Social media accounts are attributing another fake quote to actor Kurt Russell.
Former Arizona congressional candidate Josh Barnett shared a post on Instagram that attributed a quote to Russell claiming “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was fraudulent. Barnett ran in the 2022 Republican primary to represent Arizona’s 1st Congressional District.
The post, which is a screenshot of a post on X, read: “Hollywood Actor Kurt Russell just said: ‘It is now proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden CHEATED in the 2020 election with mail-in ballots.’” Barnett captioned the post, “Fact check: TRUE.”
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, Instagram and Threads.)
We reviewed news stories, interviews and Russell’s social media accounts and found no evidence that Russell ever said that. We contacted a representative for Russell about the claim but did not immediately hear back.
It’s not the first time online posts have falsely attributed words to Russell or taken them out of context.
We rate the claim that Russell said Harris and Biden “cheated” in the 2020 election False.
Menopause. The word likely calls to mind both aging and its common symptoms, such as hot flashes, changing moods and difficulty sleeping.
But for one Facebook user, the entire concept is fake — the result of social conditioning.
“There’s no such thing as menopause,” read the Aug. 25 post, which included an image making the same claim. “Listen to nothing but your Intuition with a clear empty mind. All you’ve been conditioned by society to accept as reality is a lie.”
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.)
This claim is inaccurate. Numerous clinics, groups of health care professionals and medical research organizations say menopause exists, and generally define it as the point at which a woman has naturally gone 12 months without a menstrual period.
Dr. Somi Javaid, an OB-GYN and member of the medical advisory board of Let’s Talk Menopause, a group focused on menopause education and health care advocacy, said the claim reflected a “long history of women being dismissed and overlooked in the field of medicine.”
“Menopause is an inevitable stage of life, one that every woman will experience if fortunate enough to live that long,” Javaid said. “It is a phase we can and should acknowledge, diagnose, treat, and ultimately celebrate.”
(Screenshot from Facebook)
Among various organizations, definitions are broadly similar with slight variations.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists: “Menopause is the time in your life when you naturally stop having menstrual periods. … Menopause marks the end of the reproductive years.”
National Institute on Aging:“Menopause is a point in time 12 months after a woman’s last period. The years leading up to that point, when women may have changes in their monthly cycles, hot flashes, or other symptoms, are called the menopausal transition or perimenopause.”
Cleveland Clinic: “Menopause is a point in time when a person has gone 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period. Menopause is a natural part of aging and marks the end of your reproductive years.”
Johns Hopkins Medicine:“When a woman permanently stops having menstrual periods, she has reached the stage of life called menopause. Often called the change of life, this stage signals the end of a woman’s ability to have children.”
World Health Organization: “Natural menopause is deemed to have occurred after 12 consecutive months without menstruation for which there is no other obvious physiological or pathological cause and in the absence of clinical intervention.”
Mayo Clinic: “Menopause is when periods stop for good. It’s diagnosed after 12 months without a menstrual period, vaginal bleeding or spotting.”
What causes menopause?
Menopause occurs naturally when ovaries stop making reproductive hormones such as estrogen and stop releasing eggs for fertilization, according to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, Cleveland Clinic and World Health Organization.
“Estrogen receptors are present throughout the body, from head to toe. When an individual undergoes menopause, estrogen levels plummet dramatically,” Javaid said. “It is now well understood that the reduction in estrogen can lead to significant symptoms, and to deny this reality is both irresponsible and dismissive of the profound impact it has on an individual’s health and well-being.”
That process doesn’t happen overnight. The clinical terms for the time leading up to menopause are “perimenopause” or “menopausal transition,” although people commonly refer to this period as when someone is “going through menopause.” That transitionary period typically begins between ages 45 and 55, the National Institute on Aging said. Johns Hopkins said perimenopause lasts about four years on average.
The average age of menopause — which is reached 12 months after a final period — in the U.S. is about 51 years old, according to Mayo Clinic. For women worldwide, the World Health Organization said natural menopause occurs “generally between 45 and 55 years.”
Naturally occurring menopause isn’t even the only kind: Some people might experience something called induced menopause, which is caused by a surgery or medical treatment.
How do you know when it’s happening?
Menopause symptoms include irregular periods, hot flashes, vaginal dryness, insomnia, night sweats and mood changes, according to medical research and health organizations.
“As a general rule, one-third of women will transition into menopause with only mild symptoms or none at all,” Dr. Katie Lessman, an OB-GYN, told Nebraska Medicine in 2022. “Another third will experience bothersome symptoms for a few years. The final third will have symptoms that improve but never go away.”
Menopause exists and this Facebook post made a ridiculous claim. We rate it Pants on Fire!
Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign recently said she supports a proposed policy aimed at the ultrawealthy that President Joe Biden has pushed for years: a new tax on unrealized capital gains, or unsold assets that have increased in value.
But some social media users exaggerated how such a tax would affect the majority of Americans.
An Aug. 25 Facebook post read, “Home Owner Do you Realize that Harris plan to tax unrecognized Capital Gains mean(s) if your house goes up in value you will have to pay that Tax Even if you don’t sell your House!”
(Screengrab from Facebook)
Another Facebook post showed a photo of a Fox News segment about Harris’ tax plan with the words “unrealized gains tax: 25%; currently: 0%” circled. Below that, text on the photo read, “This means they will tax you for the house you own extra every year!”
Other posts on Facebook and Threads made similar claims about the proposed tax. They 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, Instagram and Threads.)
Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump, said at an Aug. 23 campaign rally in Las Vegas that this unrealized capital gains tax “will soon be applied to small business owners and you will be forced to sell your restaurant immediately.”
Harris’ official campaign account, Kamala HQ, responded on X that the tax would apply only to people with $100 million in wealth.
How would Harris’ plan to tax unrealized capital gains work?
Harris has not released any tax policies. Harris’ campaign said she supports tax provisions in Biden’s 2025 budget proposal, including a tax on unrealized capital gains, Axios, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported.
When PolitiFact contacted the Harris campaign for more information about Harris’ tax plan, the campaign declined to comment, pointing instead to reporting from Axios and Minneapolis-based news outlet KMSP-TV.
Biden’s budget proposes tax hikes for the wealthiest Americans; it would not raise taxes for people earning less than $400,000 a year.
One of Biden’s proposals is a 25% minimum tax on income, including unrealized capital gains, for taxpayers with a net worth — meaning assets minus liabilities — of more than $100 million.
If instituted, the White House said, this so-called billionaires tax would apply only to the wealthiest 0.01% of Americans — not the vast majority of the country’s taxpayers. In the U.S., there are about 9,850 centimillionaires, or people with at least $100 million in wealth, according to a March 2024 report from Henley & Partners, a wealth and migration advisory firm, and New World Wealth, a global wealth research firm.
So, of this small ultrawealthy group, only the people who have more than 20% of their wealth in tradable assets — for example, publicly traded stock — would pay taxes on unrealized capital gains, Biden’s budget proposal states.
Taxpayers with more than 80% of their wealth in nontradable assets, such as real estate and shares in private startups, would be considered “illiquid.” These taxpayers could choose to include only unrealized gain in tradable assets when determining how much they owe in taxes, according to the budget proposal.
Currently, capital gains are taxed only after a realized event, such as when someone sells an asset. If an asset remains unrealized — never sold — it’s not subject to taxes.
Some economists said an unrealized capital gains tax would promote more equity in the tax code.
“As it is now, normal workers are taxed on their entire income, but we have a situation where the very rich can have hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of capital gains which go altogether untaxed,” said Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Wealthy people can hold stocks until they die, and then pass the assets to their heirs without paying taxes as long as their gains are unrealized, Baker said.
Biden’s budget proposal argues that tax-free accumulation of wealth over generations exacerbates income-and-wealth disparities in the U.S.
Adam Michel, tax policy studies director at the libertarian Cato Institute, said an unrealized capital gains tax would overly burden the Internal Revenue Service and would discourage investment in burgeoning businesses.
“Such a system would encourage investors to put their money in safer investments, such as government bonds, rather than new innovative industries, like new energy sources, biopharmaceuticals, or AI,” Michel said.
Economic experts told PolitiFact that this proposed tax change is not certain, even if Harris wins the presidency. Any changes would require congressional approval, and control of the House and Senate will also be decided in November.
It’s also unclear whether a wealth tax, such as this one, would survive legal challenges.
Our ruling
Social media posts claimed Harris’ “plan to tax unrecognized Capital Gains mean(s) if your house goes up in value you will have to pay that Tax Even if you don’t sell your House.”
That claim ignores several critical facts about Harris’ plan, which is derived from Biden’s 2025 budget proposal. Most crucially: Most Americans wouldn’t have to pay a tax on the appreciated value of their unsold assets and this tax would apply only to people with more than $100 million in wealth. That’s fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S.
Although this tax would affect the country’s top 0.01% of taxpayers, the claim that American homeowners, broadly, would be taxed is an overstatement. We rate this claim Mostly False.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ record as a California prosecutor has come into renewed focus as she runs for the White House. Harris touts her record of prosecuting violent criminals and her Back On Track initiative, which aimed to reduce reoffending.
But a viral video appears to show her speaking boastfully about how she could ruin lives as a prosecutor. “Power hungry Kamala Harris describing how she can ruin lives with the ‘swipe of a pen,’” an Aug. 16 X post said. The X post included a video of Harris.
“I learned that with the swipe of my pen, I could charge someone with the lowest-level offense, and because of the swipe of my pen, that person could be arrested,” she said in a 2019 New Hampshire speech.
Harris also listed consequences, including potential lost work, jail time and costly attorney fees for the person charged. “Weeks later, I could dismiss the charges but their life would forever be changed. So, I learned at a very young age, the power,” the video ends abruptly.
We saw a similar video on Facebook with text on the video that said: “How can anyone trust her with executive power.”
The Facebook video 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, Threads, and Instagram.)
But the viral is misleading and omits important context. We reviewed the 2019 speech given in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at an annual banquet by the state’s Democratic Party members. Harris was then running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
We found that rather than bragging about her prosecutorial power, Harris was discussing the importance of leaders using power responsibly because of the potential for harm if power is misused. She said that it was something she realized early in her 20s when she started work as a prosecutor.
In her 2019 speech, Harris sought to describe then-President Donald Trump as using his power irresponsibly. The viral clip ends before a crucial part of her speech.
“And I was just a lowly deputy DA,” she went on to say to laughter from the audience. “Yet we have a person in the White House who holds the office of president of the United States, who does not fully, or even partially, understand what it means to have power,” she said of Trump. “When you truly understand what it means to be powerful, you understand that the greatest measure of your strength is not who you beat down, it is who you lift up.”
Harris had used the “swipe of my pen” rhetoric before. In 2010, she described prosecutorial power in similar terms while running to become California’s attorney general, at an event organized by Google. At the time, she was San Francisco’s district attorney.
After talking about her pen swipe’s power, she added: “It is an incredible amount of power, and you want to make sure that the people who have this kind of power are taking seriously, the responsibility, in terms of understanding as much as anything the impact on the people who will be affected by that.”
PolitiFact has previously fact-checked claims about Harris’ record as a prosecutor.
We rate the claim that this video shows Harris describing ruining lives with her pen False.
Voter ID remains a contentious topic in U.S. elections, and a new California bill related to the practice has become the target of misinformation.
“SB 1174 was just passed in California, and it opens the door for illegal immigrants to vote by eliminating the requirement for voter ID at polling places,” read a screenshot of an X post shared on Instagram.
The Instagram 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.) We also saw a Facebook post that said the bill would “ban voter ID statewide.”
These claims are misleading and lack context about California’s current voter ID laws.
Senate Bill 1174 prohibits local governments from requiring voter ID at polling places, but existing state law already says that, in most cases, California voters needn’t show ID before voting at the polls. The Legislature passed the bill in August, and it awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval.
The bill was drafted in response to Huntington Beach, California, passing a measure that would supersede California state law and require voters to present their ID at the city’s polls.
By state law, however, California voters need to show ID to polling place workers only if they are voting for the first time after registering to vote by mail and did not provide a valid form of ID on their registration form, a California secretary of state spokesperson said in an email.
S.B. 1174 would block Huntington Beach’s voter ID requirement, which is to take effect in 2026.
“If enacted into law, SB 1774 will reduce potential voter confusion that could result from having local election procedures in place that conflict with state law,” said Kim Alexander, president of the voting rights nonprofit California Voter Foundation.
Voter ID is hotly debated in U.S. politics. Opponents say tighter laws make voting less accessible, especially for minorities, young people, low-income voters and people with disabilities. Proponents of tighter rules say requiring voter ID can prevent fraud.
Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections; Congress banned noncitizen voting in 1996. Noncitizens rarely cast ballots. Those who do face stiff penalties including deportation.
In April, California officials sued Huntington Beach, saying its new voter ID policy conflicts with state law and would create barriers for low-income, nonwhite, young, elderly and disabled voters.
State Sen. Dave Min, D-Calif., who authored S.B. 1774, said April 2 that California “already has robust identification procedures to register to vote.”
All people who register to vote in California must sign a notice, under penalty of perjury, that states they are U.S. citizens, a California secretary of state spokesperson said. Voter registrations are then verified with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ driver’s license databases and Social Security Administration information. Applicants whose information is not verified must show their IDs at the polls the first time they vote.
Providing false voter information is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison. Voter fraud does occur in California elections, but is rare. For example, there were eight documented cases of voter fraud in California in the 2020 election, according to data from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
The majority of California voters do not vote in person. Eighty-nine percent of voters in the 2024 presidential primary election voted by mail and federal law mandates that all first-time voters must show ID when requesting mail ballots.
Our ruling
An Instagram post said S.B. 1174 would eliminate voter ID requirements at polling places in California. A similar one on Faceook said it would “ban voter ID statewide.”
S.B. 1174 prohibits local governments from requiring voter ID at polling places, but existing state law already says that in most cases, California voters don’t need to show ID before voting at the polls. The bill was drafted in response to a Huntington Beach bill that conflicts with state law and requires voters to show ID at polling places in 2026.
All California voters must validate their identities through a multistep process when registering to vote. Falsifying voter registration information is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison. There have been instances of voter fraud in California elections, but they are rare.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.
PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman contributed to this report.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
The Trump campaign wants voters to know that Vice President Kamala Harris claims to have flipped and now supports the Trump border wall — but they don’t want you to believe she’ll actually follow through. That’s misleading.
Neither Harris nor her campaign has indicated that she has changed her position. The thin piece of evidence on which this political bank shot rests is that Harris said during the Democratic National Convention that she would sign the bipartisan border security bill that failed in the Senate earlier this year. Trump opposed the legislation. That bill would, among many other things, allow about $650 million appropriated during the Trump administration for border wall construction to be used for that purpose.
The origin of this claim is an Aug. 27 article in Axios headlined, “Harris flip-flops on building the border wall.”
“If she’s elected president, Kamala Harris pledges to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called ‘un-American’ during the Trump administration,” the article begins. “It’s the latest example of Harris flip-flopping on her past liberal positions such as supporting Medicare for All and banning fracking — proposals that aides say she now is against.”
That claim that Harris has flipped her stance on the construction of a border wall has since been boosted by conservative commentators and elected Republicans as well as the Trump campaign. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance tweeted, “Kamala Harris is a fake. If she wants to build the border wall, she could start right now!” And Trump posted to Truth Social a video of Sen. Lindsey Graham saying in a Fox News interview, “To the people in Arizona, do you really believe she’s going to build a wall? That’s just bullshit.”
Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, released a statement in response to the Axios article, pinning the alleged policy shift to anonymous Harris campaign staffers.
“How much longer will the mainstream media allow Kamala Harris to hide and use staff to speak on her behalf? It’s DAY 37 of ZERO interviews and Kamala’s anonymous campaign sources are now claiming she supports President Trump’s border wall — this is a preposterous and false claim,” Leavitt stated. “She called the wall ‘un-American,’ a ‘waste of taxpayer money,’ ‘medieval,’ and said it isn’t going to ‘stop’ illegal immigration.”
On Truth Social, Trump posted a link to a video of Fox News’ Sean Hannity in which he claimed Harris “even reportedly went full MAGA on the border wall just this week, at least that’s what the campaign is saying.”
But the Axios article isn’t based on anonymous Harris campaign staffers. Rather, the story hinges on Harris’ pledge during her speech at the Democratic National Convention that “as president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he [Trump] killed, and I will sign it into law.” The unnamed Harris staffers in the Axios article pushed back on the idea that she had changed her position.
Harris was referring to the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, a $118 billion bill that sought significant changes in border policy. The bill failed in the Senate in February, garnering just four Republican votes after Trump voiced opposition to the bill.
The bill included money to greatly expand detention facilities, and to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges to reduce the yearslong backlog in cases to determine asylum eligibility. It sought to expedite the asylum process, alleviating the so-called “catch and release” policy whereby migrants are released into the U.S. pending asylum hearings. And it would have increased the standard of evidence needed to win asylum status.
The bill also would have supplied more funding to interdict fentanyl and human trafficking, and it included $60 billion in aid for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.
And, as one of the architects of the bill, Republican Sen. James Lankford, explained from the floor of the Senate prior to the bill coming to a vote in February, it included “more border wall construction.”
Specifically, the bill states that none of the money set aside for border barriers during the Trump administration in appropriation bills in 2019 and 2020 “may be made available for any purpose other than the construction of steel bollard pedestrian barrier built at least 18 to 30 feet in effective height and augmented with anti-climb and anti-dig features.” The bill extended the deadline to spend that money to September 2028, but it does not include new funding.
The bill “doesn’t have everything in it I wanted, it doesn’t have everything in it my Democratic colleagues wanted,” Lankford said at the time. Indeed, the accommodation for border wall construction was not something Biden or his administration touted when they threw their support behind the bill.
Lankford’s office told Axios that the legislation — if the Senate version were to be resurrected — would translate to an estimated $650 million for border wall construction. That’s a fraction of the $18 billion sought by Trump in 2018. In recent campaign speeches and interviews, Trump has said he intended to build another 200 miles of new wall, but that Biden’s election upended it. At $20 million per mile, the $650 million from the bipartisan border bill would amount to less than 33 miles.
Despite Biden vowing during the 2020 campaign that not “another foot of wall [would be] constructed on my administration,” some border wall has been built during the Biden administration. As we wrote in October 2023, Biden said he could not stop some funds appropriated during the Trump administration from being spent on border barriers, and budget experts we spoke to agreed.
Harris’ Past Comments About Trump Border Wall
As a senator in 2018, Harris called the massive wall proposed by Trump “un-American.” (Trump was inconsistent about how much he proposed to add to the existing 650 miles of barriers he inherited — saying during his campaign that there should be a total of 1,000 miles, but then as president revising that to 900 to 800 to 700 and even less.) In February 2020, Harris posted on social media, “Trump’s border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won’t make us any safer.”
In a CNN town hall in January 2019, then presidential candidate Harris dismissed Trump’s “medieval vanity project called a wall.”
CNN host Jake Tapper asked if Harris would vote for a compromise bill that included “wall money” but also permanent protections for so-called Dreamers who were brought to the country illegally as children (something Harris has said she supports).
“Let me be very clear. I’m not going to vote for a wall under any circumstances,” Harris said. “And I do support border security. And if we want to talk about that, let’s do that.”
Republicans could argue that Harris has changed her position from that town hall about accepting some border wall construction in a compromise border bill. But Harris’ stated support for the failed Senate bill does not suggest she supports every part of the bill — as Lankford said, the bill did not include everything either Democrats or Republicans wanted — it only shows a willingness to accept a bipartisan compromise. (Of note, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have contributed to the wall. About 130 miles of border barriers were built under President Barack Obama. Indeed, images of the border wall feature prominently in a recent Harris ad that seeks to portray Harris as “tough” when it comes to “fixing the border.”)
Republicans are trying to accuse Harris of being dishonest about a significant policy flip-flop. But the premise is flawed. Harris has not suddenly thrown her support behind funding for a massive wall, such as Trump proposed. She has voiced support for a compromise bipartisan border bill that, among many other things, would allow $650 million of money appropriated during the Trump administration — a fraction of what Trump sought — to be used for border wall construction over the next four years. And, we note, Trump opposed the bill.
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After news broke about an altercation at the Arlington National Ceremony involving former President Donald Trump’s staff, some social media users drew parallels between that incident and a years-old campaign ad by President Joe Biden at the same location.
An NPR report described a verbal and physical dispute that happened after a cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering and taking photos in an area known as Section 60, an area containing the graves of recent U.S. casualties. Federal rules prohibit political campaigns from taking photos in the area.
Users on X resurfaced a May 25, 2020, Memorial Day campaign ad that President Joe Biden shared on his official X account. It featured a photo, dated May 31, 2010, of Biden standing over a tombstone.
“Well well well,” read one Aug. 29 X post by conservative commentator Jack Posobiec. “Joe Biden literally did a campaign ad at the graves in Arlington in 2020.” Donald Trump Jr. also amplified these claims.
(Screenshot from X)
But the circumstances surrounding the two events are different. The photo of Biden at Section 60 was taken while he was performing his duties as vice president, not as part of a campaign.
The public can take photos at Arlington National Cemetery without a release from Arlington or the Army Department. But Arlington National Cemetery’s media policy prohibits filming or photographing “if it conveys the impression that cemetery officials or any visitor or family member is endorsing any product, service or organization.”
The policy also said the cemetery will not authorize “filming for partisan, political or fundraising purposes,” citing 32 Code of Federal Regulations 553 of the Hatch Act. That law says “memorial services and ceremonies at Army National Military Cemeteries will not include partisan political activities.”
On May 31, 2010, the date of the photo featured in the ad, Biden was vice president. He participated in a wreath-laying ceremony and delivered a speech as part of his duties. PolitiFact couldn’t find the photo’s source online, but similar photos show him meeting with families in Section 60. The Defense Department also uploaded a photo of Biden speaking with families in Section 60.
At the time, Biden was not running for office. He was sworn in as vice president Jan. 20, 2009. Former President Barack Obama launched his reelection bid with Biden on April 4, 2011.
Biden’s ad, which honored the military and fallen service members’ families, also included this disclaimer at the start of the video: “The use of U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement of the U.S. military, any military personnel or the Department of Defense.”
Trump visited Section 60 on the anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 service members. Some service members’ relatives invited him to visit their loved ones’ graves, The Washington Post reported. Later, a TikTok video featuring a montage of that visit was uploaded on Trump’s official account. It showed clips of Trump visiting tombstones and meeting families while the ad’s narration and text criticized how Biden’s administration handled the U.S.’ exit from Afghanistan, when the suicide bombing happened.
The U.S. Army issued a statement defending the cemetery official who tried to stop Trump’s campaign staff from filming, calling the incident “unfortunate.”
PolitiFact contacted the White House, Arlington National Cemetery and the U.S. Army for comment but has not received on-the-record responses.
Our ruling
An X post said that Biden “did a campaign ad at the graves in Arlington in 2020.”
Biden shared a 2020 campaign ad that included a photo taken at Arlington National Cemetery, but it was taken in 2010 as part of his vice presidential duties, not as part of a campaign activity.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
In her first media interview as the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris stretched the facts on her past stance on fracking and the number of clean energy jobs created by recent legislation:
Harris said she doesn’t want to ban fracking, maintaining that she “made that clear on the debate stage in 2020.” Not exactly. She said in the vice presidential debate that year, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”
Harris claimed the Inflation Reduction Act has been responsible for $1 trillion in clean energy investments and more than 300,000 clean energy jobs. But not all the funding has come from the IRA, and her jobs figure is an estimate based on announced projects.
Harris’ interview with CNN’s Dana Bash aired on Aug. 29.
Fracking
Asked if she would ban fracking — a position she supported in 2019 — Harris said she would not and maintained she “made that clear on the debate stage in 2020.” Not exactly. She said in the vice presidential debate that year, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Harris about her comment in a September 2019 CNN town hall, when she was running for the presidential nomination and was asked by a climate activist if she would commit to a federal ban on fracking because of environmental concerns for local communities. Harris answered, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking, so yes.”
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a technique that uses water, sand or chemicals to extract oil and natural gas from underground rock formations.
In the Aug. 29 interview, Bash asked, “Fracking, as you know, is a pretty big issue, particularly in your must-win state of Pennsylvania. … Do you still want to ban fracking?”
Harris answered: “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”
Pressed on the issue, Harris repeated: “In 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I’ve not changed that position nor will I going forward.”
But in the October 2020 debate — when Harris was Biden’s vice presidential running mate — Harris stated Biden’s position, not her own, saying: “Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has been very clear about that.”
She later reiterated that “the American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. That is a fact.”
In this week’s interview, Bash asked if there was “some policy or scientific data” that changed Harris’ mind. She responded: “What I have seen is that we can — we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”
Green Jobs
Harris claimed the Inflation Reduction Act has been responsible for $1 trillion in clean energy investments and has created more than 300,000 jobs. But not all the funding has come from the Inflation Reduction Act, and her jobs figure is an estimate based on announced projects, not jobs that have been created to date.
“The Inflation Reduction Act, what we have done to invest, by my calculation, over 10 — probably a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, investing in a clean energy economy,” Harris said. “What we’ve already done creating over 300,000 new clean energy jobs.”
Harris has used the $1 trillion figure before, but her total included two other bills, as E&E News reported earlier this year.
E&E News, Jan. 22: “When the VP references the roughly $1T historic climate investment, she is referencing all of the clean energy, resilience, environmental justice, and innovation funding that is part of our historic effort to address the climate crisis, increase resilience, advance environmental justice, and build a clean energy economy,” a White House spokesperson told E&E News.
As we’ve written before, the Inflation Reduction Act included an estimated $369 billion over the next 10 years for climate change and “energy security.” E&E News writes that “in addition to the IRA, the number includes: $54 billion from the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 that went toward manufacturing, research and development; more than $530 billion of new spending in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; and funding increases the administration secured at EPA and the departments of Energy, Transportation and Commerce.”
As for Harris’ reference to clean energy jobs, the Harris campaign referred us to a report by Climate Power — an organization that advocates clean energy. In a June 20 report, Climate Power wrote that more than 300,000 jobs were “announced or [have] moved forward” since the Biden administration’s “climate and clean energy investments became law in August 2022.”
“Since August 2022, companies have announced or moved forward with projects accounting for more than 312,900 new clean energy jobs for electricians, mechanics, construction workers, technicians, support staff, and many others,” Climate Power said in its report.
The Harris campaign also referred us to the U.S. Department of Energy’s annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report for 2023 and 2024. In those reports, the DOE said the U.S. added 114,000 clean energy jobs in 2022 and 142,000 jobs in 2023. But not all of those 256,000 new jobs over the last two years were because of Biden’s policies. The reports said the jobs were due “in large part” to the administration’s policies, without providing any estimate for the number of jobs created by the bills signed by Biden.
“[A]s investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act really start to gear up, I expect we’ll see this growth [in 2022] accelerate over the next few years,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said of the 114,000 clean energy jobs created in 2022.
There were 28,000 more clean energy jobs created in 2023 than in 2022, an increase of about 25%.
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A photo of former President Donald Trump, bloodied and raising a fist in the air after a July 13 assassination attempt, appeared widely on magazine and newspaper covers, online and on social media.
The image was taken by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, who captured many images of Trump as he was hustled away in a scrum of Secret Service agents at the rally that day in Butler, Pennsylvania.
But recent social media posts claim the image is fake, generated by artificial intelligence.
“He has six fingers,” one Aug. 23 X post said. “This is clearly AI generated.”
(Screengrab from X)
Another X post made hours earlier said something similar — but it quickly became clear in the post’s replies that it was intended to troll Trump supporters.
Vucci’s image was authentic and the moment was widely observed. But these posts claiming it wasn’t a real photo include an altered version of the real image as proof.
In the altered image, Trump appears to have six fingers. AI has gotten better at drawing hands but misshapen hands with unusual numbers of digits can still be a clue that an image is fabricated.
In a video posted on The Associated Press’ website, Vucci talked about his experience photographing the rally from his perch in front of the stage. Photos from other photographers immediately after the assassination attempt also show Trump with five fingers.
We rate claims that seek to discredit the authenticity of Vucci’s image as being AI-generated False.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Sam Brown, the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, has publicly supported cutting federal spending in ways that experts say would require deep cuts in popular programs. But his Democratic opponent goes too far in a TV ad that claims Brown “embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security.”
Brown did not say he would end Medicare and Social Security. To the contrary, his campaign told us that Brown is “against cuts to either program.”
The ad, which was released earlier this month by Sen. Jacky Rosen’s campaign, refers to comments that Brown made in February 2022 about Sen. Rick Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Rescue America.” Scott designed the plan as a roadmap for governing if the Republicans took control of Congress after the 2022 midterm elections. At the time, Brown was running in Nevada’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate – a race that he lost to former state Attorney General Paul Laxalt.
“Point Six” of Scott’s plan, which was labeled “government reform/debt,” said, in part: “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Social Security (1935) and Medicare (1965) were created by legislation, so Scott’s plan was criticized at the time by Democrats and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for threatening to end both programs.
In response, Scott said in a March 2022 interview that “no one,” including himself, “wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security,” claiming that he just wanted to start a debate in Congress on how to “preserve those programs.” In February 2023, when he reintroduced his plan, he added a note saying it “was never intended to apply to Social Security, Medicare, or the US Navy.”
Despite the plan’s revised language on the senior programs and Brown’s insistence that he would not cut either program, the Rosen campaign is using Scott’s plan to attack Brown in a TV ad.
The narrator in the ad says, “Sam Brown embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security. Sam Brown publicly supported forcing massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and was caught on tape saying he admires the plan to phase out Social Security and Medicare entirely in five years.”
The single source cited in the ad is the American Journal News, a website operated by True Blue Media LLC and funded by Democratic donors. The site’s “about” page says, “True Blue Media is a for-profit media company that relies on ad revenue and investors, including The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation,” which is a nonprofit affiliated with the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, or AB PAC.
The Aug. 2, 2023, article on the partisan website is based on comments Brown made in February 2022 during a monthly meeting of Las Vegas’ Spring Mountain Republican Women. However, Brown made no mention in his remarks of sunsetting Medicare or Social Security or forcing massive cuts to the programs.
When asked which senator he “admires the most,” Brown said he admires Scott for “trying to cast a positive vision” and “attempting to create a roadmap for a better America,” referring to Scott’s Plan to Rescue America.
“I think I appreciate that he’s trying to look forward. He’s trying to cast a positive vision,” Brown said of Scott. “One of the things I think that some of our Republican Party leaders have failed at is that we have become labeled, and sometimes we do this to ourselves, as the party of no. ‘Oh, no, we’re not going to do that.’ You know? We’re the party of just rejecting policy instead of the party of projecting ideas, and what Rick Scott has done in attempting to create a roadmap for a better America is something that I admire as well.”
Brown did not address any specifics of Scott’s plan in his remarks, and his campaign told us that Brown doesn’t support any cuts to Social Security or Medicare.
“This issue is very personal to him, as he has been the beneficiary of Social Security and Medicare,” Brown campaign spokesperson Richard Hernandez told us in an email. “He is against cuts to either program.”
Brown is a retired Army captain who was seriously injured and badly burned by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Some military veterans are eligible to receive benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, and the Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, programs. Those who receive SSDI for 24 months are automatically eligible to receive Medicare.
“Protecting Social Security and Medicare is important to me,” Brown said in a recent YouTube video that his campaign sent to us. “After I was medically retired from the military, Social Security and Medicare were there for me when I needed it most.”
Brown also said, like former President Donald Trump, he supports exempting Social Security benefits from federal income tax. Such a plan would have the net effect of increasing benefits for some seniors, but it also would increase the federal deficit unless the revenue loss is offset. Taxing Social Security benefits raised $51 billion in revenue in 2024, according to the Social Security Administration.
Other Evidence From Rosen Campaign
We asked the Rosen campaign for other evidence that Brown, as the TV ad said, “embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security.” We received a statement that cited not only Scott’s plan but other fiscal policies that Brown has supported.
“The ad clearly states that Sam Brown supports forcing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which is a well-documented consequence of several economic plans he supports, including Sen. Rick Scott’s plan that would phase out Social Security and Medicare in 5 years, which Brown likened to ‘a roadmap for a better America,’ a GOP balanced budget amendment, and his own call to cut federal spending ‘across the board,’” the statement read. “Analysis has consistently found these programs would either force or threaten massive cuts to federal spending, including Social Security and Medicare. And in each case, Brown did not state he believed the programs should be exempt from cuts.”
As we mentioned earlier, Brown’s campaign has said that he would not end or cut Social Security and Medicare.
However, the Rosen campaign has a point that Brown has supported cutting federal spending in ways that experts warn would put popular programs at risk. The campaign’s evidence included a Nevada Current article last month about Brown saying he could support legislation that would cut the federal budget by 1% in successive years in an attempt to balance the budget.
Sen. Rand Paul has been proposing what he has called the “Penny Plans” for years, but the proposals have gotten progressively more aggressive. For example, Paul’s “Penny Plan Budget” for fiscal year 2019 would have required cuts of 1% every year for five years in discretionary spending, which excludes spending on mandatory programs such as Medicare and Social Security. More recently, Paul proposed a “Six Penny Plan” for fiscal year 2023 that would have cut federal spending by 6%, except for Social Security, annually for five years.
“Rand Paul’s done a lot of studying on this in the past. He used to say if we reduce spending by 1% a year for several years, we can get back to a much healthier spot,” the Nevada Current article quoted Brown as saying at a Republican women’s luncheon in February. “I haven’t heard an update on all that with all the spending we’ve had in the last 24 months, but I think that’s a very reasonable place to start. Just saying, ‘Hey, let’s have all the agencies and departments start to tighten their belts across the board.’”
While he did say it is “very reasonable” to cut federal spending annually by 1%, Brown did not say which programs he would cut and did not mention Social Security and Medicare at all. The lack of specificity is an inherent problem with Paul’s legislation and his attempts to pass such a plan in Congress, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
In 2018, when Paul introduced his “Penny Plan Budget,” the CRFB wrote: “Penny plans tell lawmakers how much spending to cut, but they do not provide any guidance as to what programs should be cut.” And, CRFB added, “without those specifics, it’s very difficult to see how dramatic spending cuts of this nature are politically or mathematically possible to achieve.”
In its article, the Nevada Current also quoted Brown as saying, “A balanced budget amendment is also something I would support.” Such amendments could trigger deep spending cuts, including to Medicare. In 2013, economist Henry J. Aaron of the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center warned the House Judiciary Committee that a Republican BBA proposal at that time “would negatively impact the economy and threaten the nation’s financial stability.”
“The cuts would have had to apply to national defense, veterans benefits, nutrition assistance, Medicare—everything other than Social Security and interest payments,” Aaron testified. “These cuts or equivalent tax increases, it is estimated, would have put 15 million more people out of work, doubled unemployment from 9 percent to 18 percent, and cut GDP by 17 percent.”
Paul himself has said that Medicare would be subject to cuts in his most recent “penny plan.” In an interview with Fox News in June 2023, the Kentucky Republican said “the penny plan used to work. It was a 1% cut across the entire board. Now, it’s a 5%, but it’s across everything,” including Medicare.
“Look, the Medicare budget is a trillion dollars,” he said. “You think you can’t skim off a few percentage without actually reducing healthcare? I think you could actually do it and enhance healthcare by making Medicare more efficient, but no one ever does it. They just say it’s off the table.”
We asked the Brown campaign how its candidate intends to balance the budget without cutting Social Security and Medicare – two programs that are the main drivers of federal deficit spending, as the Congressional Budget Office said in a June report. But the campaign provided no substantive answer. Instead, it referred us back to the video of Brown discussing the need for “better economic policies” without offering any specifics.
“Bad monetary and fiscal policies are at the root of most of our problems — if we fix this and have growth, we’ll be in a much better place economically and these programs will remain solvent,” Hernandez, Brown’s spokesperson, told us. “Sam won’t allow cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”
It’s fair game for the Rosen campaign to criticize Brown for supporting fiscal policies that could potentially put popular programs at risk, including Medicare. But it’s inaccurate to say that Brown “embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security” or suggest that he supports “the plan to phase out Social Security and Medicare entirely in five years.” At this point, not even Scott — the author of the Plan to Rescue America — supports subjecting Medicare and Social Security to the sunset requirement.
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