Your weekly fact-checks
#Executive Orders
Snopes
Mostly True: On Jan. 20, 2025, U.S President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order signed by former President Joe Biden aimed at lowering prescription drug prices for patients on Medicare and Medicaid.
Trump's reversal of Biden's order halted implementation of a program meant to lower drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries. The program Trump is halting would not have affected Medicaid beneficiaries, who were not included in the cost-cutting program to begin with.
Snopes
Mostly True: U.S. President Donald Trump has revoked the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1965.
Trump has revoked a 1965 presidential executive order — not an act/law — titled "Equal Employment Opportunity," which imposed nondiscrimination and affirmative action requirements on businesses with government contracts. There's no such thing, as some social media users claim, as the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1965.
Snopes
True: U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of dark web marketplace Silk Road.
On Jan. 22, 2025, Trump announced Ulbricht's pardon on Truth Social, calling his prison sentence "ridiculous." Ulbricht created the underground website in January 2011 and oversaw its operation until authorities shut it down in October 2013. Users sold more than $200 million in illegal drugs on the "sprawling black-market bazaar".
PolitiFact
False: President Donald Trump signed an executive order to replace the IRS with the External Revenue Service, eliminating tax returns and income tax.
President Donald Trump directed his Cabinet to explore the feasibility of creating an External Revenue Service to collect tariff revenues. Congress would need to pass a law to create the agency. Trump’s action does not eliminate the IRS or federal income taxes.
PolitiFact
False: “Under Trump's executive order, every single person in America is now legally classified as female”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order defining the terms "male" and "female" based on whether a person belongs "at conception" to the sex that produces sperm or eggs. Neither sperm nor eggs are produced at conception.
Snopes
False: U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 ending food stamps and cash assistance.
Although the video that originally made this claim did not carry an explicit satire disclaimer, at least one account that shared it did.
Full Fact
Missing Context: The birthright citizenship executive order signed by President Donald Trump will mean that Second Lady Usha Vance will lose her citizenship because her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth.
This isn’t the case. The birthright citizenship executive order only applies to people born 30 days after it was signed. Even if it did apply retroactively, Full Fact could find no evidence Mrs Vance’s parents were not either lawful permanent citizens, or US citizens when she was born.
#Nordics
Full Fact
False: Norway is refusing to play Israel in their scheduled 2026 World Cup qualifiers later this year.
These matches are still scheduled to go ahead, according to the Norwegian Football Federation.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: A Mississippi state lawmaker introduced a bill that would make sex and masturbation illegal for men unless they're intending to fertilize an embryo, titled the "Contraception Begins at Erection Act."
Sen. Bradford Blackmon introduced the measure, and the state's Republican-led Legislature is unlikely to pass it. The proposal appears to be social commentary on reproductive rights more than anything.
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