Facts Check

President Donald Trump has falsely claimed his administration invested “$2.5 trillion in all of the greatest equipment in the world” for the military. That’s approximately the total for defense budgets from 2017 to 2020, but the cost of purchasing new military equipment was 20% of that. It’s true the Defense […]

Quick Take A Christian blogger writing for The Daily Jot accused former President Barack Obama in 2017 of running a “shadow government.” The blog post has been recirculating lately on social media, but it is falsely attributed to the late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer. Full Story After a period […]

Quick Take Viral posts wrongly claim that a painting depicting children in face masks was created as a mural for the Denver airport in 1994 — and baselessly suggest the COVID-19 pandemic was planned. The painting is not at the airport, and is not from 1994. Full Story  Facebook and […]

Noting that the United States accounts for about one-quarter of global COVID-19 cases and deaths, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. has “the worst record of any country in the world.” While the U.S. has the most confirmed cases and deaths by a wide margin, it does not have […]

Quick Take Amid a surge in Florida’s COVID-19 cases, a Facebook meme dated June 24 falsely claims the state’s surgeon general recommended that people stop wearing face masks. The surgeon general actually issued an advisory two days earlier saying everyone in Florida “should wear face coverings in any setting where […]

Quick Take A meme making the bogus claim that wearing a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic “REMOVES YOUR CONCEAL CARRY ability” is spreading widely online. Laws regulating concealed weapons vary by state, but sheriffs in many states have debunked the rumor. Full Story Wearing a face mask can curb […]

FactCheck.org has won a 2019 Sigma Delta Chi Award for fact-checking from the Society of Professional Journalists. “This award recognizes excellence in fact-checking, in a single work distributed on any platform,” including print, online, TV, radio “or shared by other means, such as in a podcast,” according to SPJ. The […]

In a June 24 tweet, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that his predecessor had “destroyed” Maine’s lobster and fishing industry. It is true that, in an effort to protect a rich but delicate marine area, then-President Barack Obama in 2016 created a nearly 5,000-square-mile marine monument off the New England coast to be […]

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, claimed without evidence that President Donald Trump “wants to cut off money for the post office so they cannot deliver mail-in ballots.” The perpetually cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service has been hurt by COVID-19 and is negotiating with the Treasury Department for a $10 […]

With some states posting record numbers of new COVID-19 cases, President Donald Trump continues to downplay the concern, falsely asserting that cases are up “only because of our big number testing,” and pointing to the falling number of daily COVID-19 deaths.  Data shows that in many places, the uptick in […]