Los coches Toyotas siguen a la venta, a pesar de lo que dice un video en Facebook.
El video del 1 de diciembre dice que Toyota, la automotriz de Japón, anunció que dejará de fabricar vehículos. La publicación muestra la imagen de lo que parece ser un concesionario de Toyota con una etiqueta que dice “cerrado”.
El narrador del video dice, “Toyota acaba de anunciar que dejará de fabricar coches por esta insólita razón” — y procede a contar la historia de cómo se creó la compañía automotriz, pero no termina de decir la supuesta razón.
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).
PolitiFact contactó a Toyota, pero no recibió una respuesta.
PolitiFact busco en Google, la página web de prensa de Toyota y noticias reportadas en medios de comunicación verídicos y no encontró nada sobre el cierre de Toyota.
También notamos que alrededor del minuto 4:10, el video dice que Toyota dejará de producir su modelo Camry, un vehículo en el mercado desde hace varias décadas. Pero sólo pararán su fabricación en Japón, no en otros países como Estados Unidos. Tampoco dejará de fabricar otros modelos.
En agosto, Toyota paró por 24 horas las operaciones en 14 de sus plantas manufactureras de vehículos en Japón, pero esto fue por un mal funcionamiento en su sistema, según CNN Business.
Ya que no hay evidencia de que Toyota dejará de fabricar vehículos, calificamos la publicación como Falsa.
The Earth is warming at the fastest rate seen in the last 10,000 years, according to NASA, and the consensus among climate scientists is that human activity is causing the change. But a meme on social media tries to undermine the reality of climate change by misrepresenting the views and media coverage of a climatologist popular among those who believe climate change is a “hoax.”
Full Story
As scientists and world leaders gathered in the United Arab Emirates for the COP28 climate summit, misleading claims about climate change circulated on social media.
One meme that’s been widely shared for months tries to cast doubt on the reality of climate change by suggesting that the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg gets an unfair proportion of media coverage compared with Judith Curry, a climatologist who is popular among those who believe climate change is a “hoax.”
The social media post shows side-by-side photos of the two women and compares Thunberg’s credentials and message to Curry’s, noting that Curry has published scientific papers and claiming that she “says it’s all a hoax.” The meme says that Thunberg “gets 24/7 media coverage” while Curry “gets no media coverage” and concludes, “This is what media manipulation looks like.”
But the meme overstates Curry’s position on climate change and, more importantly, sets up a false comparison between the two in order to give the impression that climate change isn’t happening.
“Comparing media coverage of Greta Thunberg versus Judith Curry is like comparing apples to oranges,” John Cook, an expert in climate science communication, told us in an email. “Greta Thunberg is an environmentalist and typically media coverage about her focuses on the broader movement for climate action. Judith Curry is a scientist whose views are out of step with the mainstream climate science community.”
The evidence of climate change has led to consensus among climate scientists that the phenomenon is happening and is driven by human activity — primarily the burning of fossil fuels, which produce heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide that increase temperatures.
“The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 50% since 1750,” NASA has explained on its website. “This increase is due to human activities, because scientists can see a distinctive isotopic fingerprint in the atmosphere.”
“What is the appropriate way for the media to cover contrarian scientists?” Cook said. “My research has found that it’s misleading for journalists to give equal weight between mainstream climate scientists and contrarian scientists because it gives the false impression of a 50:50 debate among the scientific community.
“Instead, we recommend in the Consensus Handbook that when airing contrarian viewpoints, they also communicate the weight of evidence or weight of experts,” said Cook, a co-author of the handbook with other researchers at the Center for Climate Change Communication.
So, any lack of coverage for Curry in the news isn’t evidence of a cover-up but, rather, in keeping with best practices for reporting on the issue. It’s also worth mentioning that she gets a fair bit of coverage from conservative media, including Fox News and the New York Post.
As for Curry’s position on climate change — she doesn’t deny that it’s happening. Or that humans have contributed. She argues that natural climate variability is also a major contributing factor and that measures to stanch climate change are likely to be ineffective, which is where she falls out of line with most other scientists.
“I have never said that climate change is a hoax,” Curry told us in an email. “The earth’s climate has been changing for the past 4.6 billion years.”
“Climate change is a geological fact. What is causing the change for the past century is a different issue. Humans are contributing to the recent climate change, but there has also been natural climate variability/change,” Curry said.
But, as we said, that view is out of step with most other climate scientists, who have found that the temperature increases cannot be explained by natural climate fluctuations.
So, the meme is wrong about Curry’s position on the issue, and wrong in its implication that climate change isn’t happening, and the media is covering it up.
Sources
Cook, John. Senior research fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne. Email exchange with FactCheck.org. 6 Dec 2023.
NASA. “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate Is Warming.” Accessed 5 Dec 2023.
NASA. “The Causes of Climate Change.” Accessed 5 Dec 2023.
Curry, Judith. President of Climate Forecast Applications Network. Email exchange with FactCheck.org. 8 Dec 2023.
Some social media posts are claiming the U.S. government is giving out thousands of dollars in monthly subsidies. But this is no holiday miracle; it’s a scam.
A Dec. 5 Facebook video showed clips of members of Congress clapping and crowds of people grocery shopping. The video’s narrator said, “The new Inflation Reduction Act has just been updated to give Americans making less than $50,000 per year up to $6,400 in subsidies every single month.”
The video claimed this monthly subsidy could be used on rent, gas, groceries and other personal expenses. The Facebook post’s caption urged people to “claim their $6,400 in subsidies” before the Dec. 8 deadline.
(Screengrab from Facebook)
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.)
Misleading posts promising free and fast money are common on social media platforms. PolitiFact has debunked similar claims in the past.
This Facebook post says to receive the $6,400 subsidy, people can click the link below the video, answer a few questions and “hop on the phone with an agent to verify your information.”
However, the link leads to a webpage with the URL “secretsavingsusa.com” that’s not affiliated with the U.S. government. The site says, “Americans can now claim up to $1,400 in gov. subsidies to use on rent, groceries, gas and more!” It says this subsidy is available through health insurance policies.
The site prompts people to answer questions about their income and whether they’re on Medicare or Medicaid. If a person answers that their income is under $50,000 and they’re not on Medicare or Medicaid, the site says, “Congratulations!” and shows a phone number to call to sign up. We called the number and reached an unidentified agent who asked for our income, tax filing status and birth date. The person hung up before we shared a birth date.
Regardless, we searched and did not find any news articles or U.S. government announcements about a $6,400 giveaway or updates to the Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in 2022.
The federal government warns that offers of free money or grants from the government are often scams. Government-funded financial assistance programs are only offered through official government websites.
The Federal Trade Commission’s website offers tips on how to avoid these scams and where to report them.
PolitiFact found no evidence the U.S. government updated the Inflation Reduction Act “to give Americans making less than $50,000 per year up to $6,400 in subsidies every single month.” We rate this claim False.
Republicans vying for the 2024 presidential nomination have started taking aim at an old adversary: the Affordable Care Act, the nearly 14-year-old health legislation former President Barack Obama signed into law.
Former President Donald Trump, who failed to fulfill his first-term promise to repeal Obamacare, threatened in November to reopen that contentious fight, calling for its replacement.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said during the Dec. 6 Republican primary debate that the nation needs “diverse insurance options in a competitive marketplace.”
And presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made his own pledge, telling host Kristen Welker on Dec. 3 on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would pass a bill to “supersede” the law.
DeSantis promised a plan sometime next spring, and claimed that, “Obamacare promised lower premiums. It didn’t deliver that.”
ACA premiums are high, but DeSantis left out several pieces of a very complicated puzzle — notably that subsidies help drive down the cost of the program’s health insurance for most people.
Obamacare wasn’t intended to lower premiums for everyone, health policy experts said, but aimed to make health coverage more affordable for more people while ending discriminatory practices by insurers. Its primary objective was providing access to more affordable, comprehensive health insurance for Americans who lacked access to employer-based group insurance.
“Before the ACA, if you were buying health insurance on your own and had a pre-existing health condition, or were older, or were a woman, based on various health risk characteristics, (insurance companies) would charge you more,” said Sabrina Corlette, a researcher and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “The ACA banned that.”
What the ACA did
Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in March 2010. It took full effect in January 2014. A record 16.3 million people sought individual health insurance plans through the ACA in 2023.
Before the law, insurance companies could refuse coverage or charge people higher prices if they had pre-existing health conditions. The ACA outlawed that practice and required insurers to charge people the same premiums, regardless of health status.
“The individual market in most states barely existed before Obamacare,” said Robert Field, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health. “Insurance companies didn’t want to provide it.”
Sick people could be refused coverage, he said. And very sick patients could find themselves quickly exhausting insurers’ low coverage caps.
The law also mandated that health plans cover what it termed “essential health benefits” such as prescription drugs, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse services and pediatric care.
The ACA allowed states to expand rules for who could be eligible for Medicaid, the government’s health insurance program for low-income households. The law also gave states more federal money to insure that larger pool of Medicaid recipients. As of November, 40 states and the District of Columbia had all expanded Medicaid coverage to include nearly all adults making incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level — $20,128 for an individual in 2023. Neither Florida nor South Carolina, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s home state, are among them.
The ACA also gave enhanced premium tax credits — subsidies to offset some or all of people’s monthly premiums — to people with incomes 100% to 400% of the federal poverty line. During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden’s administration increased the credits and opened them to more taxpayers. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act later extended them through 2025.
How much are health insurance premiums?
Monthly premiums have risen since the Affordable Care Act was implemented, just as they have risen under employers’ policies. Experts said the increases represent a general trend and are not unique to the health care law.
Before premium tax credits are factored in, the average 2024 silver ACA policy (the most common plan) costs around $477 per month for a 40-year-old individual and $954 for a couple aged 40.
But more than 14 million Americans (out of about 18 million) with ACA plans receive credits based on their incomes, saving an average of $527 per month, according to KFF, a health policy research organization. People with lower incomes qualify for higher tax credits, and there are ACA plans available that cost patients nothing after the credits are applied.
With more than 3 million people enrolled, Florida leads the nation in the number of people who get their health insurance from the ACA marketplace. Ninety-seven percent of them get tax credits to lower their monthly premiums.
Some ACA health plans are lowering premiums for 2024 but many are increasing them, often by 2% to 10%, according to a Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, with a 6% median increase. The increase follows years of decreases from 2019 through 2021, although 2022 had a slight increase.
Premiums on employer-based plans — where most Americans get their insurance — also haven’t declined. KFF’s Employer Health Benefits Survey for 2023 shows the average annual premium for these plans increased 7% in 2023.
Health policy experts told us that although premiums are high, they were high before the ACA existed, and have continued a long-standing trend of health care costs rising faster than inflation.
“The ACA didn’t stop that general trend but it’s not true to say categorically that the ACA is causing health care costs to go up” Corlette said. “There’s all sorts of systemic reasons that play into that.”
Both Corlette and Sara Rosenbaum, professor emerita of health law and policy at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, said the ACA didn’t aim to lower premiums or regulate prices.
“It’s definitely the case that the premiums are not lower,” Rosenbaum said. “But that is not, in fact, what the architects of the ACA promised at all.”
Premiums are generally driven by the prices that drugmakers and companies charge for their services and how frequently people use certain health services, such as going to the hospital.
Whether and when premiums rise or fall also varies by region and insurer.
Other health care costs are affecting Americans
Besides premiums, Americans also pay out of pocket for deductibles and copayments — all of which have also risen since 2010. And some of these costs are even more cost prohibitive.
The Commonwealth Fund, a health care research organization, found in a 2023 survey that Americans overall, regardless of insurance type, report that their health care coverage does not adequately cover what they need, leading them to delay or forgo care, incur significant medical debt and experience worsening health.
Many insured adults said they or family members had delayed or skipped needed health care or prescription drugs because they couldn’t afford it.
“We should not minimize the fact that health care coverage is hugely expensive and less and less affordable for the average American family,” Corlette said. “That is less about the ACA and more about the broader system, issues in hospital expenses and drug costs. I think the next step is how do we get our health care costs under control, which was not the core purpose of the ACA.”
What Republicans such as Trump or DeSantis might try to do with the ACA remains to be seen. A repeal of the law could have far-reaching effects.
“About 55 million Americans would suddenly be uninsured and insurance companies would once again be allowed to deny health insurance, or charge substantially higher premiums, to anyone with a pre-existing condition,” said Gerald Kominski, professor emeritus of health policy and management and senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “This may be the world ideologues want us to live in, but it would be a public health disaster.”
The ACA includes protections for Americans who have health insurance through their jobs, too, including: allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26; requiring equitably priced coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions; providing for preventive care with no out-of-pocket cost; and banning annual and lifetime insurance coverage limits.
All of that, experts said, could be at stake if the law were repealed.
The Democratic primary field to challenge U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in 2024 grew to four when state Rep. Katrina Shankland joined in October.
Shankland, who represents Stevens Point and has served in the Wisconsin Assembly since 2012, faces three other Democratic competitors for the 3rd Congressional District in the western part of the state.
Those include La Crosse County Board Chair Tara Johnson, who has picked up endorsements from prominent Democrats, including the outgoing party leader in the Senate.
Others vying in the primary include Eau Claire small-business owner Rebecca Cooke, who lost last year’s primary, and Aaron Nytes, a Harvard Law School student.
Shankland has already highlighted her experience as the only state lawmaker in the field, including in a post on her campaign’s account on X, formerly Twitter.
“I have been a state legislator for 11 years, passing over 170 bills into law and delivering for Wisconsin families — I get things done,” the Nov. 15 post read.
Her claim caught our attention, as Shankland is likely to continue promoting her record in the statehouse as she campaigns for higher office.
And, it seemed like a high number for a Democrat who has served in a Republican-controlled Legislature.
Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Memo shows Shankland’s name has been on 179 bills
When PolitiFact Wisconsin reached out to Shankland’s campaign for backup, consultant Melissa Baldauff said Shankland’s legislative office had a memo showing the bills.
She also clarified that the number referred to bills that Shankland has authored or co-sponsored that were signed into law, rather than bills she’s voted for as a lawmaker.
Shankland’s chief of staff, Jacob Burbach, provided the memo from the Legislative Reference Bureau that shows the bills her name is on that were enacted by the governor.
The bureau is a nonpartisan agency that provides research to lawmakers and their staff.
Burbach first shared a memo prepared by an LRB analyst that found that 173 of the 1,928 bills she authored or co-sponsored were signed into law, as of Sept. 14.
Two updated memos prepared by LRB brought the number up to 174 out of 2,091 as of Dec. 5, then 179 out of 2,107 as of Dec. 7.
So initially, that math appears to add up.
Some bills are measures she’s co-authored or co-sponsored
But in the legislative process, authoring bills is different than co-authoring or co-sponsoring them, which signals a different level of involvement. Legislators who introduce bills are known as authors.
If lawmakers want to sign onto a bill to show their support, they are known as co-authors if they’re in the same chamber, or co-sponsors if they’re in the other chamber, according to the Legislature’s glossary.
Out of the 179 measures cited by Shankland, LRB found 104 bills that she authored. That number could also include some co-authored bills, based on LRB’s classification.
So far, in the 2023-24 session, 15 bills Shankland has authored or co-sponsored have been enacted. She was listed as introducing seven of those, including new loan programs for affordable housing.
Among the bills she co-sponsored include a measure that expanded how schools and businesses can deliver epinephrine to people having allergic emergencies.
Baldauff noted that co-sponsors still play a role in shepherding legislation through, such as getting stakeholders or other lawmakers on board.
And sometimes legislators who start drafting measures don’t ultimately get their names put first on a bill, an indicator the LRB tracks. That was the case with a first responder protection bill Shankland started.
Although those examples provide context for the tally, authoring a bill usually signals more involvement than co-authoring or co-sponsoring the legislation.
Our ruling
Democratic Rep. Katrina Shankland, who is running for Congress, said she has been “a state legislator for 11 years, passing over 170 bills into law and delivering for Wisconsin families.”
Although the nonpartisan agency’s research does show Shankland has been involved with 179 bills that have been put into law, potential voters may get the impression that she led each of those.
Instead, the memo shows she’s authored 104 of that number. Some in that tally include bills she co-authored, similar to co-sponsoring, though she might have been more involved with some of those proposals.
Our definition of Mostly True is “the statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.”
During a recent town hall, Fox News’ Sean Hannity gave former President Donald Trump the chance to rebut the idea — floated by some Republicans — that if reelected, he would be a dictator.
Instead of a straightforward denial, Trump said he would be a dictator only on “Day 1” of his tenure.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who also is seeking the GOP nomination, has accused Trump of wanting to rule as a dictator. And former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican and frequent Trump critic, told CBS during a Dec. 1 interview that Trump “told us what he will do. It’s very easy to see the steps that he will take. … One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.”
Trump discussed the accusations in a Dec. 5 Iowa town hall with Hannity. Here, we look at the former president and current GOP front-runner’s remarks in context.
During the town hall, Hannity tried twice to ask Trump if he would act as a dictator.
First, Hannity said that the media wants to call Trump a dictator, noting that Trump has used the words, “I am your retribution.” Then Hannity asked: “To be clear, do you in any way, have any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?”
Trump did not directly answer, and instead brought up the four indictments against him, which he called “nonsense” and “made-up charges.”
Later, Hannity raised the topic again:
Hannity: “I want to go back to this one issue though because the media has been focused on this and attacking you. Under no circumstances you’re promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?”
Trump: “Except for Day 1.”
Hannity: “Except for?”
Trump: (pointing to Hannity) “Look, he’s going crazy. Except for Day 1.”
Hannity: “Meaning?”
Trump: “I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.”
Hannity: “That’s not retribution.”
Trump, referring to Hannity: “We love this guy. He says, ‘You are not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, other than Day 1.’ We are closing the border and we are drilling, drilling, drilling. After that I am not a dictator, OK?”
Hannity: “That sounds to me like you’re going back to the policies when you were president.”
The media has documented multiple examples of Trump’s plans for a second presidency and comments that sound authoritarian.
At a New Hampshire campaign event, he vowed to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” We have debunked the notion that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged.
Trump has made several promises to fire local prosecutors; investigate Comcast, NBC and MSNBC for treason and remove them from the airwaves; and terminate the U.S. Constitution.
And in a Truth Social post, Trump implied that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley should be executed for treason. Trump criticized Milley, a U.S. Army general, for calling his Chinese counterpart to reassure him after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. Trump wrote on the social media platform that it was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed research to this report.
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Cuatro de los cinco candidatos republicanos a la nominación presidencial de 2024 se enfrentaron en el cuarto debate de las primarias.
El exgobernador de Nueva Jersey Chris Christie, el gobernador de Florida Ron DeSantis, la exgobernadora de Carolina del Sur Nikki Haley y el empresario Vivek Ramaswamy asistieron el debate el 6 de diciembre en Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Donald Trump, quien típicamente lidera las encuestas como el candidato republicano favorito, no asistió.
A continuación, comprobamos las afirmaciones de los candidatos.
DeSantis: Nikki Haley “se opone a ese proyecto de ley [que prohibía las cirugías de afirmación de género para menores]. Ella cree que está bien y que la ley no debería involucrarse en ello”.
En una entrevista con “CBS Mornings” en junio, Haley dijo que al determinar qué atención debe estar disponible para los jóvenes transgénero, la “ley debe mantenerse al margen y creo que los padres deben encargarse de ello”. Haley añadió que si una persona quiere hacer un cambio más permanente, puede hacerlo al cumplir 18 años.
En mayo, Haley dijo a ABC News que un menor no debería someterse a un “procedimiento de cambio de género” y se opuso a que los “dólares de los contribuyentes” lo financiaran.
Ramaswamy: “El 6 de enero ahora sí parece que fue un trabajo interno”.
Numerosas investigaciones han encontrado que el ataque en el Capitolio de Estados Unidos fue orquestado y llevado a cabo por personas que apoyaron la presidencia de Donald Trump y que creyeron que las elecciones de 2020 fueron “robadas”.
Los documentos judiciales muestran que su objetivo era impedir que el Congreso aceptara los resultados de las elecciones que mostraban que Trump había perdido.
DeSantis: “El 100% de las cosas que prometí como gobernador, las cumplí”.
Esto es incorrecto. DeSantis ha cumplido algunas de sus promesas de campaña, pero no todas, tal como muestra el rastreador de promesas DeSant-O-Meter de PolitiFact.
De las 15 promesas que rastreamos, DeSantis mantuvo cinco y se comprometió en seis. Hemos calificado una como estancada y otra como en proceso. Sus dos promesas restantes — bajar la tasa del impuesto de sociedades en Florida y reducir el impuesto estatal de servicios de comunicación — fueron calificadas como Promesa Rota.
Ramaswamy: “Esta gente quiere enviar a tus hijos e hijas a morir a Ucrania. Llevan un año defendiéndolo”.
Los otros candidatos no han dicho esto.
Ron DeSantis y Nikki Haley se oponen a mandar tropas estadounidenses a Ucrania. Aunque Christie ha apoyado firmemente a Ucrania en su lucha contra Rusia, no encontramos ningún discurso o declaraciones públicas en las que respaldara el envío de tropas estadounidenses a Ucrania.
Haley: “Todos los 7 u 8 millones de ilegales que han llegado durante el mandato de Biden tienen que volver”.
Esto es una interpretación errónea de los datos.
De febrero de 2021 a octubre de 2023, las autoridades de inmigración se encontraron con migrantes casi 8 millones de veces en y entre los puertos de entrada. Pero eso no significa que 8 millones de personas hayan entrado en el país.
Si una persona intenta cruzar la frontera tres veces, por ejemplo, eso se registraría como tres encuentros (aún si es la misma persona), según la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza de Estados Unidos.
Los datos tampoco nos dicen cuántas personas han entrado y permanecido en EE.UU. bajo el mandato del presidente Joe Biden. Además, millones de encuentros acabaron en expulsiones.
La moderadora Megyn Kelly, a Christie: “Cuando usted era gobernador en 2017, firmó una ley que exigía nuevas directrices para las escuelas que trataban con estudiantes transgénero. Esas directrices exigían que las escuelas aceptaran la identidad de género preferida de un niño, incluso si los padres del menor se oponían. Y decía que no hay obligación de que las escuelas notifiquen a los padres si su hijo o hija cambia su identidad de género, lo que permite que este grave problema siga siendo un secreto entre la escuela y el niño”.
Christie: “Eso simplemente no es cierto. Esa ley entró en vigor en 2018 y se reguló en 2018 después de que yo dejara el cargo”.
Esto necesita una aclaración.
En julio de 2017, Christie firmó un proyecto de ley aprobado por la Legislatura de Nueva Jersey, liderada por los demócratas, que exigía al Departamento de Educación del estado que emitiera directrices para las escuelas públicas sobre las políticas relativas a los estudiantes transgénero.
La Legislatura pedía directrices sobre varios temas, como el uso de baños y vestuarios, y si se debía obligar a los estudiantes a utilizar instalaciones en conflicto con su identidad de género. También exigía orientación sobre la privacidad, “incluida la garantía de que el personal escolar no divulgue información que pueda revelar la condición transgénero de un alumno”. No mencionaba específicamente la notificación a los padres.
Las directrices del departamento llegaron en 2018, durante la administración del gobernador demócrata Phil Murphy, cuando Christie ya no era gobernador.
Esa guía dijo que un distrito escolar debería aceptar la identidad de género declarada de un estudiante y que “no se requiere el consentimiento de los padres.”
“No existe un deber afirmativo para ningún personal del distrito escolar de notificar a los padres o tutores de un estudiante sobre la identidad o expresión de género del estudiante”, decía.
Este artículo originalmente fue escrito en inglés y traducido por Marta Campabadal Graus.
Reportajes de Grace Abels, Marta Campabadal Graus, Jeff Cercone, Madison Czopek, Louis Jacobson, Samantha Putterman, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Amy Sherman, Sara Swann y Loreben Tuquero.
A video shared on Facebook claims that the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, a document that set out rules for administering military justice, has been amended to allow civilians to be charged under military law.
Riccardo Bosi, a former Australian special forces lieutenant and now leader of the far-right Australia One Party, made the video, which opens with him showing a picture of what looks like the cover of the “Manual for Courts-Martial United States (2023 edition).”
“They can charge under this new courts-martial rule, everybody that needs to be charged…and it also includes civilians,” Bosi said in the video.”Civilians could previously say: ‘Well you can’t do this, this is illegal’… Well now they can.”
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.)
Courts-martial is the judicial system for adjudicating offenses committed by military personnel.
But the 2023 manual for courts-martial has not been recently amended to include civilians, nor does it expand broadly military justice’s reach. The manual is assembled by the executive branch and sets out how the Uniform Code for Military Justice, a law passed by Congress, is to be applied. Congress, the arm of the U.S. government that makes and amends laws, has not changed the code since 2007.
“The manual is inferior to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a statute and the statute does not permit (ordinary) civilians to be tried by courts-martial,” said Brenner Fissell, a Villanova University law professor with expertise in military justice. “It cannot contradict the code, it just interprets it and fleshes it out.”
Some civilians are already subject to courts-martial but in very limited circumstances. The Uniform Code of Military Justice specifies in U.S. Code Title 10 the categories of people who are subject to military law.
Crucially, one category is described as “in time of declared war or a contingency operation, persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field.” That means civilian contractors working with a branch of service during this specified period can be charged. For example, in 2008, a U.S. military court convicted a Canadian-Iraqi civilian contractor who was working as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq when he stabbed another contractor.
We rate the claim that the U.S. manual for courts-martial has been recently amended to include civilians False.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy portrayed himself as a truth-teller during the fourth presidential primary debate in Alabama.
“If you want somebody who’s gonna speak truth to power, then vote for somebody who’s gonna speak the truth to you,” he said Dec. 6 in Tuscaloosa. But he followed that statement with false claims and a conspiracy theory.
“Why am I the only person on the stage at least who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job,” he said. Ramaswamy then listed a heap of questionable, misleading and wrong comments, including that the 2020 election was “stolen by Big Tech.”
The Jan. 6 claim is extraordinarily egregious.
Numerous investigations have found the U.S. Capitol attack was orchestrated and executed by people who supported Donald Trump’s presidency and believed or pushed false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Although evidence shows FBI informants were at the Capitol that day, none shows the FBI or its informants instigated the violence that followed.
Evidence from court documents shows, person by person, who ransacked the Capitol and fought with police officers. The rioters’ goal was preventing Congress from accepting the results of the election showing that Trump had lost. Officials have charged more than 1,200 defendants, more than two-thirds of whom have pleaded guilty or been found guilty at trial so far.
In 17 key findings, the House committee investigating the attack determined Trump himself disseminated false allegations about the election and summoned supporters to the Capitol and directed them to “take back” the country.
We contacted a Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson on debate night and did not immediately hear back.
The public record for hundreds of defendants shows that many considered their actions patriotic; they believed they were on the front lines of a revolution or civil war. Rioters scaled walls, broke windows, forced their way into the building and clashed with police.
Among people sentenced for seditious conspiracy are multiple members of far-right groups including the Proud Boys extremist group and militia groups including the Oath Keepers.
How we’ve fact-checked similar claims
Similar claims about Jan. 6 being a “false flag” took off in the months after the insurrection following a blog post by Revolver News, a right-leaning website run by a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after appearing on a discussion panel with a white nationalist.
The website’s unproven theory focused on charging documents and that the FBI had used informants and undercover operatives to foil an extremist plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
A cursory look showed the theory was rife with holes, inaccuracies and circumstantial speculation, which was amplified by multiple pundits and politicians. PolitiFact rated the claim that federal agents directly incited people as False.
In late November, PolitiFact examined a claim by U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., about “ghost buses” carrying undercover FBI agents to the Capitol that day. We rated the unsupported claim False, with experts telling us they were unfamiliar with the term “ghost bus” and that there are reasons the FBI would not bus a group of informants to an event.
PolitiFact named claims that downplay the violence about the Jan. 6 attack its 2021 Lie of the Year.
Our ruling
Ramaswamy said, “Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job.”
Numerous investigations into what happened Jan. 6, 2021, including by a congressional committee, have found the U.S. Capitol attack was orchestrated and executed by people who supported Donald Trump’s presidency and believed or pushed false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Extensive court records involving more than 1,200 defendants also back this up.
The onus is on Ramaswamy to back up his statement with evidence, and he has failed to do that.
We rate this statement Pants on Fire!
RELATED: Live fact-checking the fourth 2024 Republican presidential primary debate
RELATED: Why a Republican’s claim about ‘ghost buses’ of FBI informants on Jan. 6 is dubious
RELATED: All of our fact-checks about Jan. 6
RELATED: The 2021 Lie of the Year: Lies about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and its significance
In the last Republican presidential primary debate of 2023, the candidates argued over their positions on gender-affirmation surgery, legal immigration and more:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cherry-picked comments from Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to claim she did not oppose “gender mutilation for minors.” Haley has said children should not be allowed to undergo a “gender-changing procedure” until they are at least 18 years old.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said it was “false” for Haley to claim that she “never said government should … require” social media users to disclose their names. Haley did initially suggest that all social media users should be required to use their names online, before later clarifying that only Americans should be allowed to post anonymously.
Haley wrongly accused DeSantis of supporting a Florida bill that would have required political bloggers to register with the state. He actually said at the time that he didn’t support the bill, and it later died in committee.
DeSantis claimed Haley said “there should be no limits on legal immigration.” She didn’t. She said it should be based on “merit,” not “a quota.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie disputed that he backed guidelines supporting transgender students against the wishes of parents. Christie signed a law providing wide-ranging protections for transgender students, but specific guidelines regarding parental consent were issued after he left office.
Ramaswamy wrongly said that Haley was “bankrupt when you left the U.N.”
DeSantis falsely claimed that “there was no data to support” the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for 6-month-old babies. Both Pfizer and Moderna tested lower-dose versions of their vaccines for young children in clinical trials.
Ramaswamy embraced the baseless conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was an “inside job.”
Ramaswamy repeated claims he has made before about climate change and transgender people.
The Dec. 6 debate was hosted by NewsNation and held in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Analysis
DeSantis Distorts Haley’s Position on Gender-Affirmation Surgery for Minors
DeSantis claimed that Haley opposed a bill he signed prohibiting gender-affirming surgeries — or as he put it, “gender mutilation” — for minors. That’s a distortion of Haley’s position. Haley has said any “permanent change” for transgender people should only be allowed after a child has turned 18.
DeSantis raised the issue twice in the debate, both times leading to fiery exchanges in which Haley said DeSantis was distorting her position and DeSantis insisted he had video evidence to back up his claim.
DeSantis: I did a bill in Florida to stop the gender mutilation of minors. It’s child abuse and it’s wrong. She opposes that bill. She thinks it’s fine and the law shouldn’t get involved with it. If you’re not willing to stand up for the kids, if you’re not willing to stand up and say that it is wrong to mutilate these kids, then you’re not going to fight for the people back home. I will fight for you and I will win for you. …
She didn’t respond to the criticism. It wasn’t about the parents rights education bill. It was about prohibiting sex change operations on minors. They do puberty blockers, these are irreversible. … That is what Nikki Haley opposed. She said the law shouldn’t get involved in that. And I just asked you if you’re somebody that’s going to be the president of the United States and you can’t stand up against child abuse, how are you going to be able to stand up for anything?
Haley: I never said that.
DeSantis: That is the truth.
Haley: I never said that.
DeSantis: We have it on video.
Haley: I said that if you have to be 18 to get a tattoo, you should have to be 18 to have anything done to change your gender.
Later in the debate, DeSantis again raised the issue.
DeSantis: As a parent you do not have the right to abuse your kids. … This is mutilating these minors, these are irreversible procedures. … I signed legislation in Florida banning the mutilation of minors because it is wrong. We cannot allow this to happen in this country. … Nikki disagrees with me. She opposes the bill that we did to ban that, she said the law shouldn’t get involved with it.
Haley: I did not.
In May, DeSantis signed into law a bill that prohibited “sex-reassignment prescriptions and procedures for patients younger than 18 years of age.” The ban includes both surgeries as well as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
The video evidence DeSantis cites to back up his claim about Haley is an interview she did with CBS News on June 5, but he’s cherry-picking her response. In the interview, CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil asked Haley “what care should be on the table when a 12-year-old child in this country assigned female at birth says, ‘actually I feel more comfortable living as a boy.’ What should the law allow the response to be?”
“I think the law should stay out of it and I think parents should handle it. This is a job for the parents to handle,” Haley said. “And then when that child becomes 18, if they want to make more of a permanent change, they can do that. But I think up until then, we see with our teenage kids, they go through a lot during puberty. They go through a lot of confusion, they go through a lot of anxiety, they go through a lot of pressures. We should support them the whole way through, but we don’t need to go and enforce something in schools. We don’t need schools sitting there hiding from the parents what gender pronoun they are using. We don’t need to have those conversations in schools. Those are conversations that should be had at home.”
A super PAC backing DeSantis also cited to us comments Haley made in a June 4 CNN town hall when speaking on the transgender issue. “I want everybody to live the way they want to live,” Haley said. “Let’s get them the help, the therapy, whatever they need so that they can feel better and not be suicidal.”
In neither case did Haley advocate gender-affirming procedures for minors.
In fact, in a May 3 interview with ABC News, Haley specifically said, “You shouldn’t allow a child to have a gender-changing procedure until the age of 18 when they are an adult.”
Haley on IDing Social Media Users
Moderator Megyn Kelly asked Haley to “speak to the requirement that you said that every anonymous internet user needs to out themselves.”
Haley said her original comments, made in a Nov. 14 “Voters’ Voices” segment on Fox News, were that “social media companies need to show us their algorithms.” She added, “I also said there are millions of bots on social media right now. They’re foreign, they’re Chinese, they’re Iranian. I will always fight for freedom of speech for Americans. We do not need freedom of speech for Russians and Iranians and Hamas.”
When Ramaswamy accused Haley of misrepresenting her original remarks, Haley went on to say that she believes social media companies have to “fight back on all of these bots that are happening” and that social media “would be more civil” if people had to include their names alongside their online comments.
“But having said that, I never said government should go and require anyone’s name,” she said.
Ramaswamy called her response “false,” and DeSantis also jumped in to say that Haley had said one of her first acts as president would be to ask for people’s names on social media.
In that Fox News interview, when responding to an audience question, Haley did suggest that all social media users should be required to identify themselves. (Her response starts at about 5:07 in the video.)
Haley, Nov. 14: When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts — social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms. Let us see why they are pushing what they are pushing.
The second thing is, every person on social media should be verified by their name. That’s, first of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say and it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility, when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it. It’s going to help our kids and it’s going to help our country.
After there was a backlash to her comments, including from some of her GOP primary opponents, Haley, in a Nov. 15 CNBC interview, added a caveat about allowing anonymous online posting by Americans only.
“I want freedom of speech for Americans,” she said. “I don’t want freedom of speech for Russia and Hamas. And that is what is happening right now. And so the way you fix that is, we need our social media companies to verify everybody so that we can get all of those bots out.”
When CNBC’s Joe Kernen asked if Haley was “really saying that people can’t tweet anonymously,” she said she had no issue with Americans doing so.
“I mean, do I think life would be more civil if we were able to do that? Yes. … You should stand by what you say,” she said. “But … I don’t mind anonymous American people having free speech. What I don’t like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech.”
That’s different from what she first said on Fox News.
Haley Wrong on DeSantis Support for Blogger Registration
Haley claimed that DeSantis had said “bloggers should have to register with the state if they’re going to talk about or write about elected officials.”
“Check your newspaper, it was absolutely there,” she said, suggesting that there was evidence of DeSantis’ support for the measure.
But there isn’t.
Here’s what happened:
Jason Brodeur, a Republican in the Florida Senate, introduced a bill in late February that would have required “bloggers” to register with the government if they were being paid to write about elected officials.
“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office,” the bill said.
The bill didn’t get much traction and died in committee in May.
But there was a brief flap over the bill in March, and some news outlets ran articles with pictures of DeSantis and references to him in their headlines. The New Republic, for example, published a story with the headline: “Florida GOP Bill Would Require Bloggers Who Write About Ron DeSantis to Register With the State.”
We couldn’t find any news stories reporting that DeSantis had supported the bill, but articles with a photo of the governor that mention him in the headline might give the impression that he was supportive.
Actually, though, a spokesman for DeSantis told the Tampa Bay Times on March 3 that the governor would “consider the merits of a bill in final form if and when it passes the Legislature.”
Then, at a press conference on March 7, DeSantis distanced himself further, saying, “Every person in the legislature can file bills, right? I see these people filing bills, and then there’s articles with my face on the article saying that … bloggers are going to have to register for the state and it’s, like, attributing it to me. And I’m like, OK, that’s not anything that I’ve ever supported, I don’t support.”
“I don’t control every single bill that’s been filed,” DeSantis said.
Fact-checkers at the Associated Press and Reuters addressed this issue at the time.
So, Haley was wrong about DeSantis’ support for the measure, and there have been news articles about the issue since March.
DeSantis Distorts Haley Comment on Immigration
In yet another disagreement on Haley’s policy positions, DeSantis claimed she had said “there should be no limits on legal immigration and that corporate CEOs should set the policy.” Haley interjected, “That’s not true.”
DeSantis, who has made this claim before, is distorting Haley’s comment. She didn’t say there should be “no limits”; she said legal immigration should be based on “merit” rather than a quota.
At a Nov. 2 town hall in New Hampshire, Haley said: “So for too long, Republican and Democrat presidents dealt with immigration based on a quota. We’ll take X number this year. We’ll take X number next year. The debate is on the number. It’s the wrong way to look at it. We need to do it based on merit. We need to go to our industries and say: ‘What do you need that you don’t have?’ So think agriculture, think tourism, think tech. We want the talent that’s going to make us better. Then you bring people in that can fill those needs.”
The U.S. has an “alphabet soup of visa categories” for legal immigration, the Migration Policy Institute explains. “Family relationships, ties to employers, or the need for humanitarian protection are the top channels for immigrants seeking temporary or permanent U.S. residence. And to a lesser extent, people can come if they possess sought-after skills or are selected in the green-card lottery. Visa categories have varying requirements, are subject to different numerical caps, and offer differing rights and responsibilities,” MPI says.
Christie Spins His Support of Transgender Students
Moderator Kelly asked Christie about his support for transgender students against the wishes of parents while he was governor of New Jersey. Christie did sign a bill in 2017 providing protections for transgender students. But the specific guidelines were not issued until after he left office.
“When you were governor in 2017, you signed a law that required new guidelines for schools dealing with transgender students. Those guidelines required schools to accept a child’s preferred gender identity, even if the minor’s parents objected,” Kelly said. “And it said there is no duty for schools to notify parents if their son or daughter changes their gender identity, allowing the serious issue to remain a secret between the school and the child. How is any of that pro-parental rights?”
Christie responded, “That’s simply not true. That law was put into effect in 2018 and regulated in 2018, after I was out of office. … We did not issue those guidelines and you’re wrong about that, simply wrong.” He added, “I stood up every single time for parents to be able to make the decisions for their minor children.”
Christie, who served as New Jersey governor from 2010 to 2018, signed a law in July 2017 that required the state’s education commissioner to develop guidelines to provide protections for transgender students. But the guidelines themselves were issued in late September 2018, after Christie had left office.
The law, NJ S3067, said the guidelines would “provide direction for schools in addressing common issues concerning the needs of transgender students, and to assist schools in establishing policies and procedures that ensure a supportive and nondiscriminatory environment for transgender students.”
The law said the guidelines should address “confidentiality and privacy concerns, including ensuring that school personnel do not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender status except as allowed by law, and advising schools to work with the student to create an appropriate confidentiality plan regarding the student’s transgender or transitioning status.”
At the time, Christian Fuscarino, executive director of Garden State Equality, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said the organization was “pleasantly surprised” by Christie’s signing of the transgender student bill. Christie had previously said policies concerning transgender students should be decided by school districts, and he didn’t support statewide “edicts” on the matter, Politico reported.
The guidelines issued in September 2018 said, “A school district shall accept a student’s asserted gender identity; parental consent is not required.”
Ramaswamy’s ‘Reasonable Peace Deal’ for Ukraine
Christie derided Ramaswamy’s plan for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying it would concede to Russia “all the land they’ve already stolen” and keep Ukraine from joining NATO (although Christie misspoke, saying the plan would keep Ukraine out of Russia). In exchange, Christie said, Ramaswamy would trust Russian President Vladimir Putin “not to have a relationship with China.”
Ramaswamy shot back, “That’s not my deal.”
But it seems to be a mostly accurate synopsis of what Ramaswamy had proposed in June and refers to as the “reasonable peace deal.”
Ramaswamy appeared on the June 1 episode of Kim Iversen’s podcast, which has a history of promoting conspiracy theories. There, he gave a preview of his proposed peace deal, which he then rolled out during a speech in New Hampshire.
“Here’s the deal that we can do with Putin,” Ramaswamy said in his speech. “We will stop providing aid to Ukraine; we will freeze the current lines of control, that means he gets the Donbas region, it means he gets the Crimea; and we will make a permanent commitment to tell Ukraine that you will not be admitted to NATO — not now, not ever. Those are big concessions to Russia. But we have a big ask in return — that you will exit your treaty with China.”
The treaty to which he is referring is the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, which was first signed in 2001 and extended in 2021.
According to a paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the agreement followed a border dispute and “set forth a bilateral relationship based on ‘mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ noninterference in internal affairs, equality, and mutual benefit.”
So, it’s true that Ramaswamy had proposed a plan to end the war in Ukraine by allowing Russia to keep all the land it has taken and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. Christie was less clear — but broadly accurate — when he described what Russia would have to give up in exchange, although Christie clearly would not trust Putin to end Russia’s relationship with China.
Haley Wasn’t ‘Bankrupt’ When Leaving the U.N.
While making an allegation that Haley is “corrupt,” Ramaswamy wrongly said that Haley was “bankrupt when you left the U.N.”
Ramaswamy: Nikki, you were bankrupt when you left the U.N. After you left the U.N. you became a military contractor. You actually started joining service on the board of Boeing whose back you scratched for a very long time and then gave foreign multinational speeches like Hillary Clinton is and now you’re a multimillionaire. That math does not add up. It adds up to the fact that you are corrupt.
Like a lot of politicians, Haley went on the lecture circuit after leaving office, and joined the board of a major corporation, in her case the Boeing Company. But she said she and her husband did not go bankrupt.
“First of all, we were not bankrupt when I left the U.N.,” Haley said. “We’re people of service. My husband is in the military, and I served our country as U.N. ambassador and governor. It may be bankrupt to him, but it certainly wasn’t bankrupt to us.”
When Haley left the U.N. after just two years, there was some speculation that she did so for financial reasons. Money Magazine wrote that her 2018 financial disclosure form, which she filed in May 2018 and covered the preceding calendar year, showed she and her husband had a mortgage, credit card debt and a line of credit that put her total indebtedness in the range of $525,000 to $1.1 million.
At the time, Haley’s spokesperson released a statement that said: “Their current debt level is well below $500,000, and it had no bearing whatsoever on Ambassador Haley’s decision to leave her position.”
So, Haley left office with some level of debt, but we could find no evidence that she and her husband filed for bankruptcy.
DeSantis on COVID-19 Vaccines for Young Kids
DeSantis, who has argued against COVID-19 vaccination in Florida, particularly for younger people, falsely claimed that there was no basis for the FDA to authorize the shots for babies.
“You also have the FDA approving an mNRA shot for 6-months-old babies,” he said, incorrectly referring to the mRNA, or messenger RNA, design of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. “There was no data to support that. They’re doing it because Big Pharma will make money.”
The FDA first authorized COVID-19 vaccines on an emergency basis for children down to 6 months on June 17, 2022, based on the results of clinical trials conducted in young children. As is standard for vaccines, the testing in young children followed testing in adults and older children. This step-down approach helps ensure any safety issues are caught first in adults.
For safety, the clinical trials for the Moderna vaccine included about 4,800 vaccinated kids, while the Pfizer trial included about 3,000 vaccinated kids. Both companies tested their vaccines in two age subgroups, one of which was a group for ages 6 months to 2 years.
The primary way the vaccines were evaluated for effectiveness was through a so-called immunobridging approach, in which young children were tested for their antibody responses to the vaccines. If their antibody levels were similar to those of young adults who had received the adult dose, and a similar proportion of children mounted an antibody response, then it is inferred that the vaccine works in younger children. Both vaccines met the criteria for effectiveness using this method.
The companies also reported traditional efficacy numbers for preventing symptomatic disease from their randomized controlled trials.
Reviewing all the information, the FDA concluded that the benefits of the vaccines for young children outweighed the risks. Independent panels of experts advising the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed. Subsequent safety monitoring has continued to demonstrate that the vaccines are safe.
Ramaswamy Wrong on Jan. 6
In an attack on federal workers, which he collectively called the “deep state,” Ramaswamy embraced the conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was an “inside job.”
“[I]f you want somebody who’s going to speak truth to power, then vote for somebody who’s going to speak the truth to you,” he said. “Why am I the only person on the stage, at least, who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job?”
Some conservatives have tried to blame undercover FBI agents for allegedly provoking the pro-Donald Trump crowd to attack the Capitol that day. But there is no evidence of such a government conspiracy, and, as we’ve written, FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, unequivocally denied the claim.
“To the extent that there’s a suggestion, for example, that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated Jan. 6 — that’s categorically false,” Wray said at a congressional hearing in November 2022.
The simple fact is that a throng of Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol convinced by Trump that the election had been stolen. Trump made false claims about rampant voter fraud months before the Nov. 3, 2020, election, and long after it — including in his falsehood-filled speech at a rally on the day of the riot. (For a timeline, see our article “Road to a Second Impeachment.”)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for provoking what he called an act of “terrorism” to prevent Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, from certifying Joe Biden as winner of the 2020 election.
“They did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election,” McConnell said in a floor speech on Feb. 13, 2021. “Former President Trump’s actions [that] preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”
Repeats
As he did in the second debate — and using a term that some advocacy groups say should be avoided — Ramaswamy incorrectly said that “transgenderism is a mental health disorder.” Being transgender is not a mental illness, but some trans people experience gender dysphoria, which is a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It refers to intense distress over the mismatch between a person’s sex and their gender identity. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the diagnosis requires “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”
In once again calling “the climate change agenda … a hoax,” Ramaswamy also repeated two of his favorite cherry-picked climate stats — that there’s been a “98% reduction in the climate disaster-related deaths in the last century,” and that eight times as many people currently die of cold temperatures than warm ones. Both statements are true, at least according to some data, but they don’t mean that continuing to warm the planet by burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases is a good idea. Climate change is expected to have numerous negative impacts, including on human health.
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