Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Jamaican general election
The Gleaner
Election Date: 03/09/2025
Jamaica is holding its general election on 3 September 2025, with the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) led by Prime Minister Andrew Holness seeking a third term against the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) under Mark Golding. The election, using the first-past-the-post system for 63 parliamentary seats, comes amid ongoing debate over Jamaica’s transition to a republic, which will not be settled before the vote.
#TrumpCheck
Lead Stories
False: South Park's Cartman said Trump was a "bag of shit" and criticizes him for stealing from a cancer charity, bankrupting casinos, playing golf and building a golden ballroom.
The video showing Cartman saying he doesn't "give a flying fuck" about Trump not taking a paycheck or salary is AI generated. The clip, which also included references to a golden ballroom and golf, did not appear in an episode of South Park.
Lead Stories
False: The White House suddenly suspended President Trump's official schedule because of his poor health.
Rumors that President Trump’s schedule was canceled were false; his schedule remained unchanged, and a viral video making the claim was identified as AI-generated with a fake voice.
#Politics
Snopes
True: Dr. Demetre C. Daskalakis resigned from his CDC post with a letter denouncing HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership.
In late August 2025, Dr. Demetre C. Daskalakis resigned as CDC immunization chief, citing ideological interference by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that compromised scientific integrity and threatened public health. His resignation followed the controversial firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez and was accompanied by concerns over vaccine policy changes and leadership at the CDC.
#Economy
Reuters
Mostly false: UK taxpayer funds TV licences for all illegal migrants.
British taxpayers fund TV licences for some unaccompanied asylum-seeker children in Kent, not all people in the county who are seeking asylum.
#Healthcare
Snopes
Half True: Chemotherapy drugs to treat cancer were invented from mustard gas.
The first chemotherapy treatment for cancer was pioneered at Yale University in the 1940s, when researchers adapted mustard gas's ability to destroy white blood cells to target lymphatic cancers, administering it to a patient with lymphosarcoma. However, chemotherapy research had been ongoing for years using animal testing, and the mustard gas derivative was only one among several promising synthetic drugs of the time.
Agence France-Presse - AFP
False: Trisodium phosphate (TSP), a versatile chemical compound in a lot of food, is a toxic ingredient used in industrial cleaning products.
Trisodium phosphate (TSP) is approved as a safe food additive in the U.S. and Europe, used to improve texture and quality in various foods. However, online videos mislead by comparing the tiny amounts used in food to the much stronger concentrations found in industrial cleaning products.
Snopes
True: In 2011, a North Carolina man robbed a bank for $1 so he could go to jail and receive the medical care he needed.
James Richard Verone, a 59-year-old unemployed man from Gastonia, North Carolina, deliberately robbed a bank for $1 to get arrested and receive medical care in prison, as he could not afford treatment for serious health issues. Despite hoping for a three-year sentence, Verone was charged with a misdemeanor and served about a year, during which he obtained necessary healthcare, highlighting the desperation caused by the lack of affordable medical access in the U.S.
#Conflicts
Half-True: Following the passage of a 2022 gun safety law, mass shootings “began to drop.”
Then-President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law in June 2022. The law, aimed at reducing gun violence, gave states money to implement "red flag" laws and mental health services. The Gun Violence Archive, a data collection group, counted 642 mass shootings in 2022, 660 mass shootings in 2023 and 503 in 2024. Other groups using different definitions of mass shootings found lower numbers. Gun violence experts said it is challenging to prove the legislation’s effect on mass shootings.
Snopes
False: A disproportionately high number of U.S. mass shooters are transgender as compared with transgender people’s representation in the country's population.
After the August 2025 Minneapolis Catholic school shooting, some conservative social media influencers falsely claimed an "epidemic" of transgender and nonbinary mass shooters in the U.S., citing selective and misleading data. However, comprehensive analyses from federal and research databases show that transgender individuals represent a tiny fraction of mass shooters, with cisgender men overwhelmingly responsible for the majority of such attacks.
Snopes
False: Minneapolis mass shooter Robin Westman was Jewish.
False rumors spread online claiming the shooter, Robin Westman, was a transgender Jewish man, despite no evidence supporting this. In fact, Westman and his family had strong Catholic ties, and police investigations found antisemitic writings by Westman on his weapons, contradicting the false claims.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: En 12-årig pige beskyttede sig selv med en kniv og en økse mod en migrant, der var ved at begå seksuelt overgreb på hende.
En video af en bevæbnet skotsk pige er blevet set af millioner i løbet af den sidste uge og har udløst en heftig debat.Men ifølge politiet er dette misinformation. I virkeligheden viser videoen et bulgarsk par, der blev overfaldet af flere piger på gaden.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: The CIA ran a brothel in San Francisco and tested LSD on unsuspecting patrons.
In the 1950s and 60s, the CIA ran "Operation Midnight Climax," a fake San Francisco brothel where they secretly drugged men with LSD and watched them through two-way mirrors to study mind control and extract secrets. Despite the bizarre setup with French can-can posters and scientists sipping martinis behind mirrors, the project produced no useful results and ended amid scandal and ethical outrage.
Check out the new Factiverse blog post
This week's blog post: How disinformation poisoned Romania’s election and democracy
Foreign-backed precision disinformation campaigns, particularly via social media like TikTok, critically disrupted Romania's 2024 presidential election, causing a costly annulment and rerun, and undermining public trust in democratic processes. Rapid detection and response tools are essential to safeguard elections against such subtle but highly effective digital threats.
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