Category: Fact Check

A recent Threads post casts doubt on whether former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his Manhattan criminal trial so that he could attend his son Barron’s high school graduation in May is genuine.

“I need to go to Barron’s graduation!!!” reads the post’s text, which is next to a courtroom sketch of Trump. 

“Sir, you didn’t attend the graduations of your other 4 children…” reads the text below it next to a courtroom sketch of Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial.  

“True story,” the Threads post said. 

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 found no evidence that Merchan said this. What actually happened: On the first day of jury selection, Trump asked Merchan not to hold trial May 17, so he could attend Barron’s graduation. The school ceremony at Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida, is scheduled for 10 a.m. that day, and the trial is expected to last six to eight weeks.

Merchan has ruled on neither Trump’s request nor a separate request from a Trump lawyer whose own son is graduating June 3, The Associated Press reported.

But the judge seemed open to the idea of adjourning for one or both days.

“Regarding counsel’s request that the court adjourn on Friday, May 17th for Mr. Trump to attend his son’s high school graduation and Friday June 3rd to allow a member of the defense team to attend their son’s graduation, I cannot rule on those two requests at this time. It really depends on how we are doing on time and where we are in the trial. If everything is going according to schedule without unnecessary delays, then I am sure we will be able to adjourn for one or both of those days, but if we are running behind schedule, we will not be able to,” Merchan said, according to CBS News.

Claims that Trump didn’t attend the graduations of his children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Tiffany Trump,  can all be rebutted. We’ve previously debunked claims that Trump wasn’t at Ivanka Trump’s college graduation. A 2016 column in The Choate News, a student newspaper at Ivanka Trump’s high school, Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, quotes a former student saying, “The only time I saw Donald Trump on campus was at graduation.”  

Snopes published a photo of Trump at Donald Trump Jr.’s high school graduation from The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in May 1996, and dug up several news clips placing the former president at his children’s graduations. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Trump attended Trump Jr.’s college graduation in May 2000. 

Trump also attended Eric Trump’s high school graduation, also at The Hill School, according to New York’s City & State. When he graduated from Georgetown University, “proud pop Donald” was part of the “extended clan” that “turned out for the festivities,” Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle newspaper reported.

And Tiffany Trump’s former classmate recalled in a Los Angeles Times opinion column seeing Donald Trump in the third row of their high school graduation. The Hollywood Reporter, among other publications, wrote that Trump paused his 2016 presidential campaign to attend Tiffany Trump’s college graduation ceremony that year. 

We rate this post False.

 

As student protests by pro-Palestinian groups that oppose the Israel-Hamas war flared at college campuses in recent weeks, New York’s Columbia University has been in the spotlight, with student organizers setting up tents and Jewish students saying they have faced harassment and anti-Semitism.

The situation grew so tense that Minouche Shafik, the school’s president, instituted remote classes for one day. Some social media users, however, are telling a different story.

“Columbia University has announced classes will be remote for the rest of the year as anti-Israel protests rock the school,” said an X post that had 21 million views as of April 25, from Collin Rugg, co-owner of conservative news site TrendingPolitics. “There are now growing calls for tuition refunds for the $70k a year college now that it has practically turned into an online school.” We contacted Rugg for further comment but did not receive a reply.

An April 23 TikTok video had sticker text that said, “Breaking: Columbia University announced classes will be remote for the remainder of the school year due to anti-Israel protests.”

We found multiple social media posts making the same claim that Columbia has moved all classes online.

The claim also appeared on the April 24 cover of the New York Post’s print edition, with a headline that read, “School cancels all in-person classes for semester.”

But the claims overstate what’s happening at Columbia, which is providing students with the option to choose between attending classes remotely or in person, according to the school and news reports, including the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. 

(X screenshot)

Columbia did move to all-remote classes April 22, a decision that Shafik said in a statement — released in the early morning hours that day — was intended to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.” She cited some students’ “fears for their safety” and “examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus.” 

But she did not announce classes were virtual beyond that day. The same day, Columbia Provost Angela Olinto announced a hybrid schedule — meaning students have the choice to attend classes remotely or in person — for the school’s Morningside Heights main campus for the rest of the semester.

The spring semester’s last day of classes is April 29, so the hybrid policy will be in effect during five days of classes. Final exams are scheduled from May 3 to May 10, according to a school academic calendar. It wasn’t clear if exams could also be taken remotely. A Columbia spokesperson didn’t answer questions about hybrid classes but referred us to a “campus updates” webpage that linked to announcements.

The provost’s announcement said “it’s vital that teaching and learning continue during this time” and that conditions vary across campus.

Like many schools, Columbia added new classroom technology during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed students to participate in classes in person or remotely. A school website refers to these as “HyFlex” courses.

Faculty in classrooms without the necessary hybrid technology “should hold classes remotely if there are student requests for virtual participation.” If that’s not possible, “we encourage faculty to provide other accommodations liberally to students who have requested support for virtual learning this week.”

Olinto said arts- and practice-based programs will remain in-person “with generous accommodations supported by school deans and staff.”

The school’s Irving Medical Center and Manhattanville campuses will remain in-person, “but (are) granting accommodations based on religious reasons, or approved disability accommodations.”

We rate claims that “Columbia University announced classes will be remote for the remainder of the school year”  False.

Outside reports released earlier this month showed warning signs for the financial viability of the University of Wisconsin System’s universities and signaled future cuts to the state’s public campuses. 

Around the same time, state Rep. Greta Neubauer took to X to attach the blame to Republican lawmakers. Neubauer is a Democrat from Racine and leads her party in the Assembly. 

“The GOP has failed to invest in our campuses, making WI fall to 42nd in the nation in state support,” said a graphic attached to Neubauer’s tweet, which was posted April 11 and used the postal abbreviation for Wisconsin. 

After the reports came out, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers also called on Republicans to approve more funding. He also blamed Republicans for “waging war” on the system for more than a decade.

As more of the state’s universities face layoffs and branch campus closures, we decided to look into how the university system has been funded in recent years.

Here’s what we found.

Wisconsin does rank near the bottom of states in funding public universities 

Before we get into the weeds of how the UW System is funded, let’s look at the second half of Neubauer’s claim: that Wisconsin ranks 42nd in state funding of universities. 

Neubauer is referring to a national State Higher Education Finance report released in May 2023. 

Based on 2022 data from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, Wisconsin ranked 42nd for public funding for four-year colleges.

Only Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Vermont provided less state funding.

Interestingly, the report showed Wisconsin’s two-year, technical college system was funded fourth best in the country. 

In other words, Wisconsin had the third-largest gap in state funding between technical colleges and public universities. Tech colleges received about $14,000 per student, versus $6,200 per student at UW campuses.

An April 2023 report from the closer-to-home Wisconsin Policy Forum painted the same picture by pulling from the 2021 data.

The report found that the University of Wisconsin System ranked 43rd nationally for per-student funding in 2021. The technical college system, in contrast, was ranked fifth best.

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported at the time, technical colleges receive support from local property taxes, while the UW System receives money only from the state.

If the two systems were combined, Wisconsin’s overall public funding for higher education would fall near the middle and above the national average. 

But Neubauer is clearly talking about the UW System’s poorer rankings. Let’s look closer at that funding and the Republicans’ role in it.

Analysis shows difference in what system requested versus what Republicans approved

PolitiFact Wisconsin reached out to Neubauer’s office for more specifics to back up Neubauer’s claim that Republicans have “failed to invest” in UW. 

Her communications director, Sidney Litke, shared a memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau that compares how much funding the UW System has requested with what the budget-writing committee approved.

For context: Republicans have controlled that Joint Finance Committee since 2011. They often scrap Evers’ budget, which he shapes using agency requests, and write their own version of the budget.

So, although Evers is a Democrat, Republicans essentially have control of determining funding for the public university system in the state budget.

In 2023-25, the system requested about $293 million in state general purpose revenue, and Republicans approved about $41.4 million. That’s a difference of about $252 million, the analysis shows. 

There were two budgets that had more of a difference: In 2011-13, there was a $418 million difference between what UW requested and the committee approved, and a $339 million difference in 2015-17. 

Some years were much less, including a $12 million difference in 2017-19. 

If you’re getting lost in the numbers, this basically means Neubauer’s office is showing that Republicans have often approved much less funding than the UW System has requested. 

We should note that even Evers has pared down the full amount the UW System asks for in his budget proposal. That was the case in this latest budget cycle.

But for this fact-check, it’s a good indicator to look at.

Percentage of state funding in UW budget has gone down steadily

Another chart in the memo shows that the portion of the UW System’s budget that comes from state funding has gone down in the last 10 years. 

In the last four years, that percentage has been around 18%. In 2016-17, it was the lowest at 16.8%. In 2011-12, it was at 17.9%.

In the early 2000s, state funding made up around 25% of UW’s budget. In the early 1990s, it made up as much as 50%. 

It’s been a fairly steady decline since then, a trend that appears to transcend what party was in charge of determining that funding.

But in general, the chart shows that Republicans are approving state funding that makes up a smaller part of the UW System’s overall budget.

Republicans did lift the tuition freeze, which UW said would help finances

Although Republicans have been responsible for crafting the budget over the past decade, there are still factors that affect the system’s finances that they aren’t solely responsible for.

Take the now-defunct freeze on in-state tuition, which the system had asked to be lifted because it threatened campuses’ financial stability. 

Republican lawmakers began that freeze in 2013-14, and removed the freeze in 2021. 

In his first two budget proposals, Evers supported continuing the freeze but asked Republicans for funding to offset the money lost by not increasing tuition. The budget he signed in 2019 preserved the freeze.

Bottom line: By lifting the tuition freeze, Republicans may have helped the system manage its finances in some way. Evers could have crafted a line-item veto to remove it, so he effectively kept the freeze going.

But Neubauer is talking specifically about investments of state money, and the tuition freeze is only one piece of the larger picture. 

Our ruling

Neubauer said “the GOP has failed to invest in our campuses, making WI fall to 42nd in the nation in state support.”

Two reports show that the second part of her claim is correct: Wisconsin has ranked around 42nd or 43rd in funding it’s four-year public universities.

The first part of her claim, that Republicans are to blame, is supported by a memo that shows Republicans have approved less funding than the system requested since they started controlling the budget process.

That decline in funding has been happening steadily since about the 1980s, but has reached its lowest point under the current Republican majority. 

And although Republicans lifted a tuition freeze in 2021 — something the system said would help its finances — that’s a small factor, and something both parties played a role in keeping around, including Evers.

With those caveats in mind, we rate her claim Mostly True.

 

A Facebook post from a couple of months ago has recently gained traction using the image of country singer Reba McEntire and a fabricated story about a Fox News lawsuit, dementia and a purported health product. 

“Reba McEntire’s solution to reverse dementia sparks huge lawsuit pressure on Fox,” reads text in the Feb. 29 post. “She finally fought back.” 

A link in the post says: “Reba McEntire Faces Serious Charges, Prayers.” 

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 link leads to what looks like a Fox News article about McEntire’s supposed “solution to reverse dementia” and a lawsuit filed against her by a Fox News anchor, Martha MacCallum. 

“In an Exclusive Interview,” the article says, “Reba McEntire, American most successful country music singer reveals that the show will be ending after her latest business sparks tension with Martha MacCallum.”

We found no evidence that MacCallum or Fox have filed a lawsuit against McEntire. There’s no such case in the PACER database of federal court records, and we found no news reports detailing such a legal fight, which would draw news coverage.

The story doesn’t make clear what show is supposedly ending, though McEntire is a host on NBC’s reality show “The Voice” and MacCallum hosts “The Story” on Fox News. We found no indication that either show is ending. NBC announced Feb. 23 that McEntire would be returning for the new season.  

If the post’s odd punctuation, capitalization and grammar weren’t enough clues, its lasa.ink URL — which includes a reference to “patterned-cotton-socks” — makes it clear that this isn’t an authentic Fox News article. It’s also supposedly bylined by Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume, but no such story exists on Fox News’ website.

Two days later, McEntire asked users on her Facebook page to “not click on any articles that say I am leaving The Voice.” 

“This is not true,” McEntire said. “These are fake websites to lure people in with clickbait where they claim I have a company to sell weight loss gummy products. This is false. I do not sell or promote any type of gummy product.” 

Indeed, the fake Fox News article supposedly quotes McEntire discussing her CBD gummies product. 

As for whether she’s facing serious charges: We found no credible evidence to corroborate that claim. 

We rate claims that McEntire is facing “serious charges” Pants on Fire!

 

Some social media users are claiming that a number of businesses have reported hundreds of store closures under Joe Biden’s presidency.

An April 19 Facebook post shared a photo of eight retail, fast food, entertainment and grocery stores with their purported number of closures: “Dollar Tree: 1,000 stores closing. Walgreens: 900 stores closing. Macy’s: 150 stores closing. Foot Locker: 400 stores closing. Gap: 350 stores closing. Burger King: 400 stores closing. Regal Cinemas: 429 locations closing. Kroger: 413 stores closing.”

Text on the photo read, “Is this building back better?” referring to Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan and presidential agenda, Build Back Better. The post also criticized “Bidenomics.”

(Screengrab from Facebook)

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

Some of these figures lack context; others are incorrect. Here’s a breakdown of how many of these eight businesses’ stores have closed during Biden’s presidency. These closures are largely because of lower sales or business rebrands; none cited Biden’s policies as the reason for the closures.

“Dollar Tree: 1,000 stores closing”

This is largely accurate. Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in 2015 for $8 billion, and plans to close hundreds of Family Dollar stores.

In March, Dollar Tree said it plans to close about 600 Family Dollar stores across the U.S. in this year’s first half, The Associated Press reported. Over the next several years, Dollar Tree plans to close another 370 Family Dollar stores and 30 Dollar Tree locations.

“Walgreens: 900 stores closing”

This is inaccurate. This number refers to the number of recent store closings for CVS, not Walgreens.

Walgreens said in June 2023 that it plans to close 150 U.S. locations by August 2024, CNN reported. In 2019, when Donald Trump was president, Walgreens said it was closing 200 stores in the U.S.

CVS said in November 2021 that it planned to close 900 stores by 2024.

Shoppers enter a Macy’s department store in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York, Dec. 12, 2023. (AP)

“Macy’s: 150 stores closing”

This number is correct, but needs context.

Macy’s Inc. said in February that it planned to close 150 “underproductive” stores in the U.S. through 2026. Fifty of these stores will close by Dec. 31.

In February 2020, when Trump was in office, Macy’s announced 125 store closings, the AP reported.

“Foot Locker: 400 stores closing”

This is missing context. Foot Locker said in March 2023 that it plans to close 400 stores in “underperforming” malls across North America by 2026, CBS News reported. However, the company also said it will open about 300 free-standing locations focused on its “Community,” “Power” and “House of Play” store concepts.

The company said these decisions are part of its “Lace Up” strategic plan to “reset” its business and increase revenue to $9.5 billion by 2026.

“Gap: 350 stores closing”

This number is accurate, but the closures weren’t announced on Biden’s watch.

Gap said in October 2020, when Trump was president, that it would close 350 stores, including 220 of its namesake Gap stores and 130 Banana Republic stores, in North America (not just the U.S.) by 2024, CBS News reported.

Gap’s website lists all of the completed store closures since 2020; it says 189 Gap stores and 134 Banana Republic stores have closed.

A “Home of the Whopper” sign welcomes customers outside the Burger King fast food restaurant, on Feb. 1, 2021, in Epping, N.H. (AP)

“Burger King: 400 stores closing”

This figure is largely accurate. Joshua Kobza, CEO of Restaurant Brands International Inc., which owns Burger King, said in May 2023 that the company planned to close 300 to 400 U.S. locations by the end of 2023.

Kobza said the company typically closes “a couple (of) hundred” Burger King locations each year, Restaurant Dive reported.

When contacted by PolitiFact, a Burger King spokesperson provided no details about the chain’s exact number of closures in 2023.

“Regal Cinemas: 429 stores closing”

We found no reports that this many Regal Cinemas movie theaters were closing.

Cineworld, the company that owns Regal Cinemas, said in January 2023 that it was planning to reject leases for 39 U.S. movie theaters. This announcement came a few months after Cineworld filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, CNN reported. (Chapter 11 bankruptcy lets companies keep operating as they reorganize their assets and debts.)

In September 2022, Regal Cinemas closed 12 locations.

It’s unclear how many Regal Cinemas locations closed after January 2023. We contacted Regal Cinemas, but received no response. The company’s website says it has 426 theaters in the U.S.

“Kroger: 413 stores closing”

This is wrong. Kroger has not announced store closures.

To clear a path for a merger, announced in 2022, grocery store chains Kroger and Albertsons said in 2023 they were selling 413 stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers for $1.9 billion, the AP reported.

But the federal government sued to block the merger in February, saying the merger would lead to a less competitive market and higher prices for consumers. On April 22, Kroger and Albertsons said they would sell an additional 166 stores to appease the government’s concerns, the AP reported.

Erin Rolfes, a Kroger spokesperson, told PolitiFact that Kroger will not close any stores as a result of the merger.

“Stores divested to C&S are not stores that will be closed — they are stores that will be run in the same manner they are today, just by C&S instead of Kroger or Albertsons,” Rolfes said.

Our ruling

A Facebook post claimed there have been mass closures across several businesses during Biden’s presidency.

Some information in the post lacked context, including that some closing announcements preceded Biden’s presidency and that some businesses were opening new stores. The post also shared inaccurate information about the number of stores closing for three businesses.

Although some information in the post is accurate, the claim omits important details. We rate this claim Half True.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

A recent Threads post purports to show adult film actor Stormy Daniels striding into the courthouse April 22 for former President Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial.

Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to Daniels, who has said she had an affair with the former president. 

In the Threads post’s image, Daniels appears to wear a blue dress with a mushroom pattern. 

“Stormy Daniels chose to wear this dress to court today,” the April 22 Threads post said. “I can’t imagine why.” 

But this image was altered, and it doesn’t show Daniels en route to the courtroom — or in  2024.

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.)

A reverse-image search of the photo led us to Reuters photographs that show Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, arriving in April 2018 at ABC studios in New York to appear on the talk show “The View.”

The dress she wore then  was blue, but there were no mushrooms on it. 

Daniels is expected to take the stand as a witness in Trump’s criminal trial, but she hasn’t yet. 

We rate this post False.

A misleading video circulating online appears to show Israel voting in favor of support for Palestine. 

A video shared multiple times on TikTok includes text that read, “Israel accidentally voted (for) Palestine.” 

In the clip shared on social media, Brazil’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sérgio França Danese, reads the following country names: “Belarus, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan.” Danese pauses and glances around after saying Israel’s name. 

The same video was posted on Instagram with the caption, “Israel votes for Palestine in a meeting of United Nations Security Council!” The video’s caption was later corrected after fact checkers noted it contained false information. 

The clip shared on TikTok shows a U.N. Security Council meeting on Oct. 16, 2023, during which council members voted on a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution did not pass. 

In the full video, Danese did list Israel as one of the countries that submitted the draft resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. But he immediately corrected himself, saying “Israel is not part of that list.” His correction is not shown in the abbreviated clip on TikTok.

The U.N. Digital Library shows that Israel was not one of the countries that sponsored the Oct. 16 resolution for a ceasefire.  

The U.N. Security Council is made up of 10 nonpermanent countries elected for two years and five permanent members. Israel has never been elected as a member of the U.N. Security Council, and therefore cannot vote on Security Council resolutions. 

We rate the claim that Israel “accidentally voted (for) Palestine” at a United Nations Security Council meeting False.

A social media post contrasted former President Donald Trump’s mounting criminal charges with what appeared to be a lack of legal consequences for other groups and people. 

The April 17 Facebook post showed a screenshot of an April 16 X post from conservative activist Benny Johnson. His post listed people and groups he said had “0 indictments,” including Hunter Biden, “COVID criminals” and “BLM rioters.”

The post ended with: “Donald Trump — 91 indictments.” 

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.)

(Screenshot from Facebook.)

Johnson’s post appears to have been deleted. He did not respond when PolitiFact asked why it had been deleted. 

Trump was indicted on 91 felony counts but the post paints a misleading picture. 

Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, has been indicted twice. In December, he was indicted on nine tax charges — three felonies and six misdemeanors — in California. He was also indicted in September on three other charges related to a gun he purchased in 2018.   

It wasn’t immediately clear what Johnson meant by “COVID criminals” but available information shows it is inaccurate to claim no one faced criminal charges in COVID-19-related matters. 

The U.S. Justice Department reported that as of April 2024 its COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force had “used a full range of tools to hold accountable fraudsters and other criminals” who abused economic relief measures the government established to support people and businesses during the pandemic. The efforts included charging more than 3,500 defendants with federal crimes in fraud cases related to unemployment insurance benefits and federal financial assistance programs made available through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, more commonly known as the CARES Act, including the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans. 

Some conservatives have used terms such as “BLM rioters,” to refer to people who participated in nationwide protests that calledi for racial justice in summer 2020, after a white police officer  murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. “BLM” stands for “Black Lives Matter,” which was a common refrain during the protests and the name of a related advocacy group. News reports and police reports show that although some violence, property destruction and looting occurred during the 2020 protests, most demonstrations were largely peaceful. 

When the protests turned violent or destructive, however, law enforcement responded. The Justice Department reported in September 2020 that more than 300 people in 29 states and Washington, D.C., were charged “for crimes committed adjacent to or under the guise of peaceful demonstrations since the end of May.” 

People were charged with offenses related to arson and explosives, assaulting law enforcement officers and damaging federal property, according to the department’s statement. 

Trump faces dozens of criminal charges, but it’s inaccurate to claim that others including Hunter Biden and people who broke laws during protests in 2020 were never charged with any crimes. 

We rate that claim False.

RELATED: A fact-checker’s guide to Trump’s first criminal trial: business records, hush money and a gag order

RELATED: Hunter Biden has been indicted twice, but he has not been sentenced to prison

The National Institutes of Health is the federal government’s main agency for supporting medical research. Is it barred from researching mass shootings? That’s what presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said recently.

Kennedy, whose statements about conspiracy theories earned him PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year, is running as an independent third-party candidate against President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate, and the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

On April 21 on X, Kennedy flagged his recent interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck, which touched on gun policy. Kennedy summarized his gun policy views in the post, writing, “The National Institutes of Health refuses to investigate the mystery; in fact, Congress prohibits the NIH from researching the cause of mass shootings. Under my administration, that rule ends — and our kids’ safety becomes a top priority.”

But this information is outdated. 

In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, an appropriations bill provision that federal officials widely interpreted as barring federally funded research related to gun violence (though some observers say this was a misinterpretation). Congress in 2018 clarified that the provision didn’t bar federally funded gun-related research, and funding for such efforts has been flowing since 2020.

Kennedy’s campaign did not provide evidence to support his statement.

What was the Dickey Amendment?

After criticizing some federally funded research papers on firearms in the mid-1990s, pro-gun advocates, including the National Rifle Association, lobbied to halt federal government funding for gun violence research.

In 1996, Congress approved appropriations bill language saying that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” The language was named for one of its backers, Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark.

But the Dickey Amendment, as written, did not ban all gun-related research outright. 

“Any honest research that was not rigged to produce results that helped promote gun control could be funded by CDC,” said Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist. But CDC officials, experts said, interpreted the Dickey Amendment as banning all gun-related research funding.

This perception meant the amendment “had a chilling effect on funding for gun research,” said Allen Rostron, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who has written about the amendment. Federal agencies “did not want to take a chance on funding research that might be seen as violating the restriction” and so “essentially were not funding research on gun violence.”

Also, the Dickey Amendment targeted only the CDC, not all other federal agencies. Congress expanded the restriction to cover NIH-funded research in 2011.

Although the Dickey Amendment didn’t bar gun-related research, federal decision makers acted as though it did by not pursuing such research. 

Moving past the Dickey Amendment

Over time, critics of the gun industry made an issue of the Dickey Amendment and gathered congressional support to clarify the amendment. 

In 2018, lawmakers approved language that said the amendment wasn’t a blanket ban on federally funded gun violence research. By 2020, federal research grants on firearms began to be issued again, starting with $25 million to be split between CDC and NIH.

By now, the CDC and NIH are funding a “large portfolio” of firearm violence-related research, said Daniel W. Webster, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

Also, the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice has funded the largest study of mass shootings to date, Webster said, and is seeking applications for studies of mass shootings. 

Our ruling

Kennedy said, “Congress prohibits the NIH from researching the cause of mass shootings.”

Although the Dickey Amendment, a provision of appropriations law supported by the gun industry, didn’t prohibit all federally supported, gun-related research from 1996 to 2018, decisionmakers acted as though it did.

However, in 2018, Congress clarified the provision’s language. And since 2020, CDC, NIH, and other federal agencies have funded millions of dollars in gun-related research, including studies on mass shootings. 

We rate Kennedy’s statement False.

Kelly Clarkson’s image has been repeatedly misappropriated online to purportedly sell diet products. 

We’ve debunked multiple claims including several involving altered videos that appear to show the singer endorsing diet products, but the original footage proves this didn’t happen. 

The latest scam we’ve encountered: a Facebook post warning users about “other Keto scam ads.” 

“Read the REAL stories of popular celebrities like Kelly Clarkson,” the April 18 post says, “who have changed their lives beyond recognition with the help of our only officially licensed Keto product.” 

The post features a link with an image of Clarkson and text over her that reads: “I will clarify a fact regarding a scam … “

The link leads to what looks like Kelly Clarkson’s Facebook page — but isn’t. 

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 url at the link is a nonsensical series of letters, and Clarkson’s supposed post is a missive replete with typographical and grammatical errors about a weight loss journey that involved “the director of the Olympic opening ceremony” asking Clarkson to “lose 100 pound” for “the sake of national image.”

We found no such post on Clarkson’s actual Facebook page. We’ve also found no credible evidence that Clarkson has promoted weight loss gummies or other diet products. 

Melissa Kates, Clarkson’s publicist, didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s questions about the post. But she has told The Associated Press that Clarkson “does not have any affiliation as a spokesperson” for any “weight loss products/programs.” 

We rate claims that Clarkson has promoted weight loss gummies or other diet products False.