2024 Presidential Election

Did an executive order signed by President Donald Trump reverse "the plastic straw ban"? No, that's not true: No such national "ban" was enacted by Congress. Trump's order counters policies of former President Joe Biden aimed at gradually phasing out single-use plastic items in the future, which affected only the operations of federal agencies. While some localities do have restrictions…

Does a video show an Orange County, California, election worker committing electoral fraud by scanning ballots three times? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for the Orange County Registrar of Voters denied the accusation of fraud, saying the video "shows an Orange County election worker scanning a batch of ballots three times, but only saving the batch once." The first…

Does a video show President Donald Trump saying that the 2024 presidential election was rigged with the help of Elon Musk? No, that's not true: In the speech excerpted in the video, Trump's remark about rigging referred to the 2020 presidential election, which he has repeatedly and falsely claimed was not legitimate. In the speech, he made a vague remark…

Did President-elect Donald Trump post a map of Finland on Truth Social? No, that's not true: A manual review of his account did not show such an entry as of this writing, January 14, 2025. The map in question did not correctly reflect current Finnish borders nor those in the year seen in the image. The claim appeared in a…

Is it unusual that U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was not invited to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration? No, that's missing context: A social media post's assertion that usually the British prime minister "would be the first name on the list" is untrue. Traditionally, foreign leaders were not invited to U.S. presidential inaugurations, a presidential historian told Lead Stories. The claim…

Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed to first learn through media reports and a press release about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership of which Lead Stories has been a part since 2019. On January 7, 2025, Joel Kaplan, the newly-appointed Chief Global Affairs Officer at Meta, announced in a press release that Meta will be ending the…

Did 22 states fail to upload their Electoral College certifications, which were needed to certify election results on January 6, 2025? No, that's not true: The National Archives confirmed that all 50 states and the District of Columbia submitted their Electoral College Certificates for the 2024 election. By law, these results must be reported by the fourth Wednesday in December,…

Is there a scenario in which Congressional Republicans can be forced to vote for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as vice president so President-elect Donald Trump can be sworn in as president? No, that's not true: Even if President Joe Biden resigned before his second term ends in 2025, thus temporarily making Vice President Kamala Harris president, Congress would have to approve…

Did President Joe Biden deviate from standard protocol following the death of former President Jimmy Carter on December 29, 2024, by ordering flags to be set at half-staff during President-elect Donald Trump's second inauguration? No, that's not true: Federal law requires flags to be flown at half-staff for 30 days after the death of a president or former president. This…

Did Oprah Winfrey say she was leaving the U.S. in response to the 2024 presidential election results as a social media post claimed? No, that's not true: She was still in the U.S. hosting a podcast event at her California home after this social media post's publication. The post came from a Facebook account that categorizes itself as "satire/parody". The…