Category: Fact Check

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is promoting a bill that he says will ensure only U.S. citizens can vote. He says that although the practice is already banned, the government has not established safeguards to prevent it from happening.

Noncitizen voting poses a “clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system,” Johnson said May 8 during a press conference as he advocated for the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.”

Johnson, R-La., referred to voter registration forms that ask applicants to check a box noting that they are U.S. citizens.

“If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name,” Johnson said. “That’s it. That’s all that’s required. And there’s a very small chance that illegal would get caught.”

President Joe Biden has “welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens” and “the millions that have been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote,” Johnson said. 

Are millions of people who came in under humanitarian parole able to register to vote?

The Biden administration has admitted about 1 million people into the U.S. through different humanitarian parole programs that grant people temporary legal permission to live and work in the United States. But the people participating in these programs are not U.S. citizens, and it would be a crime for them to register to vote in federal elections.

In 1996, Congress banned noncitizen voting in federal elections as part of a broader toughening of penalties for people in the country illegally. States banned it decades earlier. “Noncitizens” includes people legally and illegally in the U.S.

Safeguards already exist to prevent noncitizen voting. Think tanks, academics, courts, journalists have analyzed claims about noncitizen voting for years and have found only sporadic cases that wouldn’t swing federal elections.

Johnson did not say how many noncitizens had illegally voted. “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Johnson said at the May 8 press conference. “We don’t have that number.”

The Republican bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. However, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Arizona case that states must permit people to register for federal elections using a federal form that does not require documentary proof of citizenship. States may have their own form, but they must also accept the federal form.

People’s eligibility for public benefits or driver’s licenses doesn’t mean they’re allowed to register to vote.

Humanitarian parole beneficiaries qualify for certain federal benefits, such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid and Medicare. But to qualify for the benefits, many need to have lived in the U.S. with parole, or another qualifying status, for at least five years. Once they’re in the U.S., parole program participants must apply for a legal status, such as asylum.

Generally, people under humanitarian parole programs qualify for driver’s licenses, though rules vary by state.

Still, only U.S. citizens can register to vote.

A Johnson spokesperson pointed us to a news article about a letter a South Carolina state representative sent the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division requesting an investigation after a refugee received voter registration forms at the South Carolina Medicaid Office.

But receiving a voter registration form does not mean someone is registered to vote, John Michael Catalano, South Carolina State Election Commission’s public information officer told PolitiFact. The commission told PolitiFact it found no incidents in which non-U.S. citizens with state IDs or driver’s licenses had voted.

A South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said even though the agency provides voter registration forms, the state’s election commission reviews them.

The news article mentioned the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which says that any office providing public assistance must offer voter registration. However, the law also says voter registration applications must specify that only citizens can register and applicants must affirm that they are citizens under penalty of perjury.

“This affirmation is a big deal — not just ‘checking a box’ like Speaker Johnson suggested,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center Voting Rights Program at New York University school of law. “Making a false claim of citizenship on a voter registration form is a federal criminal offense that carries steep penalties, including deportation.”

Fraudulent voter registration is often a result of misunderstandings or errors. For example, some noncitizens accidentally register to vote when applying for a driver’s license. But the number of  people who fall into this category is “minuscule,” Rutgers University political science professor Lorraine Minnite previously told us. 

Nationwide, from 2020 to 2022 about 55% of voter registrations forms were filled out at motor vehicle departments, the Election Assistance Commission data shows. About 1.4% of voter registration applications came from public assistance offices. The other registrations were largely submitted online, via mail or in person.

What some states do to verify voting eligibility

The federal database Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, lets states check someone’s immigration or citizenship status. But only a few use it to check for voter registration purposes.

Georgia found that there were 1,634 noncitizens who tried to register to vote over 25 years — there were about 7 million on the voter rolls in 2022 when the state released this data. But none of the 1,634 were registered. 

States often use driver’s license records to vet eligibility, but this method isn’t foolproof.

People illegally in the country can get driver’s licenses in some states. Also, noncitizens driver’s licenses may later become naturalized citizens.

Our ruling

Johnson said “the millions (of immigrants) that have been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote.”

About 1 million people have entered the U.S. during the Biden administration through humanitarian parole programs. Some of them can qualify for driver’s licenses and public benefits. And motor-vehicle departments and public benefit offices must provide people with voter registration forms under a federal law. But it is illegal for people under humanitarian parole to register to vote because they are not U.S. citizens.

If a noncitizen granted parole submits a voter registration application, election officials would vet it; just submitting a form doesn’t automatically register a person to vote. Noncitizen voting is rare and Johnson provided no data to prove it’s a widespread problem.

We rate this statement False.

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This spring, multiple federal government agencies announced changes to antidiscrimination policies for LGBTQ+ people at work, at the doctor and in the classroom. Around the same time, a federal court ruled that restricting gender-affirming care and barring a West Virginia transgender student from playing girls’ sports violates antidiscrimination law.

Behind these policy and legal shifts is a 2020 Supreme Court case most people likely have never heard of: Bostock v. Clayton County. 

Weighing cases in which employees said they were fired for being gay or transgender, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock that firing people for their sexual orientation or gender identity amounts to “sex discrimination,” which is prohibited under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The landmark Bostock ruling’s impact on LGBTQ+ civil rights is proving significant. Here’s a crash course on the case, how it is shaping federal policy and being used to challenge legislation that aims to curb transgender rights.

Bostock v. Clayton County unpacked

In June 2020, as the world reeled from the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests against police brutality gripped the United States, the Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County. The ruling combined three Title VII lawsuits in which employees said they were fired because they were gay or transgender. 

All three cases were “direct evidence” cases, said Jennifer Shinall, Vanderbilt University law professor. That means there was no dispute that the plaintiffs were fired for their LGBTQ+ identities; the question was whether that counted as illegal discrimination.

In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court found that it did. 

Neil Gorsuch, considered to be a “reliable conservative vote” on the Supreme Court, authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices on the bench at the time.

Justice Neil Gorsuch in his chambers at the Supreme Court in September 2019. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County. (AP)

Gorsuch said the 1964 Civil Rights Acts’ authors likely did not consider LGBTQ+ identities when drafting the bill. But, he wrote, even if “sex” referred only to biological sex assigned at birth, “It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” 

He gave an example he said shows such discrimination: A woman being attracted to men is tolerated, but a man being attracted to men is not. “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Gorsuch wrote. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

This ruling is binding precedent only for Title VII employment cases, and Gorsuch made it clear that it did not address questions beyond those narrow circumstances. Nevertheless, many LGBTQ+ advocates and legal experts saw potential for the same legal logic to be applied to other laws that prohibit “sex discrimination,” such as Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools; the Affordable Care Act; and even the U.S. Constitution. 

How the Bostock case is shaping federal policy

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing each federal agency to review and revise its policies to ensure they reflected the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bostock. 

The Biden administration’s call to expand Bostock’s reasoning to other federal laws and corresponding policy drew criticism. Nevertheless, federal agencies including the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services responded, releasing guidance, and in some cases, formal regulations clarifying that “sex discrimination” includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The Education Department’s recently released regulations for Title IX are one of the most controversial changes. Title IX, passed in 1972, aims to protect students against sex discrimination and harassment in classrooms and school admissions. But it is best known for changing athletics to require that women and men receive equitable participation opportunities.

On April 19, citing the Bostock case, the Education Department updated its regulations to extend protections against sex discrimination to LGBTQ+ students. Although the regulations stopped short of providing guidance on the controversial issue of transgender athletes in school sports, the inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities under the nation’s leading gender-equity law prompted backlash.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote on X about the rule change, “This expansion embraces radical gender theory & erases the protections women fought for.”

Twenty-two state attorneys general have filed lawsuits challenging the new Title IX regulations. Some of those states have passed laws that potentially violate the new regulations.

Interpretations of Title VII and Title IX have often informed one another, said Shinall, the Vanderbilt University law professor. So, it’s not unusual that an interpretation of a term in one statute would affect the other. 

But opponents are expected to argue that Bostock only applies in limited circumstances, and these changes overstep agencies’ policy-making authority.

“The bottom line is that the (Biden) Administration is interpreting Bostock more broadly than perhaps the (Supreme) Court will ultimately accept,” Duke University law professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman told PolitiFact in an email. 

Title VII is a general nondiscrimination rule, but other statutes, such as Title IX, make exceptions for single-sex accommodations such as sex-segregated living facilities and single-sex sports teams. 

It’s unclear how the Supreme Court will apply Bostock’s logic to those statutory exceptions — such as whether barring a transgender girl from playing on a girls’ sports team is unlawful discrimination. 

Issues of privacy, safety, fairness or equal opportunity could figure in deciding how nondiscrimination rules should apply beyond employment. 

“I think that the margins of Bostock are going to be subject to a tremendous amount of litigation,” said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law. “As the Biden administration continues to examine the applicability of Bostock in other contexts, that’s going to provide new testing ground for the scope of the ruling.”

How Bostock is being used in legal challenges to anti-trans laws

The Bostock case also has been cited by individual plaintiffs in lawsuits nationwide that challenge laws restricting transgender access to bathrooms, school sports teams and gender-affirming care.

Most recently, the U.S Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit applied Bostock’s reasoning to a case in which a Houston County, Georgia, sheriff’s department employee alleged discrimination because the health insurance policy would not cover her gender-affirming surgery. The court ruled in her favor, writing, “Applying Bostock’s reasoning to the facts in this case, we conclude that the district court was correct in finding that the (policy) violated Title VII.”

Other lower courts are also weighing whether Bostock’s reasoning applies to other federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination or the Constitution’s equal protection clause. 

(Source: U.S. Courts)

 

Several circuit courts have found that Bostock’s LGBTQ+ protections apply to other federal statutes, and in some cases, the Constitution’s 14th Amendment equal protection clause.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in both a school athletics case and a case about access to gender-affirming care that discrimination against transgender people constituted illegal discrimination under federal law, and in the case of health care, constitutional law.

But some circuit courts have decided differently. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in the case LW v. Skrmetti, said Bostock was limited to Title VII and does not apply to the Constitution.

Most lawsuits make a two-part argument, alleging discrimination under federal laws such as the Affordable Care Act or Title IX, and that certain state laws violate the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

“In all of those cases to some degree, the question of Bostock’s applicability beyond Title (VII) is at issue” said Joshua Block, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union‘s LGBTQ & HIV Project. The ACLU is serving as legal representation for transgender plaintiffs in several of these cases.  

The Supreme Court has declined in the past to review cases that wrestle with similar issues. But given the number of cases related to Bostock, and disagreement among the circuit court rulings, experts wonder if the Supreme Court will have to resolve the issue. 

“The court is always more likely to take cases with clean facts that allow the court to only decide one issue and decide as narrowly as possible,” Shinall said.

In Michigan, a battleground state, elections have been scrutinized in recent years, and this year’s presidential election will be no exception. That’s likely one reason a proposed change to Michigan’s election laws is garnering social media attention.

“Voter fraud investigations are being banned by Michigan lawmakers!” read a May 4 Facebook post.

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.)

We searched Google for “voter fraud investigations,” “ban” and “Michigan” and found a May 2 article by the conservative news website The Daily Wire. It said Michigan Senate Bill 603 would “ban bipartisan election boards from investigating voter fraud.” That bill passed the Democratic-controlled Michigan Senate on April 30 without Republican support.

If it becomes law, S.B. 603 will amend Michigan’s procedures for election recounts, with a goal of prohibiting recounts when the outcome could not change the election results.

During the 2022 midterm elections, Michigan voters approved constitutional amendments related to abortion access and voting rights by hundreds of thousands of votes. Nevertheless, a group requested costly recounts that could not change the election outcome; that same group had unsuccessfully tried to decertify Michigan’s 2020 election results because of unproven fraud allegations.

The bill would also clarify the definition of a recount, explicitly distinguishing it from an election investigation, and remove some mentions of “fraud.”

We found no indication in the S.B. 603’s text that the measure would prevent investigations of voter fraud allegations.

Michigan election officials, a Michigan state senator, a Michigan attorney general’s office spokesperson and a voting rights group executive director all told PolitiFact that they know of no proposed legislation that would ban “voter fraud investigations.”

What does Senate Bill 603 say?

State Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, who sponsored the bill, said it amends sections of the election code related to recounts, and does not ban investigations of fraud.

Michigan law allows candidates who believe that a mistake or discrepancy resulted in an incorrect election result to petition for recounts.

“Recounts are conducted solely to recount the ballots and confirm the results of the election,” said Lindsay Oswald, county clerk and Register of Deeds for St. Joseph County, Michigan.

The bill “makes process improvements for recounts,” Oswald, a Republican, said. “I do not see how it would stop lawful investigations for illegal activity.”

S.B. 603 requires candidates who request recounts to ask that the number of votes being recounted exceed the margin of difference by which the election was lost.

“We’ve seen situations where there literally was no possible outcome of a recount that was going to change the results, so then instead county clerks were spending our taxpayer dollars on, essentially, a frivolous recount,” Chang said.

Some inaccurate claims about the bill appeared to stem from the legislation’s definition of “recount” and the removal “fraud or mistake” as a rationale for requesting a recount. If the measure becomes law, candidates who broadly believe they were “aggrieved on account of error” will be able to request recounts.

A recount “is an administrative process limited to determining the number of votes cast on ballots for each candidate seeking a particular office or determining the number of votes cast for or against a ballot question,” the bill reads. “A recount is not an investigation or an audit of the conduct of an election, and a recount does not assess the qualifications of electors participating in an election or the manner in which ballots are applied for or issued to electors.”

County Clerks from both political parties who helped draft the legislation also distinguished recounts from investigations.

The bill “simply spells out” that recounts aren’t investigations of voter fraud, “but rather an available option for candidates or impacted citizens to have the ballots counted to ensure that the results that were certified were correct,” said Democrat Barb Byrum, Ingham County Clerk. “I fail to see how voter or election fraud would be discovered by a recount.”

Proposed law would remove language about boards of canvassers investigating fraud

State Sen. Ruth Johnson, R-Holly, who served two terms as secretary of state, voted against the bill April 30 because it would remove language she said gives “bipartisan county boards of canvassers in our state the authority to investigate fraud, wrongdoing, or a violation of the law in our elections.”

A spokesperson for her office pointed to a portion of law that said the board of canvassers has the power, if there is probable cause, to subpoena witnesses, open ballot boxes and examine ballots. After that, if canvassers had “good reason to believe” fraud had occurred, they were responsible for reporting their findings in writing for a prosecutor or judge.

S.B. 603 repeals that language.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Christopher Thomas, who served as Michigan’s elections director for 36 years under Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, testified in support of the bill during a May 14 Michigan House hearing.

Thomas, who was Board of State Canvassers secretary from 1981 to 2017, said that in practice, boards of canvassers have not conducted fraud investigations.

The board’s “investigatory powers” expire as soon as a recount is certified, Thomas said, and there is “no time to conduct an investigation and complete a recount by the timelines required so that the successful candidates can take office.”

He also said recount petitioners themselves rarely have time to investigate and allege specific instances of fraud when requesting ballots be retabulated.

“Most petitions that come in are based on the fact that it’s a close election,” Thomas said. “Rarely, if ever, that I recall could anybody specify any fraud that they were basing their recount on.”

Oswald said that election officials or voters can report suspected election law violations to local law enforcement officials, county prosecutors, the state Bureau of Elections and the attorney general.

“I have never had an investigation triggered by a recount,” she said, adding that election officials would reach out to the appropriate law enforcement entity for anything “observed or reported as illegal.”

Voters wait in line outside the municipal offices before polls close on Election Day in Shelby Township, Mich., in Macomb County, Nov. 3, 2020. (AP)

Law enforcement investigates voter fraud

Quentin Turner, executive director of Common Cause Michigan, a voting rights group, said recounts are handled by election administrators who lack the authority to investigate criminal fraud.

“Voter fraud is a crime and investigations into crime can only be done by law enforcement,” Turner said.

Investigations into possible election improprieties “would be triggered by a report of some manner of illegal activity as defined by Michigan state statute,” Byrum said.

People who suspect voter fraud is occuring can address their concerns “at the proper time in the proper way,” Byrum said.

“For instance, there are some who are spreading the false accusation that people are voting who shouldn’t be,” she said. “We have election challengers that are nominated by political parties or other organizations who may be present in any precinct location and watch and challenge a voter’s qualifications. The time to do that is not at a recount, which is what this bill clarifies.”

During the May 14 House hearing, Joe Rozell, Oakland County elections director, testified in support of the bill and said that people at recounts who observe something they suspect is fraudulent may freely file criminal complaints to law enforcement. A law isn’t required to permit that.

In 2018, for example, Rozell said officials suspected a local clerk had committed fraud and, “absent any statute, we reported it to the secretary of state and the attorney general, there was an investigation, and that election official subsequently plead ‘no contest’ to a felony and was removed from office.”

Our ruling

A Facebook post says, “Voter fraud investigations are being banned by Michigan lawmakers!”

Our review found one piece of legislation that would change the scope of one entity that oversees election processes. That legislation, S.B. 603, does not ban voter fraud investigations.

Critics noted that Michigan S.B. 603 would strike one provision from existing law that says boards of canvassers can investigate fraud and report it to the appropriate enforcement authority. Michigan election experts said in practice, canvassing boards lack the time to investigate fraud while conducting a recount. And anyone can report suspected fraud to the appropriate authorities — including canvassing board members — even without a statutory obligation.

An S.B. 603 bill sponsor and county clerks from both parties said the bill is aimed at clarifying the purpose of recounts, which are to retabulate ballots to ensure that an election’s results are correct — they are not criminal fraud investigations.

Law enforcement handles fraud investigations.

We rate this claim False.

The Antisemitism Awareness Act, a bill that was voted on during a surge in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses against the Israel-Hamas war, has sparked claims on social media that it eliminates parts of the Bible.

A May 9 Instagram post in Spanish shows news segments reporting about the bill and a man explaining: 

“The House of Representatives in the U.S. just passed in an almost unanimous way, 320 votes in favor and 91 against, this past May 1, the Antisemitism Act, which proposes to eliminate parts of the Bible. Nothing more and nothing less than the New Testament for the teaching that the Gospels said that Jesus was handed over by Herod to the Jews to be crucified.”

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 man in the video says that the Antisemitism Act proposes to eliminate parts of the Bible, but PolitiFact didn’t find any mentions of the religious book or its passages in the bill’s text.

What does the bill say? 

The bill, passed May 1 by the U.S. House, requires the federal Education Department to use the definition of antisemitism outlined by the Stockholm-based International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance when addressing allegations of discrimination in higher education. If discrimination is determined to have occurred, schools would risk losing federal funding. Currently, there is no standard definition for antisemitism in such discrimination cases.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition says:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” 

Conservative critics have also expressed concern about the bill and whether the antisemitism definition could cover elements of the Bible.

Kansas City Chiefs’ kicker Harrison Butker mentioned the Antisemitism Act in a May 14 commencement speech at Benedictine College, saying, “Congress just passed a bill, where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted on X May 1 that the text of the bill “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”

The Anti-Defamation League considers blaming Jews for killing Jesus a “myth” and said it “has been used to justify violence against Jews for centuries. Historians as well as Christian leaders have agreed that the claim is baseless.” After centuries of teaching that Jewish people as a whole killed Jesus, the Catholic Church rejected the belief in 1965, a stance then-Pope Benedict XVI reiterated in 2011.

Could the bill eliminate parts of the Bible?

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., a sponsor of the bill, has dismissed concerns that the bill would eliminate parts of the Bible, telling CNN the claims were “inflammatory and it’s irrational.” Legal experts and political experts had the same take.

Ernesto Sagás, a professor at Colorado State University’s ethnic studies department, told PolitiFact that it doesn’t make sense for the government to create a new law to “eliminate” the New Testament, since the government could not prohibit the religious work’s publication due to the rights of free speech and religion established by the First Amendment. 

“Is the government going to prohibit (the Bible’s) publication, despite the rights of free expression and freedom of religion established by the First Amendment? Filed (the post) under ‘conspiracy theory’,” Sagás said.

Jason Mazzone, a law professor and director of the program in constitutional theory, history and law at the University of Illinois, also told us that nothing in the Antisemitism Act imposes a requirement to eliminate the Bible.

“There is no plausible reading of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act as banning the New Testament. The Act doesn’t ban anything: it provides a definition for enforcement of Title VI,” Mazzone said, referring to a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. “And Title VI has never been understood to require schools and other recipients of federal funding to remove or prohibit from campus books on the basis that they contain or may contain offensive material.”

He also added there are some First Amendment concerns with the proposed bill because the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s vague definition leaves people guessing about what kinds of expression or conduct are prohibited. 

However, Mazzone said that the Education Department’s mandate is only to take into consideration the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition when enforcing Title VI. 

 “There is no necessary reason to think that the result of the Act, if adopted, will be to punish or chill speech that the First Amendment protects.”

Gregory P. Magarian, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told PolitiFact previously that he sees the concern over the Bible as a stretch.

“My best sense is that the Bible is sufficiently normatively ingrained in Western cultures, especially in the U.S., that no government actor would be at all likely to invoke the (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition against any common usage of the Bible,” Magarian said.

Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the Antisemitism Act wouldn’t eliminate part of the Bible, nor criminalize biblical teaching. 

He said in an email to PolitiFact the bill would provide guidance for the Education Department in considering a definition of antisemitism when it handles complaints that universities are “tolerating anti-Semitic harassment of or discrimination against students.”

The proposal is now in the U.S. Senate, where its future is uncertain.

It’s also unclear how binding the bill would be. It is phrased as a “sense of Congress” legislation, which is language typically used for nonbinding, advisory legislation. However, the measure also says that the Education Department “shall” take into consideration the definition of antisemitism, which seems to leave no wiggle room.

Our ruling

An Instagram post says “The House of Representatives in the U.S. just passed … the Antisemitism Act that proposes to eliminate part of the Bible.”

But the text in the bill doesn’t mention anything about eliminating parts of the Bible. Experts told us that prohibiting the book would be going against the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and religion rights.

Other experts also told us the claim is inaccurate. 

We rate this claim False.

An anti-abortion activist convicted for her role in the October 2020 invasion and blockade of a Washington, D.C.-area abortion clinic was sentenced May 14 to 57 months in prison.

Lauren Handy, the activism and mutual aid director for the group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, was convicted in August 2023 of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a 1994 law that prohibits obstructing entrances to reproductive health clinics. She was also found guilty on a felony civil rights charge. 

Lila Rose, the founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action, said on social media that Handy’s sentence was too severe for her actions.

“30-year-old pro-life activist Lauren Handy has just been sentenced to 57 months in federal prison for handing roses and resources to women at an abortion facility,” Rose wrote in a May 14 Instagram post. “Meanwhile, abortionists who dismember and kill children walk free. A grave injustice!”

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.)

Rose’s claim, however, misstates the reason for Handy’s conviction. After PolitiFact contacted Rose, Live Action spokesperson Noah Brandt referred us to Rose’s May 15 X post that clarified her claim. She made the same clarification on her Instagram post. Here is the original archived version.

“CLARIFICATION: While Lauren has passed out roses and offered counseling and resources at many abortion facilities, Lauren and fellow defendants were convicted of violating the FACE Act — a law that has primarily been used to penalize pro-life activism — for their participation in a non-violent sit-in at Cesare Santangelo’s Washington, D.C. late-term abortion facility,” she wrote, in a post that went on to criticize the conviction and sentence as unjust.

Prosecutors, in their sentencing memorandum, said Handy and her co-defendants planned a “lock-and-block” invasion of the Washington Surgi-Clinic, “during which they used force and physical obstructions to interfere with access to the clinic.”

Handy planned, organized and directed the protest, which lasted for several hours on Oct. 22, 2020, prosecutors said. Co-defendant Jonathan Darnel, who livestreamed the event, also co-organized the event. He was sentenced May 15 to 34 months in prison.

Eight other activists were also convicted or pleaded guilty in the case on similar charges. Handy’s sentence is the longest in the case, so far; two other people await sentencing.

Handy identified herself to police officers as a “blockade organizer,” and admitted her role in social media posts, prosecutors said. She also used a fake name to schedule an appointment to gain access to the clinic. She identified herself using the fake name to a clinic worker as her co-defendants, one of whom had a bag of chains, locks and ropes, hid in the building’s stairwell, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said a nurse injured her ankle when another protester, Jay Smith, pushed her as he forcibly entered the clinic. Other defendants were accused of pushing or shoving clinic workers. Prosecutors said the obstruction Handy planned was “especially traumatic” for two clinic patients who testified at trial, one of whom was forced to climb through a window to receive care and another who collapsed in pain while being blocked from the clinic.

Facebook livestream videos of the protest show some protesters holding literature to pass out. Handy appears several times in the video, speaking with protesters and police officers. She also spoke with Darnel, who was narrating the livestream, and she described allowing a man in to join his partner after he promised to give her anti-abortion literature, but she said “under no circumstances” would a doctor who worked at the clinic be allowed to enter. The videos don’t show her handing out roses, although the videos  total more than two and a half hours and Handy is not on screen the entire time.

Handy’s online bio says she has helped lead the “Red Rose Movement,” an anti-abortion group that goes to abortion clinics and offers patients “red roses as a sign of life, peace and love.” 

Darnel, in the first video, described the protest as “historic” and said that he knew he and other protesters were breaking the law.

“These people are not just counseling inside of an abortion clinic, which is illegal. They are physically preventing women from going in to kill their children,” he said. “This could mean severe criminal penalties for them. But it’s worth it.”

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, when handing down her sentence, told Handy that “there may be nothing more American” than protests for and against abortion access, but the law doesn’t allow “violence or obstructive conduct,” The Washington Post reported.

“That’s what you’re being punished for, not your views on abortion nor your very American commitment to peaceful protest,” Kollar-Kotelly said.

Rose’s claim that Handy was arrested for “handing out roses and resources” at an abortion protest understates what Handy was accused and convicted of doing. Protesters forcibly invaded a clinic and prevented patients from accessing care, prosecutors said. Rose issued a clarification after PolitiFact contacted her, correctly describing why Handy was convicted. Her original statement is False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.

U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla, is one of many Trump-aligned lawmakers who traveled to the Manhattan courthouse to support the former president and express disgust about the criminal case against him. 

“I am not under a gag order, so I am going to tell the truth,” Donalds, who is reportedly a vice presidential contender, told ABC News on May 14.

Donalds criticized one prosecutor and called the judge’s daughter a “Democrat operative.” Other Republican lawmakers who joined Trump in Manhattan — including Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama — have made comments about people involved in the trial. 

A gag order from Judge Juan Merchan bars Trump from making statements about witnesses, jurors, counsel, court staff or their families and “making or directing others to make public statements” about those people. (Trump is allowed to make statements about Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.) Trump has been found in violation 10 times.

But pundits on the left and social media users have pointed to statements from Trump’s courtroom guests and allies as potential violations of the gag order. 

We interviewed several former prosecutors who cast doubt on those claims. 

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged scheme to cover up a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

Some lawmakers say they are there to speak for Trump

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., left, and Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, arrive May 13, 2024, at a press conference across the street from the Manhattan criminal court. (AP)

Tuberville told Newsmax on May 14 he accompanied Trump to court partly to “overcome this gag order” and “to be able to speak our piece for President Trump.”

Tuberville and other Republican lawmakers have made comments targeting Michael Cohen, a key witness and former Trump personal lawyer. Cohen was convicted of tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank and breaching campaign finance rules and sentenced to three years in prison. 

After attending court May 13, Tuberville questioned Cohen’s credibility. “How can you be convinced by somebody that is a serial liar? I mean there should be no reason that anyone should listen to this guy,” Tuberville said.

Vance, who attended Trump’s trial alongside Tuberville, also talked about Cohen.

“This guy is a convicted felon who admitted in his testimony that he secretly recorded his former employer, that he only did it once allegedly and that this was supposed to help his former employer Donald Trump,” Vance told reporters outside the courthouse. 

Scott, who told Politico he was invited to Trump’s trial by a senior Trump campaign adviser, lashed out May 9 at the judge’s daughter, telling reporters outside the courtroom that she’s  “a political operative and raises money for Democrats.” 

Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren Merchan has served as the president of Authentic, a digital marketing agency that lists Democratic clients, including the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign. Authentic has removed its staff page from its website and hasn’t responded to PolitiFact’s inquiries, so it is unclear whether Loren Merchan still holds that position.

“Everyone involved in this is part of the Democrat machine,” Scott said May 12 on “Fox News Sunday,” pointing to Juan Merchan, his daughter and one of Bragg’s prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo. Colangelo formerly worked for the New York state attorney general, and in that role, investigated the Trump Foundation and led lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Other Republican politicians including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, and attorneys general from Texas and Iowa also joined Trump in court. 

Experts expressed doubt about sufficient proof

We interviewed five former prosecutors who said the Republican lawmakers’ statements would violate the gag order only if there is proof that Trump directed them. All expressed skepticism that a court would find such evidence.

“So long as Donald Trump is not provably directing others to make disparaging statements about such matters as Michael Cohen and his testimony, there is no violation of a gag order,” said Kendall Coffey, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

“Public officials have the right to express their opinions and the First Amendment protects their speech as much as anyone else’s,” Coffey said. “It seems difficult to envision proceedings by state prosecuting authorities to try to penetrate the email and text communications of federally elected public officials without very significant evidence of puppet strings being pulled by the Trump camp.”

Evan Gotlob, a former federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania and Boston, said prosecutors would have to find evidence that Trump directed one of these politicians to comment, “which they are not going to find.” 

Gotlob said he doesn’t foresee a judge approving, or prosecutors making a request to seek phone records or recordings of private conversations involving Trump. 

“It’s not worth it — it turns it into more political charade than it already is,” Gotlob said.

Stan Twardy, a former U.S. attorney in Connecticut, said he strongly doubts that senators would testify that Trump directed them to make statements.

“No politician on earth is going to admit that what he says is dictated by someone else  —  even if it were true, which in this case I very much doubt,” said Bill Otis, former head of the appellate division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former special counsel to former President George H.W. Bush. 

David Weinstein, a former Florida federal prosecutor and Miami-Dade prosecutor, said, “The problem is going to be, how in the world does the court prove Trump told these people to say all of this?”

Weinstein said the judge would have to bring Trump in and ask him, “‘Did you tell people to say this?’ To which he would say, ‘No, how stupid do you think I am?’”

PolitiFact Copy Chief Matthew Crowley contributed to this report. 

RELATED: Read all of PolitiFact’s coverage on Donald Trump indictments

Abortion rights have emerged as a key issue as Republicans and Democrats plot strategies for the 2024 election. 

President Joe Biden and Democrats have focused on the issue to drive voters to the polls, with Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning on reproductive rights in swing states such as Wisconsin. 

Meanwhile, some Republicans have been trying to fire up their base, including U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who offered this claim in an April 15 interview on “The Tony Kinnett Cast” podcast:

 “Every Senate Democrat has voted to support unlimited abortions up to the moment of birth.”

Is he right?

Senate, House measures are cited

When we asked for backup, Johnson’s spokesperson Kiersten Pels said the senator was “making the point that the media will not cover that the Democrats are the ones who hold the extreme position on abortion.” 

In terms of evidence backing the claim, Pels cited two measures. We are using her words here, as perspective on how she is interpreting what the measures do. 

• “In 2022, every Senate Democrat with the exception of Joe Manchin voted in favor of (Women’s Health Protection Act) which would enshrine abortion into law up until the moment of birth and block state laws with protections against late-term abortions.”

• “In January 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act which would protect infants who survive an attempted abortion by ensuring they receive the same care as any other newborn. Every single Republican voted in favor, while every single Democrat voted against it — with the exception of Rep. Cuellar, who was exiled for his position.”

Let’s set aside for a moment whether the measures are accurately described and start with a couple obvious points.

First, if Manchin did not vote for the 2022 measure, then it is plainly clear that Johnson’s “every Democrat” phrasing is wrong. 

Second, as evidence of Senate votes, Johnson’s team is citing votes from the U.S. House of Representatives. That measure has not even come up for a vote in the Senate, so the senator’s evidence is, well, lacking at best.

Let’s dig deeper. Do the measures do what Johnson claims they do?

Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022   

According to www.congress.gov, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, introduced in the Senate on May 3, 2022, prohibits all governmental restrictions on access to abortion services. There has been one roll call vote on the bill.

Manchin, R-W.Va., voted no along with Republican senators on the measure. The vote was 49 Yes and 51 No.

Johnson’s staff claims the measure “would enshrine abortion into law up until the moment of birth and block state laws with protections against late-term abortions.”

That’s wrong.

On the contrary, the measure — which has not become law — protects the right to an abortion up until the point of fetal viability, which is roughly reached at 24 weeks of pregnancy. 

After that point, the legislation protects the right to abortion only “when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health,” according to the bill’s text. Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act

According to a congress.gov summary of the Born-Alive act, the measure establishes requirements for the degree of care a healthcare practitioner must provide in the case of a child born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion.

Specifically, the summary says, “a health care practitioner who is present must
(1) exercise the same degree of care as would reasonably be provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age, (2) ensure the child is immediately admitted to a hospital. Additionally, a health care practitioner or other employee who has knowledge of a failure to comply with the degree-of-care requirement must immediately report such failure to law enforcement.”

A health care practitioner who fails to provide the required degree of care, or a health care practitioner or other employee who fails to report such failure, is subject to criminal penalties — a fine, up to five years in prison, or both, according to the summary.

The Born-Alive measure passed the House Jan. 11, 2023, on a 220-210 vote, with 219 Republicans voting yes, along with one Democrat; the 210 nos were Democrats. 

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, said Johnson’s claim is an “absurd and abject falsehood” and that the measure would make something illegal that is already illegal because doctors already have an obligation to provide appropriate medical care. 

“Abortion ‘up to the moment of birth’ simply doesn’t happen.” Murray said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin.  “Abortions later in pregnancy are extraordinarily rare and occur essentially only when a pregnancy is nonviable and the mother risks severe injury or death by remaining pregnant.”

And, as noted, it has not come up for a vote in the Senate — so Johnson is presenting conjecture, not evidence.

Our ruling

Johnson said “Every Senate Democrat has voted to support unlimited abortions up to the moment of birth.” 

But Johnson’s evidence is flawed at best. He cites one bill that a Democratic senator, Manchin, opposed – so on the face it’s not “every Democrat” – and, in any case, it doesn’t do what he claims. The second measure cited has not even come to the Senate for a vote. 

We rate the claim False. 

RELATED: US Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, says the Democrats’ Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022 “would permit abortion up until delivery.” Mostly False. 

RELATED: Donald Trump says “The Democrat(ic) position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth.” False.

 

 

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker kicked a hornet’s nest at a commencement speech at a Catholic college in which he told women graduates that most of them are probably more excited about marriage and motherhood than their careers.

The speech, although praised by some Catholics, garnered widespread criticism. On social media, one person said Butker later made things worse while trying to defend the speech.

A May 16 Threads post shared a quote purportedly by Butker on “setting the record straight.”

“Everyone is taking what I said out of context,” the quote read. “All I said was that we should go back to a better time, like the 50’s & 60s. When men were men, and women had more babies than thoughts. When the only ‘Me Too’ movement was one woman saying she was ready for her 4th child, and another woman agreeing.”

We found other social media posts sharing the same quote.

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, Instagram and Threads.)

Butker faced significant social media backlash  for his May 11 speech at Benedictine College in Kansas. During his remarks, he also criticized Pride Month and President Joe Biden. 

The NFL distanced itself from the kicker’s speech in a statement to People, saying it was given in a “personal capacity” and that “his views are not those of the NFL as an organization.” A Change.org petition demanding the Super Bowl champion Chiefs release Butker had more than 180,000 signatures as of May 17. And Chiefs’ division rival the Los Angeles Chargers mocked him in a video, showing an animated version of Butker toiling in a kitchen.

But did Butker really double down on his speech by making the statement shared in the Threads post? No, the quote is not real. It originated as a meme on a satirical Instagram account, thesportsmemery, which calls itself “The Fakest Fake News on the Internets” and “Original Memes / Satire / Parody.”

(Threads screenshot)

The account shared an image of the fake quote in a May 15 post, adding a caption that said, “Harrison Butker sets the record straight after the biased media twisted his words using unfair verbatim quotes of things he said.”

The Threads post did not include the context that it originated on a satirical site and presented it as a real quote. It is not. The claim is False.

A Facebook post urges you to avoid one scam and entices you to fall for another.

“Look, those ads with those celebrities, they’re deepfakes, you guys, they’re not real,” said the man in a May 9 Facebook post that has been viewed about 50,000 times. 

“What you’re looking for is a subsidy. The subsidies the government is giving away, it’s $5,800 of a subsidy, and there’s no qualifications for it. Every American qualifies for it. All you gotta do is hit the link in the description below.”

(Screenshot from Facebook)

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.)

We hate to break it to you, but we clicked the link and found it won’t lead you to no-strings-attached $5,800. PolitiFact has previously debunked similar claims. 

The link in the Facebook post leads to a webpage headlined “Congress Announces $5,200 – $6,300 Subsidy Available To All Americans.” But a search of LegiScan, a website that tracks congressional bills, shows there’s no such legislation. 

The website requests your age, asks if you earn less than $50,000 annually and whether you have health insurance. It then prompts you to call a number to claim a subsidy and a zero-cost health plan. 

The government does have federal assistance programs, such as for food and housing, but those are accessed through official government websites. 

The link in the Facebook post is affiliated with usabenefitsdaily.com, a URL that has been connected to another fake scheme made to look like a government program. A disclaimer on the page says that neither the website nor the insurance plans it directs you to are endorsed by the U.S. government or the federal Medicare program. 

The Federal Trade Commission offers tips to avoid government grant scammers and how to report them; one red flag related to scammers is that they “make big promises” about paying for expenses including household bills and other personal needs.

But there’s no $5,800 subsidy that every American qualifies for. We rate that claim Pants on Fire!

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played in the NFL since the 2016 season, when he began protesting police violence against Black Americans by sitting or kneeling during the pregame national anthem.  

Has he found himself out of another job? Recent Facebook posts claim as much, saying he “was fired from his new high school coaching job after just one season.”

“The kids couldn’t stand him,” reads a quote in the May posts. “He’s arrogant and conceited.”

But this claim originated on self-described satire sites.

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

America’s Last Line of Defense, a network of fake-news websites, posted the story as early as 2023 with the headline, “Colin Kaepernick loses his first coaching job after only six games.” 

The story says that “the principal of Joseph Barron Senior High School in Des Moines” fired Kaepernick because “he just had a way … of pissing people off” and “was trying to get players to kneel for the National Anthem after just three weeks.”

Joseph Barron isn’t among the high schools of Des Moines Public Schools, and we couldn’t find a school by that name in Iowa’s capital city.  

We also found no evidence that Kaepernick ever accepted a high school coaching job. 

We rate posts that say this claim is authentic Pants on Fire!