Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: Irish Presidential Election
Irish Times
Election Date: 24/10/2025
In the final days before Ireland's presidential election on October 24, 2025, the race has tightened to a two-candidate contest after Jim Gavin’s withdrawal, leaving Catherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys as the main contenders. Connolly, running as a left-leaning independent and backed by major opposition parties, maintains a strong opinion poll lead amid polarizing debates and negative campaigning, while concerns persist about low voter turnout and high numbers of spoiled ballots due to widespread voter dissatisfaction.
#TrumpCheck
Snopes
True: Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself in a fighter jet, dropping a brown substance on protesters while wearing a crown.
After millions attended "No Kings" protests against Trump's policies on Oct. 18, 2025, Trump posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social depicting himself as "King Trump" flying a fighter jet and dumping what appeared to be feces on protesters, including Democratic influencer Harry Sisson. House Speaker Mike Johnson defended it as "satire," while singer Kenny Loggins, whose song "Danger Zone" was used in the video, demanded its removal and said he would have denied permission if asked.
Snopes
False: U.S. President Donald Trump's October 2025 ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza was the "exact deal" brokered by former President Joe Biden.
In January 2025, Biden announced that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire and hostage-exchange deal. Israel broke the agreement with surprise airstrikes about two months later.
PolitiFact
Barely-True: As the Trump administration pursues mortgage fraud charges against Letitia James, “there are three Cabinet members who committed mortgage fraud that he’s just letting fly.”
ProPublica revealed three Trump Cabinet members signed mortgages classifying separate houses as principal residences, though there's no evidence they violated the requirement to live there for a year or faced any legal consequences. Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump, was federally indicted for mortgage fraud related to how she classified a Virginia property, though she maintains her innocence.
#Politics
PolitiFact
Barely-True: Political violence, it's just a statistical fact that it's a bigger problem on the left.
Vice President JD Vance did not point to a source, but a White House spokesperson separately cited an article about a Center for Strategic and International Studies study of 750 terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. from 1994 to July 4, 2025. The study found that in the first six months of 2025, left-wing terrorist attacks outnumbered those by the right. But the study showed that for more than 30 years before 2025, right-wing attacks had outpaced left-wing attacks. Such tallies are imperfect because there’s no single definition of "political violence."
Africa Check
False: Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta met top opposition leaders to craft an alliance ahead of 2027 elections.
The Kenyan political landscape is evolving rapidly, with political realignments ahead of the 2027 elections. However, a viral photo appearing to show former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta meeting top politicians for a possible political alliance is old and is being posted out of context.
#Healthcare
Africa Check
False: Cassia alata plant can cure hepatitis, gonorrhoea and more.
Posts claiming that the cassia alata, or senna, plant can treat a range of illnesses are circulating on Facebook, but there is a lack of supporting medical research. Experts have repeatedly warned against using herbal remedies without consulting healthcare professionals
FactCheck.org
False: Certain antidepressant drugs, known as SSRIs, “might be contributing to violence”.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that SSRI antidepressants might contribute to mass shootings and falsely stated they have black box warnings for homicidal ideation, though the warnings only concern suicidal thoughts in young people. Multiple experts and databases show no evidence linking SSRIs to mass shootings, with only 4-11% of mass shooters having taken antidepressants—rates at or below general population usage—and countries with higher SSRI use than the U.S. have significantly fewer mass shootings.
PolitiFact
Mostly-True: Florida will be the “hardest hit” state in the country if enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire.
Florida has 4.7 million people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans in 2025, more than any other state. One analysis found that 24% of Florida's ACA enrollees under age 65 use enhanced subsidies — the highest percentage in the country — compared with 8% of enrollees nationally."Hardest hit" can mean many things, but multiple analyses have found Florida to be one of the most affected by the expiring credits. Health industry researchers said some states such as West Virginia might face steeper premium hikes, but for a smaller number of people than in Florida.
#Economy
PolitiFact
True: “Trump’s budget called for a $300 (million) cut” to the Women, Infants and Children program.
Trump’s budget proposal includes cutting the Women, Infants and Children program by about $291 million. The program serves low-income families with young children. During the current government shutdown, the administration said it will use tariff revenue to continue the WIC program.
Lead Stories
False: A graph showing "loan locks" for non-permanent residents applying for FHA mortgages proves that immigrants overpaying for homes has inflated U.S. housing prices.
Non-permanent residents who applied for FHA loans were "not a major factor in the vast majority of local housing markets in the U.S.," according to a researcher with the company that produced the graph. A recent rise in the share of FHA loans to non-permanent residents is "partly a denominator effect," because fewer U.S. citizens were applying for FHA loans, the researcher said.
#Conflicts
PolitiFact
False: Regarding boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela, “Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives.”
The Trump administration claimed U.S. military strikes on five boats off Venezuela's coast destroyed enough drugs to save 140,000 lives—nearly double the 73,000 Americans who died from overdoses between May 2024 and April 2025—but provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs allegedly on board. Drug experts say that even if the drugs existed, the amount of drugs intercepted doesn't directly translate to lives saved.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: Japanese researchers developed drug that could help people grow new teeth.
Japanese researchers have developed a drug that blocks the Usag-1 protein to potentially regrow teeth by reactivating dormant "third dentition" tooth buds, with successful results in mice and human clinical trials now underway. However, the treatment is specifically designed for people with congenital tooth agenesis (teeth that never developed) rather than for regrowing lost teeth in the general population.
Check out the new Factiverse blog post
This week's blog post: The digital battlefield: how elections are being manipulated now
Elections worldwide are increasingly targeted by foreign disinformation campaigns, with countries including the US, European and Asian countries experiencing coordinated efforts by Russia, China, and Iran to manipulate voters. Social media platforms' inconsistent content moderation and lack of safeguards are enabling these attacks, which prompts the question of how democracies protect themselves from this.
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