Since U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., won the Oct. 25 election for House speaker, the public has gotten a crash course on the previously low-profile congressman. As details of his political life emerged, a social media influencer claimed in a viral video that he has been affiliated with a hate group.
Johnson previously worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm that played a pivotal role in the case that led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down protected federal access to abortion.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks and labels hate groups, named the alliance a hate group in 2016, the same year Johnson won election to Congress.
“The man who was just elected speaker of the House used to be the spokesperson for a designated hate group,” said Emily Amick in an Oct. 25 video on her Instagram account “Emily In Your Phone,” which offers political commentary and analysis. Amick also heads up For Facts Sake, which says it “builds social media campaigns to drive social change.”
The law center and the alliance have sparred for years about the hate group designation.
The law center’s “hate map” has drawn controversy before, with critics saying the label conflates groups that preach hatred, such as the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, with ones that do not share the law center’s political preferences. For example, the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower immigration levels, disputes its place on the list of 1,225 organizations.
Jeremy Tedesco, Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior vice president of corporate engagement, shared that sentiment.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘hate map’ targets groups with mainstream conservative and religious viewpoints that they disagree with,” he said.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has racked up 15 Supreme Court case victories, including the case that overturned Roe v. Wade and others centered on LGBTQ+ rights, such as a baker who declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding and a website designer who didn’t want to create wedding websites for same-sex marriages.
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists LGBTQ+ rights as a signature issue.
“Extremists like ADF, who use religious rhetoric to demonize LGBTQ+ people and claim faith gives them a right to discriminate against others, do not speak for all religious people — in fact their anti-LGBTQ+ views are out of step with most Americans and most religious Americans, too,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research, reporting and analysis for SPLC’s Intelligence Project.
We reviewed the evidence and found that the Southern Poverty Law Center’s criticism of ADF pulls from examples of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from the past 23 years, with many examples that are more than a decade old.
Here, we take a closer look at the Alliance Defending Freedom, Johnson’s role in the organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” designation and criticism of the label.
What is Alliance Defending Freedom?
From 2002 to 2010, Johnson served as senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.
The alliance calls itself a Christian law firm committed to “protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.”
Alliance Defending Freedom reported $104 million in revenue for the fiscal year that ended in June 2022, a 33% increase from the year before, according to its Internal Revenue Service Form 990 on ProPublica’s database.
Johnson’s history on LGBTQ+ issues
As an attorney for the alliance, Johnson wrote in a 2004 editorial in The Shreveport Times newspaper that “homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle,” CNN reported. He also wrote that the legalization of same-sex marriage could “place our entire democratic system in jeopardy by eroding its foundation,” floating that it would lead to equal protection for pedophiles.
Johnson’s past public statements and actions on LGBTQ+ issues include:
Arguing in defense of Lousiana’s same-sex marriage ban before the state’s Supreme Court in both 2004 and 2014, The New Yorker reported.
Writing in a 2004 article that “homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”
Criticizing a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision on sodomy laws, saying that “states have many legitimate grounds to prescribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse, including concerns for public health… safety, morals and the promotion of unhealthy marriages.”
Introducing in 2022 the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, which would prohibit federal funding for any event, program or literature for kids younger than 10 that involves “any topic involving sexual orientation, gender identity, gender dysphoria.”
Expressing opposition to gender-affirming care for trans youth in a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
ADF did not specifically identify Johnson as a spokesperson for the organization, but his affiliation was listed in many editorials he wrote about LGBTQ+ issues, and he was a public face of the organization who was quoted in news stories.
SPLC cites examples it says show ADF’s anti-LGBTQ+ stance
The Southern Poverty Law Center says Alliance Defending Freedom is an anti-LGBTQ+ organization, citing legal cases, public writings and quotes from the group’s leadership and affiliated people. Several of the examples date back a decade or more.
For example, the law center points to a 2003 amicus brief filed by Alliance Defending Freedom in the Supreme Court’s review of Lawrence v. Texas, which held that Texas’ anti-sodomy law criminalizing same-sex intimate sexual contact was unconstitutional. The brief argued, in part, that same-sex sodomy was a risk to public health.
The Southern Poverty Law Center also reviewed a 2003 book co-authored by then-ADF President Alan Sears, titled “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.” The law center highlights quotes from the book that refer to the “homosexual agenda” and link being gay and engaging in pedophilia. Sears served as president until 2017.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s more recent examples for its hate group designation are legal actions and public statements made by Alliance Defending Freedom and its affiliates to challenge transgender-inclusive policies in schools, bathrooms and sports.
The ADF has rebutted the hate group label, writing lengthy pieces to address specific claims and also criticizing SPLC’s leadership and history. The two groups have engaged in a back and forth involving videos and op-eds.
SPLC’s hate group list has been weaponized, critics say
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s website defines a hate group as “an organization that, based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities, has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics” including race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.
It says an organization “does not need to have engaged in criminal conduct or have followed their speech with actual unlawful action to be labeled a hate group.”
In recent years, the SPLC has been criticized by those who argue that the “hate group” label has become too broad.
William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor and critic of the hate group list, says it has been weaponized against the “conservative movement.”
“If you have a religious Christian group or a religious Jewish group or a religious Muslim group that espouses the tenets of their faith and doesn’t you know, beat somebody up in an alleyway, they go to court to litigate it, I don’t see why that group should be on a hate map,” Jacobson said.
Richard Cohen, former Southern Poverty Law Center president, addressed the inclusion of more traditional advocacy and policy organizations on the hate group list in a 2017 op-ed.
“We think it’s more important to call out hate groups that operate in the mainstream than those that operate at the fringes,” he wrote. Those groups’ proximity to the mainstream, he said, “does not mean they don’t sow the seeds of hate. In fact, it means they have bigger, more powerful megaphones to spread their divisive, anti-democratic message. And that’s all the more reason to call them out.”
Supuestas noticias de último momento se están esparciendo en las redes sociales diciendo que los Estados Unidos ha cancelado un programa de parole humanitario para los venezolanos.
“Noticias de último momento, el gobierno de los Estados Unidos le cancelara el parole a los venezolanos”, dice la publicación en Facebook del 8 de octubre. “También deportaran a todos los que entraron por vía ilegal”.
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).
Publicaciones similares también se hicieron virales en TikTok.
Desde octubre de 2022, más de 73,000 venezolanos han ingresado a Estados Unidos legalmente bajo parole humanitario. Aunque el gobierno está deportando venezolanos, es falso que el parole humanitario fue cancelado.
El video dice que “la mayoría de disturbios en la ciudad de Nueva York han sido generados por los inmigrantes venezolanos.” Como evidencia, muestra un video en el que se encuentra una aglomeración de personas rodeadas por basura en el piso.
Sin embargo, las imágenes no son de inmigrantes venezolanos. El video original es del disturbio provocado el 4 de agosto después de que un influencer prometió regalar consolas de videojuegos.
Agencia de inmigración niega lo que dice el video en Facebook
El “parole humanitario” es un proceso que permite a los nacionales de Cuba, Haití, Nicaragua y Venezuela, a entrar a Estados Unidos y trabajar de manera legal por un periodo de hasta dos años, según el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS, por sus siglas en inglés).
Un portavoz del Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de Estados Unidos (USCIS, por sus siglas en inglés) le dijo a PolitiFact que el parole venezolano sigue vigente.
El formulario para aplicar a este programa sigue disponible para venezolanos en la página web oficial del USCIS.
Ampliación a protecciones del Estatus de Protección Temporal para venezolanos
Además del programa de parole, la administración de Biden amplió otra protección migratoria para los venezolanos que llegaron a Estados Unidos antes del 1 de agosto de 2023.
El 3 de octubre el gobierno redesignó el Estatus de Protección Temporal (TPS, por sus siglas en inglés) para Venezuela. Los venezolanos que tienen TPS pueden aplicar para un permiso de trabajo y no pueden ser deportados. Estas protecciones estarán vigentes hasta septiembre de 2025.
El gobierno de Estados Unidos designa el TPS a países con condiciones que previenen el regreso seguro de sus nacionales; tal como desastres naturales o guerra civil.
Deportación de venezolanos en Estados Unidos
El gobierno de Estados Unidos ha brindado vías legales para los venezolanos que quieran migrar a Estados Unidos y protecciones para aquellos que ya viven en el país. No obstante, los venezolanos que crucen la frontera de manera ilegal pueden ser deportados.
El 5 de octubre DHS anunció que se reanudarán las deportaciones de venezolanos que cruzaron la frontera ilegalmente a Estados Unidos y no establecieron una base legal para permanecer en el país. Desde ese entonces han habido por lo menos dos vuelos de repatriación.
Por años, las tensas relaciones diplomáticas entre Estados Unidos y Venezuela prevenía la deportación de venezolanos que cruzaban la frontera sur estadounidense de manera ilegal. Sin embargo, desde octubre de 2022, México comenzó a aceptar a un número limitado de venezolanos deportados.
No todos los venezolanos que han entrado de manera ilegal al país serán deportados. Algunos pueden permanecer en el país bajo el TPS, otros solicitando asilo también pueden permanecer en Estados Unidos durante ese proceso legal.
Obtener permisos de trabajo puede tomar meses
Bajo la ley de inmigración de Estados Unidos, las personas que llegan al país legal o ilegalmente pueden solicitar asilo si demuestran que corren peligro de persecución en su país de origen. Sin embargo, estas personas deben esperar alrededor de seis meses después de enviar su solicitud de asilo para solicitar una autorización de empleo.
Los inmigrantes venezolanos con TPS o bajo el programa de parole humanitario no tienen que esperar seis meses para solicitar la autorización de empleo. Sin embargo, el tiempo de procesamiento de una aplicación de autorización de empleo puede tomar meses.
Nuestro veredicto
Un video en Facebook dice que “Estados Unidos le cancela el Parole a los venezolanos”.
Un portavoz del USCIS le dijo a PolitiFact que esta declaración no es verídica. Tampoco encontramos informes creíbles sobre la cancelación de dicho programa y el formulario para solicitar el parole humanitario sigue en la página oficial de USCIS.
Calificamos la publicación como Falsa.
Caryn Baird, investigadora de PolitiFact, contribuyó a este reporte.
Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.
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Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.
In the days after a shooter killed at least 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, advocates of stronger gun laws decried the state’s relatively lax gun laws.
Shannon Watts, the founder of the grassroots group Moms Demand Action, made this point in an Oct. 25 post on X.
Watts compared the restrictions on purchasing a popular over-the-counter cold medicine and the type of semiautomatic weapon believed to be used by the suspect.
“It is harder to buy Sudafed than an AR-15 in Maine,” Watts said, repeating the phrase five times in all capital letters.
The comparison of Sudafed laws and gun laws did not start with Watts’ post; it has been circulating in news reports and social media for at least five years. But is it accurate?
The answer hinges on the setting of the gun purchase. Laws that govern sales by federally licensed gun dealers are stronger than laws on sales by unlicensed dealers at gun shows or other private exchanges.
The rules for buying Sudafed
The rules for buying Sudafed are tight because one of its precursor chemicals can be used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, a dangerous drug. The federal Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 imposed new regulations for medications that contain ingredients such as pseudoephedrine, which is used to make Sudafed.
Maine’s restrictions on Sudafed sales hew closely to this federal law. A retailer may not sell more than 3.6 grams of the active ingredient to a customer in 24 hours; that’s the equivalent to about three regular packages. Sales are capped at 9 grams over a 30-day period.
In addition, the customer must present government-issued identification, from which the retailer must copy down the customer’s name and address, the amount of grams purchased, the date and time of the purchase, and the ID number and issuer of the card.
Although the law doesn’t require that this information be shared with other government entities, 38 states, including Maine, use a system called the National Precursor Log Exchange to share this data, tracking 80% of pseudoephedrine transactions nationally, according to the exchange.
The rules for buying a gun
It’s clear, then, that purchasing Sudafed requires more safeguards than purchasing, say, a pack of gum.
But is it more stringent than the process for buying a gun in Maine?
It depends on how the purchase is made.
If a purchase happens from a federally licensed dealer, either at a brick-and-mortar store or at a gun show, the transaction will be more complicated than purchasing Sudafed.
Buying Sudafed and a gun will both require an ID. The information of gun buyers in Maine will be accessible to law enforcement because the state is part of the National Precursor Log Exchange.
Gun purchases from a federally licensed dealer must be reported to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local law enforcement if one person purchases multiple handguns at the same time or within five consecutive business days.
Gun purchases from a federally licensed dealer are easier than buying Sudafed in one way: There are no limits on the numbers of guns that can be purchased at one time, unlike time limits on Sudafed sales.
In other ways, however, buying a gun from a licensed dealer is more complicated than buying Sudafed, said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group.
It requires filling out Form 4473 from the ATF, in which prospective purchasers must attest that they are not prohibited from purchasing guns. Purchasers cannot buy a gun unless they are the intended recipient of the firearm, are not a convicted felon, a fugitive, dishonorably discharged from the U.S. military or are involuntarily committed to a mental health treatment. The completed forms must be kept permanently, including transferring them to the ATF if the seller goes out of business.
Also, the purchaser must pass a screening by the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. About 90% of these checks are instantly approved, and the rest are typically completed within three days.
Although some critics say that the data in the background check system isn’t as complete as it could be, it is still a more stringent process than the one needed to buy Sudafed.
Finally, there are restrictions on who can buy each product.
One is age. Under federal law, you must be 18 to buy a shotgun or a rifle and 21 to buy a handgun. (States can choose to set higher age minimums.) Maine has not set a minimum age for purchasing Sudafed, unlike such states as Alabama, Arkansas and Ohio, which have set the minimum age at 18.
Maine law specifically bars two other categories of potential gun purchasers: people convicted of assault or other violent misdemeanors, and convicted domestic abusers. People in those categories would be able to purchase Sudafed.
Buying from unlicensed gun dealers is easier
Where people who support tougher gun laws have a point are on purchases that do not involve a federally licensed dealer.
Federal law specifically rules out a required license if a person “makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
This can sometimes be a fuzzy distinction, but it means many gun sellers do not need a license. And if they don’t have a license, the laws for federally licensed sellers don’t apply to their sales.
Gun shows can include either licensed dealers or private sellers. The licensed sellers need to run a background check on buyers, while the unlicensed sellers don’t.
In Maine, “individuals who would otherwise be blocked from purchasing a weapon can go to a private seller and purchase a weapon, no questions asked,” said Chris Harris, vice president for communications for Giffords, a group that lobbies for tougher gun laws. “This is the classic ‘gun show loophole’.”
The bottom line, Harris said, is that in Maine, “there is nothing to stop someone from buying a gun without so much as showing an ID, let alone going through a background check. That same person could not find a place to buy Sudafed without showing an ID.”
Our ruling
Watts said, “It is harder to buy Sudafed than an AR-15 in Maine.”
It depends on the context.
In most ways, the process for buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer under federal and Maine law is more stringent than federal and state laws governing the purchase of Sudafed. The gun purchase requires attesting to the buyer’s legal ability to buy a gun on a federal form, as well as passing an instant background check. In addition, many people with criminal convictions cannot buy a gun but can buy Sudafed.
However, if someone chooses to purchase a gun from an unlicensed seller, the process will likely be more stringent for buying Sudafed.
Vaccines contaminated with undisclosed ingredients. Manufacturers facing liability. In an Oct. 21 thread on X, entrepreneur and anti-vaccine activist Steve Kirsch made alarming allegations about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
“You can now sue the mRNA COVID vaccine manufacturers for damages and the FDA is required to take the COVID vaccines off the market,” Kirsch wrote. “Why? Adulteration. The plasmid bioactive contaminant sequences were NOT pointed out to the regulatory authorities. It’s considered adulteration.”
In Kirsch’s fourth X post in the thread, he specifically said, “SV40 contamination” was the basis for his claim. SV40 stands for simian virus 40, a monkey virus found to cause cancerous tumors in lab animals.
Experts say there’s no evidence to support Kirsch’s claim that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are contaminated or contain ingredients that weren’t disclosed to regulators.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not list details on its website about what, if anything, would constitute an adulterated vaccine, but the agency provides some information about other adulterated products. The FDA says cosmetics are adulterated if they contain “any poisonous or deleterious substance” that can make those products “injurious to users.” The FDA also says that “economically motivated adulteration” of food occurs when “someone intentionally leaves out, takes out, or substitutes a valuable ingredient or part of a food.”
We reached out to the FDA for comment, but did not receive a reply.
We asked Kirsch what evidence he had to support his claim, and he responded with several links, including to a nearly two-hour video on Rumble, a website known for spreading misinformation, and another to an X thread. He also sent his Substack article, which claimed that officials admitted “the vaccine is contaminated with SV40.”
Drug manufacturers say that noninfectious parts of the SV40 DNA sequence are used to create COVID-19 vaccines, but it’s routine and not a sign of the virus contaminating the vaccine.
The SV40 virus “is a naturally occurring virus and the virus itself is not included in either starting materials, plasmid DNA, or in the final product of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine,” said Kit Longley, a Pfizer spokesperson. “However, specific, non-infectious parts of the SV40 sequence, which are commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry, are present in starting material used by Pfizer and BioNTech.”
Longley said Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was reviewed by regulatory authorities, including the FDA and the European Medicines Agency, and met safety and quality control requirements. Those authorities also approved the development and manufacturing specifications for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, Longley said, including a method for assessing residual DNA that is outlined by the World Health Organization and the FDA.
Longley said that residual DNA quality standards are applied similarly to other vaccines.
“Small amounts of residual DNA can be found in several approved vaccines, including influenza and hepatitis vaccines, which have been administered globally for more than 30 years,” Longley said.
We also contacted Moderna but did not hear back.
Where do the contamination claims originate?
The claims about “SV40 contamination” are linked to findings from a preprint paper that has not undergone peer review.
An April preprint paper found elements of a DNA sequence known as an “SV40 promoter” — a part of DNA that initiates the process of making an RNA copy of a gene’s DNA sequence — in two expired Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine vials. Kevin McKernan, one of the authors of the paper, told PolitiFact in June that the whole SV40 virus was not found in the vaccines.
Dan Wilson, a senior associate scientist at Janssen — which also developed a COVID-19 vaccine — said that the documents Pfizer submitted to the FDA included “the full sequence of the plasmid.” Wilson hosts “Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson,” a YouTube show that covers science misinformation.
The SV40 promoter wasn’t specifically highlighted in Pfizer’s disclosures to regulators and “did not need to be,” Wilson said, “because it is a nonfunctional part of the manufacturing process and not a bioactive ingredient in the drug product.”
Kirsch later amended his claim that the vaccine manufacturers failed to disclose the inclusion of an SV40 promoter DNA sequence in the vaccine.
“The SV40 promoter is found in all the vials and it was in the gene sequence that was provided to the regulators,” Kirsch wrote Oct. 21 in the thread on X. “The problem was that neither drug company ever pointed it out to the regulators.”
Is it “adulteration”?
“Tiny amounts of ingredients that do not make a difference do not lead to a vaccine being declared adulterated or taken off the market,” said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at University of California Law San Francisco who specializes in vaccine policy and legal issues.
Reiss pointed to examples:
The 2010 discovery of genetic material from a pig virus in a rotavirus vaccine didn’t result in the vaccine being taken off the market; an investigation did not find safety concerns.
In 2011, people expressed concerns that Gardasil, an HPV vaccine, contained DNA fragments. The FDA reported that Gardasil contained some specific DNA fragments that were not contaminants. “The presence of these DNA fragments is expected, is not a risk to vaccine recipients, and is not a safety factor,” the FDA said.
But if a contaminant were found in a vaccine, the FDA would investigate and decide if it is a safety issue, Reiss said.
Our ruling
Kirsch said that “the FDA is required to take the COVID vaccines off the market” because they are “adulterated.”
Experts said there’s no evidence that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines contain previously undisclosed contaminants. Pfizer said noninfectious SV40 sequences were part of the starting material for the Pfizer vaccine, and the FDA and other regulators approved the vaccine manufacturing process.
Experts also said the FDA would not be required to take vaccines off the market even if something undisclosed had been detected. The agency typically would investigate the risks before making a determination.
We rate this claim False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
A recent video circulating social media suggests that McDonald’s has changed the color scheme of its food wrappers to support Israel amid the country’s war against Hamas.
“What is this?” a woman in the video says, holding what looks like a blue-and-white McDonald’s food wrapper. “What is this new packaging?”
“It’s the McChicken wrapper,” someone who appears to be a McDonald’s employee replies.
“Why is it blue and white?” she says.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” the person says.
“I think you do know. This is in support of Israel,” she says, apparently referring to the country’s blue-and-white flag.
“I mean, it was like that since a few months ago when we ran out of the regular ones,” the person says. “We’ve had that for a while now.”
The woman then appears to speak with another employee at the restaurant.
“I’m just curious what’s with the new wrapping,” she says. “The blue and white.”
That person can be heard saying that “they just changed it” and adds that they received the wrappers “maybe like last week.”
Posts sharing this video were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
We don’t know which McDonald’s appears in the video, but we asked the company about the claim and received an emailed statement explaining that the wrapper in the video is an example of a generic wrapper that’s been used for years in some restaurants for special orders, limited-edition products, or to replace the company’s typically red-and-yellow packaging when there are shortages.
The generic wrappers come in a variety of colors, not just blue and white, according to the statement, and none of the colors are intended to make a political statement.
We found no evidence to corroborate the claim that McDonald’s has newly introduced the blue-and-white wrappers to support Israel.
But in April, the New York Daily News reported that the company was serving its Big Mac sauce in a blue-and-white cup, “the colors of the original Big Mac wrapper when the burger was introduced 55 years ago.”
We also found a 2016 Reddit post featuring blue-and-white McDonald’s wrappers.
We rate claims that the company changed its packaging to support Israel False.
The state Legislature is searching for a way to pay for stadium upgrades the Milwaukee Brewers say they need to remain in Milwaukee – all of which call for significant money from Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee.
On Oct. 17, 2023, a $546 million plan passed the state Assembly, and appears to be on the way to passage in the state Senate – and then would go to Gov. Tony Evers, who has signaled his support.
Before all of that is settled, we wanted to examine a claim that stems from testimony by Rick Schlesinger, Brewers president of operations, during an Oct. 5, 2023 hearing on an earlier version of a funding plan. Specifically, this tweet from state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, caught our attention:
“Brewers are complaining about a lack of transit going to the ballpark at the same time as they are testifying in favor (of) taking $135 million away from Milwaukee County, which funds transit, is pretty tone deaf. Read the room, guys.”
The funding would go toward repairs and any major capital expenditures the stadium would need during the course of the lease, which would end in 2050. It would not go to player salaries. In return, the Brewers committed to putting in $100 million toward renovations and repairs, and to stay in Milwaukee until the lease ends.
Complaining about government money and professional sports franchises, who ever heard of such a thing?
But are the Brewers complaining about transit even as they seek money from the county?
Let’s investigate.
Brewers in favor of legislation, but what about the core question?
When we reached out to Larson’s office seeking backup, they responded with links to the public hearing, legislative documents related to the bill and a page on a state website listing lobbyists.
To be sure, the Brewers are in favor of the legislation being proposed to help fund the stadium. Schlesinger was there to testify in favor of it and on the Wisconsin Ethics Commission lobbying website, the Brewers are listed as being in favor of the legislation.
But that’s not really in dispute, nor is it a central part of Larson’s claim.
And while the proposal has changed, at the time of the statement, the proposal was for the county to pay $5 million a year until the end of the lease in 2050. That tallies $135 million.
(In the current proposal being taken up by the state Senate the city and county are paying a combined total of $135 million during the course of the lease, half of the original total.)
We’ll also note that Larson’s statement may have left readers thinking it meant a lump-sum, upfront payment. But, again, the total was not really in dispute.
What Larsen was arguing goes to two key points: Whether the county money in question would come at the expense of transportation funding, and whether the Brewers were complaining about the lack of public transit to the stadium in the first place. He’s off on both points.
Transit funding
Milwaukee County does oversee and fund the Milwaukee County Transit System, but the legislation does not say the county money would come from the transportation budget.
In the same hearing, the author of the bill, state Rep. Robert Brooks, R-Saukville, noted that he – along with Evers, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley – don’t want services cut as a result of the stadium-funding measure.
“I never want to hear it said that we didn’t hire a police officer, we had to lay off a fireman, we had to cut any services in Milwaukee to pay for the Brewers,” Brooks said at the hearing. “So, we have been negotiating on that premise… I don’t want to see a pothole not filled, a road not fixed, and somebody blame it on the Brewers.”
The plan calls for the state-level taxpayer funds for the stadium to come out of the income tax generated from Brewers employees, including players, and visiting players who also pay income taxes when they are in Milwaukee, which would normally go to the state but instead would go to the ballpark.
The city and county each plan to pay $2.5 million a year for the stadium with the threat of reduced shared revenue if each didn’t pay in full. County spokesman Jonathan Fera said the legislation could actually help improve transit:
“The bill as passed by the Assembly would actually provide us opportunity to invest in additional capital projects that we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise invest in, which could include transit, parks, and more.”
Complaining
During his testimony, Schlesinger addressed a key question – about whether land around the stadium could be used for development, which in turn could generate new tax revenue. He pointed out, accurately, that the Brewers do not own the land. The organization is a tenant on the state’s property which makes building on the property complicated.
He told the committee that the utility lines may need to be relocated, the tailgating experience could be impacted, the reduction of parking could lead to increased exit times after games and the state Department of Transportation is planning on widening the freeway “so we’re not sure of what our footprint is supposed to be or how many parking spots we’re going to have after that.”
Then he said the line that Larson deemed a complaint:
“There’s no great public transit to our ballpark, which is not anybody’s fault, it’s a matter of tight budgets.”
That was it.
So, even when talking about the lack of public transportation, Schlesinger says it “is not anybody’s fault.” In our view, Larson’s claim that this was “complaining” distorts what was said.
Our ruling
Larson claimed the Brewers were “complaining about a lack of transit going to the ballpark at the same time as they are testifying in favor (of) taking $135 million away from Milwaukee County, which funds transit.”
The tweet could be read to say the $135 million would be taken at once, not spread out over time. But that’s a quibble compared to two more important points:
Leaders say they want to make the contribution without service cuts. And the quote in question is far too mild to be described as “complaining about a lack of transit.”
Our definition of Mostly False is “the statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.” That fits here.
A recent Instagram post questions the loyalties of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, comparing the New York Democrat with an “enemy combatant” and claiming he is a “dual Israeli citizen.”
But that’s wrong.
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.)
“He’s not a dual citizen,” Schumer spokesperson Alex Nguyen told PolitiFact.
Schumer, an American citizen who was born in New York, is one of 10 senators who are Jewish, and some have been the target of misinformation about their nationality before. In 2019, for example, we debunked a claim that the Jewish members of Congress held “dual citizenship with Israel.”
Aryeh Tuchman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told PolitiFact then that such lists perpetuate the anti-Semitic trope of Jewish disloyalty.
“Jews have a long experience of being put on lists with very negative results,” Tuchman said. “The implication that you are promoting is that these people are not loyal citizens of the country.”
In 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., rebutted the assumption that he had dual citizenship with Israel.
“That’s some of the nonsense that goes on in the Internet,” he said at the time. “I am, obviously, an American citizen, and I do not have any dual citizenship.”
Jewish Americans are not automatically granted citizenship in Israel. While Israeli law generally grants immigration visas “to every Jew who has expressed his desire to settle in Israel,” a citizenship certificate is granted only to those who wish to live in Israel permanently.
U.S. law, meanwhile, requires senators to be U.S. citizens for nine years to hold office, according to Article I of the Constitution.
We rate claims that Schumer is an Israeli citizen False.
Some Republican lawmakers are flagging Hamas’ attack on Israel as an example of why more security is needed at the southern U.S. border. Hamas militants breached a border fence and attacked Israeli villages bordering the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
“Potential terrorists are attempting to cross our southern border. In September alone, 18 illegal immigrants on the terror watchlist were caught at the border,” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., posted Oct. 21 on X. “The attack on Israel should serve as a warning as to why we must secure the border.”
The next day, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also mentioned the terrorist watchlist on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
“We just caught 18 people, just last month, on the FBI terrorist watchlist, coming across our border,” McCarthy said. “More than 160 have done it this year, a record breaking.”
U.S. immigration officials have encountered rising numbers of people on the watchlist. But not everyone on the list is a terrorist, and not everyone encountered is allowed to enter the country.
Terrorism and immigration experts say that the threat of attacks in the U.S. and Israel are incomparable.
“They both involve borders, but the comparison ends there,” David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, previously told us. “People aren’t crossing the border to conduct terrorist attacks or take over parts of the United States. A very small percentage may come to commit ordinary crimes, like selling drugs, but overwhelmingly, they are coming for economic opportunity and freedom.”
McCarthy’s office did not respond to our query for more information. A Blackburn spokesperson pointed us to a Fox News reporter’s post on X. Customs and Border Protection did not confirm whether 18 people were stopped in September.
Here’s what we know about who is on the terrorist watchlist, and what the data can and can’t tell us.
What is the terrorist watchlist and who is on it?
The terrorist watchlist, run by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, is a federal database of people who are either known or suspected terrorists.
“Known terrorists” include people who have been charged, arrested, indicted or convicted of a terrorism-related crime or who belong to a foreign terrorist organization.
“Suspected terrorists” are people who are “reasonably suspected to be” involved in terrorist activities.
U.S. government agencies nominate people to the terrorist watchlist and those names are vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center or the FBI.
For years, civil liberty groups have cited concerns about the nomination process and its lack of transparency. People are neither told they are on the watchlist nor are privy to the evidence that landed them on it. The standard for being included, “reasonable suspicion,” allows intelligence analysts to rely not only on facts when deciding if someone has ties to terrorism. They can also make rational inferences to support their determination, the Congressional Research Service wrote in a 2016 report.
Encounters with people on terrorist watchlist have increased, most happen at northern border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection releases the number of times immigration officials encounter a known or suspected terrorist each fiscal year. But there is a lot of information the government doesn’t disclose. For example, we don’t know how the data varies by month or the nationality of people apprehended. Still, the available data does not support the impression of routine terrorist crossings at the southern border.
Overall, most of the 736 encounters in fiscal year 2023 (which ended Sept. 30) happened at the northern border at official checkpoints.
Here’s a breakdown of those encounters:
484 at official ports of entry on the northern border;
80 at official ports of entry on the southern border;
3 between ports of entry at the northern border, and;
169 between ports of entry at the southern border.
Encounters between ports of entry along the southern border were higher in 2023 (169) than in 2022 (98) and 2021 (15).
But CBP says that it’s “very uncommon” for border authorities to encounter people on the terrorist watchlist. At the southern border between ports of entry in 2023, for example, such encounters represented .0083% of all the 2 million encounters.
What the numbers don’t say
Encounters data represent events, not people. If one person tries to come in three times in a year and is stopped each time, that counts as three encounters.
Additionally, border officials can deny entry to people on the terrorist watchlist. An encounter does not equal an entry into the country.
A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told PolitiFact the agency vets everyone who is encountered. People who pose a threat to national security or public safety, are denied admission, detained, removed or referred to other federal agencies for possible prosecution.
It means “that potential terrorists are not getting through but rather are being detected,” even when they try crossing between official ports of entry, said Denise Gilman, immigration clinic co-director at the University of Texas School of Law.
People on the list are “subject to extremely high scrutiny and are almost certainly detained indefinitely by CBP while they determine what to do with them,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director for the American Immigration Council, an immigrants’ rights group. “They are not just waved on through.”
Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration expert at Cornell University, said the increase in encounters with people on the terrorist watchlist “means that there is better coordination between government agencies than before. It does not necessarily mean that more terrorists are trying to enter the country.”
Many people coming in through the southern border apply for asylum. Even if people on the watchlist were allowed into the country to apply for asylum or any sort of immigration protection, “they would assuredly” be sent to immigration detention while a judge hears their case, said Adam Isacson, defense oversight director at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and human rights advocacy group.
Flaws in terrorism watchlist data make it a bad indicator of threat level
Some people on the watchlist have not been deemed terrorists by the U.S. government, but they might be affiliated with people, such as family members, who are known or suspected terrorists, according to CBP.
Additionally, some people on the list may be affiliated with a designated foreign terrorist organization that does not pose a threat to the U.S., such as inactive domestic guerilla groups, said Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies.
Nowrasteh recently testified to Congress that his analysis of terrorist attacks in the U.S. from 1975 to 2022 showed that none of the people involved had crossed the southern border illegally.
The federal government’s encounters data can include false positives of matches on the terrorist watchlist, such as people who were added to the watchlist because they share the same name or birth date as someone listed.
A ‘false analogy’
Experts dismissed the idea that Hamas’ attack on Israel is in any way analogous to U.S. border security concerns.
There isn’t a terrorist movement in Mexico, Central America or South America that targets the U.S. or compares with Hamas targeting Israel, Nowrasteh said. Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel.
“It’s just a radically different security environment,” Nowrasteh said.
Ernesto Castañeda-Tinoco, the American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies director, said “there is no evidence of members of Hamas in Mexico preparing attacks on the U.S. The geopolitical situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is different from the one between Israel and Palestine.”
Jason M. Blazakis, director of the Middlebury College’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, said the comparison was a “false analogy.”
“The vast majority of people who are at the southern border are trying to escape criminal gangs and drug trafficking organization violence,” he said.
RELATED: Hamas militants ‘pouring’ across U.S. southern border? Donald Trump’s claim is Pants on Fire!
Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., offered a downbeat statistic on the state of the nation’s finances in his first address as the House of Representatives’ presiding officer.
He called the national debt “unsustainable” and “the greatest threat to our national security.”
“In the time it’s going to take me to deliver this speech,” Johnson said from the speaker’s chair Oct. 25, “we’ll go up another $20 million in debt.”
Johnson spoke for a little under 20 minutes.
There is no practical way to determine how much the debt rose during the literal 20-minute period when Johnson was speaking. And Johnson’s office noted that debt increases do not happen at a constant rate and are subject to the inflows and outflows of the federal treasury.
But we wondered how close Johnson might be, given what we do know, using the average rate of increase over the past year.
Calculated that way, the dollar amount is even bigger than what Johnson said.
The debt can be measured two ways: debt held by the public and gross federal debt, which includes public debt plus money that one part of the government owes another part of the government.
We calculated the annual increase of both kinds of debt broken up into 20-minute segments. Here’s how: There are three 20-minute segments in an hour, 72 20-minute segments in a day, and 26,280 20-minute segments in a 365-day year.
Over the past year, from Sept. 25, 2022, to Sept. 24, 2023, the public debt rose by $2.18 trillion. Over the same period, the gross federal debt rose by about $2.42 trillion.
If you divide those increases by the annual number of 20-minute increments, the public debt rose by about $83 million every 20 minutes while gross federal debt rose by almost $92 million over the same period.
Ultimately, Johnson is right that the debt goes up by a lot every 20 minutes, but, using averages, it appears he understated the amount by a factor of four.
Small amounts of DNA from the manufacturing process may remain in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Purification and quality control steps ensure any leftover DNA is present within regulatory limits. There isn’t reason to think that this residual DNA would alter a person’s DNA or cause cancer, contrary to claims made online.
How do we know vaccines are safe?
How do we know vaccines are safe?
No vaccine or medical product is 100% safe, but the safety of vaccines is ensured via rigorous testing in clinical trials prior to authorization or approval, followed by continued safety monitoring once the vaccine is rolled out to the public to detect potential rare side effects. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration inspects vaccine production facilities and reviews manufacturing protocols to make sure vaccine doses are of high-quality and free of contaminants.
One key vaccine safety surveillance program is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which is an early warning system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA. As its website explains, VAERS “is not designed to detect if a vaccine caused an adverse event, but it can identify unusual or unexpected patterns of reporting that might indicate possible safety problems requiring a closer look.”
Anyone can submit a report to VAERS for any health problem that occurs after an immunization. There is no screening or vetting of the report and no attempt to determine if the vaccine was responsible for the problem. The information is still valuable because it’s a way of being quickly alerted to a potential safety issue with a vaccine, which can then be followed-up by government scientists.
Another monitoring system is the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, which uses electronic health data from nine health care organizations in the U.S. to identify adverse events related to vaccination in near real time.
In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, randomized controlled trials involving tens of thousands of people, which were reviewed by multiple groups of experts, revealed no serious safety issues and showed that the benefits outweigh the risks.
The CDC and FDA vaccine safety monitoring systems, which were expanded for the COVID-19 vaccines and also include a new smartphone-based reporting tool called v-safe, have subsequently identified only a few, very rare adverse events.
For more, see “How safe are the vaccines?”
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The COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are produced with help from DNA templates, which include instructions for making the mRNA that encodes the spike protein. Manufacturers take steps to purify the final vaccine components, cutting up and removing the DNA, although there could be a very small amount of DNA left.
Past research and mechanistic logic indicate that any DNA remaining after these purification and quality control steps is likely inconsequential. However, in recent months unsubstantiated theories have spread online that DNA remaining in mRNA vaccines could integrate into a person’s own DNA and cause cancer, or even that the vaccines are already causing cancer.
A spokesperson from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration told us in an email that “no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified.” The spokesperson added that “with regard to the mRNA vaccines, while concerns have been raised previously as theoretical issues, available scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the minute amounts of residual DNA do not cause cancer or changes to a person’s genetic code.”
A spokesperson for the European Medicines Agency — which helps regulate medical products in the European Union— told us via email that the agency “can confirm that we have not seen any reliable evidence of residual DNA exceeding approved/safe levels” for the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Nor is the EMA “aware of scientific evidence showing that the very small amounts of residual DNA that may be present in vaccine batches could integrate into the DNA of vaccinated individuals,” the spokesperson continued.
Various experts also told us that it is unlikely that residual DNA in the vaccines could integrate into DNA or cause cancer, even in theory. And as we have previously written, there isn’t evidence to date that the vaccines cause cancer or have led to an increase in cancer.
Marc Veldhoen, an immunologist at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes in Portugal, told us via email that residual DNA would be expected, but he refuted the idea that it could cause cancer. “Yes, there would be some fragments, but within the limit this is allowed and without any clinical consequence,” he said.
This family of claims was originally inspired by a preprint posted in April, which said there was “DNA contamination that exceeds” the EMA and FDA regulatory limits in Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine vials sent anonymously to the authors in the mail without cold packs. This led to other reports of DNA in mRNA vaccine vials, including a second preprint that analyzed largely expired vaccine vials obtained at pharmacies in Canada. None of this work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and many elements of it have been criticized.
We reached out to Kevin McKernan, an author on both preprints, to better understand his views. Rather than replying to our email, he posted a screenshot of it on X, formerly known as Twitter, and included responses there. McKernan, who has an undergraduate degree in biology, is the founder of Medicinal Genomics, a company that markets test kits and genomics-related services to the cannabis, hemp and mushroom industries.
Some of the alleged concern has focused on the possibility, raised in the original preprint, that some of the residual DNA in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is from a monkey virus called SV40. The EMA confirmed to us that the plasmid, or DNA template, used to make the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine contains some short sections of DNA from this virus. A Pfizer spokesperson also told us via email that “specific, non-infectious parts of the SV40 sequence, which are commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry are present in starting material used by Pfizer and BioNTech.”
But none of the sequences identified in the preprint are known to cause cancer, contrary to recent social media posts that say “SV40, a cancer causing sequence” was “put in the Covid Vaccine.”
Experts say there isn’t reason to think that any small pieces of leftover DNA, including SV40 DNA, in the vaccines would be harmful.
“It is very unlikely that any residual DNA would integrate into a person’s genome and if it did it would be even much less likely to cause cancer,” Barry Milavetz, a molecular biologist who studies SV40 at the University of North Dakota, told us in an email.
South Carolina Senate Committee Meeting Amplifies DNA Claims
Reports of residual DNA in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and its purported dangers spread further after a Sept. 12 South Carolina Senate committee listening session. One speaker, molecular biologist and cancer geneticist Phillip Buckhaults from the University of South Carolina, shared his own findings that DNA pieces were present in leftover vaccine in the bottom of used Pfizer/BioNTech vials.
In his presentation, which was shared widely online, he said that DNA “can and likely will” integrate into the genomes of people’s cells, and he shared concerns about various potential health impacts, including cancer. As we’ve said, other experts and regulatory agencies disagree that residual DNA is likely to integrate into a person’s own DNA.
“It was surprising to me to see any DNA in this product, and I am a bit concerned about the theoretical possibility of genome modification,” Buckhaults told us in an email. “I want the scientific community to help find out if this is a real hazard or not a problem.”
He also said that he did not intend for his comments “to be widely circulated in the public and compromising people’s confidence in vaccines.”
Another widely posted clip from the listening session was of Janci Lindsay, who runs a toxicology consulting firm and has a history of sharing incorrect information about vaccines and COVID-19. She also spoke about unsubstantiated cancer risks and told the lawmakers that she believes the SV40 DNA sequences were included in the vaccines with “nefarious intent.” The idea that the presence of these sequences is nefarious is a conspiracy theory with no basis in reality.
Lindsay goes on to reference hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, falsely concluding, “We never needed these vaccines. We had treatments that worked.” This is incorrect. The COVID-19 vaccines saved many lives, and randomized controlled trials have shown that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin do not help people recover from COVID-19.
FactCheck.org obtained a copy of an Oct. 16 letter sent to the Senate committee by Pfizer. In the letter, Pfizer disagrees with comments made during the session, saying that statements are incorrect that “the vaccine contains plasmid DNA that could potentially impact a person’s DNA and be a theoretical cancer risk.” The letter continues, “There is no evidence to support these claims and they provide the risk of being misconstrued by either Committee members and/or the public at large.”
The letter also states that “no signs of DNA mutation or COVID-19 vaccine-induced cancer have been reported to date” related to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
DNA in Vaccines Is Not Inherently Dangerous
Research into residual DNA in vaccines dates back decades. Anti-vaccine fear-mongering about residual DNA or other substances in vaccines is also not a new phenomenon.
Many currently available vaccines are made using cells. Some vaccines, such as the one against chickenpox, rely on weakened virus that is grown in cells. For other vaccines, such as for hepatitis A, viruses are grown in cell culture and then inactivated. Cells also can be used to produce protein-based vaccines. One example is the COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax, which is grown in moth cells.
In all of these cases, the active ingredients for the vaccines are purified, but the vaccines can still contain small amounts of residual DNA from the cells used to make them. The FDA and other regulatory agencies have offered guidance on limiting the quantity and size of residual DNA left over from cells used to make vaccines.
The limits are based on the theoretical concern that residual DNA — specifically from mammalian cell lines — could cause cancer or a viral infection, particularly if there were a cancer-causing gene or certain viral DNA present in the cell line. But Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told us that regulatory limits on residual DNA in vaccines are set conservatively.
Pfizer’s letter to the South Carolina Senate committee refers to a quality control process that ensures that residual DNA levels in its mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 are within regulatory limits.
“The validated method for assessment of residual DNA has shown that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine meets the requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the FDA for biological products,” the letter states. “Vaccine batches are only certified and released if the criteria, during quality control testing, are met using the validated and approved method.”
Photo by Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images.
The EMA spokesperson added that in the European Union, these results must be checked by an independent laboratory. “As a result, we are confident that the DNA levels in the vaccine are consistently below the approved/safe level,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson from the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which regulates medical products in Australia, told us that the agency has been monitoring batches of Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. “This includes independent testing performed by the TGA laboratories to confirm that residual DNA impurity levels are below the acceptable limit,” the spokesperson told us in an email. “To date all batches of COVID-19 vaccines supplied in Australia have met all quality specifications.”
Research on experimental DNA vaccines, which contain DNA as their active ingredient, also supports the idea that DNA in vaccines is unlikely to integrate into a person’s DNA. Stephen M. Kaminsky, a professor of research in genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, told us via email that “there is little concern of integration from DNA vaccines that are delivered in much greater quantities” than any residual DNA that might be found in one of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.
“Since amounts of DNA vaccines in the milligram range have been approved for clinical evaluation, it is difficult to imagine that the smaller quantities of residual cell-substrate DNA present in viral vaccines would pose a significant risk due to integration,” FDA scientists also concluded in one paper.
The FDA scientists went on to state that they consider the primary cancer-related concern with DNA in vaccines to be the introduction of an activated version of a cancer-causing gene to a cell — not just any DNA integrating into the genome at the wrong place.
Offit added that we are constantly exposed to DNA, including in the food we eat and from viruses that don’t cause cancer.
Cancer Theory Relies on Improbable Sequence of Events
Experts told us that theories for how residual DNA would cause cancer rely on an entire series of events, many of them unlikely.
As we’ve discussed above, changing a person’s DNA is not easy. The residual DNA would first need to get into a cell. This could happen if the DNA was inside one of the fatty bubbles called lipid nanoparticles used to package the mRNA in the vaccines, Veldhoen, the immunologist in Portugal, said. But even if this happened, the DNA would only end up in the cytoplasm, the region of a cell outside the nucleus.
Next, any residual DNA that made it into a cell would need to get access to a person’s DNA in the nucleus and insert itself. In general, a cell needs to be in the process of dividing for foreign DNA to integrate into the cell’s own DNA.
The mRNA vaccines are injected into the muscles, where the bulk of the vaccine remains. Muscle cells “do not divide rapidly and have lots of cytoplasm compared to the size of their nuclei,” Milavetz, the molecular biologist at the University of North Dakota, said. This means that it is “very unlikely” that any residual DNA from a vaccine introduced to the cytoplasm of a cell will make it into the nucleus and insert itself into the DNA there in the first place, he added.
“Even if it enters the nucleus, which it probably can’t, it would still have to be integrated into DNA, which requires an integrase, which it also doesn’t have,” Offit said. An integrase is an enzyme some viruses use to insert themselves into cellular DNA.
In the event that some residual DNA did manage to insert into a person’s DNA, it would need to be exactly the wrong kind of DNA, land in exactly the wrong place or a combination of the two.
And then, if this entire sequence of events occurred in one of a person’s trillions of cells, the cell would need to avoid destruction by the immune system, divide and give rise to other cells, which would need to continue along the path toward becoming cancerous.
In reality, the immune system can detect when cells take up foreign DNA or mRNA, Veldhoen said. In the end, cells that had taken up residual DNA would not survive, he said, and the DNA bits would be “broken down, its individual parts recycled.”
SV40 Sequence Unlikely to Cause Cancer
As we’ve said, social media posts misleadingly refer to the presence of “SV40, a cancer causing sequence.” This brings to mind past concerns, which were not borne out, that contamination of polio vaccines with the entire SV40 virus could cause cancer. Researchers discovered in 1960 that monkey kidney cells that had been used to produce some polio vaccines were contaminated with SV40, which was found to cause cancer in rodents. But the virus has not been shown to cause cancer in humans, and the contamination did not ultimately lead to more cancer in children who received the contaminated vaccines compared with those who didn’t.
The small amount of SV40 DNA in the DNA template for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine does not encode the entire virus. SV40 “is a naturally occurring virus and the virus itself is not included in either starting materials, plasmid DNA, or in the final product of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine,” the Pfizer spokesperson said.
McKernan’s original preprint did not indicate the presence of the whole virus or any DNA encoding viral proteins, but rather highlighted regulatory DNA. Regulatory DNA, including a type of sequence called a promoter, helps control which genes in a cell are turned on.
Milavetz said that the portion of SV40 shown to have the potential for causing cancer in the lab — encoding a protein called T-antigen — is not among the sequences McKernan identified in the vaccine.
It is unclear why the Pfizer/BioNTech DNA template would include SV40 regulatory DNA. The EMA told us that “the sequence is not directly relevant” for producing copies of the DNA template or for producing mRNA for the vaccine, “so it is considered to be a non-functional part of the structure of the source plasmid.”
McKernan has suggested that a piece of SV40 regulatory DNA could cause cancer by integrating into a person’s DNA and turning on a cancer-causing gene. In response to criticisms that it’s difficult for DNA to get into the nucleus, McKernan points to research showing a role for part of that sequence in helping to bring DNA into the cell nucleus.
But it’s hardly clear that any nuclear entry mechanism would be at play in human cells exposed to residual DNA fragments. And as we have previously explained, there are multiple reasons why residual DNA is unlikely to integrate into a person’s DNA.
“Fragments of the SV40 sequence may only be present as residual impurities at very low levels that are routinely controlled,” the EMA spokesperson said. “There is no scientific evidence that any of these SV40 fragments can act as insertional mutagens,” the spokesperson said, meaning there is no evidence the fragments would integrate into a person’s DNA.
Buckhaults, who also found SV40 regulatory DNA in Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine vials, told us the bits of SV40 DNA aren’t “any more dangerous than all the other bits” of DNA he found in the vaccine vials.
Milavetz pointed out the improbability of the SV40 regulatory sequence causing cancer, even if it did somehow integrate into a person’s DNA.
He said that any residual DNA present would be unlikely to contain only the SV40 sequence needed to turn on a gene. There would likely be extra chunks of DNA that would prevent it from functioning.
“For this to be a viable problem only critical portions of the promoter would have to be introduced into the regulatory region of only a very small subset of genes in a human in a very specific way,” he said. “In my opinion there are too many things that would have to occur perfectly for the promoter to be integrated into one of these critical human genes.”
‘No Meaningful Difference’ from Manufacturing Process Change
Various posts also reference a change in the DNA template used to produce the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine between the clinical trials and the rollout of the vaccine to the general public. To make the vaccine supply that was primarily used in the clinical trials, manufacturers produced copies of the DNA template using a process called PCR, in which DNA is amplified in a lab without the help of biological organisms. To help scale up production, manufacturers enlisted bacteria to make many copies of a plasmid, a circular piece of DNA. The bacteria divide rapidly and can make large quantities of DNA.
Based on this process change, social media posts have said that the “Pfizer covid vaccine approved the for emergency use was not the same one used on the public!” or posted the “BREAKING” news that “Pfizer’s COVID vaccine that was approved for emergency use was not the same one they injected into billions of arms.”
To be clear, the fact there was a process change has long been publicly available information. It is mentioned in the Pfizer clinical trial protocol, the emergency use authorization from the FDA and an EMA public assessment report first published in December 2020. The EMA spokesperson confirmed that vaccine batches produced by both processes were tested in clinical studies, adding that the manufacturer provided test results and other information to show the comparability of the product resulting from both processes. “This assessment of comparability confirmed there was no meaningful difference in the quality of material from process 1 and process 2 that could impact the safety and/or efficacy of the vaccine,” the EMA spokesperson said.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.
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