PolitiFact is a United States fact-checking site run by the Poynter Institute. It rates claims by politicians and viral posts on its Truth-O-Meter, from True to Pants on Fire.
PolitiFact says: Congress created the employee retention tax credit to incentivize employers to keep paying staff after business activity dropped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The credit is paid to eligible employers, not employees.
PolitiFact says: Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin experienced cardiac arrest during a Jan. 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals. The cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest has not been released; doctors are still investigating what happened.
PolitiFact says: When Social Security runs a deficit, it relies on its reserve funds that the Treasury Department holds in government bonds. Treasury has to borrow money to repay the bonds, which adds to the federal deficit.
PolitiFact says: The increase in discretionary spending was close to zero when measured by “outlays,” or actual federal dollars out the door during a given year, but not for the spending approved in a given year for all future years.
PolitiFact says: We took a closer look at the circumstances of the deaths of several doctors that were purportedly linked to COVID-19 vaccines and found no evidence the vaccines were the cause.
PolitiFact says: “2,000 Mules” claimed its data showed that 400,000 ballots were cast illegally in the 2020 election. Experts said the data can show only that people were near ballot drop boxes, which could have been for many reasons.
PolitiFact says: Wages have outpaced inflation for the past two quarters. However, that increase is only beginning to compensate for the wages that were eaten away by inflation earlier in Biden’s presidency.
PolitiFact says: This claim is premature. It’s possible he paid what he owed and it’s possible he owes money. Only audits, not returns, can prove whether the proper amount of tax was paid.
PolitiFact says: There is no evidence the election was rigged. Election observers in Brazil and internationally have reviewed the processes and determined the election was safe.
PolitiFact says: There have been instances when the U.S. government changed the terms for bondholders, such as preventing them from trading paper holdings directly for precious metals, but experts do not consider these true defaults.
PolitiFact says: Younger people face less of a health threat from COVID-19, but vaccines reduce their chances of developing serious disease from the virus. Heart inflammation linked to coronavirus vaccination is rare.
PolitiFact says: The website HumanMeatProject.com exists, but the group said it is not actually soliciting donated bodies and organs to create alternative meat products. Per the site, it is “purely a conceptual art project."
PolitiFact says: The data is missing context. More than 540,000 people visited vote centers Nov. 8, but only about 251,000 of them were there to vote in person. The majority were dropping off early ballots.
PolitiFact says: FBI guidance showed a “threat tag” was created to track threats against school officials, not to flag parents exclusively for voicing views on curriculum.
PolitiFact says: The image wasn’t taken during the Jan. 8, 2023, attack on Brazil’s congress. The photo is from a September 2021 rally in São Paulo.
PolitiFact says: There's no evidence that President Biden was uninvited from Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral. The Vatican said Benedict wished for his funeral to be simple and confirmed it invited only two delegations from Italy and Germany.
PolitiFact says: The clip shows Hanks in a 2011 “Jimmy Kimmel Live” sketch that mocked the reality television series “Toddlers & Tiaras.”
PolitiFact says: The overdose death rate did drop in 2018. But this is a cherry-picked view of the trends on Trump’s watch. In the other three of his four years in office, the overdose death rate rose, including a record jump in 2020.