Category: Fact Check

TALLAHASSEE — Amid rising teen anxiety and suicides, Florida lawmakers are moving ahead with a solution: Stop them from using social media.

Under House Bill 1, kids under 16 would be prohibited from using social media. Another bill would block them from accessing online pornography.

To top legislators and other advocates, social media is akin to opioids and tobacco.

“Companies are knowingly putting forth a harmful product that is taking the lives of young people, and they’re doing nothing to stop it,” House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said Thursday.

But while the rate of teen anxiety and depression has risen along with the prevalence of social media, there is little data indicating that one is causing the other, researchers say.

Instead, various signs point to larger problems with American society. Kids have much less time to play than they did decades ago. Older adults are also suffering from high rates of suicide.

“I think there’s a misimpression about what’s going on,” said Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University who has studied the issue and written about it for Psychology Today.

“Everybody is experiencing a rise in depression and anxiety.”

Florida would join other states

Under H.B. 1, social media companies like Facebook and TikTok would be required to hire a third-party company to verify the age of users. New users under 16 wouldn’t be allowed to join. Existing accounts would be deleted.

Those rules wouldn’t apply to apps that primarily focus on messaging.

H.B. 3 would restrict anyone under 18 from accessing online pornography and other “material harmful to minors,” defined as what the average person would find “appeals to the prurient interest.” The sites would also have to hire a company to do age verification.

The legislation has bipartisan support, including from conservative and Christian groups, and is one of Renner’s top priorities. On Thursday, the bills passed their first House committee with only one lawmaker voting against them.

The Senate has a similar bill, and the chamber’s president, state Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said this week that there was “huge interest in the Senate to support those initiatives.”

If it passes, Florida would join Utah, Arkansas and Mississippi in imposing age restrictions on social media sites. Even more states have created limits on online pornography. (Some states’ social media and pornography bills have been blocked by federal judges on grounds they violated minors’ right to free speech.)

The legislation is in response to dramatic increases in suicide rates among teens and depression among teen girls in particular since 2010. The timing has led many to tie the increases to smartphones and social media. The iPhone was released in 2007.

Studies have also linked longer social media use to worse mental health. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy cited that statistic when he urged parents and policymakers last year to take action to better understand the issue.

“You see a very direct correlation — not just in this country but across the globe and everywhere where social media is available — in a devastating, devastating effect on the mental health and well-being of our children,” Renner said Thursday.

Renner and other lawmakers cited social media companies’ desire to keep young people on their platforms. Reporters for The Wall Street Journal in 2021 uncovered slides from researchers inside Instagram who acknowledged that teen girls who felt bad about their bodies felt worse while using the platform.

“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” one slide stated, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In October, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and dozens of other attorneys general sued Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, alleging the platforms “purposefully addict children and teens.”

Research is not conclusive

But the data is not nearly as conclusive as advocates for social media limits state.

“Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people,” the American Psychological Association concluded after reviewing the studies.

The association wrote that the effects of social media depend on what teens do online, their preexisting strengths or vulnerabilities and how they grew up.

Researchers say that while there might be a correlation between social media and mental health, it doesn’t mean one is causing the other. Ferguson called the relationship an “ecological fallacy,” when two unrelated things appear to correlate, such as the known correlation between the number of people who drown in swimming pools and the number of movies Nicolas Cage stars in each year.

Other evidence indicates that social media is not the problem. Social media is popular worldwide, yet Europeans, for example, did not see a rise in suicides. Suicides among teens also fall during the summer, when they’re out of school.

Instead, Ferguson and other researchers believe other factors are driving the mental health crisis.

Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College who has written extensively on the topic, notes that Americans’ largest rise in suicides peaked in the mid-1990s, before the internet. Rates fell until the last decade, when they again reached 1990s levels.

“The people who talk about social media being the problem are ignoring that,” Gray said.

Gray notes that American kids’ amount of play — unstructured time away from adults — has declined markedly over the last several decades, while rates of depression and anxiety have increased. He co-founded the advocacy group Let Grow, which encourages more freedom for children.

Unsupervised time away from parents allows kids to learn to be self-sufficient and to learn how to deal with stress, Gray said. But kids today have much more of their time consumed by homework, adult-directed activities and a hyperfocus (for some parents) on getting their kids into elite colleges. Those have robbed kids of valuable time for themselves and their peers, he said.

“The opposite of play is not work. The opposite is depression,” he said.

Teens have reported that social media is one of the few places where teens can speak to their friends away from their parents, he said.

“What I’m seeing is a movement to deprive young people of yet one more freedom,” Gray said.

Renner did not disagree with the importance of play and mental health, and he noted that lawmakers last year pushed to give high school students later start times to help with sleep. Doing away with social media, he said, would give kids more time for real-world interactions.

 

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley will learn how her campaign is resonating with voters after the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, the first presidential nominating contest of this election year.

Already, the former South Carolina governor — who became well known as one of the Affordable Care Act’s loudest critics during her tenure in office from 2011 to 2017 — has raised questions about what her presidency could mean for the nation’s health care policy.

“I would be very concerned,” said Sue Berkowitz, policy director and special counsel for the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center. “South Carolina is at the bottom of so many things in rankings in our country because of a number of the decisions she made while governor.”

Although politicians from both parties rallied behind Haley when she urged lawmakers to remove the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds following the 2015 church shooting in this coastal city, her politics diverged sharply from those of her Democratic colleagues when it came to most health care issues.

Haley’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but statements she’s made during recent debates offer clues about her health care positions.

She has criticized the Biden administration for high federal spending on covid relief and for the number of people on Medicaid, a program she has argued the federal government should give states more flexibility in funding and administering.

She has also emphasized the need to find consensus on banning abortions late in pregnancy. And on Jan. 10, during her heated sound-off with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the final debate before the Iowa caucuses, she reiterated her critical stance on gender-affirming care.

“I have always said that boys need to go into boys’ bathrooms, girls need to go into girls’ bathrooms, that we shouldn’t have any gender transitions before the age of 18,” she said. “Just like we don’t have tattoos before the age of 18, we shouldn’t have gender transformation or puberty blockers.”

On the campaign trail, she’s addressed reforming Medicare and Social Security. But her tenure as governor, which overlapped with several tumultuous years of national health care reform, offers an even clearer picture of how a Haley presidency might look.

Former South Carolina Medicaid Director Anthony Keck pointed out that one of her early achievements as governor was fixing a $228 million Medicaid deficit.

“People forget what dire straits the Medicaid program was in when she came into office and how it took us a couple years to right the ship,” said Keck, now executive vice president for system innovation at Ballad Health in Tennessee.

Beyond that, Keck said Haley understood that the cost of health care was “growing faster than most people’s paychecks,” adding that affordability and access were “really important to her.”

As Haley eyes the White House, here’s a recap of her health care record as South Carolina governor, a post she left in 2017 after Trump appointed her as ambassador to the United Nations.

Affordable Care Act

In 2011, Haley convened an advisory committee to decide if South Carolina should build its own health insurance marketplace instead of participating in the federal one established under the Affordable Care Act.

But before the group gathered for its first meeting, Haley wrote in an email to her advisers that the “whole point of this commission should be to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange,” according to a report published by The Post and Courier.

When that email was made public, then-Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, requested a federal investigation to find out whether Haley had predetermined the outcome of the committee. She was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.

Throughout her time in office, Haley repeatedly advocated for the Affordable Care Act’s repeal and replacement, but she has not definitively answered on the campaign trail whether she’d try to repeal the law if elected president, The New York Times has reported.

Medicaid

In 2012, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality and made Medicaid expansion an option for every state, Haley declined to expand it in South Carolina. Christian Soura, one of her former cabinet members, estimated in 2019 that “several hundred” people in the Palmetto State had died because of the decision.

On the presidential campaign trail, Haley’s stance on Medicaid expansion has remained unchanged, even as people who live in nonexpansion states broadly support it, according to KFF polling.

South Carolina remains one of 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA, leaving more than 90,000 residents in a health insurance coverage gap, according to a 2023 KFF report.

Even so, Medicaid enrollment and spending in South Carolina during Haley’s tenure grew substantially, drawing criticism from some conservatives.

In 2012, her administration chose to implement a federal program that automatically issued new Medicaid coverage to children from low-income families based on data from welfare assistance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. A 2013 case study found that the Express Lane Eligibility initiative grew Medicaid enrollment in South Carolina by more than 92,000 children in less than a year and that the simplified process “resulted in large enrollment and retention improvements.”

Haley’s administration was also widely applauded for establishing a coalition of health insurers, hospitals, and health care providers to improve birth outcomes in a state where Medicaid pays for more than 60% of all deliveries. Infant and maternal death rates in South Carolina have long ranked among the worst in the nation.

Recent research suggests, however, that some of the policies Haley’s administration prioritized, such as a home visiting program and a campaign to prevent early elective deliveries, didn’t improve maternal or infant health outcomes.

Abortion

On the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which allowed state legislatures to outlaw abortion, Haley called the decision a “victory for life and democracy.”

Her position aligned with a controversial bill she signed into state law in 2016 that banned the procedure in South Carolina 20 weeks after the probable date of fertilization — slightly past the midpoint of a woman’s pregnancy.

When she signed the law, it affected only hospitals because the state’s three outpatient abortion clinics already didn’t administer abortions after 15 weeks of gestation. The bill, which she championed, made exceptions for if the fetus were diagnosed with an “anomaly” and would die or if the mother’s life were threatened. But no exceptions were made for rape or incest.

During the recent debate in Iowa, Haley called herself “unapologetically pro-life.”

“Not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband is adopted, and I’ve got my two sweet children sitting in front of me, and I had trouble having both of them,” she said. “Our goal should be how do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as possible.”

On the campaign trail, Haley has tried to thread the needle between being pro-life and recognizing the difficulty of enacting a national abortion ban. She has spoken of finding areas that are winnable for Republicans, including increasing access to contraception and supporting adoption. That said, Haley indicated she would sign a national abortion ban as president if such a bill reached the Oval Office.

Certificate of need

During her first term, Haley vetoed more than $1 million from the state budget that had been allocated to administer the health department’s long-standing “certificate of need” program. The program required hospitals and health care providers to apply for permission from the state before building new facilities or purchasing expensive equipment, with the goal of controlling health care costs and avoiding duplication of available health care services.

At the time, Haley called the rules “intensely political” and said they allowed “bureaucratic policymakers” to block health care providers from offering treatment. “We should allow the market to work rather than politics,” she said.

Nevertheless, the state Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that a budget veto wasn’t sufficient to eliminate the regulations.

The South Carolina Legislature ultimately repealed the state’s certificate of need rules last year.

During the Jan 10 CNN debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Haley said she would eliminate certificate of need across the country. The rules still exist in about two-thirds of states.

Rural hospitals

During Haley’s second year in the governor’s office, the hospital where she was born in 1972 closed. After a failed attempt to merge with other hospitals in the area, it became financially unfeasible for that hospital in the rural town of Bamberg to remain open.

In 2013, Haley announced her administration would reimburse rural hospitals across the state for all their uncompensated care costs, amounting to tens of millions of dollars over her time in office. The policy is still in effect.

Essentially, hospitals lose money when uninsured patients don’t pay their bills. Federal law offers some support. For example, it requires state Medicaid programs to make “disproportionate share” payments to hospitals that serve large numbers of low-income and uninsured people.

But programs like those don’t necessarily cover all of the losses.

Haley prompted the South Carolina Legislature to support rural hospitals by increasing their disproportionate share payments because, without an infusion of cash, several of them faced the same fate as Bamberg County Memorial Hospital.

“I certainly don’t think it’s a bailout,” Haley told The Post and Courier in 2014. “We’re allowing solid footing for these hospitals to make the changes that they need to make.”

But her plan wasn’t fail-safe. Two more rural hospitals closed during Haley’s tenure as governor.

Vaccine mandates

As a member of the state House of Representatives in 2007, Haley co-sponsored a bill that would have made the vaccine for HPV, the virus that causes nearly all cases of cervical cancer, mandatory for girls entering seventh grade. It was ultimately killed by evangelical lobbyists, who have historically associated the HPV vaccine with encouraging underage sex, KFF Health News reported.

Several years later, Haley called her support of that bill a mistake.

In 2012, Haley vetoed a bill that would have provided free, voluntary HPV vaccines to seventh graders in South Carolina.

During the pandemic, Haley, whose sister-in-law died from COVID-19, said she received a COVID-19 vaccine, though she has said she firmly opposes COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Ahead of South Carolina’s February primary, President Joe Biden appealed to the state’s Black voters by touting his administration’s efforts to bolster racial equity in the economy.

“We’re growing back Black wealth, but we have a lot more to do,” he said Jan. 8 in Charleston at Mother Emanuel AME Church, the South’s oldest Black church. “The racial wealth gap is the smallest it’s been in 20 years, under my watch. More Black small businesses are starting up than in decades. Opening a new business (is) the ultimate act of hope.”

When we asked the White House for evidence, a spokesperson pointed us to a chart from the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, that shows the ratio of wealth between white and nonwhite families. By this single measure, Biden is accurate: The wealth ratio between white and Black families narrowed slightly in 2022 and is the smallest it’s been since 2001.

However, this is not the only way to measure the racial wealth gap. The same Federal Reserve report that Biden referred to said racial wealth gaps “persisted and widened” in 2022 based on the dollar amount differences in median wealth between white and nonwhite families.

Economists use both measures to assess the racial wealth gap, so Biden’s statement covered only half of the picture — and it was the more favorable half. All of the wealth measures calculate assets minus liabilities.

Since Biden made the statement in the context of Black wealth and when speaking to a Black audience, we focused this fact-check on economic disparities between white and Black families. The Federal Reserve also reports wealth data for Hispanic, Asian and other nonwhite communities.

Although average American families’ incomes grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, significant economic disparities between white and nonwhite families persisted. In 2022, the median wealth for white families was more than six times larger than that of Black families.

Data on the racial wealth gap shows a mixed bag

One way to determine the racial wealth gap is to measure Black families’ wealth in comparison with white families. This is calculated by dividing the median total wealth for Black families by the median total wealth for white families.

The white-Black wealth ratio narrowed modestly in 2022, as the Federal Reserve reported. Still, white families had vastly more wealth than Black families. In 2022, for every $100 the average white family held, the average Black family had $15.75. That’s the most since 2001, when Black families had $15.79, but it still accounts for only about one-sixth of the white level.

Another way the Federal Reserve measures the racial wealth gap is the absolute-dollar value difference in wealth between white and nonwhite families. By that measure, the racial wealth gap widened in 2022.

The absolute-dollar 2022 median wealth for white families was $285,000, and just less than $45,000 for Black families, the Federal Reserve reported.

Average wealth increased for families in all racial groups from 2019 to 2022, partly because of pandemic-era government benefits. Black families had the fastest growth in wealth during this period, with a 61% jump. The typical white family’s wealth increased 31%.

However, despite this surge, Black families’ total dollar increase in wealth still trailed far behind that of white families.

From 2019 to 2022, the median wealth for white families increased by almost $67,000. For Black families, median wealth increased about $17,000. Because of the uneven increases, the wealth gap between white and Black families expanded by about $50,000, bringing the total wealth disparity to more than $240,000.

Both ways of measuring the racial wealth gap are accurate, said Jonathan Welburn, a senior researcher specializing in economics at the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan research organization.

Welburn and other Rand researchers estimated in a May 2023 article that it would take trillions of dollars to eliminate the wealth gap between white and Black Americans.

The racial wealth gap during the Biden administration

In South Carolina, Biden took credit for the narrowing racial wealth ratio, saying it happened “under my watch.”

The Biden administration has announced efforts to address income inequality for Black Americans, including expanding access to home and business ownership.

The Federal Reserve report said net housing wealth, investment income and businesses or self-employment were the top Black income growth drivers from 2019 to 2022. But other factors helping to reduce the wealth gap predated Biden’s presidency.

The report said during this period, which intersected with the COVID-19 pandemic, incomes for nonwhite families were “propped up” by temporarily expanded government benefits, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps. Stimulus checks were another pandemic-era lifeline for Black Americans. Congress and the Trump administration approved these programs and Biden continued them.

Our ruling

Biden said, “The racial wealth gap is the smallest it’s been in 20 years.”

By one measure, the white-Black wealth ratio, that’s true. In 2022, that ratio modestly reduced to the smallest it’s been in 20 years.

By a different measure, the dollar amount difference in wealth, the gap widened between white Americans and Black Americans to more than $240,000. That’s the largest disparity since 1989, the earliest year recorded in the Federal Reserve data.

Biden’s claim is partially accurate, but leaves out additional context about how the Federal Reserve assesses the racial wealth gap in the U.S. We rate this claim Half True.

Former President Donald Trump’s final push before the Iowa caucuses came with warnings about an outrageous Democratic scheme to register immigrants in the country illegally to vote.

“That’s why they are allowing these people to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote,” Trump said Jan. 5 in Sioux Center, Iowa. “And I believe that’s why you are having millions of people pour into our country and it could very well affect the next election. That’s why they are doing it.” 

Trump didn’t directly identify who “they” are but in his preceding comments, he talked about people who “cheat on an election” — language he often uses to talk about Democrats.

Trump’s statements in majority-white Iowa, which holds its caucuses Jan. 15, fit in with conspiracy theories about “white replacement” or the “great replacement,” which claim white people of European descent are deliberately being replaced with nonwhite people.

Trump has said false claims about immigrants voting in 2014,  in 2016 as a presidential candidate, and again in 2020 after his reelection loss.

There is nothing new about this claim in 2024. Our search for evidence turned up sporadic cases of noncitizens registering to vote or casting ballots. But we found no effort by the left to register people in the country illegally.

“There is zero evidence that institutionally the Democratic Party has been doing this,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican strategist in California who produces the Latino Vote podcast with Chuck Rocha, a Democratic political consultant. We asked Trump’s campaign for evidence and received no a reply.

Voting by immigrants in U.S. illegally is rare

Federal law requires citizenship to vote in national elections, and would-be voters sign a form attesting under penalty of perjury that they are citizens when they register to vote. States can check databases to verify voters’ citizenship. 

Fraudulent voter registration or voting by noncitizens is often a result of misunderstandings or errors. For example, some noncitizens accidentally register to vote when applying for a driver’s license. But the number of people who fall into this category is “minuscule,” Rutgers University political science professor Lorraine Minnite previously told us. 

In Colorado, ahead of the 2022 midterm election, the secretary of state’s office mistakenly sent postcards to about 30,000 noncitizens who had driver’s licenses encouraging them to register to vote. The office sent a second postcard notifying these noncitizens about the error and worked with county clerks to ensure the ineligible voters did not register.

In 2020, federal prosecutors charged 19 people in North Carolina with voter fraud after they cast ballots mostly in the 2016 election. Sixteen people pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors related to voting as a noncitizen. Three cases were dismissed. 

That was a big case, but keep in mind that more than 4.5 million people in North Carolina voted in the 2016 presidential election.

An investigation in Georgia found 1,634 noncitizens who attempted to register to vote over 25 years, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in 2022. Ultimately, no one was registered. 

“The system worked to prevent illegal voting,” said John Melvin, chief assistant district attorney in Gwinnett County, home to part of Atlanta.

Noncitizens who vote could face serious consequences

Voting by noncitizens carries high risks that include deportation or incarceration.

Interacting with the government, including trying to vote, is something the undocumented population tries to avoid, said Madrid, the Republican strategist. “They are not going to go register to vote and expose themselves.”

The penalties are also high for a political party or volunteer who would try to sign up an ineligible voter.

“There are so many millions of citizens of eligible voting age, Latinos, that are not registered,” Madrid said. It makes more sense to focus on them, he said.

Republicans sometimes object to some communities allowing certain noncitizens to vote in local elections. Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed it since 1993. But, again, noncitizens aren’t allowed to vote in presidential races.

“There is no indication that noncitizen voting in those localities has caused noncitizen voting in state or federal elections,” said Wendy R. Weiser, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

It’s a long path for immigrants to gain the right to vote

The process of becoming a citizen — and the right to vote that comes with it — can take a decade or longer.

Border officials have encountered migrants nationwide 8.1 million times under President Joe Biden’s administration, as of November 2023. (If one person tries to enter the country three times and is stopped each time by border officials, that equals three encounters.) Also, not everyone encountered is let into the U.S. About 3.6 million encounters ended in people being deported from the country under Biden, DHS data shows.

“Even if many of these people found a path to legal status via asylum or other means, it would be many, many years before they would become eligible to vote given both the huge backlogs in adjudicating cases in immigration court and the fact that people spend years on a green card before being eligible for citizenship,” Michelle Mittelstadt, a Migration Policy Institute spokesperson, previously told PolitiFact.

Our ruling

Trump said Democrats are allowing illegal immigrants “to come in, people that don’t speak our language, they are signing them up to vote. And I believe that’s why you have millions of people pouring into our country.”

Trump provided no evidence for this scheme. Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, and proven incidents of noncitizens casting ballots are rare. Even immigrants who arrive now and apply for citizenship won’t be able to vote for more than a decade because of the lengthy citizenship process. 

We rate this statement Pants on Fire!

Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this fact-check.

An Instagram post shared a video of a giant orb taking shape in a public space, claiming the video was from New Year’s Day at a Miami mall. But the video of the orb was shared on the internet as early as May 2023.

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

The video is shared with the caption, “Looks like the Blue Beam Project started … ” 

Blue Beam is a conspiracy theory that claims the United Nations and NASA are using technology to spread a new religion on Earth and take over the world, establishing a “New World Order.” 

The Instagram post suggested the video was taken at Miami’s Bayside Marketplace on New Year’s Day, when police activity sparked false claims that aliens were in the mall. Police were called to the mall Jan. 1 after a group of 50 teenagers shot fireworks at people and looted stores, PolitiFact previously reported. 

But the orb video was shared on TikTok as early as May 5, 2023. That video had a caption in Russian that Google translated to, “A real portal was noticed in China.” 

We rate the claim that a video shows a giant orb appearing in Miami’s Bayside Marketplace on New Year’s Day Pants on Fire!

Un video de un muñeco ensangrentado en una tienda de juguetes con un empaque que dice “hecho en Israel” ha enfurecido a varios usuarios en las redes sociales. 

“Muñeco de niño palestino hecho en Israel … nos hemos vuelto locos? Que fakin es esto?”, dice una publicación en TikTok del 7 de enero de 2024. El video muestra a el muñeco empaquetado con soldados de juguete con las palabras, “incluye bebe palestino”. El paquete también muestra las banderas de Israel, EE. UU., la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte y la Unión Europea. 

La publicación también muestra al muñeco ensangrentado en un estante junto a otros juguetes en lo que parece ser un mercado al aire libre lleno de gente. 

El video también ha sido compartido en inglés sin el contexto de que el muñeco es parte de una protesta y no un muñeco real hecho en Israel. 

PolitiFact encontró el video del muñeco en la cuenta de Instagram del usuario @vlocke_negro.

Esa cuenta tenía tres publicaciones separadas en Instagram mostrando el mismo muñeco.

• En una publicación del 5 de enero, el video contiene las mismas imágenes del muñeco en un estante vistas en la publicación en TikTok que estamos verificando, aunque este video es más largo y es reproducido a una velocidad más rápida. Una persona en el video carga el muñeco alrededor de un mercado nocturno lleno de gente. 

El subtítulo del video dice, “Juguete que me encontré este día de reyes en el tianguis de la Col Doctores, Cdmx. Soldados de Elite Israeli. Incluye Bebé Palestino. Made in Israel??”.

• Otra publicación del 6 de enero muestra dos fotos, una de una persona sosteniendo el muñeco, y otra donde el muñeco está al lado de otros juguetes en un estante. 

El subtítulo dice, “ACTUALIZACIÓN, ACTUALIZACIÓN. Nadie ha muerto en la    realización de esta protesta que intenta visibilizar lo que ocurre todos los días en la Franja de Gaza, logramos llamar su atención”.

La publicación expresa apoyo a Palestina, condena las muertes de niños en Gaza, y dice que vendedores ambulantes en el mercado le dejaron al publicador poner el muñeco en sus estantes y tomar fotos. 

• Por último, un video del 9 de enero muestra una mano limpiando la sangre en el muñeco, con otro subtítulo explicando la idea detrás de los muñecos.

PolitiFact contacto a la persona detrás de la cuenta, quien dijo que usa el nombre Vlocke Negro y se describio así mismo como un artista conceptual de la Ciudad de Mexico. 

Él describió al muñeco como una “pieza de arte activista” con el propósito de “presentar la realidad de lo que está pasando en Gaza, el asesinato de 10,000 niños y personas inocentes, por parte de ejercito de Israel con apoyo de Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y la OTAN”. Él dijo que él creó solo un muñeco, y que no está a la venta en ningún lado.

El artista dijo que él usualmente va al mercado de la Merced, en Ciudad de México a comprar juguetes para sus proyectos artísticos y en esa ocasión encontró un bebe realista y un set de soldados clásicos. El hizo la etiqueta en el paquete del muñeco palestino escaneando el paquete original y agregando las banderas de Israel, la Unión Europea OTAN y el símbolo de “hecho en Israel” usando un programa de edición de imagen. 

Él dijo que el 5 de enero al marco de El Día de los Tres Reyes Magos, un día en el que niños reciben regalos en México y en otros países — él fue a un popular mercado ambulante en el barrio de La Colonia Doctores, donde vendedores en dos locaciones le permitieron filmar el muñeco en medio de su mercancía. 

Luego de nuestra conversación, Vlocke Negro publico un video en Instagram el 11 de enero mostrandolo empacando el muñeco. El video mostrando al muñeco ensangrentado del niño palestino no fue hecho en Israel, como sugiere la publicación en TikTok. El muñeco fue creado en forma de protesta para llamar la atención sobre las muertes de niños en Gaza. La declaración en TikTok es Falsa. 

Read a version of this fact-check in English.

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.

Former Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton spoke out last week on NBC’s “Today” show about what she said was a rare pneumonia that almost killed her and resulted in an expensive, monthlong hospital stay.

It was a shocking reveal. One key comment jumped out for people who follow health policy: Retton said she was uninsured, blaming that lack of coverage on 30 orthopedic surgeries that count as “preexisting conditions,” a divorce and her poor finances.

“I just couldn’t afford it,” Retton told host Hoda Kotb, who did not challenge the assertion.

Retton, who after winning the gold medal in 1984 became a well-known figure — “America’s sweetheart,” appearing on Wheaties boxes and claiming a variety of other endorsements — did not provide details of her income, the illness, the hospital where she was treated, or the type of insurance she was seeking, so it’s hard to nail down specifics.

Nonetheless, her situation can be informative because the reasons she cited for not buying coverage — preexisting conditions and cost — are among the things the Affordable Care Act directly addresses.

Under the law, which has offered coverage through state and federal marketplaces since 2014, insurers are barred from rejecting people with preexisting conditions and cannot charge higher premiums for them, either. This is one of the law’s most popular provisions, according to opinion surveys.

The Affordable Care Act also includes subsidies that offset all or part of the premium costs for the majority of low- to moderate-income people who seek to buy their own insurance. An estimated “four out of five people can find a plan for $10 or less a month after subsidies on HealthCare.gov,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a written statement when kicking off the annual open enrollment period in November.

Subsidies are set on a sliding scale based on household income with a sizable portion going to those who make less than twice the federal poverty level, which this year is $29,160 for an individual, or $60,000 for a family of four. Premium costs for consumers are capped at 8.5% of household income.

Still, “we know from surveys and other data that, even 10 years on, a lot of people are unaware there are premium subsidies available through ACA marketplaces,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reform at Georgetown University.

Those subsidies are one of the reasons cited for record enrollment in 2024 plans, with more than 20 million people signing up so far.

To be sure, there are also many Americans whose share of the premium cost is still a stretch, especially those who might be higher on the sliding subsidy scale. Looking at the KFF subsidy calculator, a 60-year-old with a $100,000 income, for example, would get a $300 monthly subsidy but still have to pay $708 a month toward their premium, on average, nationally. Without a subsidy, the monthly cost would be $1,013.

And even with insurance, many U.S. residents struggle to afford the deductibles, copayments, or out-of-network fees included in some Affordable Care Act or job-based insurance plans. The act does offer subsidies to offset deductible costs for people on the lower end of the income scale. For those with very low incomes, the law expanded eligibility for Medicaid, which is a state-federal program. However, 10 states, including Texas, where Retton lives, have chosen not to expand coverage, meaning some people in this category cannot get Medicaid or Affordable Care Act subsidies.

“If her income was below poverty, she could have been caught in the coverage gap,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. 

Attempts to reach a representative for Retton were not immediately successful.

One last point — Affordable Care Act enrollment generally must occur during the annual open enrollment, which for 2024 plans opened Nov. 1 and runs until Jan. 16 in most states. But Retton provided no details on what kind of health insurance she shopped for, or when. And there are types of plans and coverage, for example, that fall outside of the act’s rules.

Those include short-term plans, which offer temporary coverage for people between jobs, for example. There are also coverage efforts dubbed “health care sharing ministries,” in which people pool money and pay one another’s medical bills. Neither is considered comprehensive insurance because they generally offer limited benefits, and both can exclude people with preexisting conditions.

If she was considering insurance during a time of year that wasn’t during the open enrollment period, Retton might have still been able to sign up for an Affordable Care Act plan if she met requirements for a “special enrollment.” Qualifying reasons include a residential move, loss of other coverage, marriage, divorce and other specific situations.

Retton excelled in landing difficult moves as a gymnast, but she may have missed the bar when it came to buying insurance coverage.

“You can be a very successful person in your other life and not understand American health care and get into a situation that maybe you could have prevented,” said Joseph Antos, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

An Instagram video misrepresented the reach of a Palm Springs, California, pilot program that aims to supplement some citizens’ incomes.

“So apparently, they giving (transgender people) a monthly payment of $900,” claimed the man in a Jan. 2 video. He was superimposed over a screenshot of a different social media post. 

“Transgender residents to receive a monthly payment of $900,” the screenshot read along with text that cut off midsentence: “Palm Springs moves to pay transgender, non-binary residents. According to Fox News, A California city is planning to give universal basic income…”

Near the end of the video, the man put on a wig as if he might adopt a transgender identity to receive the payments.

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.)

While some transgender people could qualify for this small pilot program, it is not limited to transgender people and so far is available only to 30 people.

The Instagram post in the background of the video was first shared on April 6, 2022. It referenced the Palm Springs City Council’s March 2022 approval for $200,000 requested by two nonprofit organizations — DAP Health and Queer Works — that work with people in LGBTQ+ communities but do not exclusively serve those populations.

The funds were intended “to support the initial research and program design of a guaranteed income pilot program,” that aimed to “provide direct financial assistance to marginalized local individuals in need for a likely period of 18 months,” according to a press release from DAP Health.  

DAP Health describes itself as the region’s “primary not-for-profit resource for those living with, affected by, or at-risk for HIV or AIDS.” Queer Works’ goal, DAP Health’s press release said, is to reduce “disparities faced by members of the LGBTQ+ community in Southern California.” 

Although some news coverage misconstrued it, the City Council’s initial funding approval was so DAP Health and Queer Works could research and design a pilot program proposal. 

Since then, the city — partnered with the nonprofit organizations — launched a small universal basic income pilot program. Palm Springs provided $500,000 for the program, the local newspaper Desert Sun reported. Program applications were accepted beginning in March 2023. 

The pilot is now providing 30 eligible people with $800 per month for 18 months, a program spokesperson told PolitiFact. The post’s claim about the monthly amount is off by $100.

Queer Works’ webpage about the pilot said the organization was “encouraging the transgender and non-binary community to apply,” but the program was not exclusively available to transgender people, as the post claimed. 

Some of the misconceptions appeared to be tied to early news coverage about the research for the pilot proposal, which incorrectly reported that the city was, for example, giving out payments to people “solely for identifying as transgender or nonbinary.” The organizations behind the pilot said early on that they “intended to prioritize support for local individuals who are transgender and nonbinary.”

But the pilot program’s spokesperson said there were no eligibility requirements about gender identity, sexual orientation, age, race or other demographic qualifications. 

To qualify for the pilot program, a person had to: 

• Be a resident of Palm Springs.

• Make less than $16,600 a year. 

• Be a past or present client of DAP Health and/or Queer Works.

The program’s organizers noted that these parameters could include homeless people who primarily live in Palm Springs, for example. Recipients had to agree to participate in the pilot program’s research, including by completing monthly surveys, according to the Queer Works website.  

Queer Works’ website said 30 recipients were chosen on March 30. A final report on the program is expected in winter 2024. 

Program participation is anonymous, so information about whether most recipients were transgender or nonbinary is not yet available. 

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed Palm Springs, California, is giving transgender people monthly payments of $900.

Palm Springs is not giving all transgender residents monthly payments solely because of their gender identity.

The city launched a 2023 universal basic income pilot program that provides $800 — not $900 — monthly payments to 30 eligible recipients, but the program was not exclusively available to transgender people. It was open to any Palm Springs residents making less than $16,600 a year who were past or present clients of two nonprofit organizations who helped launch the program. Those organizations encouraged transgender and nonbinary residents to apply but did not limit participation to those populations. 

This claim contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

A video featuring an artificial intelligence-created physician is claiming that a homemade juice concoction of sliced cucumbers, carrots and garlic will “restore perfect vision in just seven days.” 

The virtual physician, with a dubbed voice, explains in a Jan. 4 Facebook reel how to make what it calls “this miraculous drink” — by chopping and blending with water and fresh garlic carrots for beta carotene and cucumbers for vitamin B6, calcium and magnesium, he says.

“Pour yourself a glass and drink this preparation every morning on an empty stomach for seven days,” the AI-generated doctor says before inviting viewers to subscribe to the account or sign up for a “free e-book.”

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

Although real eye doctors agree that a healthy diet can help people maintain good eyesight, this video’s claim that one drink can restore perfect vision in a week is nonsense.

Experts at the National Eye Institute, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health, say that specific foods and supplements can sometimes improve vision for some patients, but the extent of this improvement and how it’s rendered are still being studied. There are a lot of qualifiers there. And, the group offer this big caveat:

“Unfortunately, no amounts of liver, carrots, or bilberries will give you owl-like night vision,” an article on the Institute’s website says. (Bilberries are related to blueberries.)

If you wanted to try to improve or maintain your vision through nutrition, however, experts say cucumbers would not top the list of foods that are most beneficial. Carrots are more so — they are rich in beta carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, which helps your eyes adjust to dimness and keeps the eye’s surface, the cornea, moist and healthy. 

But there are many limitations to how and when an increase in beta carotene from carrots specifically can improve vision or prevent vision problems in patients, National Eye Institute investigator Dr. Emily Chew told Scientific American. 

“Most eye problems stem from vision-impairment caused by issues such as genetics, aging or diabetes that cannot be aided with an infusion of beta-carotene,” Chew said.

We rate the claim that this  “miracle drink” can “restore perfect vision in seven days” False. 

If only high blood pressure could disappear forever.

A viral Facebook post claims Dr. Ben Carson has discovered how — with three natural ingredients. 

The Jan. 10 post shows a screenshot of what looks like a CNN article with a photo of Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, former Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary. The headline says: “72-years-old Ben Carson: Do not kill the heart with chemistry! If your blood pressure is higher 140/80, drink two tablespoons of … “

The post includes a link to a bogus website hawking porcini oil.

“Dr. Ben Carson discovered 3 completely natural ingredients, and as a result, blood pressure disappeared forever,” the post’s caption reads.

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.)

We searched for this headline and found no articles from CNN or other credible news outlets that contained this information. 

The photo of Carson in the post is neither recent, nor related to any comments he made on high blood pressure or porcini oil. A reverse-image search found the photo was taken in March 2016 at a Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

The same image of Carson was used in a scam ad shared on Facebook to sell CBD gummies to treat high blood pressure. PolitiFact rated that post False.

Although high blood pressure can be managed with regular monitoring, doctor-prescribed medications and a healthy diet, it’s so far incurable, according to the American Medical Association. 

“There is no cure for high blood pressure, it is important for patients to take steps that matter, such as making effective lifestyle changes and taking (blood pressure)-lowering medications as prescribed by their physicians,” according to the group’s website. 

We rate the claim that Dr. Ben Carson has discovered new ingredients to cure high blood pressure False.