Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: Abkhazian presidential election
Special Eurasia
Election Date: 15/02/2025
The 2025 Abkhazian presidential election will take place on 15 February 2025 following the resignation of President Aslan Bzhania amid protests over a property deal with Russia. Five candidates, including acting President Badra Gunba and opposition leader Adgur Ardzinba, are contesting the election, which is expected to cost 25 million rubles.
#Politics
PolitiFact
False: Federal websites updated with a nine-star flag that represents the Confederacy.
A flag icon with nine stars, used on federal websites since 2017, was not added after Trump’s second term began and does not represent any historical flag. Historians confirmed it is unrelated to the Confederate flag, whose versions with nine stars were arranged in a circle.
USA Today
False: Elon Musk donated $10 million to support families of Jan. 6 defendants
A Jan. 26 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims Elon Musk financially supported the families of Jan. 6 defendants. There is no evidence Musk made any such donation. The claim was first posted on a Facebook page called “America Loves Liberty,” which presents itself as a satirical account.
Snopes
True: In January 2025, a GOP Congressmen introduced a bill that would allow U.S President Donald Trump — but not former presidents Obama, Biden, or Bush — to run for a third presidential term.
In January 2025, a GOP Congressmen introduced a bill that would allow U.S President Donald Trump to run for a third presidential term. The bill would alter the Constitution to stipulate that a person can serve three terms as president so long as the person did not serve two consecutive terms prior to running for a third term.
#Economy
Lead Stories
False: Walmart decreasing is food prices back to pre-inflation rates within one month of President Donald Trump's inauguration.
Walmart denied claims that it is lowering food prices to pre-inflation levels, stating the announcement did not come from the company. The rumor originated from a Facebook page run by former congressional candidate Eric Deters, who provided no evidence for the claim.
#Disasters
Check Your Fact
False: Trump fired 3,000 air traffic controllers before a fatal collision in Washington, D.C.
A viral post shared on X claims President Donald Trump fired multiple federal employees, including 3,000 air traffic controllers, ahead of a recent fatal crash between a Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial flight. A White House spokesperson denied the claim’s validity.
PolitiFact
False: Recent plane crashes in the United States were “human sacrifice rituals” for the Super Bowl.
These claims are unfounded. Social media posts falsely claim that recent U.S. plane crashes were human sacrifices for the February 9 Super Bowl, drawing connections between numbers, symbols, and the Year of the Snake. These claims link the crashes to Kobe Bryant’s 2020 helicopter accident and suggest they were intentional rituals, despite a lack of evidence.
#Conflicts
Factchecker.gr
False: Ukraine is selling American weapons to cartels.
The allegation that the Ukrainian military is selling American weapon systems on the black market, including to drug cartels, is false. There is no evidence that Ukraine is involved in such activities. This narrative is based on misleading news reports, mistranslations, and out-of-context videos that have been debunked by fact-checking organizations. The claim that Ukraine is selling Western weapons to criminals aligns with Russian disinformation tactics.
#Healthcare
Snopes
False: USDA Inspector General Phyllis Fong ordered the mass extermination of healthy poultry in 2024, citing "mutating bird flu," in order to artificially inflate poultry and egg prices in the U.S.
There is no evidence to support social media claims that former USDA Inspector General Phyllis Fong personally ordered mass poultry cullings to inflate egg and poultry prices. While avian flu has led to the culling of millions of birds since 2022, this is standard disease control protocol, not a conspiracy orchestrated by Fong.
Reuters
False: Moderna began clinical trials of COVID vaccine in 2020, not 2017.
Social media claims that Moderna began testing its COVID-19 vaccine in 2017 are false; the company only started developing the vaccine in early 2020 after the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence was released. Prior to the pandemic, Moderna had conducted mRNA trials for other diseases like cancer, flu, and Zika, but not for COVID-19.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Avancerede våben står bag de voldsomme skovbrande i Los Angeles.
Påstandene er en del af en velkendt konspirationsteori, som også blussede op under de katastrofale skovbrande på øen Maui i 2023, men påstandene er helt udokumenterede, og de videoer, der bruges som dokumentation, er enten manipulerede eller stammer fra andre steder.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Vikings believed a goat whose udders produced an endless supply of beer waited for them in the afterlife.
The Norse mythological goat Heiðrún, described in the Poetic and Prose Edda, is said to produce an endless supply of mead, not beer, for fallen warriors in Valhalla. While the core idea of the myth is accurate, online posts have misrepresented details by claiming the drink was beer instead of mead. The image circulating with these claims is an authentic 18th-century depiction of Heiðrún from an Icelandic manuscript.
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