Category: Fact Check

  • Stefanik’s Distorted U.S. Energy Production Claim

    In her speech nominating Rep. Jim Jordan as House speaker, Rep. Elise Stefanik distorted the facts about U.S. energy production and the reasons for higher gasoline prices and utility bills.

    Stefanik, who is the House Republican Conference chair, made her case for Jordan on Oct. 17, during the first roll call vote for speaker, which ended with Jordan falling well short of the necessary votes to become speaker.

    The New York Republican claimed that Jordan is the right person “”for such a time as this” — a quote from the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. She claimed, among other things, that “American energy production has been crushed by Joe Biden’s radical, failed far left policies, causing seniors, farmers and families to pay more at the pump and struggle with skyrocketing utility bills.”

    In fact, U.S. oil production has increased since Biden took office. Gasoline and utility prices have gone up, too, but experts have told us the reasons have little to do with Biden.

    In 2020, before Biden took office, domestic crude oil production averaged 11.3 million barrels per day in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration. In the last 12 months, crude oil production averaged about 12.5 million barrels per day, EIA data through July shows. That’s an increase in oil production of roughly 10.7%.

    And the EIA projects that production will average 12.92 million barrels a day in 2023 and 13.12 million barrels a day in 2024. Both averages would exceed the record set in 2019.

    As for gasoline prices, the national average price of regular gasoline was $2.379 the week of Jan. 18, 2021, and $3.576, as of the week of Oct. 16. That’s an increase of a whopping 50% during Biden’s presidency.

    Likewise, average electricity prices increased from 10.66 cents per kilowatt-hour, or kwh, in 2020 to 13.21 cents per kwh in the third quarter of 2023, according to EIA historical data. That’s an increase of nearly 24%.

    However, the price at the pump depends on the cost of crude oil, which is set on the global market and based largely on worldwide supply and demand, as the EIA explains on its website. Experts have told us that the global supply has struggled to keep pace with the demand after the pandemic-induced economic shutdowns and during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    Utility prices, too, are determined by the price of “feeder fuels,” which is set on the global marketplace, Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, told us.

    “President Biden has no more control over retail electric, natural gas, heating oil or gasoline prices than did President Trump,” Wolfe said in an email. “‘Feeder fuels’ such as natural gas and coal to produce electricity and petroleum to produce gasoline are set in [the] marketplace rather than by ‘fiat’ by the White House.”

    The House was scheduled to resume voting on a speaker Oct. 18.

    Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

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  • Fact Check: Biden did not announce a military draft. This video is AI-generated

    Amid the Israel-Hamas war, social media users are stoking fears that U.S. citizens will soon be drafted. One video appears to show President Joe Biden himself calling American men and women to fight.

    In an Oct. 15 Facebook video, Biden appears to say, “Invoke the Selective Service Act, as is my authority as President. Remember, you’re not sending your sons and daughters to war. You’re sending them to freedom.”

    The video then cuts to a man who comments, “My children, my daughter, will not be participating in your f—— greedy wars.”

    The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    This is not a real announcement, as it’s not a real video of Biden. It was generated by artificial intelligence.

    The original video in full was posted Feb. 27 by the conservative Canadian publication The Post Millennial. Its caption read, “AI imagines what would happen if Biden declares and activates the Selective Service Act and begins drafting 20 years old to war.”

    The video made it appear as if Biden was talking about how Russia’s war in Ukraine and “China’s blockade of Taiwan” have created a “two-front national security crisis that requires more troops than the voluntary military can supply.” China has performed military exercises to signal its ability to blockade Taiwan should it try to seize control of the island. 

    The video made Biden appear to say men and women who turn 20 years old in 2023 will be first to enter a national lottery.

    It then shifts to commentary by Jack Posobiec, a conservative pundit affiliated with Turning Point USA: “That was an AI, I don’t wanna say recreation but maybe a pre-creation, a pre-creation of President Biden designed and scripted by our producers here for the show of what could happen if President Biden were to declare and activate the Selective Service Act and begin drafting 20-year-olds here in the United States.”

    The U.S. has not had a military draft since 1973 for the Vietnam War. The Selective Service registration requirement was reinstated in 1980 by former President Jimmy Carter in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Registration allows the government to keep a list of names of men to draw from in case of a national emergency. 

    A draft would require congressional and presidential authorization. According to The Associated Press, defense officials confirmed as of Oct. 10 that the armed forces have not recommended the reinstatement of the draft to either Congress or the president.

    The Military Selective Service Act only authorizes the registration of “male persons.” Congress would have to amend the current law in order to authorize the registration of women.

    The video does not show Biden saying he is invoking the Selective Service Act. We rate that claim False.  

    RELATED: Politicians blame ‘wokeism’ for low military recruitment. The problem is more complex.



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  • Video: FactChecking Social Media Misinformation

    Hearst Television, which has been one of our media partners since 2019, recently featured our work in a “Get the Facts” segment on how to detect social media misinformation.

    The segment includes two of our recent articles about the Israel-Hamas war — one about a viral video clip that took former President Donald Trump’s remarks about Israel out of context and another about social media posts that shared a doctored “memorandum” from the White House on aid to Israel.

    In her segment, Hearst Washington correspondent Jackie DeFusco also provides tools and best practices that we use to separate fact from fiction. For instance, TinEye — a reverse image search tool — can determine whether an image has been previously published online and, if so, where and when.

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  • Fact Check: Why Barack Obama’s sexuality became a news story, and then a conspiracy theory

    He spent eight years in the White House, nearly every move recorded by press and watched by staff. But six years after former President Barack Obama left office, some conservative media figures aggressively circulated a salacious rumor: that Obama is secretly gay.

    The claim percolated across social media and conservative news sites for weeks throughout August and reverberated throughout September.

    An Aug. 3 headline in the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller said “Obama once wrote to ex-girlfriend that he ‘repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men,’ biographer says.” A day later, Infowars, the website founded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, published a similar story. 

    By Aug. 15, conservative news sites had published over 20 stories with headlines about the former president’s “gay sex fantasies” or his “gay sex fantasy confession.” Carlson, the former Fox News host, on Aug. 30 told podcaster Adam Carolla that, “In 2008, it became really clear that Barack Obama had been having sex with men.”

    Really clear? As part of PolitiFact’s work reporting on misinformation online, we found this claim to be anything but.

    By the time Carlson made this statement, speculation about Obama’s sexuality had fused into even broader online conspiracy theories, including that Obama had murdered both his chef Tafari Campbell and comedian Joan Rivers to keep his secret.

    Videos on Facebook revived the 15-year-old unsubstantiated allegations of Larry Sinclair, a man with a criminal history of fraud and forgery who in 2008 claimed to have had drug-fueled sex with Obama in 1999. 

    On Sept. 6, Carlson fanned interest in Obama’s sexuality, releasing on X a new interview with Sinclair in which Sinclair repeated his allegations.


    (Screenshot of X post)

    This narrative’s dominance online prompted us to explore this renewed speculation’s source and spread. We learned that the two pieces of “evidence” fueling this claim — a letter and Sinclair’s statements — need more context than the headlines supply. 

    Experts told us that although social media helped accelerate these claims, the political debate about sexuality and gender helped them thrive.

    “This is really neatly entangled with the upcoming electoral cycles, the ongoing political assaults on LGBTQ+ and in particular trans people,” said TJ Billard, assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University. Anxiety that people in power are pushing a secret “gay agenda,” helps fuel theories that those powerful people are themselves secretly gay, Syracuse University associate professor Joshua P. Darr said.

    It also weaves into existing conspiracies. Allegations by Sinclair include drug use, secret limo rendezvous and murder, drawing on broader, QAnon-like fears of hidden and violent sexual behavior by powerful people. That conspiracy theory holds that powerful, left-leaning figures from politics, business and entertainment are part of a cabal that engages in pedophilia and cannibalism.

    These claims about Obama’s sexuality are rooted in two sources, both which need more explanation and neither of which serve as proof. 

    The love letter 

    On Nov. 20, 1982 — seven years before he met Michelle Robinson, his future wife of 31 years  — Obama wrote a four-and-a-half-page letter to then-girlfriend, Alex McNear.

    The letter, now stored at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library in Atlanta, shows Obama, then 21, exploring where cruelty comes from, whether cruelty is intrinsic to being a man in Western society and how people cope with the pain of existence and eventual death. He also expresses romantic affection for McNear and satisfaction at meeting an intellectual match.

    Much of the letter seems to be a continuation of a conversation with McNear. Neither McNear nor Obama responded to PolitiFact’s requests for comment. 

    The paragraph that Obama’s detractors focused on is on the fourth page: “In regards to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal, perhaps, to perpetuate the farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination. My mind is androgynous to a great extent, and I hope to make it more so, until I can think of people, not women as opposed to men. But returning to the body, I see that I have been made a man, and physically, in life, I choose to accept that contingency.”

    Fast-forward 28 years to 2010, when McNear shared the letter (and several others) with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Garrow, who was working on a 1,472-page Obama biography.

    McNear had redacted the paragraph in question, Garrow told PolitiFact, but later paraphrased its contents in time for Garrow to publish his 2017 book, “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.” In the book, Garrow included a sentence about the letter that said Obama had “considered gayness.” The comment generated minor news coverage at the time.

    Once the letters became public at Emory in fall 2017, Garrow sent a longtime friend and Emory professor Harvey Klehr to transcribe the redacted portion. The June 2018 paperback edition of Garrow’s book newly contained several lines from the letter, including parts of this paragraph.

    Garrow told PolitiFact he included the passage in the paperback because, “My whole attitude is you just put things on the record.” But the paragraph did not change the biographer’s view of Obama or his sexuality.

    “My substantive view is that this is not in any way remarkable,” Garrow said. 

    In the five years since they were published, the letter’s partial contents garnered almost no media attention.

    Larry Sinclair’s statements

    Sinclair’s involvement goes back to Obama’s first campaign for president. 

    On June 18, 2008, Sinclair, then 46 and living in Duluth, Minnesota, held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He opened it by describing himself as “a former recreational drug user, drug trafficker and I’m a convicted felon for crimes of forgery, bad checks and theft by check.” He also said he’d had three legal name changes. 

    Sinclair reiterated claims he had initially made in a since-deleted YouTube video — that during a 1999 trip to Chicago, a limo driver introduced him to Obama, then a state senator. Sinclair said he and Obama did drugs and had a sexual encounter in the limo and again the next day.

    Sinclair’s story further alleged that a former choir director at Obama’s Chicago church had an intimate relationship with Obama — one that Sinclair suggested ended in the director’s murder.

    Taking reporters’ questions, Sinclair said he planned to provide phone records, financial records, and a list of his doctors on his website larrysinclair.org, some as soon as that afternoon. An archived version of the site from August 2009 shows no such information posted. The website links to a PDF showing a receipt from a Comfort Inn in Gurnee, Illinois, in 1999, and a PDF showing a limousine company business registration. It also includes an unsigned affidavit by Sinclair that is addressed to the Chicago police. 

    “The burden is now off of me,” Sinclair said at the press event. “I am now done. It is for others to find the corroborating evidence of my story.” He gave a name for the limo driver and provided several phone numbers he said he was using during the fall of 2007, saying he hoped that someone could “connect the dots.”


    (Screenshot of YouTube video)

    PolitiFact’s attempts to contact Sinclair were unsuccessful. We found no additional evidence to substantiate his claims, and we couldn’t locate a person by the limo driver’s name. 

    In 2008, the media largely dismissed Sinclair’s allegations as lacking credibility. His lack of corroborating evidence and past criminal history made him hard to trust, judging by the news coverage and the comments from people who remember the event: In a 2008 story, Politico reported that Sinclair’s criminal record spanned close to three decades and revealed what it described as “a specialty in crimes involving deceit.” 

    Public records show arrests for Sinclair in Colorado, Florida and South Carolina on charges that include grand larceny, forgery, fraud and disorderly conduct, many from the mid-’80s. He says he was sentenced to 16 years in Colorado, but only served only some of that sentence; Colorado records show he was held on forgery and fraud charges at the time. In 2014, Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show, he was arrested on a charge of larceny as an out-of-state fugitive. 

    Sinclair’s allegations have kept circulating. In 2009, he wrote and self-published a now hard-to-find book titled “Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder?” In 2018, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor in Cocoa, Florida. Sinclair has since maintained a presence on X, formerly Twitter, describing himself as an investigative journalist. 

    Sinclair’s claims have popped up on Facebook videos online over several years. They gained steam as the 1982 letter gained attention. 

    When the Carlson interview resurfaced Sinclair’s claims, more than 36 million people viewed it on X, exposing his allegations to a new generation of social media users who offered their commentary, speculations on Sinclair’s credibility, and reactions. 

    Why now?

    Online claims about Obama’s sexuality resurfaced after Aug. 2, when the Jewish magazine Tablet posted a wide-ranging interview with Garrow. In it, the biographer mentioned the redacted letter and its reference to homosexuality.

    As news about the story spread across the conservative media ecosystem, Garrow said he received 20-plus media requests including from Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs.

    Online media networks are built to amplify stories like these, said Joel Penney, associate professor of communication at Montclair State University. So, when they get picked up, they get “very big very fast.” 


    (Screenshots of news headlines)

    Soon, the claims devolved into conspiratorial Facebook videos with false captions such as “Obama chef ELIMINATED for knowing Obama’s gay secret!” and “Joan Rivers was sacrificed after she exposed Barack Obama being gay!!!”

    There is no evidence supporting either claim.

    Jenny Rice, associate professor of writing, rhetoric, and digital media at the University of Kentucky, said conspiracy theorists may have also found intrigue in the way the paragraph from Obama’s 1982 letter came to light.

    In the world of conspiracy theories, Rice said, “things that are secret and hidden, become almost de facto proof that something very nefarious or evil is happening.”

    Penney said, “In general, the pleasure of conspiracy theory is the sense of satisfaction or pleasure of knowing the real story is not the one that they’re telling you.” 

    Obama, the first and only Black president in U.S. history, has long been a magnet for conspiracy theories with racist roots, most notably regarding claims that his birth certificate is fake. (It’s real.) 

    Penney said Obama also challenges traditional stereotypes of masculinity, making him an easier target for this claim: “He’s an intellectual. He’s a college professor. He’s kind of skinny. He’s not like a big muscle guy.”

    Obama remains popular in recent polls. In 2018, a Pew survey asked people to say which president they believed had done “the best job during your lifetime.” Obama took first place, trailed by Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. In 2022, people polled by NBC News said they had more positive feelings toward Obama than they did toward at least six other public figures, including Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

    Because Biden was Obama’s vice president, Obama also serves as a proxy for attacks against Biden. Former Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly, for example, said that some believe Biden is a “shadow puppet” for Obama. Podcaster and Trump ally Dan Bongino argued Obama is “the real president” now.

    “He’s out of power,” Penney said of Obama, “but I still think that in the national imagination, he still has this very strong image.” 

    Georgia-based reporter Jeff Amy and PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.



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  • Fact Check: On the ground: PolitiFact’s impressions of the 2024 New Hampshire primary season

    EXETER, N.H. — At a town hall in this picturesque New England village, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy came face-to-face with the spirit of the New Hampshire primary process. Ramaswamy was about halfway through his hourlong session Oct. 14 when a woman stood up and delivered a two-minute monologue.

    She said, “Just a few years ago, we all saw firsthand the disastrous results when a ruthless capitalist, a scam artist, a showman and a liar with no public service experience became the president of the United States, and yet we are here again. My fellow New Hampshire residents are being manipulated by showmen and Trump wannabes to win our votes.”

    She called Ramaswamy — an entrepreneur without experience in electoral politics — “not qualified to run” for president, or to even be principal at her children’s school. 

    “Spewing nonsensical, fast-talking, empty words interspersed with name-dropping Thomas Jefferson and George Washington should not be misconstrued as ‘knowledgeable,’” she said.

    When moderator Phillip Bailey, USA Today’s national political correspondent, prodded her to ask a question, the audience member ended her remarks by asking Ramaswamy, “Please, your thoughts.”

    Unfazed, Ramaswamy thanked the woman and said, “Hard questions are welcome.” He explained why he believes an outsider is needed to break the stranglehold of money and corporate interests in politics.

    Ramaswamy’s exchange with the audience member — followed by another attendee’s pointed question about Ramaswamy’s stance on Palestinian rights — illustrates how the up-close-and-personal New Hampshire primary process persists, even in an age of TV attack ads and social media. 

    Yes, several of the candidates we saw at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s First in the Nation Summit in Nashua and in other events in Manchester and Exeter paid homage to the venerated role of the feisty, inquisitive New Hampshire voter.

    Yet, after a couple days on the ground in New Hampshire — part of PolitiFact’s effort to fact-check the GOP primary candidates in partnership with WMUR-TV — there are also signs that something is different this year. Maybe even amiss. 

    Former President Donald Trump, who is lapping the field in voter support, has been absent from events that host all Republican candidates. Following an Oct. 13 address at the “Politics & Eggs” speaker series at St. Anselm College in Manchester, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters he would be “lighting up the town halls and the house parties in New Hampshire a lot of the next 100 days” because voters “resent being taken for granted.”

    “You have to earn this,” DeSantis said. “It’s something that they expect. They want to be able to kick the tires” on candidates.

    DeSantis also told reporters that some candidates feel “entitled” to not show up on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, and that “is going to burn them.”

    Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis meets with reporters after speaking Oct. 13, 2023, at the “Politics & Eggs” series in Manchester, N.H. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)

    Although Trump has visited New Hampshire — speaking at an Oct. 9 rally in Wolfeboro, for instance — he skipped the summit in Nashua, as he has all of the national primary debates. And political observers in New Hampshire agree that the differences between this year and years past are palpable.

    The New Hampshire primary season “feels different — times have changed,” Jane Lane, a secretary for the New Hampshire Republican State Committee who has been involved in the state’s primaries since 1980, told PolitiFact during a break in the summit.

    Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political scientist, said, “Candidates still interact with voters at town meetings — there’s a fairly steady stream of them coming in and out.  What’s changed is what’s happened between those visits.”

    Scala said grassroots movements on behalf of candidates — door-knocking, leafleting, house parties — have waned. Efforts to line up the backing of town and county party chairs “feels more like an anachronism than it used to,” Scala said.

    Part of the reason, said Andrew Smith, another University of New Hampshire political scientist, is that “most people now get their campaign news from national news sources.”

    But Trump’s absence has exacerbated the shift away from ground-level politicking, observers say. 

    Having a front-runner so far ahead, and so infrequently in the state, “dampens things” for the rest of the field, Scala said: “The whole cycle feels like there are two incumbents — President Joe Biden and Trump — running, not one.”

    Republican voter Dave DeWitt, 77, of Dublin, New Hampshire, about 40 miles northwest of the Nashua summit, told PolitiFact that this primary is “definitely different than before.”

    “They’re all here — they’ve all been around. Well, except for one,” said DeWitt, who wore a “DeSantis 2024” baseball cap and told us he voted for Trump twice but isn’t inclined to in 2024. 

    Trump’s absence led Chris Galdieri, a St. Anselm College political scientist, to use a term Trump has historically lobbed against his rivals to describe the New Hampshire primary season: “low-energy.”

    “Candidates show up, leave, and take their campaign with them,” Galdieri said. “I’m hearing from other political science professors who want to bring their students into the political process as volunteers that they can’t find anyone to work with at candidate offices.”

    Despite a moderate streak among New Hampshire’s Republican electorate, Trump’s strong support within the Republican base has led most of his rivals to treat him gingerly on the trail here.

    “The candidates are really reluctant to criticize Trump directly, and are certainly not doing it in moral terms,” Galdieri said.

    During our visit, we saw candidates criticize Trump’s spending, but they often lumped his policies in with those of Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Biden rather than singling him out.

    Lawn signs for Republican presidential candidates on Oct. 14, 2023, outside the First in the Nation Leadership Summit in Nashua, N.H. (Samantha Putterman/PolitiFact)

    A more direct approach boomeranged on Christie. When he spoke at the summit in Nashua, Christie called out Trump for promoting the false narrative that the 2020 election was rigged. It won him the only boos we heard for any candidate during our visit.

    Another well-worn tactic — a lower-profile candidate essentially moving to New Hampshire for a few months to try to generate grassroots support — appears to be a nonstarter this year. Galdieri is especially surprised that Christie, who is the field’s most aggressively anti-Trump candidate and isn’t contesting the earlier Iowa caucuses, hasn’t gone that route. 

    “He seems to come up every couple weeks,” Galdieri said. “That’s it.”

    Scala said the more typical dynamic — nationwide attention boosting local performance — shows this year with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. She’s rising in the polls in New Hampshire less because of ground-level interactions with voters, but rather because she attracted new attention after the two nationally televised Republican debates.

    Ultimately, experts said, the New Hampshire primary will likely remain important in the political process. But measured by delegates that determine the nomination, “the number here is insignificant.”

    That means the primary’s primacy depends on continued in-person participation, the University of New Hampshire’s Smith said. 

    “It’s only important if the candidates show up,” he said. “If they don’t bother to come, it becomes pretty meaningless.”



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  • Fact Check: Hamas has not surrendered to Israel, despite video’s claim

    As Israel prepares for a ground incursion into Gaza more than a week after an Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel by Hamas militants, some social media users are falsely claiming that the war is already over.

    A caption and headline on an Oct. 15 Facebook video read, “Cries of Victory in Israel — Gaza Now Belongs to Israel! Hamas Surrenders Desperately!”

    The Facebook 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 Facebook account that shared the video was created in January and has shared multiple misleading headlines about the Israel-Hamas war, such as the False Oct. 16 statement that Egypt had joined the war against Israel.

    This video about Hamas surrendering originated on a YouTube channel called DCM Global, which shared a video Oct. 15 with the same headline.

    “The Israeli army has entered Gaza as of now,” a narrator in the video said. “The Hamas militia was forced to surrender to the Israeli army by waving their white flags in their hands.”

    (Facebook screenshot)

    The video shows soldiers with their arms up and holding white flags. They aren’t Hamas militants, however. Using a reverse image search, we found the footage posted on YouTube Nov. 25, 2022. That video’s caption said the footage showed Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian soldiers, although we couldn’t authenticate that video.

    But there are no credible reports that Hamas had surrendered to Israel by the time this Facebook video was shared. 

    Israel has been bombarding Gaza with airstrikes, but as of Oct. 16, it had yet to launch an expected ground invasion three days after ordering more than a million people to evacuate Gaza City, the most populous city in the Palestinian territories.

    Israel in 2014 launched a ground invasion into Gaza in a battle that lasted more than a month before a truce that still left Hamas in control. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Oct. 15 to “demolish Hamas” in response to the terrorist attacks.

    The claim that Hamas had surrendered to Israel by Oct. 15 is False.



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  • Fact Check: No, Egypt hasn’t started a war with Israel

    A week after Israel declared war on Hamas in response to the militant group’s attack, social media posts are claiming Egypt has joined the conflict, too, 

    An Oct. 16 Facebook video’s title and caption claimed, “Egypt is now at war with Israel! Tanks are entering Gaza! Arab countries vow revenge.”

    The nearly nine-minute video said the Egyptian government has deployed troops, armored vehicles and tanks to the Gaza border and armed Egyptians have “infiltrated” Israel.

    (Screengrab from Facebook)

    Another Facebook video, shared Oct. 14 from the same account, made a similar claim about Egypt “joining the Israeli war.”

    These posts 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 found no credible news reports or government declarations that Egypt is now at war with Israel. The videos provided no evidence to support this claim.

    In reality, what’s waiting at the Gaza-Egypt border are thousands of pounds of humanitarian aid supplies. More than 100 trucks carrying food, water, fuel and medical supplies have been waiting days to cross safely into Gaza.

    Days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israel shut down two of three Gaza border crossings, leaving Rafah at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt as the only access point for humanitarian aid, the BBC reported.

    But the Egyptian government said Israeli airstrikes have prevented aid from reaching Gaza, The Washington Post reported.

    The Post also reported that the United States has been talking with the United Nations, Egypt and Israel about allowing foreign aid in and getting U.S. citizens out of Gaza but no agreement has been reached.

    The World Health Organization and other humanitarian groups have warned that the situation in Gaza is dire and these supplies are needed immediately.

    Although Egypt has been involved in these efforts to get humanitarian aid to Gaza, there is no evidence the country is at war with Israel. We rate this claim False.



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  • Fact Check: Video no muestra a Gaza en llamas: es de fuegos artificiales en Algeria y un incendio en Azerbaiyán

    Un video en las redes sociales muestra imágenes perturbadoras. La publicación muestra edificios cubiertos de humo rojo, explosiones de bengalas y fuegos artificiales. Negocios en fuego. Según usuarios en redes sociales, estas imágenes muestran la Franja de Gaza.

    “La franja de Gaza en este momento está siendo borrada del mapa, OMG”, dicen los subtítulos de un video en TikTok del 11 de octubre.

    Otra publicación en Facebook del 13 de octubre también muestra las mismas imágenes con el mismo subtítulo. 

    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).

    Videos fuera de contexto llenan las redes sociales desde el comienzo de la guerra entre Israel y Hamas, y este video no es diferente. 

     

    (Screenshots de publicacion en Facebook y TikTok)

    Las imágenes al principio del video incluyen el nombre de un usuario de TikTok, @ramiguerfi41. La publicación ya no está disponible en la cuenta del usuario. Pero el video fue republicado por otros usuarios en TikTok el 2 de octubre, días antes del ataque del 7 de octubre de Hamas a Israel. 

    A pesar de que el contexto del video original no está claro, fans de fútbol en Algeria suelen usar bengalas rojas y fuegos artificiales en celebraciones. 

    Usando imágenes satelitales, AFP reportó que el video fue tomado en Alger, Algeria, al identificar una imagen de una valla publicitaria alumbrada en uno de los edificios. 

    En otras imágenes también se ven establecimientos incendiados. Específicamente se puede notar el letrero de una tienda con la palabra Xalça, que significa alfombra en azerbaiyano, según Google Translate. Al hacer una búsqueda de imagen inversa, PolitiFact encontró esas imágenes en un reporte de un incendio de un mercado en Masalli, Azerbaiyán, el 6 de octubre. 

    Calificamos la declaración que estos videos muestran a “la franja de Gaza” en llamas como Falsa. 

    Read a related fact-check 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.

     



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  • Fact Check: Fact-checking Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire on education, economy and drugs

    MANCHESTER, N.H. — During a visit to New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would be a commander-in-chief who unreservedly supports allies, such as Israel, and takes dramatic steps to oppose groups harming Americans.

    “We are being invaded by these cartels,” referring to drug traffickers in Mexico, DeSantis said during an Oct. 13 address at the “Politics & Eggs” speaker series at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. “They are bringing poison in and they’re killing our people. So as commander-in-chief, you have the right to respond when American lives are being taken”

    DeSantis also criticized the field’s front-runner, former President Donald Trump, for missing the GOP’s First in the Nation two-day summit sponsored by the New Hampshire Republican Party. All other candidates attended.

    “Republicans need to stop making excuses,” DeSantis said. “We’re not going to get a mulligan on the 2024 election. We’re either going to get the job done, we’re going to be able to chart a better path for this country, or we’re going to continue to dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole.”

    If Trump wins the nomination, DeSantis said, “I think you’re gonna see down-ballot effects that are going to make holding the House very difficult.”

    DeSantis also said Trump shouldn’t be criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israeli security lapses in the wake of the Hamas attacks.

    With Israel now at war against Hamas in Gaza, “that is not how you treat an ally,” DeSantis said. “It’s not how I would treat an ally.”

    Here are a few things DeSantis said in Manchester, along with our fact-checks. 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses an audience at St. Anselm College as part of the “Politics & Eggs” speaker series. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)

    Economy

    Inflation “was government-induced by (Joe Biden’s) response to COVID, which was a total disaster, by borrowing and printing trillions and trillions of dollars, acting like that wasn’t going to cause disruptions in the economy.”

    Biden’s economic response accelerated inflation, but there were other factors, too.

    Economists say the Biden-backed 2021 American Rescue Plan Act worsened inflation by putting more money in Americans’ hands after the pandemic began to wane; this meant too much money was chasing too few goods.

    However, COVID-19-related labor market disruptions and supply-chain difficulties are what initially drove up inflation. The war in Ukraine, which started in February 2022, led to a spike in gasoline prices and increased inflation, too. 

    In Florida, “we have the second lowest per-capita tax burden in the entire country.”

    Some analyses say this.

    There are different ways of calculating a state’s tax burden. One ranking that backs up DeSantis’ assertion was conducted by USAFacts, a nonprofit organization that reports on government data. Using 2020 data, the organization ranked Florida as the second lowest tax burden state.  

    One Florida’s tax rates are relatively low, but a leading measurement of state-by-state tax burdens — published annually by the Tax Foundation — ranked Florida as having the 11th-lowest tax burden of any state. Alaska and Wyoming ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.

    But regardless of the method, Florida ranks relatively low for its tax burden in the commonly cited studies.

    Drugs

    “I think (Florida is) the only state in the country that actually had a decline in overdose deaths outright.”

    We asked DeSantis’campaign where he got the data, but did not hear back.

    According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida had a slight increase in overall overdose deaths between 2020 and 2021, from 7,231 to 7,827. 

    The large majority of states also saw increases in the same period, with the exception of Hawaii and Maryland, which saw nominal decreases; and Nebraska, which showed the same figure.

    “We had a situation in Florida, a family was renting an Airbnb unit, and an 18 month old baby was crawling on the carpet. There happened to be residue from fentanyl from the previous tenant, and the baby died just by coming in contact with that fentanyl.”

    That’s what a March lawsuit alleges.

    Enora Lavenir, a 19-month-old visiting Wellington, Florida, died Aug. 7, 2021, at an Airbnb rental where her family was staying.

    The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that the toddler died of acute fentanyl toxicity, NBC News reported when the lawsuit was filed. The family, which was visiting from France, filed a wrongful death lawsuit that said the Florida property had a history of being used for parties. 

    NBC News reported that a sheriff’s incident report showed investigators interviewed the prior renter, who said cocaine and marijuana were used during his stay, but not fentanyl. The sheriff’s office said the death is listed as accidental and the case is closed.

    Attorneys for the prior renter and the property owner, who were named in the suit, told NBC they denied fault, alleging negligence by the parents or others who were at the property, such as cleaners.

    Florida “finished third and fourth, respectively, in fourth grade reading and fourth grade math.”

    This is accurate, according to the 2022 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

    Known as the nation’s report card, the NAEP tests fourth and eighth graders on key academic subjects. The 2022 report, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic, found that Florida’s fourth graders placed third and fourth in the U.S. in average scores for reading and math. 

    DeSantis said the results are because his administration is “fully invested in parental choice.” However, the fuller picture shows that some of these test results have worsened since he’s been governor, while others stayed the same. 

    In 2017, the year before DeSantis won his first term, Florida’s fourth graders had an average reading score of 228. In 2019, that dropped to 225, where it remained in the 2022 assessment.  The NAEP notes that changes above or below .05 are “statistically significant.” These scores are considered below “proficiency” — but are above the national average, which dipped to 216 in 2022. 

    For math, Florida fourth graders in 2017 had an average score of 246. This stayed the same in 2019, but dropped to 241 in 2022. These levels are also considered below proficiency, but are higher than the national average.

    In all, Florida fared better than many other states. The report showed significant declines in math and reading proficiency that affected students in every state and region, with academic progress believed to be largely derailed over disruptions from the pandemic. 

    “Florida currently ranks No. 1 for economy by CNBC. No. 1 for education by U.S. News and World Report.”

    He’s right about CNBC, and partially right on the U.S. News and World Report assessment.

    In July, CNBC ranked Florida first in states that are “running the best economies.”

    U.S. News and World Report ranked Florida No. 1 for higher education, but 14th for pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. Florida’s combined rating for the two categories ranked 10th overall among states.

    The higher education rankings were based on several factors, including the share of citizens holding college degrees, college graduation rates, the cost of in-state tuition and fees and the burden of student debt.

    PolitiFact Copy Chief Matthew Crowley contributed to this report.



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  • Fact Check: Estados Unidos no lanzó ataque hacia el Medio Oriente en apoyo a Israel

    Una publicación en Facebook declara especulaciones alarmistas de que Estados Unidos lanzó el primer ataque hacia el Medio Oriente después del ataque de Hamas a Israel.

    “Estados Unidos lanza el primer ataque hacia Medio Oriente, Joe Biden furioso por los atentados del grupo Hamas en Medio Oriente sobre la ciudad de Israel ha decidido realizar un ataque aéreo”, dice el video del 8 de octubre.

    El narrador de la publicación añadió: “La flota de aviones alcanzó sus objetivos y destruyó bases militares de Hamas”.

    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).

    El presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, dijo el 10 de octubre que Israel tiene el apoyo de los Estados Unidos para defenderse del grupo militante Hamas. Pero no hay evidencia de que Biden haya autorizado un ataque hacia el Medio Oriente en defensa de Israel. 

    Un portavoz de la Oficina del Secretario de Defensa de los Estados Unidos le dijo a PolitiFact el 12 de octubre que el video en Facebook es falso. 

    PolitiFact encontró que la publicación en Facebook es originalmente de otro usuario que crea contenido satírico. En la parte izquierda del video se nota el logo de TikTok y el nombre del usuario @newkasnews. El video en TikTok también tiene etiquetas como #humor, #humortiktok y la biografía del perfil dice: “Nuestras noticias aveces son verdad”.

    Al hacer una búsqueda de imagen inversa, encontramos que varias de las imágenes en la publicación son escenas ficticias del video juego, Arma 3. Pavel Křižka, el manager de relaciones públicas de Bohemia Interactive, la compañía que desarrolló el juego, le confirmó a PolitiFact que las escenas de acción en el video fueron producidas en Arma 3. 

    La compañía también dijo el 10 de octubre que las imágenes estaban siendo usadas para representar falsamente conflictos bélicos de la vida real.

     

    (Screenshot de publicación en TikTok).

    “Si bien es halagador que Arma 3 simule los conflictos bélicos modernos de una manera tan realista, ciertamente no nos complace que pueda confundirse con imágenes de combate de la vida real y usarse como propaganda de guerra”, dijo Křižka.

    Calificamos la publicación que dice que “Estados Unidos lanza el primer ataque hacia Medio Oriente” después del ataque de Hamas a Israel como Falsa. 

    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.



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