Your weekly fact-checks
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#Greenland
Snopes
True: Katie Miller, wife of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, posted a map of Greenland overlaid with the U.S. flag and captioned with the word "SOON" following the January 2026 U.S. military operation in Venezuela.
The post is authentic, and it prompted Denmark's U.S. ambassador to publicly assert expectations for respect of Danish territorial integrity, while Trump and his advisers continued to escalate rhetoric about annexing Greenland without ruling out military force.
DW
False: Trump said "We have a couple of bases in Greenland already"
During a White House meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump falsely claimed the US has "a couple of bases" in Greenland when it actually operates only one: Pituffik Space Base. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in annexing Greenland due to its strategic location between Europe and North America and its potential mineral resources, though Greenland is a self-governing Danish territory seeking full independence.
DW
False: A pro-US party is in charge of Greenland
A viral social media post falsely claimed a "pro-US/Trump political party" won Greenland's recent election. In reality, the opposition Demokraatit Party won with 29.9% of the vote and favors a gradual path to independence from Denmark, not US control. Opinion polls show only tiny percentage of Greenlanders support joining the US, while overwhelming majority oppose the idea.
#TrumpCheck
Lead Stories
False: Trump said Windmills – also known as wind turbines – are killing all of the bald eagles in the United States
Studies estimate the number of eagles killed by wind turbines in the contiguous 48 U.S. states was in the hundreds in 2024, including both bald and golden eagles. The population of American bald eagles was estimated to be above 300,000 and growing in 2019. Trump's post shows a falcon killed by a wind turbine in Israel in 2017, not an American bald eagle.
#Conflicts
Agence France-Presse - AFP
False: Video shows US operation to capture Nicolas Maduro.
After US forces captured Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2026, social media users circulated a video of an old military exercise and falsely claimed it showed the operation against the ousted Venezuelan leader in Caracas. The clip depicts a US Army exercise attended by President Donald Trump in North Carolina.
PolitiFact
False: New Yorkers celebrated the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
An X user said he used artificial intelligence to create an image of U.S. soldiers in fatigues escorting ousted leader Nicolás Maduro. In authentic images of Maduro in custody, he was escorted by agents who were not in fatigues. Images that appear to show a New York protest and a celebration in Venezuela show signs of AI generation, such as illegible text and inaccurate flags. Clips of people supposedly celebrating in Venezuela show disappearing items and inaccurate flags.
#Politics
Newschecker
False: Citizens in Venezuela are tearing down posters of President Nicolas Maduro after he was captured by the US forces.
A reverse image search of keyframes from the viral clip led to an X post by @monitoreamos, dated July 30, 2024. Sharing the same footage, the post stated: “Maduro banner torn down at Base Aragua, in protest against the June 28th fraud.” Another post on X from July 2024 also carried the identical video, confirming that it predates the recent developments in the US.
PolitiFact
False: US Governor Tim Walz had Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman killed.
There is no credible evidence that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was involved in the fatal shootings of a Minnesota state representative and her husband, or the non-fatal shootings of a state senator and his wife. Police charged 58-year-old Minnesota resident Vance Luther Boelter in the June attacks, which they said were politically motivated. Conservative influencers floated a conspiracy theory about Walz’s involvement after they discovered that Walz reappointed Boelter to a state board in 2019 following another governor’s appointment. Walz’s spokesperson said Walz had no relationship with Boelter.
Snopes
False: In 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency found U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, owed $1.6 million in unpaid taxes.
A viral Facebook rumor claiming Senator Bernie Sanders owed $1.6 million in unpaid taxes, discovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and was being referred to the DOJ for tax evasion is false. The claim originated from America's Last Line of Defence, a known satirical Facebook account that explicitly labels its content as fake, with the post even bearing a watermark stating "NOTHING on this page is REAL"—yet many users mistook the satire for factual news.
#Economy
DW - Deutsche Welle
False: The German government has fixed gasoline prices at €3 ($350) per litre.
A viral video falsely claims Germany has fixed fuel prices at €3 per litre, when current prices are actually €1.64, exploiting real policy discussions about CO2 pricing to spread misinformation. Technical analysis reveals AI-generated elements with a 69.6% deepfake probability, including voice anomalies and manipulated footage of Friedrich Merz.
#Healthcare
Snopes
True: In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., repealed a rule that required nurses to be present around the clock in long-term care facilities.
The rule for staffing standards in long-term care facilities (which includes skilled nursing facilities) requiring registered nurses to be present at all times — announced during the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden — had not yet gone into effect and had met several legal setbacks before the Trump administration announced the repeal.
Lead Stories
False: A man, Mark Delcourt, frantically escaped from a hospital that was secretly going to harvest his organs.
There is no corroborating evidence matching key details of this story. Several of the unrelated clips used in the video to spread this can be traced to incidents that happened in other countries and do not document a fake organ harvesting story.
Lead Stories
False: America's first 100% free community health center was opened by Eminem, by Kid Rock, Taylor Swift or other celebrities.
Nearly identical stories mentioning more than 40 celebrities in near-identical photos were published by a network of foreign websites and Facebook pages. There were no legitimate news articles about the ribbon-cuttings, any one of which would have been a newsworthy event covered by legitimate local and national news outlets.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Sandt: Hackergruppe med tilknytning til Rusland hacker danske systemer i forskellige bygninger.
Den russiske hackergruppe Z-Pentest, der har tilknytning til Kreml, hackede et overvågningskamera i en svømmehal i Tårs, Danmark, og offentliggjorde optagelser på Telegram efter lignende angreb på et vandværk og en pub. Eksperter siger, at disse relativt harmløse videoer er psykologisk krigsførelse, der har til formål at sende budskabet »vi holder øje med jer« til almindelige danskere.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: A town in England cancelled a New Year's Eve fireworks show so a walrus could sleep.
In December 2022, the English town of Scarborough cancelled its New Year's Eve fireworks display to avoid disturbing Thor, a walrus that had stopped to rest in the town's harbour during a remarkable journey around the UK coastline. The story, which resurfaced on social media in 2025, was confirmed by BBC News and marine rescue groups, with the walrus ultimately departing before the fireworks would have occurred.
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