Society

Did USAID fund financier and noted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein via the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.? No, that's not true: A screenshot circulating online on social media actually lists "Jeffrey E Epstein," a different person who is a director at Kaiser Permanente. Several of his online profiles show he sometimes goes by the name of "Jeff Epstein" but his…

Does a photo show a young Brigitte Macron with the implication that it shows her before she transitioned from male to female? No, that's not true: The photographer who took the picture confirmed to Lead Stories that the person is not Macron. The image showing a topless person with French first lady Macron's face has been doctored. The original image…

Did the husbands of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein conspire to make money by using federal grants to buy land for high-speed rail? No, that's not true: There is no evidence either Paul Pelosi or the late Richard Blum were involved in land purchases connected to the California High-Speed Rail project. A social media…

Did President Donald Trump sign an executive order on February 3, 2025, announcing the purchase of 2 billion doses of COVID shots from Moderna and Pfizer? No, that's not true: The order established a sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned fund that directs funding from various resources. In a video of the signing, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recalled purchasing pandemic-era…

Did Bill Gates say that "defunding USAID will bring about another mystery illness across the world. Millions will die" during a TV appearance in February 2025? No, that's not true: Gates did not say that in the clip posted on X with that assertion. Lead Stories watched the full segment of Gates' appearance and did not hear Gates say it.…

Is a study that claims vaccinated children have a 170 percent higher risk of autism reliable? No, that's not true: An infectious disease expert told Lead Stories the study is "just junk," saying the journal it was published in and the study design both lack credibility. Numerous large studies have found no proven link between vaccines and autism. The claim…

Did USAID spend over $8 million on Politico, LLC, as social media posts imply? No, that's not true: The government spending database only shows $44,000 in two transactions. Both were subscriptions, not grants. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published on February 5, 2025. It opened: So let me get this straight... USAID…

Does a photo show handcuffed and chained Indians being deported from the U.S.? No, that's not true: The photo shows people from Guatemala sitting on a military aircraft at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas awaiting deportation to Guatemala. The photo previously appeared in several January 2025 media reports. The claim the picture showed people from India appeared in a…

Did the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, wear a "Make America Mexicana Again" hat? No, that's not true: A representative from the Embassy of Mexico told Lead Stories the image was "NOT real." A reply under the social media post with the image of Sheinbaum wearing such a hat revealed that a logo of Grok, X's AI tool, had been…

Did Elon Musk tweet "Anyone protesting the Trump Administration will be suspended from X"? No, that's not true: There is no record that Musk, the owner of the X platform, ever posted this message on his official X account @ElonMusk, according to a search of the site. Had he made such a statement, it would be easily found and news…

Did Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo impose a 50 percent retaliatory tariff on Tesla cars sold in Mexico, calling Elon Musk "pendejo"? No, that's not true: As of February 4, 2025, Lead Stories found no credible media or government reports confirming that she ever said what social media attributed to her. U.S. President Donald Trump said on February 3, 2025,…

Does an authentic photo show an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement restraining a distressed little girl? No, that's not true: This image is AI generated. Hive, an AI-generated image detection service determined with 97.4 percent confidence the image was "highly likely" to be AI generated. Another service, Sightengine, returned the same reading with a 97 percent confidence score. The…

Is former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell accurately credited with a "lazy immigrants" quote often shared on social media? No, that's not true: The quote was first published on social media in 2019 by a user on X who acknowledged having written it. There is no record of the former general publicly sharing this sentiment. The Foreign Service Institute…

Did singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran perform for wounded soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces to show support for Israel? No, that's not true: Sheeran denied this rumor in a now-deleted Instagram story. He stated a charity organization bought tickets to his "large scale public concert." Other reputable entertainment media outlets also posted about Sheeran's denial of the rumor. The implied claim…

Does a video accurately report "breaking news" about a woman who found a truck full of children's bodies in Mexico? No, that's not true: No recent news story matches the narrative's details as of this publication. The video clips in the montage are years old and were pulled from various sources, including different real news stories about bodies found in…

Did Melania Trump win a $900 million defamation lawsuit against the TV show "The View"? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for "The View" told Lead Stories the story was false. No news websites indexed by Google News reported anything about such a lawsuit and there was no trace of it in court dockets in New York and Palm Beach.…

Has the U.S. flag icon in the header of several federal U.S. government websites been replaced by a nine-star version in 2025, or has this icon been added recently? No, that's not true: The icon in the "official website of the United States Government" banner has been like that since at least 2021, and the icon was uploaded in 2020.…

Did Elon Musk say two Boeing Starliner astronauts died in space, as a social media post implies? No, that's not true: Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were shown conducting a spacewalk nearly a month after the post -- and there's no record of Musk ever having made the statements attributed to him in the social media post. On February…

Did police find human remains and evidence of cannibalism in TV producer Oprah Winfrey's Los Angeles, California, home that she purportedly sold in 2013? No, that's not true: This post reappeared on social media recently but it was copied from an older post. In the original post, the social media user who shared the news implied that it was shared…

Was the explosion near Roosevelt Mall in Philadelphia on January 31, 2025, not caused by an airplane crash but by a missile or comet? No, that's not true: The Federal Aviation Administration and multiple news outlets confirmed that the incident involved an aircraft. Global flight tracker Flight Radar 24 said the aircraft fell vertically at high speed. Other video angles…