In one of his most controversial Cabinet picks, President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Here, we summarize our past work fact-checking Kennedy’s claims about health and science.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to begin “the largest deportation program in American history.” How exactly he plans to carry that out, and how many he ultimately intends to deport, remains unclear.
President-elect Donald Trump has called for an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that would deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents in the country illegally. That has prompted some on social media to wrongly speculate that under such a policy, Trump’s son Barron might not be a U.S. citizen because his mother wasn’t a citizen when he was born in New York.
While campaigning for a second term in office, President-elect Donald Trump declared “tariff” to be his “favorite word” and “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” We’ll explain how tariffs work, what Trump has proposed and what experts say about it, and what happened during Trump’s first term.
Elon Musk’s Starlink system helped provide internet access to communities affected by the recent hurricanes. But online posts spread baseless claims that Starlink “uploaded votes in swing states” and helped Donald Trump win the election. Experts said voting machines are not connected to the internet during tabulation; one state election official called the claims “utter garbage.”
Vice President Kamala Harris received many celebrity endorsements leading up to the election, including from Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Eminem, Megan Thee Stallion and Lizzo. Social media posts have made the unfounded claim that these celebrities were collectively paid $20 million for their endorsements. We’ve found no evidence to support the claim.
President-elect Donald Trump, who will return to office for a second term on Jan. 20, 2025, recently reignited a constitutional debate about whether a twice-elected president can serve a third term.
Social media posts falsely claim that Elon Musk banned author Stephen King from X, the social media platform owned by Musk. The rumor that King was banned originated on a satirical website. King’s X account remains active, and he used it on Nov. 13 to debunk the claim.
Some social media posts falsely claimed that CBS News reported there was “cheating” in the 2024 presidential election that benefitted President-elect Donald Trump. We found no evidence of such a report, and a CBS News spokesperson said the outlet “did not report or say there was cheating in the election.”
Ballots were still being counted in the days following the 2024 election, but a claim that there was a suspicious gap of 15 million to 20 million votes as compared with the 2020 election has been circulating on social media. There is no such large gap — states were still counting their ballots — and even if there are fewer votes for the Democratic candidate than there were four years ago, that doesn’t prove fraud.