The House passed a bill on July 29 that would make it a crime to knowingly “import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon.” Social media posts falsely claim “millions of people will become felons overnight” because of the bill. Under the bill, current owners of such firearms would be allowed to keep them.
The Inflation Reduction Act proposes to raise over $700 billion in new revenues over 10 years to be spent on energy, climate change initiatives, health care and deficit reduction. But not all of those revenues come via higher taxes. More than half comes from health care savings and from beefed up IRS tax enforcement.
Former President Donald Trump announced that the FBI had searched Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, home on Aug. 8. Here’s what we know about the incident so far.
Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Wisconsin on Aug. 5. Posts on social media circulated a photo to claim that the recent Trump rally in Wisconsin attracted a “massive” crowd. But the photo was from a previous Trump rally and was shared by Eric Trump in 2020.
Monkeypox is a viral disease that spreads through close physical contact with an infected person and large respiratory droplets that don’t travel more than a few feet. A recent meme on social media gets the facts wrong about how the virus spreads, its severity and symptoms.
The U.S. announced it had conducted a drone strike on July 31 killing al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. But social media posts make unfounded claims that al-Zawahiri had died in 2020 from asthma. The posts cite an unconfirmed story in a British tabloid, which reported a year later that al-Zawahiri was still alive.
Three stimulus payments have been sent to Americans to ease the economic impact of the pandemic. Social media posts are now sharing a false claim about a new, $40,000 federal stimulus loan. But it’s a marketing ploy. The bottom of the web page says, “This is not a government program nor is it government aid, this is an advertorial for a loan service.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate plans to hold its first vote Aug. 6 on the Inflation Reduction Act. An estimated $369 billion over the next 10 years would go toward combating climate change and investing in “energy security.” Here we review some of the climate-focused provisions in the bill.
Both political parties are spinning the facts on whether the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act would raise taxes.
It’s estimated that COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives, but false claims continue to cast doubt on their safety and efficacy. One such claim that has spread around the world falsely suggests that three Canadian doctors died from the shots. But they each died of a long-term illness unrelated to the vaccines.