Category: Fact Check

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., recently introduced a bill that would establish a federal website with resources for pregnant women and mothers. But critics are raising alarm over the legislation, which they say has dangerous implications for women.

Democrats and other blue check users on X said Britt’s bill would “create a national registry” or “federal database” of pregnant women. Some news outlets, including The Guardian, Salon and Raw Story, ran headlines that made similar claims about the bill.

“So (Britt) creates a database of pregnant women so Trump then knows who to prosecute if any of those women get an abortion,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said on X.

Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath, who unsuccessfully ran to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in 2020, said on X, “According to the GOP, America needs a national registry for pregnant women.”

The bill text doesn’t mention the words “registry” or “database.” Britt’s spokesperson, Sean Ross, told PolitiFact that “these social media posts are intentionally, flagrantly false.”

The measure says that if website users consent to provide their contact information, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services may call or email them to share additional resources. The bill neither defines other ways users’ contact information might be used, nor says who would, or would not, have access to the data beyond the department’s secretary.

Critics say the bill’s ambiguity poses data privacy concerns for the site’s users. The bill has also been criticized for excluding from the website’s resource list any information from organizations that offer abortions.

What would Britt’s bill do?

The bill, titled the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act, says it would establish the government website pregnancy.gov as “a clearinghouse of relevant resources available for pregnant and postpartum women, and women parenting young children.”

The bill says the website would include “a series of questions” users could answer to generate a list of “relevant resources” within a ZIP code. The website would show online resources and organizations that provide services within 100 miles of that ZIP code.

The website’s resources would include public and private entities that provide mentorship opportunities; health and well-being services; financial assistance; material or legal support; mental health services; child care, adoption or foster care services; and information on abortion risks or alternatives to abortion, according to the bill.

The bill says pregnancy.gov would also contain an “assessment” through which users could “provide consent to use the user’s contact information, which the (Department of Health and Human Services) Secretary may use to conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users on additional resources that would be helpful for the users to review.”

The bill prohibits information from organizations, including any affiliates, subsidiaries, successors and clinics, that “perform, induce, refer for, or counsel in favor of abortions, or provide financial support to any other organization that conducts such activities.”

People using pregnancy.gov would not be required to disclose personally identifiable information, Ross said, nor does the bill say that the website would ask users about their pregnancy status. Although the bill does not specifically address this, Ross said no login or registration would be required to use the site.

Ross said the “assessment” would ask users about the website’s accessibility and helpfulness, and enable them to opt in with a phone number or email address; the Department of Health and Human Services may then contact these users with additional resources. Ross said Britt envisions this outreach to be a one-time occurrence.

Receiving this outreach is voluntary, Ross said, and people could use a “burner” email address or pseudonym to remain anonymous. The additional resources provided would vary by person and be largely up to the department’s discretion, he said, although they would exclude entities that provide abortions.

Another bill provision would provide grants to nonprofit organizations that “support, encourage and assist women to carry their pregnancies to term and to care for themselves and their babies after birth.” Entities providing abortions would be excluded from these grants.

Because Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate, Britt’s bill is unlikely to pass if it is brought to a vote.

We contacted the Department of Health and Human Services with questions about the potential impact of the legislation but did not hear back.

Critics say the bill poses data privacy concerns

Dr. Rob Davidson, a west Michigan-based emergency physician, shared in a series of X posts his concerns about Britt’s bill, including that it would “create a database of pregnant women in the U.S.” Davidson is also the executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, a national organization advocating for expanding health care access, lowering medical costs and protecting reproductive rights.

Although Davidson acknowledged users would have to voluntarily provide contact information and consent to receive outreach on the proposed website, he told PolitiFact that many people don’t read the fine print to know what that information sharing entails.

Davidson said it’s “very concerning to me” that this bill would have “women who are pregnant, who are considering their options, hand over their information and just the fact that they are pregnant to a government database. Where does that information go?”

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun violence prevention advocacy group Moms Demand Action, also criticized the bill on social media, saying it would “create a federal database of pregnant women.”

“The website would create a ‘database’ of user contact information that could be used for ‘outreach via phone or email,’” Watts told PolitiFact. “The public has no guarantee (or reason to trust) how that information would actually be used.”

The bill doesn’t have provisions about the dissemination or destruction of the data the website collects, said Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis.

“So, I think it’s fair for people reading the bill to ask questions and be concerned about how the information would be used,” Ziegler said.

Because of the limitations on what kind of resources the website would offer, critics said people seeking information would be directed only to crisis pregnancy centers, or facilities that dissuade or prevent people from seeking abortions.

“The law doesn’t require the creation of a registry at all. It’s not mandatorily requiring anyone to give information or interact with the website at all,” Ziegler said. “So, in that sense, it doesn’t create a registry or mandate compliance with a registry, but it’s certainly setting up the information people will receive and the information that people will use in a way that’s designed to help the antiabortion movement.”

Our ruling

Social media users claimed Britt introduced a bill “to create a national registry of pregnant women.”

The bill would create pregnancy.gov, a website designed as a clearinghouse of information and resources for pregnant women. It would bar information from organizations that provide abortions.

The legislation does not mention the words “registry” or “database.” It says that if website users choose to take an “assessment” available through the website, they can consent to share their contact information and may receive additional resources from the Department of Health and Human Services. Britt’s spokesperson said the bill would not require a login or registration to access, although the bill doesn’t specify this.

Critics counter that the bill is vague about how collected data would be handled or who would have access to it.

But to describe this as a “national registry” of pregnant women is inaccurate. We rate that claim False.

Following a violent assassination attempt on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, some social media users circulated video of a speech he made opposing a World Health Organization plan.

“Only last week Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico gave this speech: ‘I also clearly declare that we (Slovakia Democratic Party) WILL NOT support strengthening the Powers of the World Health Organisation,’” said a May 15 X post viewed more than a million times and amplified by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. “Today he has been shot in public.”

(Screenshot from X)

Fico was shot several times May 15 in Handlova, in central Slovakia. He was rushed to the hospital, had emergency surgery and was fighting for his life hours later, Slovakian Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák said in a press conference. 

Although Fico made this speech, he didn’t do so “last week.”  The X post’s video was from a November 2023 assembly of Smer, the party Fico chairs.

The WHO’s pandemic treaty, a draft global accord among the 194 member states, is a frequent subject of misinformation.

The document, formally known as the WHO’s pandemic prevention, preparedness and response accord, is a legal agreement that the organization’s member states, including the U.S., are negotiating to help prevent and better prepare for future pandemics. 

The plan was meant to be finalized May 10, but the deadline lapsed with no final draft. 

The WHO said members continue to refine the draft agreement. Negotiators were aiming to have the final draft of the pact ready to be ratified at the World Health Assembly that starts May 27.

Fico spoke in Slovak; multiple sources showed he spoke against the WHO pandemic accord in his speech. 

The Slovak Spectator, a news outlet, reported Dec. 8 that Fico said his administration “will not strengthen the competencies of the WHO in any way,” and called the treaty “nonsense that must have been created by insatiable pharmaceutical companies.” 

Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said the suspected shooter, a 71-year-old man from Levice, Slovakia, whom government authorities have not fully named, acted as a “lone wolf” and now faces attempted premeditated murder charges. Šutaj Eštok described the attack as politically motivated although the suspect belonged to no political groups, The Associated Press reported.

Šutaj Eštok said the suspect expressed his disagreement with Fico’s policies and was moved to act after an ally of Fico won the presidential election last year. 

CNN reported that Šutaj Eštok said, “The reasons (the suspect gave) were the decision to abolish the special prosecutor’s office, the decision to stop supplying military assistance to Ukraine, the reform of public service broadcaster and the dismissal of the judicial council head.”

Fico is serving his fourth term as prime minister since 2006. He founded the Smer party, which is increasingly shifting to right-wing ideology, the New York Times reported. Fico is known for his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he opposed sanctions against Russia and announced a stop to military aid to Ukraine.

The X video of Fico speaking against the WHO was not from the week before he was shot. We rate that claim False.

As the world emerged from a global pandemic, the World Health Organization began drafting a legal agreement to respond to future pandemics. Since then, the document has been a target of misinformation.

The WHO’s pandemic prevention, preparedness and response accord is a legal agreement the organization’s 194 member states, including the U.S., are negotiating to help prevent and better prepare for future pandemics. 

In a clip from former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson’s web show, author Bret Weinstein warned the WHO’s actions with regard to the accord could strip Americans of their constitutionally protected rights to free speech.

“So, you’re saying that an international health organization could just end the First Amendment?” Carlson asked Weinstein in the clip, which circulated Jan. 28 in an Instagram video and was attracting comments and interactions in late April.

“The ability to do it is currently under discussion at the international level,” replied Weinstein, whose COVID-19 claims PolitiFact has previously fact-checked. 

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

The clip came from a video published Jan. 5 on the subscription-based Tucker Carlson Network website. The network also shared a longer clip of this portion of the video on its YouTube page.

The longer version shows a fuller exchange:

Carlson: “So, you’re saying that an international health organization could just end the First Amendment?”

Weinstein: “Yes, and I know it sounds preposterous — “

Carlson: “It does not sound preposterous.”

Weinstein: “The ability to do it is currently under discussion at the international level.”

Weinstein later said the WHO’s pandemic preparedness plan will be used to silence podcasters and eliminate “national and personal sovereignty.”

Weinstein did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.

But his assertion that the WHO’s work on this plan could eliminate Americans’ free speech  protections is contradicted by the U.S. Constitution and the draft accord itself. 

A March 28 WHO press release said the pandemic agreement’s draft will continue to be refined ahead of the World Health Assembly, set for May 27 to June 1 in Geneva, Switzerland.

An April draft of the plan explicitly stated that the plan’s implementation will be with “full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” and that states have the sovereign right” to “adopt, legislate and implement legislation.” 

World Health Organization information also details that the governments themselves would determine the accord, with member states deciding the terms. 

Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, told PolitiFact that the pandemic accord contains no provision that would override any U.S. law.

“The Pandemic Agreement would not control what could or could not be written or said in the United States,” Gostin said. “The regulation of speech, including online content, is entirely within the realm of the US Congress.” He added that there is a domestic process for amending the constitution. 

The process of changing the U.S. Constitution is lengthy. To eliminate the First Amendment, Congress would have to propose the change with a majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. An amendment can also be proposed during a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures. For the amendment to be adopted, three-fourths of the states in the U.S would have to ratify it. 

We rate the claim that the World Health Organization could “end the first amendment” False. 

President Joe Biden’s decision this month to pause a shipment of heavy weaponry to Israel  amid that country’s war against Hamas in Gaza was widely seen as an effort to  discourage a full-scale attack on Rafah that could kill large numbers of civilians.

Critics, however, characterized the pause as an unprecedented departure from the United States’ long-standing commitment to Israel during a war in which that nation’s security is at stake.

On May 12 on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” for instance, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., accused Biden of having “imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel.”

Host Margaret Brennan pressed Cotton on whether Biden’s actions were much different than what previous presidents had done when they believed that Israel was pursuing an unwise course. She cited actions by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Cotton rejected the comparison.

“Ronald Reagan’s decision to pause the delivery of fighter jets in the 1980s was totally different from what has happened here,” he said.

Reagan, Cotton said, “knew that the pause of fighter jets would not interfere with Israel’s fighting because they had plenty of fighters. He did not pause munitions. Joe Biden is not sending munitions in the middle of a shooting war that’s a war of survival.”

Other Republicans have made similar points, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on May 12 on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Are Biden’s actions unprecedented? Not really, experts told PolitiFact.

Multiple presidents have sought to influence Israel’s actions with policies that created distance between the U.S. and Israel, although there’s less agreement on whether Biden’s move is greater in severity or comes at a more delicate time for Israel.

“Biden is doing what every president has done since 1948: He’s trying to support Israel without alienating the entire Arab world,” said Lance Janda, a military historian at Cameron University. “His job is harder because the current conflict has lasted so long and produced so many civilian casualties in Gaza. Israel is almost completely isolated in the international community, which is bad for them and for (the United States) at the same time.”

Perhaps sensitive to the criticism, unnamed Biden administration officials told news outlets May 14 that the White House was proposing more than $1 billion in weapons agreements for Israel, including tank ammunition, tactical vehicles and mortar rounds. It is not PolitiFact’s policy to rely on anonymous sources; when we asked the White House for confirmation, we received no response.

At the White House, President Harry Truman holds a copy of the Torah presented to him by Chaim Weizmann, then the chairman of Israel’s Provisional State Council, on May 25, 1948. (AP)

Previous presidents have paused aid or pressured Israel

There are multiple examples of presidents pursuing moves that created friction between the U.S. and Israel.

In 1948, President Harry Truman pursued an overall policy of supporting Israel following its establishment. Despite this, his administration, pushed by State Department officials, maintained an arms embargo on Israel and surrounding Arab countries throughout that pivotal year. The embargo had begun as a way of limiting violence in the lead-up to independence.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened sanctions against Israel if it didn’t withdraw from the Egyptian Sinai peninsula after invading it following Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez canal, a key Middle East waterway. 

Eisenhower later wrote that to pressure Israel into withdrawal from Sinai, he preferred “a resolution which would call on all United Nations members to suspend not just governmental but private assistance to Israel.”

A decade later, in the lead-up to the Six-Day War in 1967, the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on all participants, including Israel. “It was largely symbolic, since the Israelis won the war, but we did do it,” Janda said.

The president at the time, Lyndon B. Johnson, “was slow to come to Israel’s defense,” according to Dennis Ross, a veteran Middle East diplomat and author of “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama.” Johnson “seemed interested in helping Israel … but he felt constrained by limited resources and procedural hurdles.”

In 1981, Reagan paused shipments of F-16 fighter jets to Israel in response to what Secretary of State Alexander Haig called “the escalating cycle of violence in the Middle East.” The pause came after Israel destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor that was under construction and after it bombed Beirut, the Lebanese capital. 

Reagan lifted the suspension of military aircraft for Israel later that year, but the U.S. and Israel were at odds again by April 1983, when Reagan said that until Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon, he would not permit the transfer of some 75 F-16 fighter jets.

Lawrence Korb, who served as assistant defense secretary from 1981 through 1985, wrote in 2021 that Reagan “allowed 21 U.N. resolutions that directly or indirectly condemned Israeli behavior and actions to pass. These included condemning Israel for the bombing of Lebanon, Iraq, and Tunisia.”

President George H.W. Bush meets with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel on April 6, 1989, in the White House. (AP)

In September 1991, Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, told reporters he’d asked Congress to defer considering Israel’s request for $10 billion in loan guarantees. News reports then said Bush’s delay request was intended to stop Israel from building settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

“Both Reagan and George H.W. Bush played hardball, or harder ball, with Israel than Biden,” said Stephen Knott, a presidential and foreign policy historian who retired in 2022 from teaching at the U.S. Naval War College.

However, it’s been decades since the last similar break with Israel; remembering that far back requires historical knowledge.

Biden’s actions “would be the strongest show of resistance against any Israeli policy I can think of since” Bush’s withholding of loan guarantees 33 years ago, said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

Is Israel at greater risk from a U.S. rift today than it was under previous presidents?

Historians told PolitiFact agreed that the U.S. weapons pause comes at an inopportune time for Israel.

After Hamas’ Oct. 7 cross-border terrorist attacks, “Israel was revealed as vulnerable in a way it had not been since 1973,” said David Greenberg, a presidential historian at Rutgers University. “If this war were like the previous Gaza incursions, there would be far less urgency. But if the Israeli goal is to wipe out Hamas as a fighting force, a goal the U.S. has endorsed, then depriving it of munitions in the middle of the war is a lot more controversial than the fighter jets controversy under Reagan.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, acknowledged historical parallels between Reagan’s conundrum and Biden’s that may “appear compelling.” However, he wrote, the current conflict “was triggered by the worst terrorist attack on Israel in its history — one that was unprovoked and utterly depraved, and that followed a period of U.S.-Israeli-Arab coordination on Gaza.”

Nevertheless, historians expressed skepticism to PolitiFact that today’s situation poses a uniquely existential threat to Israel. Many of the previous U.S.-Israel rifts have come amid wars that involved Israel.

For instance, the 1948 war that enabled Israel’s independence “was much more ‘existential’ for Israel,” said Joshua Landis, director of the University of Oklahoma’s Center of Middle East Studies. U.S.-Israeli disagreements also emerged during the 1967 and 1973 wars, historians said.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-Israel frictions that emerged early in Reagan’s tenure involved the Palestine Liberation Organization and a splinter group led by Abu Nidal, that Knott described as serious security threats.

“It’s not as if either group were averse to engaging in terrorism against Israeli interests around the globe,” Knott said. “Nidal’s group was as committed to atrocities as Hamas. So the idea that the threat to Israel in 1982 wasn’t on par with today I think is questionable at best.”

Also, foreign policy experts said, the governments of the U.S., under Biden, and Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are far apart on many issues.

“You have a real crisis of confidence between the U.S. and Israel,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and former advisor to secretaries of state from both the Republican and Democratic parties. The Israeli government is pursuing policies in the West Bank, judicial reform and Gaza which depart from American values, Miller said.

Miller also said Israel has irritated the U.S. by not articulating a postwar plan for Gaza.

“Israel does not appear to have a ‘winning’ strategy in Gaza or one that comports with the laws of war,” said Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow with the Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank. Despite significant civilian casualties, Israel has so far “failed to destroy Hamas and instead turned it into a poster child for ‘resistance.’” Given this, Slavin said, “Biden has shown extraordinary patience.”

How today’s political environment is shaping rhetoric over the U.S. and Israel

Increasingly partisan politics, particularly in a presidential election year, are exacerbating the backlash to Biden’s policies. Republicans, Miller said, are portraying themselves as “the ‘Israel can do no wrong’ party and Democrats are ‘deeply divided.’”

Republicans, meanwhile, “have given Biden zero credit for having been pretty strongly behind Israel for the first four or five months of the war,” Greenberg said.

But Greenberg added that he’s been surprised by some mainstream Democratic lawmakers’ willingness to become openly more skeptical of U.S. support for Israel.

“It used to be that Democrats could hold ranks against a small anti-Israel faction in their midst,” Greenberg said. “But the pressure Biden is coming under from his own party is new. As recently as President Barack Obama, it was reversed, with mainstream Democrats pressuring Obama to be more pro-Israel than perhaps he wanted to be.”

RELATED: Trump said Biden wants to ‘immediately stop all aid to Israel.’ That’s not what Biden said

An image of a snake as tall as an ottoman and longer than a bus, its head the size of a child, casually lying — or slithering? — between about a half dozen people is drawing attention on social media for an unexpected reason. 

Apparently, a May 13 Threads post said, this “huge snake was found by a hiker near South Carolina creek.” 

“‘What a beast!’” reads a quote included in the post.

It 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 included a link for “more photo/video,” and it leads to an undated blog post with this title: “Hiker finds massive ‘beast’ hiding along banks of South Carolina creek.” 

The post recounts how a South Carolina woman named Meredith Langley saw “a giant brown snake — several feet long and thicker than the root of a tree used to rest his head” along the edge of a creek in a park in Florence, South Carolina. 

The blog post included several photos of different snakes, though not the huge one in the Threads post. 

Only one of the pictures was actually of the snake that Langley saw. The State published it and Langley’s story on March 11, 2021, noting that one person who commented on the photos Langley originally posted on Facebook said: “What a beast!”

It was a harmless watersnake, the article said, and not the snake pictured in the Threads post. 

That snake in the Threads post, incidentally, appears significantly bigger than the world’s largest snake that was killed in the Amazon in March. 

That 440-pound northern green anaconda was 26 feet long, as thick as a car tire and with a head “the size of a human’s,” the U.S. Sun reported.

We rate claims that the image of a snake in the Threads post is the snake discovered by a South Carolina hiker in 2021 Pants on Fire! 

Elon Musk has not predicted the second coming of Jesus Christ, but a recent Facebook post claims that the X owner has some inside Rapture knowledge. 

“Elon Musk confirms — ’The rapture is going to happen VERY soon,’” the caption and headline on a May 9 Facebook post say. 

It 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.)

Looking for credible news reports, public statements and social media posts from Musk, we found no evidence to support this claim.

A narrator in a video included in the post largely muses about the Rapture as a concept. It isn’t until about 4 minutes into the video that the narrator asks, “What did the billionaire Elon Musk say about the rapture?” 

We kept watching to find out, but no statement about the Rapture is attributed to Musk in the video. 

Rather, it references a December 2021 interview Musk did with satire site The Babylon Bee. 

In the interview, the then-creative director of the Babylon Bee asked Musk if he would “accept Jesus as your lord and savior.” 

Musk said he agreed with the principles Jesus advocated and that “there’s great wisdom in the teachings of Jesus,” such as forgiveness and treating people as you’d like to be treated. 

“But hey, if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I won’t stand in his way,” Musk added. “Sure, I’ll be saved. Why not?”

We rate claims that Musk confirmed the Rapture is happening soon False.

In her new book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem recalled shooting a 14-month-old dog with an “aggressive personality” that tried to bite the Republican and dispatched some chickens. 

The revelation shocked some dog lovers, but a supposed response from Noem that’s being shared on social media isn’t authentic. 

“For everyone who absolutely lost their minds about my decision to shoot a dog twenty years ago, I hope you don’t eat cows or pigs or chickens!” reads what looks like a screenshot of an X post from Noem. “At least I have the guts to look in the eyes of the animal I’m killing!”

A May 8 Threads post sharing this screenshot 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 alleged statement from Noem veers from the tone of her previous responses to critics. 

“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she said in an April 26 X post. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

A couple of days later, she added on X that it was a 20-year-old story. “South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down,” Noem said. “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”

We found no evidence that Noem made the statement attributed to her in the Threads post. It doesn’t appear on her X account and there was no news coverage of the purported response.

Ian Fury, a spokesperson for Noem, told PolitiFact the governor didn’t make this statement.

We rate this post False.

CNN anchor Abby Phillip appears in what looks like a segment about actor Robert Downey Jr. in a recent video shared May 6 on Facebook. 

But it’s quickly clear that this video isn’t authentic, from a typo in the chyron to audio that doesn’t sync with Phillip’s mouth. 

“Sensational news,” the chyron says. “The actor Robert Downey Jr has released a new mobile app that allows to earn money!” 

“The most famous and recognizable actor and one of the richest man of the planet, Robert Downey Jr., decided to open his own online casino where everyone can win,” Phillip appears to say. “In an interview, he talked about the creation of this application and how people of our country can earn a lot of money in it.” 

The video then cuts to what looks like podcast host Joe Rogan interviewing Downey about the app. But again, the audio doesn’t sync with their mouths’ movements. 

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

The Rogan interview happened in 2020, when Downey was promoting his movie “Doolittle.” 

In 2023, Downey became an investor, board member and spokesperson for the security and privacy company Aura, which has an online safety app. 

But we found no evidence that he’s promoting an app that lets people earn money, as the post claims. 

We rate it False.