Category: Fact Check

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

During the April 8 eclipse, people in the path of totality were able to see solar phenomena, including the sun’s corona. But social media posts have shared altered or composite images of these phenomena, claiming one image was “captured by NASA.” It was actually an artist’s rendering of a composite photo of the 2017 eclipse.

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Full Story

A total solar eclipse — in which the moon blocked Earth’s view of the sun — occurred April 8 in a narrow path across Mexico, the United States and Canada. Crowds gathered in cities along the path, including Dallas, Cleveland and Montreal, to witness totality, the brief period in which the sun’s light is completely obscured by the moon.

In addition to the sky darkening, those in the path of totality were able to see a part of the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, which is otherwise impossible to see because of the sun’s bright light.

Gary Bernstein, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, explained the appearance of the corona in an email to us. “The sun is always in the process of ejecting a tenuous stream of gas into space. This gas emits a very faint light compared to the sun’s main body, so while it’s always present in the sky, we can’t see it on a normal day because it’s lost in the glare of the disk of the sun,” he said.

“During a total eclipse, the moon blocks the disk, and the sky becomes dark enough to see the corona.  This only occurs during the totality phase,” Bernstein said.

Another phenomenon known as Baily’s Beads — beads of light that appear around the edge of the moon during an eclipse — occurs just as totality begins and ends. “They occur because the moon has mountains and valleys, and the last rays of the sun can pass through the valleys while the mountains block light. This breaks up the very thin final arc of light into pieces,” Bernstein explained.

NASA uploaded a photo album of pictures taken during the recent eclipse, many of which show Baily’s Beads and the sun’s corona.

But some social media posts have shared the painting of a composite image or an altered image of these phenomena, and misleadingly claimed they were photos of the recent eclipse.

A Digital Painting of a 2017 Composite Photo

One image, featuring a dramatic corona, was shared on Facebook on April 9 with the caption, “Most Detailed Image of the Solar Eclipse.” The post received 88,000 likes, but has since been removed.

Several other posts also shared the image on social media, falsely claiming it was a photo taken during the eclipse and “captured by NASA.” Through a reverse image search, we found this image is actually a digital painting from 2020 by artist Cathrin Machin.

As she wrote in an Instagram caption on July 20, 2020, Machin based her painting on a picture created by astrophotographer Sebastian Voltmer in Wyoming during the 2017 total solar eclipse. Voltmer uploaded his original photo to Flickr in September 2017, and he wrote that the photo was a composite of 35 images taken during the eclipse.

Bernstein explained that many astrophotographers use composite images — that is, an image produced by combining two or more photos — “since we are taking pictures of things the human eye can’t see.” He added: “They’re not what your eye would see but they are ‘real’ in the sense of being an image of what’s truly in the sky.”

Alexei Filippenko, a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, told us, “Cameras are good at capturing the solar corona, but only with composites made from images having many different exposures. A given exposure doesn’t have a large ‘dynamic range’ the way the human eye does. The human eye can see faint and bright things well simultaneously, but a photo cannot.”

Image ‘Appears to be Altered’

Another image, which shows both Baily’s Beads and the corona, was posted to Facebook on April 10 with a caption misleadingly claiming it was from the recent eclipse. The caption, originally in Spanish, claims that the photo is “one of the best shots of the solar eclipse.”

But a spokesperson for scientists at the National Solar Observatory told us that “this image appears to be altered.”

“The S-shape of the coronal streamers on the left and right of the corona is the most obvious problem,” the NSO spokesperson told us in an email. “The coronal magnetic field does not bend in such sinuous curves. They are angled and curved at times, but a 90-degree bend in the field lines is unrealistic.”

Filippenko also raised concerns about the waviness of the corona in this image. “Although it could in principle look curvy… I’ve never seen it that way. Always, or almost always, the coronal streamers basically go radially outward from the Sun; they don’t curve much.”

The NSO spokesperson also noted that the placement of the Baily’s Beads in this image were unlikely. “They appear all around the sun simultaneously, which is unrealistic except in a very special eclipse (when the moon was exactly the same size as the Sun, so a very brief eclipse). Also, when the Baily’s beads are still present, the corona is not yet so visible and prominent.”

But during the April 8 eclipse, the moon actually appeared significantly larger than the sun, Filippenko said.

Filippenko also told us the image in the April 10 Facebook post could be a composite photo of several previous eclipses, but not of the April 8 eclipse or any single eclipse.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Bernstein, Gary. Professor of astronomy and astrophysics, University of Pennsylvania. Email to FactCheck.org. 15 Apr 2024.

Dunn, Marcia. “Total solar eclipse wows North America. Clouds part just in time for most.” Associated Press. 9 Apr 2024.

Filippenko, Alexei. Professor of astronomy, University of California, Berkeley. Email to FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2024.

NASA. “Baily’s Beads.” 5 Oct 2017.

NASA. “NASA Eclipse Science.” Accessed 16 Apr 2024.

NASA. “Total Solar Eclipse FAQs.” Accessed 16 Apr 2024.

National Solar Observatory. Spokesperson’s email to FactCheck.org. 16 Apr 2024.

Strickland, Ashley, et al. “Total solar eclipse: Where and when it was most visible.” CNN. 8 Apr 2024.

On the day of the tax filing deadline, former President Donald Trump went on Truth Social to misleadingly warn that if President Joe Biden is reelected, “you will soon be facing colossal tax HIKES.” But in his latest budget proposal, Biden supports extending the tax cuts championed by Trump for people making less than $400,000.

“Happy TAX DAY to everyone,” Trump wrote on April 15, the last day for most people to file their federal tax returns. “This year, the typical family’s tax bill is thousands of dollars lower because of the Trump Tax Cuts. We doubled your Standard Deduction. We doubled the child tax cuts—and we lowered income tax rates for EVERYONE. But if Crooked Joe Biden gets his way, you will soon be facing colossal tax HIKES…”

He’s talking about the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which became effective in 2018. Whether it reduced the “typical family’s” tax bill by “thousands” depends on how one defines the typical family. According to a Tax Policy Center analysis, the law reduced the individual income taxes owed by Americans by about $1,260 on average in 2018. Taxpayers in the middle 20% of earners (those with income between about $49,000 and $86,000) saw an average tax cut of about $800.

Only those in the top quintile of earners — those making over $149,400 — saw average tax savings in the “thousands” ($5,790 on average). 

And while it’s true that tax rates were cut for nearly “EVERYONE,” not everyone got a tax cut as a result of the TCJA. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that about 65% of taxpayers got a tax cut, while about 6% saw a tax increase.

As for Trump’s warning that if Biden “gets his way, you will soon be facing colossal tax HIKES,” Trump has been making that misleading claim for years. Yet, in his three years as president, Biden’s major tax changes have included setting a minimum corporate tax rate and lowering taxes for some families by expanding the child tax credit and making it fully refundable.

During the 2020 campaign, Trump falsely claimed that Biden’s tax plans would result in “doubling and tripling your taxes.” As we wrote then, while Biden proposed to raise an additional $4 trillion in taxes over the next decade, the increases would have fallen mainly on very high-income earners and corporations. The plan would not have doubled or tripled people’s taxes at any income level (on average), according to analyses of Biden’s plan by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation.

More recently, after winning New Hampshire’s GOP primary in January, Trump claimed Democrats “want to raise your taxes times four,” but the Tax Policy Center said Biden’s 2024 budget would, on average, increase after-tax incomes for low-income households and “leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households.” The Tax Policy Center noted, “The top 1 percent, with at least roughly $1 million in income, would pay an average of $300,000 more than under current law, dropping their after-tax incomes by 14 percent.” That’s a sizable amount, but the top 1% wouldn’t be the “typical” American family.

In March, Biden released his fiscal year 2025 budget, which contains many of the same proposals and adds a few new wrinkles. But it still does not contain any “colossal tax hikes” on typical American families.

Biden’s latest plan proposes — as he has in the past — to increase the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, and to restore the top individual tax rate of 39.6% from the current rate of 37%. It would also increase the corporate minimum tax rate to 21% for companies that report average profits in excess of $1 billion over a three-year period. (The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act established a minimum of 15%.) And the plan would impose a 25% minimum tax on very wealthy individuals. The plan also proposes to extend the expanded child tax credit enacted in the American Rescue Plan through 2025, and to make the child tax credit fully refundable on a permanent basis.

As he has since the 2020 campaign, Biden’s FY 2025 budget vows not to increase taxes on people earning less than $400,000.

In order to keep that pledge, Biden would have to extend most of the individual income tax provisions enacted in the TCJA that are set to expire at the end of 2025. And that’s what Biden says he would do — but only for individual filers earning less than $400,000 and married couples making less than $450,000.

The budget says Biden “[s]upports paying for extending tax cuts for people earning less than $400,000 with additional reforms to ensure that wealthy people and big corporations pay their fair share, so that the problematic sunsets created by President Trump and congressional Republicans are addressed in a fiscally responsible manner.” (In order to pass the TCJA with a simply majority, Republicans wrote the law to have most of the individual income tax changes expire after 2025.)

“Bottom line: Biden is promising to protect the TCJA tax cuts for at least 95 percent of households,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told us via email. “Whether he actually could deliver is another matter, but that is his promise.”

The Biden budget plan “would raise marginal income tax rates faced by higher earners and corporations while expanding tax credits for lower-income households,” according to a Tax Foundation analysis of the tax provisions in Biden’s budget. “The budget would redistribute income from high earners to low earners. The bottom 60 percent of earners would see increases in after-tax income in 2025, while the top 40 percent of earners would see decreases.”

In other words, if one considers the “typical American family” to be among the middle 20% of earners, those taxpayers would see a small increase in after-tax incomes in 2025 (0.5% on average) and a slight decrease (0.2%) by 2034, according to the Tax Foundation. The difference, explained Garrett Watson, senior policy analyst and modeling manager at the Tax Foundation, is largely due to the expiration of the expanded child tax credit after 2025. As we said, Biden has proposed extending the expanded child tax credit.

However, the pro-business Tax Foundation also wrote that because Biden’s plan would increase taxes on businesses and high-income people, the proposed changes would harm the economy in the long run, reducing the GDP by 2.2%, the capital stock by 3.8%, wages by 1.6%, and employment by about 788,000 jobs. Factoring in the economic effects of the lower long-run GDP, the Tax Foundation estimates middle-income earners would see their after-tax income reduced by about 2.1% in 10 years.

But as Watson explained in an email, the Tax Foundation’s estimates about lower after-tax incomes due to the impact on economic growth “are distinct from direct tax hikes, but they have similar effects to tax hikes in that the amount of income after-tax is lower from either source.”

A Washington Post analysis of Biden’s budget plan found it fails to say how it will pay for the proposal to extend tax cuts in the TCJA for those making under $400,000, calling into question whether Biden can keep that promise while also upholding his budget pledge to cut deficits by about $3 trillion over 10 years. (Trump, too, would have to find new revenue or cut spending to avoid higher deficits if the tax cuts are extended.)

And we should also note, as we often do when discussing a president’s budget plans, they are largely symbolic statements of priorities, not legislation on which Congress actually votes. Case in point: Biden’s budgets have included most of the large tax proposals this one does, and those proposals were never enacted even when Democrats held a majority in both the House (barely) and Senate in Biden’s first two years in office.

Of course, Biden did create a corporate minimum tax rate of 15% in 2022, and Trump was able to get his tax cut plan into law.

Still, whether Biden’s plan can be enacted or not, the president’s budget represents what Biden would do if he “gets his way,” as Trump put it, and that stated plan does not include “colossal tax hikes” for the “typical family.”

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A couple of videos featuring Bollywood actor Aamir Khan are being circulated on social media. In one, he talks about the Rs 15 Lakh apparently promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to every citizen. In the second, he talks about Congress’s election manifesto.

Video I

Here, Khan questions where the money promised by the PM went and asks people to stay aware of such ‘jumle waade’ (false promises). The video ends with an appeal to people to vote for Congress in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Khan states: “If you think India is a poor country, then you are wrong. Because every citizen here is a millionaire. Every citizen here should have at least Rs 15 Lakh. What did you say? You don’t have this money? So where did your 15 Lakh go? Beware of jumlewad“.

Premium subscribed X (formerly Twitter) user Harish Meena (@HarishMeenaINC) shared the video on April 15. In the tweet, the user wrote: “… You don’t have 15 lakhs in your account.. So where did your 15 lakhs go??? So be careful with such jokers.. Otherwise it will be your loss…” (Archive)

भारत का हर नागरिक लखपति है
क्योंकि सबके पास काम से कम 15 लाख तो होने ही चाहिए ..
क्या कहा
आपके अकाउंट में 15 लाख नहीं है..
तो आपके 15 लाख गए कहां ???
तो ऐसे जुमलेबाजों से रहे सावधान
नहीं तो होगा तुम्हारा नुकसान
🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳देशहित में जारी🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/GkhwpbUCfz

— Harish Meena (@HarishMeenaINC) April 15, 2024

Several other users on X also shared the same video claiming Aamir Khan was endorsing Congress.

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Video II

In the second video, which is yet again an appeal to the public to vote for Congress, the actor can be heard praising ‘Panch Nyay‘ which is the Congress party’s manifesto for the upcoming election.

Aamir Khan says, “In this election, there are two types of guarantees, one is good and other bad. The bad news is that again such ‘jumle waade‘ (false promises) have been made to destroy your life. But the good news is this time for your betterment there is ‘Paanch Nyay’. The Hand (Congress Party’s symbol) will change the scenario.”

Facebook page North East With Congress shared the above-mentioned video on April 12 with the following caption: “Indian Film Superstar Shri Amir Khan’s support for ‘ #PaanchNYAY ‘ and his endorsement of the #Congress and #INDIAAlliance is a welcome sight. It takes courage to stand up for what’s right, and his stance signifies a shift in Bollywood’s narrative. Let’s embrace this momentum for change and cast our vote for progress.
#NoVoteForBJP
#HaathBadlegaHalaat #voteforchange2024 #Vote4Congress
#VoteForCongress”.

Alt News received requests on its WhatsApp helpline to fact-check the above video.

 

Fact Check

Video I

We noticed that the words heard in the video and the lip movement of the actor did not match in several instances. After breaking down the video into several key frames, we ran a reverse image search on some of them. This led us to a YouTube video posted on the channel Satyamev Jayate, a show hosted by Aamir Khan which ran between 2012 and 2014 on TV channel Star Plus.

The visuals and background music in this YouTube video were the same as those in the viral video. The video was posted on August 30, 2016, and the title said: “Sataymev Jayate Ep 4 Promo – Each Indian is entitled to one crore!”

In the 35-second video, Khan says that every Indian is entitled to 1 crore rupees. The video ends with Aamir Khan asking everyone to watch the show and there is no mention of “jumle waade” as in the viral video.

We ran a relevant keyword search to find more information related to the above video and found the promo on the official website of the programme as well. The promotional video was for an episode titled: “Kings Every Day” in season 2 of the show which aired in 2014. The entire 1.11-hour-long episode is available on Satyamev Jayate’s YouTube channel, it was posted on March 23, 2014.

In the above video, Aamir Khan begins by talking about financial scams in the country and then goes on to discuss taxes and personal wealth. At the 9.41 mark, he introduces a guest expert from an independent think tank. They discuss about national wealth and deduce that if the total wealth of the country is distributed among the citizens, each Indian will become a crorepati.

Hence, it is clear that the audio of the viral video of Aamir Khan that is being shared as his appeal to voters to vote for Congress is not genuine. The audio has been doctored seemingly using AI voice cloning.

Video 2

As in the above video, in this case as well we noticed that the lip movement was not always in sync with the audio.

We looked through Satyamev Jayate’s YouTube channel to check if the second viral video had also been taken from here and we found the same video posted on August 30, 2016. The visuals of this video are the same as the video clip in question.

However, the audio is different. In the YouTube video, Khan can be heard talking about the comeback of his show on television and not about the manifestos of any political party.

He gestures ‘five’ with his hand and says that his show will be telecast on five Sundays in March. In the viral video, this gesture is being claimed to be made for his endorsement of the ‘Panch Nyay’ in Congress’ manifesto.

We further found a tweet by the official X account of Satyamev Jayate from February 23, 2014, which carried the link to the same video. The caption said: “Sirf Paanch Sunday, March Ke! Watch the new season of Satyamev Jayate , every Sunday of March at 11am #DeshKiFikr”.

Sirf Paanch Sunday, March Ke! Watch the new season of Satyamev Jayate , every Sunday of March at 11am #DeshKiFikr http://t.co/nAyJJRxX4u

— Satyamev Jayate (@satyamevjayate) February 23, 2014

Therefore, from the above findings, it is clear that the claim that Aamir Khan is endorsing Congress’ manifesto is false. The audio of the original video has been doctored.

With respect to the first video, we could also find an official statement from Aamir Khan’s team given to the media. NDTV reported that Khan’s office said, “We want to clarify Aamir Khan has never endorsed any political party in his 35-year career. He has dedicated his efforts to raising public awareness through campaigns for the Election Commission for many past elections. We are alarmed now to see a recent viral video alleging Mr Khan is promoting a particular party. He would like to clarify this is a fake and totally untrue video. He has reported the matter to various authorities, including filing an FIR with the Cyber Crime Cell of Mumbai Police”.

Related

Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.

Quick Take

A claim on social media misrepresents the number of people who have registered to vote in three states in 2024 and suggests the new voters are immigrants in the country illegally. There have been 194,000 newly registered voters in those states — not 2 million — and there’s no evidence they are immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

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Full Story

About 194,000 new voters have registered since the beginning of 2024 in three states — Pennsylvania, Arizona and Texas. That’s in line with the number of new registrations at this point in 2020.

It’s also far short of the 2 million new voters claimed in social media posts that have been circulating recently, one of which was amplified by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.

On X, the social media platform that he owns, Musk reposted a claim from a far-right account that said: “The number of voters registering without a photo ID is SKYROCKETING in 3 key swing states: Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Since the start of 2024: TX: 1,250,710 PA: 580,513 AZ: 220,731.”

It’s true that Pennsylvania and Arizona, which went to former President Donald Trump in 2016 and to President Joe Biden in 2020, are swing states, but Texas isn’t generally considered to be in play for presidential elections. Trump won Texas in 2016 by 9 percentage points and 2020 by 6.5 points and is comfortably ahead in the polls for 2024.

The post cited data from the Help America Vote Verification system run by the Social Security Administration and suggested that the new voter registrations it counted were for “illegals.” The HAVV system is a tool used by states to verify the identity, but not the citizenship, of “new voters who do not present a valid driver’s license during the voter registration process.”

Musk wrote that the claim in the post was “Extremely concerning.” Musk recently advanced another inaccurate claim about immigration’s impact on elections, as we reported.

Another popular conservative account also spread the inflated voter registration claim, summarizing it this way: “Over 8 million illegal aliens have invaded America under Biden[.] Now we learn more than 2 million voter registrations have been completed *WITHOUT VOTER ID* in the past 3 months in 3 crucial states for 2024[.] Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Texas[.] Now you know why the border is open.”

But those aren’t the numbers of new voters who have been registered in those states.

We reached out to the secretaries of state in each of those three states and were told by all of their offices that the numbers in the social media posts were wrong.

In Pennsylvania, “As of April 3, there have been more than 76,000 new voter registrations in 2024,” a statement provided to us by spokesperson Amy Gulli said. “That is compared to nearly 102,000 new voter registrations in that same time frame in 2020.”

JP Martin, spokesperson for Arizona’s secretary of state, called the claims “spurious” and pointed us to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s response to Musk, which said the number of new voters registered in the state so far this year is about 60,000.

And a statement from Jane Nelson, the Texas secretary of state, said, “It is totally inaccurate that 1.2 million voters have registered to vote in Texas without a photo ID this year. The truth is our voter rolls have increased by 57,711 voters since the beginning of 2024. This is less than the number of people registered in the same timeframe in 2022 (about 65,000) and in 2020 (about 104,000).”

The data that one post cited came from a system run by the Social Security Administration that checks the accuracy of new voters’ information using their Social Security numbers.

The Help America Vote Act, which became law in 2002, requires states to verify identity information for newly registered voters with their respective motor vehicle authority. For voters who don’t have a driver’s license, the law said that the motor vehicle authority must verify the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number with the Social Security Administration.

Two years after HAVA passed, the Social Security Administration developed the Help America Vote Verification system. That system allows state motor vehicle licensing departments to submit the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number to the Social Security Administration for verification. Data on the number of requests from each state and the outcome — including whether the information was matched and whether the matches were for a person who is alive or dead — is public.

But it doesn’t show the number of new voters who have actually been registered.

Pennsylvania, for example, “uses the Help America Vote Verification to check partial social security numbers (SSN) not only for voter registration applications, but also for absentee and mail ballot applications,” the statement from the secretary of state’s office explained. “In many cases, the same voter’s partial SSN is being checked more than once in a single year.”

For the first three months in 2024, Pennsylvania had submitted about 568,500 inquiries to the Social Security Administration and about 543,000 of them were matches, according to data provided by the administration. But, as we said, there have been about 76,000 new voters registered in the state so far this year.

Since the HAVV system is designed only to verify identity, and not citizenship, Richer said Arizona — like some other states — uses a motor vehicle database “to confirm citizenship for the vast majority of registration applicants.” But he added, “We also have some other tools at our disposal, or we communicate directly with the voter to get documentation” of citizenship. Some of those other options for proving citizenship include a passport, naturalization documents, or an Indian Census number, Bureau of Indian Affairs card number, or Tribal Treaty card number, according to the Arizona secretary of state website.

In Texas, the secretary of state cast doubt on whether the total number of requests logged by the Social Security Administration was actually correct. Referring to the original claim on X, Nelson said in her statement, “The 1.2 million figure comes from the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) website, which is supposed to report the number of times states have asked to verify an individual’s social security number. The SSA number is clearly incorrect, and we are working now to determine why there is such a large discrepancy.”

Neither the Texas secretary of state’s office nor the Social Security Administration responded to our request about whether or not they had determined if there was an error in the number of inquiries sent from Texas.

So, the actual number of new voters in the three states is about a tenth of what is claimed in the posts. And there’s no evidence to support the suggestion that the new registrants are immigrants in the country illegally.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

270 To Win. Texas Presidential Election. Accessed 12 Apr 2024.

Pennsylvania Department of State. 2016 Presidential Election. Official Returns. 8 Nov 2016.

Pennsylvania Department of State. 2020 Presidential Election. Official Returns. 3 Nov 2020.

State of Arizona Official Canvass. 2016 General Election. 29 Nov 2016.

State of Arizona Official Canvass. 2020 General Election. 24 Nov 2020.

Social Security Administration. Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) Transactions by State. Accessed 5 Apr 2024.

Farley, Robert. “Elon Musk Overstates Partisan Impact of Illegal Immigration on House Apportionment.” FactCheck.org. 27 Mar 2024.

Robertson, Lori. “Breaking Down the Immigration Figures.” FactCheck.org. 27 Feb 2024.

Gulli, Amy. Spokeswoman, Pennsylvania Department of State. Email to FactCheck.org. 5 Apr 2024.

Martin, JP. Spokesman, Arizona Secretary of State. Email to FactCheck.org. 5 Apr 2024.

Richer, Stephen (@stephen_richer). “Hi Elon! The post you’re quote-tweeting seems to suggest that, based on Social Security Administration data, 220,731 illegal immigrants have registered to vote in Arizona since January 1, 2024. A few things if I may be so bold (since I have easy access to Maricopa County’s data — which makes up 62% of Arizona)…” X. 3 Apr 2024.

Nelson, Jane. Texas Secretary of State. Press release. “Statement on Voter Registration ID Requirements.” 3 Apr 2024.

Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.

We’ve fact-checked a lot of claims from the presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential nominees — after all, they’re the same two men who faced off in 2020. Some of President Joe Biden’s and former President Donald Trump’s assertions are well-worn talking points they will likely continue to trot out on the campaign trail.

As a primer for the 2024 election, here’s our guide to the top 10 falsehoods and distortions — so far — in terms of Trump’s and Biden’s propensity to repeat them.

No ‘Rigged Election’

At just about every opportunity, Trump makes the false claim that the 2020 election was “rigged,” claiming that he and his allies “found tremendous voter fraud” in swing states that he lost, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia.

But there is no evidence to support Trump’s claims, and, in fact, there is ample evidence that the 2020 election was — in the words of the Trump administration’s own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — “the most secure in American history.”

The fact is, Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results. In Georgia, for example, Trump not only lost 11 post-election lawsuits, but a statewide hand audit and a machine recount. “Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said in announcing the results of the audit on Nov. 19, 2020.

William Barr, who served as the U.S. attorney general under Trump, told a House committee in testimony released June 13, 2022: “In my opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud, and I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that.”

Barr gave that testimony to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Like Barr, other top Justice Department officials in the Trump administration testified that they repeatedly told Trump the department found no evidence of widespread election fraud. For example, Richard Donoghue, who was deputy attorney general under Trump, told the Jan. 6 committee that he tried “to put it in very clear terms to the president” that “major allegations” of fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada were “not supported by the evidence.” (For more, see our June story “Trump Ignored Aides, Repeated False Claims.”)

Yet, Trump has made baseless claims about a stolen election a key part of his 2024 campaign.

Deficit Decline Due to Pandemic Spending

Biden often misleadingly suggests that his administration is responsible for the federal budget deficit declining from about $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020 to about $1.7 trillion in fiscal 2023. “Our administration has already cut the deficit by $1 trillion,” he said during April 9 remarks from Washington, D.C.

But as we’ve written, the large decline in the deficit had more to do with expiring emergency COVID-19 funding than it did with Biden’s policies. Experts have said that his push for more pandemic and infrastructure spending early in his presidency increased deficits. The drop that Biden cites would have been larger in fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022 if not for his policies.

Unsupported Illegal Immigration Claim

Virtually every campaign speech Trump has delivered for more than a year has included some version of the unsupported claim that countries around the world are “emptying out their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions and sending their most heinous criminals to the United States.” As we have reported, immigration experts say they have not seen evidence to support that.

Trump has offered scant evidence to back up his claim, at various times claiming to have read media reports that support it — but which journalists, including those at FactCheck.org, have been unable to locate and the Trump campaign has failed to provide.

More recently, in a speech in Green Bay on April 2, Trump cited a drop in violent crime in Venezuela as circumstantial evidence that “they’re taking their gangs and their criminals and depositing them very nicely into the United States.”

The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, which has access to the country’s crime data, reported a 25% decrease in violent deaths between 2022 and 2023. But the group’s founder and director, Roberto Briceño-León, told us via email, “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country.”

Rather, he said, the drop in crime is due to worsening economic and living conditions in the country, which has led to a massive out-migration of nearly 8 million people.

“Crime is reduced in Venezuela due to a reduction in crime opportunities: bank robberies disappear because there is no money to steal; kidnappings are reduced because there is no cash to pay ransoms; robberies on public transportation cease because travelers have no money in their pockets and old, worthless cell phones; and assaults on bank money dispensers disappear because the cash they can give to their clients has not exceeded twenty US dollars,” Briceño-León said.

Some criminals have left Venezuela “seeking to continue their criminal life in other places where they find greater opportunities for profit,” he said, but the vast majority of emigrants from Venezuela are “honest workers fleeing the country’s poverty, looking for a job and a better future.”

Misleading Jobs Comparison

In speeches and on social media, Biden continues to misleadingly contrast the jobs gained during his presidency with the job losses under Trump — ignoring that the loss under Trump was because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here’s a chart that has been pushed out by the White House:

The great American comeback continues under President Biden. pic.twitter.com/DVSoLeahQT

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 12, 2024

The economy under Biden has added about 15.2 million jobs between January 2021 and March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That comes out to about 400,000 jobs a month, as the chart says. And Trump’s number is correct, looking at the entirety of his time in office. But under Trump, jobs were growing at an average of about 180,000 per month until the pandemic hit. The U.S. lost 20.5 million jobs in April 2020, as efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus led to business closures and layoffs.

It wasn’t until June 2022, under Biden, that employment numbers reached their pre-pandemic levels.

On the campaign trail, Biden also frequently boasts that the 15 million jobs added in his first three years “is a record in American history.” While that may be true in raw numbers, in terms of the percentage of job growth, which accounts for population growth, the first three years under Presidents Jimmy Carter (12.5%) and Lyndon Johnson (12.1%) were higher than Biden’s 10.3% so far.

Still ‘Energy Independent’

Trump regularly makes the misleading claim that the U.S. was “energy independent” during his term, suggesting that is no longer the case under Biden. In his Super Tuesday victory speech on March 5, Trump said, “Three years ago … we were energy independent. We were going to be very shortly energy dominant, and today we’re getting oil from Venezuela.”

But under Trump, the U.S. never stopped importing sources of energy, including crude oil, from other countries. In addition, as the country did when Trump was president, the U.S., during Biden’s presidency, has exported more energy, including petroleum, than it imported, and it has produced more energy than it consumed. Those are ways some people define “energy independence,” and the U.S. still meets those metrics.

Also, the U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and natural gas under Biden, contrary to claims that his policies “crushed” American energy.

No Plans to Cut Medicare, Social Security

Increasingly, Biden makes the unsupported claim that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security.

As we wrote, Biden in December claimed Trump “is proposing …. cutting Social Security and Medicare,” even though the former president has said he has no plan to cut either program and has publicly warned Republicans not to do so.

More recently, Biden repeatedly points to a single statement that Trump made in March to claim he has proof that Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. “So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements,” Trump said in a March 11 interview on CNBC.

Biden excerpted part of that quote on at least three occasions in March while in North Carolina, Texas and New Hampshire.

But in context, the Trump campaign said, the former president was talking about cutting waste and fraud in those programs – not benefits. And there is evidence to support the Trump campaign.

Trump has consistently stated his opposition to cutting Social Security and Medicare. When he first ran for president in 2015, he said he would “get rid of the waste and fraud” and “save” the programs “without cuts.”

As an aside, experts have told us that Social Security cannot be “saved” by simply cutting waste and fraud.

When House Republicans in early 2023 began to debate among themselves how to reduce government spending, Trump said in a video post on Jan. 20: “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree.”

Some critics argue that Trump’s words cannot be trusted because of the budgets he proposed as president. But, as we have written, Trump did not propose cuts to Social Security retirement benefits, and his budgets included only bipartisan ideas to reduce the growth of Medicare spending.

Another aside: Trump, too, has made similar claims about Biden. Earlier this month, he told supporters in Wisconsin, “Unlike Biden and the open borders Democrats, I will always protect Medicare and Social Security for our great seniors.” There is no support for the idea that Biden wants to cut the programs’ benefits, either.

An Abortion Distortion

Trump falsely claims that Democrats support abortion “even after birth,” as he said in Iowa in January. More recently, he made the claim in an April 8 video, saying: “The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth.” That’s homicide, and it’s illegal.

“No such procedure exists,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says on its website.

The former president has wrongly said that this was permitted under Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion. It was not.

Under Roe, states could outlaw abortion after fetal viability, but with exceptions for risks to the life or health of the mother. As we’ve explained, many Republicans have objected to the health stipulation, saying it would allow abortion for any reason. Democrats say it’s an exception for medical risks for the mother. But Trump’s extreme claim of abortion “after birth” goes well beyond the GOP viewpoint that the health exception is a loophole.

In June 2022, after Trump had appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, the court overturned Roe in a 5-4 ruling. Biden supports restoring Roe as “the law of the land,” as he said in his State of the Union address.

Billionaires Pay Higher Federal Tax Rates

As part of his proposal for a billionaire minimum tax, Biden routinely says that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of about 8%, “less than a teacher or a firefighter,” as he said in February. In the State of the Union address, he included “a sanitation worker, or a nurse.” He leaves the misleading impression that billionaires pay that tax rate under the current tax system. Instead, the figure comes from a White House calculation that factors in earnings on unsold stock as income.

When looking only at income, the top-earning taxpayers, on average, pay higher tax rates than those in the income groups below them, as we’ve explained. Earnings on assets, such as stock, aren’t taxed until that asset is sold, at which point the earnings are subject to capital gains taxes. Biden has proposed that those with wealth over $100 million pay a 25% minimum tax, as calculated on both standard income and unsold investment income combined.

The problem with the current system, the White House has said, is that unrealized gains could go untaxed forever if wealthy people hold on to them and pass them on to heirs when they die. At the time of an inheritance, an asset’s value is adjusted to the fair market value, essentially eliminating any taxes on the gains that had accumulated from the time the asset was purchased and when it was passed on to heirs.

Not the ‘Greatest Economy’

Trump repeatedly makes the false claim that under his leadership the U.S. had the “greatest economy in history” — a claim he made throughout his time in office. On his last day in office and in his first speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump said he “built the greatest economy in the history of the world.” He repeated that claim recently at a rally in Ohio.

But it’s not true.

Economists generally measure a nation’s health by the growth of its inflation-adjusted gross domestic product. Under Trump, growth was modest. Real GDP in Trump’s four years grew by 2.5% in 2017, 3% in 2018 and 2.5% in 2019 — before the economy went into a tailspin during the pandemic in 2020, when real GDP declined by 2.2%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

So, at best, U.S. real GDP grew annually by 3% under Trump. By contrast, the nation’s economy grew at a faster annual rate 48 times and under every president before and after Trump dating to 1930, except Herbert Hoover. The economy grew at 3% or more six of Ronald Reagan’s eight years, including 7.2% in 1984, and it grew 5% or more 10 times under Franklin D. Roosevelt, including 18.9% in 1942.

Misleading on Preexisting Conditions and the ACA

Just as he did during the 2020 campaign, Biden continues to tout the benefits of the Affordable Care Act and claims Trump wants to end it. His go-to, and misleading, talking point: “100 million Americans can no longer be denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition because of that law,” as he said March 9 in Atlanta, adding that Trump “wants to repeal” the ACA.

The ACA greatly expanded protections for those with preexisting conditions: It barred insurers in all markets from denying coverage or charging more based on someone’s health status. But those protections were most important for the individual, or nongroup, market, where people buy their own coverage. About 20 million Americans were in that market in 2022. Before the ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny a policy to an employee. If a new employee had a lapse in insurance coverage, they could decline coverage for some preexisting conditions for a limited period.

The 100 million figure is an estimate of how many Americans not on Medicare or Medicaid have preexisting conditions. But, again, if the ACA were repealed, only those buying their own plans on the individual market would be at risk of being “denied health insurance.”

As for Trump, he has said he wants to get rid of the law, posting on social media in November that Republicans “should never give up” on terminating the ACA. More recently, in late March, Trump said he wanted to make the ACA better and cheaper. But he hasn’t released a health care plan.

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SciCheck Digest

Small amounts of aluminum have been used for many decades to strengthen the immune response to vaccines. Exposure to high levels of aluminum has been associated with brain and bone problems, but there is no evidence that the level of exposure provided by vaccines leads to such toxicity, contrary to social media claims.

What ingredients are in vaccines?

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Full Story

Adjuvants in vaccines — ingredients added to increase efficacy — help spur the immune system to mount a strong response to the vaccines’ main ingredients. Aluminum serves as an adjuvant in some vaccines, such as those against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, and hepatitis A and B.

Aluminum is found in the Earth’s crust, water and the air, as well as in a variety of foods, drugs and other products. Animal and human studies indicate that high doses of aluminum can have neurological effects. People with impaired kidneys who are exposed to too much aluminum over time via dialysis or nutrition delivered directly into their bloodstream have developed problems with their brains and bones.

However, exposure to the small amounts of aluminum in vaccines poses an “extremely low risk to infants,” according to calculations by scientists from the Food and Drug Administration.

Nevertheless, social media posts regularly raise unfounded concerns about aluminum in vaccines, including that it can harm the nervous system, that it exceeds safe levels or it is unsafe because it never leaves the body. As we have written, this is part of a larger pattern in which people attempt to raise concerns about vaccines by making unfounded claims of harms from substances present in tiny amounts.

“Aluminum is a known neurotoxin,” said one recent post on Instagram. “If we keep bombarding the system over and over at so many well visits with an increasing scheduling there has to be a breaking point,” the post misleadingly said, referring to aluminum exposures from vaccines.

The post went on to refer to an FDA “safety limit” of 5 micrograms aluminum per kilogram body weight per day, juxtaposing it with amounts of aluminum in vaccines. But FDA draft guidance recommends this as the limit for total daily aluminum exposure via nutrition products infused intravenously, given to people who cannot absorb nutrients through their guts. This limit does not apply to vaccines, which have their own aluminum limits.

“There are conditions where aluminum can harm the nervous system,” Robert Yokel, an emeritus professor at the University of Kentucky who has studied the toxicology of aluminum, told FactCheck.org in an email. He referenced the example of dialysis patients who were exposed to high levels of aluminum infused directly into their blood.

However, “it is the dose (concentration) that is relevant,” Yokel said, adding that he is not aware of evidence that typical exposures to aluminum harm the brain.

Known Side Effects of Aluminum Adjuvants Are Typically Minor 

Aluminum adjuvants in vaccines can cause side effects at the injection site. These local reactions include “some redness, swelling, and a little bit of firmness,” Dr. Neal Halsey, director emeritus of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, told FactCheck.org, but these don’t lead to long-lasting problems.

Halsey said that in very rare cases, people can develop a hypersensitivity to the aluminum adjuvants after receiving multiple vaccine doses, leading to nodules at the injection site. This reaction occurs at an estimated rate of 300 to 8,300 per million people.

A recurrent misleading social media claim is that aluminum accumulates in the body and this means it’s unsafe. While most aluminum — whether from vaccines or other sources — is processed in the kidneys and excreted in urine, some does remain in the body. Of the aluminum that stays in the body, the majority is found in the bones.

“Over the human lifespan the aluminum concentration has been shown to increase in several organs, including the brain,” Yokel said.

However, he said, aluminum accumulation is not necessarily unsafe. “This is an example of the ‘dose making the poison,’” he said. “To conclude that aluminum accumulation results in an unsafe condition, without consideration of the level of accumulation, is a non-sequitur fallacy.”

To get a better sense of the possible impact of aluminum from vaccines on infants, researchers from the FDA in 2011 published an updated analysis of the amounts of aluminum infants would be exposed to via vaccine and dietary sources, including breast milk, formula and food.

As their benchmark, the researchers used a minimal risk level for aluminum established by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry based on experiments in which mice were fed an aluminum salt. The studies measured neurological impacts on mice exposed to aluminum in utero and during early life. The minimal risk level is an estimate of how much of a substance a person can consume “without a detectable risk to health,” according to the agency.

Aluminum-containing vaccines are generally injected into the muscle, and the aluminum is released gradually into the bloodstream from the injection site over time. Taking into account the multiple possible sources of aluminum in the babies’ blood and the slow release from the vaccines, the body burden of aluminum would not be expected to rise above the safe limit, the researchers found. In fact, the level stayed at less than half the safe limit, they wrote, pointing out that this limit itself has a cushion built in and that exposure at or slightly above the limit might be safe.

“We conclude that episodic exposures to vaccines that contain aluminum adjuvant continue to be extremely low risk to infants and that the benefits of using vaccines containing aluminum adjuvant outweigh any theoretical concerns,” the FDA researchers wrote.

The researchers found that during infancy, the aluminum from vaccines at most might contribute twice the amount that the body absorbs from dietary sources, taking into account that the vast majority of aluminum in food or drinks is never absorbed into the body. Other research has indicated that overall, vaccines contribute a negligible amount of aluminum to children’s total exposure.

One study, published in 2017 in Academic Pediatrics, took blood and hair samples from 85 healthy children between 9 and 13 months of age. The researchers did not find a correlation between the vaccines the children had received and the amount of aluminum in their hair or blood, either when looking at total vaccine history or the vaccines they’d gotten the day of testing. This is in keeping with results of a smaller study of 2-month-old preterm infants, which also didn’t find a relationship between vaccination and blood aluminum levels.

Posts Misrepresent Aluminum Safety Limits

As we’ve discussed, there are FDA limits on the amount of aluminum that can be in individual vaccines. Despite this, social media posts repeat claims that aluminum in vaccines exceeds safe limits.

“If the baby’s typical size, and let’s say he or she weighs about 8 pounds, the amount of aluminum in the hepatitis B vaccine alone is almost 14 times the amount of aluminum that’s FDA approved,” Ty Bollinger misleadingly said in a video clip shared in a recent Instagram post. Bollinger, who owns a publishing company, has long been a prolific spreader of misinformation on topics such as cancer and vaccines.

The video refers to a limit of 5 micrograms of aluminum per kilogram body weight. But as we’ve said, this draft recommendation applies to total daily exposure from intravenous nutrition products. FDA regulations have also long stated that these intravenous nutrition products must carry a warning label stating that people with impaired kidney function, including premature babies, “accumulate aluminum at levels associated with central nervous system and bone toxicity” when exposed to levels greater than 4 to 5 micrograms per kilogram per day.

This recommended daily limit does not apply to vaccines, however. No available vaccines in the U.S. are given intravenously. Vaccines using aluminum adjuvants are generally injected in the muscle.

With intravenous nutrition, “100% is delivered into the blood immediately, from which it can distribute throughout the body and be eliminated (by the kidneys, which account for >95% of aluminum elimination),” Yokel explained.

By contrast, absorption of aluminum from vaccines “is not immediate,” he said. The same amount of aluminum given in a vaccine would not produce as high of a blood concentration as the same amount given intravenously, he said, and the aluminum would be eliminated over time as it was “absorbed from the non-intravenous administration site.”

“Bottom line: Any time after the administration by the non-intravenous routes the blood level of aluminum would be less than after the intravenous route,” Yokel said.

Studies of Aluminum Adjuvants Are Ongoing

Online posts and articles also misleadingly imply that there aren’t studies into the safety of aluminum in vaccines. As we’ve said, people have studied the safety of aluminum in vaccines in the past and continue to do so.

One recent post included a screenshot of an Informed Consent Action Network webpage that says, “CDC and NIH unable to provide a single study to support the safety of injecting aluminum adjuvants despite its widespread use in childhood vaccines.” ICAN — a nonprofit founded by Del Bigtree, who has a history of spreading incorrect information about vaccines — describes making Freedom of Information Act requests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health for “any human or animal studies” that the agencies relied on to “establish the safety of injecting infants and children” with aluminum adjuvants.

It is true that the agencies did not send studies back in response to specific FOIA requests, but this does not mean aluminum adjuvants have not been studied.

According to documents on the ICAN website, the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office ultimately responded that “[t]his request is outside of ISO purview and should be referred to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” The NIH told ICAN to search publicly available materials, such as the scientific literature.

The FDA assesses the safety of vaccines on a case-by-case basis. This includes evaluating whether the included adjuvants adversely affect the safety of the vaccine. 

Outside of the FDA approval process, there also have been attempts to evaluate various safety concerns related to aluminum adjuvants. One 2004 study, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, responded to concerns about aluminum-containing versions of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or DTP, vaccines by pooling data from studies in children that compared DTP vaccines with and without aluminum adjuvants.

“The results of our review should be interpreted within the limited quantity and quality of available evidence,” the researchers said. “Within these limits, we found no evidence that aluminum salts cause any serious or long-lasting adverse events.”

Another concern was that aluminum in vaccines might cause a family of autoimmune disorders, but this has not been borne out. The evidence doesn’t support the notion that these conditions are caused by aluminum adjuvants, according to a 2017 review article published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. 

For instance, the researchers said, one large study found that people who received allergy shots containing a very high cumulative dose of aluminum — used outside the U.S. — had a lower rate of autoimmune disease than those who received other allergy treatments.

Most recently, a study published in 2022 in Academic Pediatrics found a “potential safety signal” indicating an association between aluminum-containing vaccines and asthma. The study relied on medical records from Vaccine Safety Datalink, a vaccine safety monitoring collaboration between the CDC and health care organizations.

The researchers chose to study asthma because of animal data indicating a theoretical immunological mechanism by which aluminum-containing vaccines could increase asthma risk while also decreasing the risk of autoimmune diseases, such as Type 1 diabetes. Interestingly, a separate VSD study, published in 2021 in Pediatrics, found that increased aluminum exposure via vaccines was associated with a reduced risk of Type 1 diabetes.

Sometimes potential safety signals turn out to be real, and sometimes they do not. The question of whether aluminum-containing vaccines are linked to asthma “is now undergoing further evaluation and more studies to try to determine if it’s really true or whether it’s just an association,” meaning there is no cause-and-effect relationship, Halsey said.

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Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.

Sources

“Adjuvants and Vaccines.” CDC website. Updated 27 Sep 2022.

“Vaccine Ingredients – Aluminum.” Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia website. Updated 15 Dec 2022.

“ToxFAQsTM for Aluminum.” Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry website. Updated 12 Mar 2015.

Corkins, Mark R. et al. “Aluminum Effects in Infants and Children.” Pediatrics. 1 Dec 2019.

Mitkus, Robert J. et al. “Updated Aluminum Pharmacokinetics Following Infant Exposures through Diet and Vaccination.” Vaccine. 28 Nov 2011.

Angela | Exposing Big Pharma · Vaccine Truths (@faithful_free_momma). “It doesn’t just get filtered out. It’s meant to stick around. …” Instagram. 17 Mar 2024.

Weston A. Price Foundation (@westonaprice). “There are over 100 clearcut scientific studies that compare va><inated and unva><nated individuals, published in peer-reviewed journals….” Instagram. 16 Jan 2024.

The Daily Momma (@thedailymomma03). “This is so tragic and heartbreaking …” Instagram. 18 Mar 2024.

circleofmamas (@circleofmamas). “And the crazy thing is: in 1980 only 3 of those were actual injections. …” Instagram. 14 Mar 2024.

Angela | Exposing Big Pharma · Vaccine Truths (@faithful_free_momma). “Aluminum is a known neurotoxin. If we keep bombarding the system over and over at so many well visits with an increasing scheduling there has to be a breaking point. …” Instagram. 13 Mar 2024.

“Small Volume Parenteral Drug Products and Pharmacy Bulk Packages for Parenteral Nutrition: Aluminum Content and Labeling Recommendations Guidance for Industry.” FDA. December 2022.

CFR – Code of Federal Regulations Title 21. FDA website. Reviewed 22 Dec 2023.

Yokel, Robert. Emails with FactCheck.org. 26 and 28 Mar 2024.

“Vaccine ingredients.” The Vaccine Knowledge Project. Updated 26 May 2022.

Halsey, Neal. Interview with FactCheck.org. 26 Mar 2024.

“Do Vaccine Ingredients Cause Adverse Events?” Institute for Vaccine Safety website. Updated 7 Nov 2023.

“Toxicological Profile for Aluminum.” Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Sep 2008.

“Minimal Risk Levels (MRLs).” Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry website. Updated 4 Jun 2018.

Karwowski, Mateusz P. et al. “Blood and Hair Aluminum Levels, Vaccine History, and Early Infant Development: A Cross-Sectional Study.” Academic Pediatrics. 14 Sep 2017.

Movsas, Tammy Z. et al. “Effect of Routine Vaccination on Aluminum and Essential Element Levels in Preterm Infants.” JAMA Pediatrics. Sep 2013.

Smith, Michelle R. and Reiss, Johnathan. “Inside One Network Cashing in on Vaccine Disinformation.” AP News. 13 May 2021.

21 CFR 201.323. Code of Federal Regulations. Accessed 5 Apr 2024.

“Administer the Vaccine(s).” CDC website. Updated 8 Sep 2021.

“CDC and NIH unable to provide a single study to support the safety of injecting aluminum adjuvants despite its widespread use in childhood vaccines.” Informed Consent Action Network website. 1 Mar 2023.

“Common Ingredients in FDA-Approved Vaccines.” FDA website. Updated 12 Jan 2024.

21 CFR Part 610. Code of Federal Regulations. Accessed 5 Apr 2024.

Jefferson, Tom et al. “Adverse Events after Immunisation with Aluminium-Containing DTP Vaccines: Systematic Review of the Evidence.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Feb 2004.

Ameratunga, Rohan et al. “Evidence Refuting the Existence of Autoimmune/Autoinflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA).” The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. 6 Sep 2017.

Linneberg, Allan et al. “Association of Subcutaneous Allergen-Specific Immunotherapy with Incidence of Autoimmune Disease, Ischemic Heart Disease, and Mortality.” The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 17 Oct 2011.

Daley, Matthew F., et al. “Association Between Aluminum Exposure From Vaccines Before Age 24 Months and Persistent Asthma at Age 24 to 59 Months.” Academic Pediatrics. 28 Sep 2022.

“Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD).” CDC website. Updated 2 Aug 2023.

Glanz, Jason M. et al. “The Childhood Vaccination Schedule and the Lack of Association With Type 1 Diabetes.” Pediatrics. 6 Jul 2022.

Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.

Quick Take

Both Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility happened to fall on March 31 this year. President Joe Biden recognized both occasions, as he has done every year in office. But some social media posts and conservative politicians characterized his acknowledgement of Transgender Day of Visibility as “mocking” Easter and declaring “war” on Christianity.

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Full Story

Every year since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he has issued a proclamation recognizing March 31 as the Transgender Day of Visibility.

Rachel Crandall Crocker, executive director and co-founder of Transgender Michigan, started the day of recognition in 2009. She chose March 31 as the date because it was far enough away from Pride Month in June and the more somber Transgender Day of Remembrance — held every year in November to commemorate those in the community who have been killed out of hate — to have its own presence.

This year, Easter also fell on March 31. Biden issued Easter wishes that day, and the White House held its traditional Easter festivities for children on April 1.

The date for Easter shifts each year, but is always held between March 22 and April 25. The only other year that Easter has fallen on March 31 since the Transgender Day of Visibility began was in 2013.

But the fact that Biden issued his annual recognition of Transgender Visibility Day in a year when it coincided with Easter touched off a firestorm among some conservatives on social media.

One such post claimed Biden was “intentionally and purposely mocking” Easter. Another claimed, “BIDEN DECLARED WAR!!!”

Incidentally, March 31 was also César Chávez Day, honoring the founder of the United Farm Workers. Biden issued a proclamation recognizing that, too, although it didn’t get the same attention as his recognition of a day for transgender people, who have become a focal point in the culture wars.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign, for example, described the recognition of Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter as “appalling,” and on March 30 his national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called on the White House “to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Other high-profile Trump allies — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Sen. Josh Hawley and House Speaker Mike Johnson — followed suit.

Johnson’s post on X included screen shots of headlines that said “Biden Proclaims Easter Sunday ‘Transgender Day of Visibility,’” and “White House Bans Religious Easter Eggs From Art Contest.” The speaker wrote, “Banning sacred truth and tradition—while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day’—is outrageous and abhorrent.”

But, like the characterization that the administration had chosen to supplant Easter with Transgender Day of Visibility, the claim about the Easter egg ban is misleading, too.

In a statement, the American Egg Board said that it “has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations.”

Here’s what the submission form said (emphasis ours):

The Submission must not contain material that violates or infringes any rights of any other party, including but not limited to copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or any other intellectual property rights;

• The Submission must not in any way disparage Sponsor or any other person or party;
• The Submission must not contain material that is inappropriate, indecent, obscene hateful, tortious, defamatory, slanderous or libelous;
• The Submission must not contain material that promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
• The Submission must not contain material that is unlawful, in violation of or contrary to the laws or regulations of the United States or of any jurisdiction where Submission is created.
• The Submission must not promote illegal drugs or firearms (or the use of any of the foregoing), or any activities that may appear unsafe or dangerous;
• The Submission must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements; and
• The Submission must be consistent with the image and values of Sponsor and be consistent with and satisfy the purpose of the submission.

Similarly, first lady Jill Biden’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, issued a statement saying, “the American Egg Board flyer’s standard non-discrimination language requesting artwork has been used for the last 45 years, across all Dem & Republican Admins—for all WH Easter Egg Rolls —incl previous Administration’s.”

The theme for this year’s Easter egg decoration contest was “Celebrating National Guard Families.”

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Biden, Joe. “A Proclamation on Transgender Day Of Visibility, 2021.” WhiteHouse.gov. 31 Mar 2021.

Biden, Joe. “A Proclamation on Transgender Day Of Visibility, 2022.” WhiteHouse.gov. 30 Mar 2022.

Biden, Joe. “A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility.” WhiteHouse.gov. 30 Mar 2023.

Biden, Joe. “A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024.” WhiteHouse.gov. 29 Mar 2024.

Sosin, Kate. “The history behind International Transgender Day of Visibility.” The 19th. 31 Mar 2021.

Biden, Joe. “Statement from President Joe Biden on Easter.” WhiteHouse.gov. 31 Mar 2024.

U.S. Navy, Astronomical Applications Department. The Date of Easter. Accessed 1 Apr 2024.

U.S. Census Bureau. Date of Easter (2000-2099). Revised 8 Oct 2021.

Biden, Joe. “A Proclamation on Cesar Chavez Day, 2024.” WhiteHouse.gov. 29 Mar 2024.

Boorstein, Michelle (@mboorstein). “The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations…” X. 31 Mar 2024.

Alexander, Elizabeth (@EAlexander46). Spokeswoman, First Lady Jill Biden. “*Fyi on all the misleading swirl re White House and Easter: the American Egg Board flyer’s standard non-discrimination language requesting artwork has been used for the last 45 years, across all Dem & Republican Admins—for all WH Easter Egg Rolls —incl previous Administration’s.” X. 30 Mar 2024.

With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections barely a few weeks away, political campaigns have reached a fever pitch both on the ground and virtually. With India ranking very high on the list of countries with the largest number of Internet users in the world, parties have recognized the power of social media and are investing significant sums into their digital campaigns. Consequently, social media advertisements have come up as a crucial means for parties to communicate with the electorate.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others provide advertisers with enough information to run targeted advertisements reaching millions of voters. These targeted advertisements are based on factors such as location, demographics, interests, language, and behaviour, to achieve maximum impact.

Methodology

Alt News filtered data from the top 100 pages that spent the most on political advertisements in the last 90 days, as published by the Meta Ad Library on March 19 of this year. Advertisements run by leaders in their personal capacity were excluded from this data. Rahul Gandhi’s page is included in this data because the disclaimer in the advertisements run by him mentions the name of the Congress party.

Political advertisements on Facebook pages are of two types: official party pages, which share posts and propaganda according to party lines, and other pages that support a particular party through all posts and advertisements but do not have any official affiliation with the party. The expenditures on advertisements by these pages are not accounted for by the Election Commission. We have categorized such pages as proxy pages.

Analysis of this data revealed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has spent the most on political advertisements, but the expenditure on advertisements by BJP’s proxy pages exceeded that on their official advertisements.

Party and Government Advertisement Expenditure

BJP (including official and proxy pages)

The Bharatiya Janata Party has spent Rs. 74,407,939 on 10,884 advertisements through official pages and Rs. 84,175,893 through proxy pages.

Page ID	Page name	Disclaimer	Amount spent (INR)	Number of ads
121439954563203	Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)	Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)	61670515	2710
174425559078659	Ulta Chashma – उल्टा चस्मा	Ulta Chashmaa	20333950	428
574079826086251	Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar	phirekbaarmodisarkar.com	18714772	2498
192548643939288	MemeXpress	Memes Xpress	6835584	183
206212622563937	Political X-Ray	Political X Ray	6107215	161
192548643939288	MemeXpress	Ulta Chashmaa	4705068	105
1987488401557504	Mahathugbandhan – महाठगबंधन	Mahathugbandhan – महाठगबंधन	4031860	1092
206212622563937	Political X-Ray	Ulta Chashmaa	3903094	60
108923581963430	Nirmamata	Nirmamata	3892330	1023
1400615623488784	BJP Odisha	BJP Odisha	3834648	742
113730508499849	Mudde ki Baat – मुद्दे की बात	Mudde Ki Baat	3380826	58
1563310070576778	BJP Andhra Pradesh	BJP Andhra Pradesh	2440155	479
107026039151450	మన మోదీ	manamodi.com	1926026	843
118554107945158	Badlenge Sarkar, Badlenge Bihar	badlengesarkarbadlengebihar.com	1736517	720
162311940465517	BJYM	Bharatiya Janata Party	1563415	335
721713357902229	Mahila Morcha BJP	Bharatiya Janata Party	1429489	567
100198806388306	The Nation Vibes	The Nation Vibes	1307936	717
180161138515248	କେତେଦିନ ସହିବା? / Ketedina Sahibaa?	କେତେଦିନ ସହିବା? / Ketedina Sahibaa?	1248691	660
1464414077034071	BJP ST Morcha	Bharatiya Janata Party	1112712	336
104136199047870	Bharat Todo Gang – भारत तोड़ो गैंग	Bharat Todo Gang – भारत तोड़ो गैंग	1096140	1104
180005665207295	Kannada Sangamam – ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಂಗಮ	Ulta Chashmaa	1080219	58
179670408573941	Tamilakam – தமிழகம்	Ulta Chashmaa	1035065	60
262572220917547	भाजपा राष्ट्रीय अनुसूचित जाति मोर्चा – BJP SC Morcha	Bharatiya Janata Party	617101	375
1542743585786974	Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar – Gujarat	Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar – Gujarat	613048	54
114233898263244	Indian Compass Videos	theindiancompass.com	578166	824
283350415665978	Ek Akela Sab Par Bhari	Ek Akela Sab Par Bhari	545109	251
244801258708580	Telangana Central – తెలంగాణ సెంట్రల్	Ulta Chashmaa	496639	8
239720143296109	BJP OBC Morcha	Bharatiya Janata Party	491213	42
107848055262209	Paltu Paltan – पलटू पलटन	Paltu Paltan – पलटू पलटन	482186	290
115529624796206	Hokage Modi Sama	Hokage Modi Sama	473771	296
249708958217278	Malabar Central – മലബാർ സെൻട്രൽ	Ulta Chashmaa	461084	36
247944825069932	Amaar Sonar Bangla – অমর সোনার বাংলা	Ulta Chashmaa	439288	15
		Total	158583832	17130

Congress:

The Congress party has spent Rs. 4,298,268 on 614 advertisements.

Page ID	Page name	Disclaimer	Amount spent (INR)	Number of ads
294493857651676	Rahul Gandhi	Indian National Congress	3585788	158
351616078284404	Indian National Congress	Indian National Congress	712480	456
		Total	4298268	614

TMC:

The Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, has spent Rs. 6,373,293 on 423 advertisements.

Page ID	Page name	Disclaimer	Amount spent (INR)	Number of ads
218904931482352	All India Trinamool Congress	All India Trinamool Congress	4758354	310
108777655527686	Trinamoole Nabo Jowar	Trinamoole Nabo Jowar	1614939	113
		Total	6373293	423

YSRCP:

The Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party led by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has spent Rs. 16,999,080 on 566 advertisements.

Page ID	Page name	Disclaimer	Amount spent (INR)	Number of ads
104211439033799	Jagane Kavali	Jagane Kavali	4185707	200
111986798594822	Jagananna Suraksha	Jagane Kavali	4017803	95
327120054405346	Jagananna ki Thoduga	Jagan Anna ki Thoduga	3087881	139
213811765155120	Memu Siddham Maa Booth Siddham	Jaganna Tho Siddham	1857632	24
175139949013002	Jagan: The Juggernaut	Team Jagananna	1319338	40
229008700302978	Praja Theerpu	Jagananna Tho Siddham	736761	17
105209472211637	Voice of Andhra	Voice of Andhra	696989	18
204792022725505	Memantha Siddham	Jaganannatho Siddham	657413	21
205049862700772	Jagananna Kosam Siddham	Jagananna Tho Siddham	439556	12
		Total	16999080	566

Government Advertisements:

During these 90 days, the central government and various state governments collectively spent Rs. 46,140,328 on 1,223 advertisements.

Page ID	Page name	Disclaimer	Amount spent (INR)	Number of ads
192856493908290	Ama Odisha Nabin Odisha	Ama Odisha Nabin Odisha	18670367	357
775974615850063	MyGovIndia	MyGovIndia	14202725	67
418662318473847	Health & Family Welfare Department, Government of Odisha	Health & Family Welfare Department, Government of Odisha	3255261	35
138622632667217	Laxmi/ଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀ	Laxmi/ଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀ	2196960	19
114035533329593	Mo Sarkar 5T	MoSarkar 5T	1603172	37
106966414891832	DIPR TN	DIPR TN	1275814	93
220329711159719	Other Backward Bahujan Welfare Department, Maharashtra	Olio Global AdTech	787092	172
319693278479184	Finance Department, Government of Odisha	Finance Department, Government of Odisha	781383	20
179243868596011	ନୂଆ-ଓ	ନୂଆ-ଓ	742899	157
1195267553857448	Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department, Government of Odisha	Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department, Government of Odisha	684839	7
113373710385095	कृषी विभाग महाराष्ट्र शासन	कृषी विभाग महाराष्ट्र शासन	511328	78
269612676227090	सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग – सामाजिक विकास समन्वय, महाराष्ट्र शासन	Olio Global AdTech	504179	24
314832518976952	Fisheries & ARD Department	Fisheries & ARD Department	478860	16
102379519139483	जल जीवन मिशन महाराष्ट्र	जल जीवन मिशन महाराष्ट्र	445449	141
		Total	46140328	1223

Proxy Pages:

Apart from official pages of political parties, a whole bunch of controversial proxy and meme pages have emerged as key players as far as running divisive advertisements is concerned. These pages not only target opposition parties but often amplify contentious narratives. By concealing their true identities, they work on behalf of political parties and publish ads that cannot be run through official channels. These advertisements often use humour, satire, and sarcasm to mock opposition parties and their leaders, and frequently allude to communal angles.

Several pages in this list attack the Opposition and bolster the BJP’s propaganda, with higher expenditures on advertisements compared to BJP’s official pages. Alt News had previously exposed some of these pages in an investigation in April 2023, revealing their direct connections with the BJP.

Page ID	Page name	Disclaimer	Amount spent (INR)	Number of ads
174425559078659	Ulta Chashma – उल्टा चस्मा	Ulta Chashmaa	20333950	428
574079826086251	Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar	phirekbaarmodisarkar.com	18714772	2498
192548643939288	MemeXpress	Memes Xpress	6835584	183
206212622563937	Political X-Ray	Political X Ray	6107215	161
192548643939288	MemeXpress	Ulta Chashmaa	4705068	105
1987488401557500	Mahathugbandhan – महाठगबंधन	Mahathugbandhan – महाठगबंधन	4031860	1092
206212622563937	Political X-Ray	Ulta Chashmaa	3903094	60
108923581963430	Nirmamata	Nirmamata	3892330	1023
113730508499849	Mudde ki Baat – मुद्दे की बात	Mudde Ki Baat	3380826	58
107026039151450	మన మోదీ	manamodi.com	1926026	843
118554107945158	Badlenge Sarkar, Badlenge Bihar	badlengesarkarbadlengebihar.com	1736517	720
100198806388306	The Nation Vibes	The Nation Vibes	1307936	717
104136199047870	Bharat Todo Gang – भारत तोड़ो गैंग	Bharat Todo Gang – भारत तोड़ो गैंग	1096140	1104
180005665207295	Kannada Sangamam – ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಂಗಮ	Ulta Chashmaa	1080219	58
179670408573941	Tamilakam – தமிழகம்	Ulta Chashmaa	1035065	60
1542743585786970	Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar – Gujarat	Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar – Gujarat	613048	54
114233898263244	Indian Compass Videos	theindiancompass.com	578166	824
283350415665978	Ek Akela Sab Par Bhari	Ek Akela Sab Par Bhari	545109	251
244801258708580	Telangana Central – తెలంగాణ సెంట్రల్	Ulta Chashmaa	496639	8
107848055262209	Paltu Paltan – पलटू पलटन	Paltu Paltan – पलटू पलटन	482186	290
115529624796206	Hokage Modi Sama	Hokage Modi Sama	473771	296
249708958217278	Malabar Central – മലബാർ സെൻട്രൽ	Ulta Chashmaa	461084	36
247944825069932	Amaar Sonar Bangla – অমর সোনার বাংলা	Ulta Chashmaa	439288	15
		Total	84175893	10884

Sensitive Advertisements:

Some advertisements run by these pages are so inflammatory and sensitive that political parties refrain from posting them on their official pages. Advertisements run through proxy pages often touch upon divisive issues and exploit prejudices. Alt News reported last month about a political advertisement depicting live murder, which had been viewed more than 30 million times. Upon informing Meta, they acknowledged the violation of their standards and took action against it.

Several advertisements have displayed violence and targeted political adversaries. Examples of some such advertisements are provided below. Meta took action against many of these advertisements later, although by then they had already garnered lakhs of views collectively.

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Pages with similar disclaimers:

Here we have listed pages with identical disclaimers. The disclaimer on all of these pages reads “Ulta Chashmaa.” Upon checking the details of these disclaimers, it is evident that these pages, which target the Opposition and propagate BJP’s agenda, are operated by the same admin. All these pages are included in the list of BJP’s proxy pages. One such page is ‘सीधा चश्मा’ (Straight Glasses), which was created on March 5 and has spent over Rs. 15 Lakh on advertisements so far.

The disclaimer of this page also contains details associated with ‘उल्टा चश्मा’ (Ulta Chashma), meaning this page is also a part of BJP’s proxy pages. One page, ‘Sonar Bangla – সোনার বাংলা,’ has now been deleted. Between March 5 and 7, this page spent Rs. 3,27,000 running nine advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. However, it is noteworthy that when the data of this page is searched in the Meta Ad Library according to date range, only four advertisements are shown. However, upon further inspection, it is revealed that nine advertisements were indeed run by this page. This raises questions about the data released by Meta.

 

Page name	Disclaimer
Ulta Chashma – उल्टा चस्मा	Ulta Chashmaa
Political X-Ray	Ulta Chashmaa
MemeXpress	Ulta Chashmaa
Tamilakam – தமிழகம்	Ulta Chashmaa
Sidha Chashma – सीधा चश्मा	Sidha Chashma – सीधा चश्मा
Amaar Sonar Bangla – অমর সোনার বাংলা	Ulta Chashmaa
Kannada Sangamam – ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಂಗಮ	Ulta Chashmaa
Telangana Central – తెలంగాణ సెంట్రల్	Ulta Chashmaa
Malabar Central – മലബാർ സെൻട്രൽ	Ulta Chashmaa
Sonar Bangla – সোনার বাংলা (This Page has been deleted.)	Ulta Chashmaa

 

Political parties are spending large sums on online advertisements, including via proxy pages. This also raises the question of whether parties maintain accounts for advertisements run through proxy pages. This expenditure raises questions about electoral transparency. As the general elections in India draw closer, all parties are increasingly focusing on digital advertisements, with the role of proxy pages also gaining prominence. The lack of transparency and accountability regarding expenditure and content of political advertisements on social media will continue to be a subject of scrutiny in the near future.

Related

The festival of Holi is often marred by allegations of molestation and harassment. While the catchphrase associated with the festival of colours, “Bura na mano, Holi Hai” (Don’t feel bad, it is Holi) is allegedly used to justify such acts, more often than not, women and people from non-Hindu communities become the victim of such nuisance. In extreme cases, what some see as ‘fun’ becomes a nightmare for those not participating in the festival.

Around March 25 (the day of the festival this year), several incidents came to the fore, thanks to social media platforms, where people from the Muslim community were targeted by Holi revellers. Some of the incidents allegedly involved intimidation, harassment and rowdyism, leading to FIRs and arrests.

Anticipating communal disturbance on Holi, the administration in Uttar Pradesh took preemptive measures in Shahjahanpur and Bareilly asking mosques to be covered in tarpaulin. “….they (the clerics) have been told that the mosques will be properly covered so that no mischievous element does anything to disturb communal harmony,” said senior superintendent of police (Bareilly) Ghule Sushil Chandrabhan. This goes to show how a sense of premonition and foreboding among non-participating communities ahead of the festival has perhaps become the ‘new normal’.

Patients Headed to Hospital, Men Going to Funeral — None Spared in Bijnor, UP

In a video that emerged on Sunday, March 24, a group of men can be seen stopping a bike and harassing three travellers – a man and two women, one of whom is wearing a hijab. It can be gauged from the video that the group comprised more than 10 men. They proceed to physically intimidate the trio, drenching them with water and colours despite their protestations. Towards the end of the video, the mob lets the bike pass, but not before breaking into a barrage of religious slogans like ‘Har Har Mahadev’ and ‘Jai Sri Ram.’

In UP’s Bijnor, a purported video of a family of three on motorcycle being harassed by people playing Holi on the street has surfaced. The family could be seen objecting to people forcefully applying colors and pouring water on them. pic.twitter.com/adjB4EADnH

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) March 24, 2024

The Muslim man seen in the video, identified as Dilshad, was reportedly taking his sister Sophia to a doctor. His mother also had to accompany them since his sister was too unwell to walk properly. The men stopped their vehicle and forcefully smeared them with Holi colours. Dilshad was physically assaulted once he tried to resist the harassment. “Bura na mano, Holi hai (Don’t feel bad, it’s Holi)”, they jeered while doing so. Dilshad alleges that the mob tried to inappropriately touch his mother and sister while raising religious slogans.

Bijnor Police arrested three people and detained two minors in connection with the incident. As pointed out earlier, the video shows a group of more than 10 people involved in the incident.

In another case from Dhampur, Bijnor, City News journalist Nidhi Sharma was harassed on the street. She alleged that the perpetrators held her collar and poured water on her from glasses they were drinking from. She was further seen accusing policemen standing in the vicinity of not taking cognizance of such cases of harassment that were occurring just a few steps away in broad daylight.

In another live stream from the Dhampur police station on the same day, Nidhi reveals that the perpetrators’ mothers also misbehaved with her, but they later apologised. Sharma’s husband, who was recording, also commented that Muslims who were returning after prayers were also being forcefully smeared with colours.

As her livestream continued, the couple got into their car and started driving. On their way, they came across a group of around six individuals, some of whom were minors, throwing water at passers-by. As their car stopped, they observed three Muslim men who were clearly asking the perpetrators to stop. However, one of them from the group proceeded to smear one of the Muslim men, who was wearing a white kurta, with colours and poured water over him. The victim, who later identified himself as Mohammad Iqbal, said the three of them were going to attend a funeral.

Barely two minutes later, Sharma observed two more burqa-clad women being harassed by the same group at the same spot. One of the women had a cannula inserted in her hand and had a high fever. The duo were headed to the hospital.

Last year, a viral video from Dhampur showed two burqa-clad women being harassed by a group of youths. The men are seen violently throwing water balloons at the women. They did the same with other unsuspecting passers-by as well.

वीडियो बिजनौर के कस्बा धामपुर के भगत सिंह चौराहे की है जहां होली खेलने के दौरान बुर्के में जा रही माँ- बेटी को ज़बरन परेशान किया गया,उनके ऊपर लगातार रंग भरे गुब्बारे फेंके गये तो चप्पल हाथ मे उठा जल्दी निकलने की कोशिश की,भरोसा कर निकली पर अफ़सोस भरोसे का तो ज़माना ही चला गया है! pic.twitter.com/bYZX7CYq69

— Zakir Ali Tyagi (@ZakirAliTyagi) March 9, 2023

Muslim Man’s Rickshaw Torched in Gujarat, 2 Arrested

In Ahmedabad, a mob brutally beat up a Muslim rickshaw driver and set his rickshaw on fire.

The driver, Nawab Vora, is a resident of Nawab Chawl in Ramol. According to the complaint filed by Nawab, he had dropped off passengers near Champaner Society in Usmanpura on Monday afternoon, March 25, when one of the accused touched the hood of his vehicle with his colour-stained hands. The victim had asked them to stop dirtying his rickshaw, which angered the men. They consequently abused Vora and beat him up when he objected to the foul language. Vora pleaded with them not to hit him since he was observing Roza (the Muslim practice of observing a fast during the holy month of Ramadan). This allegedly riled them up more and the accused beat him up again. Upon the advice of some passers-by, Vora left the spot immediately. According to the complaint, as he was leaving, he could see the accused damaging his vehicle. When he returned to the spot after some time, he said that he only found the burnt frame of his rickshaw.

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Two individuals — Vijay Suryavanshi, 26, and Natwar Solanki, 39, — have been arrested in the case. Another accused, Sanjay Vyas, is on the run. Vadaj police booked them for causing hurt, using abusive words, causing damage and abatement.

YouTuber Records Unrestrained Harassment of Women in Mathura

A YouTuber who runs a channel named Ghumakkad Laali filmed her ordeal while visiting Mathura on Holi. At the beginning of the video itself, she can be seen facing her camera and pointing out how she feels unsafe. “They are asking me for my number, saying that their uncles are at home”, she is heard saying as men flock around her camera. “They specifically target women, intentionally spray water on their breasts and hips..When I protested, they asked me if I had come here to die,” she says. The visuals show hordes of men standing along either side of a staircase, throwing water and harassing women as they pass by.

In what remains one of the most harrowing first-person accounts of harassment faced in the midst of a crowd of Holi revellers, writer Meghana Sanka and independent photographer Deepti Asthana had in 2017 recorded the dark sides of the famed ‘Lath Mar Holi’,celebrated in the towns of Barsana and Nandgaon in the Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh. As part of the festival, people try to recreate the legend of the Hindu deities Radha and Krishna, where Radha and her consorts take offence at Krishna’s advances and drive him out with sticks. The ‘festivity’, as witnessed by Meghana Sanka and Deepti Asthana, led to mass harassment of women, which involved making vulgar gestures, lewd comments, and physical harassment.

This year, in a video purportedly from Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi, a woman accompanied by a man is seen harassed by a group of men, in the presence of approximately 80-100 onlookers. The mob threw water at her, and justified their actions saying ‘Holi Hai’. When her male companion protested, he was also harassed. According to a Lallantop report on the incident, the couple had not lodged a formal complaint with the police and a probe was underway.

Mosque Defaced with ‘Jai Sri Ram’ Slogans

In Beed, Maharashtra, ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogans were inscribed using Holi colours and pichkari at the Markaz Masjid. The inscription was found at around 5 pm on the day of Holi, March 25. Police have registered an FIR. SDPO Dheeraj Kumar released a video saying the accused would be arrested soon.

#WATCH | ‘Shri Ram’ slogan was found written on the wall of a mosque in Maharashtra’s Beed on 25th March

SDPO Dheeraj Kumar yesterday said, “A notorious man wrote ‘Shri Ram’ on the wall of Markaz masjid. FIR was lodged in the incident. The accused will be arrested soon.” pic.twitter.com/3y2NHtNWo2

— ANI (@ANI) March 26, 2024

Instances like these are no aberration. Last year, a Japanese traveller was molested during Holi celebrations on the streets of Paharganj in New Delhi. Police took cognizance of the issue after a video had gone viral on social media, showing the 22-year-old woman being groped on camera by several men, including minors, under the pretext of applying colours as part of the celebration. In the video, someone also smashes an egg on her head, despite her clear objections and discomfort.

In a report on March 9, 2023, the Citizens for Justice and Peace documented several similar incidents on Holi, last year. On March 6, 2023, i.e., on the eve of the festival, Right Wing propaganda outlet Sudarshan News tweeted about a programme that evening titled, “मुल्ले होली मिलन में आएंगे लेकिन रंग नहीं लगाएंगे” (Mullas will come for Holi festivities, but will not allow you to apply colours.) Over a year later, the tweet is still live on the platform.

Prantik Ali is an intern at Alt News.

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