Category: Fact Check

Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley failed to use the word “slavery” when discussing the cause of the Civil War and the fallout from the misstep had lots of politicos talking about it.

That included former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

“Democrats wanted to expand slavery into western territories,” Walker posted on X on Dec. 28, 2023. “Republicans opposed it.”

Walker’s point seems to be that today’s voters should take that into account when making decisions now, many years later.

But this question is largely one for – and from – the history books. And the narrow claim does not provide great insight for the political picture today, so we’re setting aside of Truth-O-Meter in favor of a deeper dive into the history.

Walker’s spokesperson, Jim Dick, pointed out that Democrats wanted to spread slavery west, and that Abraham Lincoln was the first successful Republican nominee for president. Of course, Lincoln went on to become a pivotal historical figure in the abolition of slavery.

“Upon his election, southern states dominated by Democrats (seceded) from the United States of America and formed the Confederacy,” Dick wrote in a Dec. 29, 2023 email. “Jefferson Davis served as the President of the Confederacy. Previously, he was elected to the House of Representatives and Senate as a Democrat from Mississippi. His Vice President was Alexander Hamilton Stephens, a Democrat from Georgia.”

The Republican Party was founded in 1854, with some historians (and the Republican party itself) pointing to Ripon, Wisconsin, as its birthplace. At the time of its founding, the country was bitterly divided over slavery. The Republican Party formed on the heels of the Whigs, which saw members desert to join the Southern Democrats. The anti-slavery Whigs joined the Republican Party, according to a timeline compiled by PBS.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had divided the country between the pro-slavery South and the anti-slavery North, according to a May 2020 USA TODAY fact-check. That compromise was put into place more than 40 years before the start of the Civil War in 1861.

In May of 1854, Democrats in Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which included a provision that would allow residents of the new Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide whether or not to allow slavery. The Act effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and set into motion the creation of the Republican Party.

So, Republicans wanted to stop a Democratic piece of legislation. But were Democrats really a pro-slavery party?

Kind of, depending on where they lived.

While the majority of Democrats did support expanding slavery, they weren’t exactly united in that support. The divide wasn’t between the Democrats and the newly created Republicans, the USA TODAY fact check pointed out. It was the division between the northern and southern portions of the country that fueled the Civil War.

But Matthew Karp, an associate professor of history for Princeton University, pointed out that while northern Democrats didn’t really want the expansion of slavery, they remained a part of a national party whose southern members did want the expansion.

“As a compromise, Northern Democratic leaders like Stephen Douglas sought to rally the party behind the idea of ‘popular sovereignty’ — that is, letting the (white) settlers of a new western territory decide the future of slavery, one way or the other,” he said in a Jan. 5, 2024 email. “In practice, Republicans argued — accurately in my view — this amounted to permission for slavery to expand, first in Kansas Territory and then into the other western territories.”

So for Karp, the geographic location of Democrats didn’t really influence their choices, their political party did.

But while looking back at history is important, it’s likely not what voters are doing when making their decisions today. It’s also important to look at how things changed following the Civil War, and in more recent years, too.

Kathryn McGarr, an associate professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is also affiliated with the Department of History, pointed out the regional differences too, and then that there has been a shift since the Civil War for both of the parties. One example is the stance on equal rights.

“At the time of the Civil War, most members of what was then called the Democratic Party supported slavery, and most members of what was then the newly formed Republican Party were anti-slavery,” she wrote in a Dec. 28, 2023 email.

“But what each party stood for has shifted dramatically over time, with the biggest realignments occurring in the middle of the Twentieth Century over civil rights. So someone like the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond was a Democrat until 1964 when he switched affiliation to the Republican Party.”

In today’s political world, affiliations have shifted, and of course, now that slavery is illegal in the United States, neither party supports its expansion.

So yes, Democrats supported expanding slavery at the outbreak of the Civil War. And the Republicans’ anti-slavery position stemmed from their geographical position in the northern portion of the country.

But in looking at those positions, and seeing how the parties have changed since the 1800s, voters have a whole new set of facts to look at. Including Republicans’ and Democrats’ stances on civil rights, for instance.

It’s winter, that cozy season that brings crackling fireplaces, indoor gatherings — and a wave of respiratory illness. Nearly four years since the pandemic emerged, people are growing weary of dealing with it, but the virus is not done with us.

Nationally, a sharp uptick in emergency room visits and hospitalizations for COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, began in mid-December and appears to be gaining momentum.

Here are a few things to know this time around:

What’s circulating now?

The COVID-19 virus is continually changing, and a recent version is rapidly climbing the charts. Even though it appeared only in September, the variant known as JN.1, an omicron descendant, is rapidly spreading, representing between 39% to half of the cases, according to pre-holiday stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lab data signals that the updated vaccines, and existing COVID-19 rapid tests and medical treatments, are effective with this latest iteration. More good news is that it “does not appear to pose additional risks to public health beyond that of other recent variants,” according to the CDC. Even so, new COVID-19 hospitalizations — 34,798 for the week ended Dec. 30 — are trending upward, although rates are still substantially lower than last December’s tally. It’s early in the season, though. Levels of virus in wastewater — one indicator of how infections are spreading — are “very high,” exceeding the levels seen this time last year.

And don’t forget, other nasty bugs are going around. More than 20,000 people were hospitalized for influenza the week ending Dec. 30, and the CDC reports that RSV remains elevated in many areas.

“The numbers so far are definitely going in the not-so-good direction,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of the research and development service at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “We’re likely to see a big uptick in January now that everyone is back home from the holidays.”

But no big deal, right?

Certainly, compared with the first COVID-19 winter, things are better now. Far fewer people are dying or becoming seriously ill, with vaccines and prior infections providing some immunity and reducing severity of illness. Even compared with last winter, when omicron was surging, the situation is better. New hospitalizations, for example, are about one-third of what they were around the 2022 holidays. Weekly deaths dropped slightly the last week of December to 839 and are also substantially below levels from a year ago.

“The ratio of mild disease to serious clearly has changed,” said William Schaffner, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

Even so, the definition of “mild” is broad, basically referring to anything short of being sick enough to be hospitalized.

While some patients may have no more than the sniffles, others experiencing “mild” COVID-19  can be “miserable for three to five days,” Schaffner said.

How will this affect my day-to-day life?

“Am I going to be really sick? Do I have to mask up again?” It is important to know the basics.

For starters, symptoms of the COVID-19 variants currently circulating will likely be familiar — such as a runny nose, sore throat, cough, fatigue, fever, and muscle aches.

So if you feel ill, stay home, said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “It can make a big difference.”

Dust off those at-home COVID-19 test kits, check the extended expiration dates on the FDA website, and throw away the ones that have aged out. Tests can be bought at most pharmacies and, if you haven’t ordered yours yet, free test kits are still available through a federal program at covid.gov.

Test more than once, especially if your symptoms are mild. The at-home rapid tests may not detect COVID-19 infection in the first couple of days, according to the FDA, which recommends using “multiple tests over a certain time period, such as two to three days.”

With all three viruses, those most at risk include the very young, older adults, pregnant people and people with compromised immune systems or underlying diseases, including cancer or heart problems. But people without high-risk factors can also be adversely affected.

While mask-wearing has dropped in most places, you may start to see more people wearing them in public spaces, including stores, public transit, or entertainment venues.

Although a federal mask mandate is unlikely, health officials and hospitals in at least four states — California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York — have again told staff and patients to don masks. Such requirements were loosened last year when the public health emergency officially ended.

Such policies are advanced through county-level directives. The CDC data indicates that, nationally, about 46.7% of counties are seeing moderate to high hospital admission rates of COVID-19.

“We are not going to see widespread mask mandates as our population will not find that acceptable,” Schaffner noted. “That said, on an individual basis, mask-wearing is a very intelligent and reasonable thing to do as an additional layer of protection.”

The N95, KN95, and KF94 masks are the most protective. Cloth and paper are less effective.

And, finally, if you haven’t yet been vaccinated with an updated COVID-19 vaccine or gotten a flu shot, it’s not too late. There are also new vaccines and monoclonal antibodies to protect against RSV recommended for certain populations, which include older adults, pregnant people, and young children.

Generally, flu peaks in midwinter and runs into spring. COVID-19, while not technically seasonal, has higher rates in winter as people crowd together indoors.

“If you haven’t received vaccines,” Schaffner said, “we urge you to get them and don’t linger.”

Aren’t we all going to get it? What about repeat infections?

People who have dodged COVID-19 entirely are in the minority.

At the same time, repeat infections are common. Fifteen percent of respondents to a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll said they’d had COVID-19 two or three times. A Canadian survey released in December found 1 in 5 residents said they had gotten COVID-19 more than once as of last June.

Aside from the drag of being sick and missing work or school for days, debate continues over whether repeat infections pose smaller or larger risks of serious health effects. There are no definitive answers, although experts continue to study the issue.

Two research efforts suggest repeat infections may increase a person’s chances of developing serious illness or even long COVID-19 — which is defined various ways but generally means having one or more effects lingering for a month or more following infection. The precise percentage of cases — and underlying factors — of long COVID-19 and why people get it are among the many unanswered questions about the condition. However, there is a growing consensus among researchers that vaccination is protective.

Still, the VA’s Al-Aly said a study he co-authored that was published in November 2022 found that getting COVID-19 more than once raises an “additional risk of problems in the acute phase, be it hospitalization or even dying,” and makes a person two times as likely to experience long COVID-19 symptoms.

The Canadian survey also found a higher risk of long COVID-19 among those who self-reported two or more infections. Both studies have their limitations: Most of the 6 million in the VA database were male and older, and the data studied came from the first two years of the pandemic, so some of it reflected illnesses from before vaccines became available. The Canadian survey, although more recent, relied on self-reporting of infections and conditions, which may not be accurate.

Still, Al-Aly and other experts say taking preventive steps, such as getting vaccinated and wearing a mask in higher-risk situations, can hedge your bets.

“Even if in a prior infection you dodged the bullet of long COVID,” Al-Aly said, “it doesn’t mean you will dodge the bullet every single time.”

​More than 60 U.S. House Republicans traveled to Texas’ southern border this month to demand President Joe Biden’s administration crack down on record migrant crossings.

Led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the delegation gathered in Eagle Pass, a popular crossing point. 

At a Jan. 3 news conference, Mark Green, R-Tenn., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said FBI Director Christopher Wray recently told Congress the border is open for terrorists. 

“Director Wray admitted before my committee the other day — our committee the other day — that with the border wide open and a war in Israel, Hamas can just walk right in. That’s the director of the FBI. He fears for his own agents. It’s clear this is intentional.”

Hamas — an Islamic militant group that formed in Gaza in the 1980s — calls for the destruction of Israel and was designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in 1997. Hamas’ attack on multiple sites in October was the deadliest attack on Israel in decades.

Green’s office did not respond to two phone calls and two emails seeking information, but Wray last appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee on Nov. 15, 2023. 

At that hearing, Green asked Wray if members of Hamas or others on the terrorism watch list could be among those crossing the border without detection, referred to by border agents as “got-aways.”

“Can the FBI guarantee the American people that known or suspected terrorists, including any from Hamas or other terror groups, are not amongst those got-aways?”

Wray replied: “Well, certainly the group of people that you’re talking about is a source of great concern for us.”

Pressed further, Wray answered, “Well, again, as you say, there’s the unknown unknown and the known unknown. But what I can tell you is that our 56 joint terrorism task forces are working their tails off to make sure that they suss out and identify potential terrorist suspects, whether they’re on the watch list or not.”

The terrorist watchlist, run by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, is a federal database of people who are known or suspected terrorists. The list has been criticized by civil liberty groups, citing concerns about the nomination process and its lack of transparency. 

The number of migrants arrested at the southern border who are on the U.S. terrorist watch list did slightly increase over the past year, according to an assessment by the Department of Homeland Security. 

In fiscal year 2023, officials at the southern border arrested about 160 people whose names matched those on the watch list, compared with about 100 the previous year. That represents a fraction of the about 2 million reported Border Patrol encounters with migrants during that time frame.

In October, PolitiFact fact-checked former President Donald Trump, who said “the same people that raided Israel are pouring into our once beautiful USA, through our TOTALLY OPEN SOUTHERN BORDER, at Record Numbers.” We rated his statement Pants on Fire.

“There is no credible evidence of Hamas on the southern border of the United States,” Jason M. Blazakis, director of the Middlebury College’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, previously told PolitiFact.

No Americans have been injured or killed in terrorist attacks by immigrants who crossed the border illegally, noted Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, who studied attacks and planned attacks from 1975 through 2022.

At a separate hearing Dec. 5, 2023, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wray testified that since Hamas’ attack on Israel, the U.S. faces a heightened terrorism threat. 

“I am concerned that we are in a heightened threat environment from foreign terrorist organizations for a whole host of reasons and obviously their ability to exploit any port of entry, including our southwest border, is a concern.”

Noting the slight increase of people on the terrorist watch list apprehended at the border, Wray cautioned the committee against reading too much into numbers. 

“Let’s not forget it didn’t take a big number of people on 9-11 to kill 3,000 people,” he testified. “While numbers are important, numbers don’t tell the whole story.”

Our ruling

Green said Wray told Congress “that with the border wide open and a war in Israel, Hamas can just walk right in.”

Wray never said that. The FBI director said 56 joint terrorism task forces are working to identify potential terrorist suspects and that Hamas militants are “a source of great concern for us.” But he didn’t explicitly say that Hamas militants could walk in through a “wide open” southern border.

We rate this claim False.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often touts his state’s economic growth on his watch as a test case of what he could do for the country as president.

“Our economy is ranked number one of all 50 states by CNBC,” DeSantis said during a Jan. 4 CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa. “We lead the nation in net in-migration. Income growth is top of the charts. No. 1 in education. So, we’ve shown how it’s done. And we need to bring that same level of success to the United States of America.”

We’ve previously looked at the claims about CNBC’s ranking (it’s accurate), Florida’s domestic in-migration (it’s accurate but based on small numbers) and the state’s educational ranking (it’s accurate, at least in one ranking by U.S. News & World Report).

So, what’s left to review is whether Florida’s “income growth is top of the chart.”

The DeSantis campaign didn’t give PolitiFact a specific measurement he was referring to, but we examined three statistics that can broadly be defined as “income.” Each has pluses and minuses for analyzing DeSantis’ statement. For all three measurements, we tried to make the comparisons fair by seeing how Florida compared with its relative peers — the nine other most populous states.

We also compared the most recent data with 2019 levels. That was DeSantis’ first year as governor and the last full year before the coronavirus pandemic.

We found that how well Florida performs depends on what metric is used. By one of the three methods, the Sunshine State is No. 1; it’s in the middle or near the top using two other formulas. When isolating Florida’s 2021 pandemic-era performance using all three measures, however, we found the state lagged many of its peers.

Real per capita personal income

This measurement is released annually. It shows how much personal income was generated in each state, divided by the state’s population. It is adjusted for inflation.

For real per capita personal income, Florida is in the middle of the pack among the 10 most populous states.

Florida’s real per capita personal income was about 5.1% higher in 2022 than it was in 2019. (2023 data is not yet available.) 

That trails the best of the 10 most populous states, Michigan, which expanded by 6.8% over the same period. Florida also trails Ohio, Texas, and California — a state DeSantis has regularly sparred with over economic performance. Florida’s performance exceeded that of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois and Georgia, which finished last.

Real median household income

This measurement is also released annually and is adjusted for inflation. It shows the midpoint in income on the rank-ordered list of all households within the state.

Florida does better on this metric, though it’s not first.

Georgia finished first in real median household income, despite placing last in real personal income per capita. The Peach State is the only one of the top 10 most populous states in which real median household income increased from 2019 to 2022.

Florida finished second, though its real median household income dropped by about 2% during that period. The other eight states lost even more ground.

Average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers

The third and final statistic we scrutinized — average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers — is the narrowest. It counts only wage and salary earnings, whereas the first two statistics include other types of earnings, including those from interest and dividends, business profits, self-employment income, employer provided benefits such as health care and retirement support, and payments from the government such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These differences make it the least well-suited of the three statistics to stand in for “income” — the word DeSantis used. 

However, this statistic is the one that provides Florida’s strongest ranking.

Since January 2019, average hourly earnings for private-sector workers has increased by about 25% in Florida, or more than any of the other states in the most populous 10. It edged out North Carolina, which was just shy of 24%.

New York and Georgia were the lowest-ranking states among the 10 most populous, with about a 15% increase over the same period.

How did Florida do after Florida’s economic reopening during the pandemic?

DeSantis’ campaign frequently posits that he had the foresight to open the state to economic activity during the pandemic much sooner than many other states, something he argues enabled a spurt of economic growth.

So, how did Florida do on these three metrics through 2021, the first full year after DeSantis moved to reopen Florida’s economy?

On the two income measures, Florida was in the middle of the pack by the end of 2021. And for average hourly earnings — the statistic for which Florida ranked No. 1 through the end of 2022 — the Sunshine State’s performance was less impressive.

In 10 of 2021’s 12 calendar months, when the benefits of the reopened economy should have reflected most keenly, wage increases in Florida were smaller than those in DeSantis’ big rival state, California. 

Our ruling

DeSantis said that in Florida, “income growth is top of the chart.”

There are different ways to measure this, and using some of the relevant statistics, Florida performs well compared with its peers. 

However, the one statistic that puts Florida first among the 10 most populous states is wages. That’s a narrower category than “income,” the word DeSantis used.

We rate the statement Half True.

RELATED: As Ron DeSantis kicks off his presidential bid, how has Florida fared economically on his watch?

RELATED: The Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom economies, in 8 charts

After a New Year’s incident at a Miami mall sparked a massive police response, social media users started spreading some out-of-this-world claims.

Videos circulating social media show dozens of police cars and shadowy figures at Bayside Marketplace, located about 5 miles from South Beach. Many people claimed these figures were not human, but extraterrestrial.

A Jan. 5 Instagram reel shared a screenshot of an X post that said, “I was at the Miami mall yesterday and the government is lying. There were no kids fighting. Everyone started panicking because these gray creatures were walking around.”

(Screengrab from Instagram)

The same Instagram account shared another reel, also Jan. 5, that said there were “rumors and witness reports that there were 7- to 10-feet tall creatures and beings running around the shopping area and attacking people.”

Another Instagram user claimed that the police presence was in response to kids opening “a portal for alien creatures to walk through.”

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

But Miami police didn’t swarm the mall because E.T. went on a shopping spree.

Miami police officers responded to reports of a shooting Jan. 1 at Bayside Marketplace, the department told local and national news outlets. What sounded like gunshots was actually a group of at least 50 teenagers shooting fireworks at people and looting stores.

Police temporarily shut down roads near the mall and warned people to avoid the area because of “a large crowd of unruly juveniles.” About an hour later, at 11:30 p.m., police said the roads were reopened.

Officers had trouble controlling the chaos at first and called all active police officers to the scene. That’s why there was a large police presence at the mall, Miami police officer Rafael Horta said in a video shared Jan. 5 on the department’s Instagram account.

Horta also addressed the alien claims: “There is now a video going viral of 8- to 10- foot aliens walking around Bayside. It’s actually just a person walking with a shadow. So I can confirm to you all here today right now that there are no aliens in Miami, in Bayside Marketplace at the moment.”

We rate the claim that police responded to alien creatures at a Miami mall on Jan. 1 Pants on Fire!

Days before voting starts in the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald Trump has his eyes trained on Nikki Haley, his closest Republican rival in the 2024 presidential campaign. 

Trump targeted the former South Carolina governor during a Jan. 6 campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, and claimed she wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and raise the retirement age. 

“Nikki says the retirement age at 65 is way too low, it must be much higher,” Trump said of his former U.N. ambassador.

That characterization lacks context. Haley has recently said the federal U.S. retirement age, at which Americans would receive Social Security and Medicare benefits, is “way too low.” But she said it should be raised in line with longer life expectancy, and she did not support changing the age for current beneficiaries or those nearing retirement.

In an Aug. 24 Bloomberg Markets interview, Haley said the U.S. should increase the retirement age to help prevent Social Security and Medicare from becoming insolvent. 

“The way we deal with it, is we don’t touch anyone’s retirement or anyone who’s been promised in, but we go to people like my kids in their twenties, when they’re coming into the system, and we say the rules have changed,” Haley told Joe Mathieu, a Washington correspondent for Bloomberg TV and radio. “We change retirement age to reflect life expectancy. Instead of cost-of-living increases, we do it based on inflation. We limit the benefits on the wealthy and we expand Medicare advantage plans.”

When Mathieu asked which “right age” she would recommend, Haley said it would need to be calculated, but that 65 “is way too low,” and needs to be increased according to life expectancy. 

Although Haley cited 65 as the retirement age, that’s for people born before 1960. In 1983, Congress upped the age when Americans can receive full retirement benefits through Social Security from 65 to 67 for those born in 1960 or later.

U.S. life expectancy dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, but has shown signs of rebounding, increasing from 76.4 years in 2021 to 77.5 in 2022, according to federal data.

Here are other instances in which Haley discussed the U.S.’ retirement age during her presidential campaign:

• Sept. 22 at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, New Hampshire: “I’ll raise the retirement age — only for younger people who are just entering the system. Americans are living 15 years longer than they were in the 1930s. If we don’t get out of the 20th century mindset, Social Security and Medicare won’t survive the first half of the 21st century.”

• Nov. 8 at the third Republican presidential debate in Miami: “Those that have been promised, should keep it. But for, like my kids in their 20s, you go and you say, ‘We are going to change the rules.’ You change the retirement age for them.” 

On Medicare, Haley has proposed expanding Medicare Advantage, a type of Medicare health plan offered by approved private companies. The government pays the companies to cover Medicare benefits.

Our ruling

Trump claimed that Haley “says the retirement age at 65 is way too low.”

This is missing context. When Haley said the federal retirement age of 65 was “way too low” she wasn’t talking about current Social Security beneficiaries or people who are close to retiring. She would propose raising the retirement age for younger people, in line with longer life expectancy. 

Trump’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. We rate his claim Half True.

In the middle of the 2023 winter holiday season, conservative news organization Breitbart shared an alarming Instagram post that claimed the coronavirus had tainted the U.S. water supply. 

“The CDC’s Christmas Wish Granted: Nationwide Data Reveals Surging Levels of Newest COVID Strain in Water Supply,” read Breitbart’s Dec. 27 post. The caption was shared alongside a U.S. map that featured several states shaded in red and orange. The post encouraged people to follow a link in the account’s bio.

In the Instagram post comments, users speculated, writing, “it’s almost like it was put there on purpose” and “Infecting people thru the water supply? Seems like something the government would do.”

“Water supply” typically refers to potable water that is delivered to users and is able to be consumed. 

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.)

(Screenshot from Instagram)

The link in Breitbart’s Instagram bio directed people to a paid article selling a “Medical Emergency Kit” that included ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug that is not a proven COVID-19 treatment. A link from the ad takes users to a page where they can order the kit for $249 to $299.

The ad, with a headline similar to the wording in the post, described the situation as “the most recent control tactic. All winter, the CDC and FDA have been using the new contagious JN.1 variant to push their WEF-endorsed policies.”  (WEF stands for World Economic Forum, a group often targeted by conspiracy theories.)

PolitiFact contacted Breitbart, and a spokesperson said that post and article were paid partnerships that were labeled accordingly. The spokesperson said its client said the data came from the CDC.

But the map in the post and ad didn’t mention the water supply; its key said it showed COVID-19 levels in wastewater. 

“COVID-19 detection in United States wastewater,” read the small text of the map key. Most states on the map were shades of red signaling that “severe” or “high” levels of COVID-19 were detected in wastewater.

Breitbart deleted its Instagram post and changed its article headline after PolitiFact reached out. It now reads, “Shocking Discovery: Viral Levels in Wastewater Skyrocket.”

Wastewater surveillance has detected high levels of COVID-19 viral activity in recent weeks, but that viral activity was detected in untreated wastewater found in sewers, for example. 

That wastewater is not part of what is commonly referred to as the “water supply.” And experts told PolitiFact that any wastewater that might eventually be recycled to return as part of the drinking water supply would be treated and sanitized at very high levels that would kill pathogens.

Heather Murphy, associate professor and Tier II Canada Research Chair in One Health at the University of Guelph in Canada, said that framing COVID-19 detected in wastewater as equivalent to the water supply is not appropriate. 

“COVID-19 is being tracked in wastewater and the data presented in the figure is not representative of COVID-19 in the water supply,” she said. 

Murphy, who has more than 15 years of experience researching wastewater treatment, water quality and drinking water distribution, said the agency that manages drinking water might also have authority over wastewater management. But that doesn’t make “wastewater” and “water supply” interchangeable. 

“Wastewater is typically not part of ‘water supply,’” she said. “I would never refer to wastewater as part of the water supply unless it is a known recycled water system whereby wastewater is treated to such high levels that it is used for drinking water.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that nationally, the wastewater viral activity level for COVID-19 is now “very high.” 

People who contract COVID-19 can shed the virus in their feces, which can then be detected in wastewater, according to the CDC. Because wastewater surveillance data can cover people who have COVID-19 but are asymptomatic, it often provides early warnings that infections are increasing or decreasing. 

Testing wastewater for COVID-19 viral activity helps track infection trends, but this high viral activity in wastewater doesn’t mean the water supply is contaminated. The wastewater samples tested to monitor infections are taken before wastewater is treated, according to the CDC. 

“Wastewater treatment plants treat viruses and other pathogens,” the Environmental Protection Agency said on its website. “Coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, is a type of virus that is particularly susceptible to disinfection.” 

The EPA reported that the COVID-19 virus had not been detected in U.S. drinking water as of October 2023.

“Based on current evidence, the risk to water supplies is low,” the EPA said, encouraging normal use of tap water.

The EPA told PolitiFact that since 2020, scientists have employed wastewater surveillance — that is, testing for the virus in human waste collected in sewers, not testing the drinking water supply — to monitor COVID-19’s spread. 

Although the virus that causes COVID-19 can be shed in feces, the CDC says “there is no information to date that anyone has become sick with COVID-19 because of direct exposure to treated or untreated wastewater.”

COVID-19 most often spreads via close contact with an infected person who exhales virus-containing droplets, according to the CDC and the World Health Organization. Sometimes, a person can get infected after touching a surface that the virus has contaminated, health organizations say.

We rate the claim that national data showed “surging levels” of the “newest (COVID-19) strain in (the) water supply” False.

For many Americans, the coronavirus pandemic has receded into the past. But it wrought some lasting changes on the nation’s workforce — a point Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley described at a Jan. 2 town hall in Rye, New Hampshire.

Haley criticized the size of the federal budget and said some of the federal government’s duties can be shifted to the states. “Do you know right now over 70% of federal employees are still working from home three years after COVID?” she said.

Haley repeated the statistic Jan. 4 during a CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa.

Haley’s campaign confirmed that this data point came from a recently released annual study by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency that handles the federal government’s human resources. 

However, the 70% figure misleads by leaving out important information: Only half of that figure involves people who said they worked remotely most or all of the workweek. The other half consists of employees who work two days or less per week from home, including some who do so “rarely.”

Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business who has studied telework, said politicians often confuse measures of “telework” with measures of working entirely by telework, even though the two “are quite different.” 

Rockmann added that research shows benefits from telework, such as saving on commuting costs and enabling a better work-life balance.

“So the real debate is not the one Haley suggests,” he said. “Most private companies are OK with one or two days of telework a week. The real debate is over full-time telework. This is where organizations are struggling a bit.”

Data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

Every year, the federal government publishes a survey of employees from a wide range of federal agencies. The most recent survey, released in November 2023, queried about 1.6 million federal employees and received responses from more than 625,000.

One of the survey’s many questions involves remote work, also known as telework.

Thirty-seven percent of the 2023 survey’s respondents said they typically worked remotely from three to five days a week. Seventeen percent more said they worked remotely one or two days a week, while 46% said they did so rarely or never. (The 46% who rarely or never worked from home included employees whose jobs made remote work impossible and those who could have worked remotely but chose not to.)

To approach the figure Haley cited, you would have to include not just the 37% who work remotely three to five days a week, but also the 17% who work remotely one or two days a week; the 4% who said they telework one or two days a month; and the 10% who said they telework even less often than that. That adds up to 68%, which is close to the 70% figure she cited.

A little more than half of the federal employees Haley considers to be “working from home” do so from two days a week to “very infrequently.”

How government telework compares

Haley’s campaign argued the percentage of remote government work is still higher than it was pre-pandemic. Looking back to the 2019 survey, she has a point, mainly for those working a three-to-five day remote schedule. That number has risen from 7% in 2019 to 37% in 2023. (The share working remotely one or two days a week is virtually unchanged.)

But telework’s growth isn’t limited to the federal government. Telework has also expanded in other parts of the private-sector economy in which working remotely is feasible, such as information and professional and business services.

An analysis of Census Bureau data by the Government Accountability Office found that from 2010 to 2019, 4% to 6% of workers “primarily” worked at home, but that share jumped to almost 18% during the pandemic. And the share doing “any work from home during an average work day” rose from the low-20% range before the pandemic to 38% during it.

Comparing federal government telework patterns with those in the private sector is complicated, because different industry sectors, for practical reasons, cannot embrace telework equally. But some data suggests that federal government telework rates are similar to or lower than other economic sectors in which remote working is feasible.

In 2022, Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that 42% of information sector employees worked remotely all the time and an additional 25% worked remotely sometimes. In the professional and business services sector, 25% worked remotely fully and 24% worked remotely sometimes.  

“Has there been a shift?” Rockmann said. “Yes. But it is not nearly the shift Haley suggests.”

Our ruling

Haley said, “Right now, over 70% of federal employees are still working from home three years after COVID.”

Getting to that 70% figure requires counting not just full-time teleworkers but anyone who ever works from home, however infrequently. In 2023, a benchmark federal survey found that about half that figure — 37% — worked a majority of their week remotely and about 17% worked remotely one or two days a week. But 46% of respondents said they worked remotely rarely or never. 

Federal government telework is more common than it was before the pandemic, but it this work style has also increased in private sector companies. The federal government’s rate of teleworking is broadly similar to what it is in private-sector industries in which teleworking is feasible, such as information and professional and business services.

We rate the statement Mostly False.

Una publicación en Facebook da falsas esperanzas a hispanos en busca de cobertura médica asequible.

La publicación dice: “¡El gobierno federal aprobó la orden ejecutiva 14009 que apoya seguro médico de $0 mensuales para hispanos en la inscripción del 2024!”. Añade que la prima de seguro y el copago de visitas médicas son gratis.

La publicación incluye una imagen del presidente Joe Biden firmando un documento, junto a su esposa Jill. También conduce a un enlace que pide datos personales y de contacto. Al final, aparece un mensaje que dice que “alguien se comunicará con usted en 24 horas”.

La publicación fue marcada como parte del esfuerzo de Meta para combatir las noticias falsas y la desinformación en su plataforma. (Lea más sobre nuestra colaboración con Meta, propietaria de Facebook e Instagram).

Tras asumir la presidencia a principios de 2021, Biden emitió una serie de órdenes ejecutivas, entre ellas, la orden ejecutiva 14009. Pero esta orden no proporciona seguro médico gratuito a los hispanos. 

Más bien, ordena a las agencias federales a explorar vías para ampliar la cobertura de salud y reducir costos. La orden no dice nada específicamente para los hispanos.

“No encuentro ningún texto en la orden que respalde la afirmación de que se apoyaba un seguro médico de $0 dirigido a los hispanos”, dijo a PolitiFact Jason Hockenberry, profesor de salud pública en la Universidad de Yale. 

Sin embargo, Hockenberry dijo que la orden ejecutiva busca ayudar a las personas sin seguro o con seguro insuficiente, incluyendo en los estados que no han ampliado la elegibilidad para Medicaid. Algunos de estos estados, como Texas, tienen una gran población hispana.

Lawrence Gostin, un profesor de derecho de salud global en la Universidad de Georgetown, también dijo que “no hay nada en la orden ejecutiva que conceda primas de $0 a ningún grupo”. Él añadió que el presidente no tiene potestad para conceder cobertura médica, sino que es algo que está bajo la autorización del Congreso. 

“La idea de que el presidente podría, aunque quisiera, dar privilegios especiales a los hispanos es sencillamente falsa”, dijo Gostin. 

La foto incluida en la publicación no tiene relación con la firma de la orden ejecutiva 14009. 

PolitiFact realizó una búsqueda de imágenes inversa y la imagen de Biden y su esposa es del 25 de junio de 2022 cuando él firmó la Ley Bipartidista para Comunidades Más Seguras. El objetivo de esta ley es establecer mayor control para la venta de armas en los Estados Unidos. La foto fue tomada por la fotoperiodista Elizabeth Frantz de Reuters.

Calificamos la declaración de que el gobierno federal ha aprobado una orden ejecutiva que apoya seguro médico de $0 mensuales para hispanos como Falsa.

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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