Category: Fact Check

In November, Floridians will vote on a ballot amendment that, if approved, will expand abortion access up to the point of fetal viability, overriding the state’s current six-week abortion ban that took effect May 1.

Amendment 4 says abortions cannot be prohibited before fetal viability, typically considered around 24 weeks of pregnancy, or when a health care provider determines it’s necessary to protect the patient’s health, which is called a health risk exception.

Florida’s Republican House Speaker, Paul Renner, who has spoken out against the amendment, took exception to the fact that “health care provider” is not defined in the text.

Health risk exceptions are “in the hands of a health care provider that’s not defined,” Renner told South Florida radio station WLRN in an April 4 interview. “Is that a receptionist at the abortion clinic? Is that a tattoo artist? It doesn’t say. It’s certainly not a physician, as other amendments in other states have provided. So, you’re not even talking to a doctor to make that determination on what could be something that’s risky to the mother at a late stage in pregnancy.”

Similar claims about the amendment allowing “any person that provides a health care service, like tattoo artists” to determine when women qualify for health risk exceptions also circulated in a Miami Spanish-language radio show and have been repeated by the amendment’s opponents.

PolitiFact contacted Renner’s office for comment but received no reply. 

The terms “health care provider” and “practitioner” are used and defined in Florida statute in several different ways, depending on the regulation the statute covers, legal experts told PolitiFact. No single statute would apply, and the definition of “health care provider” for abortion care would be determined by Florida’s Department of Health. If the amendment passes and is challenged in court, the state court system would weigh in on the definition.

In response to our questions about whether professionals such as tattoo artists can authorize health risk exceptions or certify viability under Florida law, Weesam Khoury, Florida Department of Health deputy chief of staff, said, “No, tattoo artists are not health care providers.”

Experts in health and constitutional law and reproductive health physicians also said Renner’s statement isn’t accurate. Florida’s amendment would not allow people who aren’t licensed to provide health care to determine whether a patient qualifies for a health risk exception. They said such claims ignore the rules and laws governing the practice of medicine. 

Nicole Huberfeld, a Boston University health law professor, said there’s “zero truth” to the statement.

“This is not enigmatic terminology,” she said. “Not only are tattoo artists, 911 operators or receptionists not considered health care providers, if they held themselves out as providing health care, that would be unlicensed practice of medicine.” That’s against the law in Florida.

What does the amendment say? 

The summary for Amendment 4, titled, “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” reads: 

“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

PolitiFact contacted Floridians Protecting Freedom, the committee sponsoring the amendment, to find out more about how the language was decided.

Michelle Morton, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney and senior adviser with Floridians Protecting Freedom, said “health care provider” is a generic term that’s used in statutes for multiple state regulations, and the professions included under that term depend on the context.

In this case, “health care provider,” Morton said, would be interpreted in the context of who is qualified to determine whether patients meet criteria for health risk exceptions for an abortion. She said different statutory definitions of what constitutes a health care provider are not necessarily applicable if they aren’t related to abortion care. 

For example, in some places in Florida statute, the term “health care provider” includes podiatrists, who specialize in the treatment of feet. But a podiatrist would not be called on to determine an abortion health risk exception. 

Morton said the amendment would not change that health care providers are bound by standards of care and medical ethics, as well as oversight from the state.

Florida health care regulation

Florida doctors are regulated by the state’s Board of Medicine, and must follow the “standards of practice,” or they can be disciplined, up to and including losing their license.

We also asked the Florida Medical Association, the state’s professional association of medical providers, whether it considers professionals such as tattoo artists or receptionists to be “health care providers.” We did not receive a response by publication.

However, in a 2022 report that discusses public policies adopted by the organization’s delegates and board of directors, the association outlines its abortion policy, including under what circumstances, and by whom, it should be performed.

“Abortion is a medical procedure and should be performed only by a duly licensed physician in conformance with standards of good medical practice and the laws of the state,” the report said. “No physician or other professional personnel shall be required to perform an act violative of good medical judgment or personally held moral principles.”

The association has defined the term “health care provider” in other documents to include a “healthcare professional, healthcare facility, or entity licensed or certified to provide health services in this state as recognized by the board,” and has clarified that “scope of practice” should be “specifically defined” to keep “health professionals’ responsibilities in line with their training and respective titles.”

How Florida statute defines health care provider

PolitiFact found several definitions for “health care provider” or “practitioner” in Florida law. These statutes cover a range of regulations and include rules governing professions and occupations, patient’s rights and medical malpractice.

• Florida Statute 765, which covers advance directives to inform providers about a patient’s preferences at the end of life, defines a health care provider as “any person licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized by law to administer health care in the ordinary course of business or practice of a profession.” 

• Florida Statute 766, which covers medical malpractice, says a “health care provider” can be a medical doctor, an osteopathic doctor and a podiatrist. 

• In Florida’s Patient Bill of Rights, which is intended to ensure that patients are treated respectfully and can exercise informed consent, “health care provider” is defined as a “physician” licensed under Florida statute chapters 458, 459 and 461, which covers medical doctors, osteopathic doctors and podiatrists. 

• In another section of Florida law, “health care practitioner,” which is slightly different from the amendment’s wording, includes professions such as acupuncturists, dental hygienists, nutritionists and massage therapists. (Tattoo artists and receptionists are not included.)

Legal experts said none of these provisions are directly related to abortion health risk exceptions.

“All states license health care providers to practice medicine, sometimes calling them providers, sometimes practitioners, but this is a longstanding set of state regulations that is not mysterious or controversial,” Huberfeld, from Boston University, said.

Bob Jarvis, a Nova Southeastern University law professor, took issue with the amendment not defining the term.

“I think the drafters of Amendment 4 did a poor job, and either should have left the term ‘health care provider’ out altogether or should have explicitly defined it,” Jarvis wrote in an email to PolitiFact. “In the end, however, it probably won’t matter because the courts probably will (if the amendment passes) read into it a requirement that the health care provider be a licensed medical professional.”

Others said they thought the answer was obvious.

“I think it is fair to say a common sense, textual reading of the amendment anticipates that the health care provider referred to would be the one qualified to determine that the abortion was necessary to protect a pregnant woman’s health,” said Louis Virelli, a Stetson University College of Law professor, wrote in an email. “I therefore find it hard to imagine how a tattoo artist would be able to make that determination.”

Health risk exceptions require specialized knowledge

More than 90% of abortions take place in the first trimester, or up until around 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Abortions after fetal viability, which marks the point at which a fetus is able to survive outside the womb, are rare and typically happen because of severe fetal anomalies or health risks to the pregnant woman. 

Health care providers typically place viability between 22 and 25 weeks of pregnancy. Neonatal survival rates vary and depend on the size and health of the fetus, the pregnant woman’s health and the health care facility.

“Physicians, if anything, have been very reluctant to perform abortions in health emergencies that are clearly justified under state statutes for fear of liability,” Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at University of California, Davis, previously told PolitiFact. “The terms are ambiguous, but who’s going to be interpreting that? The Florida Supreme Court and the conservative legislature.”

Most state abortion law health risk exceptions permit abortion when there’s a serious risk or substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function. However, the language is often vague, without specific clinical definitions of what qualifies, according to a December 2023 report by KFF. This leaves medical practitioners vulnerable, with the determination often being debated or decided by hospital lawyers or courts.

Reproductive health experts told us that, even if it were legal for nonmedical professionals to determine health risks under the amendment, obstetricians and gynecologists would only provide care if they personally saw the patient, as failing to do so would be against their medical training.

Leah Roberts, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist with Boca Fertility in Boca Raton, Florida, said qualifying a patient for a health exception is not a simple task and requires years of study and experience. “It’s certainly a lot of nuance,” Roberts said, “and we’ve been trained for a very, very long time to be able to parse some of that in order to provide the best care for our patients.”

Our ruling

Renner said that, for health risk exceptions in Florida’s abortion amendment, “You’re not even talking to a doctor to make that determination.”

Health law experts said Renner’s statement is inaccurate and the terms “health care provider” and “practitioner” are used throughout Florida statutes, with the definition depending on the regulation and context. 

Those Renner cited such as tattoo artists and receptionists are not considered to be health care providers, experts said. Anyone practicing medicine without a license would be violating state law.

Florida health care providers are regulated by the state and must follow medical ethics and the standards of practice or risk losing their licenses.

We rate the statement False.

RELATED: No, a Florida ballot measure wouldn’t ‘mandate abortion up to birth,’ as Gov. Ron DeSantis said 

Are these images claiming to show Beyoncé at the 2024 Met Gala all up in your mind? If so, we have bad news: They’re fake.

“Beyoncé met gala 2024 ! Ate left no crumbs,” read two May 7 Facebook posts, showing four photos of Beyoncé in a cowboy hat, supposedly walking the 2024 Met Gala red carpet.

(Screenshot from Facebook)

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.)

But these aren’t real images of Beyoncé at the 2024 Met Gala; she skipped it. 

A closer look at the images reveals that they were generated by artificial intelligence. The four photos show four different outfits. 

They also show distorted features of photographers in the background, and the carpet in the fake photos didn’t match the 2024 gala’s green-and-cream carpet.

(Screenshot from Facebook)

The images’ flowers were also off. The ones used to decorate the 2024 Met Gala’s steps were white, not pink.

Zendaya attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition May 6, 2024, in New York. (AP)

In the days after the 2024 Met Gala on May 6, PolitiFact debunked several fake images of celebrities who didn’t attend the event, including singers Rihanna, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.

These images of Beyoncé at the 2024 Met Gala aren’t real either. We rate that claim Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact Audience Engagement Producer Ellen Hine contributed to this report.

Gov. Kristi Noem’s book didn’t officially drop until May 7, but a torrent of headlines made the rollout troublesome for the South Dakotan.

First, there was the story about Noem shooting her 14-month-old dog Cricket, which angered animal lovers, gathered wall-to-wall headlines (including from PolitiFact) and prompted jokes on late-night television, including “Saturday Night Live” in its May 4  “Weekend Update” segment. 

Then came three anecdotes about her foreign policy experience that multiple news outlets have reported as false. In her book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” Noem wrote about meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during her 2013 to 2015 congressional stint on the House Armed Services Committee, canceling a 2023 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and having a phone conversation with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley that Noem deemed threatening. 

Noem said May 5 on CBS’ “Face the Nation”  that the Kim Jong Un anecdote “shouldn’t have been in the book.” In a statement several outlets picked up, Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, said, “It was brought to our attention that the upcoming book ‘No Going Back’ has two small errors. This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor.” PolltiFact contacted the publisher, Center Street Books, for comment about whether the errors will delay the book’s rollout and what might happen with the audiobook, which Business Insider says Noem recorded with the Kim Jong Un story. We got no reply.

PolitiFact reviewed two of the questioned anecdotes in Noem’s book. As Noem stated, the Kim story was scrubbed from the Kindle edition we bought May 7; we reviewed that excerpt in other coverage of this story. 

PolitiFact also asked Fury and the House Armed Services Committee about the Kim anecdotes but didn’t hear back. A message to Macron’s office was not returned by publication. And the State Department, which we asked about both the Kim and Macron anecdotes, did not directly address the matter. 

Politico and The Wall Street Journal had counted Noem among possible 2024 running mates for former President Donald Trump. Axios reported Trump praising Noem the weekend of May 4, saying she is, “Somebody that I love. She’s been with me, a supporter of mine and I’ve been a supporter of hers for a long time.” In the book, Noem praised Trump, writing, “Donald Trump and a few brave folks broke politics.”

The Kim anecdote

In advance copies of “No Going Back,” as covered by several news outlets, Noem wrote:

“Through my tenure on the House Armed Services Committee,I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders. I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”

The account doesn’t say when the purported meeting was.

On May 2, the Dakota Scout, an independent newspaper, reported that its review of congressional travel documents and outside sources showed no record of such a meeting. Over the weekend, other news outlets followed the story, reporting the anecdote was false.

Although Noem addressed the Kim anecdote on “Face the Nation,” she wouldn’t say whether she’d met with Kim. In a cross-talk filled back-and-forth discussion, host Margaret Brennan noted that when Noem served on the Armed Services Committee from 2013 to 2015, a female president led North Korea, not Kim.

HOST MARGARET BRENNAN: “You talk about meeting some world leaders and one specific one … Did you meet Kim Jong-un?”

GOV. KRISTI NOEM: Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this — this passage. And I have met with many, many world leaders. I have traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits.

BRENNAN: So, you did not meet with Kim Jong-un? That’s what you’re saying.

NOEM: No, I have met with many, many world leaders, many world leaders. … I’m not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders, I’m just not going to do that. This anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book. And as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted.”

Later, came this exchange:

NOEM: Well, I think you need to remember, Margaret, and everybody needs to remember that I have worked on ag policy and federal policy for over 30 years. My time in serving and making policies in this country has been extensive and covered decades.

BRENNAN: Right, but you never went to North Korea.

NOEM: So, I make no specifics in this book. I talk about the fact that — yes, I have. I have been there.

BRENNAN: You went — you went to North Korea?

NOEM: I went to the DMZ (Korean demilitarized zone). And there are details — there details in this book that talk about going to the DMZ and specifics that I’m willing to share. There’s some specifics I’m not willing to share with you.

The Macron and Haley anecdotes

In the book, Noem also writes that she and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who until March was a Republican presidential candidate, chatted by phone in summer 2021.

Noem wrote that Haley said, “I’ve heard a lot of really good things about you. But I also want you to know that if I hear something bad … I will be sure to let you know.’”

Noem wrote that after the call, she called her assistant and said, “I’m pretty sure I was just threatened by Nikki Haley. It was clear that she wanted me to know that there was only room for one Republican woman in the spotlight.’”

Haley spokesperson Chaney Denton told PolitiFact Noem’s story about Haley was inaccurate in timing and character. 

Denton said Noem and Haley had talked, but in 2020, not 2021, and added, “(Haley) called Governor Noem in 2020 to encourage her when she was criticized for keeping her state open during COVID,” Denton said in a statement. “How she would twist that into a threat is just plain weird.”

Noem also wrote that she canceled a November 2023 meeting with Macron in Paris.

“While in Paris, I was slated to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron,” Noem wrote. “However, the day before we were to meet he made what I considered a very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press. So, I decided to cancel. There is no place for pro-Hamas rhetoric.”  

PolitiFact contacted the French Embassy in Washington and Macron’s office in Paris for comment but received no reply. The Associated Press reported that Macron’s office said there had been no “direct invitation” for Noem to meet the French president, although Noem and Macron might have been invited to the same Paris event.

A viral video claimed Starbucks customers are being scammed because all of the coffee chain’s cup sizes hold the same amount of liquid. But does this buzz-worthy claim hold up?

An April 28 Instagram reel showed a person pouring coffee from a tall cup of coffee, which is Starbucks’ small size, into an empty grande cup, equivalent to medium. The grande cup appears to be filled to the brim. Then, the person pours the coffee back into the tall cup, supposedly showing that the two cups hold the same amount of coffee.

The person then pours the contents of the tall cup into a venti, Starbucks’ large size, cup. Once again, the cup appears to be filled to the brim with coffee.

(Screengrab from Instagram)

“You might think it’s some kind of trick — and it is — but it’s not a magic trick. It’s a marketing trick. And Starbucks gets all the credit,” the person in the video says. “This is how they put the ‘bucks’ into ‘Starbucks.’”

The post’s caption reads, “(You’re) getting the same size but paying more seems like robbery to me.”

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.)

PolitiFact tested this claim ourselves.

(PolitiFact photo)

We went to a nearby Starbucks and requested three empty paper cups used for hot drinks in the same sizes seen in the video: tall, grande and venti.

We filled the tall cup to the brim with water, then poured its contents into the grande cup. The water did not reach the top, showing that the grande cup is, in fact, bigger than the tall cup.

We also tested the venti cup. We poured water from a full tall cup into the venti cup and, again, the contents did not reach the top. The water line was lower on the venti cup than on the grande cup, showing that it is the biggest of the three cups.

(PolitiFact photo)

To be certain, we filled the tall, grande and venti cups to the brim with water and then, one at a time, measured the amount of water in each with a measuring cup. The tall cup held about one and two-thirds cup of water. The grande cup held more than two cups, which is the highest line on the measuring cup. And the venti cup’s content filled the measuring cup to the brim.

Starbucks’ menu says this is how much each of its cups hold:

• Tall, 12 ounces

• Grande, 16 ounces

• Venti, 20 ounces

It’s unclear how the person in the video performed this coffee cup trick.

Verify, Snopes and BuzzFeed fact-checked similar false claims that Starbucks cups were all the same size.

We rate the claim that a video proves all of Starbucks’ paper drink cups hold the same amount of liquid Pants on Fire!

A presidential candidate said doctors found a worm in his brain. That worm, he said, also consumed some of his brain tissue while it was in there.

The New York Times reported May 8 that in a 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a doctor believed an abnormality on his brain scans in 2010 was “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”

Kennedy, an independent presidential candidate, told the Times he didn’t know what kind of parasite was in his brain, but he said he might have contracted it while he was traveling through South Asia. Infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons told the Times that they believed it was “likely a pork tapeworm larva” or Taenia solium. 

Could a worm have eaten part of Kennedy’s brain? Experts told PolitiFact it’s unlikely.

“It is certainly possible that the larval form of some parasites (including Taenia solium) can ‘accidentally’ migrate to the human brain. It is absolutely incorrect that this form of T. solium (e.g., neurocysticercosis) ‘eats’ brain tissue,” said Stephen Felt, a comparative medicine professor at Stanford University. “In fact, the human immune system recognizes it as foreign material and walls it off by forming a cyst and the larva then dies.”

PolitiFact contacted Kennedy’s team but did not hear back.

Infections in the body resulting from larval cysts of pork tapeworm cause cysticercosis, and when found in the brain, the condition is called neurocysticercosis. This parasitic infection can cause seizures and can be fatal.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people contract neurocysticercosis by swallowing microscopic eggs in the feces of a person with an intestinal pork tapeworm. People with a pork tapeworm infection, people who live with someone who has a pork tapeworm and those who consume food made by someone infected with pork tapeworm are more likely to get neurocysticercosis.

Andrea Winkler, visiting professor of global health and social medicine at the Harvard Medical School, told PolitiFact she found the claim of a worm eating brain tissue “far-fetched.”

“The larvae may cause inflammation, but brain tissue is not ‘eaten,’” Winkler said. “There are also other parasites that may travel to the brain, but they obey similar principles.” 

Winkler said some parasites, such as the amoeba Naegleria fowleri, can “eat” brain tissue, but this is “very rare” and would result in a “progressive, deadly disease.” Naegleria fowleri can live in warm fresh water; when water with this amoeba enters a person’s body through the nose, it travels up to the brain and destroys brain tissue. 

Pria Anand, assistant professor of neurology and director of Boston University’s neurology residency program, said that if it Kennedy was referring to a pork tapeworm, he was correct in saying it “might have lodged in his brain and then died.” But the symptoms wouldn’t have resulted from the worm “eating” his brain.

Instead, Anand said, the symptoms would have been caused by “the human body’s immune/inflammatory response to the dying worm, or from the physical presence of a calcified dead worm, which remains lodged within the brain.”

Neurocysticercosis causes epilepsy, and depending on where the cyst is located, Anand said, it could also cause blindness, increased pressure in the brain, weakness and headaches. She said it could also remain dormant for years.

Kennedy told the Times he recovered from the memory loss and mental fogginess he experienced in 2010 and did not experience “aftereffects from the parasite.” Felt said that although we don’t know whether Kennedy suffered or continues to suffer symptoms, the disease can be devastating and is common in areas “where humans and pigs coexist under unsanitary conditions.” 

“However, it is also possible for individuals to never realize they have been infected as they show no symptoms,” he said. “These asymptomatic patients are usually discovered by accident by brain image studies.”

Felt said the symptoms that manifest — seizures, blindness, headaches, cognitive losses and death — depend on the location, number and severity of the associated immune reaction to the cysts.

“Many folks with neurocysticercosis never show symptoms,” he said. “In these cases, the brain cyst may be low in number, localized in noncritical areas of the brain and/or the associated immune response is quite mild.”

By 320-91 vote, the House on May 1 passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act. 

The bill came to a vote amid pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses against the Israel-Hamas war that some Jewish students said they found threatening. It produced an unusual lineup of supporters and detractors.

Although the legislation passed easily and with bipartisan support, the votes against it were also bipartisan: 21 Republicans and 70 Democrats voted no. Some Republicans who voted no cited possible threats to Christian beliefs; some Democrats said the measure would chill political speech critical of Israel’s government, rather than Jews as a group.

Here are some questions and answers about the legislation.

What does the bill say?

The bill 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 be at risk of losing federal funding. Currently, there is no standard definition for antisemitism in such discrimination cases.

Portions of the alliance’s definition of antisemitism are not especially controversial, including “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews,” “making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews,” or denying the Holocaust.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., a leading sponsor of the bill, said the recent campus protests made passing the measure urgent. 

In a statement following passage, Lawler said the bill “is a key step in calling out antisemitism where it is and ensuring antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses are properly investigated and prosecuted.” He added, “When people engage in harassment or bullying of Jewish individuals where they justify the killing of Jews or use blood libel or hold Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government — that is antisemitic. It’s unfortunate that needs to be clarified, but that’s why this bill is necessary.”

But the bill’s critics said parts of the definition could bleed into more legitimate types of criticism of Israel’s government. Those portions of the definition include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “applying double standards by requiring of (Israel) a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

What do critics of the bill say about political speech and Israel?

In recommending a no vote, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote that the bill is “not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”

This view won backing from some figures from across the ideological spectrum.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told a congressional hearing that “speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said it was wrong to say that “if you are protesting, or disagree with what (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and his extremist government are doing in Gaza, you are an antisemite.” 

Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., said, “I’m deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in San Diego and across the country. But I do not believe that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitism. … “I support Israel’s right to exist, but I also know many people who question whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state who are deeply connected to their Judaism.”

Nadler, Sanders and Jacobs are all Jewish.

Some legal scholars echoed these criticisms.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who leans libertarian, wrote that the bill “really does risk suppressing not just discriminatory conduct but speech — speech that I generally disagree with, but speech that is fully constitutionally protected.”

Florida International University law professor Howard M. Wasserman concurred with Volokh. 

Wasserman told PolitiFact that “the law raises genuine First Amendment concerns to the extent it can or will be used to impose or threaten (Civil Rights Act) Title VI liability on schools for failing to restrict antisemitic but otherwise constitutionally protected speech.”

Meanwhile, Kenneth Stern, an attorney who helped write the definition in question, has expressed caution about relying on it for the purpose the bill intends. In 2016, when Congress was considering an earlier version of the bill, Stern testified that the definition was designed to help governments collect antisemitism data and “was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus.”  

Timothy Zick, a William & Mary Law School professor, said he’s skeptical that the definition would chill Christian beliefs or criticism of Israel. But he added that it “does not mean it is a good idea to adopt the definition, which was intended to be educational rather than legal.”

What do the bill’s conservative critics say?

Some conservatives focused on whether the antisemitism definition could cover elements of the Bible.

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

When conservative commentator Charlie Kirk asked in an X post whether the bill made “parts of the Bible illegal,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson replied, “Yes. The New Testament.”

The Anti-Defamation League considers blaming the 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 it, the Catholic Church rejected the belief in 1965, a stance then-Pope Benedict XVI reiterated in 2011.

Lawler dismissed the concerns of Greene and others, telling CNN they were “inflammatory and it’s irrational.”

“If you’re calling all Jews Christ-killers, then yes, that is antisemitic and everybody understands that,” Lawler said. “But if you’re referring to the Bible in context, then no, nobody is saying that that is antisemitic.”

Gregory P. Magarian, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said 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 told PolitiFact.

Where does the bill stand?

The bill has moved to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. “There are objections on both sides,” said Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

How binding would the bill be?

It’s 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, it also says that the Department of Education “shall” take into consideration the definition of antisemitism, which seems to leave no wiggle room.

“I would call it ‘strongly advisory’ — a warning shot across the bow with possible funding cuts to follow if not heeded,” said Donald Wolfensberger, a congressional procedure specialist with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.

“The bill could have directly amended the Civil Rights Act to cement this advisory language into law, but (lawmakers) didn’t dare to, given likely opposition by the Senate, the president and even the courts over First Amendment free speech violation concerns.”

Ilya Somin, George Mason University law professor, said the bill’s ultimate impact may be less sweeping than some of its critics suggest, because former then-resident Donald Trump incorporated the definition into Title VI by executive order and Biden kept that policy in place. 

Somin added that antisemitic discrimination “is already illegal under Title VI, under longstanding legal precedent. However, the bill does clarify and codify that, and ends any residual uncertainty,” including whether being Jewish falls under the category of national origin, race, or a religious group.

PolitiFact Copy Chief Matthew Crowley contributed to this report.

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