Q: Does a proposed law in Washington state say that the government can take children away from parents who don’t agree to gender transition surgery?
A: No. Under the bill, licensed youth shelters no longer have to report the location of a runaway child to the child’s parents if the child is seeking gender-affirming or reproductive care. Instead, the shelters must notify the state’s child services department.
There’s no evidence the White House aided or had prior knowledge of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. By law, the White House requested access for the FBI to review the classified documents that former President Donald Trump turned over seven months earlier. That doesn’t mean the White House was “involved” in the “raid” that came later and “lied” about it, as a conservative commentator claimed.
Public health organizations have explained that the reason there were far fewer cases of the flu in 2020 and 2021 was likely due to measures adopted to slow the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, such as handwashing and social distancing. But a post on social media has spread the false claim that the dip in flu cases suggests that COVID-19 was a hoax.
Social media posts and former President Donald Trump are sharing an edited video of President Joe Biden to make the unfounded claim that Biden “is coordinating these Trump indictments.” Biden’s comments, made in 2022, were related to international concerns about American democracy, not Trump’s legal battles.
A tweet posted years ago by the late comedian Norm Macdonald has been altered to falsely claim that he’d commented on the possibility of a transgender school shooter back in 2016. A search of Macdonald’s account shows he didn’t write that transphobic tweet.
False claims about the shooter at a Christian elementary school in Nashville have been swirling on social media. Police shot and killed the suspect, whom they identified as 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale. The person was not named “Samantha Hyde” — a reference to a long-running internet hoax.
Porn actor Stormy Daniels maintains that she had sex with Donald Trump in 2006. Daniels said a letter she signed under pressure in 2018, claiming the affair “never happened,” was a “lie.” But some conservatives are misleadingly citing that letter as proof that Trump and Daniels were never intimate and she was not paid “hush money.”
Former President Bill Clinton settled a sexual harassment lawsuit with Paula Jones in a case that was a matter of public record. Former President Donald Trump made a secret payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, which may lead to criminal charges against him. Social media posts falsely claim the situations are similar and Trump is being treated differently by prosecutors.
A database that claims to show corporate contributions to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes” doesn’t show any contributions from Silicon Valley Bank to Black Lives Matter. But some conservative commentators are citing it to falsely claim that the bank gave more than $73 million to the organization.
The nearly 50 migrants Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in September were later moved to a shelter at a military base several miles away in Massachusetts. After that, most of them found housing in other parts of the state.