Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Curaçao general election
Curacao Chronicle
Election Date: 21/03/2025
Curaçao is a Caribbean island country and a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, known for its vibrant culture, Dutch colonial architecture, and tourism-driven economy. The general elections will take place on 21 March 2025 to elect 21 parliamentary members through proportional representation. In the primary election on 1–2 February, Mihó Kòrsou, Kousa Promé, and Union i Progreso surpassed the 848-vote threshold to qualify for the general election.
#Politics
Lead Stories
False: The CIA in 1978 only requested to black out mentions of Israel when journalists and historians sought to read documents about investigations into President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
The CIA wanted other things to be redacted, too, as seen in other files from the JFK collection. According to the agency's website, it generally doesn't release information about "the sources and methods of intelligence collection".
Politifact
False: Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire businessman and White House adviser Elon Musk resurrected a term that Social Security critics have sometimes used to describe the program, calling it a Ponzi scheme. Social Security differs from a Ponzi scheme as it is transparent, regulated, and financially adjustable. Unlike Ponzi schemes, it doesn’t rely on endless new participants or promise unrealistic returns.
Politifact
False: President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that, “After I’ve annexed Greenland and making it the 52nd State, I will annexe Alaska.”
Databases of President Donald Trump’s social media posts show no evidence of social media posts show no evidence that Trump said on Truth Social that he would annex Alaska after annexing "Greenland and making it the 52nd State."
Snopes
True: Musk reposted an X post that said, 'Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn't murder millions of people'
A review of Musk's X activity found that on March 13, 2025, he truly reposted the thought saying that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Communist China's founding leader Mao Zedong and German dictator and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler didn't murder millions of people, and that "public sector workers did." In other words, the repost genuinely existed, and no one doctored the screenshot with any image-editing tools. He later removed the repost on or following March 14.
#Healthcare
Politifact
False: A lot of studies” show that getting measles "boosts your immune system later in life against cancers, atopic diseases, cardiac disease.
Experts said there’s no conclusive evidence that a measles infection boosts a person’s immune system later in life against cancer, heart disease or atopic diseases. Several studies show that a measles infection can suppress the immune system for up to three years, making people susceptible to other infections. Measles infections’ risks of severe illness, death or lifelong complications outweigh the generally mild side effects that can follow measles vaccination.
Yahoo
False: Getting Measles gives you lifetime protection against contracting a measles infection again. Vaccines do not give you as long of protection in comparison.
Many health experts agree that for most people, the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine confers lifetime immunity. According to Johns Hopkins' Public School of Health, there is no evidence that protection from the vaccination "is lost with age."
#Economy
Poytner
False: Tariffs are ‘a tax cut.’
Economists widely view tariffs as tax hikes because they raise consumer prices. While some argue that the additional revenue could help lower taxes, analyses suggest that even high tariffs wouldn’t generate enough to provide meaningful tax cuts for most Americans.
DW
False: The EU tariffs the US in the form of a VAT tax of 20%.
Trump incorrectly equates the value-added tax (VAT) with tariffs, but VAT applies uniformly within a country regardless of origin, while tariffs selectively target imports. Unlike VAT, tariffs create price advantages for local goods, as confirmed by the WTO, and vary by country and product, such as the EU’s 10% tariff on US cars versus the US’s 2.5% tariff on EU cars.
#Conflicts
AFP
False: British newspaper reporting on its front page that tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers had died in Russia's Kursk region.
A March 15, 2025, post on X by far-right blogger Ian Miles Cheong falsely claimed that the Hull Daily Mail reported 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in the Kursk region, blaming the UK for funding Zelensky’s failure. However, the newspaper's parent company confirmed the story was fake, and archives show the actual front page covered a stabbing case. The origin of the 70,000 casualty figure is unclear, as neither Russia nor Ukraine provides verified loss counts.
#Climate
US Today
False: Los Angeles wildfires produced more CO2 in two days than American cars have in decades.
Wildfires are a significant source of CO2 emissions, but two days of January wildfires in Southern California did not produce anywhere near as much CO2 as U.S. cars have emitted over decades. Total fire emissions through late January were still about 1% of annual U.S. car emissions, the latest data shows.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
USA Today
True: The popular Mexican Salsa Valentina hot sauce is named for a woman who fought in the Mexican Revolution dressed as a man.
Valentina hot sauce is named after Valentina Ramírez Avitia, a young woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Mexican Revolution, drawing comparisons to Disney’s Mulan. Born in 1893, Avitia joined the Maderista Army at 17, adopting the name Juan Ramírez, but was expelled after five months when her true identity was discovered. Despite this, she was honored for her bravery, though she later faced hardship in her final years. Inspired by her heroism, hot sauce creator Manuel Maciel Méndez named Salsa Valentina after her as a tribute.
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