Your weekly fact-checks

#TrumpCheck
FactCheck.org
False: According to Trump, on June 4, “They gave a man seven years in jail, actually, because he fixed his own car.”
Trump falsely claimed a man received seven years in jail for fixing his own car, but Troy Lake actually served seven months for the commercial crime of disabling emissions systems on 344 trucks under the Clean Air Act. Lake's case is unrelated to the right-to-repair debate Trump cited.
#Politics
PolitiFact
False: “Michelle Obama is a man.”
This conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked. All of the supposed evidence, such as altered images of Michelle Obama and an unverified voter registration card, has not stood up to scrutiny.
Africa Check
False: Document shows Ugandan president requested citizenship checks on supposed ministerial appointees.
A document circulating on Facebook claims Yoweri Museveni asked immigration authorities to verify the citizenship of four ministerial appointees in Uganda. But a presidential spokesperson has said the document is fake.
PolitiFact
False: Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Graham Planter’s “oyster business (is) totally fake.”
Graham Platner’s oyster business was formed in 2018. He received a grant in 2021 to buy business equipment and has had aquaculture leases from the state since at least 2021.
Snopes
False: Thousands of mail-in ballots cast for Republican Spencer Pratt in the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary were rejected for "signature irregularities."
According to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, which oversees the county's elections, about 12,700 mail-in ballots across the county (not just in the city of Los Angeles) required additional verification due to signature discrepancies. Information was sent to affected voters explaining how they could ensure their vote was still counted. There was no evidence that all of those ballots had been cast for Pratt, and that total would not have been enough for him to advance to the general election.
#Healthcare
Agence France-Presse - AFP
False: Pap smear test swabs are 'coated' in cancer-causing ethylene oxide.
Pap smear testing has been safely used for decades to screen for cervical cancer. But across social media, health influencers are claiming the brush used in the test exposes individuals to dangerous amounts of a chemical routinely used to sterilise medical equipment, an assertion experts told AFP is false.
#Crime
Lead Stories
False: There is a masked, armed anti-immigrant "New Republican Movement" responding to the Belfast knife attack in June 2026.
The footage is from that group, but the video is from December 2025, six months earlier than the incident. In the clip, a statement is read that threatens local politicians over "policies" related to immigration.
#Conflicts
StopFake
False: "U.S.-made patriot missile struck Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra"
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) published photographs from the site where a drone struck the roof of the Dormition Cathedral. Based on analysis of the recovered fragments, the SBU determined that Russia struck the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra using a Geran-2 drone, the Russian variant of the Iranian Shahed kamikaze drone. Eyewitnesses confirmed it was a direct strike on the cathedral.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Danske landmænd bruger den laveste mængde antibiotika i hele EU.
En dansk politiker hævder, at hendes land bruger den laveste mængde antibiotika i EU, men officielle europæiske tal modsiger dette. Danmark ligger faktisk dårligt placeret samlet set. Landet klarer sig kun bedre, hvad angår antibiotikaforbruget hos svin sammenlignet med andre store svineproducenter, selvom datagrundlaget er upålideligt.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: In the 1990s, in Nebraska, a Ku Klux Klan leader converted to Judaism after the Jewish family he was harassing reached out to him.
A 2026 Facebook rumour about a Jewish cantor befriending and converting a KKK leader is verified as true. Michael Weisser reached out to Nebraska KKK grand dragon Larry Trapp after receiving hate threats, and through persistent outreach, Trapp eventually converted to Judaism and died months later in 1992.
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