Social media users are claiming a Canadian cancer charity replaced reproductive anatomy terminology with gender-neutral language. But this misconstrues the organization’s guidance for treating transgender and nonbinary patients.
On June 7, the conservative X account Libs of TikTok posted, “UNREAL. In order to be ‘inclusive,’ the Canadian Cancer Society will no longer use the term ‘cervix’ and instead use the term ‘front hole.’”
Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren made a similar statement in a video shared June 17 on X: “I don’t know what’s dumber or more delusional, the fact that some are trying to make ‘front hole’ terminology a thing, or that a leading cancer charity, the Canadian Cancer Society, has apologized for not using it and instead referring to a woman’s cervix as a ‘cervix.’”
Lahren’s video showed a screenshot of a June 9 Daily Mail article headline that said, “Top cancer charity apologizes for using word ‘cervix’ instead of trans-friendly ‘front hole.’”
The Daily Mail article cites an archived page of the Canadian Cancer Society’s website that provides information for trans and nonbinary patients about getting screened for cervical cancer.
At the bottom of the archived page, under a section titled, “words matter,” the organization states, “We recognize that many trans men and non-binary people may have mixed feelings about or feel distanced from words like ‘cervix.’ You may prefer other words, such as ‘front hole.’ We recognize the limitations of the words we’ve used while also acknowledging the need for simplicity. Another reason we use words like ‘cervix’ is to normalize the reality that men can have these body parts too.”
The archived page did not say “cervix” would no longer be used. The Daily Mail story may have misconstrued the language about “limitations” as a statement of regret, but the organization was explaining why it uses the word “cervix.” The words “apology,” “apologize” and “sorry” are not mentioned on the webpage, which was archived April 4.
The page has since been updated and the “words matter” section was removed. The only mention of the term “front hole” appears under a question about whether trans men and nonbinary people assigned female at birth should get screened for cervical cancer.
The page recommends these individuals talk with their health care providers about screenings and says, “Anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer. The cervix is at the top of the vagina. Some trans men may call the vagina the front hole.”
When PolitiFact contacted the Canadian Cancer Society, we were referred to the organization’s June 12 statement on cancer information it provides to the trans community.
“We support all people with all cancers in communities across the country, regardless of age, race, language, education, geography, socio-economic status, gender identity or sexual orientation,” the statement said. “We use medical terminology, while also providing cancer information using plain language and formats to meet people’s unique needs and help them navigate their questions about cancer risk.”
In 2023, PolitiFact checked False claims that health professionals were being “urged” to call vaginas “bonus holes” to avoid offending transgender or nonbinary patients.
Viral claims that the Canadian Cancer Society apologized and will “no longer use the term ‘cervix’ and instead use the term ‘front hole’” are based on an inaccurate interpretation of an archived webpage. The organization was explaining why it uses “cervix.” We rate the claim False.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Former President Donald Trump has made illegal immigration and its impact on the U.S. a focus of his campaign – but several of his talking points are wrong or misleading. Here’s what we found among his immigration claims at recent events in the electoral swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
Trump falsely said that a proclamation by President Joe Biden to limit asylum eligibility “establishes an annual minimum of approximately 2 million illegal alien border crossers.”
He distorted how a mobile app for asylum appointments operated, saying it allows “free entry to be released into the United States at the push of a button.” Applicants are screened, and appointments are limited.
Trump offered wildly exaggerated border crossing statistics. For instance, he said that in April, “border crossings were up 1,000% compared to the same month last year.” Apprehensions, which are a proxy for illegal crossings, were down by 30%.
He distorted reporting by the New York Times to misleadingly claim that “88,000” unaccompanied minors who came to the U.S. illegally and were processed by the Biden administration “are missing” and “many of those children are dead.”
Trump claimed that “more drugs are coming into our country right now than at any time in our history.” Federal data for drug seizures by weight are trending down under Biden. As a proxy for drug smuggling, that data suggest that fewer drugs, not more, are coming into the country. Fentanyl seizures, however, have increased significantly under both Trump and Biden.
Trump claimed that “300,000 people are dying a year” in the U.S. from drugs, and said the figure is “probably more than that.” A federal agency reported that there were 107,941 drug overdose deaths in 2022, and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher previously told us that any undercount “should be relatively small.”
He falsely claimed that “virtually 100% of the new jobs under Biden have also gone to illegal aliens.” Since Biden became president in January 2021, employment of U.S.-born workers has increased more than employment of foreign-born workers, which includes those in the U.S. legally.
Trump claimed that real, meaning inflation-adjusted, income and wages for the Black population are down 6% under Biden. But the most recent government data show real income is up for Black households, while real wages for full-time Black workers are down by less than what Trump said.
The former president claimed that illegal immigration under Biden had created “flat-out economic warfare” on Black and Hispanic Americans by “taking the jobs” of those workers, and he said unions were “being absolutely slaughtered.” Employment and union membership data show no evidence of that.
Trump first spoke at a June 6 town hall in Phoenix hosted by groups affiliated with Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit organization. Three days later, he spoke at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on June 9.
We’re focusing only on Trump’s immigration-related assertions in those speeches. In addition to the claims below, Trump repeated his unsubstantiated talking point that “the entire world is emptying their prisons and jails, insane asylums, and mental institutions” and sending those people to the U.S. He has provided no evidence for that explosive claim, as we’ve written several times.
Biden’s Immigration Proclamation
In his Phoenix remarks, Trump wrongly said that a recent Biden proclamation to limit asylum eligibility “establishes an annual minimum of approximately 2 million illegal alien border crossers,” and he further inaccurately claimed that those crossing the southern border illegally are “coming in totally unchecked, unvetted.”
Biden’s June 4 immigration proclamation limits asylum eligibility for those caught trying to cross the southern border illegally when the number of people apprehended reaches a daily average of 2,500 encounters or more for seven straight days. The new rules went into effect immediately, because apprehensions were already higher than that threshold.
As we’ve explained, the proclamation allows the Department of Homeland Security to deny asylum eligibility and remove migrants who are apprehended when the limits are in effect. There are exemptions, according to DHS — including unaccompanied children, victims of “a severe form of trafficking,” noncitizens with visas or other lawful means of entering the country, and noncitizens who enter at a legal port of entry using a DHS-approved process, such as the CBP One app (more on that later). There is also a broader exemption for people who “express a fear of return to their country or country of removal, a fear of persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum” if they “establish a reasonable probability of persecution or torture in the country of removal.”
The restrictions will be lifted 14 days after the daily average of apprehensions drops to 1,500 encounters or less for seven consecutive days. But the daily monthly average hasn’t been that low since July 2020.
None of this calls for a minimum 2 million border crossers. Even if the 2,500 threshold is reached every day for a year, that totals under 1 million, and those apprehended are processed and screened, not simply allowed to come into the country no questions asked.
Trump’s claim is similar to his false claims about the bipartisan Senate immigration deal earlier this year, which would have restricted asylum eligibility when apprehensions reached 5,000 per day for a week. As Republican Sen. James Lankford, one of the architects of that failed legislation, said of the measure in February, “It’s not that the first 5,000 [migrants encountered at the border] are released, that’s ridiculous. The first 5,000 we detain, we screen and then we deport. … If we get above 5,000, we just detain and deport.”
The idea that migrants are “coming in totally unchecked, unvetted” — either before or after Biden’s proclamation — is also wrong. Immigration experts explained to us that those who are apprehended trying to cross illegally are interviewed, have criminal record checks and provide biometric data. Depending on their circumstances and asylum claims, migrants could be released with a notice to appear in immigration court, processed for expedited removal or asked if they want to be returned to Mexico.
At both his Phoenix and Las Vegas events, Trump repeated a false claim he has often made — that the U.S. “had the most secure border we’ve ever had” when he left office. “When I ran in 2016, I ran largely on the border. Border was really bad. I fixed it,” he said in Phoenix. Apprehensions on the southern border, figures used as a proxy for illegal immigration, went up under Trump by 14.7% in his last year compared with 2016.
CBP One Mobile App
The Biden administration has tried to steer those seeking asylum to an application method at legal ports of entry that requires people to sign up for a limited number of appointments through the CBP One mobile app. They are then screened at those appointments. Trump claimed that the app allows “free entry to be released into the United States at the push of a button. Pretty hard, you go like this, ‘Ding, I’m here.’ Congratulations. Welcome to America.”
That’s not how it works.
Trump also falsely said that Biden’s recent immigration proclamation “dramatically expands” the CBP One app, but it doesn’t. Appointments have been capped at 1,450 per day since last June. The Customs and Border Protection press office confirmed to us that there has been no change in the number of daily appointments available.
The CBP One app was launched in January 2023 to accept appointments for migrants who are in Mexico and want to request asylum or parole. DHS calls this “safer, humane, and more orderly” than processing between ports of entry, where migrants cross the border illegally and wait to be apprehended.
Migrants must submit information about themselves in order to get the appointment, including contact information and a photo. At the appointment, they are screened and could be subject to expedited removal, but the majority are released into the U.S. with a notice to appear in immigration court, Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that researches immigration issues, told us when we wrote about immigration in February.
As of the end of April 2024, more than 591,000 people have made appointments with the app, CBP says.
Border Stats
Trump offered some wildly exaggerated statistics on illegal border crossings in his Phoenix remarks.
He claimed that 18 million people had been allowed into the U.S. under Biden. “I think that’s the real number as of now, 18 million people.” There’s no evidence for such a figure. We asked the Trump campaign about this claim, and others cited in this article, but we didn’t receive a response.
According to data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics, there were 6.5 million apprehensions by Border Patrol of migrants trying to cross the southern border illegally from February 2021, the month after Biden took office, to February of this year. (The figure doesn’t correspond to that same number of people because of repeat crossing attempts by the same people. For example, the recidivism rate was 27% in fiscal year 2021, according to the most recent figures from CBP.)
Trump speaking at the “Chase the Vote” town hall at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 6. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Over that 2021-2024 time period, there were also 923,000 “inadmissibles” who arrived at legal ports of entry but didn’t have legal permission to enter the U.S. Of those 7.4 million total encounters at the border, 2.9 million were removed by CBP and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole.
As we’ve explained before, there are also estimates for “gotaways,” or migrants who crossed the border illegally and evaded the authorities. Based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78%, which DHS provided to us, that would mean there were an estimated 1.8 million gotaways from February 2021 to February 2024.
The gotaways plus those released with court notices or other designations would total 5 million, a far cry from 18 million. There were also 407,500 transfers to HHS, which is responsible for children who cross the border on their own, unaccompanied by adult family members or legal guardians, and 883,000 transfers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE transfers include those who are then booked into ICE custody, enrolled in “alternatives to detention” (which include technological monitoring) or released by ICE. So, we don’t know how many of those were released into the country with a court notice. But even if we include those figures, it still doesn’t get us to anywhere near 18 million.
Also, these figures reflect what initially happens when migrants have come to the border. In many cases, the final decision on whether a migrant will be allowed to stay or will be deported comes later, particularly since there is a yearslong backlog of immigration court cases.
Trump also falsely claimed that in April, “border crossings were up 1,000% compared to the same month last year, 1,000% compared to last year. And by the way, last year, it was 1,000% compared to the year before.” In April, apprehensions of those trying to cross illegally were 30% lower than they were in April 2023. And the April 2023 figure was down 9.6% compared with the year before.
Migrant Minors
In February 2023, the New York Times reported that the Department of Health and Human Services was not able to get in contact with more than 85,000 children whom department officials had placed with relatives or other sponsors in the U.S. after the minors illegally came to the country unaccompanied in 2021 and 2022.
In Phoenix, Trump distorted those facts and claimed without any evidence that all of the children “are missing” and that “many” of them are now deceased.
“Because of Biden’s policies, millions and millions of children have been separated from their families and pushed into the hands of the coyotes and the cartels,” Trump said. “And, you know, 88,000, I don’t know if you — if it were me, it would be the biggest story — 88,000 children are missing. … 88,000 children are missing under this administration, and they have no idea. And unfortunately, many of those children are dead.”
That’s not what the Times reported. Its article said: “While H.H.S. checks on all minors by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors, data obtained by The Times showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS agency that manages the program for unaccompanied children, says its “custodial relationship with the child terminates” once he or she is placed with a sponsor. However, before closing a case file, ORR says that 30 days after releasing the child, the office should make a “Safety and Well Being Follow Up Call” and document the results, including noting if the child or sponsor could not be reached “after reasonable efforts have been exhausted.”
But if a call goes unanswered or is not returned, that doesn’t necessarily mean the child is missing. The Times said it interviewed more than 100 minors who had been released from ORR custody. Many were working dangerous jobs “in violation of child labor laws.”
As for deaths, the Times said it “found a dozen cases of young migrant workers killed since 2017.” There was little information provided on when they died or who was president when they came to the U.S. Based on the details the Times provided for four deaths that were highlighted in its story, we were able to determine that two of the children died in work-related accidents during the Trump administration. And at least one of those two reportedly came to the U.S. during the Obama administration. The two other deaths highlighted in the Times story occurred, or likely occurred, during the Biden administration.
The Washington Post Fact Checker wrote about this claim, noting that HHS also couldn’t reach children under the Trump administration.
Drug Smuggling
Trump claimed that there has been a large increase in drugs coming into the U.S. because drug smugglers do not fear the Biden administration.
“More drugs are coming into our country right now than at any time in our history, times five or times six,” he said in Phoenix. “We’ve never had massive amounts of drugs pouring into our country. We fought it like hell.”
And in Las Vegas, he claimed that under Biden “now the drugs are pouring into our country.”
Comprehensive data on the total quantity of illicit drugs smuggled into the U.S. do not exist. But CBP does track the amount of drugs seized by border officials, most of which comes through legal ports of entry. Some use the seizure data as a proxy for how much enters the country undetected. When more drugs are seized, that is seen as an indication that more drugs are coming into the country.
Trump may have been referring only to fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that is lethal in small doses. He mentioned that drug in his remarks in Phoenix and Las Vegas.
The amount of fentanyl seized by border officials has increased by about 462% under Biden, going from almost 4,800 pounds seized in fiscal year 2020 to roughly 27,000 pounds in fiscal 2023. There were about 700 pounds of fentanyl seized in FY 2016, the last full fiscal cycle before Trump took office, so there was a 586% increase in seizures of that drug when he was president.
Overall, federal data show that the total amount of drugs seized nationwide has declined each fiscal year under Biden.
As we’ve written, there were nearly 1.1 million pounds of drugs seized by the Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations in fiscal 2020, Trump’s last full fiscal cycle as president. That was an increase from the 901,000 pounds of drugs seized in fiscal 2019.
Under Biden, there were about 913,000 pounds of drugs seized in fiscal 2021, which is the highest total during his administration. The amount of drugs seized then declined to almost 656,000 pounds in fiscal 2022 and about 549,000 pounds in fiscal 2023.
As of April, more than 320,000 pounds of drugs had been seized through the first seven months of fiscal 2024. That’s more drugs seized than in the same period the prior year, but it’s still well below the totals interdicted during the end of Trump’s presidency.
Drug Overdoses
Trump again inflated the number of people dying each year in the U.S. from drug overdoses, claiming that such deaths are significantly underreported.
In Phoenix, he said: “300,000 people are dying a year. Those are the real numbers. They like to say 100[,000]. They like to say 90[,000]. It’s been that number for a long time. It’s 300,000 people, and it’s probably more than that, and we’re going to have to take very strong action because we can’t let that happen.”
Officially, there were 107,941 deaths from drug overdoses in 2022, up from 106,699 in 2021, according to the most recent figures from the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The total did not top 90,000 deaths until 2020, during Trump’s administration.
When we fact-checked a similar Trump claim in March 2023, Christopher Ruhm, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, told us that he had “not yet seen convincing evidence that the number of overall drug deaths is drastically underreported.” Ruhm wrote in a 2018 paper that incomplete death certificates previously led to drug deaths from opioids being “understated,” but in our interview with him he said that “undercount has fallen over time” because the reporting on death records improved.
Merianne Spencer, then a CDC researcher, also told us last year that there was no evidence hundreds of thousands of drug-related deaths were not being counted.
“While we believe that there could be an undercount due to some overdose deaths still pending investigation at the close of the mortality files at the end of each year, any undercount should be relatively small,” she said in an email.
Native- and Foreign-Born Employment
In Las Vegas, Trump falsely claimed that all of the jobs added in the U.S. during the Biden administration have been filled by people residing in the U.S. illegally.
“Virtually 100% of the new jobs under Biden have also gone to illegal aliens. Did you know that?” Trump said in his remarks. “100% of the new jobs have gone to illegal aliens, can you believe it?”
But he’s wrong. According to estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total employment for the native-born population has increased by almost 7.4 million under Biden. The employment level for people born in America was at 123,065,000 in January 2021, when Biden took office, and it was up to 130,445,000, as of May 2024.
Meanwhile, employment of foreign-born workers increased by about 5.6 million – from an estimated 25,318,000 in January 2021 to 30,896,000 in May 2024. BLS says the foreign-born population, meaning those who weren’t citizens at birth, includes “legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants.” There is no employment breakdown for just people in the U.S. illegally.
Trump may have been referring to a February analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that favors low immigration, which found that, when comparing the fourth quarter of 2019 with the fourth quarter of 2023, the U.S.-born employment level declined by 183,000 and the immigrant employment level increased by 2.9 million.
But Biden did not become president until more than a year after the fourth quarter of 2019; he took office when the U.S. economy was still recovering from millions of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. So, the CIS analysis does not illustrate the change in employment under Biden. It also does not include employment data for only people without legal status.
Black Income and Wages
After falsely claiming that “illegal aliens” have taken all of the new jobs, Trump said, “Meanwhile, real wages of African Americans and the workers from all over the world that came here legally, they’re down 6% under Crooked Joe.”
Three days before that in Phoenix, Trump claimed that “real income for African Americans is down more than 6%” under Biden.
But as of 2022, the real median income for Black-only households was $52,860, according to the latest inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. That was up about 2% from $51,880 in 2020 and $51,750 in 2019. (Figures for 2023 should be out in September.)
On the other hand, more recent data from the BLS show that real wages for Black Americans are down – but by less than Trump claimed.
For Black full-time workers, real median usual weekly earnings, when adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, were $293 in the first quarter of 2024. That was down 3.6% from $304 during the fourth quarter of 2020.
However, some economists argue that wage statistics were inflated in 2020 because low-wage workers disproportionately lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. With millions of low-wage workers out of the workforce, average and median wages appeared to increase because workers with higher earnings kept or gained jobs.
Compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, which was before the pandemic started in early 2020, the real weekly earnings of Black full-time workers are currently down just 0.3%.
Black and Hispanic Unemployment
Unemployment rates under Biden — overall and by race — are low, as we recently reported. The rates for Black and Hispanic Americans reached or tied record lows.
Yet Trump claimed, without evidence, that migrant border crossings under Biden had created “flat-out economic warfare” on Black and Hispanic Americans by “taking the jobs” of those workers.
He also claimed, as he said in Phoenix, “Unions are being absolutely slaughtered because people are coming in, and they’re taking those union jobs.” The data on union membership rates don’t show a slaughtering in recent years.
In Las Vegas, Trump claimed that “with his border nightmare, Joe Biden is also waging an all-out war on the workers of America, especially African-Americans and Hispanic Americans.” In Phoenix, he added, “These people are taking the jobs of African Americans. They’re taking the jobs of Hispanic Americans, and it’s — they’re tremendously affected.”
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t support that.
The Black unemployment rate was 9.3% when Biden took office, and it’s now 6.1% as of May. Over that time, it hit a record low of 4.8% in April 2023. The current 6.1% rate is the same as the pre-pandemic rate in February 2020.
The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 8.5% when Biden took office and has dropped to 5% as of May. In September 2022, it tied a record rate of 3.9%, which was first hit under the Trump administration. The rate now is 0.7 percentage points above the pre-pandemic rate of 4.3%.
There are also more job openings in the U.S. than job seekers: 8.1 million job openings in April and 6.5 million unemployed job seekers the same month.
The number of unemployed Black Americans has gone down under Biden, from 1.9 million people when he took office to 1.3 million in May. The level of Hispanic or Latino unemployment dropped from 2.5 million to 1.6 million over the same time period.
As for Trump’s claim that people who have crossed the border illegally are taking union jobs, the available statistics don’t back that up, either. Our fact-checking colleagues at Politifact interviewed economists and labor experts on this issue, who said migrants who come to the U.S. aren’t likely to take union jobs and instead work in lower level jobs such as being a day laborer.
A 2022 Cato Institute working paper posited that immigration overall from 1980 to 2020 led to a 5.7 percentage point reduction in union density in the U.S. because immigrants “have lower preferences for unionization and increase diversity in the working population that, in turn, decreases solidarity among workers.” That paper doesn’t show immigrants are taking union jobs, but rather having an effect on unionization. (And one of the authors of the report noted on the Cato website that there were other issues to consider, such as whether “unions reduce immigration rather than immigration reducing unions.”)
Regardless, the yearly rates of union membership among wage and salary workers under Biden don’t show evidence that unions are being “slaughtered,” as Trump claimed.
In 2023, 10% of wage and salary workers were union members, down from 10.8% in 2020, the year before Biden took office. But the rate has been declining for several decades; it was 20.1% in 1983, according to BLS figures.
The rate declined under Trump, too, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The union membership rate was 10.7% in 2016, before Trump took office, and it dropped to 10.3% in 2019. The following year, when a union job could have offered more security than others during the pandemic, as researchers found, the rate went up to 10.8%.
The question of how immigration overall, not only illegal immigration, affects the U.S. economy and jobs has long been debated and studied. We wrote about the issue in 2010 and found: “Study after study has shown that immigrants grow the economy, expanding demand for goods and services that the foreign-born workers and their families consume, and thereby creating jobs. There is even broad agreement among economists that while immigrants may push down wages for some, the overall effect is to increase average wages for American-born workers.”
A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released in 2016 largely reiterated those conclusions. It said there was “little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers,” according to a press release on the report, and that the impact on wages over a 10-year or longer period was “very small.” However, the National Academies said there was “some evidence that recent immigrants reduce the employment rate of prior immigrants” and that if there is a negative impact on wages, it’s “most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born workers who have not completed high school—who are often the closest substitutes for immigrant workers with low skills.”
Those conclusions, too, are for all of the foreign-born in the U.S., not solely those who entered the U.S. illegally.
Those in the country illegally don’t have legal authorization to work — but many do anyway. A 2022 Congressional Research Service report said most of those in the country illegally participate in the labor force, and their jobs are “highly concentrated in certain industries, including agriculture, construction, leisure/hospitality, services, and manufacturing.” (Those who have applied for asylum have to wait six months to receive a work authorization.)
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Four years after about 51% of Alaskans voted to adopt a new election system and two years after the new system debuted, some people in the state want to hit the undo button.
A measure that aims to repeal Alaska’s system, which was first used in 2022 and includes open primaries and ranked-choice voting, will appear on the November ballot if it survives a legal challenge.
If a majority of voters approves the ballot measure, Alaska will revert to primaries controlled by the Republican and Democratic parties — where the parties can choose whether to allow ballot access to independent voters who are unaffiliated with either party — and general elections where voters cast ballots for a single candidate.
Proponents of Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system said it makes elections more competitive and improved representation because candidates across the political spectrum have been elected. Critics said the new system lacks transparency and confuses voters.
The repeal measure received enough signatures to qualify for inclusion on the November ballot. But three voters sued seeking to disqualify it, citing errors in the signature gathering and approval process. A state court will decide by mid-July whether the repeal measure can proceed.
Whatever the ballot measure’s fate, Alaskans will use this system for the 2024 election to decide the state’s sole U.S. House seat and dozens of state legislative races. Meanwhile, voters in two more states will consider ballot measures to adopt ranked-choice voting systems.
Here’s what to know about how Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system has worked so far, who’s behind the repeal efforts and why part of the argument against the new system doesn’t add up.
The nuts and bolts of Alaska’s new election system
Alaska adopted an open top-four primary system. That means two things for primary elections:
All candidates, regardless of political party, appear on one ballot.
The four candidates in each race with the most votes advance to the general election.
Voters can choose one candidate per race. When there are fewer than four candidates in a race, all of them move on to the general election, regardless of the votes cast.
Then, in general elections, voters have ranked-choice voting, ranking candidates in order of preference rather than choosing a single candidate. They do this by filling in ovals on the ballot for their first-, second-, third- and fourth-choice candidates, from any political party.
If one candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes in the initial count, that candidate wins.
If no candidate meets that threshold, the counting extends to additional rounds. The candidate with the fewest first-choice votes in round one is eliminated. Voters who ranked the now-eliminated candidate first will have their votes reallocated to their second-choice candidate. This vote redistribution process continues until one candidate exceeds 50% of the vote.
Unlike most states, a majority of Alaska voters are not affiliated with the two major political parties. As of April 2022, state voter registration data showed about 62% of voters were registered as “nonpartisan,” “undeclared” or with a minor political party. About 24% of Alaskan voters were registered Republicans and 13% were registered Democrats.
Alaska was the second state after Maine to adopt ranked-choice voting in federal and statewide elections. Dozens of U.S. cities, including New York City, also use ranked-choice voting in municipal elections, according to FairVote, a nonpartisan national group supporting ranked-choice voting.
Alaska and four other states — California, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington — hold what the National Conference of State Legislature calls “multi-party primaries” in which all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, are listed on the same ballot. Alaska’s system is more commonly referred to as an “open top-four primary.”
This fall, voters in Nevada and Oregon will vote on ballot measures to adopt election systems with ranked-choice voting for federal and some statewide races.
Carol Beecher, director of Alaska’s Division of Elections, said the state has spent $3.5 million since 2021 on the ranked-choice voting system, including education outreach and election equipment upgrades.
Switching voting systems will be expensive. If the state reverts to a party primary system and single-candidate voting, the Alaska Division of Elections estimated it would cost $2.5 million to conduct a public education campaign about the changes.
Who’s who in the repeal effort
Alaskans for Honest Elections is the political group leading the effort to repeal the state’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system. Phil Izon, a Wasilla, Alaska, resident who works for an artificial intelligence technology company, said he started the repeal effort in August 2022 after his grandfather struggled with his ranked-choice voting ballot.
Phil Izon, one of the backers of a ballot initiative that would repeal ranked-choice voting in Alaska, poses for a photo May 14, 2024, outside his home in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP)
Izon, who runs the political group with his wife, Diamond Metzner, and Anchorage resident and minister Art Mathias, described it as a “grassroots” group that isn’t connected to political parties or out-of-state nonprofit groups.
Campaign disclosure reports from 2023 and 2024’s first quarter show most of Alaskans for Honest Elections’ funds have come from Izon and Mathias, and another group they created called the Ranked Choice Education Association.
The Alaska Division of Elections determined in late February that Alaskans for Honest Elections’ repeal measure had gathered 37,042 valid signatures, which exceeds the 26,705-signature threshold needed for approval. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was also the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, was the first to sign.
Opponent’s argument against the new system misconstrues 2022 vote count
After an August 2022 special general election for Alaska’s U.S. House seat, Izon, who is a registered nonpartisan, said Republicans in the state felt “disenfranchised” because of ranked-choice voting.
“In that race, you had like, 112,000 people vote for a Republican, and you only had 75,000 people vote for a Democrat, and yet the Democrat won the election,” Izon said.
That statement is misleading. The figures Izon cites are from only the first round of vote tabulation for that race, in which about 112,000 votes were collectively cast for two Republican candidates, neither of whom received more than 50% of the vote. In the second round, the Democratic candidate received more than 50% of the vote and was declared the winner.
PolitiFact fact-checked a claim similar to Izon’s from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in September 2022 and rated it Mostly False.
The 2022 special general election, in which voters ranked candidates, was held on the same day as Alaska’s 2022 primary elections, in which voters chose a single candidate for each race.
Izon speculated the concurrent elections likely led to “significant confusion” and “a significant portion of voters” might have opted to choose only one candidate in the special general election, rather than rank the candidates. He provided no data to support that claim.
After the 2022 special general election’s first round of voting, Republican Nick Begich received the fewest first-choice votes and was eliminated. Of the 53,810 voters who ranked Begich first, 27,053 of them ranked Republican Palin second and 15,467 more ranked Democrat Mary Peltola second. The Palin and Peltola votes were reallocated after Begich was eliminated, and Peltola was declared the winner with 51.48% of the vote.
About 11,200 votes were “exhausted” after the first round, meaning those voters selected Begich as their first choice, but ranked none of the other candidates. Izon said voter confusion during the August 2022 elections and low voter turnout during the November 2022 general election underscored the need for better education about ranked-choice voting.
Nearly 37% of the voting-eligible population participated in the August 2022 special general and primary elections — the state’s highest primary turnout since 2014. The November 2022 general election had an almost 51% voting-eligible-population turnout, which was the state’s lowest since 1976, the earliest year with available data. (The voting-eligible population includes Alaskans who are 18 and older and excludes noncitizens and felons.)
“I’m not against reform, but I am against force-feeding people something that they may not understand or are ultimately going to make mistakes and then not show up to vote anymore because they don’t get it,” Izon said.
Alaska Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, a Republican, told PolitiFact that the state’s GOP is “vehemently opposed” to ranked-choice voting. But Republican efforts to repeal Alaska’s new election system through legislation have so far failed.
Efforts to block the ballot measure
A lawsuit seeks to disqualify the repeal measure, saying its sponsors “intentionally conducted their signature petition drive illegally, thereby disqualifying thousands of signatures.” The voters who filed the April lawsuit are represented by attorney Scott Kendall, who authored the 2020 ballot measure that established the open primary and ranked-choice voting system.
A decision from the Anchorage Superior Court is expected this summer, court documents show. If a state judge rules in favor of the repeal measure, it will appear on the November ballot.
Proponents of Alaska’s new election system have also filed several complaints against Alaskans for Honest Elections, accusing its leaders of violating the state’s campaign finance rules. In January, Alaska’s campaign ethics commission fined Mathias and Izon more than $94,000 after it found their groups violated state law by funneling their funding through a tax-exempt church and inaccurately reporting funds.
Advocates say new system broadens choices and competition
Advocates for keeping Alaska’s open primaries and ranked-choice voting say the system gives Alaskans more choices at the ballot box, encourages competition in elections and leads to candidates with broad appeal among voters.
(Screengrab from the Alaska Division of Elections’ website)
Juli Lucky, director of Alaskans for Better Elections, which supports keeping the new system, said she believes it doesn’t favor one political party over another. Lucky pointed to Alaskans in 2022 electing conservative Republican Mike Dunleavy as governor, moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski as U.S. senator and Democrat Peltola as the state’s U.S. House member. (Peltola was also the first Alaska Native elected to Congress.)
Giessel, the state Senate majority leader, said she changed her campaign strategy in 2022 to win back the seat she lost in 2020. With Alaska’s new election system, Giessel said she chose to appeal to all voters, rather than just Republicans as she had in the past. (Giessel now serves as a board member of Alaskans for Better Elections’ Foundation, the group’s nonprofit affiliate.)
“This was an open primary. I needed everyone’s vote. And so, I simply started walking door to door, going to every single door,” Giessel said. “I knocked on doors that I would have walked past in previous years.”
During her door-knocking, Giessel said she met Democrats who said they had never voted for a Republican before. Giessel asked these voters to rank her as their second-choice candidate. Giessel received 36% of the vote in the primary, the most among the three candidates, then won the race after two rounds of ranked-choice voting tabulation in the general election, with about 57% of the vote. She now serves as state Senate president.
FairVote and Unite America, a nonpartisan election reform group, analyzed Alaska’s 2022 election results and found that more than 99% of ballots were correctly cast in the ranked-choice voting elections.
In an August 2022 exit poll commissioned by Alaskans for Better Elections, 62% of the 1,200 voters surveyed said they favored open top-four primaries. Survey results shared by the group did not say how voters responded when asked about ranked-choice voting.
After the November 2022 election, Alaskans for Better Elections commissioned another poll, in which 79% of the 800 Alaska voters surveyed said using a ranked-choice voting ballot was “simple.” The poll also found 58% of poll respondents said Alaska’s elections were more competitive under the new system.
Lucky said she encourages people who are unsure about Alaska’s new system to ask themselves, “What are the real reasons I don’t like the system?”
“Are those parts of the system … that I dislike?” Lucky said. “Or is it the outcome of the one election we’ve had under the system that I don’t like?”
Hunter Biden was convicted June 11 of three federal felony gun charges in a Delaware courtroom, where his family members, including first lady Jill Biden, listened to details about his past drug use. It all unfolded in the midst of his father’s re-election campaign.
Despite past complaints from some Republicans about a plea deal in the case they deemed too lenient that later fell apart, a new narrative has emerged: The trial was orchestrated as a distraction from the alleged crimes of President Joe Biden and his family, or to legitimize the New York conviction of former President Donald Trump.
“Hunter Biden guilty. Yawn. The true crimes of the Biden Crime Family remain untouched,” conservative influencer Charlie Kirk said in a June 11 X post. “This is a fake trial trying to make the Justice system appear balanced. Don’t fall for it.”
Other well-known conservatives and Trump supporters echoed the claim. Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called it a “smoke screen to legitimize the Trump conviction & to deflect attention” from Biden family “crimes.” Conservative activist Jack Posobiec on X said, “They went after Hunter on his gun stuff to make you overlook all his Ukraine stuff.” And Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt issued a media statement June 11 calling the trial “nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine.”
But legal experts told PolitiFact that the Hunter Biden trial was legitimate and was an example of the justice system working properly. It’s unlikely that any politician seeking reelection — let alone a U.S. president — would engineer an election-year trial and conviction stemming from their child’s history of addiction.
Hunter Biden was prosecuted by an independent Justice Department in his father’s administration. The investigation began during the Trump administration. Trump’s appointee remained in charge of it under Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland later appointed him special counsel to prosecute the case.
Capital University law professor Dan Kobil said that had the trial been engineered by the White House, it’s unlikely three felony convictions for the president’s son was the desired outcome.
“Such a result,” Kobil said, “can only harm the president and his family.”
Daniel Medwed, a Northeastern University School of Law professor, said Hunter Biden’s conviction refinforces “the legitimacy of the rule of law.”
“Federal prosecutions — let alone trials — for these types of offenses may be rare, but perhaps that simply shows that no one, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, is above the law and that DOJ is committed to that principle,” Medwed said.
PolitiFact reached out to Andrew Kolvet, a Kirk spokesperson, who said Hunter Biden’s conviction amounts to a judicial slap on the wrist and a distraction from what he called “other, more serious crimes.”
Evan Gotlob, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said there’s no evidence the trial was arranged as a cover.
“It shows that (the justice system) works,” he said. “Somebody was indicted for charges, no matter how powerful their father is, and they didn’t want to plead guilty. They had a constitutional right to trial. They had their day in court. An independent jury of 12 people listened to the evidence and convicted him.”
First lady Jill Biden, left, Hunter Biden and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, walk out of federal court June 11, 2024, after hearing Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict on three gun charges. (AP)
How did Hunter Biden’s trial come about?
Hunter Biden was found guilty of making false statements about his drug use in the course of purchasing a firearm — once on a federal application and once to the licensed gun dealer. His third conviction was for knowingly possessing a firearm while addicted to drugs.
He had been under investigation since 2018 over his business dealings and tax issues in a case overseen by U.S. attorney David Weiss, a Trump-era appointee in Delaware. The two sides had reached a tentative plea agreement in which Hunter Biden would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax changes of failing to pay $100,000 in two separate years, for which prosecutors would have recommended probation. They also agreed to a “diversion” program on a gun-related charge.
But the parties abandoned the deal after U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika expressed concerns about its parameters. In August 2023, Garland tapped Weiss as a special counsel to prosecute the case, and a month later a grand jury indicted Biden on the three gun charges.
Shortly after his father won the 2020 presidential election, Hunter Biden announced that he’d learned his tax affairs had been the subject of federal investigation since 2018. Since then, Joe Biden has repeatedly sought to distance himself from any appearance of influence over the Justice Department’s investigatory or prosecutorial processes — especially involving his son.
In a statement after the conviction, Joe Biden said that he “will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter continues an appeal.”
Biden said he would neither pardon his son nor commute his son’s sentence.
What are Republicans accusing Hunter and Joe Biden of doing?
Kolvet, Kirk’s spokesperson, listed unregistered foreign lobbying and money laundering as examples of more serious crimes that Hunter Biden should be investigated for, that may be also linked to his father.
“Whistleblowers have indicated that Hunter Biden received special treatment from the DOJ, that investigations into more serious crimes were obstructed, and the statute of limitations on suspected criminal activities were allowed to lapse,” Kolvet said. “Those allegations deserve serious investigations.”
In July 2023, two IRS agents assigned to the Hunter Biden case testified before the House Oversight Committee and accused the Justice Department of “slow-walking” the investigation, a claim Garland and Weiss denied.
On June 11, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., called the Biden verdict a step toward accountability, but accused the Justice Department of covering for Joe Biden in his family’s “corrupt influence peddling schemes.”
Comer has led a monthslong House investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. He also spearheads an impeachment inquiry into the president that the House launched in December. The investigation included releasing bank records that Comer claimed show millions of dollars in payments to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members and reimbursements Joe Biden received from personal loans to his son and brother.
But so far, none of these investigations have implicated the president in criminal activity or wrongdoing. The impeachment inquiry so far has resulted in two criminal referrals by the House Republicans to the Justice Department, accusing Hunter and James Biden, the president’s brother, of making false statements to Congress.
Didn’t Republicans want a Hunter Biden trial?
Many of the same conservatives critical of the conviction had also been critical of the plea deal, arguing it was too lenient. Some urged Garland to appoint a special counsel, then criticized his choice — Weiss — because Weiss was the prosecutor who had orchestrated the plea deal.
In July 2023, Kirk was among the plea deal’s critics, calling it a “slap on the wrist.”
And although former Trump adviser Stephen Miller argued in June 2023 that the proposed plea was a “sweetheart deal” meant to protect the president, he also was unhappy with the convictions, calling them “a giant misdirection.” “This is all about protecting Joe Biden and only Joe Biden,” Miller wrote in an X post.
Medwed said the claims are an example of the “dog catching the car.”
“Haven’t Republicans been clamoring for years that Hunter Biden should be investigated, prosecuted, and convicted?” he said. ” And now that he has been, for several felonies, including illegal firearm possession, that’s somehow not enough?”
Hunter Biden isn’t out of legal trouble
Separately, Hunter Biden faces trial beginning Sept. 5 in California over federal tax charges. He’s accused of avoiding at least $1.4 million in income taxes from 2016 to 2019 and faces six misdemeanor counts and two felony counts.
The Justice Department said in a December press release announcing the tax charges that Weiss’ investigation continues. When Biden’s plea deal fell apart, prosecutor Leo Wise confirmed after questions from the judge that the investigation was “ongoing” and that charges related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act could still be brought in the future.
That law, known as FARA, requires agents of foreign governments seeking to influence U.S. policy to register with the Justice Department.
Conviction not evidence of White House interference, experts say
Trials on gun charges like Hunter Biden’s are rare, experts told PolitiFact. A 2018 Government Accountability Office report supports that.
About 112,000 firearm transactions were denied in fiscal year 2017 by the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives referred about 12,700 of those denials to field offices for further investigation and U.S. Attorney’s Offices had prosecuted 12 of those cases by June 2018, the report said.
But Hunter Biden’s prosecution isn’t evidence of any improper coordination between the Justice Department and President Biden, experts told PolitiFact.
Most federal prosecutions, not just in gun cases, result in plea deals, rather than trials, Gotlob said. Hunter Biden rejected a plea deal and the Justice Department had strong evidence in the gun case, he said.
“Assertions that the trial of Hunter Biden was a fake, without credible supporting evidence, to quote the late Justice (Antonin Scalia) ‘tax the credulity of the credulous,’” Kobil said.
Although it’s possible for the Justice Department to coordinate with the White House — President Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, went to prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate scandal — Kobil said the Justice Department has developed a “strong tradition of independence from the president.”
Garland instituted a “general policy of non-communication between the Justice Department and the White House,” Kobil said. So much so that press reports have highlighted significant White House-Justice Department tensions.
Medwed said the Justice Department “is famously proud of its independence and often touts its nonpartisan orientation, at least in most administrations.”
“The idea that President Biden could somehow be pulling the strings from behind the curtain strikes me as bizarre and out of tune with how DOJ actually operates,” he said.
Our ruling
Kirk and other well-known conservatives including Posobiec, Ramaswamy and Miller posted on X to say that Hunter Biden’s trial and conviction were contrived to divert attention from what they described as other Biden family crimes.
Hunter Biden’s activities and business dealings have been the subject of federal investigation since at least 2018, when Trump was in office. He was convicted on gun-related charges in a jury trial led by a Trump-era appointee following a failed plea deal that conservatives also criticized as being too lenient.
Joe Biden, Hunter’s father, has repeatedly sought to distance himself from the prosecutorial process. And experts say that under Garland’s leadership, the Justice Department has enacted strict policies to limit communication between the White House and federal prosecutors. The president has not challenged the conviction, which came after more than a week of testimony about his son putting his drug addiction ahead of relationships and responsibilities. Joe Biden has said he will neither pardon his son’s crime nor commute his sentence.
Republicans have sought to expose what they allege to be criminal behavior by the president linked to his family members. So far, none of the investigations, including a presidential impeachment inquiry, have produced clear evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
Hunter Biden still faces additional charges — with potentially harsher penalties — in California later this year. If anything, experts said, Hunter Biden’s conviction shows the judicial system worked as it should, unswayed by the influence of one of the world’s most powerful leaders.
We rate absurd claims that the trial was orchestrated in an election year as Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.
The U.S. government hasn’t aligned with a former naturopath banned from practicing in Australia, but recent Facebook posts could lead users to believe otherwise.
An image of what looks like a Fox News broadcast features a picture of Barbara O’Neill, a former naturopath who promotes alternative medicine, and a chyron that says: “U.S. formally endorses Barbara O’Neill’s ‘US without diabetes’ initiative.”
“BREAKING NEWS!” a June 11 Facebook post sharing the image said. “Barbara O’Neill’s ‘US without diabetes’ initiative has been officially endorsed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
This post and another identical post 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.)
The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to PolitiFact’s questions about the post, but a Fox News spokesperson said the image of the supposed broadcast was doctored.
Searching Fox’s website, we found no evidence the network has ever reported on O’Neill, who in 2019 was banned for life from providing health care in Australia. We also found nothing about O’ Neill on the Department of Health and Human Services’ site.
Looking more broadly online for news coverage to corroborate this claim, we found no credible reporting that the United States has endorsed a diabetes plan from O’Neill.
To some people sharing the story, it seemed like an example of poetic justice: A Trump supporter angry about LGBTQ+ Pride Month tried to burn a Pride flag before his demonstration backfired.
“BREAKING: A MAGA fan in Iowa accidentally burned down his house today trying to burn a gay pride flag,” read the screenshot of an X post shared June 11 by a Threads user.
“Stupid, homophobic and homeless is no way to go through life,” the post’s caption said.
Other social media users piled on, mocking the misfortune of the person who was so blinded with rage by the Pride flag, he set his own house alight.
“Happy Pride Month,” another Threads user wrote, with a smiling emoji.
Although there is plenty of real-life backlash against Pride Month, this tale of karmic payback was pure fiction.
The X account that first shared the story is The Halfway Post. That the post had no links to a news article or any specific details was the first sign something was amiss.
The account is run by a comedian who goes by the name Dash MacIntyre. His X account profile describes the account as “halfway true comedy and satire by @DashMacIntyre. I don’t report the facts, I improve them.”
The profile links to a blog on the website Medium, where he describes himself as a “comedian, political satirist and poet” and a top source of “absurdist satire” on X.
MacIntyre followed up his tale of the MAGA flag burner June 13 with an update. “BREAKING: The MAGA fan in Iowa who accidentally burned down his house yesterday trying to burn a gay pride flag today set his truck on fire trying to burn a DVD of Brokeback Mountain,” he wrote.
Although some social users fell for the fictional story of a Pride flag burner accidentally burning his house down, the story originated as satire. The claim is False.
“Forever chemicals” have become a flashpoint for Wisconsin politics.
Although there has been money set aside — a $125 million trust fund — to address the growing number of communities and homeowners impacted by PFAS, Republicans and Democrats disagree over how best to release the money to the state Department of Natural Resources for spending.
Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, wants the department to decide how to best spend the money to help residents. Meanwhile, Republicans say they want a clear spending plan for the money, created through legislation.
Over the last several months, Evers has continually called for the release of the PFAS trust fund to the Department of Natural Resources, so the agency can focus on solving issues being caused by the chemicals.
But with that call for release has also come controversy, as pointed out by state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, in April 15 on X.
“Do you think he realizes that he’s using the fact that he vetoed how to spend the money to ask that we give him the money anyways?” the post said.
Wanggaard’s post was meant as a comment on a previous post by Evers, in which the governor again called on the Legislature to “release these funds and get this important work done for folks and families across our state.”
But let’s look at Wanggaard’s claim – basically, he’s saying that Evers is asking the GOP to release money for PFAS, but “vetoed (a bill outlining) how to spend the money.”
Is that true?
PFAS have faced a partisan battle
When asked for backup, a Wanggaard spokesperson declined to share any information about the claim. But plenty of information already exists, so let’s dive in.
PFAS, polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widely used, long-lasting synthetic chemicals found in a wide array of consumer products including stain-resistant carpet, waterproof clothing and nonstick cookware. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they’re nearly indestructible — they don’t dissolve in water and break down slowly. Scientific studies have linked exposure to some PFAS in the environment to harmful health effects in humans and animals.
In April, Evers did veto a bill created by Republicans that outlined how they thought the $125 million trust fund should be spent. Issuing the veto, of course, is Evers’ prerogative.
The bill included a provision that some believe could harm the Department of Natural Resources ’ authority to address PFAS contamination, and another targeted at “innocent landowners” that environmental advocates worried would excuse some PFAS manufacturers and users from having to take responsibility for a contamination.
Officials with the department, Evers and Republican bill authors met several times throughout the drafting process and the amendment process, but did not reach a compromise, according to an Oct. 11, 2023, report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Republicans have insisted that the veto also blocks them from releasing the funds currently held in the trust fund, the Journal Sentinel report said.
Republicans voted along party lines to override Evers’ veto, but the Assembly — also controlled by Republicans — has offered no indication it will schedule its own vote.
So, the matter has been left in limbo.
Evers has repeatedly asked the Legislature to release the money. He even tried to call in the Joint Finance Committee to release the funding and his administration submitted several draft plans to the panel that outlined how the money could be spent without further legislation.
On May 7, 2023, for example, the committee released funding from the national opioid settlement agreement, after altering the Department of Health Service’s submitted plan, according to the Journal Sentinel.
But the committee twice refused to hold a vote.
Republican leaders on the committee said the panel can’t hold a vote to release the funding, because “it would be essentially ignoring the governor’s veto on the bill spending the money,” a May 14, 2024 report from the Journal Sentinel said.
Leadership also suggested that releasing the funding after the veto could open the Legislature up to legal action.
Our ruling
Wanggaard claimed that despite the governor’s calls for Republicans to release the PFAS “trust fund,” Evers “vetoed (a bill outlining) how to spend the money.”
Evers in April 2024 did veto a Republican-authored bill that outlined how the money could be spent, and created new programs to aid in cleaning up PFAS and protecting “innocent landowners” from being held liable for contamination on their property.
Of course, Evers isn’t obligated to agree to the Republican plan, any more than Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee are obligated to sign off on his administration’s plans to let the DNR spend the PFAS trust fund.
And without some sort of agreement between Republicans and Democrats, Wisconsin is unlikely to see the PFAS funding released to communities.
We rate this claim Mostly True. While Wanggaard’s statement is accurate, it needs clarification or additional information.
Former President Donald Trump’s felony convictions have led to a lot of questions about what he can and can’t do with a criminal record. He will likely be able to vote in November. He can’t possess firearms. He can run for president.
A June 8 Threads post said Trump’s conviction means he can’t appear on the ballot in the red state of Texas, an important state for the Republican candidate because it delivers 40 electoral college votes.
“Trump can’t be on the Texas ballot because of our state constitution,” the post said. It appeared about one week after a Manhattan jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The post continued: “The United States Constitution does not prohibit felons from holding elected federal office. However, various federal statutes provide that a conviction may result in loss of or ineligibility for office. Texas law prohibits any person convicted of a felony from being a candidate for public office or holding any public office position. A full pardon restores eligibility to run for office.”
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.)
The post wrongly states that Texas’ constitution would knock Trump off the ballot.
“The qualifications of federal office are outlined by the U.S. Constitution, not the Texas Constitution,” Alicia Phillips Pierce, a spokesperson for Texas’ secretary of state, told PolitiFact in an email.
The Texas secretary of state’s website lists the qualifications for the presidency and does not mention criminal history. That’s because it wouldn’t disqualify a candidate from running for the presidency.
The U.S. Constitution upholds the principle that voters decide who should represent them, and its qualifications are limited to natural-born citizenship, age (35 by Inauguration Day) and residency in the United States (14 years).
Texas election code prohibits anyone who is “finally convicted of a felony” from running for office in the state, but that doesn’t cover the U.S. presidency, which is a federal office, said Mimi Marziani, an adjunct professor at University of Texas at Austin law school who has taught constitutional law.
“It does mean that if Trump were finally convicted — after his appeals, etc. — that he would be ineligible to run for, say, Texas Governor,” said Marziani, a lawyer in private practice and former president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit group advocating for voting rights.
Texas election code states that a political party is entitled to have the names of its nominees for president and vice president on the ballot as long as those nominees meet the qualifications “prescribed by federal law.”
Andy Taylor, an election lawyer in Texas who has represented many Texas Republicans, agreed that the claim that Trump’s felony conviction bars him from the ballot is wrong.
“Trump can and will be on the ballot in Texas,” Taylor said.
People convicted of felonies have run for president in the past. Lyndon LaRouche was convicted in 1988 of tax and mail fraud conspiracy and ran for president multiple times from 1976 to 2004. Eugene Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for an anti-war speech, then ran for president under the Socialist Party banner from a federal prison in Alabama in 1920.
Trump faces sentencing July 11. It is unknown whether he will receive jail time.
Our ruling
A Threads post said, “Trump can’t be on the Texas ballot because of our state constitution.”
The U.S. Constitution does not state that felony convictions bar someone from running for president, and the federal framework supersedes any state rules on whether someone can run for president.
The state constitution can establish requirements only to run for state office, not a federal office such as president.
We rate this statement False.
RELATED: Read all of PolitiFact’s coverage on Donald Trump indictments
“Joe Biden is not real,” reads the text in a recent Instagram video.
The evidence that the commander-in-chief is an impostor? A screenshot from Ancestry.com “showing he actually died in 2018 in Guantanamo, Cuba.”
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.)
As Snopes reported, such a page did appear on Ancestry.com but appears to have since been deleted. But the page was archived May 28 and June 12. It says Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. — the president’s full name — and includes other factual details about his life such as his birth place (Scranton, Pennsylvania) and birth date (Nov. 20, 1948).
But it also says he died in 2018 in Guantánamo, Cuba, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
U.S. Army records show there’s no grave for Biden at the cemetery, and a cemetery spokesperson confirmed to Snopes that Biden is “not laid to rest” there.
Anyone can upload information to Ancestry, according to the site’s submission agreement page.
“The decision to upload personal information to the Ancestry website is your responsibility,” the page says. “All information that you post will be displayed and is available for others to search, view or hear.”
The site also reserves the right to “remove any user provided content which comes to our attention and which we believe, in our sole discretion, is illegal, obscene, indecent, defamatory, incites racial or ethnic hatred, violates the rights of others or otherwise violates this agreement.”
We’ve previously fact-checked and rated Pants on Fire claims that Biden is in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and that the current president is a Biden impostor. Such developments would draw intense, global news coverage but there are none.
As of June 13, Biden was in Italy, participating in public events with world leaders and holding a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy.
Biden didn’t die in Guantánamo in 2018, and a since-deleted Ancestry page doesn’t prove otherwise. We rate this post Pants on Fire!
In a video appearing in social media posts, helicopters hover over a sandy beach and vibrant turquoise water, people in swimsuits gawk at aircraft soaring overhead and the sky is a clear, bright blue.
“Breaking,” text over the video says. “US Navy deploys in Miami due to Russian warships 6/12.”
Multiple Instagram posts sharing the video were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
(Screenshot from Instagram)
In reality, a flotilla of Russian warships reached Cuba on June 12, “in an apparent show of force by President Vladimir Putin flexing his missiles in the Western Hemisphere,” The Washington Post reported. The United States and Canada have since made their presence known in the Caribbean. A fast-attack submarine has docked at the Guantánamo Bay naval base, and a Canadian navy patrol ship arrived in Havana on June 14.
But this video doesn’t show the U.S. dispatching multiple Navy aircraft in response to the warships.
It’s footage of the Hyundai Air & Sea Show that happened several weeks earlier over Memorial Day weekend in Miami, a spokesperson for the show told PolitiFact.
What’s more: The sunny skies in the video don’t reflect reality. June 12 in Miami heralded a rare flash flood emergency with “life-threatening flooding,” according to the National Weather Service in Miami. A brief appearance by the sun June 12 was followed by rain and thunderstorms, historic weather data shows.
We rate claims this video shows U.S. Navy aircraft responding to Russian warships June 12 False.
