Category: Fact Check

Rapper 50 Cent recently shared a photo of President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden lounging on the beach paired with an Oct. 20 Daily Mail headline: “Biden hits the beach with Congress in chaos.”

“Hey Joe get the fvck up, we in trouble man,” 50 Cent wrote in the Oct. 22 post.

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.)

The Bidens departed The White House Oct. 20 for their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, according to the president’s public schedule. They returned Oct. 23. 

But the photo in the Instagram post isn’t from that trip. It’s from Aug. 2.

The Daily Mail caption says it shows the Bidens “reading and taking a nap on the beach during a trip to the shore in August.” 

Video footage from the recent October trip shows the Bidens walking along the beach. 

But we rate claims that the photo of the Bidens lounging on the beach was taken in October 2023 False.

 

Nota del Editor: Este artículo contiene referencias y enlaces a imágenes y videos gráficos. 

Las imágenes de muertes y destrucción en Israel y Gaza son abundantes, perturbadoras y muy reales. Al mismo tiempo, la desinformación sobre la guerra ha prosperado. 

Han habido reportes verificados de que Hamas, el cual atacó a Israel el 7 de octubre, cometió violencia en contra de niños. Pero en particular una perturbadora declaración — de que militantes del grupo palestino decapitaron a docenas de bebes — ganó prominencia en los días despues de la masacre, y fue amplifacada en los niveles mas altos de los gobiernos estadounidenses e israelies. Este reporte sigue sin ser verificado. 

Desde el ataque, la declaración ha sido ampliamente repetida por políticos incluyendo al Presidente Joe Biden, la representante republicana de Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, y la representante republicana de Nueva York, Elise Stefanik; medios de comunicación, como CNN, Fox News y el New York Post; oficiales israelíes, incluyendo la oficina del primer ministro; el actor Noah Schnapp y otros usuarios en las redes sociales con un gran número de seguidores.

La devastación de la guerra se ha intensificado en los días subsecuentes. The Associated Press reportó el 20 de octubre que en Gaza, las autoridades de salud palestinas dijeron que al menos de 4,137 personas han sido asesinadas y más de 13,200 heridas — incluyendo más de 500 muertes en una explosión de un hospital. (Un informe de inteligencia estadounidense del 20 de octubre estimó la muerte de entre 100 a 300 personas en la explosion del hospital en Gaza).

En Israel, al menos 1,400 personas han sido asesinadas y 4,500 heridas a la fecha del 20 de octubre. El número de muertos incluye a 32 estadounidenses. Y Hamas tomó a más de 200 personas como rehenes, reportó NBC News. 

La violencia confirmada ya es lo suficientemente horrible. Así que, ¿por qué una declaración proveniente de una fuente dudosa sobre la decapitación de 40 bebés viajó a lo largo y ancho?

Expertos en desinformación y el Medio Oriente señalaron la respuesta emocional provocada por la violencia contra niños, junto con la falta de confirmación por fuentes oficiales.

“Porque es una declaración impactante … ha obtenido atención significativa así como también intentos de apoyo o refuta”, dijo Osamah Khalil, un profesor de historia en la Syracuse University especializándose en el Medio Oriente moderno y las políticas exteriores de Estados Unidos. 

PolitiFact examinó el origen de la declaración y documentó cómo los políticos estadounidenses e israelíes y los medios la repitieron y luego se retractaron. 

La declaración se originó con un reporte de campo

La declaración de que Hamas decapitó a 40 bebés se remonta a los comentarios al aire de una reportera israeli.

El 10 de octubre, tres días después del ataque de Hamas en el kibutz o comuna de Kfar Aza en el sur de Israel, las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel, el ejército de la nación, permitió a medios de comunicación reportar desde el sitio devastado. La reportera Nicole Zedeck de i24 News, un canal de noticias israeli, dijo que soldados israelíes le dijeron que infantes habían sido asesinados en el ataque. 

“El ejército israeli sigue diciendo que ellos no tienen un número claro (de las víctimas), pero estoy hablando con algunos de los soldados, y ellos dicen que lo que han presenciado es, ellos han estado caminando por las diferentes casas, estas diferentes comunidades — bebés, con sus cabezas cortadas. Eso es lo que ellos dijeron”, dijo Zedeck durante su transmisión en inglés desde Kfar Aza.

También el 10 de octubre, Zedeck publicó en X que “uno de los comandantes me dijo que vieron cabezas de bebés cortadas”. Treinta y cinco minutos después, ella publicó de nuevo, diciendo “soldados me dijeron que ellos creen que 40 bebés/niños fueron asesinados”.

Ella no dijo que Hamas decapitó a 40 bebés, pero varias publicaciones en las redes sociales tergiversaron esos informes.

El 11 de octubre, medios de comunicación en los Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido, incluyendo The Independent, The Daily Mail, CNN, Fox News y el New York Post, repitieron las declaraciones de que Hamas había decapitado bebés, citando a medios israelíes o la oficina del primer ministro como fuentes. 

En Telegram el 11 de octubre, Hamas desestimó “las declaraciones falsas promovidas por algunos medios de comunicación occidentales, como los palestinos luchadores por la libertad asesinando niños y atacando a civiles”, sin mencionar específicamente decapitaciones.

Sin embargo, la evidencia cuestiona la amplia refutación de Hamas: mujeres, niños y adultos mayores estaban entre los miles asesinados o heridos en el ataque sorpresa del grupo militante, reportaron ABC News y The New York Times. Múltiples medios de comunicación reportaron que mujeres estaban entre las personas secuestradas por Hamas. 

El grupo militante “ha dicho repetidamente que ellos no atacan o asesinan intencionalmente a mujeres y niños”, a pesar de la evidencia abrumadora contradiciendo estas declaraciones, dijo Khalil. 

Oficiales israelíes y estadounidenses repitieron la declaración, después se distanciaron

Líderes políticos, primero en Israel, y después en Estados Unidos, le dieron credibilidad a las declaraciones de decapitación tempranamente. Pero oficiales después enmendaron sus declaraciones, lo que incrementó la confusión.  

El 11 de octubre, un vocero del primer ministro israeli, Benjamin Netanyahu le dijo a CNN que bebes y niños fueron encontrados en Kfar Aza con sus “cabezas decapitadas”. La siguiente mañana, CNN reportó que el gobierno israeli no podía confirmar la declaración de que Hamas decapitó bebés, contradiciendo la declaración anterior de la oficina del primer ministro. 

Biden también repitió la declaración durante una mesa redonda el 11 de octubre con líderes judios, diciendo, “Yo nunca pensé que iba a ver y a confirmar imágenes de terroristas decapitando a niños”.

Pero Biden no había visto, ni recibido confirmación de que Hamas decapitó a bebés o niños, le dijo más tarde la Casa Blanca a CNN. Biden se estaba refiriendo a los comentarios públicos de medios de comunicación y oficiales israelíes. 

Biden fue más cuidadoso en sus comentarios del 18 de octubre en Israel: “Niños masacrados. Bebés masacrados. Familias enteras masacradas. Violación, decapitaciones, cuerpos quemados vivos”.

Netanyahu dijo durante las visitas del Secretario de Estado Antony Blinken y Biden a Israel que Hamas decapitó a personas, pero Netanyahu no dijo si las víctimas eran infantes. 

La oficina del primer ministro israeli compartio el 12 de octubre fotos de bebés que dijo que fueron “asesinados y quemados” por Hamas. La publicación no mostró decapitaciones. 

Blinken dijo que le mostraron documentación de “un infante acribillado con balas, soldados decapitados, y personas jóvenes quemadas vivas”, durante su visita del 12 de octubre. 

Cuando le preguntaron sobre la autenticidad de las imágenes de los niños muertos que Netanyahu compartió, el vocero del Consejo de Seguridad Nacional de la Casa Blanca John Kirby dijo el 12 de octubre, “Yo no pienso que estamos en el negocio de tener que validar o aprobar esos tipos de imágenes. Estas son del primer ministro de Israel y no tenemos razón de dudar de su autenticidad”. 

La reportera de i24 dijo que la declaración vino de soldados israelíes, pero las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel no habían confirmado cuántos bebés o niños fueron asesinados o si alguno fue decapitado. El 12 de octubre, un vocero de la Fuerza de Defensa de Israel le dijo a PolitiFact que el ataque en Kfar Aza fue “una masacre en la cual mujeres, niños, y niños pequeños y ancianos fueron brutalmente masacrados en una forma de acción de ISIS”. 

Como la declaración se volvió tan omnipresente

La velocidad a la que la información fue compartida siguiendo los ataques de Hamas, ampliamente superaron la habilidad de los periodistas e investigadores de verificar o hacer preguntas sobre lo que sucedió. 

“Está todo atado a la falta de información confiable certificada”, dijo Dina Sadek, Mideast research fellow para el laboratorio de investigación forense digital del Atlantic Council. “(Le) deja a las personas especular y creer un montón de cosas que ellos están viendo en el Internet antes de esperar por una confirmación oficial”.

La declaración de las decapitaciones se rastrea a una reportera que dijo que ella estaba transmitiendo relatos de primera mano de los soldados. Pero otros periodistas en Kfar Aza, incluyendo Oren Ziv de +972 Magazine, la cual cubre a Israel y Palestina, y Samuel Forey del medio de comunicación francés, Le Monde, dijeron que sus reportes no corroboran este informe. 

Durante el tour a través de Kfar Aza, Ziv dijo que él no vio evidencia de que Hamas había decapitado a bebés, “y un portavoz del ejército y comandantes tampoco mencionaron esos incidentes”, el público en X. Ziv dijo que periodistas en Kfar Aza estaban permitidos a hablar con cientos de soldados sin supervisión del equipo de comunicación de las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel.

Similarmente, Forey dijo, “Nadie me dijo sobre las decapitaciones, mucho menos de niños decapitados, ni mucho menos de 40 niños decapitados”. Forey dijo que el personal de servicios de emergencia con quien él habló, no habían visto cuerpos decapitados. (Las publicaciones de Forey en X fueron traducidas del francés al español).

Dada la pesadez y polarización de este tema, Khalil, el profesor de la Syracuse University, advirtió que “todas las declaraciones y negaciones deberían ser tratadas con escepticismo y verificadas lo más posible”. 

Este artículo fue escrito originalmente en inglés y traducido por Maria Briceño.

Read this article in English.

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

_______________________________________________

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

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin leaders made waves in mid-September when they announced that the organization would resume abortion services. 

Abortions had been unavailable in Wisconsin since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, reverting the state back to an 1849 law that was widely interpreted as banning the procedure in nearly all cases. 

This past July, a Dane County judge signaled that she did not believe the 1849 law referred to consensual abortions, but instead to feticide, in which a non-consensual act causes a fetus to die. Planned Parenthood, which provides a variety of sexual and reproductive health care services, pointed to that as evidence that Wisconsin does not have an enforceable abortion ban. 

Groups that support abortion rights were quick to praise Planned Parenthood’s decision. That included Opportunity Wisconsin, which describes itself as a coalition of Wisconsin residents fighting for economic equity. 

In a Sept. 14, 2023 press release, the group applauded the access Wisconsinites will once again have to abortion and focused on the health impacts of the past year-plus, when that access was limited. 

“The repeal of Roe v. Wade has exacerbated the state’s OB-GYN shortage as residency programs report a decline in enrollment due to the inability of residents to receive training in-state,” the release stated. 

Is the decline in enrollment a direct consequence of Wisconsin’s abortion restrictions? And has it exacerbated the shortage?

Let’s dig in.

Wisconsin’s OB-GYN residency applications did dip in last cycle 

We’ll break things down step by step, starting with the first portion of the claim. 

First, Wisconsin does have a documented shortage of doctors that specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, particularly in rural areas – a trend that existed prior to Roe’s overturn. Forty-four percent of the state’s rural hospitals don’t provide obstetric services, according to a 2019 report from the Wisconsin Office of Rural Health. 

And the state’s OB-GYN residency programs did report a recent decline in enrollment. An April 13, 2023 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Research and Action Institute found that Wisconsin’s OB-GYN residency programs saw a 7.8% decrease in 2022-23 from the previous application cycle. 

The report found that the decrease in OB-GYN applicants was highest in states with complete abortion bans (a decline of 10.5%) and lowest in states without abortion restrictions (a decline of about 5.3%). 

There are three places in Wisconsin that have OB-GYN residencies: UW Health in Madison, and Aurora Sinai Medical Center and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. 

A UW Health spokesperson reported a roughly 2.5% decline in applicants to their program in 2023. An Aurora spokesperson declined to share their applicant trend, and spokespeople for the residencies at the Medical College of Wisconsin did not respond to a request for the information.

What’s the connection between OB-GYN residency programs and abortion? Those programs are required to teach students how to perform a procedure commonly known as a D&C, which is used to diagnose and treat certain uterine conditions or to clear the uterine lining after a miscarriage or an abortion. Not providing that training could cause the programs to lose accreditation.

Last year, the Journal Sentinel reported that OB-GYN residents at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Aurora Sinai Medical Center would travel out of state to receive training on the procedure because Wisconsin had halted abortions. 

Link between abortion restrictions and application decline isn’t fleshed out

But can we explicitly draw the connection between the state’s abortion ban and a decline in applicants to its OB-GYN residency programs? That’s where things get murky. 

Fears from OB-GYNs and residency program directors nationwide on this issue are well-documented – in fact, when asked for evidence of the claim, an Opportunity Wisconsin spokesperson sent a litany of examples. 

On Wisconsin Public Radio last October, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said it was “a real worry” to not be able to recruit and retain physicians in a state that doesn’t provide abortions. 

A Medical College of Wisconsin doctor told PBS Wisconsin in August that “it’s nearly impossible to find doctors who are willing to go to states that have such hostile bans,” and that Wisconsin’s physician shortage could get worse because of that. 

And a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in February surveyed more than 2,000 current and future physicians on social media and found that more than three-quarters of respondents “would not even apply to states with legal consequences for providing abortion care.” 

Although signs seem to point to the claim being accurate, causation is harder to tease out – that is, that the decline in residency applications is a direct consequence of Wisconsin’s abortion rules. 

In fact, the UW Health spokesperson said the hospital isn’t certain if its decrease in applications is an indication of a trend – though she noted that some applicants have asked about the 1849 law in their interviews. 

Dr. Ellen Hartenbach, chair of the OB-GYN department at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, also told Wisconsin Health News in May that the university is uncertain if abortion restrictions caused this year’s decrease in applicants. 

It’s worth noting that the report from the Association of American Medical Colleges’ think tank report found that the number of medical school graduates who applied to residency positions during the 2022-23 application cycle decreased by about 2% from the previous year. So there was a small overall decrease, regardless of what states’ laws were regarding abortion.

And since Roe’s overturn happened just over a year ago, there may need to be more years of documented decreases in residency applications to suss out a trend that can be explicitly linked to abortion restrictions, or one that directly results in worsening Wisconsin’s OB-GYN shortage.

Our ruling 

Opportunity Wisconsin claimed that Roe’s overturn – and the subsequent halt of abortions in Wisconsin – exacerbated the state’s OB-GYN shortage by driving medical school graduates away from residencies in the state. 

Though the number of OB-GYN residents did decline, and there’s been significant speculation that abortion restrictions could have caused it, it doesn’t appear that the direct link is settled yet like Opportunity Wisconsin framed it. 

And if there could be other reasons for the dip, that means it’s not yet clear whether the repeal of Roe exacerbated the shortage. It’s likely that more years of data will be needed to draw a conclusion. 

Our definition of Half True is a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. 

That fits here. 

 

A video showing dozens of United Nations vehicles parked at a Maryland warehouse gave way to the baseless claim that the organization is establishing its presence in the U.S.

The caption of an Oct. 18 Facebook video read, in all capital letters: “The United Nations is already coming and setting up shop in U.S. states for when WW3 is officially declared.”

In the video, a man introduces himself as Alistair Williamson and says he’s in Hagerstown, Maryland. He then shows footage of what he calls a convoy of U.N. armored vehicles and shipping containers that say “U.N.”

 

(Screenshot from Facebook)

An Oct. 13 Instagram post suggests a video of people scaling a wall is current footage of Lebanese demonstrators supporting Palestinians as violence persists in Gaza with Israel and Hamas at war. 

“BREAKING: Protesters in Lebanon are currently storming the border with Palestine in support of Gaza,” text above the video says.  

But this video is old, and 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.)

The video is from TikTok, and the handle of the user who shared it is visible in the Instagram post. We couldn’t find the original video — that account appears to have been deleted — but we found another post from a different account that posted the footage in May 2021.

A May 2021 YouTube video and a May 2021 X post feature the same video.

Photos and video from news outlets in 2021 show the same scene from different perspectives, capturing Lebanese protesters at the country’s southern border with Israel demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians. 

But the video in the Instagram post doesn’t show protesters in Lebanon “storming the border” in October 2023. We rate that claim False. 

 

A nighttime scene captured in a video shows a group running at a walled-off building and throwing flaming projectiles at it. 

“The Zionist regime embassy in Bahrain,” the caption on an Oct. 20 Instagram post sharing the video said. “Protesters attacked with molotov cocktails the Israeli regime embassy and set it on fire.” 

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.)

That’s because this footage has been online for more than a decade. 

It appears in a YouTube video posted Dec. 30, 2012, with this caption translated by Google from Arabic to English: “The Revolution Media Center in Bahrain obtained scenes of a demonstrators attack on a police station on Sitra Island, south of the capital, Manama. It is reported that the attack occurred last Saturday (November 3, 2012). This attack came after Professor Hassan Mushaima’s health deteriorated in Al-Khalifiya prisons, as his cancer returned due to medical negligence in the prison.”

We couldn’t confirm the precise date this footage was filmed. 

A Nov. 6, 2012, Facebook post labeled it Nov. 5, 2012. A Nov. 5, 2012, UPI story reported that “some youths tossed Molotov cocktails at the Sitra Police Station about 1 a.m.” that day.

And an Oct. 1, 2012, AFP story reported that 32 people were facing trial for allegedly attacking a police station in Sitra with Molotov cocktails following an Aug. 26, 2012, attack on the station.

Israel didn’t even have an embassy in Bahrain in 2012, according to news reports and the website of Israel’s embassy in Bahrain. Israel’s foreign minister opened one for the first time in 2021 in the country’s capital, Manama. 

And an image of the police station on Google Maps looks like the building in the video. 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators have rallied outside of the Israeli embassy in Bahrain since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, but the building wasn’t set on fire.

We rate claims this video shows people attacking Israel’s embassy False.

 

The Republican-controlled state Senate on Oct. 17, 2023, took up 47 of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ selections to various state commissions, occupational boards and councils — many of whom had already been serving for months on an interim basis.

Republican senators voted to fire eight of those appointees, including four of his picks for the Natural Resources Board and the Democratic appointee to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

State Sen. Melissa Agard, the Democratic leader in the upper chamber — which has the power to give “advice and consent” on many of the governor’s appointments — rose to speak before Republicans began the rejection votes.

Agard called their decision to reject appointments and reappointments, including members of the Medical Examining Board and Council on Domestic Abuse, “unprecedented.”

“Since 1981, the state Senate has only rejected five executive appointments,” she said. “The GOP, today, is more than doubling that number.”

The Senate and Evers have been at loggerheads over appointments since he took office. Many of his Cabinet officials have served years without being confirmed. And GOP appointees to the Wisconsin Technical College Board stayed in their expired positions due to a court ruling that found a vacancy doesn’t exist until the Senate holds a confirmation hearing.

Historically, the chamber often defers to the governor, even when the branches are from opposing parties.

That’s why Agard’s claim caught our attention.

Let’s take a look.

Legislature has rejected appointments from Democratic, Republican governors

When asked for backup for her claim, Agard’s office forwarded an email between her communications director and an analyst at the Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that provides research to lawmakers and their staff.

The analyst searched as far back as the 1981-82 session, the earliest date that records of the Legislature’s activities are available online, according to the email. 

She “was only able to find five executive appointments that have been rejected by the full Senate.” They are:

• Brad Pfaff as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection in 2019. Pfaff was appointed by Evers and rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate. 

• Michael Rosen as a member of the Technical College System Board in 2006. Rosen was appointed by former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, and rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate.

• Francis “Bill” Murphy as a member of the Natural Resources Board in 1999. Murphy was appointed by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican, and rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate. 

• Terry J. Kohler as a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents in 1991. Kohler was appointed by Thompson and rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

• Dom Gordon as a member of the Council on Domestic Abuse in 1988. Gordon was appointed by Thompson and rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The analyst also found a 1999 Cap Times article that noted a sixth appointment, Charles Stoddard to the Natural Resources Board, was rejected in 1972. 

In 1990s, appointees rejected over offensive remarks

Republicans divulged some reasons for the Tuesday firing votes. 

Those included Natural Resource Board members’ views on whether the state should have a wolf quota.

Another was a Democratic elections commissioner’s decision to abstain from a vote to reappoint the leader of WEC, preventing the chance for Senate Republicans to fire her. 

Pfaff, who was rejected in 2019, actually participated in the vote, opposing the firing of the eight appointees. He is now a Democratic senator representing Onalaska. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s report of the 2019 vote, Republicans argued the manure storage rules Pfaff was developing would hurt farmers amid one of the worst downturns for the dairy industry. 

Evers, at the time, said the GOP was punishing Pfaff — who had been serving as secretary for nearly a year when he was fired — for publicly criticizing Republicans over holding back suicide prevention funds.

The reasons for the other firings are harder to find, but scant newspaper records explain why two of Thompson’s appointees were rejected.

Racist and sexist jokes were part of the opposition to Murphy, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

The Senate also rejected Thompson’s pick to the UW Board of Regents, after lawmakers expressed concern over Kohler’s comments about minorities and LGBTQ people.

To be sure, Republicans noted prior to the 2023 rejections, that before that day they had only rejected one of 380 nominations made by Evers. State Sen. Julian Bradley, R-Franklin, noted “the approval percentage, as of right now (is) at 99.998.”

That number was not quite right. In any case, though, it doesn’t undermine the claim Agard made.

Our ruling

Agard claimed “Since 1981, the state Senate has only rejected five executive appointments. The GOP today is more than doubling that number.”

In fact, it more than doubled, given the Senate rejected eight people on one day, versus just five in the last 42 years. That brings the total rejected to 13, more than doubling the previous 5.

We rate her claim True.

 

A video shared on Instagram shows makeup artists creating realistic looking injuries on people, and social media users suggested these were “crisis actors” posing as victims in Palestine amid the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Hollywood? No it’s Pallywood and crisis actors are working overtime to fool the world. Don’t fall for it or fall for it. The choice is yours!” read the caption on the Oct. 23 post. 

(Screenshot from Instagram)

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.)

The post misrepresents what is shown in the footage. 

The footage is from a video originally uploaded to YouTube in March 2017 by Turkish public broadcaster TRT World. The report featured special effects makeup artist Mariam Salah on a film set in the Gaza Strip.

“There are not many film productions in the Gaza Strip,” says a description on the video. “But that didn’t stop makeup artist Mariam Salah from following her dream. She taught herself to make fake blood for Palestinian films, breaking into a business traditionally run by men.” 

The footage shows Salah working on a project by international human rights organization Doctors of the World. 

The video does not show Palestinian crisis actors during the current Israel-Hamas war. We rate that claim False.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., is challenging Gov. Jim Justice for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate race in 2024. Mooney is attacking the governor by posting a “Phony Jim Justice” website.

Mooney’s website makes a number of claims, one of which is that Justice “opposes the Right to Work.”

“Right-to-work” refers to laws in 26 states that give the state government the authority “to determine whether workers can be required to join a labor union to get or keep a job,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Such laws generally make it hard for workers to join a union.

The Mooney website elaborated on the “right-to-work” claim by saying that Justice “threatened to veto an education reform package that would give teachers raises and put more money in the classroom all because the bill would have stopped automatically withholding union dues.”

We reached out to both candidates’ offices. Justice’s campaign did not respond to inquiries, but Mooney’s campaign did.

West Virginia passed its “right-to-work” bill in 2016. The Republican legislature overrode the veto of then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat.

When Justice was running for governor as a Democrat in 2016, he proposed putting the “right-to-work” bill up for a statewide vote. But that never happened. (Justice switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2017.)

After Justice won the governorship, he vetoed a bill that was intended to modify the “right-to-work” law. Senate Bill 330 would have clarified how the bill would affect collective bargaining in the building and construction industry. Justice said the issue is one “for the Supreme Court to decide.” 

In 2021, Justice held a town hall meeting in which he expressed disappointment with the “right-to-work law” passed in 2016.

“Really and truly, let’s just be brutally honest,” Justice said, according to West Virginia MetroNews. “We passed the right-to-work law in West Virginia. And we ran to the windows looking to see all the people that were going to come, and they didn’t come. … We’ve absolutely built the field in a lot of different places thinking build the field and they’ll come, and they didn’t come.”

This suggests that Justice is not in favor of the “right-to-work” law. However, after almost seven years in office he has not acted to overturn it, and his campaign website does not mention the policy one way or the other.

In addition, in 2021, Justice did sign a bill supported by “right-to-work backers” and opposed by labor unions. 

That bill prohibited employers and payroll agents from withholding a portion of an employee’s pay for union political activities without the employee specifically authorizing it. It also barred state, municipal and county governments from withholding union or club dues from a public employee’s wages or salaries.

Our ruling

Mooney said, “Jim Justice opposes the right to work.”

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2016, Justice suggested putting the state’s newly passed “right-to-work” law to a popular vote, and in 2017, he vetoed a provision that would have modified a portion of the law. At a 2021 event, Justice said he was disappointed with the law’s economic impact.

However, the word the Mooney campaign used was “opposes,” and there is no firm evidence of this. Despite Justice being in office for almost seven years, the “right-to-work” law remains in place, and as a current U.S. Senate candidate, Justice does not discuss his views on the law on his campaign website.

We rate the statement Mostly False.