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Were University of Texas students who knelt during the national anthem "removed from scholarships" as a social media post with a link to an article in the comments said? No, that's not true: The photo appearing with the story depicts cheerleaders at Kennesaw State University, in Georgia. As of August 27, 2024 there was no public statement by the University of Texas or reporting by any media organizations any of this happened. The text of the article appeared to be AI generated according to a specialized detection tool.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on August 20, 2024. Above two images of players and cheerleaders kneeling at sports events, the caption of the post said:

KNEELING: After the University of Texas, all students who knelt during the national anthem were rounded up and REMOVED FROM SCHOLARSHIPS

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Aug 23 17:57:29 2024 UTC)

The photo of the kneeling cheerleaders in black, yellow and white uniforms does not show University of Texas cheerleaders, who wear orange and white. That photo appeared with a 2017 USA Today report about Kennesaw State University cheerleaders protesting racial inequality and police brutality, which looked like this:

(Source: UsaToday.com screenshot taken on Tue Aug 28 01:56:00 2024 UTC)

Neither the post nor the article it linked to cited sources or provided links to evidence that University of Texas students who knelt during the national anthem were being removed from scholarships.

A Lead Stories staffer clicking on August 27, 2024 on the link to an article (https://newscr.bio/?p=3543, visit at your own risk, archived here) pubished by the post author in the comments of the post received a warning of possible virus infection. The warning may or may not have been legitimate, as some Trojan scam ads use bogus warnings to induce users to give up their passwords and other personal information. Here is a screenshot of the warning:

The text of the article had several words that were mashed together, possibly as a result of copy pasting it from somewhere else, as you can see in this sample:

The University of Texas (UT) has recently come under intense scrutiny for reportedlyrevoking scholarships from five athletes who knelt during the National Anthem toprotest racial injustice. Inspired by former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, theseathletes sought to bring attention to systemic racism and police brutality. Theuniversity's alleged action has ignited a heated debate on the delicate balancebetween free expression and adherence to institutional rules, placing UT at thecenter of a national conversation about the limits of protest in academic andathletic environments.

(bold highlights by Lead Stories)

Through a Google search Lead Stories found a nearly identical copy of the story but without the mashed-together words on a different site. According to Hive Moderation's tool to detect AI generated text the opening paragraphs were 97.4% likely to contain AI generated text:

(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken by Lead Stories on August 28, 2024 at 9.25 am CET)

Lead Stories searched for information about University of Texas scholarships being revoked, using keywords on Google News' index of thousands of credible sites. The index search report, visible here, showed no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim, but several versions of the same false claims.

Lead Stories contacted representatives of the University of Texas to learn if scholarships had been withdrawn from students who knelt during the anthem. When the university responds, this fact check will be updated, as appropriate.

When this was written, multiple fact checking organizations had previously reviewed variations of the claim, including Snopes in 2023, USA Today in 2023 and PolitiFact in 2024.

Additional Lead Stories fact checks mentioning "anthem kneeling" can be read here.