Category: Fact Check

People in London have devised with a unique way to block cameras that enforce emissions standards: They’re luring bats.

In London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone or ULEZ, people with vehicles that fail to meet certain emissions standards are asked to pay 12.50 pounds per day to drive within the zone. Cameras help enforce the rule. A social media post said, detractors are pushing back by installing bat boxes — roosts for the flying mammals — that can’t be legally removed.

“ULEZ protesters covering cameras with bat boxes. Authorities not allowed to remove under their own law,” read a March 31 Instagram post.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

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.)

News outlets reported in March that bat boxes were installed under number plate recognition cameras in London areas Chessington and North Cheam. British law protects bat species and their roosts. According to the Bat Conservation Trust, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to bat conservation, the following could be considered criminal offenses:

But there are cases when bat boxes can be removed.

“You need a licensed bat (worker) to carry out a check on a bat box but that does not mean they cannot be legally removed with the correct authority,” said Joe Nuñez-Miño, communications and fundraising director for the Bat Conservation Trust, in an email to PolitiFact. He said the licensing authority — in this case Natural England — has the “power to make decisions based on the evidence available.” 

Natural England, a public body that advises the government for England’s natural environment, licenses people who want to “carry out work that may affect bats.”

How likely bats are to bat boxes depends on factors including their surrounding habitat, available alternative roosting sites and how the boxes were placed. 

“In this case, it seems highly unlikely that the bat boxes will be occupied,” Nuñez-Miño said. “While we don’t have the details of where these bat boxes have been placed, it is highly unlikely that bat boxes next to busy roads will be used by any bat species. The noise and artificial light would act as a powerful deterrent and the bat boxes are likely to remain unoccupied.”

A Transport for London spokesperson told PolitiFact that the agency is working with environmental specialists to remove the boxes. According to Transport for London, it is illegal to install materials on its infrastructure without consent. 

We rate the claim that authorities cannot legally remove bat boxes covering ULEZ cameras False.

When a U.S. president speaks to Americans from the Oval Office, it’s often regarding a crisis or an issue of utmost importance. 

It’s where former President George W. Bush addressed Americans the evening of the 9/11 terror attack and where former President Donald Trump spoke about the coronavirus outbreak on March 11, 2020. 

After Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel on April 13, one social media user claimed President Joe Biden planned to address the American public in a similar way. 

“BREAKING NEWS: 5:34 President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will address the nation from the Oval Office tonight, following Iran’s attack on Israel,” read a screenshot shared April 13 on Threads. 

The post featured five siren emojis and the words: “I was really hoping not to see this. This isn’t good.” 

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, Instagram and Threads.)

It’s easy to understand why the idea of Biden addressing the nation from the Oval Office might have alarmed social media users, but there’s one problem: The claim was inaccurate.

(Screenshot from Threads.)

We found no media reports about Biden addressing the nation from the Oval Office the same day Iran attacked Israel. Biden released an April 13 statement condemning the attacks and describing how the U.S. military had helped defend Israel. 

“The U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week,” he said in the statement. “Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”

Biden said he would meet with other leaders of the Group of Seven, or G7, the world’s leading economies, “to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.” The G7 leaders also released an April 14 statement condemning the attack. 

Biden did not announce plans to address the nation, and there is no record of such an address on the White House website or the White House’s YouTube channel. 

Politico reported that Biden “deliberately kept a low public profile” following Iran’s attacks against Israel in an effort to deescalate the situation. 

White House advisers speaking on condition of anonymity told Politico a public address was discussed, but there weren’t immediate plans for Biden to deliver one. Two officials said advisers felt that a televised presidential address “would likely escalate the tensions,” Politico reported April 14.

Oval Office addresses are infrequent. 

President Joe Biden addresses the nation on the budget deal that lifts the federal debt limit and averts a U.S. government default, from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, June 2, 2023. (AP)

Biden gave his first Oval Office address in June 2023 after Congress passed a bipartisan bill that would raise the federal borrowing limit and keep the U.S. from defaulting on its debt. In October, following Hamas’ attack on Israel, Biden gave his second Oval Office address, explaining why he believed financial support for Ukraine and Israel was critically important. 

We contacted the White House for comment and did not receive a reply. 

We rate the claim that Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office on April 13 “following Iran’s attack on Israel” False.

Recent U.S. outbreaks of avian influenza and the first known case of a human contracting bird flu from a mammal have ignited concerns that bird flu will be the next pandemic. 

Some social media users are claiming bird flu will be worse than COVID-19, which caused more than 1.2 million U.S. deaths since 2020.

“GET READY because the fabled ‘Disease X’ COVID PLANDEMIC 2.0 IS on the horizon, and it looks like it’s the ‘Avian Influenza’ Bird Flu H5N1 variant,” an April 4 X post said.

Another X post, featuring butchered grammar, said, “Here we go …. Again. Scientists says Bird Flu pandemic could be ‘100 times worse’ than COVID.”

Other X users said public health authorities are “already working” on a bird flu vaccine for humans, suggesting the disease outbreak was planned.

Public health experts in the U.S. and worldwide say avian flu poses a low risk to humans, and there have been no signs of human-to-human spread of the disease. Developing a bird flu vaccine is part of the federal government’s pandemic preparedness.

What is bird flu?

Avian influenza is a naturally occurring disease among wild birds, including ducks and geese, that can also infect domesticated birds, such as chickens and turkeys. Highly pathogenic strains of bird flu can cause severe infection and high fatality in birds. Low pathogenic strains trigger mild infections, but can turn highly pathogenic.

Domesticated birds can contract avian flu through contact with infected birds, or through contact with surfaces contaminated with the virus. Because avian flu spreads quickly and is untreatable in animals, infected flocks are culled to prevent further infection.

How widespread is the bird flu outbreak in the U.S.?

This strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1, was discovered in wild birds in the U.S. and Canada in late 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. In 2022, the virus began causing outbreaks in commercial and backyard poultry.

Since 2022, H5N1 bird flu has affected more than 82 million birds across almost every state, the CDC said. That means they live on premises where the flu has been detected. Sporadic infections of other wild animals, including bears, foxes and skunks, have also been reported.

Recently, the virus spread to livestock for the first time. In March, U.S. officials reported that goats on a Minnesota farm tested positive for H5N1. Since then, the avian flu has also been detected in dairy cows in Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas.

At the beginning of April, the country’s largest egg producer, Cal-Maine Foods Inc., said it was temporarily halting production at a Texas plant after bird flu was found in its chickens. A Michigan poultry plant also reported bird flu infections.

As of April 10, the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said avian flu affected more than 3.85 million birds in commercial and backyard flocks in Michigan, South Dakota and Texas over the past 30 days.

How often do people get infected with bird flu?

It’s unusual for people to contract avian flu, but rare cases have occurred globally for nearly three decades, the CDC said. Infections can happen when the bird flu virus gets into a person’s eyes, nose or mouth, or is inhaled.

The first bird flu outbreak among humans happened in 1997 in Hong Kong, and about 20 people were infected, the CDC said.

No human cases were reported between 1998 and 2002, the CDC said. And since 2003, the World Health Organization said, there have been 889 cases of humans infected with bird flu across 23 countries, including the U.S., where two people have been diagnosed with the disease.

The first U.S. case occurred in 2022 when a prison inmate caught the disease while killing infected poultry on a Colorado farm as part of a prerelease program. The person’s only symptom was fatigue and he recovered.

On April 1, the second U.S. case of bird flu infection in a human was reported. The person who tested positive with the virus had been exposed to infected cows in Texas. The person, whose only reported symptom is eye redness, is being treated with an antiviral drug.

Officials say public health risk remains low

Many social media users have raised alarm about the avian flu’s fatality rate for humans, with some citing “scientists” who said a bird flu pandemic could be “100 times worse” than COVID-19.

This prediction appears to come from an April 3 Daily Mail article in which John Fulton, founder of Canada-based pharmaceutical company BioNiagara, said, “This appears to be 100 times worse than Covid, or it could be if it mutates and maintains its high case fatality rate.”

PolitiFact reached out to Fulton for comment, but didn’t hear back before publication.

Of the people diagnosed with H5N1 avian flu worldwide since 1997, about 470, or 52%, have died, the WHO said. Bird flu infection numbers and fatality rates differ from country to country.

Most of these bird flu infections were reported in Egypt and Indonesia before 2020, according to the WHO. The fatality rate for bird flu in Egypt is about 33%; in Indonesia, it’s 84%. The lower fatality rate in Egypt may be because the infections were less severe, detected early and treated better, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said.

Claire Standley, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security who specializes in zoonotic diseases, said the severity of a disease depends on a myriad of factors, including a person’s previous exposure to the disease, underlying health conditions, age, access and quality of health care and exposure to the pathogen.

It’s possible that mild or asymptomatic cases of bird flu in humans are not being detected or reported as well in low- and middle-income countries, “so only those cases who are getting very sick are being picked up, along with their contacts — this is going to bias the case fatality data upwards, most likely,” Standley said.

“My sense is that the claim of being ‘100 times worse’ than COVID is just an expression and is not based on a quantitative analysis,” Standley said.

Bird flu remains primarily an animal health issue and the risk to the general public remains low, the CDC said. The WHO also said the public health risk posed by this virus is low.

Is there a bird flu vaccine?

Yes, there are bird flu vaccines in the federal government’s stockpile, but they are not available for sale.

The CDC said vaccine manufacturers could use two candidate vaccine viruses to produce a H5N1 avian flu vaccine, if one was needed in an emergency. The current bird flu strain causing outbreaks in the U.S. is “very closely related” to these candidate vaccine viruses, the agency said.

Viruses can change when they replicate after infection. The CDC has been monitoring the virus as outbreaks have occurred across the country. The agency’s preliminary analysis found that the virus remains “primarily avian” and “not well adapted to people.”

“There were no changes that would make these viruses resistant to current FDA-approved and recommended flu antiviral medications,” the CDC said.

Is it safe to eat poultry and dairy products?

The Agriculture Department said poultry and eggs that are properly prepared and cooked to an internal temperature of 165° Fahrenheit are safe to eat.

The chance of poultry affected by the avian flu entering the food supply is minuscule. The department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service personnel inspect poultry products intended for human consumption for signs of disease before the products enter the market.

The department said it’s not concerned about the commercial milk supply’s safety because these products must be pasteurized before entering the market. Pasteurization heats dairy products to destroy any bacteria and viruses in them.

Additionally, dairies must send only milk from healthy animals into processing for human consumption. Milk from avian flu-infected animals is diverted or destroyed so that it stays out of the human food supply, the department said.

The FDA warns against consuming raw milk or unpasteurized dairy products because they can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can seriously threaten health.

Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson will host an event at Mar-a-Lago on April 12 in an appearance that is expected to underscore something that PolitiFact has fact-checked repeatedly as false: allegations of rampant election fraud — most recently claims of noncitizen voting.

Their joint appearance comes as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has called for Johnson’s ouster for working too closely with Democrats, and as Trump continues to make securing the border a key argument for his return to the White House. 

As he campaigns in 2024, Trump has repeatedly made false and ridiculous statements about the 2020 election. Trump’s election result denial has poisoned many Americans’ views on voting, misleading the public about how elections are run.

So far this year, Trump, entrepreneur Elon Musk and social media influencers have spread statements that create a false impression that noncitizens’ voting or their voter registration is rampant. It isn’t.

The rhetoric is fed, partly, by the reality that a minority of cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, such as for mayor or city council. This includes some cities in California, Maryland and Vermont, Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, previously told PolitiFact. 

But by law, only American citizens are allowed to vote in elections for Congress and president.

Noncitizen voting has been a frequent theme of misinformation in 2024

Trump has made false claims about noncitizens voting stretching back to 2014, and his 2016 presidential race. He made similar statements after his 2020 loss.

Trump said in January that Democrats are allowing immigrants illegally in the country “to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote.” 

Trump didn’t directly identify who “they” are, but in his preceding comments, he talked about people who “cheat on an election” — language he often uses to talk about Democrats.

Our search for evidence turned up sporadic cases of noncitizens registering to vote or casting ballots. But we found no effort by Democrats to register people in the country illegally. Most noncitizens don’t want to risk jail time (or deportation if they are here illegally) by casting a ballot. Election officials take several steps to ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots. 

We rated Trump’s statement Pants on Fire. 

Musk has posted about noncitizens and voting dozens of times. His posts claim that Biden is bringing in new migrants to boost votes for Democrats.

Musk said in a February post on X that Biden’s strategy is to “get as many illegals in the country as possible” and “legalize them to create a permanent majority.” 

The path to U.S. citizenship, which is required for voting in federal elections, can take a decade, so the current influx of immigrants would not lead to a significant number of new voters for many years, if ever. Even when immigrants become voting citizens, it doesn’t mean the United States will become a one-party nation. We rated Musk’s statement False. 

If a noncitizen is allowed to vote in a city race, that does not give that person the right to vote for president.

For example, Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed noncitizen voting for mayor and city council since 1993. About 200 noncitizens are registered to vote in elections compared with 11,200 registered citizen voters in Takoma Park. 

Voting for local elections is held on a separate ballot and location from state and federal elections. Jessie Carpenter, Takoma Park clerk, said if a noncitizen showed up at a polling precinct site to vote in a state or federal election, that person would not be on the roll of eligible voters.

“There is no basis for thinking these folks would be voting in state elections,” Carpenter said.

Trump continues to spread falsehoods about 2020

Trump has made other statements that distort the outcome of elections. Before his recent rally in Wisconsin, Trump said he won Wisconsin in 2020. He won the state in 2016, but lost in 2020.

A probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — who has aligned with Trump and promoted his false claims — turned up no evidence the election was incorrectly called. We rated Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.

Many of Trump’s falsehoods pertain to voting by mail and its expansion during the pandemic. Trump said in January that Democrats “used COVID to cheat” in the 2020 election.

Many states made voting easier during the pandemic by mailing a ballot or an application to receive a ballot to registered voters. Some states that previously required voters to have an excuse to vote by mail loosened that rule.

Trump is free to disagree with these changes, but he is wrong to characterize them as cheating. These changes were made openly, through executive orders, administrative actions or law. And when a state expanded access to voting by mail, that was available to Republican voters, too. 

In a March speech in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump falsely said, “Eighty-two percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election.” Polls showed a majority of Americans believed the 2020 results were legitimate, although significant numbers of Republicans did not.

Johnson sought to overturn the 2020 election

Johnson aligned himself with Trump and congressional Republicans who sought to overturn legitimate results ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

​​In December 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block four battleground states from voting in the Electoral College. Those four states voted for Biden.

Johnson sent an email to Republican colleagues asking them to join an amicus — or “friend of the court” — brief in support of Paxton’s lawsuit, CNN reported. 

The majority of the conference, 126 Republicans, signed the brief. Johnson tweeted Dec. 10, 2020, that he was “proud to lead” the effort.

In interviews after the election, Johnson spread falsehoods about voting machines and a “rigged” election. On Jan. 6, Johnson objected to certification of the election.

Congressional efforts to ban noncitizen voting

Republicans in Congress, with a boost from Trump, are pushing for lawmakers to pass a ban on noncitizen voting. 

“Congress has a role with regard to federal elections,” Johnson said April 12, before his meeting with Trump. “We want to make absolutely certain that anybody who votes is actually an American citizen. In some states, it’s too easy. … So, we need to make sure that federal law is clear on that matter.”

The proposed legislation is drawing attention because Republicans have made fear of noncitizen voting a frequent talking point as a high number of migrants cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

There are a few Republican-backed legislative efforts to curb noncitizen voting.

The broadest bill, the American Confidence in Elections Act, is sponsored by Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis. It currently has 131 co-sponsors, all Republicans. One provision in this bill states it will ensure “only eligible American citizens may participate in federal elections. It draws from previous legislation including the “NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act of 2023” filed by Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va.

The bill acknowledges that this requirement is duplicative of existing law and constitutional requirements: Noncitizens are already not allowed to vote in federal elections.

Steil’s bill also has the following elements targeting noncitizen voting:

• A provision that requires ballots given to noncitizen voters in local elections to include only the offices for which they are eligible to vote, rather than federal offices for which they may not vote.

These measures would fall short of banning local noncitizen voting entirely, because federalism prevents Congress from infringing on local powers over their own jurisdictions. But because of Congress’ unusual ability to influence governance in the District of Columbia, the bill would block the district directly from allowing noncitizens to vote. The district’s provisions have attracted intense opposition from voting rights groups.

This bill has passed the House Administration Committee, which Steil chairs, over Democratic opposition. But it has not received a floor vote yet.

Amid Republican concerns that the full bill will have trouble getting through the chamber, the committee has also approved six pieces of Steil’s bill as stand-alone legislation. Three of these smaller bills touch on noncitizen voting.

One measure would ban the District of Columbia from allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. Another spinoff bill would let states include on vote-by-mail registration applications a requirement that the applicant provide proof of U.S. citizenship.

And a third bill would require the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to respond to requests from election officials who seek to verify the citizenship of voters in their state.

It’s unclear when, or if, any of these measures will come to a vote in the House. If they do pass the House, the ones that receive widespread Democratic opposition are likely to be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Opponents of such measures argue that there are already election law safeguards in place that address these concerns. Those protections include that current law already bans noncitizen voting in federal elections and penalties can include jail time, deportation or denial of citizenship applications. Also, when people register to vote they swear under oath that they are citizens.

RELATED: Trump’s claim that millions of immigrants are signing up to vote illegally is Pants on Fire!

RELATED: ‘An environment of distrust’: How Elon Musk amplifies falsehoods about immigration, 2024 voting

 

New York Police Department officer Jonathan Diller died in the line of duty, and social media users claimed his death moved former President Donald Trump to generosity.

“INCREDIBLE: Trump pays off mortgage of killed NYPD officer’s family,” read an April 1 Facebook post. Diller was shot and killed March 25 during a traffic stop in Queens, New York. 

(Screenshot from Facebook)

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

The comments included a link to a Rumble clip showing a Real America’s Voice report about Diller’s funeral. “Breaking Point” host David Zere said, “Trump gave a donation to Tunnel to Towers, (I) believe he paid off the mortgage for this family through (Tunnel to Towers).”

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation, established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, provides mortgage-free homes to families of military service members killed in active duty and fallen first-responders with young children.

It released a statement March 28 saying it would pay off the mortgage on Diller’s home in Massapequa Park, Long Island. The statement did not mention Trump.

“We will honor Officer Diller not only for his sacrifice but for his unwavering resolve to protect the people of New York City by ensuring his family can stay in their home, forever,” said Frank Siller, Tunnel to Towers chairman and CEO.

PolitiFact contacted Tunnel to Towers and did not hear back, but a spokesperson for the organization told Greater Long Island Media Group that the foundation had not been in touch with Trump or his team about the mortgage.

Zere also walked back his statements on X posts. Replying to a Tunnel to Towers X post, he said, “I may have been mistaken about Trump donating the money to Tunnel and Towers for the Diller family.  I had several people approach me this was the case. I apologize if I reported misinformation.”

He also posted on X, that he had “retracted the story a few hours later….I did not originate this … i reached out to Tunnels to Towers and apologized. Multiple people reached out to me earlier in the day with the story.”

Trump attended Diller’s March 28 wake, but we found neither statements from Trump nor news reports that show he paid off the mortgage for Diller’s home. We contacted Trump’s team and did not hear back.

We rate the claim that Trump paid off Diller’s mortgage False.

PolitiFact Contributing Writer Sofia Ahmed contributed to this report.

Did House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., just expose trouble with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as some social media users are claiming? No, that’s misleading.

An April 6 Facebook post shared side-by-side photos of Johnson and Pelosi with text above it that read, “Nancy Pelosi Busted, Speaker Johnson Just Released It For Everyone To See.”

In the comments, the Facebook user who posted the image said, “Everyone needs to see this!!” and shared a link to a March 20 article by Conservative Brief, a conservative media website. The article headline reads, “GOP-Led House Votes To Ban Housing Migrants On Public Lands.”

(Screengrab from Facebook)

This Facebook 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.)

Although the post says Pelosi, the former House speaker, was “busted,” the linked article doesn’t reveal any wrongdoing.

First, the article mentions a bill passed by the House in November 2023 that would ban the use of public lands for temporary migrant housing. This bill is unlikely to pass in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.

Then, the article changes the subject to note that House Republicans voted in December 2023 to approve an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

The article suggests the two votes are linked, but this is not so. The Republican impeachment inquiry seeks to find evidence of wrongdoing in Biden’s family business dealings.

Pelosi is mentioned in the Conservative Brief’s article only when it says she criticized Johnson’s decision to hold a vote on the impeachment inquiry in a December 2023 MSNBC interview.

We rate the claim that Pelosi was “busted” and Johnson “released it for everyone to see” False.

A parole program for migrants from Latin American countries has been the target of misinformation online, with social media users claiming that taxpayers fund it. 

The  @NashvilleTeaParty Instagram account, which has 77,000 followers and links to the same-named conservative group’s website, posted a graphic about the program and captioned it, “YOUR taxpayer dollars at work!” 

The post’s image includes a map from Fox News that says 326,000 migrants were flown to Florida and thousands more to other U.S. cities, attributing the figures to the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank advocating for reduced immigration. 

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 map image aired April 2 on “Fox & Friends First.” 

But these flights were not paid for by taxpayers. Nor are they secret, as the Instagram post also alleges. 

The migrants who flew to the U.S. did so as part of a parole program for  Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans that is meant to reduce the number of migrants crossing the southern U.S. border. The U.S. grants parole based on “significant public benefit or urgent humanitarian reasons.”

People coming through the program are lawfully entering the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security publicly introduced the program in October 2022, initially for 24,000 Venezuelans.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Jan. 6, 2023 extended the program to admit 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua each month. Under the program, applicants who meet qualifications, including having a U.S.-based sponsor who will support them financially and passing a background check, can request an “advanced authorization to travel and a temporary period of parole for up to two years for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

The agency also says that migrants in the program must pay for their own air travel to the United States. PolitiFact previously rated False a social media claim that “300,000 illegal immigrants were able to use a simple app to get a free flight to our country.” 

An April 1 report by the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes this Biden administration program, said 326,000 migrants arrived in Florida through the parole program since October 2022. 

But the report does not say taxpayers paid for those flights. A March 7 article by the center says that taxpayers did not. 

The center’s April 1 report also said that although 326,000 migrants in the parole program landed in Miami, Florida might not have been their final destination. Miami International Airport is a large transit hub, particularly for flights between the United States and Latin America. 

We rate the claim that 326,000 migrants were secretly flown to Florida with taxpayer money False. 

A three-word deathbed murder confession from O.J. Simpson — arguably America’s most infamous star-athlete-turned-murder-suspect — would have dominated headlines.

So, it raised suspicion when the only person reporting such a claim was an anonymous X poster. 

“This was the last thing OJ Simpson tweeted before he passed,” read the X user’s April 11 post. It included a screenshot of Simpson’s account purportedly sharing the words, “I did it.”

“What did he mean by this?” the poster asked. As of noon April 12, the post had been seen more than 230,000 times.

(Screenshot from X.)

There’s no evidence that Simpson posted such a confession. We found no credible sources or news reports documenting such a confession, and the post does not appear on Simpson’s X profile. X users also appended a community note to the post, saying the supposed confession did not appear on Simpson’s real account. 

Following televised legal proceedings dubbed the “trial of the century,” Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. In 1997, however, a civil trial jury found Simpson liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to Brown and Goldman’s relatives.

In 2008, Simpson was convicted on felony armed robbery and kidnapping charges unrelated to the murder case. He served nine years in a Nevada prison. 

The most recent post on Simpson’s X profile was the Simpson family’s April 11 statement about his death: “On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.”

Before that, Simpson’s most recent post was shared hours before the Feb. 11 Super Bowl. It featured a video in which Simpson said “my health is good” and predicted a win by the San Francisco 49ers, one of his former teams. In May 2023, Simpson announced an unspecified cancer diagnosis, and news organizations reported in February that Simpson had prostate cancer. 

Simpson had always maintained his innocence, however in 2006, he announced plans to publish a book titled “If I Did It.” The book, authored by Simpson and a ghostwriter, sparked instant controversy because it was billed as a memoir in which Simpson speculated about how he hypothetically might have killed Brown and Goldman, according to news reports.   

After a public outcry, the book wasn’t published as planned. Goldman’s family later secured rights to the book in an effort to recoup millions Simpson owed for the civil wrongful death judgment. The family published it in 2007 with a new title, “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer,” and commentary written by the Goldman family. 

In 2018, Fox aired “O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?,” which included 2006 footage of Simpson discussing a “hypothetical” detailed account of the stabbings. Simpson’s lawyer said the conversation was about money — a way to promote the “If I Did It” book, which the lawyer described as “fictional.”

But Simpson has never directly admitted to the crimes, and there’s no evidence he posted such a confession on X before his death. We rate this claim False.

A Facebook post shared a photo of a New Jersey doctor’s office notice as evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous for student athletes.

The April 9 post highlighted parts of the notice that said “COVID-19 vaccinations affect your risk” of “sudden cardiac death on the playing field,” and that the office “may not be able to clear” vaccinated athletes’ sports physicals without “lab work and possibly an echocardiogram to rule out potential heart damage.” 

The post resonated with people who oppose COVID-19 vaccines. “Amazing, even after they knew early on that the vaccine was affecting children’s hearts, they still kept pushing it for even younger kids,” one commenter wrote. “And they called us all names for 3 years,” said another.

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

The notice from the doctor’s office — Morris Sussex Family Practice in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey (now called Morris Sussex Direct Family Practice) — is real. But one notice from a single doctor’s office does not equate to evidence that COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of sudden cardiac arrests in young athletes.

(Facebook screenshot)

The notice was shared in a New Jersey school’s Facebook group in July 2022 and it has been on the practice’s website since at least March 2022, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The notice was updated in January 2023 to say that having a COVID-19 infection also may lead the office to require additional tests for sports physicals. The notice now says, “COVID infection and COVID vaccinations affect your risk” of sudden cardiac death.

But scientific studies have found no link between COVID-19 vaccinations and increased risk of cardiac arrest in young athletes. The narrative that the two are associated, widespread throughout the pandemic by groups opposed to COVID-19 vaccines, has been consistently debunked by journalists, including PolitiFact.

Sports cardiology experts told PolitiFact in January 2023 that they haven’t seen a sharp rise in athlete cardiac arrest episodes since the COVID-19 vaccines came out.

There is a rare, but increased risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the lining outside the heart) mostly in male teens and young adults within seven days of receiving a second dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

A 2022 study in England showed the risk of myocarditis from COVID-19 infection is substantially higher than the risk of myocarditis after a vaccine.

Health experts say myocarditis usually goes away quickly but severe cases can permanently damage the heart muscle and in some cases lead to sudden cardiac arrest.

But an April CDC study that focused on young people, although not specifically athletes, provides more evidence that there’s no connection between the vaccines and sudden cardiac deaths.

Investigators examined Oregon death certificate data from June 2021 to December 2022 for 1,292 people ages 16 to 30. None of the death certificates listed vaccination as an immediate or contributing cause of death. 

Of the total, 101 deaths could not exclude a cardiac cause. Vaccination records were available for 88 of those people, and 40 had received at least one dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Of those 40, three died within 100 days of a vaccine dose. 

Two of those people had underlying illnesses such as congestive heart failure and chronic respiratory failure, and the cause of death of the other was “undermined natural cause.” A “follow-up with the medical examiner could neither confirm nor exclude a vaccine-associated adverse event as a cause of death for this decedent,” the study said.

“The data do not support an association of COVID-19 vaccination with sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young persons,” the study concluded.

We rate the claim that a notice from a New Jersey doctor’s office proves that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous for athletes False.