Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2024
This week's election: Tunisian Presidential Election
Reuters
Election Date: 02/10/2024
Tunisian President Kais Saied set the presidential election date for Oct. 6 and intends to seek a second term, with at least one potential candidate in jail and others facing prosecution. Elected president in 2019, Saied said last year he would not hand power to what he called non-patriots. The opposition parties have rebuked his statements on the transfer of power by saying fair and credible elections cannot be held unless imprisoned politicians are released and the media is allowed to do its job without pressure from the government.
#Politics
Reuters
False: Haitian migrants in Springfield can use a driver’s license to vote in elections.
Haitian migrants who are legally living in Springfield, Ohio are not U.S. citizens and thus cannot use a driver’s license to vote in any election as per state and federal laws, contrary to social media posts.
USA Today
False: JD Vance admitted he has a ‘rent-a-dog’ to make him seem like ‘a dog fan’
A post on Threads stated that “JD Vance admits he has a ‘rent-a-dog’ and the dog is to ‘make me seem like I’m a dog fan,”. The post leaves out the portion of Vance’s remarks that makes it clear he was not giving a serious admission. A spokesperson said Vance and his family had Atlas, their German shepherd, months before Vance became Trump’s running mate.
India Today
False: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a ‘Zionist slave’.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York, calling Israel’s war “one of the most heinous crimes of our era”. In his speech, Abbas called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to military aggressions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, this quote is fake. No news reports mention Mahmoud Abbas making such a comment.
#Economy
PolitiFact
False: The Inflation Reduction Act “drove inflation higher.”
Inflation has fallen by more than two-thirds since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The law was likely not the reason for inflation’s easing, but it’s wrong to say it made inflation worse.
#Healthcare
Snopes
True: Kamala Harris has supported a policy that gives transgender people who rely on the government medical care.
In 2019, Vice President Kamala Harris expressed support for a policy that would give access to trans people who depend on state-funded health care — including inmates and detained immigrants — to gender-affirming care, which includes surgery. Harris and her campaign have declined to say whether she still supported it in 2024. However, it has been the policy in federal prisons since at least 2016, according to the Bureau of Federal Prisons' guidance issued in 2016 and updated in 2022. Both President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have maintained it. The policy follows the medical recommendations of every major medical association in the U.S.
PolitiFact
False: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester “voted to give taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants."
In 2013, during a "vote-a-rama," when lawmakers from both parties often introduce amendments intended to force votes on policies that could be controversial with constituents, Senate Republicans forced Democrats to vote on a budget bill amendment to prohibit immigrants illegally in the country from qualifying for federally subsidized health care. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., voted against the amendment, But its passage would not have given "taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants." Such spending was then, and is now, prohibited under federal law, and changing that would have required passing separate legislation.
PolitiFact
True: Kamala Harris stated that “Donald Trump said he was going to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. He never did. We did.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has touted the Biden administration’s move, via the Inflation Reduction Act, to let Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. She has also promised to expand the program if she wins the election. Former President Donald Trump promised to allow drug negotiations during his 2016 campaign, but he never pursued such a policy while in office. Trump tried to enact a policy that would have tied prices for some Medicare drugs to lower prices in foreign countries, but courts blocked the move.
#Conflicts
PolitiFact
False: Video shows “the bunker-busting bombs that ended the lives of (Hassan) Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s leadership.”
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed at night in an Israeli airstrike Sept. 27 in a Beirut, Lebanon, suburb. Social media videos that claim to show Israeli bombs striking buildings with Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leadership inside were taken in daylight, and many are from earlier bombings in Gaza.
Full Fact
False: A video shows several missiles from Yemen hitting Tel Aviv in Israel.
This is false. Posts on Facebook claiming to show video of missiles hitting Tel Aviv, Israel, actually depict an air attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, in 2023.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: 60 procent af alle retssager i Københavns Byret er hash-relaterede.
I et interview på YouTube siger Enhedslistens politiske ordfører, Pelle Dragsted, at »60 procent af alle retssager i Københavns Byret er hashrelaterede. Det koster samfundet dyrt, og hvis hash blev legaliseret, kunne de penge i stedet bruges på forebyggelse«. Men der er ingen tal, der understøtter Pelle Dragsteds påstand.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: The United Arab Emirates is manufacturing rain through several technologies, including drones, to counter rising heat and a sinking water table.
In the summer of 2021, scientists used drone technology around Dubai that zapped clouds with electricity, causing them to clump together and create larger raindrops from precipitation that then fell to the ground. In mid-July, the country’s meteorological agency released a video of cars driving through a downpour, which they said was the result of their testing drones to increase rainfall. This is part of ongoing efforts in the Gulf state to battle rising temperatures and dwindling water supplies. The desert nation gets about 4 inches of rainfall a year on average. World Bank data predicts that the region will see higher and higher temperatures and more unpredictable rainfall.
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