On Aug. 18, President Joe Biden said if there were U.S. citizens left in Afghanistan on Aug. 31 who wanted to leave, “we’re gonna stay to get them all out.” But that’s not what happened when the last U.S. soldier departed the country.
Q: Did the U.S. abandon its military dogs during its withdrawal from Afghanistan?
A: The Department of Defense maintains that none of its military service dogs were left behind. But animal welfare groups say some contract working dogs — which did not belong to the U.S., though some may have been contracted by the military — were left at the Kabul airport.
The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration, though an emergency use authorization also remains in place. Dr. Robert Malone misleadingly said Americans are being offered the shot only under the latter and that it carried different liability ramifications. The liability protections, afforded under a public health law, are the same for the two.
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation honoring those who died in the attack at the Kabul airport Aug. 26 and calling for flags to be flown at half-staff. But a meme has been circulating on Facebook with the false claim that no such order had been issued.
In this video, FactCheck.org and Univision Noticias teamed up to debunk false claims made by a doctor in Idaho about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and treatments. It is available in both English and Spanish.
Former President Donald Trump said he had gotten the U.S. to a point where “we didn’t need the Middle East” for “energy.” And now, he said, “we’re going back to them asking them for help.” But the U.S. has continued to import a smaller amount of its petroleum from the Middle East under President Joe Biden.
A digital device company is developing gel sensors that would monitor the wearer’s health and could potentially help to detect future outbreaks of disease. But conspiracy theorists are falsely claiming that the sensors are actually COVID-19-detecting microchips that will be used to track people’s movements.
Videos on social media suggest that holes in the return envelopes being used for mail-in ballots in California were designed to allow election officials to peek inside and toss out ballots in favor of recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom. Officials say the holes serve two useful purposes, including helping the vision impaired to sign the ballot envelope in private.
The delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is more transmissible than previous forms of the virus, and has helped spur an increase in cases, including in children. But a chiropractor in a Facebook video wrongly claims that “it is not showing more of a problem.” That’s one of several misleading and false claims he makes about COVID-19.
Eleven American military members were killed in Afghanistan in 2020, including four in combat. But, as the U.S. nears its Aug. 31 deadline for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, a social media post falsely claims that there weren’t any American casualties in Afghanistan in the last year-and-a-half of the Trump administration.