Category: Fact Check

State the obvious: Celebrities often endorse political candidates. 

You wouldn’t know that from recent chatter in conservative circles online and on TV that have added “psyop” to singer Taylor Swift’s lengthy resume. (Psyop is shorthand for psychological operation.)

The prospect of Swift endorsing President Joe Biden a second time has sent some allies of former President Donald Trump down a conspiratorial rabbit hole about a Democratic plot involving Swift.

Other iterations of the theory claim Swift’s romance with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce — and his team’s upcoming appearance in Super Bowl LXIII — is orchestrated to benefit Democrats. 

Examples include: 

• Conservative activist Jack Posobiec said Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, “tried to warn us about the Taylor Swift psyop and we didn’t listen.” 

• Former Republican congressional candidate Laura Loomer, who has spread other conspiracy theories, said that the 8-year-old daughter of former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs proved “the Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop.” 

• Conservative activist Benny Johnson jeered at news organizations’ efforts to rebut the falsehood. “Nothing says ‘Taylor Swift is not a psy-op’ like every major Corporate News show parroting the same talking points about her at once,” he wrote.

Those examples were just from the past week; suspicion about Swift’s role in a plot to distract Americans or help Biden has been simmering for months in fringe online forums. 

In early January, Fox News host Jesse Watters devoted a segment to promoting the Swift-psyop conspiracy theory, using supervillain-esque imagery and omitting important context.

Watters’ primetime segment laid the groundwork for more mainstream conspiratorial commentary after Swift’s January appearances at Kelce’s playoff games.

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift walk together after an AFC Championship NFL football game between the Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, Jan. 28, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP)

“You’ve got Taylor Swift herself,” said Whitney Phillips, a University of Oregon assistant professor of digital platforms and media ethics who researches conspiratorial belief and identity. “You’ve got the connection to the NFL, which just adds additional energy. You’ve got the fact that we’re approaching the 2024 election. You have the fact that Kelce was in those COVID vaccine commercials.” 

Any one of those things could dominate a news cycle. Combined, Phillips said, it’s a cultural “perfect storm.”

How influencers on the political right have pushed the theory

Before Watters’ segment aired, speculation about Swift’s potential as a government operative was fodder for discussion on X and podcasts. 

In June, the hosts of the podcast “Macrodosing” questioned whether Swift’s brief relationship with musician Matty Healy was orchestrated to cover up the existence of aliens. (A former military officer went public with claims that the U.S. government possessed nonhuman spacecraft). 

“We started this out kind of joking around about the Taylor Swift thing,” said host Eric Sollenberger, also known as PFT Commenter. “Is Taylor Swift — is she a CIA asset? … What better way to distract America from finding out about aliens than having just Taylor Swift announce that she got dumped?” 

Some of the “Macrodosing” hosts acknowledged the theory’s outlandishness and laughed at themselves. 

Others were more serious about how Swift, who endorsed Biden in 2020 with a tray of cookies, could be used in the 2024 election.

On National Voter Registration Day in September, Swift encouraged her Instagram followers to register to vote. Vote.org reported 35,000 registrations that day, up from 25,000 on the same day in 2022. 

This action fed conspiracy theories. Mike Benz — a former State Department official under Trump who NBC News reported was once a content creator associated with white nationalists — shared a headline in September about Swift’s activism, writing on X: “I told you Taylor Swift was going to be wielded as instrument of statecraft…” 

Benz had previously pushed the “statecraft” idea on his social media accounts. 

Benz, who has more than 140,000 X followers, saw more evidence of government interference after a Dec. 2 opinion piece in The Hill discussed how Swift could “save Joe Biden.”

Taylor Swift performs at the Monumental stadium during her Eras Tour concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023. (AP)

Swift stayed in the headlines as she attended Kelce’s games in fall and took her “Eras” tour to Argentina and Brazil in November. In December, Time magazine named her “Person of the Year.”

Former Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller wrote Dec. 6 on X, “What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic.”

Watters used an out-of-context video to introduce a possible ‘psyop’

Early in his Jan. 9 broadcast, Watters flashed onscreen an edited photo of Swift with red lasers for eyes. Watters, who took over former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s evening slot in July, speculated that Swift’s popularity isn’t tied to her musical talent.

(Screenshot from Internet Archive)

“Well around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting,” Watters said. “What kind of asset? A psyop for combating online misinformation.” 

He aired a clip of data engineer Alicia Marie Bargar saying at a conference almost five years ago that “social influence can help encourage or promote behavior change.” Bargar, who then worked as a research engineer at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, mentioned Swift as an example, because she is “a fairly influential online person.” 

Watters cut in, saying, “‘Primetime’ obviously has no evidence” that Swift is a “front for a covert political agenda.” But he continued, mentioning Swift’s voter-registration efforts and that her relationship with Kelce had boosted the NFL’s ratings. “So how’s the psyop going?” 

Bargar told Business Insider that her comment came from the 2019 International Conference on Cyber Conflict organized by NATO’s cyber defense hub — and that Watters took it out of context. 

Swift was “an incidental example of a famous person to explain a social network analysis concept to the audience,” Bargar said. “This is a commonly used approach in academia to make theoretical concepts easier to understand.”

In the full clip, Bargar discussed ways to counter covert influence campaigns. Because one way involved training influential people to spread desired messages, she mentioned Swift, who had shared a photo of herself next to a voting sign. 

Bargar said that U.S. celebrities regularly post pictures of themselves voting to encourage others to vote, a strategy that “has a measurable effect” on turnout. Bargar went on to explain other methods for countering influence campaigns without mentioning Swift. Bargar told Business Insider she has no affiliation with NATO or the Pentagon. 

“Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told PolitiFact Feb. 2. “I’m sure she has other chief priorities, as do we.”

PolitiFact reached out to Bargar and Swift’s spokesperson, but did not hear back. 

The theory’s new, wider audience isn’t swayed by debunking 

Watters was the main amplifier of the Swift-as-psyop conspiracy theory, said NewsGuard senior analyst Macrina Wang. NewsGuard tracks online misinformation and produces weekly “Reality Check” reports. 

Data from NewsGuard’s media monitoring tools showed a 13,000% increase in online mentions of “Taylor Swift” and “psyop” from Jan. 8 to Jan. 10 — the day after Watters’ Jan. 9 show, Wang said. That included mentions on X, Reddit, websites, blogs, news sites and forums — largely excluding mentions that aimed to debunk the idea.

When Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens on Jan. 28, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, shared “wild speculation” that the Super Bowl would be rigged for Kelce’s team ahead of a “major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.”

Days later on X, Benz scrutinized Swift’s use of emojis and punctuation — a behavior not so different from Swifties on the prowl for Easter eggs — to speculate that the conspiracy dated back years. He said it appeared Swift had been “handed” language critical of Trump ahead of the 2020 election.

Phillips said she sees conservative commentators’ efforts to target Swift as an attempt to “grab the cultural microphone.” They are essentially arguing that Swift “is a form of liberal propaganda” who might mobilize people to vote for Democrats and “take away the voices of Republicans,” Phillips said. 

“Taylor Swift is just a perfect opportunity to make that argument and make it loud and make it so that people can’t help but write articles about it,” she said. 

Wang said that media scrutiny and fact-checks seemed to encourage proponents of the Swift theory to dig in their heels.

“It comes from this systemic distrust of media and the establishment … and it’s almost like a badge of honor that people are trying to debunk the claim,” Wang said.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird and PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman contributed to this report.

RELATED: What could a Taylor Swift endorsement mean for voter turnout in the 2024 election?

RELATED: No, X is not blocking users from searching for Taylor Swift because of past “pro-Biden” images

The expected presidential rematch between two men, ages 77 and 81, is a fight over many things: How to protect the border; foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine; abortion access. And now, the potential for a 34-year-old superstar’s endorsement.

Last fall, Taylor Swift encouraged her more than 270 million Instagram followers to register to vote, leading to a surge in registrations.

Now Swift’s political influence is getting renewed attention amid a freakout among conservative media that she could endorse Joe Biden this year and lead her fans to tip the election in his direction. 

One unnamed source close to former President Donald Trump said top Trump allies will plot a “holy war” if Swift endorses Biden, Rolling Stone reported. 

But it is misguided to assume that Swift’s potential involvement in the race would be a magic bullet with guaranteed results. Experts say it often takes more than a single message or action for celebrity endorsements to move the needle in elections. And younger people could be particularly hard to sway because they consistently chalk up the lowest turnout rates at the polls. An endorsement would draw attention, but her fans already lean left.

Swift’s involvement in politics 

Swift, who registered to vote in 2008, largely avoided politics until 2018, when she endorsed Democrat Phil Bredesen in Tennessee’s U.S.Senate race against then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican.

In a 2020 documentary about Swift, “Miss Americana,” she said she regretted that she didn’t speak out against Trump in 2016. 

Trump lashed out about Swift’s Bredesen endorsement, saying he liked her music “about 25% less now.” Blackburn defeated Bredesen — a widely respected two-term governor — by double digits. 

In August 2020, Swift alluded to Trump’s attacks on mail voting during the pandemic and told her fans to “request a ballot early and vote early.” She endorsed Biden in October 2020.

But many of her social media posts are nonpartisan, encouraging fans to register and vote but not specifying a party to support. 

“Are you registered to vote yet?” Swift wrote on Instagram Sept. 19, National Voter Registration Day. “I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my US shows recently. I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year! Register to vote in less than 2 minutes at Vote.org/NVRD.” Swift is not officially affiliated with the Vote.org nonprofit organization. 

The day that Swift posted that message, Vote.org received about 35,000 new registrations, up from 25,000 the same day in 2022. Two-thirds of those 2023 registrations were people ages 18 to 29. 

Swift’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about whether Swift plans to continue to encourage registration or endorse Biden. 

What role does voter registration play? 

Registering thousands of new voters suggests that additional votes will be cast, since in most places the first step to voting is registering, said Jonathan Nagler, co-director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics.

Being a registered voter can lead to more extensive outreach from campaigns and organizations that use lists of registered voters for get-out-the-vote efforts, said Alberto Medina, spokesperson for the Center for Information and Research Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, which tracks youth voting.

“Our research has found that youth who hear from campaigns and candidates, especially multiple times per cycle, are more likely to vote,” Medina said, adding that, “given Swift’s massive cultural footprint, her potential impact could be unprecedented.” 

“But research suggests it may take more than a single message or action,” he said. 

A fall poll of about 2,100 18- to 29-year-olds by the Harvard Institute of Politics asked whether respondents would be more likely to vote if they received a call or text from Swift encouraging them to do so. Nearly two-thirds said it would make no difference, 19% said it would make them more likely to vote, and 15% said it would make them less likely to vote.

Swift’s fans, however, span all age groups. According to a Morning Consult poll of adults, 45% of “avid” Swift fans are millennials aged 27 to 42. Another 11% are in Generation Z, who were born between 1997 and 2012. The remainder is split about evenly between Baby Boomers and Generation X. (That poll was conducted in early March, and Morning Consult wrote, “Swift has not yet earned the admiration of many Gen Zers, but perhaps her ‘Eras’ tour can change that.”) 

Swift’s 2024 influence could be greater than in 2020 when she endorsed Biden. Since then, she has released multiple albums and generated skyrocketing demand and publicity with her Eras Tour. 

When it comes to juicing younger voter turnout, the main way Swift could have an impact is among independent voters who are fans, said Wayne P. Steger, a DePaul University political science professor. Independents “do not have the same party allegiances and, if they pay attention to political news, can be swayed,” Steger said. “There may well be people who do not have a particularly strong partisan attachment and who do not pay attention to politics normally, but who do pay attention to Taylor Swift.”

Mary-Kate Lizotte, an Augusta University political science professor, said Swift’s comments about politics will influence her fans and followers, as we’ve seen already, but are unlikely to influence people who are not already fans or who are her fans but are politically conservative. 

“Her endorsement, however, will result in a different type of media attention to the Biden campaign, which could also be advantageous,” said Lizotte, who has researched gender differences in political opinion. “Having more young and millennial women register, turnout and vote for Biden would be beneficial for the Biden ticket. Her endorsement is not likely to change anyone’s mind on who to vote for or to even influence undecided voters. But increasing registration and turnout among women who would already be likely to vote for Biden, would help the Biden ticket.”

Young voters have the lowest turnout rates 

It’s possible Swift could inspire some young people to vote, but it’s an uphill task: People ages 18 to 29 consistently have lower turnout rates — as much as 25 to 30 percentage points lower in recent presidential elections than the rate for those 60 and older.

Observing a liberal bent among younger voters — who have favored Democrats by 7 to 13 percentage points in presidential elections since 2008 — some Republican lawmakers have sought to enact barriers to voting.

The Kentucky Senate in January backed a bill that would remove student IDs as a primary proof of identification at the polls. Idaho in 2023 banned the use of student IDs for voter ID. In Texas, laws created new obstacles to establishing early voting sites on college campuses. All three states have Republican majorities in their state legislatures. 

Do celebrity endorsements have an impact? 

Research suggests that celebrities can sometimes influence voter choice, but it doesn’t happen in every election. 

Celebrities may have more influence in primaries, when voters are choosing among candidates who have broadly similar ideologies. Moving the needle in a general election, when the differences between nominees are more pronounced, has more to do with voter motivation. 

For example, in 2016, Hillary Clinton received multiple celebrity endorsements including George Clooney, Beyonce and Jay-Z . Many of Clinton’s endorsements came during the general election, but she still lost to Trump.

By comparison, one research paper concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama resulted in approximately 1 million votes for him in the Democratic primary. 

David J. Jackson, a Bowling Green State University political scientist, surveyed Ohio voters in 2016 and asked whether a particular endorsement would influence their vote. Some potential celebrity endorsements he floated produced negative results, but Jackson said his research showed that selective use of endorsements with certain targeted audiences might have an impact. For example, rocker Ted Nugent supported Trump. Jackson’s research indicated that although overall Nugent’s endorsement produced negative results, voters aligned with the tea party movement indicated that they would be positively influenced by it.

Morning Consult found in a March 2023 survey that 55% of Swift fans identified as Democrats, and the remainder were evenly split between Republicans and independents.

How much Swift does to promote Biden’s candidacy will play a major role, political experts say. 

Jackson said the power of a Swift endorsement would depend on whether it’s a one-off social media post versus multiple appearances with Biden.

“There are lots of reasons why people do things, but one basic reason is because someone they like and trust asked them to do it,” Jackson said. 

If people like and trust Swift, he said, “then the more often and vigorously she supports Biden (if she does),” the more likely it is to have an effect. 

RELATED: No, X is not blocking users from searching for Taylor Swift because of past “pro-Biden” images

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, presidential campaigns are seizing on two top issues on voters’ minds: abortion and the economy.  

Democrats argue they will protect reproductive rights from Republican interference, while Republicans blame “Bidenomics” for the lingering effects of inflation. 

Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took stock of those issues in a Jan. 21 interview on “Upfront,” WISN-TV’s Sunday morning show.

Walker was asked about Vice President Kamala Harris’ then-upcoming visit to Waukesha County on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and whether abortion is still a losing issue for Republicans ahead of the general election. 

He responded that Democrats need to find an issue that “connects with the everyday concerns” of voters, rather than running on abortion. 

“The everyday concerns of Americans are the economy — even young people that we work with at Young America’s Foundation, our polling shows nationwide, their top issue for college students is the economy,” Walker said. 

Walker is now the president of Young America’s Foundation, a group that aims to mobilize young conservatives, particularly on college campuses. 

His claim caught our attention, especially because turnout for the most recent statewide election in Wisconsin was dominated by liberal, college-age voters who were motivated by abortion. 

Is Walker right that “The top issue for college students is the economy”?

What did Young America’s Foundation’s poll find, and how reliable is it? How does it compare with other nationwide polls of young voters? 

Let’s look at the group’s poll and others on the topic. 

First, let’s check what Young America’s Foundation asked young voters and how they responded. 

Michael McGonigle, the group’s public relations director, directed PolitiFact Wisconsin to the poll highlights and the data.

The poll was commissioned by the group and conducted in July 2023 by Echelon Insights, a polling company that works mostly for Republican or conservative organizations. 

The company polled 840 high schoolers (ages 15 to 20) and 812 college students (ages 15 to 24). 

The poll asked participants to select up to three of eleven issues, in randomized order, that they were most concerned about. 

The leading answer was the economy: 38% of college students and 37% of high schoolers said that was a top issue for them. 

School safety was next, though that issue was higher ranked among high schoolers, at 45%, than college students, at 29%. Then came gun policies, education, the environment and climate change. 

Sixth on the list was abortion: that was a top issue for 15% of high schoolers and 27% of college students.

So, the heart of Walker’s claim appears correct — the group’s polling showed the economy was the top issue among college voters. 

Poll was conducted by reputable company, most questions were not slanted

Now, let’s take a closer look at the survey to check its credibility.

To do this, PolitiFact Wisconsin asked Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, to review the poll.

Franklin said Echelon Insights is a “well-respected pollster.” Although a couple of questions were framed in a way to elicit a certain answer, he said the wordings in general were straightforward. 

“I expected to see a much more slanted survey, because interest groups normally do that. They ask questions in a way that benefit their group,” Franklin said. “So, I was pretty struck by what I took to be a pretty evenhanded set of questions.”

Franklin said recruiting participants through online panels is now the norm in polling, and Echelon Insights’ method of reaching high schoolers was smart. And, the demographic makeup of respondents was in line with what he expected. 

The participants also had a range of partisanship. Among college participants, 53% were Democratic or Democratic-leaning, 26% Republican or Republican-leaning, and 21% considered themselves independents. 

More high schoolers were unsure of their party affiliation, which Franklin said fits with research about when young people develop political awareness. 

Finally, Franklin said the poll’s finding is common in other surveys, and voters saying they’re worried about the economy is “almost a default answer.”

“The point about abortion being considerably less (important) than the economy, that’s true in every survey of adults I’ve ever seen. Doesn’t mean it’s not important, but it’s not the most important issue for a big chunk of the public,” he said.

Based on Franklin’s evaluation, it looks like we can trust Young America Foundation’s poll.

Other polls show economy is top concern of young voters, more so than abortion

Now: Does Young America Foundation’s finding that the economy is the top issue for college-age voters match up with other polls?

First, let’s start with the close-to-home Marquette Law School Poll, which most recently asked Wisconsin voters to rate their top concerns in fall 2022. 

Among the youngest category of voters (ages 19 to 29), 60% said they were very concerned about inflation and higher prices, and 40% said they were somewhat concerned. Inflation was the top issue in that poll.

Now, comparing that with abortion: For the same age group in that poll, 62% were very concerned, 26% somewhat concerned, 4% not too concerned and 8% not at all concerned about abortion policy.

So, it’s not exactly the same question format and age group as Young America Foundation’s poll. But it does show that the economy was an area of high concern among young voters. Then again, abortion was too. 

Let’s check another poll: the Harvard Youth Poll, which surveys voters aged 18 to 29. Its most recent poll was conducted in fall 2023.

That poll asked young voters which national issue concerned them most — so, more similar to Young American Foundation’s wording. 

Among all the issues, inflation and cost of living increases was highest, at 14%. The economy in general was the top concern of 12% of respondents. 

In comparison, abortion was at 3%. Still, another question indicates abortion was important to young voters: 63% said they find it important to consider legal access to abortion when deciding which state to live in.

And let’s look at one more for good measure: the CIRCLE Pre-2024 Election Youth Survey, developed at Tufts University and conducted by the polling company Ipsos. The poll surveyed voters ages 18 to 34 in fall 2023.

The cost of living and inflation was again the top concern of young voters: 53% ranked it as one of their top three issues. Expanding access to abortion sat at 19%. 

Bottom line: The finding by Young America’s Foundation isn’t an outlier. Other polls of young voters show the economy, inflation and rising costs of living are top concerns, even more so than abortion. 

Our ruling

In discussing the economy and abortion — two emerging issues in 2024 campaigns — former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said, “The everyday concerns of Americans are the economy — even young people that we work with at Young America’s Foundation, our polling shows nationwide, their top issue for college students is the economy.”

The economy was the top issue for college students who participated in the group’s poll. Wisconsin pollster Charles Franklin said the polling company is reputable and the questions were overall evenhanded.

And, other polls conducted by nonpartisan groups found the same thing: Inflation and the cost of living was the top concern among young voters.

We rate Walker’s claim True.

 

In his annual State of the State address, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers boasted of record low unemployment rates in Wisconsin last year.

“In April last year, our state unemployment rate hit a record-low of 2.4%,” Evers said during his Jan. 23 address. “Last year, Wisconsin had an all-time lowest number of unemployed workers ever in modern history.” 

Often, when rating these sorts of claims, speakers credit themselves with making the difference, and that lowers the rating, since there are many things that drive the economy at the state, national and worldwide level. In this case, Evers stated it generally as a fact, so we will evaluate it with that in mind.

Evers is correct that last year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wisconsin had a 2.4% unemployment rate for April and May.

But, was there ever a time in history when it was even lower?

Let’s do some digging.

Wisconsin’s unemployment data

BLS has available data on Wisconsin’s labor force dating back to January 1976.

Following a record-high unemployment rate of 14.1% at the start of the pandemic in April 2020, Wisconsin has been on a steady decline in the percentage of the labor force without a job.

The state hit its lowest unemployment rate of 2.4% in April 2023.

April’s record low beat Wisconsin’s previous lowest unemployment rate of 2.5% from just the month prior. And before the pandemic, Wisconsin’s lowest unemployment rate on record was 2.9% in March 2020. 

Wisconsin’s low ranking undercut the national unemployment figures which were 3.4% for April.

Since then, the state’s unemployment has gone slightly up and now stands at 3.3%.

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development’s Communications Director John Dipko confirmed with PolitiFact that 2.4% is the lowest unemployment rate for Wisconsin on record.

Unemployment rates are one of the most common figures economists use to capture the health of the labor market. 

The rate measures the proportion of workers in the labor force who do not currently have a job but are actively looking for work. People who have not looked for work in the past four weeks are not included. 

In a DWD report from April, Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek attributed some of the low unemployment to the increase in jobs across the state following the pandemic.

The report stated Wisconsin added 51,500 total nonfarm jobs from April 2022 to April 2023, totaling a record-high 3,003,600 jobs across the state.

Our ruling

Evers said Wisconsin had the “lowest number of unemployed workers ever in modern history” of 2.4% last April.

According to available BLS data dating to 1976, Evers is correct that 2.4% is the lowest unemployment rate Wisconsin has had.

We rate Evers’ claim True.

 

Social media users are claiming the Israeli military has booby-trapped food cans in Gaza, where, by the United Nations’ count, more than 570,000 Gazans face “catastrophic hunger” amid the Israel-Hamas war.

A Jan. 24 Instagram post shared a photo of about a dozen metal cylinders and claimed the Israeli military left “these detonators that resemble food cans” at schools in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza.

“Thinking they were food, displaced families opened the cans. As soon as they did, they exploded and killed them instantly,” the post said. The Instagram post’s caption claimed that Israeli forces were “taking advantage of the desperate situation in Gaza.” 

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

(Screengrab from Instagram)

Multiple X posts also shared footage of the cans and similarly claimed they were concealed munitions. But these social media posts are misleading.

Although there has been significant news coverage of Israel’s recent attacks on Khan Younis, we found no reports about Israel using explosives disguised as food cans in Gaza. 

Experts on military strategy and the Middle East reviewed the footage and told PolitiFact the munition is likely the American-made M603 fuze, which is designed to detonate landmines.

Some pro-Palestinian news outlets shared the video that’s been circulating social media, but they provided no additional information to substantiate the claim.

The Middle East Monitor, which shared the viral video, used English subtitles to accompany the Arabic-speaking man in the video. The man claims the metal devices are “canned meat … found to contain a hidden danger” that “detonate instantly” if opened. (We were not able to independently verify the translation.)

A longer version of the video shows at least one of the cans is labeled “fuze mine.” There are no visible labels or pictures on the cans that suggest they contain food.

At one point in the video, the man holds up a fuze that’s been removed from its container. 

Diagrams of the fuze and its container show the “keyway,” or opening mechanism, is on the can’s bottom. In the video, most of the cans have been turned upside-down to make it look as if the keyway is on top.

The fuze container is not designed to explode upon opening. Instructions under the diagrams say to open the container and remove the fuze to attach it to a landmine.

This fuze is activated when a large amount of force is applied, driving the firing pin into the detonator and causing the landmine to explode, experts said. The metal cylinder acts as a container for the fuze.

The M603 fuze alone requires at least 140 pounds to activate, according to Collective Awareness to Unexploded Ordnance, an explosive hazards database. When attached to a landmine, it could take as much as 750 pounds of force to trigger an explosion.

Because so much weight and pressure are required to ignite the fuze and detonate an explosive, it’s “highly unlikely anyone was harmed or killed by opening up the container that holds this fuze,” retired U.S. Army Lt. General Mark Schwartz told PolitiFact.

“All the fuzes also have a safety clip on them. I doubt that anyone was deliberately targeted with these fuzes,” said Schwartz, who is also a senior fellow at Rand Corp., a nonpartisan research organization.

It’s possible the fuzes are being used for purposes beyond their original design, said Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

One such use could be booby-trapping buildings, which is common in urban warfare, he added.

But Nadimi said he is “a little skeptical” that opening the cans causes deadly explosions given how these fuzes are typically activated.

We rate the claim that a photo shows explosives disguised as food cans False.

Leading Republicans have called for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D- Minn., from office after a speech she delivered in Somali was posted on X with a supposed English translation.

The X account EndWokeness posted the video Jan. 28 with the caption, “Ilhan Omar tells a crowd of Somalians that her top priority is to put Somalia first and expand its territory.”

It also included a purported quote from Omar that said, “The U.S. government will do what we want, nothing else. They must follow our orders. That is how we safeguard the interest of Somalia.” The video was first posted by Rhoda J. Elmi, deputy foreign minister of Somaliland, a self-governing region of Somalia that declared independence in 1991 but hasn’t been officially recognized by any country.

When contacted for comment, Omar disputed the X post’s translation. An interpreter PolitiFact contacted also said the X post’s translation was inaccurate. Other news outlets reached the same conclusion.

Omar, the first Somali-American member of Congress, delivered the speech in Somali, Somalia’s official language and a language widely spoken in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and within diaspora communities outside East Africa.

The Jan. 27 speech at a Minneapolis hotel was to Somali-American constituents; Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the U.S. Omar’s remarks followed the Ethiopian government’s January deal with Somaliland officials to enable Ethiopia, a landlocked country, to gain access to the sea. In exchange, Ethiopia vowed to officially recognize Somaliland as a country, a move U.S. State Department officials have rejected and described as “disruptive.”

Reposting the video of the speech on X, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote about Omar, “Expel from Congress, denaturalize and deport!”

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., called for an ethics investigation and Omar’s resignation.

“Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office,” Emmer wrote on X.

In a statement to PolitiFact, Omar said the attacks were “rooted in xenophobia and Islamophobia.” She said the speech was in line with official U.S. policy on the land borders of Somalia, which includes the disputed region of Somaliland.

Omar was born in Somalia and her family immigrated to the U.S. as refugees when she was a child. Omar, who is Muslim, has often faced accusations of disloyalty to the U.S. since her election to Congress in 2019. Omar also has previously been criticized for questioning the allegiance of Jewish Americans.

PolitiFact asked Jibril Mohamed, an Ohio State University professor of Somali who is a registered court interpreter in Ohio, to assess the translation in the X post. He found several inaccuracies in the translation. 

He told PolitiFact that Omar did not say her top priority is Somalia and expanding its territory. He also said other statements in the X post translation were not part of Omar’s speech. 

The video subtitles on X say Omar told the audience that they are “people who know they are Somalians first, Muslims second who protect one another.” Republicans have condemned her because of the alleged “Somalia-first” phrase.

But Mohamed said that translation is inaccurate, and that Omar told her constituents they are “people who know they are Somalis and Muslims who come to the aid of another and aid their other brothers and sisters.” Also, people from Somalia call themselves Somali, not Somalians, as the subtitles say that Omar said.

Omar’s office shared a translation of the speech with PolitiFact that matched a version posted on X by Abdirashid Hashi, a former Somali government official.

The EndWokeness X post said that Omar had said, “The U.S. government will do what we want, nothing else. They must follow our orders.” Hashi’s X post said the accurate translation was, “My response was: the U.S. government will do what we ask it to do. We should have this confidence in ourselves as Somalis. We live in this country. We are taxpayers in this country.” 

Other news outlets have also said the translation in EndWokeness’ X post is inaccurate.  A fact-check by the Star Tribune, a Minneapolis newspaper, cited an in-house reporter who speaks Somali and who described the translation by Hashi as “more accurate” and said it “matched Omar’s actual comments.” The Star Tribune article described the Republican criticism as “based on a flawed translation.”

The Minnesota Reformer, another news outlet, published a translation of the speech by a federal court interpreter who also found inaccuracies in the original translation.The Reformer described the original translation as “faulty” and distorted. The translation published by the Reformer broadly matched Mohamed’s translation for PolitiFact.

Our ruling

An X post said that Omar said her “top priority is to put Somalia first and expand its territory.”

A translation provided to PolitiFact by a court-registered translator said the speech expressed support for current U.S. foreign policy on Somalia’s borders.

Omar disputed the translation of her comments, and the court-registered interpreter agreed that the X post’s translation was inaccurate. Other news outlets also called the translation in the X post flawed and distorted.

We rate this statement False.

Stanley cups, the trendy tumblers whose sales have skyrocketed in recent years, have been the beneficiary of social media success.

Customers have waited in long lines to buy the cups, and a limited edition pink version sparked mayhem as customers tried to snatch them up at Target stores in early January.

But more recent social media videos alleging the popular cups contain lead and endanger consumers have flooded Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. Many featured people using lead home-testing kits on the cups.

We found at least a dozen Facebook posts sharing the same screenshot from a post in which a person claims to have used lead home test swabs in a Stanley cup, and on cups from its competitors, Yeti and Rtic. One Jan. 29 post was shared more than 600 times.

“I rubbed it on the inside of the cup where the drink is,” the person wrote. “Every single Stanley I owned tested positive for lead.” The other cups did not, the post said.

The 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.)

Lead is a metal that is toxic to people, particularly young children. It can cause developmental delays and other adverse effects, health officials say.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has not recalled any Stanley cups and said lead home-testing kits are unreliable. An expert also said the home tests generally are used to detect lead on painted surfaces.

(Facebook screenshot)

Do Stanley cups contain lead?

Stanley said on its website that it uses lead in manufacturing its cups, but not in any part consumers touch or drink from.

Stanley said it uses “an industry standard pellet to seal the vacuum insulation at the base” of the cups. The sealing material contains some lead, but the area is covered with a durable stainless steel layer, making it inaccessible to consumers, Stanley said.

“Rest assured that no lead is present on the surface of any Stanley product that comes into contact with the consumer nor the contents of the product,” Stanley said.

If the cups’ bases break and expose the seal, customers can contact Stanley to take advantage of the products’ lifetime warranty. 

Stanley did not return our request for comment, but a spokesperson told NBC News the company is working on alternative materials to use in the sealing process.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has not issued a recall for Stanley cups, a search of the agency’s website shows. The agency previously has recalled other companies’ children’s drinking cups over lead exposure concerns, spokesperson Patty Davis said.

“We have recalled children’s cups in the past where the lead solder bead became accessible due to the bottom coming off, or the lead solder bead was just covered by paint, which is not considered a barrier to make it inaccessible,” Davis said.

The agency issued recalls for several brands of children’s drinking cups in November for that reason. 

Jack Caravanos, a New York University clinical professor of environmental public health sciences who studies lead poisoning, said after seeing social media videos about the Stanley cups he tested several of the cups himself.

Caravanos used what he called a “state of the art” X-ray fluorescent monitor that can detect lead and other metals in solid or semisolid materials. He also used an at-home test kit with swabs that change color if lead is detected. He used both the monitor and the kit to test the cups’ outside areas, including the top portions consumers drink from.

“I did not find anything on the outside that contained lead in any detectable quantity,” Caravanos said.

“So, the cups that people are buying today are absolutely lead-free on the outside and (there’s) really no practical way for you to ingest that lead material,” he said.

Caravanos said it would be impossible for the lead used at the base of the cup to leak into the cup’s interior, which holds the beverage. He described the thermoses as a “bottle within a bottle, and the space between the inside and the outside is a vacuum.”

“There’s no way that lead can go through the stainless steel into the drinking part of the cup,” he said.

What about the tests?

It’s  unclear what testing kits people in the social media posts are using on the Stanley cups. Some videos show people swabbing the inside of the cups; others show them swabbing the base of the cup with the protective cover removed. Some videos have shown positive tests; others have shown negative results.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized three test kits that it says can accurately determine whether lead-based paint is present on a surface, although one is no longer being produced by its maker, 3M Co. 

There are other home testing kits available, some of which say they can test for lead on any surface. 

However, the Consumer Products Safety Commission does not recommend testing for lead with home kits.

“They are not reliable and can have false positives and false negatives,” Davis said.

Caravanos said the home tests generally are used to detect lead on painted surfaces.

“They’re really intended for paint or glaze, we don’t usually use them on metals,” he said.

Should consumers be concerned about lead exposure from these cups?

Caravanos said when testing the cups he tried and failed to pop off the cap covering the lead at the cup’s bottom, and his friend suggested they would need to use a drill to remove it.

“If I have to do all that to get to the lead, it’s really unlikely a human can expose themselves to that material,” he said.

Even if the base broke and exposed the lead, it would be unlikely to be ingested, Caravanos said, but it could contaminate other surfaces, perhaps leaking into water if you’re washing the cup in a sink or a dishwasher.

“The chances that you’re drinking something that gets contaminated like that are pretty low,” said Caravanos, who added that lead should not be used in any consumer product.

Our ruling

Social media posts say the inside of popular Stanley cups are testing positive for lead. 

The cups contain lead in material that’s used to vacuum seal the cups’ base. Unless the cup is damaged, that lead does not come into contact with the inside of the cups or any part the consumer would handle, the company and an expert said. 

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has not recalled any Stanley cups as of this article’s publication and says home testing kits for lead are unreliable. The tests generally are used to detect lead on painted surfaces, an agency official said.

A lead expert who tested the cups told PolitiFact he detected no lead on the cup’s exterior or lid and that it would be impossible for lead in the base to reach the cup’s interior.

We rate these claims False.

It’s been more than three years since COVID-19 vaccinations were rolled out, but that has not slowed new conspiracy theories about them.

In one Instagram reel, a man says the Marburg virus disease was implanted in people who got COVID-19 vaccines. “What was really in them is nanoparticles, and they lay dormant until they pulse a signal from the 5G network,” he says. 

The man also says 5G pulses from the Marburg virus will kill some people, but for others, it will activate hologram technology to fool everybody about Jesus’ second and alien invasions. He says the fear the holograms will produce will make everyone accept a single global government, military and religion.

As multiple PolitiFact articles have found, the ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines have been publicly available since the vaccines came out. 

In checking the ingredients for the Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax COVID-19 vaccines, we found none of them contained the Marburg virus. 

Amira Roess, a professor and epidemiologist at George Mason University, told Agence France-Presse that “the components of the vaccines do not include anything related to the Marburg virus.” 

The Marburg virus is a severe illness in the same family group as Ebola and causes a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans. ​

The disease is spread through bodily fluids of an infected person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. 

More than 270 million people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of May 2023, the CDC’s data tracker shows. Multiple studies have found that the death rate among people who received COVID-19 vaccines has been lower compared with people who did not receive the vaccines. 

Politifact has also previously debunked claims that COVID-19 vaccines have nanoparticles that can connect to 5G networks. 

Nanoparticles refer to materials with dimensions in the nanoscale, or less than 100 nanometers. Lipid nanoparticles are used in COVID-19 vaccines to carry mRNA and are  unconnected to 5G networks. 

We rate the claim that COVID-19 vaccines contain a Marburg virus disease that can be activated by 5G technology Pants on Fire!