Category: Fact Check

President Joe Biden didn’t attend the Dec. 9 Army-Navy college football game in Massachusetts, but some social media users claim the crowd had some choice — and vulgar – words for him.

“BREAKING: Massive f— Joe Biden chant breaks out at Army/Navy game,” read sticker text atop a Dec. 9 Instagram video.

The video shows thousands of Army cadets jumping up and down in the stands during Army’s 17-11 win over Navy at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The Instagram video’s audio shows the crowd members, rather than cheering on their team, making the obscene chant.

“Let us know how you really feel,” said a caption with the post that included two laughter emojis. “They are not saying ‘Let’s go Brandon’ anymore.”

“Let’s go Brandon” became code for a vulgar insult toward Biden after a crowd chanted “F— Joe Biden at a 2021 NASCAR event in Alabama. Driver Brandon Brown was being interviewed, and an NBC sports reporter suggested the crowd was instead chanting, “Let’s go Brandon.”

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We found multiple social media posts sharing the Army-Navy football crowd video with audio of the vulgar chant.

(Instagram screenshot)

The video is real, but the audio is altered. We found the original video showing the same scene shared by CBS Sports on TikTok and elsewhere on X, formerly Twitter.

In the video, Army cadets clad in gray, wool overcoats jump up and down and sing along with the band’s music. The crowd made no vulgar chant against the president.

Altered videos of and about Joe Biden pop up periodically on social media. This is the latest post sharing a video alleging people shouted profanities at Biden that PolitiFact has checked. 

A child did not tell Biden to “shut the f— up” at a White House Take Our Kids to Work Day earlier this year. Nor did a crowd of hecklers shout “F— Joe Biden” at a gun safety speech in 2022.

Hecklers also didn’t shout profanities at Biden during a 2019 speech in Texas, during former President Barack Obama’s speech at a 2022 campaign rally or at a 2022 Philadelphia Eagles National Football League game Jill Biden attended.

Likewise, a crowd did not chant “F— Joe Biden” at the Army-Navy college football game. We rate this claim False.

Casey DeSantis went on Fox News to rally support for her husband, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is campaigning in Iowa for the Republican presidential nomination. But her comments encouraging out-of-state residents to go to Iowa to “participate” in the caucuses prompted criticism and clarifications.

“We’re asking all of these moms and grandmoms to come from wherever it might be, North Carolina, South Carolina and to descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus, because you do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus,” Casey DeSantis said Dec. 8, sitting next to her husband. “So, moms and grandmoms are going to be able to come and be a part and let their voice be heard in support of Ron DeSantis.”

After that interview, Casey DeSantis said on X, formerly Twitter, that although voting in the Iowa caucus is limited to registered Iowa voters, there was another way for people to participate. “I’m calling on mamas and grandmamas from all over the country to come volunteer in support of Ron DeSantis in the Iowa caucus,” she wrote.

The Iowa Republican Party also posted on X: “Remember: you must be a legal resident of Iowa and the precinct you live in and bring photo ID with you to participate in the #iacaucus!”

The same day, Ron DeSantis told reporters that people can go and speak on behalf of candidates, “and they have all these precincts, so you may have people who really can speak strongly about our leadership that are going to come.”

Donald Trump’s campaign issued a statement Dec. 9 accusing the DeSantises of purposely spreading false information or being uninformed about Iowa’s election process.

“The DeSantises specifically said they were calling on their campaign coalition groups of out-of-state, non-Iowa residents to illegally ‘descend on the caucus’ and try to cast a vote,” the Trump campaign statement said.

But Casey did not say “vote,” she spoke more broadly about people participating in the caucuses.

To vote Jan. 15 in Iowa, people must be U.S. citizens, Iowa residents and registered Republican voters. People who are 17 years old may register to vote the same day of the caucus if they will be 18 by the November election. 

It’s not uncommon for Iowans — including no-party voters or college students — to register to vote at the caucus.

It’s not unusual for out-of-state residents to volunteer in the caucus

Multiple political scientists who have studied the Iowa caucuses, and Will Rogers, a former GOP chair in Polk County, Iowa, said it’s possible for nonresidents to “participate” — but not vote — in the Iowa caucuses. 

In Iowa, state parties set caucus rules.

For decades, some presidential campaigns have deployed out-of-state residents to work on the ground in the final days before the caucus by door-knocking and making phone calls on their candidates’ behalves. And some of them on caucus night speak in favor of their candidate.

“They will deploy supporters to precinct locations across the state,” said Rogers.

Iowa has about 1,700 precincts, although some caucus in the same buildings (including schools, churches and community centers). That means campaigns have to find a lot of people to have someone at each precinct.

In 2000, George W. Bush’s campaign deployed busloads of Texans at precincts across the state. They wore Bush stickers, buttons and hats and tried to persuade people to vote for Bush, Rogers said.

“Back in 2020, President Trump brought in a commercial jetliner full of people to speak as surrogates at precincts all over the state of Iowa,” Rogers said.

Rogers predicts that in January multiple campaigns will send people to precincts to speak on behalf of their candidate. Not all may be from Iowa.

Precincts are typically small enough that Iowans know if someone is from their neighborhood or state, or out of town, said Tim Hagle, associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa. It could be a selling point if a person from out-of-state appears at an Iowa caucus to explain why DeSantis has been a good governor, he said.

However, out-of-state residents advocating for a candidate at the caucus is not something candidates would want on a wide basis, said Bob Beatty, a professor at Washburn University in Kansas who has studied the caucuses for decades. For example, an Iowan may be more convincing to an Iowan than a Floridian, he said.

RELATED: Fact-checking 2024 presidential candidates, who’s running

Note: This story includes a description of a rape incident.

A social media post claims to show a woman beaten by George Floyd, the man whose 2020 killing inspired nationwide social justice demonstrations.

Floyd died May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. He was 46. Former officer Derek Chauvin, 47, was convicted of Floyd’s murder.

This post, like others we have checked, seeks to challenge the notion that Floyd was a victim.

“Let me introduce you to Araceli Hernandez. … She was a girl that was kidnapped by George Floyd and brutally beaten during a home invasion! George and his accomplices search her apartment for drugs,” read the text in the Dec. 10 Instagram video.

The Instagram post’s caption included the hashtags “#georgefloyd” and “#blm,” referencing the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 sparked by Floyd’s death.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

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In 2020, we fact-checked a similar post that also used Sicignano’s photo but identified the woman by another name: Aracely Henriquez. Both are wrong.

These posts conflate two unrelated events and exaggerated the charge against Floyd.

In 2007, Floyd was arrested in Houston and charged with aggravated robbery. He and five other men broke into the apartment of a woman named Aracely Henriquez (not Hernandez, as the most recent post says). According to the criminal complaint, Henriquez accused Floyd of placing a pistol against her abdomen and forcing his way into her home. 

The men searched her home, demanding to know where the drugs and money were stored. They took some of her jewelry and her phone. Another complainant, Angel Negrete, who was with Henriquez during the robbery, said he remembered seeing Floyd going through the kitchen cabinets. The complaint didn’t mention kidnapping or brutal assault. 

But the woman in the Instagram post photo is not Henriquez. A reverse-image search of the photo led to 2018 news articles about a woman named Andrea Sicignano who shared her account of being assaulted and raped in Madrid. 

Sicignano’s Facebook post detailing the incident is now unavailable, but we found an archived copy of the Dec. 19, 2018, post. She did not mention Floyd; she said the man who assaulted her was detained and awaiting trial.

Floyd spent most of his life in Houston, where he was arrested nine times. None of the charges were for kidnapping, assault or rape.

We rate the claim that this photo shows Araceli Hernandez who “was kidnapped by George Floyd and brutally beaten during a home invasion” False.

Video of students who supposedly drank laxative-laced lemonade is circulating social media. One post claims the school prank was done in retaliation for bullying. But this stinks of misinformation.

A Nov. 24 Facebook post showed a split-screen video: on the left, a distressed teacher walked past multiple students in a school hallway suffering from severe gastrointestinal issues; on the right, a man reacted to the chaotic scene.

“This is what happens when someone at school that’s getting bullied gets tired of being bullied,” the man said in response to the video. “They put horse laxatives inside the lemonade in the cafeteria and got ‘em all.”

The Facebook post’s caption read, “That moment when you get tired of being bullied.”

(Facebook screengrab)

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That’s because this video is from the true crime satire show “American Vandal.”

The show’s two seasons depict mockumentary-style investigations into school pranks. In the second season, released in 2018, students at a fictitious private high school get sick after the cafeteria’s lemonade is contaminated with laxatives.

Parts of the video shared in the Facebook post can be seen in the Netflix trailer for the second season of “American Vandal.”

This isn’t the first time the video has been miscaptioned. Snopes checked this claim in 2018 and Lead Stories saw posts like this in 2019.

The footage may be resurfacing now because of news about two lemonade-related lawsuits against Panera Bread. Families of two people who died say Panera’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade played a role. Panera has added warnings to the product but said in a statement that it believes the deaths are not connected to the lemonade.

We rate the claim that a video shared on Facebook shows the aftermath of a school prank in which students drank lemonade containing “horse laxatives” False.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that California makes it possible for parents to lose control of their minors’ health care decisions.

“Your minor child can go to California without your knowledge or without your consent, and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers and a sex change operation all without you knowing or consenting,” the Republican presidential primary candidate said during a Nov. 30 debate with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The claim was among many the pair hurled at each other during Fox News’ “The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate,” moderated by Sean Hannity and held in Alpharetta, Georgia.

After the event, DeSantis’ team referred us to two news stories that referenced Senate Bill 107, 2022 legislation that Newsom signed into law making California a “sanctuary state” for families seeking gender-affirming care. The law’s proponents said it was written and passed in response to bills in other states that made gender-affirming care illegal or that threatened to criminalize parents who allowed their kids to access it. 

But DeSantis’ claim is misleading. Children younger than 18 still need parental consent to access gender-affirming medical care. But a change to interstate child custody law allows for narrow circumstances under which a minor could theoretically receive gender-affirming care without one parent knowing or consenting. But that is not how the law is constructed, and experts say the chances of that happening would be low.

Parental consent is still required for minors to get gender-affirming medical care in California 

Can a 15-year-old get on a bus to San Francisco and get sex-reassignment surgery? No. 

“In California, there is no provision for a minor to consent independently to gender-affirming medical care,” said Lois Weithorn, law professor at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. Whether a child is new to the state, or a longtime resident, parental consent is required for physical health care and Senate Bill 107 did not change that. 

California law allows some minors to receive outpatient mental health care without parental consent, said Weithorn, but not the pharmacological or surgical interventions that DeSantis described. 

DeSantis’ team sent us two articles when we asked for evidence to support the Florida governor’s claim. 

One came from the National Review, a conservative news outlet: “Like the Pied Piper, California under S.B. 107 would entice children nationwide to leave their families and run away into the arms of California bureaucrats who believe that harmful drugs and sterilizing surgeries should be freely available to anyone who asks,” the Sept. 7, 2022, article said.

The other article, from The Center Square, a publication of the conservative-leaning nonprofit Franklin News Foundation, referred to a Sept. 20, 2022, letter that numerous groups sent to Newsom asking him to veto the bill. The letter incorporated a line similar to the one in the National Review about California becoming a “pied piper” for kids to leave the families in search of care.

But California law does not permit minors to get puberty blockers, hormones or surgery without parental consent, experts said. 

What if a child is traveling with a parent? 

Among its changes, Senate Bill 107 altered the Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, a section of the law that outlines how different states determine who has authority to make a child custody decision. 

The Uniform Law Commission, a nonprofit organization working for the uniformity of state laws, drafted the law in 1997. Every state except Massachusetts has adopted it.

By assigning a “home state” to children involved in custody orders, the act aims to prevent having competing custody orders from different states. Home states are typically where the parents divorced, the first custody order was issued or where the child lived for six months before a custody proceeding. 

That “home state” remains in charge of the case unless another home state is legally established. Generally, if parents want to modify custody orders, they must do so in the child’s home state. 

California, like the other states with this uniform law, has a caveat to account for extreme circumstances. In instances of abandonment, mistreatment or abuse, the law says a state other than a child’s home state can claim “temporary emergency jurisdiction,” giving it short-term authority to make custody decisions.

Senate Bill 107 amended that portion of the law to outline another qualifying emergency circumstance: situations in which a parent — or person acting as a parent or guardian— and child come to California in an attempt to receive gender-affirming care. 

But a temporary emergency jurisdiction’s effect is narrow, experts said: It applies only to custody agreements that originated outside of California and only for a court-specified period, not forever. And the other parent is entitled to know about the court proceedings as well as the outcome, said Scott Altman, a law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.  

The law lets the California court take temporary jurisdiction over a case, but does not automatically favor parents who support gender-affirming care for their children.

If a California court takes emergency jurisdiction, it must contact the home state court to “resolve the emergency, protect the safety of the parties and the child, and determine a period for the duration of the temporary order.” 

If a parent with a valid custody order files a motion in the home state, that home state jurisdiction trumps California’s. The uniform law mandates the custody order be “enforced and recognized in the other states,” said Courtney Joslin, a University of California, Davis law professor, “and that remains true in California.”

To summarize a complex process: A child involved in a custody dispute who is traveling with a parent who supports the child’s request to receive gender-affirming care could be placed temporarily into the traveling parent’s custody (under emergency jurisdiction), but this wouldn’t override an existing custody order or jurisdiction from the child’s home state. 

If the child has no “home state” or existing custody order, a temporary custody order could last longer, Altman said. 

A narrow possibility 

There appears to be narrow circumstances under which DeSantis’ statement could have merit. 

If, for example, a parent  and a gender-affirming-care-seeking child fled to California in violation of a custody order from another state, a court could take temporary emergency jurisdiction and issue a temporary custody order.

The non-California-based parent would receive notice of the temporary custody order and its conditions, legal experts said.

If the temporary custody order granted sole physical and legal custody to the parent in California and said that parent was not required to inform his or her counterpart of medical decisions, a child could possibly receive gender-affirming medical care without the other parent’s consent or knowledge.

But there is no guarantee that a temporary order would remove the other parent from legal decisions or medical knowledge. Again, this law gives no legal preference to parents who affirm a child’s gender identity. The court must decide what is in the child’s best interests. 

It is possible that a temporary order’s conditions would require only one parent’s consent. But the other parent would know she or he had temporarily lost that right. 

If the other parent had a valid custody order from the child’s home state, this circumstance would likely be short-lived. The parent with custody could file a motion in the home state, and the Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act mandates that the courts work together to enforce the existing custody order.

If the other parent had no existing custody order from the home state, the temporary order could last longer. 

There’s one more condition that makes this a hard-to-imagine scenario: long wait times for  gender-affirming care, said Kathie Moehlig, executive director of TransFamily Support Services, a nonprofit that supports families of children undergoing transition, and a sponsor of Senate Bill 107. 

The likelihood that a child could receive substantial care, or all the procedures that DeSantis described, within a temporary order’s time frame, would be unlikely, especially if the other parent has custody.

Our ruling 

DeSantis said, “Your minor child can go to California without your knowledge or without your consent, and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers and a sex change operation.”

California law requires parental consent for gender-affirming medical care. The state altered its interstate child custody jurisdiction law in 2022 to let the state take temporary emergency jurisdiction over a custody case when a child arrives for gender-affirming care. But that change doesn’t automatically mean that parents who support the care will be able to exclude the other parent or guardian from decision-making.  

Such court orders are temporary and existing valid custody orders from another state would supersede them.

Under narrow circumstances, a child might be able to get care without a parent’s knowledge, but experts say the conditions allowing it are unlikely.

We rate DeSantis’s claim Mostly False.

Editor’s note: This fact-check contains references and links to graphic images from the Israel-Hamas war.

In a Facebook video, a woman weeps as she holds her swaddled infant close to her cheek. She rocks and kisses the baby as a crowd looks on.

A Facebook post shared the video and claimed the infant was not real.

“More Hamas theater propaganda exposed,” text across the video read. The Dec. 4 post’s caption described the video as showing “a peculiar scene where a lady passionately embraces and kisses a doll.”

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The video does not depict a doll. We fact-checked a similar claim about this baby, but the image called into question in that instance showed an older man holding the child.

Here’s how we know the claim is wrong: As part of his work documenting the Israel-Hamas war, photojournalist Ali Jadallah captured a series of images of the deceased infant boy Dec. 1 in Gaza; the baby was held by his mother and grandfather. The images were distributed by Getty Images with the caption: “Dead body of a 5-month-old Palestinian baby named Muhammad Hani Al-Zahar, is brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital by his mother Asmahan Attia Al Zahar and grandfather Attia Abu Amra after the Israeli airstrikes at the end of the humanitarian pause in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza.” 

The Jerusalem Post spread the claim that the baby was a doll with an article it published Dec. 1 headlined, “Al Jazeera posts blurred doll, claims it to be a dead Palestinian baby.” The news site later deleted the article and issued a statement on X the following day saying the article had “faulty sourcing:” “The article in question did not meet our editorial standards and was thus removed,” the statement said. The Jerusalem Post did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment. 

Jadallah shared the photo on his Instagram story with the caption, “I shared the name of this baby and still Israeli media are claiming he is a doll. No. He is not a doll. He is a human that was killed by Israeli airstrikes.”

We rate the claim that this video shows a woman embracing and kissing “a doll” False. 

 

Editor’s note: This fact-check contains references and links to graphic images from the Israel-Hamas war.

In the image, a white-haired man cradles a blanket-wrapped infant in his arms while people look on from behind.

One TikTok post shared the image as part of a screenshot of an X post that claimed the infant was not real.

“Video from Gaza shows a Palestinian man showing a plastic baby doll toy that had been ‘killed’ in an air strike,” read the X post, made by British social media influencer Oli London. It appears that London later deleted his original post. 

TikTok identified this video as part of its efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)

The photo does not depict a doll.

As part of his work documenting the Israel-Hamas war, photojournalist Ali Jadallah captured a series of images of the deceased infant boy Dec. 1 in Gaza; the baby was held by his mother and grandfather. The images were distributed by Getty Images with the caption: “Dead body of a 5-month-old Palestinian baby named Muhammad Hani Al-Zahar, is brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital by his mother Asmahan Attia Al Zahar and grandfather Attia Abu Amra after the Israeli airstrikes at the end of the humanitarian pause in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza.”

The Jerusalem Post spread the claim that the baby was a doll with an article it published Dec. 1 headlined, “Al Jazeera posts blurred doll, claims it to be a dead Palestinian baby.” The news site later deleted the article and issued a statement on X the following day saying the article had “faulty sourcing:” “The article in question did not meet our editorial standards and was thus removed,” the statement said. The Jerusalem Post did not immediately respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment. 

Jadallah shared the photo on his Instagram story with the caption, “I shared the name of this baby and still Israeli media are claiming he is a doll. No. He is not a doll. He is a human that was killed by Israeli airstrikes.” 

We rate the claim that this image shows a Palestinian man holding a doll that he says is his deceased grandson False. 

After a major snowstorm hit Munich on Dec. 2, social media users shared footage of a “frozen” airplane they claim was bound for an international climate change conference. But this claim is on thin ice.

A Dec. 2 Facebook video shows a snowy airport tarmac and an ice-and-snow-covered airplane tipped back onto its tail. A fire truck marked “Feuerwehr,” the German word for fire department, is parked next to the airplane.

The video’s caption said, “Heavy snow and ice has frozen jets in Munich bound for Dubai’s global warming conference.”

(Screengrab from Facebook)

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This video was also shared widely on X, where users said it was ironic that a private jet bound for the United Nations’ 28th Conference of the Parties, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, would get stuck in a snowstorm.

Global leaders are meeting in Dubai for COP28, which started Nov. 30, ends Dec. 12 and promotes climate change solutions worldwide. But there’s no evidence this snow-covered airplane was Dubai-bound.

Sequences of letters and numbers are put on all aircrafts for identification purposes. In the video, the letters “OE-HUB” on the airplane’s tail identify the plane as a Cessna Citation X, a type of business jet, operated by the Austrian company Bairline Fluggesellschaft.

The last flight scheduled for this aircraft was Nov. 15 from Antwerp, Belgium, to Munich, the flight tracking website FlightAware shows. This aircraft’s schedule listed no flights to Dubai.

A Dec. 4 Aviation International News report confirmed that this footage showed a Cessna Citation jet that had tipped over at the Munich International Airport because of heavy snow accumulation on the aircraft’s tail.

PolitiFact contacted Bairline and the Munich airport to verify details about the aircraft, but did not hear back.

We rate the claim that a video shows “frozen jets in Munich bound for Dubai’s global warming conference” False.

Iowa has played an outsized role in presidential politics for decades. Now, the Hawkeye State’s importance is being played out here in the Badger State, as Republicans and Democrats tussle over Wisconsin’s current gerrymandered Legislative maps. 

A Calumet County lawmaker is now citing the “Iowa model” when touting a Republican redistricting plan that calls for the Legislature to OK new maps drawn by nonpartisan staff.

“Wisconsin Republicans will introduce a nonpartisan redistricting plan based off the Iowa Model,” state Rep. Ron Tusler, R-Harrison, said Sept. 12, 2023 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This plan has been hailed as the ‘gold standard’ redistricting model by Democrats and Republicans alike. Republicans, Democrats, and the Governor pushed this plan last time redistricting happened in 2020.”

PolitiFact Wisconsin found the Calumet County lawmaker’s statement interesting, particularly the claim that “Republicans, Democrats, and the Governor pushed this plan last time redistricting happened in 2020.”

That’s because following the introduction, there was howling from Democrats about an about-face by Republicans to support the plan. And howling from Republicans that Democrats suddenly were balky about a plan they supported all along.

Have Republicans, Democrats and the governor really been pushing the “Iowa model” since 2020? And is what’s on the table now, really the “Iowa model”?

Let’s take a look.

What is the “Iowa model”?

When asked for backup for the claim, Tusler legislative aide Nick Schultz referred PolitiFact Wisconsin to several news articles, press releases, past lawmaker statements and legislation detailing the Iowa model and why its being hailed as “a gold standard’ redistricting model. 

But here, we focused on two things: How closely does what was introduced mirror the Iowa model. And have all the parties pushed that approach since 2020?

The Iowa model, as explained in a Sept. 13 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, refers to a redistricting method Iowa  adopted in 1980 that calls for Iowa’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency to draw district boundaries for state legislative and congressional seats.

Legislation to adopt the “Iowa model” has been introduced during every session of Wisconsin’s Legislature since 2011 but until October 2023 had never gotten a hearing during a legislative session. Republicans controlled both chambers throughout that period, and, for a long stretch, also held the governor’s office.

The new Assembly Bill 415 has had only one public hearing, Oct. 19, — and that came only after the recent GOP announcement of support.

Under that proposal, announced in September by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the new maps would take effect in the 2024 election cycle.

Following three hours of oral arguments Nov. 21, a ruling on a bid to overturn the legislative maps now rests with the state Supreme Court. 

But there are key differences differences between the Iowa model and the Wisconsin plan.

Richard Loeza, senior legislative analyst at the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, said the differences between Iowa’s process and Wisconsin’s largely reflect matters unique to Wisconsin law, such as the timing of the steps in the process and the constitutional power of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In a memo, the Legislative Reference Bureau said the proposed legislative redistricting is largely the same as that in Iowa, with some exceptions.

Loeza, in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin, said the main difference is that, under the Iowa Constitution, if no map proposal is enacted by Sept. 15 of the year ending in 1, the Iowa Supreme Court must intervene to adopt a redistricting plan, or cause a redistricting plan to be adopted. None of the Wisconsin proposals in 2019, 2021 or 2023 include such a provision, although such a dispute would likely end up before the court.

Also, Democrats’ recent bills have favored adding a provision that maps adopted after three sets from the state agency are rejected must be passed by a three-fourths supermajority of the Legislature. This is to ensure that one party does not ultimately enact a partisan gerrymander at the end of the process. The GOP bill includes neither the Iowa Supreme Court backstop or this provision.

Furthermore, unlike the previous Wisconsin bills or Iowa, AB 415’s amendments create even more differences between the two state’s models. Under one example, the amended AB 415 would require the Legislative Reference Bureau to continue drawing maps after a third map was rejected. Additionally, there are still no supermajority requirements in AB 415 as amended. The amendments, Loeza pointed out, “have resulted in more differences between AB 415 and the Iowa system.”

John Johnson, research fellow in the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education at the Marquette University Law School, said there has been a bill pertaining to the redistricting process proposed in each of the last three legislative biennia. 

“All of the bills bear similarity to the ‘Iowa model’” but are not the same, Johnson said.

Bills in 2019 and 2021 were introduced, received limited GOP support and never made it to a hearing. 

“None of these plans are the same as the ‘Iowa model,’ Johnson said “They all vary in important ways.” 

Have Republicans previously supported the model or moved to enact it?

There is little doubt that Democrats have supported the approach in recent years. For instance, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has proposed nonpartisan redistricting in his first two biennial budget requests. 

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said most Republicans in the state Legislature and GOP leaders opposed any kind of independent redistricting commission or process “until Tuesday, Sept. 12, when Speaker Vos led a press conference to announce support for a freshly crafted bill that would implement a system similar but not identical to the Iowa model.” 

Burden said it was a surprising turn of events given Republicans’ history of standing by the existing system and resisting reforms.

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, pointed to the change in support of the Iowa model by Republican lawmakers.

“The short answer is that very few Republicans and certainly not Tusler ever supported any version of the Iowa model legislation before Sept. 11, 2023 — the date Robin Vos announced his plan,” Heck told PolitiFact Wisconsin. 

Common Cause is a nonpartisan national group with state chapters devoted to fighting for reforms to gerrymandering, political spending and other issues.

In the supporting information Schultz, of Tusler’s office, shared with us, there was mention of “past comments by legislative Democrats, as well as legislation authored by both Republicans and Democrats including the Governor.” 

It’s true that legislation was co-authored by both Republicans and Democrats, however, Republican support for the earlier measures was very limited. For example, the 2019 measure, A.B. 303, was introduced in June 2019 by 36 Democratic representatives and two Republicans. The two Republicans were Reps. Todd Novak, R-Dodgeville, and Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City. Two additional GOP Assembly members, Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay and Rep. Loren Oldenburg, R-Viroqua, signed on as co-authors a month after the introduction.

In other words, there was no indication of widespread support by Republicans prior to the Vos 2023 news conference, such as public pronouncements or any votes — which could have easily been held, given GOP control of both chambers.

In fact:

A.B. 395, a proposal to institute nonpartisan redistricting was introduced to the legislature on June 11, 2021, and was referred to the Committee on State Affairs. No action was taken on the bill and no public hearings were held on it. The bill died at the end of the 2021-22 legislative biennium. 

A.B. 303 was introduced to the legislature on June 20, 2019, and was referred to the Committee on Campaigns and Elections. No action was taken on the bill and no public hearings were held on it. The bill died at the end of the 2019-20 legislative biennium.

What’s more, the redistricting maps created by the GOP — the ones being challenged before the state Supreme Court — did not include the Iowa approach.

The ongoing dispute and continued disagreement undermine Tusler’s claim that everyone has fought for Iowa-style maps since 2000.

Our ruling

Tusler said “Wisconsin Republicans will introduce a nonpartisan redistricting plan based off the Iowa model. … Republicans, Democrats, and the Governor pushed this plan last time redistricting happened in 2020.”

The claim, while being largely true, has problems on multiple fronts.

First, the plan introduced by Republicans in 2023, proposes a nonpartisan legislative redistricting process almost identical to Iowa’s process. But has key differences to earlier measures introduced in 2019 and 2021. 

Those earlier measures did have Republican support, but political experts pointed out that very few Republicans ever supported any version of the Iowa model legislation before this past Sept. 11, when the latest plan, backed by Republicans, was introduced. Therefore, there has been GOP support, albeit very limited. 

For a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context, our rating is Half True.

A recent uptick in pediatric pneumonia cases in one Ohio county led some social media users to falsely claim the cases are tied to a similar rise in respiratory illnesses in China.

“Mysterious pneumonia from China is now here in Ohio. Sound familiar?” read sticker text on a Nov. 30 TikTok video that has been liked more than 198,000 times.

A woman in the TikTok read aloud from an article on the website of WTRF, a West Virginia TV station that also covers Ohio. The article tied the Ohio outbreak to the China outbreak, describing a “mystery outbreak” in China it said is called “white lung syndrome.”

“I feel like we’ve seen this movie before. We did this, and I don’t think that we can do it again,” the woman in the TikTok said, an apparent reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.

TikTok identified this video as part of its efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)

(TikTok screenshot)

A Dec. 1 Instagram post made similar claims. 

Although the pneumonia cases are similar — stemming from typical respiratory pathogens — the outbreaks in Ohio and China are not connected. Each outbreak is caused by known pathogens, not new ones, health authorities and experts said. Despite concerns in media reports and among U.S. politicians about the “mystery” outbreak in China, experts said the fact that it’s caused by a known pathogen means there is no mystery.

What’s happening in China?

China has had a recent rise in respiratory illnesses, primarily among children, the World Health Organization said in a Nov. 22 statement. The WHO said it requested more information from China after media reports “about clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children’s hospitals.” 

After speaking with Chinese authorities, WHO said in a Nov. 23 post that data showed that multiple known pathogens caused the increase. Cases since May have been linked to Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a common bacterial infection, and cases since October have been linked to respiratory syncytial virus, adenovirus, and influenza. No new pathogens have been detected or identified in China, WHO said.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen echoed that explanation at a Nov. 30 House subcommittee hearing.

“We do not believe this is a new or novel pathogen. We believe this is all existing, meaning COVID, flu, RSV, mycoplasma,” Cohen said, answering a question about China’s rise in respiratory illnesses.

The Ohio outbreak

The Warren County Health District in Ohio said in a Nov. 29 press release that an “extremely high number of pediatric pneumonia cases” had been reported this fall. The district said it did not think the outbreak was from a new respiratory disease, “but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time.”

There was no common thread linking the illnesses, the district’s news release said. Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and adenovirus — all known pathogens — were among the pathogens found.

In a Nov. 30 follow-up press release, the district said there were 145 reported cases of pneumonia in children ages 3 to 14 since August. There were no deaths reported, and the severity of the cases is similar to past years, it said. Most children are treated with antibiotics and recover at home.

The CDC said Dec. 1 on its website that the respiratory illnesses among children in the U.S. “do not appear to be due to a new virus or other pathogen, but to several viral or bacterial causes” that are common during the respiratory illness season.

“The current rise in respiratory disease cases in the United States is normal for this season,” CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed told PolitiFact. “CDC is in touch with local health authorities and its country office in China. We continue to monitor the situation, collaborating with global health partners.”

The Ohio Department of Public Health said in a Dec. 8 statement to PolitiFact that it doesn’t have statewide counts of pediatric pneumonia cases. Outbreaks, such as the one in Warren County, are reportable to the state, but individual cases of pneumonia without specific identified causes are not. The department pointed us to a CDC webpage that shows respiratory virus activity across Ohio is minimal.

No connection between China, Ohio

There is no evidence the Warren County outbreak is connected to outbreaks elsewhere, the health district said.

The Ohio and China cases aren’t linked, but each is caused by the same factors, said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News.

“Young children were less exposed to respiratory infections during the pandemic and so did not develop immunity. They are now being exposed to influenza, RSV, COVID(-19) (and) Mycoplasma and are getting sick,” said Gounder, who was a guest at this past autumn’s PolitiFact-led United Facts of America conference.

Gounder cited “especially tight and long social distancing” in China, and said the U.S. saw a similar increase in RSV cases last year after COVID restrictions were eased.

Dr. Shira Doron, chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine and associate professor at  Tufts University School of Medicine, agreed with Gounder.

“If there was a new pathogen, you would not expect to see infection predominantly in children. Seeing infection affect children more than adults means that it’s an issue of ‘immunity debt,’” Doron said. That means children haven’t been exposed to the pathogens they normally would and that adults have been exposed to many times.

What is “white lung syndrome”?

Though several news reports and social media posts described the cases as “white lung syndrome,” that is not a medical term, Gounder said.

“When someone has ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome), the lungs on a chest X-ray look white,” Gounder said. “ARDS is a syndrome, not a specific infection or disease. It’s like saying pneumonia.”

Doron said ARDS is not what’s arising in Ohio or China or anywhere else.

“I do not know who decided to insert that scary phrase into a headline,” Doron said, “but I read a lot of articles to try to figure it out, and not a single doctor or scientist used it. It is not a term doctors in the US would use.”.

Our ruling

A TikTok video claimed a “mysterious pneumonia” from China is now in Ohio.

There have been similar increases in pediatric pneumonia cases in China and one Ohio county, but the outbreaks aren’t connected. Both outbreaks are caused by known pathogens that commonly circulate this time of year, not a new pathogen.

We rate the claim False.