Cited, verified accountability journalism.

Crosscheck

No. 162

All fact-checks

Everything we've checked, newest first. 162 fact-checks to date — browse by verdict, by topic, or by person.

October 20266

  1. Public Citizen’s count of Trump’s canceled corporate cases holds up; its math and $3.1B figure do not Trump’s agencies did drop cases and pardon companies, as Public Citizen says. But its totals don’t add up, and most of its $3.1 billion figure was cut by a judge under Biden.
    5 Mostly True2 Mixed1 Unproven1 Misleading1 False
  2. Trump Declines OSCE Election Observers for the First Time in 24 Years The Trump administration declined OSCE/ODIHR election observers for the first time in 24 years. Six explicit claims rated; the Russia-Belarus comparison assessed.
    5 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Misleading
  3. Iowa steel plant builder is Indian-owned and files H-1B visas, as Greene said Mesabi Metallics is owned by India’s Essar Group and has filed for H-1B workers in Minnesota. It is not new to the U.S., and its Iowa plant is still only a plan.
    3 True2 Mostly True2 Unproven1 Misleading
  4. The America.gov chatbot dodged political questions, then answered them again America.gov’s chatbot swapped fact-checks for refusals on Sept. 30, then answered again within hours. Nothing shows who changed it or why, and TNR misstated a CBO figure.
    2 True3 Mostly True2 Mixed2 Unproven2 Misleading
  5. NRC plan drops ALARA and raises emissions benchmark; public dose limit unchanged A proposed NRC rule would scrap ALARA and lift a reactor emissions benchmark from 10 to 25 mrem a year. The 100 mrem public dose limit stays, and nothing is final yet.
    2 True2 Mostly True2 Mixed1 Unproven1 False
  6. DOJ complained about seven Minnesota judges; it is not investigating them The Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint and asked the Eighth Circuit to investigate seven Minnesota judges. It is not running an investigation itself.
    4 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed3 Unproven1 Misleading1 False

September 202648

  1. The Arendt quote is real; her test for totalitarianism does not fit the US Arendt wrote the crackpots-and-fools sentence, and the record shows loyalty-driven hiring under Trump. By her own criteria, the United States is not totalitarian.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Misleading1 False
  2. Fraternity men self-report more sexual aggression, but proof of cause is thin Fraternity men report more sexual aggression than other college men in most studies. Whether fraternities cause that gap, or draw higher-risk men, is still unproven.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed2 Unproven4 Misleading2 False
  3. Jack Smith never gave the meme’s toll-records answer to Sen. John Kennedy Kennedy did ask Smith about Democrats’ phone records on Sept. 29. Smith’s real answer differs from the meme, and records show Democrats’ texts were swept in.
    1 True2 Mixed1 Unproven2 False
  4. Tesla’s lawyer did not claim a right to call Black workers the N-word Tesla is on trial over racism at Fremont. Its lawyer argued that some uses of the N-word among Black workers are not slurs, not that the company may call workers it. No source counts his uses.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Unproven1 Misleading2 False
  5. Project 2025 urged farm subsidy cuts, but Republicans enacted increases Project 2025 never proposed bankrupting family farms. Republicans raised the farm subsidies it wanted cut, and the largest farms collect the biggest share.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Unproven1 Misleading3 False
  6. Benny Johnson’s Border Claims: Real Data, False Conclusions Johnson’s border chart cites real CBP numbers — but ‘open the border’ misrepresents Democratic policy, and the ‘replacement’ framing invokes a debunked white nationalist conspiracy theory.
    1 Mostly True1 Misleading1 False
  7. A Belgian diplomats’ memo doubted the US alliance; the government disowned it The leaked memo is real and says what the FT reports. It is an unapproved October 2025 draft by diplomats, and Belgium’s government has disowned it as policy.
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Misleading2 False
  8. Courts ruled against 18 of Cohen’s 26 charges and settled two Rep. Steve Cohen filed 26 impeachment articles. Courts have ruled against 18 at some stage, the Supreme Court has settled two, and eight have no court ruling at all.
    3 True9 Mostly True7 Mixed1 Unproven1 Misleading7 Contested1 False
  9. Lahn’s $7,500 tax claim about Sand cites two sources with no such figure Zach Lahn says Rob Sand wants to raise Iowans’ taxes $7,500 a year. The ad’s cited sources hold no such figure, and the cuts it points to total about $3,540. False.
    1 True1 Misleading4 False
  10. Chicago to NYC in 2.5 hours would outpace any maglev built or being built A 2.5-hour Chicago-NYC trip needs a faster average than any maglev in service or under construction. The highway-over-rail spending shift the post describes is real.
    2 True1 Mostly True3 Misleading1 False
  11. El-Sayed’s $5,619 tariff figure measures Michigan importers, not households The $5,619 is Michigan importers’ $23.2 billion tariff bill split across the state’s households. The group behind the figure says it is not what each household paid.
    1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Misleading1 False
  12. No-claims was one of four tests Oz cited, and those enrollees paid no premium The administration cut 760,000 ACA enrollees and is reviewing about 419,000 more. Never filing a claim was one test among four, and all four applied to fully subsidized plans.
    1 Mixed1 Unproven1 Misleading1 Contested1 False
  13. Trump hit record lows in September, but only one poll puts him in the 20s One poll has Trump at 29%. His polling average is a record-low 37.6%. The Hill column’s smaller numbers each round toward its thesis.
    5 True3 Mostly True4 Mixed1 Unproven2 Misleading
  14. Trump never said the banana line, but the trade-deficit idea it mocks is his A viral banana quote came from a parody account. On the same day, Trump did say trade deficits are money the US loses, a view trade data and tariff research contradict.
    1 True5 False
  15. Trump says he has ‘made peace’ while threatening Iran and inviting Putin In one week Trump claimed to have made peace, threatened to annihilate Iran, invited an ICC-indicted Putin to the G20 and kept sanctioning the court. What holds up, and what does not.
    2 True2 Unproven1 Misleading1 Contested
  16. JD Vance repeated at least eight claims after they were publicly debunked We traced claim, debunk and repeat for JD Vance’s statements since 2024. Eight fit, none was corrected, and his fact-check scorecard can’t carry the rest of the case.
    1 True3 Unproven1 Misleading1 False
  17. Congress is older than the voters it answers to, and those voters skew old too The median senator is 12 years older than the median 2024 voter. Research finds lawmakers follow voters, and voters are older than the country.
    2 True3 Mostly True2 Mixed3 Unproven1 Misleading1 False
  18. The research backs later school starts and less overwork, not less homework A viral post says nearly all research favors less homework, later school starts, more vacation and shorter shifts. Two hold up well, one partly, and homework runs the other way.
    2 Mostly True2 Mixed1 Unproven1 Misleading1 False
  19. The White House cited its own background call to justify banning Politico A Status scoop names JD Vance as the source of an Iran quote the White House used against Politico. The call was White House-run; Vance’s role rests on Status alone.
    5 True1 Unproven1 Misleading
  20. No data show trans people commit more violence; Tuberville misnamed two shooters Two of the five attackers Tuberville named were not trans. Trans people are underrepresented among mass shooters, and no US data can measure their overall crime rate.
    1 True2 Mostly True1 Mixed3 Unproven3 Misleading3 False
  21. The $131.5M DoorDash settlement is real, but the probe began under Eric Adams New York’s DoorDash settlement is real and, by our count, the largest by any US city labor office. The investigation behind it began under Mayor Adams, and no court ruled.
    2 True3 Mostly True2 Misleading1 False
  22. Belarus Says Its Potash Is Already Sold. A Gulf War Took Diesel to a Record. Two posts on 21 September named the two costs squeezing American farms. One describes real damage to Russian refineries but points away from the shock that actually moved diesel. The other offers…
    1 True1 Unproven2 Misleading1 False
  23. One Elected Republican Objected to the Press Ban. Fox News Chaired the Pool That Stopped. A widely shared article is being read as saying two Republicans denounced the ban. Its own headline says one, and so does its text. The substantive conservative objection came from media…
    1 Unproven1 Misleading2 False
  24. The Networks Did Refuse to Replace CNN. Cameras Still Covered Trump. Kaitlan Collins said no camera was broadcasting and sharing the footage with the wider press corps. A viral post cut the last seven words and made it a claim about every camera.
    1 True1 Misleading2 False
  25. The 90% Is a Reversal Rate on Appeals, Not an Error Rate The lawsuit is real and says exactly this. Its own paragraphs show the 90% measures appeals that were reversed, and a federal audit puts the measured error rate at 13%.
    1 True1 Unproven2 False
  26. Congress Would Pass Its Own Medicaid Work Test on the First Line of a Pay Stub The statute Congress wrote is met by hours or income. The income bar is $580 a month; a member of Congress earns $14,500. The comparison fails on the law’s own terms.
    3 True3 False
  27. Republicans prompted McConnell’s vote; no one present reported he nearly voted no The prompting happened and is on the record. The claim that he nearly voted with Democrats traces back to no reporter who was there.
    2 True1 Unproven1 False
  28. Patel meets the FBI’s agent education rules but exceeds its age limit On the FBI’s published entry criteria Patel clears education and experience easily. The one rule he fails is the age ceiling, which also excluded Freeh, Mueller, Comey and Wray.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed
  29. Max Miller abuse allegations are documented in court filings but unproven Three allegations against Rep. Max Miller are circulating as settled fact. All three are real court filings by his ex-wife, all are denied, and the police investigation never named anyone.
    1 Mostly True2 Unproven
  30. Pennsylvania reports 693 measles cases and four deaths, two of them confirmed Pennsylvania’s 693 cases match the state’s own release exactly. The fourth death is reported but not confirmed: the state confirms two, a pathologist disputes one, the CDC counts none.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Unproven
  31. ICE Attacked Two U.S. Citizen Teens on Their Way to Enlist in the Marines Video confirms ICE agents attacked two U.S. citizen minors in Texas on their way to file Marine enlistment paperwork. The teens filmed an ongoing ICE operation. ICE has not responded.
    4 True
  32. McConnell drew about $43,858 while absent because Senate pay ignores attendance Three of the four claims in the viral McConnell graphic hold up on the roll-call record. The fourth fails on one word: the Senate has no paid leave for him to have taken.
    2 True2 Mostly True
  33. The FBI’s relaxed bestiality rule turns on age, not coercion Patel told the Senate the FBI’s relaxed bestiality rule shields coerced victims. The criterion reported from the June memo turns on whether the applicant was under 18, not on coercion.
    1 Mostly True2 Misleading1 False
  34. Taxpayers fund 40,000 bombs for Israel through the standard military aid program Rolling Stone is right about the $2.8 billion and the 40,000 bombs. Calling Foreign Military Financing a special program is the error: it is how US aid to Israel has worked for decades.
    1 True1 Mostly True2 Misleading
  35. Trump’s claims that oil was higher under Biden and prices are falling don’t hold Brent closed at $109.51 on Sept 9. Oil beat that on 72 of Biden’s 1,011 trading days. Core prices, energy already excluded, are up 1.83 percent since January.
    1 Unproven3 Misleading2 False
  36. Did the CIA’s Instability Model Put the US in the Highest-Risk Category for Civil War, Coup, or Collapse? The PITF model is CIA-funded and the US met its highest-risk criteria in 2020. But the CIA never scored the US — academics did. The US now ranks 51st globally, below all G7 peers.
    1 Mostly True1 Mixed
  37. A judge stayed one job-application question, not a loyalty oath for employees A court did stay the Trump administration’s ‘loyalty question’ on September 11. It reached job applicants, not sitting employees, and one essay question of four.
    1 Mostly True1 Misleading
  38. Did a Putin-Connected Russian Official Secretly Pay for Trump Jr.’s Wedding? ProPublica found a Kremlin-decorated IBA president paid six figures for Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding. Both claims are Mostly True, with key caveats on ‘bankrolled’ and ‘oligarch.’
    2 Mostly True
  39. The Denial Thesis: Checking a Popular Argument About Trump’s Voters The individual facts in the argument mostly hold. The causal story bolted onto them does not, and on the two claims where the data can test a sequence, the arrow runs the other way.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed2 Unproven2 Misleading3 False
  40. The EPA Stopped Pricing Lives Saved A viral alert says the EPA will weigh only industry costs when limiting soot and smog. The rule text confirms the substance. Zeldin’s ‘fake news’ response does not survive it.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Unproven2 False
  41. Does Grindr Spike at Political Conventions? The traffic pattern is real and it is not a Republican phenomenon. The 2016 Democratic convention produced the largest spike on record. The word doing the most work is ‘crash.’
    2 Mostly True2 Unproven4 False
  42. Groceries Since 2020: The Real Number Is 32%, Not 130% A viral post says a grocery basket more than doubled since 2020. Federal data says food at home rose 32%. Both that claim and the 3% figure it attacks are wrong, in opposite directions.
    3 True1 Unproven1 Misleading3 False
  43. US intelligence assessed Iran was not building a weapon before the strikes Trump justified two rounds of strikes on Iran with claims of imminent weaponization. His own intelligence agencies assessed otherwise, including in writing that Iran was not rebuilding.
    2 True4 Misleading1 False
  44. Trump’s Third Dividend Promise A $5,000 check to every adult, if Republicans keep Congress. Two earlier per-person dividend promises produced no payments. The one that did pay was already funded by Congress.
    2 True1 Misleading5 False
  45. America Guarantees Zero Days Off Trump said America has too many holidays, costing billions. US law mandates zero paid holidays and zero paid vacation, alone among 21 rich countries. Japan guarantees 15.
    1 Unproven1 Misleading3 False
  46. The Sprinkler and the Server Farm Denver’s water restrictions are real and tightening. Whether the data center in the viral video broke them cannot be established, and the water that matters is not on the lawn.
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Unproven1 Misleading
  47. The Case Against Hegseth, Fact-Checked Robert Reich’s impeachment argument rests on a stack of specific claims. Most hold up against the record. The child death toll does not.
    3 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Misleading
  48. Measles, Migration, and the Missing Evidence Donalds blamed Biden-era immigration for the 2026 measles surge. CDC data: 16 of 2,903 cases involved international visitors. The cause is declining vaccination.
    1 True2 False

August 202635

  1. Do Republican Voters Support the Programs Their Party Cut? Medicaid, SNAP, and Foreign Aid Republican voters favor Medicaid and foreign aid programs their representatives cut. The SNAP data are weaker. Most who backed the cuts believed they’d target fraud, not beneficiaries.
    2 True5 Mostly True1 Misleading
  2. Did Trump Deliver Justice for Abbey Gate? Fact-Checking His Fifth-Anniversary Post Trump’s Abbey Gate anniversary post gets the death toll right but misleads on sole Biden responsibility and overstates the ‘mastermind’ arrest and conviction.
    1 True1 Mixed3 Misleading
  3. Did Trump Fall Again? What the Video Record Actually Shows Trump has stumbled and shown gait difficulties across 14 months of public appearances. No confirmed fall to the ground. The most viral “fell” claims were AI-generated disinformation.
    1 Misleading
  4. Fact-Check: Did Trump Buy Boeing Stock the Same Day Boeing Got an $880M Navy Contract? The card gets the dates right, but ‘same day’ means little when Boeing gets DoD contracts almost weekly and the filing was 65 days late.
    2 Mostly True1 Misleading
  5. Mamdani at Eight Months: Promises, Delivery, and What the Record Shows A documented review of what NYC Mayor Mamdani enacted, what stalled at Albany, and what eight months is enough time to judge.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed
  6. Fact-Check: Are American Consumers “Hitting a Breaking Point”? Executive quotes check out, statistics are accurate — but the article picks weaker numbers over stronger ones and never asks what is driving the consumer stress it describes.
    2 True2 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Misleading
  7. The Oval Office Warnings Before the Iran War — What the WSJ Record Actually Shows A viral rewrite converts Trump’s pre-war deliberations into an ignored secret warning. The WSJ shows one camp advised attack, one warned off; Trump chose the wrong one.
    2 True2 Mostly True1 Mixed3 Misleading2 False
  8. Fact-Check: Trump’s August 2026 Canada Trade Claims — ‘Ripping Off,’ the $200B Subsidy, ‘Don’t Need Canada,’ and a False Auto History Trump’s ‘ripping off,’ ‘$200B subsidy,’ and ‘don’t need Canada’ claims rated alongside Greer’s false Auto Pact history and Canadian counterclaims.
    1 Mostly True1 Mixed3 Misleading3 Contested1 False
  9. Four accountability failures, not a halt, lie behind the 14,000 casualty claim Four distinct accountability failures — EO revoked, statute missed, ROE loosened, war-zone labels quietly expanded — collapsed into one claim that doesn’t hold up on closer inspection.
    1 Mostly True2 Misleading
  10. Fact-Check: Did Trump Target the French Language in Canada? His Administration’s Paper Trail Says Yes. Trump denies targeting Canada’s French language. The US listed Quebec’s language law as a trade barrier and demanded French-media subsidy cuts. Polling shows 85% of Quebecers backed Carney.
    1 Misleading2 False
  11. Did Trump Cut Funding to the FDA? Trump’s DOGE-driven layoffs cut nearly 20% of FDA’s workforce, and the administration proposed a $400M budget reduction. Congress blocked most of the budget cuts. Verdict: Mostly True.
    1 Mostly True
  12. Fact-Check: Attorney General Todd Blanche on Meet the Press, August 16, 2026 Two claims rate False: Blanche on presidential direction (the Bondi episode contradicts the “never”) and his Biden clemency description (Jan. 17 commutations were non-violent).
    3 Mostly True2 Mixed2 Misleading2 False
  13. Fact-Check: “Federal Data Reveals U.S. Foodborne Illness Cases Are Up Nearly 400%” 400% understates a real ~600% surge in outbreak-linked cases. The metric is wrong: total food poisoning (48M/yr) didn’t move. Policy cuts plausibly slowed response; they didn’t cause it.
    1 Mixed2 Misleading
  14. True Texas Project in Tarrant County: What the Evidence Shows Four sub-claims about TTP and Tarrant County GOP politics, rated on their own evidence: real influence documented; ‘dominate’ and ‘takeover’ overclaim it.
    2 Mostly True2 Mixed
  15. Operation Puppet Master: What the DHS Surveillance Records Show DHS court records confirm Minneapolis surveillance of unions and protesters — but the AFL-CIO subpoena claim is wrong, and the entrapment theory remains unresolved.
    2 True1 Mixed1 Misleading1 Contested
  16. FinCEN’s CTA Rollback: A Claim-by-Claim Fact-Check of the August 2026 Beneficial Ownership Exemption FinCEN permanently exempts U.S. entities from BOI reporting and deletes collected data, going further than courts required in a move that serves both small businesses and anonymity-seekers.
    1 True2 Mostly True2 Mixed1 Misleading1 False
  17. Infrastructure and Ideology: Parsing the Tech-Elite Surveillance Claim Palantir’s ICE contracts, Thiel’s ‘freedom and democracy are incompatible,’ and Yarvin’s autocracy blueprint are all real. The claim they form a coordinated plan is not proven.
    4 True2 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Unproven
  18. COVID Accountability, Strand by Strand: Fact-Checking the Pre-Pandemic Preparedness Record PREDICT’s end was scheduled. The NSC directorate was dissolved. The April 23 remarks are on video. The causal chain is unproven. PPE to China preceded domestic need. Trump’s private and public COVID…
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Unproven1 Contested
  19. Did Fauci’s Texts Prove He Knew Vaccines Caused Miscarriages? Texts show Fauci flagged a theoretical miscarriage mechanism in 2021. The viral claim he knew and hid it is False; a transparency question remains Contested.
    2 False
  20. Did Biden’s Pardon Strip Fauci of His Fifth Amendment Rights? Brown v. Walker supports the claim’s logic, but perjury exposure, three state AG subpoenas, and autopen questions leave Fauci’s Fifth Amendment invocation legally unresolved.
    1 Contested
  21. El-Sayed, Rogers, and the Misattributed 9/11 Claim Rogers said El-Sayed ‘believes America deserved 9/11.’ That quote belongs to Hasan Piker. El-Sayed rejected it on camera. The live debate is his refusal to condemn it.
    1 True1 False
  22. Did Trump Serve in the Military? Trump never served. Five Vietnam-era draft deferments, a disputed bone spurs diagnosis, and a private military school do not add up to military service. Verdict: False.
    1 False
  23. The Arizona Voter Data Breach and the 2020 Election Security Claim A real confession and real non-prosecution, but framing voter-roll scraping as proof the election was insecure inverts what CISA’s security claim actually covered.
    1 True2 Mostly True1 Misleading
  24. Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order: What the Law Says, What Wong Kim Ark Held, and What the Supreme Court Decided Trump’s Jan. 2025 EO on birthright citizenship is accurately described but overstates Wong Kim Ark’s scope. SCOTUS settled it 6-3 in June 2026: the EO is unconstitutional.
    1 Mostly True
  25. DOGE’s Federal Data Dragnet: Access Was Real, Broad, and Poorly Controlled DOGE accessed at least 12 agencies’ sensitive databases over 18 months. Multiple IG investigations confirmed mishandling. One D.C. case is now in discovery.
    3 True1 Mostly True
  26. DOGE’s Savings Claims Were Overstated by Billions. The Record Doesn’t Support Fraud. GAO-26-108615 confirms DOGE’s savings claims were overstated and largely unverifiable. The evidence points to methodological failure — not the fraud some allege.
    4 True1 Mostly True
  27. Fact-Check: Eight Outlets, One Flawed Argument — The “Liberal Media Is a Myth” Graphic [Corrected] A viral graphic claims eight outlets prove no liberal media. CNN is false. The test: WaPo, LA Times, ABC, CBS accommodated — under owners with divergent partisan profiles.
    2 True4 Mostly True2 Misleading1 False
  28. Were Mamdani’s X Bots Traced to NYC City Hall? Bot-like accounts boosting Mayor Mamdani exist — but the “traced to City Hall” claim rests on IP geolocation that routinely misidentifies NYC VPN traffic as City Hall Park.
    1 Misleading
  29. Paul’s committee published 20 people’s medical records without redaction True: Paul exposed 20+ individuals’ medical records in Fauci’s diary. HIPAA doesn’t apply to Congress. Speech or Debate Clause is the key protection; HHS carries the greatest statutory risk.
    1 True
  30. Fact-Check: Senate Panel Votes to Hold Fauci in Contempt — Five Disputed Figures, One Unresolved Procedure The committee vote was 8-5, the Senate floor was bypassed, and five circulating figures need correction. The pardon-vs.-Fifth Amendment legal fight is headed to the courts.
    1 True2 Mostly True1 Contested
  31. Trump’s Midnight Munitions Post: Five Claims, Five Verdicts ATACMS are gone, Patriots are down two-thirds, and WWII built far more factories. Five claims from Trump’s midnight post, rated.
    1 Mostly True1 Mixed2 Misleading1 False
  32. Peru, not the US, had the world’s highest confirmed COVID-19 death rate RFK Jr.’s claim that the U.S. had the highest COVID death rate globally is false. Peru’s confirmed rate was nearly double the American figure. Among peer nations, the U.S. story is worse.
    1 True1 False
  33. The Fine Print on Utility Money: Haley Stevens’ Senate Claim, Examined Stevens denied taking utility money for her Senate campaign. FEC records show $5,000 from DTE and Consumers Energy PACs reached her Senate account via her House committee’s transfer ledger.
    1 Misleading1 False
  34. MAHA Action’s Fraud Task Force Post: The Figures Are Real, the Labels Aren’t Vance’s $230B and $56B figures are real. MAHA Action’s post gets both labels wrong: ‘fraud’ overstates a broader category, and ‘halted or recovered’ contradicts Vance’s own words.
    1 Misleading
  35. Did Biden Pardon Violent Offenders? Biden’s mass pardons went to non-violent offenders. He commuted — not pardoned — 37 death row murderers to life without parole, a different legal action that leaves convictions intact.
    1 Misleading

July 202635

  1. Trump vs. Cornyn on Blanche and the Anti-Weaponization Fund Trump misquotes Cornyn on Mar-a-Lago, calls a warrant-backed search ‘illegal,’ and ignores ~$100M in IRS audit immunity he gained from the fund’s own settlement.
    1 Mixed1 Misleading
  2. Fauci, COVID Deaths, and the Pitch Heard Round Truth Social Trump’s COVID-deaths post is selectively framed; the basketball-pitch premise misattributes Trump’s own words to Fauci; Fauci’s Fifth Amendment Senate invocation is confirmed true.
    1 True2 Misleading
  3. The Fifth Amendment Is Not a Confession Invoking the Fifth Amendment cannot be treated as guilt in criminal proceedings; Biden’s pardon of Fauci creates a live legal question courts have not yet resolved.
    1 Misleading
  4. Fauci’s Diary and Masks: What the Viral Claim Gets Backward Viral posts claim Fauci’s released diary proves ‘everything he was pushing about Covid was a lie’ on masks. The specific diary entry cited — March 31, 2020 — says the opposite…
    1 False
  5. Trump’s NYT “Victory” Post: A Deferral Is Not a Denial Judge Merryday did not deny the NYT’s motion to dismiss — he deferred it, ordering a third version of Trump’s complaint by August 27. Trump’s post frames this judicial punt as a decisive win…
    1 Misleading
  6. “Trump’s Net Worth Increased by $4 Billion Since Taking Office” — Fact-Check Trump’s net worth grew substantially since January 2025, driven by crypto ventures ($1.4B in 2025 income alone), but the specific “$4 billion” figure uses a baseline lower than what Forbes and…
    1 Mixed
  7. Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism: What 40 Years of Research Shows, and What RFK Jr. Changed at the CDC More than 40 large-scale studies covering 5.6 million children found no vaccine-autism link. The claim’s only scientific source was fabricated for money and retracted in 2010. Under RFK Jr., the CDC…
    1 Mostly True2 False
  8. Trump’s July 16 Election Speech: What the Declassified Documents Do — and Don’t — Show Trump’s primetime speech happened and his quotes are accurately characterized, but his central framing — that documents prove China compromised U.S. voter data — overstates what was released…
    1 Misleading
  9. The White House cut 284 clean-energy grants using an electoral-vote filter A DOE lawyer admitted that 284 clean energy grants ($7.5B) were canceled by electoral-vote filter. A judge ruled it illegal. Full verdict: unlawful under three frameworks, without historical…
    1 True
  10. Trump’s “Complete Sweep” in Arizona: Three Claims, Three Verdicts Trump-backed candidates won key Republican primaries on July 21, 2026, but “won everything” misleads on three levels: these were primaries not generals (Democrats hold all major Arizona statewide…
    3 Misleading
  11. Trump’s Saudi Nuclear Post: The “No Enrichment” Claim Doesn’t Match the Signed Deal A real civil nuclear cooperation agreement was signed July 22, 2026 — but the deal Trump signed does not prohibit enrichment (it contains a pathway to an enrichment facility via a joint study, and…
    1 True1 Mixed2 Misleading1 False
  12. NJ’s Noncitizen Voter Registration: What the Software Error Actually Shows A real 12-month software error enrolled 6,600 noncitizens in NJ voter rolls and produced roughly 400 votes spread across party lines — but the post’s three framing claims collapse: the governor…
    1 Mostly True3 Misleading
  13. Trump’s “Levels Never Seen Before” Blue-State Exodus Claim Two Trump Truth Social posts claim rich people and companies are fleeing blue states at record rates. IRS data shows migration peaked during COVID and has since eased by roughly a third;…
    2 Misleading
  14. Trump’s 52,000 Iran Protester-Death Claim, Fact-Checked Trump’s 52,000 protester-death figure exceeds every independent estimate 7-fold; his Netanyahu pledge is legally grounded; and the Iran war-directive claim to military leadership is mostly true.
    1 Mostly True2 Misleading
  15. Did Illegal Immigration Drive Up Your Rent? The Dallas Fed Study Trump Cited, Examined A preliminary Dallas Fed working paper found unauthorized immigration contributed about 19% of rental price increases from 2021–2024. Trump claimed 40–50% via a government housing program that…
    1 Mixed1 Misleading
  16. Trump’s Canada Wildfire Post: Negligence, Tariffs, and What the Science Says Three of six claims are False (Canada ‘refused to engage,’ ‘willful negligence,’ and adding pollution costs to tariffs — which have no legal mechanism post-IEEPA); two are Misleading (forest…
    1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Misleading3 False
  17. Fact-Check: Trump’s Digital Equity Act ‘Victory’ Post — What the Court Actually Ruled A federal judge struck down one race-targeted provision but simultaneously ordered Trump’s Commerce Department to reinstate over $1.25 billion in canceled broadband grants; advocates called it their…
    3 Misleading2 False
  18. Trump’s Election Declassification Posts: Three Truth Social Claims Checked All three posts are Misleading. The declassified documents are authentic and the whitehouse.gov/election-integrity/ page is live, but the ‘covered up’ narrative, the ‘largest compromise in history’…
    3 Misleading
  19. Trump’s June CPI Post: Five Claims Checked Two claims are True (largest monthly drop since April 2020; all 67 Bloomberg economists missed) and three are Misleading: ‘across the board’ ignores food and shelter rises, the 0.8% real wage gain…
    2 True3 Misleading
  20. McConnell Rehab Photo: AI, Recycled, or Real? Forensic experts and four independent fact-checkers found no evidence the July 12 rehabilitation photo was AI-generated or recycled from 2023; all three viral claims rate False, though the…
    3 False
  21. Trump Claims DC Crime Is Down 95%: What the Numbers Actually Show DC crime is down 20% overall and homicides 38% year-to-date in 2026 — significant, but nowhere near the 95% Trump claimed; the ‘Italian Embassy’ he praised is the US Ambassador’s Residence in Rome,…
    1 Misleading1 False
  22. Trump’s Election-Integrity Disclosure: What the Declassified Documents Actually Say The July 16 address released genuine intelligence records. On most claims, the documents’ own caveats, confidence levels and context cut against the framing the speech drew from them.
    1 True3 Mixed1 Unproven5 Misleading
  23. NY Millionaire Flight and $5K Rents: What the Data Shows, and What Mamdani Has to Do with It The CBC tax-revenue and rent figures are real, but the viral post misattributes a 12-year trend to a mayor who has been in office six months and misrepresents undocumented immigration as the cause…
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Misleading1 False
  24. Fact-Check: Hegseth’s Pastor and the Pentagon Pulpit The viral Wilson/NPR claim is substantially accurate but overstates in three ways: “all women” misrepresents household voting, Wilson is not technically Hegseth’s pastor, and the Pentagon sermon was…
    3 True3 Mostly True1 Mixed2 Misleading
  25. Did Biden “Open” the Southern Border? Fact-Checking the Claim Biden reversed key Trump-era enforcement measures and presided over record border encounters, but ‘opened the border with unrestricted immigration’ is Misleading: 2.5M+ expulsions occurred, FY2024…
    1 Misleading
  26. Has Education Overtaken Race as America’s Key Ideological Divider? Mostly True — a peer-reviewed PNAS Nexus study confirms education-based ideology gaps (0.72 SD) now exceed racial gaps (0.27 SD), but race still dominates actual voting behavior by a 1.7× wider…
    1 Mostly True
  27. Trump Threatens to Block the Housing Bill Over the SAVE America Act Trump’s post is accurate on the Housing Bill’s passage but misleads on three fronts: the 97% Republican polling figure lacks any identified source, the SAVE America Act as passed by the House does…
    1 True3 Misleading1 False
  28. Did Ken Paxton Commit Voter Fraud Six Times? ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found credible evidence Paxton voted in six elections from an address he’d moved out of, but ‘committed voter fraud’ overstates what has been legally established.
    1 Misleading
  29. The “Black-on-White Crime Epidemic” Claim: What the Government’s Own Numbers Say The raw figures in the viral post are mostly real. The epidemic they are arranged to prove is contradicted by the same government tables they came from.
    1 Mostly True1 Misleading3 False
  30. Trump’s Toyota-Texas Post: What the Announcement Actually Says Toyota is shifting Tacoma pickup production from one Baja California plant to Texas in a $3.6B investment, but maintains Mexico operations and cited USMCA uncertainty rather than endorsing tariff…
    1 Mostly True2 Misleading
  31. Does a Civil Judgment “Prove” Trump Raped Someone? A civil jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse; the trial judge ruled that finding is rape as commonly understood. It is a civil finding, not a criminal conviction.
    1 Mostly True
  32. Disaster Aid by Party & the ‘Stolen’ 250th: Two Threads, Checked Trump withheld FEMA aid from blue states (23% vs 89%) and tied it to his candidates; Democrats allege his fundraisers diverted America250 donations to Freedom 250. Proven, alleged, illegal, sorted.
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Unproven
  33. Trump’s ‘National Scallops Day’: What the Post Gets Right, Leaves Out, and Gets Wrong The NOAA action opening the Northern Edge of Georges Bank is real, but the post misattributes a 32-year-old Clinton-era closure to Obama and Biden, falsely credits Biden as co-creator of the…
    1 True1 Mixed1 Unproven2 Misleading1 False
  34. ‘The UAE Sent $580 Million Directly to Trump’: Checking the Viral Crypto Bombshell A viral video says the UAE bought half of Trump’s crypto company and funneled $580M ‘directly to the President.’ The deal is real and serious — but the number is inflated and ‘directly’ is wrong.
    2 True1 Misleading1 False
  35. Trump Family Foreign Deals: Abuse of Office, Hunter Biden Redux, or Illegal? The Trump Org did zero foreign deals in term one and eight in term two, plus crypto billions from foreign-linked entities. We check the facts and answer three questions: abuse, hypocrisy, legality.
    2 True1 Mostly True2 Unproven

June 202626

  1. Did the Supreme Court ‘Take Restrictions Off Political Spending’? Trump says the Court removed limits on political spending; a critic says it lets billionaires buy elections. It struck one limit, on coordinated party spending. Here’s what fell and what it changes.
    1 True2 Mostly True1 Mixed1 False
  2. Did Trump Buy a Taser Maker’s Stock Before ICE Sought a $220M Deal? A viral tweet says Trump bought Axon stock two weeks before ICE went looking for $220M in tasers, and that it’s ‘super illegal.’ The trade is real and CNBC-documented. The ‘illegal’ part is not.
    2 True1 Mostly True1 False
  3. Fact-Checking ‘Trump’s Biggest Failure’: The Op-Ed vs. the Data A Common Dreams column calls Trump the biggest failure in recent presidential history. Its sourced numbers mostly hold; ‘hyperinflation’ and ‘tanked the economy’ do not.
    3 True1 Mostly True1 Misleading1 False
  4. Trump’s Gas Price Post: Six of Seven Claims Fail the Numbers WTI crude settled at $70.56 on June 29, not $68; gas prices had already fallen 53 cents/gallon in one month; $2.50/gallon is mathematically impossible at current crude costs; no federal price…
    1 Mostly True1 Mixed3 Misleading2 False
  5. Did the USAID Cuts ‘Do Nothing’? Checking Musk’s ‘Not a Single Name’ Musk says no one can name a person who died from his aid cuts, and the ‘millions’ are false. A NYT columnist named four; models estimate hundreds of thousands of deaths already.
    1 True2 Misleading2 False
  6. Jeffries on the Mail-Ballot Ruling: Seven Claims, Checked After the Supreme Court upheld state grace periods for mail ballots, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries indicted Trump’s whole record. The facts mostly hold; the framing is partisan.
    3 True3 Mostly True1 Mixed
  7. Humphrey’s Executor Is Dead: Fact-Checking the FTC Firing Ruling NPR reported the Supreme Court handed Trump at-will power over the independent agencies. We checked every load-bearing claim against the opinion itself: the reporting holds.
    3 True1 Mostly True
  8. Letlow Wins Louisiana Senate Runoff: Fact-Checking Trump’s Two Truth Social Posts Julia Letlow’s 57-43 runoff win over John Fleming is confirmed and the margin was decisive; Trump’s “election run continues” framing is misleading because he had just lost two governor primaries.
    1 True1 Misleading
  9. Fact-Check: Trump’s Truth Social Attack on Maggie Haberman’s “Regime Change” Trump calls the co-authored Regime Change book ‘largely fiction’ — but his own White House confirmed its accuracy. His electoral stats are mostly correct; his tape denial is unproven; his Iran…
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Unproven1 Misleading1 Contested2 False
  10. Is Antifa a Designated Domestic Terrorist Organization? Trump’s September 2025 order declared antifa a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’ No federal law lets him: the U.S. has no domestic designation power, and the order cites none.
    1 True1 False
  11. Are the Democratic Socialists “Communists”? The DSA’s Rise, Fact-Checked The DSA grew 20x in a decade and put a socialist in NYC’s City Hall; the ‘communist’ label is misleading on the mechanism, but they’re not Nordic social democrats either.
    3 True2 Misleading
  12. Was Trump’s Iran Deal a “Catastrophic Capitulation” for Israel? The NYT’s reporting on Israel’s shock is accurate, but its ‘none of Israel’s war aims’ verdict omits Israel’s real tactical wins, and the Lebanon-withdrawal claim remains contested.
    2 True1 Mostly True1 Contested1 False
  13. “Russia Already Lost”? Fact-Checking the Drone-War Claim Ukraine’s deep-strike drone campaign is real and escalating, but the viral claim that Russia ‘already lost the war’ outruns the evidence; experts see a prolonged stalemate.
    2 True1 Mostly True2 Misleading
  14. Is the Iran War “Worse Than Vietnam”? Fact-Checking Foreign Policy’s Verdict Foreign Policy’s facts on the 2026 Iran war check out; its ‘defeat worse than Vietnam’ verdict is a contested argument, and real upsides for Trump exist that it minimizes.
    1 True1 Mostly True2 Misleading1 False
  15. The Mashed Potato Incident: Fact-Checking Trump’s “Origin Story” Genuine family lore, and most corroborating quotes hold up, but the essay mislocates one story, cites two untraceable quotes, and oversells one childhood humiliation as the cause of the whole man.
    4 True2 Mostly True1 Mixed1 Unproven
  16. The “Two Santas” Strategy: A Fact-Check Fact-checking the viral “Two Santa Clauses” essay on GOP vs. Democratic economic strategy: the core thesis holds up, but several headline details are wrong.
    1 True3 Mostly True1 Misleading1 False
  17. Two Iran Deals, Eleven Years Apart: Trump’s 2026 MOU vs. Obama’s JCPOA The 2026 US-Iran ceasefire memorandum defers the hard nuclear numbers to a ‘final deal’ 60 days out; on the measures Trump used to attack the 2015 JCPOA, the signed text is so far looser and…
    6 True
  18. The Patel “Slush Fund” Claim: What’s Proven, What Isn’t Rep. Raskin’s letter alleging FBI chief Kash Patel paid $1M+ in bonuses to a loyalist ‘payback squad’ is real, but the bonus specifics are unproven; the firing purges are the best-documented part.
    1 True1 Mixed1 Unproven
  19. The $600M Ballroom & Three More Claims: A Fact-Check A newsletter four claims, checked: the $300M ballroom taxpayer-free label, GOP senators balking at the Iran deal, and the WSJ retreat verdict all hold; the affordability promise does not.
    3 True1 False
  20. Does This Deal Stink? Trump’s Crypto Firm Becomes a Bank World Liberty Financial — the Trump-family crypto firm — is about to get a federal bank charter from Trump’s own OCC appointee. It’s legal (the president is exempt from the conflict statute) but a…
    2 True1 False
  21. Billions for Iran, None for Health Care? A Fact-Check A viral framing pairs one true claim with three shaky ones: the money to Iran is its own frozen assets, the US did not pay Venezuela $20 billion, and Trump did call Medicaid unaffordable amid war.
    1 True1 Misleading1 Contested1 False
  22. Depression Talk and Hitler Comparisons: Fact-Checking a Viral Reddit Thread The US checks none of the Great Depression hard markers but faces real recession risk. The Hitler analogy is contested: experts document authoritarian drift, the 1930s comparison overreaches.
    1 Mixed1 False
  23. Noncitizen Voting: What Republicans Claim vs. What the Data Shows State audits, Trump own disbanded commission, a federal court loss, and Heritage own fraud database all find noncitizen voting vanishingly rare, far too rare to swing elections.
    5 False
  24. Palantir, the Minab School Strike, and AI Warfare: A Fact-Check A viral Reddit post claims Palantir’s AI autonomously bombed an Iranian school using outdated Google Maps data — the core tragedy is real but several key details are wrong or exaggerated.
    1 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed3 Misleading
  25. Hegseth vs. Murray: The Iran War’s Price Tag, Fact-Checked Pentagon claims $29B for the Iran war; independent estimates say $50–72B. Murray’s core claims hold up. Hegseth’s framing that ‘previous presidents’ let Iran go nuclear omits that Trump himself…
    3 True2 Mostly True1 Misleading
  26. 3,711 Trades: A Fact-Check of Trump’s Presidential Stock Portfolio Trump filed 3,711 stock trades worth $220M-$750M in Q1 2026 — including unsolicited purchases in companies he praised the same day, contradicting blind-trust claims and exploiting a legal exemption…
    1 Mostly True2 Misleading1 False

May 202612

  1. Fleeing Justice via the Law of Return: Fact-Checking the CBS Investigation CBS’s core claims about accused sex offenders exploiting Israel’s Law of Return are substantiated by court outcomes and policy changes; the most direct current-administration connection is the…
    3 True1 Mixed
  2. The Thiel Signal: Fact-Checking the Argentina Relocation Of 13 claims about Thiel’s Argentina move, 10 are fully confirmed, 2 are editorialized, and 1 is premature — but the viral narrative omits the most concrete driver: California’s billionaire tax.
    2 True1 Mixed1 Unproven
  3. Fact-Check: ICE Detention Conditions & the Delaney Hall Hunger Strike Detainee allegations at Newark’s Delaney Hall are unverified on-site but consistent with a documented pattern of medical neglect and deaths across ICE facilities nationwide.
    3 True1 Unproven
  4. Itamar Ben-Gvir: From Convicted Extremist to Minister — And What America Isn’t Seeing A convicted supporter of a terrorist organization now runs Israel’s police — and the US both condemns and enables him while Europe fights back.
    4 True2 Mostly True
  5. DNC 2024 Autopsy: What It Gets Right, Wrong, and Omits The DNC’s 192-page 2024 election autopsy correctly identifies strategic failures but is riddled with factual errors, missing sections, and a glaring omission of Gaza’s electoral impact.
    1 True1 Mixed3 False
  6. The $1.776 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund: Where the Money Comes From, Where It Goes, and What’s Legal Trump created a $1.776B taxpayer fund to compensate allies he says Biden ‘wronged’ — funded by a permanent Treasury account, overseen by his own appointees, with Jan. 6 defendants eligible to claim.
    3 True1 Mostly True1 Mixed
  7. Did China Troll Trump? A Claim-by-Claim Fact-Check of the Beijing Summit Five viral claims about China trolling Trump during his May 2026 state visit — one false, two true, two true-but-misframed — with sources for every detail.
    1 True3 Mixed1 False
  8. Fact-Check: ICE Treatment of Children — Detention Conditions & “Children as Bait” Both claims verified: government reports document sub-human detention conditions for children, and multiple incidents confirm ICE using children to lure families.
    2 True
  9. Court Packing vs. Court Stacking: A Fact-Check of Every Major Claim Trump hasn’t ‘packed’ the courts (added seats), but McConnell’s vacancy blockade and 271 lifetime appointments across two terms constitute the most aggressive court-stacking operation in modern…
    3 True1 Mixed1 Misleading
  10. Originalism When Convenient: A Case-by-Case Audit of the Conservative Supreme Court’s Own Standard The conservative majority says it decides by text, history, and tradition. A case-by-case audit of six landmark rulings finds the method applied where it helps and set aside where it would not.
    1 Mostly True2 Mixed3 False
  11. Trump Calls for Obama’s Arrest: A Fact-Check of Every Claim Trump posted 55 times in three hours calling for Obama’s arrest on treason charges — every specific claim he made has been investigated and debunked, most of them by Trump’s own appointees.
    1 Unproven4 False
  12. 8,499 Posts, Fact-Checked: What the President Told America From Truth Social A data-driven, bipartisan fact-check of the most significant claims Trump made on Truth Social during his second term — 8,499 posts categorized, cross-referenced against court filings, government…
    1 Mixed1 Misleading4 False

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