President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden from serving time for gun- and tax-related crimes. But contrary to claims on social media, Hunter Biden’s gun charges did not stem from a 1994 “crime bill authored” by then-Sen. Joe Biden.
President-elect Donald Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote in 20 years. Social media users have wrongly claimed that Trump lost the popular vote, but they are confusing the popular vote with a majority of votes. The unofficial results show Trump received slightly less than a majority, but more votes than any candidate.
Attacks by Israeli forces and Hamas continue to kill or displace people in the Gaza Strip. But social media posts misleadingly claim Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election led Hamas to call for an end to the war in Gaza. Hamas has called for a ceasefire several times before the election. And the violence has continued since Election Day.
While campaigning for a second term in office, President-elect Donald Trump declared “tariff” to be his “favorite word” and “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” We’ll explain how tariffs work, what Trump has proposed and what experts say about it, and what happened during Trump’s first term.
Elon Musk’s Starlink system helped provide internet access to communities affected by the recent hurricanes. But online posts spread baseless claims that Starlink “uploaded votes in swing states” and helped Donald Trump win the election. Experts said voting machines are not connected to the internet during tabulation; one state election official called the claims “utter garbage.”
Some social media posts falsely claimed that CBS News reported there was “cheating” in the 2024 presidential election that benefitted President-elect Donald Trump. We found no evidence of such a report, and a CBS News spokesperson said the outlet “did not report or say there was cheating in the election.”
Ballots were still being counted in the days following the 2024 election, but a claim that there was a suspicious gap of 15 million to 20 million votes as compared with the 2020 election has been circulating on social media. There is no such large gap — states were still counting their ballots — and even if there are fewer votes for the Democratic candidate than there were four years ago, that doesn’t prove fraud.
Less than a month after we wrote about a misleading ad that used out-of-context quotes to attack Vice President Kamala Harris on taxes, former President Donald Trump’s campaign has released another anti-Harris ad drawing from the same deceptive political playbook. This time, the campaign used distorted quotes from news outlets to criticize Harris on taxes, illegal immigration and other issues.
The Department of Defense issued a standard policy revision in September to existing procedures for the intelligence community. Some social media accounts have misrepresented the language and timing of the update to falsely claim the military has been newly authorized “To Use Lethal Force On Americans!!”
A super PAC supporting conservative Republicans.