The COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials were designed to study the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in preventing symptomatic disease, not transmission. But online publications now misleadingly present the fact that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was not tested for transmission as a “shocking admission” and proof that the company and the government lied.
In TV and social media ads, Club for Growth Action misleadingly edited remarks by independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin of Utah to make it appear he said that “the Republican base is racist.” In fact, McMullin said “there is an element of the Republican base that is racist,” and that the party’s leaders won’t stand up to them for fear of losing votes.
The arrest of a CEO whose company maintained poll worker data for Los Angeles County has sparked a wave of false voter fraud claims. County District Attorney George Gascón has said that the “alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results.”
Various measures of what has happened in the country since the president’s inauguration.
The state of Florida recently announced that it was no longer recommending that younger males receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, based on an unpublished analysis that purportedly found an increased risk of cardiac-related death following vaccination. But experts who specialize in the unique method used in the analysis say it was not properly done — and even if it had been, the findings would not mean that individuals should not get vaccinated.
A Facebook ad from the Republican Accountability PAC says Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels “supports” an abortion ban with “no exceptions for rape [or] incest.” The ad doesn’t tell the whole story.
Former President Donald Trump made a series of faulty comparisons to other past presidents to argue that he was being held to a double standard regarding the FBI’s pursuit of his presidential documents.
In the tight Senate race in Nevada, where nearly a third of the population is Latino, the campaigns of Republican challenger Adam Laxalt and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto have been locked in a dispute over remarks Laxalt made about the impact of the pandemic on Latino jobs and businesses.
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams opposed the state’s new election law and gun laws, but she spoke out against corporations using economic sanctions to protest the laws. Yet, a social media post falsely claims Abrams “lobbied to move” the MLB’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta last year and a music festival this year.
John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor who is running for the U.S. Senate, has tattoos on his arms, some of which memorialize victims of violence. But conservative pundits — including Newt Gingrich — claim, without proof, that his tattoos suggest drug use and ties to a violent street gang.