Category: Fact Check

Meat-processing giant Tyson Foods in October announced a partnership with Protix, a Netherlands-based startup that produces insect ingredients.

That has bugged some social media users, who worry those insects will end up in their food.

“Watch those chicken nuggets!!!” said a Dec. 9 Facebook post caption. Below was a screenshot showing part of Tyson Foods’ press release about the Protix partnership.

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.)

We found other social media posts making similar comments about Tyson’s interest in bugs.

The screenshot shared on Facebook, however, shared only the first paragraph of the Oct. 17 press release. The full release says Tyson is taking a minority stake in Protix and partnering with it to build an insect-ingredient facility in the U.S.

That facility, Tyson said, would turn food manufacturing byproducts into “high-quality insect proteins and lipids which will primarily be used in the pet food, aquaculture, and livestock industries.”

Essentially, black soldier flies feeding on waste from Tyson’s processing would be turned into food for animals.

“​​In addition to ingredients for the aquaculture and pet food industries, processed larvae may also be used as ingredients within livestock and plant feed,” the press release said.

Edible insects have been pitched as a solution for world hunger and as a more environmentally friendly protein source than eating livestock. But eating bugs for food isn’t yet widespread or accepted in the U.S.

(The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has no specific regulations about insects as food for people, an FDA spokesperson told PolitiFact. But insects sold as food for people must comply with the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, that is, they must be safe and produced in sanitary conditions. The act also requires manufacturers to label ingredients by their common names.) 

Neither Protix nor Tyson signaled whether they will someday venture into insect foods for human consumption. But the word “primarily” in Tyson’s press release may leave room for interpretation about future plans. A Tyson spokesperson told PolitiFact, though, that products made at the planned U.S. facility won’t be for human consumption. 

They will be used as a sustainable ingredient in premium pet food or as protein alternatives for “aquatic organisms,” such as salmon and shrimp, the Tyson spokesperson said. Protix did not respond to a request for comment.

In an October CNN article about the partnership, Tyson Foods Chief Financial Officer John Tyson said the insects aren’t going into human food. “Today, we’re focused on more of [an] ingredient application with insect protein than we are a consumer application,” he said.

The October press release didn’t mention using insects in food for people. None of the products with insect ingredients Protix lists on its website are for human consumption, either.

Tyson Foods’ chicken nuggets are made with chicken, water and wheat flour. Other ingredients, such as onion and garlic, are added for flavoring. There are no plans to add black soldier flies or other insects into the mix, a company spokesperson said. The claim is False.

Amid legislative debate over how to address Wisconsin’s mental health care gaps, state Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse, said Wisconsin’s youth-to-school social worker ratio is nearly triple what experts recommend.

Billings made her claim in a Nov. 14 Assembly floor speech against a Republican-led bill that would have mandated Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction establish a mental health training program for school staff. 

The bill did not provide additional money for school mental health resources, something Billings and other Democrats objected to.

“With school-based professional social workers, the recommendation is 400-to-1,” Billings said. “And in Wisconsin, we’re almost triple that at 1,136 students for every one school social worker. Can you imagine trying to help kids in a school and those ratios are so out-of-whack?” 

Is Billings right about the ratio?

Claim matches findings from state report 

When asked to provide evidence for her claim, Billings sent us the 2022 annual report from the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health, a state office that studies youth mental health issues.

The 2022 report found the ratio of students to school-based professional social workers to be 1,136-to-1, 284% higher than the 400-to-1 ratio recommended by the state Department of Public Instruction. Data for the claim is sourced from county-level health data collected by the state.

Those numbers match Billings’ claim on the Assembly floor. What’s more, they back up a number of other claims Billings made about Wisconsin “falling short” on youth mental health.

According to the report, Wisconsin has one community-based mental health professional for every 400 kids, nearly double the DPI-recommended 250-to-1 ratio. Additionally, the state has one school-based psychologist for every 826 kids, approximately 1.6 times higher than the DPI-recommended 500-to-1 ratio.

Additionally, the report estimated 75% of kids who receive mental health treatment access the care at school.

The report further detailed that accessing youth mental health care in any capacity depends on the financial ability to pay for treatment, transportation, reliable internet access and the ability of both parents and kids to leave their job or school for appointments. 

“These are often insurmountable barriers for low-income, rural, or single-parent families,” the report read.

Our ruling

Billings claimed Wisconsin’s youth-to-social worker ratio is nearly three times higher than recommended levels.

When asked to support her claim, Billings provided an official state report that confirmed her claims and provided concrete evidence for statewide shortages of other youth mental health professionals.

We rate this claim True.

President Joe Biden took a recent victory lap on social media, touting the number of manufacturing jobs created on his watch. 

“We’ve created close to 800,000 manufacturing jobs since I’ve taken office,” Biden said Dec. 5 on X, formerly Twitter. 

An X community note cast doubt on the claim, saying that although Biden’s jobs figure was “factually correct,” the president failed to note that the current total is only 175,000 higher than the February 2020 peak “from before COVID-19 forced layoffs.”

“It’s more accurate,” the community note said, “to say 589k manufacturing jobs were recovered and 175k created.”

We dug into it and found Biden’s figures are accurate. And although pre-pandemic numbers are worth examining, historical data show that doing so gives Biden something to celebrate. 

Official statistics from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show that manufacturing employment has risen by 789,000 since Biden took office in January 2021. That qualifies as “close to 800,000.”

The first three-quarters of those job gains represented a return to pre-recession levels. But historical post-recession patterns show that it’s rare for manufacturing jobs to bounce back at all.

We analyzed the federal government’s official data for manufacturing employment as far back as it goes — to the eve of World War II. We focused on two numbers: how many people were employed in manufacturing at the beginning of a recession and how many people were employed in the field 45 months later — the same amount of time that has passed since Biden took office.

The U.S. economy has had 13 recessions in the past 80-plus years. Forty-five months after nine of those recessions began, manufacturing employment remained below their initial levels. After 45 months passed in the remaining four recessions, manufacturing employment exceeded their initial levels.

Of those four recessions that produced net manufacturing job gains after 45 months, the one underway during Biden’s presidency ranks as the second-largest percentage gain, a 1.6% increase. The only manufacturing jobs recovery through 45 months that beats the current one was a recession that started in 1948, with a 6.9% increase.

In other words, the nation’s current manufacturing jobs rebound is the strongest at this point after a recession in 72 years.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama were all in office 45 months after a recession began, and they did not see manufacturing jobs bounce back even to their initial levels, much less add manufacturing jobs on net. Reagan, Bush, and Obama all saw declines of 9.9% to 15.7%.

Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless said the historical trend reveals “an even greater — that is, even rarer — achievement than suggested by the president’s own statement.”

We should note that presidents never deserve all the credit or all the blame for the country’s economic performance. The economy is bigger than one political figure, and it’s shaped by factors outside a president’s control — from technological gains to oil price vagaries to, most recently, the recession-triggering coronavirus pandemic. 

Nevertheless, a president’s policy agenda can boost job creation — and Biden has pushed for and signed several bills to bolster manufacturing, notably the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

“There was no reason to think we would see anything like the increase we actually did without Biden’s policies,” said Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Analysis.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the likelihood of a post-recession rebound in manufacturing jobs varies by era. From the 1940s to the late 1970s, U.S. manufacturing was generally expanding; this period accounted for three of the four examples of post-recession increases. 

Since the late 1970s, manufacturing employment has generally fallen, both in absolute terms and as a share of U.S. employment.

That manufacturing employment registered a post-recession increase during the current period, when such employment is far below its historical peak, makes the Biden administration achievement especially impressive, Holtz-Eakin said.

“Given the environment Biden’s in, manufacturing has done well,” he said.

Our ruling

Biden said, “We’ve created close to 800,000 manufacturing jobs since I’ve taken office.”

Federal data shows that manufacturing employment has increased by 789,000 since Biden took office in January 2021, though presidents do not control the economy single-handedly.

The first three-quarters of those jobs represent a return to previous manufacturing employment levels, but history shows that is rare. 

The post-recession gains in manufacturing employment under Biden have been the strongest in 72 years, and the second strongest since World War II.

We rate Biden’s statement Mostly True.

A political action committee supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary aired a television ad that tries to link a rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The ad that aired in Iowa, by Fight Right Inc., opens with clips of Haley saying, “The reason I got into politics was because of Hillary Clinton.” Then, a narrator says, “So, Haley raised taxes like Hillary.” 

It is not an apples-to-apples comparison because the two politicians oversaw different types of taxes; Haley is a former state legislator and governor and Clinton is a former U.S. senator. But in this fact-check we will focus on the ad’s claim about Haley’s tax record. 

The ad cites two tax proposals: one to raise South Carolina’s sales tax and another to raise the state’s gasoline tax. 

‘”These were tax swaps, not tax increases,” Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, a group educating the public about tax policy, told PolitiFact.

Haley’s sales tax increase was combined with property tax cut

The ad cites a 2006 bill Haley co-sponsored as a state House member. It was signed into law and raised the state’s sales tax by 1 penny while also cutting homeowners’ property taxes for school operations.

Sarah Young, a University of South Carolina, Aiken political scientist, said that the measure was presented as a “tax swap.” Media outlets reporting on the bill used the same term.

“In essence, this meant that most homeowners pay nothing in school operating taxes on their property tax bill” for a primary residence, Young told PolitiFact.

Ellen Saltzman, a Clemson University research associate, analyzed the legislation in 2006 and concluded that most homeowners would pay less overall in taxes under the bill. Writing for the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government & Public Affairs, a research group, Saltzman found that the estimated property tax relief would likely be greater than the additional sales tax homeowners would pay, although the impact would vary based on homeowners’ purchases, home prices and tax rates for local school operations.

Renters paid that sales tax increase but did not benefit from a property tax cut.

Because the property tax relief was limited to owner-occupied properties and excluded commercial real estate, including rental properties, “renters do not receive the benefit of the property tax relief,” either directly through lower tax payments or indirectly through lower rent, Walczak said. 

“Overall, the tax package was not a tax increase… but the 2006 property tax relief package prioritized homeowners and thus shifted more of the burden to businesses and renters, since they did not receive property tax relief but still faced higher sales tax burdens,” he said.

Some lawmakers and school officials objected to this bill from the outset, fearing it would remove a stable school funding base.

Years later, South Carolina journalists found that the tax swap slashed property taxes, but the 1 penny sales tax increase did not make up for the lost revenue for school districts. 

Gov. Haley proposed a gas tax hike coupled with income tax cut

The campaign ad also cited a September Fox News article that said that Haley as governor  supported a 2016 state gasoline tax increase to pay for infrastructure. The article explained that Haley coupled her proposed gasoline tax increase with an income tax cut, lowering the top income bracket’s rate from 7% to 5% over a decade. 

“I’m going to veto anything that is a net tax increase,” Haley told reporters in January 2016. “I’m just not going to have it when you’ve got $1.3 billion in new money. I’m not going to do that to the taxpayers of this state.”

Ultimately, such a proposal was not approved, NBC in Charleston reported in November 2016.

In 2015, when she proposed the same plan, Haley said that she would sign a gas tax increase only if the state income tax was reduced. “If we do all of those things, we will have better roads and a stronger economic engine for our people. That’s a win-win.”

A Haley campaign spokesperson sent us a 2015 article from the Post and Courier, a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper. It said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, which asks politicians to oppose tax hikes, wrote a letter in 2015 to South Carolina state lawmakers urging them to support Haley’s plan.

Haley’s campaign spokesperson also sent articles showing that in 2014, Haley opposed a gasoline tax hike alone, saying there were other ways to increase infrastructure funding.

In 2017, the South Carolina legislature voted to raise the gasoline tax while providing other tax relief, but that was after Haley’s governorship and during her time as former President Donald Trump’s United Nations ambassador.

When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for Fight Right Inc.,the DeSantis PAC, pointed to minor tax measures Haley had supported that the ad did not cite, and were not what most people would consider a broad tax increase. One example was a lodging tax on vacation rentals. 

Our ruling

A Fight Right Inc. ad said Haley “raised taxes.”

The ad points to 2006 legislation Haley co-sponsored as a state legislator to raise the state sales tax by 1 penny while cutting homeowners’ property taxes. Experts and journalists called the measure a tax swap. And a university researcher’s analysis estimated that with the change, most homeowners would pay less overall in taxes.

People who do not own property saw a sales tax increase, but did not benefit from the property tax cut.

The ad also cites Haley’s 2015 and 2016 proposals while governor to raise the gasoline tax. Again, it was not a stand-alone increase; it was coupled with an income tax cut. And the proposal didn’t pass, so taxes did not change. 

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

RELATED: AdWatch: DeSantis super PAC ad misleadingly edits Nikki Haley’s comments about Hillary Clinton

RELATED: All of our fact-checks of Nikki Haley

RELATED: All of our fact-checks of Ron DeSantis

Social media users have shared an excerpt of 2015 remarks by then-Vice President Joe Biden and said it’s evidence that he, as current president, intentionally opened U.S. borders to immigrants.

“When you hear someone say Biden hasn’t intentionally opened the boarder show them this video from 2015,” read sticker text that misspelled “border” on a Dec. 11 Instagram video.

The video played a clip of then-Vice President Biden in midsentence referring to an “unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop. Nonstop.” Biden went on to say, “Folks like me who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white, European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”

The video then cuts to a man who said, “You all trying to tell me you didn’t hear that guy just say he was going to make a stream of illegal immigrants, basically overflooding our immigration. Y’all didn’t hear that? Liberals, Democrats, you gonna pretend like you didn’t hear that?”

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.)

Other social media users, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have used the clip of Biden’s remarks to make allegations similar to the Instagram poster’s.

Biden said the words portrayed in the video. But by sharing only a shortened clip from his much longer remarks, the Instagram post gives the false impression that Biden was encouraging a flood of illegal immigration into the U.S.

(Instagram screenshot)

Biden had been speaking Feb. 17, 2015, at the opening of a White House summit on countering violent extremism, and the comments shared in the Instagram video are part of a video that’s more than 18 minutes long. (The full video is available on C-SPAN.)

Biden spoke of integrating immigrants in communities to preempt radicalization and praised Boston for how it reacted to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing by two Chechen immigrants. (See the 7:28 mark in the video player below).

“It did not turn its venom, its anger, its frustration against any community. It resolved to pull the communities together,” Biden said of Boston.

Biden said the U.S. didn’t have all the answers to battle violent extremism, but suggested it had more experience because it is a “nation of immigrants.”

“We are a melting pot. It is the ultimate source of our strength. It is the ultimate source of who we are, what we’ve become,” Biden said. “And it started all the way back in the late 1700s. There’s been a constant unrelenting stream of immigration — not in little trickles, but in large numbers.”

Biden then recalled a conversation with former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (at the 8:57 mark), in which Lee said the Chinese were in America “looking for the buried black box.”

Biden explained that Lee meant that China was “looking for that secret that allows America to constantly be able to remake itself.”

Biden said the secret had two parts, the first being Americans’ healthy skepticism toward orthodoxy.

Then, in the clip taken out of context, Biden said: “There’s a second thing in that black box. An unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop. Nonstop. Folks like me who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white, European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength. And so we have been, we haven’t always gotten it right. I don’t want to suggest we have all the answers. But we have a lot of experience of integrating communities into the American system, the American dream.”

Biden neither suggested that people should enter the country illegally, nor proposed increasing immigration, legal or otherwise, into the U.S.

Biden, as president, also has not installed a policy to open U.S. borders, a common accusation from his critics. There have been historically high numbers of migrant encounters at the border, but it is not “open” for everyone to enter. There are about 20,000 U.S. border patrol agents, miles of barriers and surveillance technology to monitor who enters the country.

The claim that an excerpt from 2015 remarks by Biden proves that as president he has intentionally opened U.S. borders is False.

Geert Wilders chalked up a surprising victory in the Nov. 22 election in the Netherlands, but some social media posts took it one step too far.

A Dec. 12 Instagram video said Wilders is the “new prime minister of the Netherlands.”

In the video, Wilders, a far-right politician who campaigns on an anti-immigrant platform, gives a speech describing Islam as “incompatible with freedom.”

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.)

Although Wilders’ Party for Freedom won 37 seats in the elections, which was the highest number among any party, it did not constitute a majority in the 150-seat lower house of parliament. 

As of Dec. 13, three weeks after the election, Wilders was still negotiating with other parties to form a coalition government. Coalition negotiations could be lengthy and difficult because of ideological differences between more centrist parties and Wilders’ far-right agenda, which includes plans to ban mosques, Islamic schools and the Quran.

It took 271 days after the 2021 elections in the Netherlands for coalition partners to agree to the formation of a government. After an agreement is reached between the coalition partners, a formal ceremony is held and the Dutch king swears in the new prime minister and government ministers.

We rate the claim that as of Dec. 12, Geert Wilders was the “new prime minister of the Netherlands” False.

Millones de estadounidenses tienen deudas acumuladas en sus tarjetas de crédito y un video en Facebook alega que se ha aprobado la solución al problema.

En el video aparece el presentador de Univision Jorge Ramos, y aparentemente dice que “los bancos están saldando tarjetas de crédito y liquidando balances de más de $15,000” para evitar otra recesión.

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).

Aunque lo que promociona el video suena práctico e interesante, el video fue editado y ofrece información falsa. No encontramos ningún artículo de prensa ni anuncio de los bancos afirmando la cancelación de deudas.

Una de las imágenes de Ramos vienen de un reporte que él dio afuera de una corte en Miami para Univision. Ese día Donald Trump se declaró inocente de 37 cargos federales, la mayoría relacionados al manejo de documentos clasificados encontrados por el FBI en su residencia de Mar-a-Lago en Palm Beach, Florida. Ramos en ese reporte no dijo nada sobre los bancos liquidando deudas.

En el video de Facebook aparece un rótulo que dice “IRS” (Servicio de Impuestos Internos) y otro que dice “Breaking news” (Últimas noticias). Ninguno de ellos está en el video original de Univision.

Asimismo, el video muestra a personas yendo a cajeros automáticos, mostrando tarjetas de crédito, y billetes de dólar. Mientras, la voz de fondo que suena como la de Ramos dice, “escuché que lo están haciendo para evitar otra recesión ya que la inflación alcanzó un máximo histórico”. 

El video mezcla una parte de un noticiero real con rótulos falsos y una voz manipulada.

“Al Punto”, el programa semanal que presenta Ramos en la cadena, publicó un reportaje recientemente diciendo que la voz de Ramos “fue clonada con inteligencia artificial para darle credibilidad a un supuesto servicio de alivio de deudas”.

Según el profesor de marketing de Emory University David Schweidel, la mejor herramienta que existe para detectar si un video es real o no es validarlo con la fuente original ya que “cuando se trata de una figura pública, como hay contenido disponible, este tipo de videos son fáciles de crear”.

Ramos en mayo alertó en X sobre el uso de su nombre e imagen en falsos comerciales; él publicó algo similar este mes en su página web.

Existen compañías privadas que asisten con el alivio de la deuda. Pero estas compañías no cobran dinero antes de ayudar, no garantizan eliminar deudas y no dicen que tienen acceso a programas de asistencia del gobierno, según la Comisión Federal de Comercio (FTC, por sus siglas en inglés).

Calificamos la publicación que dice que los bancos están liquidando balances de más de $15,000 de tarjetas de crédito como Falsa.

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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

The U.S House of Representatives voted Dec. 13 to formally authorize an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden. On party lines, with all Republican and no Democratic support, the measure passed, 221-212. 

The vote did not address the merits of whether Biden should be impeached. Instead, it formalized the House’s decision to undertake an investigation that could lead to Biden’s impeachment next year.

Here’s a recap of where a possible Biden impeachment stands after this vote.

What is being investigated?

House Republicans have been investigating Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, for months. These efforts have focused on money Hunter received while serving on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. At the time, Joe Biden was serving as U.S. vice president and helping shape Ukraine policy. Bribery is specifically listed in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment.

Also receiving scrutiny from House Republicans are payments overseas entities made to James Biden, the president’s brother; statements the president has made about Hunter Biden’s work; evidence of contact between the president and his son’s business partners; and reimbursements Joe Biden received for loans he made to family members.

So far, none of these inquiries has produced clear evidence of wrongdoing by the president. And the White House has cast the impeachment effort as a way for Republicans to create false equivalence with the four indictments of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Separately, Hunter Biden has been federally indicted on tax and gun charges.

Why did the authorization vote take place now?

Initially it was unclear whether House Republicans could get enough votes to pass a formal impeachment authorization, given the GOP’s narrow majority in the chamber and Democratic opposition.

Seventeen House Republicans who serve in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020, compared with five Democrats who serve in districts Donald Trump won. 

Voting for an impeachment investigation could be politically risky for any of those Republicans. But party leaders appear to have calmed concerns among those members, emphasizing that this is simply a procedural step. 

“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., speaking for the GOP leadership, said in a Dec. 12 news conference.

What does it mean that a formal inquiry has been authorized?

Before a vote to launch an inquiry, specific charges do not need to be presented. The inquiry is designed to collect evidence.

“The scope can change in the course of an investigation,” Stephen Griffin, a Tulane University law professor, told PolitiFact in September, when an impeachment inquiry vote was initially considered.

“The scope of the inquiry could be very broad and even amorphous at the outset, but by the time a committee takes a vote on impeachment articles, it tends to be more focused,” Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor, told PolitiFact in September.

Formally impeaching the president would require another vote, after the investigation has been completed and after the committee responsible for the inquiry advances specific impeachment charges — such as obstruction of justice or bribery — to the full House.

Does this vote meaningfully change how the process will unfold?

The Dec. 13 resolution authorizes three House committees to continue the investigations that are already underway; to seek grand jury materials; to pursue subpoenas and approve others retroactively; and to hire outside counsel.

Scholars disagree about how much difference it could make. 

A formal inquiry could increase investigators’ ability to demand and receive documents from the White House.

“It’s clear that the investigative power of the House is stronger in an impeachment inquiry,” Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and author of a book about the history of impeachment told PolitiFact in September. “If you’re the House, it behooves you to get your investigation under that umbrella if you can.”

The White House made this argument in a November letter from White House special counsel Richard Sauber to two Republicans who are key to the impeachment effort, House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Republicans, Sauber wrote, “claim the mantle of an ‘impeachment inquiry’ knowing full well that the Constitution requires that the full House authorize an impeachment inquiry before a committee may utilize compulsory process pursuant to the impeachment power — a step the Republican House Majority has so far refused to take.”

Not everyone agrees that a formal vote is necessary, though.

On the eve of the vote, Matt Glassman, a Georgetown University congressional scholar and former Congressional Research Service staffer, posted on X, “I am going to remain a broken record and say the House committees have all the authority they need to investigate an impeachment. This resolution doesn’t add anything; the Trump and Biden (White Houses) were/are wrong about this; and a bipartisan House should tell them to pound sand.”

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, talks to reporters Dec. 13, 2023, at the U.S. Capitol. (AP)

Investigators already had collected a large amount of information even without official authorization, including “more than 36,000 pages of bank records; 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports from the Treasury Department; and dozens of hours of testimony from two of Hunter Biden’s business partners, a senior official from the National Archives and Records Administration, seven federal agents and three U.S. attorneys,” The New York Times reported.

Testimony from one key witness, Hunter Biden himself, was in limbo as the impeachment authorization vote loomed. Hunter Biden’s legal team offered to have him testify in public, but Republicans leading the investigation said they would meet him only privately. Biden’s camp refused, arguing that this would enable Republicans to leak selected portions of his testimony without full context.

On the day of the impeachment vote, Comer and Jordan said that with Hunter Biden’s refusal to testify privately, they would pursue contempt of Congress proceedings. 

RELATED: What’s behind Republicans’ claim that Joe Biden received $40,000 of ‘laundered Chinese money’?

RELATED: Largest share of foreign payments went to Biden associates, not kin, House GOP memos show

At a Republican presidential primary debate in Alabama, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy claimed he was the only candidate onstage who would “speak truth to power” and “speak the truth to you.” 

“Why am I the only person, on this stage at least, who can say … that the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory. But a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform,” Ramaswamy said Dec 6. 

The “great replacement theory” is a debunked conspiracy theory claiming that white people of European descent are deliberately being replaced with nonwhite people. Perpetrators of several violent attacks around the world, including the shooter who killed 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in 2022, have referred to the theory.

Immigration and political science experts said Ramaswamy’s claim is wrong and dangerous. And PolitiFact’s review of the Democratic Party’s campaign platforms from 1840 to 2020 show no reference to the “great replacement theory.” 

The Democratic Party’s pro-immigrant platform is not evidence of the ‘great replacement theory’

There are different versions of the “great replacement theory.” The most “explicitly racist” version claims that Jewish people are manipulating “high-fertility” immigrants to come to the U.S. and replace white people through demographic warfare, said Casey Kelly, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln expert in political extremism. 

Ramaswamy is citing a more “sanitized version” repeated by right-wing politicians and pundits, claiming that Democrats’ pro-immigration policies are replacing white people in the U.S. and strengthening the party’s voter base, Kelly said.  

But there is no part of the Democratic Party platform that endorses or echoes the ideas of a replacement theory, said Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. “Ramaswamy is trying to interpret the party’s historically liberal immigration policies as wanting to get rid of its predominantly white majority,” Oliver said.

Alan Kraut, a historian and expert in immigration and ethnic history at American University, said of Ramswamy’s claim, “That’s absolutely rubbish. It’s an attempt to create a racist theory out of something that’s simply not there. And I don’t think it should be taken seriously by anyone.” 

Ramaswamy incorrectly ties pathway to citizenship to conspiracy theory

Ramaswamy’s team said a 2013 Politico article supported his claim. The article was about a pending immigration proposal in Congress that would have provided a pathway to citizenship to millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Beneficiaries could eventually vote for Democrats, the article said, but it was uncertain “what their turnout percentages would be once they gain voting rights.” The bill passed in the Senate with bipartisan support, but it did not get a House vote.

Experts say that providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants doesn’t prove Ramaswamy’s claim that the Democratic Party’s platform includes the “great replacement theory.”

Also, it was Republican President Ronald Reagan who signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the most recent law that paved the way for immigrants who were in the country illegally to become lawful permanent residents if they met certain requirements.

Ramaswamy’s campaign also shared a link to a Ramaswamy Dec. 7 X post sharing a 2021 clip of CNN political commentator Van Jones during a Drew University forum. During the forum on “the four crises facing the Western world,” a university article said, Jones spoke about a “diversity challenge” as nonwhite communities grow and demand equality. 

“No ethnic majority group in 10,000 years of human history that I could find ever went from being a majority to being a minority and liked it. And that’s basically the request from the racial justice left,” Jones said in the clip. “Is that we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it. That’s a tough request, and the reality is that change is hard.”

Jones served in the Obama administration as an environmental adviser, but he is not a Democratic Party leader.

Demographics are changing worldwide as more people age and migrate. The U.S. population also is racially diversifying. But equating demographic shifts to a sinister “replacement” plan is part of a “paranoid style of conspiratorial thinking,” said Kelly.

For centuries, people have migrated to the U.S. because of violence, political instability and poverty in their home countries. Others have come seeking better academic or employment opportunities.

Our ruling

Ramaswamy said “the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory. But a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”

Although the Democratic party generally is pro-immigrant, there is no evidence that it is the party’s platform to systemically replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants. 

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

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