Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: 2025 Marshallese constitutional referendum
Election Date: 25/04/2025
Citizens will vote on changes that tighten who can become a citizen by marriage, give a traditional court full authority over customary land and title cases, and create an independent Ombudsman to investigate and prosecute high‑level corruption. The amendments also require lawmakers to be natural‑born citizens with inherited land rights, prevent the Attorney General from blocking Ombudsman cases, redraw certain electoral districts, and add a new seat to the Council of Iroijlaplap for Mili Atoll.
#Politics
Snopes
False: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father sent to an El Salvador prison due to an "administrative error" by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, is a convicted MS-13 gang member.
According to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement court filing, an immigration judge said that evidence indicated Abrego Garcia was a "verified member" of MS-13. However, the word of an immigration judge is not the same as a criminal conviction — and there is no evidence Garcia has ever been convicted of a crime; furthermore, the claim that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member appears to rest almost entirely on the word of a confidential police informant.
Snopes
True: U.S. President Donald Trump posted an Easter 2025 message that attacked political opponents, judges, law enforcement and others.
Trump did attack his political opponents, judges and law enforcement officials; because of this, the claim is true. Trump did not write about Jesus, resurrection or forgiveness in the Truth Social post, as social media users correctly asserted, but he did speak on the religious significance of the holiday during an Easter dinner at the White House days earlier.
PolitiFact
False: Arizona Democrats “needed a lawsuit to force them to remove 50,000 noncitizens from voter rolls.”
A Fox News report wrongly claimed Arizona agreed to remove 50,000 noncitizens from its voter rolls, when officials merely settled to ask Homeland Security to help verify citizenship for registrants lacking verification. The agreement doesn’t mandate mass removals, and “federal only” voters—who attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury—remain eligible for federal elections but must prove citizenship to vote locally.
#Economy
AP News
False: The U.S. is earning $2 billion per day from their recent tariffs.
Trump began raising tariffs in February. That month, about $7.247 billion in customs duties were collected, or $258.82 million per day. In March, the most recent monthly figure available, a total of about $8.168 billion in customs duties was collected, or approximately $263.48 million per day. A customs duty is a type of tariff.
PolitiFact
Half-True: “Less than half of Americans have $1,000 in savings.”
A 2024 Forbes survey found that about 28% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. Consumer financial services company Bankrate found in 2025 that most Americans do not have enough savings to meet expert recommendations of three to six months of living expenses, and many are financially vulnerable due to inflation and rising costs. The Federal Reserve Bank’s most recent survey of consumer finances found that average Americans have $8,000 in their bank accounts at any given time.
#Technology
Lead Stories
False: The Blue Origin spaceflight April 14, 2025 was a hoax.
A circulating photo of a hand in a Blue Origin crew capsule was from a December 2017 test flight mannequin, not the April 14, 2025, crewed mission, and thus doesn’t indicate any hoax.
#Healthcare
Lead Stories
False: Cleveland Clinic study showed flu vaccine increased adults' risk of contracting flu.
This study's finding that vaccination was "associated with" a higher risk isn't the same as showing the vaccine is what caused increased risk. The authors of the study found that vaccinated health care workers had a 27% higher incidence of flu than those who were not vaccinated. The researchers said their paper did not identify what factors caused the higher infection rate, only that the shot was relatively ineffective.
FactCheck.org
False: Food dyes are linked to increased rates of cancer and ADHD.
RFK Jr. claims strong links between synthetic food dyes and cancer and ADHD as he pushes for bans and tighter FDA rules, but experts say cancer evidence is limited to animal studies and ADHD links are modest and mixed. Advocates call dyes unnecessary risks, while public health specialists stress that obesity, diet quality, and other environmental factors play larger roles in chronic disease and behavior.
#Conflicts
PolitiFact
True: Gun violence is the leading killer of college-aged people in the U.S.
Accidental deaths ranked No. 1 for people ages 18 to 25 in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Firearms were the "leading mechanism." Firearms were also the leading mechanism of death for every age in that bracket except 24 and 25, for which drug poisoning deaths exceeded firearm deaths.
Lead Stories
False: Graphic from Statista showing the nationalities of mercenaries killed in fighting around Kursk.
The data on the Statista website doesn't show the graph shared on social media. Unlike authentic charts published by that company, the graph omitted the source of the figures and showed the Liberian flag in the column purporting to detail the data about the U.S. In an email to Lead Stories, a spokesperson for Statista denied any association with the graph.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: To skoledrenge fra Esbjerg måtte sidde skræmte i et træ i halvanden time og gemme sig for en ulv, der kredsede under dem.
To drenge i Esbjerg klatrede op i et træ i 90 minutter i sidste uge i den tro, at en ulv kredsede under dem, men førende ulveeksperter og en præcisering fra JydskeVestkysten konkluderer nu, at det filmede dyr var en kat og ikke en ulv. Den oprindelige rapports overskrift og påstande blev ændret, efter at eksperter havde rejst tvivl, men avisen står fast på drengenes troværdighed.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Washington Post
True: Before joining the church, Pope Francis danced the tango and worked as a doorman at local bars.
Francis grew up in Buenos Aires’s working‑class Flores neighborhood, where nuns called him a “little demon.” He played pool, danced milonga, and worked as a bar doorman on weekends; in high school he studied chemistry in class and apprenticed in a lab. Almost 17, after passing the San Jose de Flores Basilica, he realized he wanted to be a priest and secretly read theology despite his mother’s wish that he become a doctor. His love of tango endured, and in 2014 he celebrated his 78th birthday with a mass tango in St. Peter’s Square.
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