Police are still investigating the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, but as of May 26 they had shared no evidence about the shooter’s gender identity. Despite that lack of evidence, Rep. Paul Gosar and others claimed the gunman was transgender. Social media posts making the baseless claim have shared photos of a person unrelated to the attack.
COVID-19 vaccines don’t contain microchips and have readily available ingredient lists. But social media posts use an old clip of the Pfizer CEO talking about an “electronic pill” for schizophrenia to leave the false impression he was confirming a conspiracy theory about microchips in the vaccines.
Democrat Cheri Beasley’s record in North Carolina Supreme Court cases involving violent crime is the subject of competing TV ads in the state’s U.S. Senate race. But neither ad gives viewers all of the necessary context for the claims portraying Beasley, a former state chief justice, as either weak or tough on crime.
The World Health Organization can make recommendations after the declaration of a global emergency, but it has no control over any nation’s decisions. Yet conservatives in the U.S. falsely claim that amendments proposed by the Biden administration to existing global health regulations, and a new WHO pandemic treaty, will threaten U.S. sovereignty.
Q: Has the Biden administration sent “pallets” of infant formula to the border amid a nationwide shortage?
A: Yes. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that first encounters and then processes immigrants, is legally required to provide formula to infants in its care and has been doing so during the recent shortage.
A nonprofit recently reported that, since 2009, the National Institutes of Health and many of its scientists received an estimated $350 million in royalties for developing experimental treatments. Some kept the money, but Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that he donates royalties he receives to charity — a detail left out of some online posts about the payments.
A Mississippi-based nonprofit has sent shipments of baby formula to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country. A social media post misleadingly suggests the shipments are responsible for the formula shortage in the U.S. But the shortage has been due to supply chain problems, a product recall and the temporary closure of a manufacturing plant.
The U.S. indirectly funded some bat coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, China. But those experiments could not have led to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, because the viruses used were very different. Yet former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro repeated a false claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci “killed a lot of people” by funding the lab.
A fund backed by Bill Gates has invested in a startup working to develop lab-manufactured breast milk, but it won’t reach the market for several years. Yet, social media posts make baseless claims that Gates is behind the current baby formula shortage — which stems from supply-chain issues and the shutdown at a major manufacturing plant.
Proposed legislation in Tennessee and Missouri would not regulate Plan B contraception pills, and experts say state “trigger laws” that would take effect if Roe v. Wade were overturned will not ban methods of birth control. But social media posts falsely claim that both states have banned Plan B – the morning-after pill.