Rumors online said a long-standing agreement gave the United Kingdom first right of refusal should Denmark decide to sell Greenland.
The rumor came from reports that cited former Danish Minister for Greenland Tom Høyem, who said there had been such a deal between Denmark and the U.K., agreed upon after World War I. Høyem based his claims in part on a 2007 historical report commissioned by the Danish government that said the U.K. had “unilaterally” imposed that the Danish government consult the British government before selling Greenland in exchange for recognizing Denmark’s sovereignty over the territory.
A British journalist, Martin Rosenbaum, said — after researching documents in the British National Archives — that while the U.K. had requested the Danish government give the British government the “right of pre-emption” in case Denmark wanted to be rid of Greenland, Denmark had refused to agree to it, and it had never responded when the U.K. asked to be consulted.
Snopes could not see the documents in the National Archives, though we saw the historical report from 2007. As such, we left the claim unrated.
Still, Høyem told Snopes that such an agreement would have no validity today, “only historical.” In other words, even if such an agreement existed, it would not be enforceable.
As speculation intensified that, after capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, the U.S. might focus next on acquiring Greenland, a rumor circulated that a longstanding agreement gave the U.K. first right of refusal should Denmark decide to sell the territory.
Several posts on socialmedia, dating back to early 2025, shortly after President Donald Trump took office for the second time. One such post said the U.K. had “secured a promise that if Denmark ever sold Greenland, the UK would have the first right to buy it or be consulted” (archived):
The rumor stemmed from Janurary 2025 reports in The Telegraph, The Times and NPR, each of which cited Tom Høyem, Denmark’s former and final Minister of Greenland (this ministerial post no longer exists).
Days after those reports were published, on Feb. 10, 2025, Martin Rosenbaum — a British journalist who specializes in freedom of information requests — published research he carried out in his country’s National Archives. He said his work revealed that while the U.K. had attempted to attach a “right of pre-emption” should Denmark decide to be rid of Greenland in exchange for recognizing Denmark’s sovereignty over the territory, the effort had failed.
To verify this rumor, Snopes spoke to Høyem by phone and asked Rosenbaum questions via email. We also reached out to the British Library, the National Archives, the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, seeking sources and documents to back the claim. The National Archives said consulting the documents in question required an in-person visit.
Snopes was able to see a report that said the U.K. had “unilaterally” imposed that the Danish government consult — as opposed to offer first right of refusal to — the British government before selling Greenland in exchange for recognizing Danish sovereignty over the territory. We could not see documents stored in the British National Archives. As such, we left the claim unrated. What we could confirm is that even if such an agreement existed, it would be unenforceable today.
The history
Høyem told Snopes in a telephone interview that his source was a historical report commissioned in 2007 by the Danish government on the status of Greenland.
In 1917, the U.S. and Denmark ratified a convention that would give Denmark “dominion and sovereignty” over Greenland. In exchange, Denmark agreed to sell to the U.S. islands in the “West Indies” — now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands.
After World War I ended in 1918, Denmark sought recognition of its sovereignty over Greenland from the allied powers who had just won the war — including the United Kingdom. Canada, which had yet to reach full legal independence from the U.K. (this happened with the Canada Act of 1982), had expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, due to its geographical proximity.
In 1920, Denmark formally asked the British government to recognize its sovereignty over Denmark.
Rosenbaum echoed this event in his report, sharing a note he said he found in the National Archives. Dated March 16, 1920, from the Danish Legation in London, the note read:
Having submitted to my Government the contents of Your Lordship’s note No.158073/W/30 of December 11th 1919 with regard to the recognition by the Powers of Danish sovereignty over Greenland I have the honour once more to revert to the same matter, the King’s Government having decided to obtain a final settlement of this question by submitting it to each of the Principal Allied Powers separately. –
I have accordingly been instructed to submit to His Britannic Majesty’s Government a request for the official recognition of His Danish Majesty’s Sovereignty over the whole of Greenland.
The U.K.’s conditions
The British government replied, saying it would agree to recognizing Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland if, in exchange, the Danish government committed to giving the British government “the right of pre-emption” — that is, the first right of refusal if Denmark chose to part with Greenland. Rosenbaum posted the written reply from the Foreign Office, dated May 19, 1920 (emphasis ours):
Sir,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Hote of the 16th of March (No. 58/30/6.2) requesting the official recognition by His Majesty’s Government of His Danish Majesty’s Sovereignty over the whole of Greenland.
The Danish Government will, I am convinced, readily understand that the geographical position of Greenland makes the question of its ownership a matter of great importance to the British Empire as a whole and to Canada in particular. His Majesty’s Government therefore feel obliged, after the most careful consideration of the matter, to attach to their recognition of Danish sovereignty over Greenland the condition that, should Denmark sver wish to dispose of the island, she would grant the right of pre-emption to the British Empire. Should your Government be willing to give a guarantee to this effect in the form of an exchange of lhotes, His Majesty’s Government are prepared at once to recognize officially Danish sovereignty over Greenland.
I have the honour to request that you will be so good as to submit this matter to your Government and to acquaint me due course with their reply.
I am informing the Governments of France, Italy, Japan and the United States of America of the attitude taken up on this question by His Majesty’s Government.
Rosenbaum said via email that according to his research, “The Danes clearly rejected outright any agreement to give the UK right of first refusal in the event of sale.” His article includes said response dated July 20, 1920, pulled from the National Archives:
The King’s Government direct me to observe that there is absolutely no intention of selling Greenland and that there is no prospect that such a sale will ever become actual. Accordingly the King’s Government on grounds of principle regret that such a guarantee cannot be given as such an undertaking might imply the possibility at some future date of the question of sale being raised in some form.
This, Rosenbaum says, came after the U.S. was notified of the U.K.’s request and disagreed with it.
Different narratives
The U.K. then asked to at least “be consulted” should Denmark seek to be rid of Greenland. A note from the Foreign Office dated Sept. 6, 1920, read (emphasis ours):
WITH reference to your note No. 202/30/B.2, concerning the official recognition by His Majesty’s Government of His Danish Majesty’s sovereignty over Greenland, which you were good enough to address to me on 20th July, I have the honour to inform you that His Majesty’s Governmen Government recognize His His Danish Majesty’s sovereignty over Greenland, but in view of its geographical proximity to the Dominion of Canada, His Majesty’s Government must reserve their right to be consulted should the Danish Government at any time contemplate the alienation of this territory.
The Danish government did not reply to this request, according to Rosenbaum, who said this showed the two countries never struck such a deal.
But according to the report Høyem based his claim on, the U.K. had imposed the condition to be consulted “unilaterally” (Page 15, translated by Snopes, emphasis ours):
Another indicator of the vulnerable sovereignty was that Denmark at the same time encouraged England to recognize Denmark’s sovereignty over the island, but recognition only came after a series of difficult consultations, which included, among other things, Canada and the USA, and was then accompanied by a unilaterally invoked right by the British side to be consulted if Denmark wanted to sell Greenland.
In other words, it is possible Denmark took the U.K.’s condition not as something it could negotiate, but as a non-negotiable demand without which the U.K. would not recognize Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland.
The same report indicated that following a dispute between Norway and Denmark, the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague (established by the League of Nations, it preceded the International Court of Justice) granted Denmark sovereignty over Greenland.
Asked what validity such a deal would have today, Høyem said, “It has no worth, it is only historical.” In other words, even if such an agreement existed it would not be enforceable.
For further reading, Snopes verified the claim that a former official of Trump’s White House, Katie Miller, posted a map of Greenland overlaid with the U.S. flag.
After a recent viral video claimed Somali-run daycares in Minnesota were committing fraud, Trump officials quickly pointed to ongoing prosecutions over such allegations, and credited the administration.
Responding to the video from conservative influencer Nick Shirley, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in late December that the Justice Department “has been investigating this for months. So far, we have charged 98 individuals — 85 of Somali descent — and more than 60 have been found guilty in court.”
In the Dec. 29 thread, Bondi praised the work of Trump administration appointees like Daniel Rosen, who was sworn in as the U.S. attorney in Minnesota in October. She said other agency leads “continue unraveling this scheme.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has recently mentioned a similar number of fraud prosecutions in the state, while President Donald Trump has framed the case as “a new thing in Minnesota with the Somalians.”
But this isn’t new. The initial investigation dates back years, not months, and the bulk of the resulting charges were brought before Trump took office.
The administration’s narrative distorts that timeline, and misleads on some of the facts.
Trump and administration officials have ramped up rhetoric about fraud in the blue state of Minnesota since November, following a report from a conservative activist that said Somalis stole the money to use it for terrorism. The years-old claim lacks evidence.
The majority of the defendants in these fraud scandals are Somalis. Trump has cited the fraud schemes to support his immigration enforcement agenda, even though most Minnesota Somalis are U.S. citizens.
Amid this drumbeat, Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee who has faced criticism over massive fraud that happened on his watch, announced Jan. 5 that he will not seek a third term.
FBI launched investigation in 2021 leading to dozens of charges in 2022
Feeding Our Future was a Minnesota nonprofit that received federal funding to provide meals to low-income children.
The FBI started investigating the program in May 2021, according to a state legislative auditor report.
In September 2022, federal prosecutors announced charges against 47 people, saying they stole $250 million in federal money and spent it on international vacations, real estate, jewelry and luxury cars.
They charged more people in 2023 and 2024. In June 2024, five people were indicted in a related juror bribery scheme. Before Biden left office, Andrew Luger, his U.S. attorney in Minnesota, said 70 people had been charged in the Feeding Our Future case.
The case continued under Trump. Federal prosecutors charged eight defendants in 2025, bringing the total to 78.
Other fraud cases followed
The Trump administration has brought charges against people in additional schemes tied to the earlier investigation.
Prosecutors during Trump’s current term charged 13 defendants for misusing Medicaidmoney to help people with disabilities, mental illnesses and substance use disorders secure housing. They also charged two defendants in a program to provide services for people with autism spectrum disorder.
“What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need,” acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said.
At a news conference announcing initial charges in the housing cases, Thompson said that most of the health care fraud investigations grew from the Feeding Our Future investigations. “We just went down that rabbit hole of looking at bank records and looking to these individual companies,” he said.
Thompson also referenced the Feeding Our Future and housing charges when he later spoke about the autism investigation.
“This is not an isolated scheme,” Thompson said. “Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.”
Fact-checking DOJ’s evidence
We asked the Justice Department why Bondi said the agency has been investigating for “months” when the majority of charges stem from an investigation that launched before Trump’s second term began.
A DOJ spokesperson said that a charge is only the beginning of the prosecution and that more people have pleaded guilty during the Trump administration than the Biden administration. As of October 2024, 23 had pleaded guilty.
Bondi noted developments during her tenure, writing on X, “In August, we successfully secured the conviction of the Feeding Our Future scheme leader, Abdiaziz Shafii Farah.” Farah was convicted at trial in 2024; he was sentenced in August.
In massive fraud investigations, much of law enforcement’s heavy lifting happens before charges are filed as authorities obtain and vet hundreds of thousands of pages of records.
“The investigative part is the most time consuming and sometimes extremely time consuming,” said Joel DeFabio, a South Florida criminal defense attorney who has represented fraud clients.
Bondi said that more than 60 had been found guilty in court, including 57 convicted in Feeding Our Future.
It’s typical for most federal charges to lead to convictions, usually as a result of plea deals because defendants want to reduce prison sentences. Their cooperation can lead to charges against additional defendants.
“There is a saying in federal court: those who cooperated and those who wish they cooperated,” DeFabio said. “You get highly rewarded at sentencing if you cooperated.”
Most of the Feeding Our Future defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted; some went to trial in 2024 and 2025.
Our ruling
Bondi said the Justice Department has been investigating fraud in Minnesota “for months. So far, we have charged 98 individuals.”
Bondi omits context about when the bulk of the charges happened.
Law enforcement and prosecutors in Minnesota have investigated this major fraud for years, starting in 2021. By mid-January 2025, before Trump took office, 70 had been charged in the Feeding Our Future case in addition to five for the related juror bribery scheme. That means about 75% of defendants charged so far predated Trump.
The Trump administration prosecutors have continued the investigation. Late in 2025, the number of Feeding Our Future defendants grew to 78, and prosecutors charged 15 in other related schemes.
We rate this statement Half True.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.
CBS Anchor Ends Newscast with Praise for Marco Rubio
CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil ended Tuesday’s broadcast with an unusual “salute” to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, praising the former Florida senator’s growing role in the Trump administration. Rubio currently holds multiple titles, including Secretary of State, interim national security adviser, and acting national archivist. Dokoupil referenced viral memes that humorously imagine Rubio in a variety of roles, calling him “the ultimate Florida man.” The segment was shared by a White House account with enthusiasm, but it also comes amid controversy at CBS. (Read More) (The Hill Rating)
Philadelphia Inquirer’s Julia Terruso Joins Time Magazine
Veteran reporter Julia Terruso is leaving the Philadelphia Inquirer after 13 years to become Time magazine’s senior national political correspondent. Starting January 20, Terruso will continue to be based in Philadelphia. She played a key role in shaping the Inquirer’s 2024 election coverage and was part of a team that won the Toner Prize for Excellence in Local Political Reporting. Terruso’s departure also affects the Inquirer’s NewsGuild union, where she was recently elected president. Investigative reporter Max Marin will serve as interim union head, with a decision on permanent leadership expected later this month. (Read More) (Axios Rating)
X Expands Creator Payments and Long-Form Access to Win Back Journalists
X (formerly Twitter) is increasing creator payouts and broadening access to its long-form Articles feature in a bid to entice more authoritative content, including journalism, onto the platform. All X Premium subscribers can now post long-form content directly to the app. This move aligns with the data needs of Elon Musk’s xAI project, which powers tools like Grok. The strategy appears to be part of a broader effort to improve content quality on the platform, though Musk’s fraught relationship with journalists may undermine these efforts. Despite past hostility toward the media, X hopes financial incentives will help rebuild engagement and data volume. (Read More) (Social Media Today Rating)
In early January 2026, an image (archived) circulated online purportedly showing captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro giving a “thumbs up” while standing handcuffed next to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during an overnight mission in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, on Jan. 3. The operation reportedly left dozens of Venezuelan and Cuban officers dead. According to The Associated Press, U.S. officials were holding Maduro at the the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, while he awaited trial.
Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is said to have willingly took pictures with several of the DEA, FBI, and other law enforcement officials who escorted him to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York City on Saturday.
Snopes could not independently verify whether the image was authentic, meaning not generated or edited using artificial intelligence software. It was also unclear at the time of this writing where or when the picture was taken or who took it, if it was real. Given the lack of verifiable information, we left this claim unrated.
Several unknowns
According to online AI detectors Hive Moderation and SightEngine, the image was not likely to have been AI-generated. Google’s Gemini AI language model said it did not detect SynthID — an invisible watermark that Google embeds in content created by its generative AI consumer products — in the photo. Such detectors are not always completely reliable.
Snopes contacted the DEA for confirmation on whether the picture authentically showed one of its agents standing with Maduro. We will update this article if we receive a reply.
It was not possible to determine the origin of the photograph. Reverse image searches on Google Images and TinEye indicated it started spreading online on Jan. 4, 2026, the day after the Venezuelan president’s capture.
On Jan. 3, the White House’s @RapidResponse47 X account posted a “perp walk” video (archived) showing Maduro wearing the same clothes as seen in the image in question. That same day, reputable photo agency Getty Images published a picture of the Venezuelan president arriving in New York wearing a black hoodie that resembled the one seen in the “perp walk” video and the alleged DEA agent photo.
For further reading, Snopes debunked a photo and video relating to the capture of the Venezuelan president.
Sources
‘AI Image Detector. Detect AI-Generated Media at Scale’. Sightengine, https://sightengine.com/detect-ai-generated-images. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
‘At Least 24 Venezuelan Security Officers Killed in Maduro Capture, Its Military Says’. AP News, https://apnews.com/live/us-venezuela-trump-maduro-updates-01-06-2026. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
COTO, DÁNICA, and ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ. ‘Cuba Releases Details of 32 Officers Killed in US Strike on Venezuela as US Defends Attack’. AP News, 6 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/cubans-killed-venezuela-strike-us-oas-a8d8fcbe3e825979c5d3171f9b076a85.
Fortier, Marc. ‘Venezuelan Leader Shown in Photos Wearing Hoodie Made by Maine Apparel Company’. NBC Boston, 5 Jan. 2026, https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/venezuelan-leader-shown-in-photos-wearing-hoodie-made-by-maine-apparel-company/3871935/.
KINNARD, MEG, and MICHELLE L. PRICE. ‘How the US Captured Venezuelan Leader Nicolás Maduro’. AP News, 3 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/trump-maduro-venezuela-presidential-palace-blowtorches-7969152ae48510003fe9cbde92f3c102.
‘Maduro Wishes US Agents “Happy New Year” as He Is Escorted to Jail’. The Telegraph, 4 Jan. 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/01/04/maduro-wishes-us-agents-happy-new-year-perp-walk-new-york/.
‘Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Arrives at the Westside…’ Getty Images, 4 Jan. 2026, https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/ousted-venezuelan-president-nicolas-maduro-arrives-at-the-news-photo/2253959406.
SISAK, MICHAEL R., and LARRY NEUMEISTER. ‘After Capture and Removal, Venezuela’s Maduro Is Being Held at Notorious Brooklyn Jail’. AP News, 4 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/maduro-federal-prisons-jails-mdc-brooklyn-f985d47a1aa82ac330aa8a2e004f3db2.
‘SynthID’. Google DeepMind, https://deepmind.google/models/synthid/. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
In a Jan. 6, 2026, speech at a House Republicans retreat, U.S. President Donald Trump said Democrats will force “transgender for everyone” if they win the 2026 midterm elections.
Rating:
What’s True
Trump did, in fact, say the phrase, “transgender for everyone” during the aforementioned speech in connection with Democratic policy.
What’s False
The president said Democrats want “transgender for everyone,” but he didn’t claim they would force such a policy. His phrasing appeared to imply that this would be an option rather than a mandate.
Context
Trump has repeatedly used “transgender for everyone” and similar phrases to target Democrats and oppose trans rights policies. Some of his previous statements include language akin to what the claim suggests about using force to enact “transgender for everyone.”
In early January 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump allegedly said the Democrats would force “transgender for everyone” if they won the midterms, according to a rumor circulating online.
The claim spread on Reddit, Instagram, Facebook and news sites focused on LGBTQ+ issues. For example, LGBTQ Nation wrote a story with the headline, “Trump says ‘mean’ Dems will impeach him & force ‘transgender for everyone’ if they win midterms.”
During a Jan. 6 House Republicans retreat, Trump did, indeed, say the words, “transgender for everyone” while talking about a possible Democratic win in the 2026 midterms. He has frequently used the same or similar phrasing to describe Democratic policies and attack trans rights, and has previously claimed that progressive policy involves forcing “transgender for everyone” or supposedly indoctrinating children to be trans.
But in this most recent instance, Trump said Democrats “want transgender for everyone,” not that they would force it. His phrasing appeared to imply that this would be an option rather than a mandate.
As such, we have rated this claim a mixture of truth and falsehood — with the caveat that Trump has previously made statements that match the general sentiment of the claim.
The White House did not immediately respond to our question about what Trump meant when he said Democrats want “transgender for everyone.”
In a video (archived) on the White House YouTube page, Trump made the following remarks during the retreat, starting at 1:20:11 (emphasis ours):
You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached. We don’t impeach them, you know why? Because they’re meaner than we are. We should have impeached Joe Biden for a hundred different things. They are mean and smart. But fortunately for you, they have horrible policy. They can be smart as can be, but when they want open borders, when they want, as I said, men in women’s sports, when they want “transgender for everyone.” “Bring your kids in, we’re going to change the sex of your child. Just send them our way.” In some cases, like in Minnesota, they don’t even tell the parents, is that right? And nobody believes it when I say that. I think we have six states. Nobody — am I correct? OK, Tom Emmer said yes. But it’s true — where the kid comes back. They keep the kid. They operate on the kid, they don’t even tell the parents.
It is worth noting that gender-affirming surgeries are very rarely, if ever, performed on transgender youth.
According to a tracker by GLAAD, a nonprofit LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, Trump said the words “transgender for everyone” or a variant of that phrase over 40 times in 2025.
“There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto our brave men and women in uniform or on anybody else for that matter in this country,” the president said on May 24, 2025, during a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (see 45:56).
In another instance, during a virtual campaign event for a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate in October 2025, Trump claimed the state had seen a “mass exodus of jobs and businesses all throughout the state while they indoctrinate your children at a public school.” He continued: “It’s called transgender for all and we’ve ended that.”
Brownstein, Maya. “Gender-Affirming Surgeries Rarely Performed on Transgender Youth | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, HSPH, 8 July 2024, hsph.harvard.edu/news/gender-affirming-surgeries-rarely-performed-on-transgender-youth/.
Roll Call Factbase Videos. “Remarks: Donald Trump Holds a Bilateral Meeting with Micheál Martin of Ireland – March 12, 2025.” YouTube, 12 Mar. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BQGsF4PVJk. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
—. “Remarks: Donald Trump Joins a Tele-Rally for Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey – October 24, 2025.” YouTube, 25 Oct. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSwi8PWKmvw. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
White House. “President Trump Addresses the Army Academy’s Class of 2025.” Www.youtube.com, 24 May 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyULwVCcgJw. Accessed 27 May 2025.
—. “President Trump Delivers Remarks at the House GOP Member Retreat.” Www.youtube.com, 6 Jan. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6tzCCyfwFM. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
After the U.S. military captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the U.S. to face drug-related charges, congressional Democrats criticized President Donald Trump’s unilateral actions.
“The president cannot run a military operation of this size, cannot invade a foreign country, without coming to Congress first,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Jan. 4 on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Presidents and Congress have battled for decades over who has the institutional power to declare war, with presidents from both political parties trying to assert power and limit lawmakers’ interference.
At a Jan. 3 press conference after Maduro’s capture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that members of Congress were not notified in advance. Trump said the administration was concerned about lawmakers potentially leaking news of the decision.
It’s unusual for an administration not to offer advance notification — at a minimum, to a select group of eight senior lawmakers who have historically been trusted with classified information. In June 2025, the administration told Republicans, but not Democrats, about the forthcoming U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Legal experts say the most relevant law makes it clear that the president “shall consult with Congress” before initiating military action. But there is less certainty about whether other laws might provide some flexibility for the president.
Murphy’s office did not respond to inquiries.
What do the Constitution and U.S. law say about notifying Congress?
One law that supports Murphy’s critique is the War Powers Resolution.
While most of this law’s text addresses after-action notification and deadlines for congressional approval, it also says, “The president in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.”
The use of “shall” offers strong support for advance notification, even in the absence of a formal vote to authorize an action in advance, experts said.
Another section of U.S. law that addresses covert operations offers more leniency for the president, but it may not apply to the Venezuela operation.
The provision allows the president to notify the so-called Gang of Eight — the chair and ranking members of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, and the top-ranking members from both parties in the House and Senate — rather than Congress as a whole.
But this provision includes a loophole: If the administration doesn’t provide advance notification, “the president … shall provide a statement of the reasons for not giving prior notice” once the operation is launched.
Although the operation was planned and carried out in secret, it does not fit the definition of “covert action” under this law. The law refers to an effort where it is “intended that the role of the United States government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.”
“The Venezuela raid simply cannot fit within the law’s clear definition of a covert operation,” said Michael J. Glennon, a Tufts University professor of constitutional and international law. “Obviously, there are confidential aspects to virtually every military operation, but that does not render them covert operations.”
War powers have been contested for decades
Courts have not provided much guidance about who has the authority to initiate military action. The Constitution and laws giving powers to Congress have been followed inconsistently.
The U.S. Constitution assigns Congress the right to declare war. The last time Congress did that was at the beginning of World War II.
Since then, presidents have generally initiated military action using their constitutionally granted powers as commander in chief without an official declaration of war.
In August 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Congress to back his effort to widen the United States’ role in Vietnam. He received approval with enactment of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which passed both chambers of Congress, including the Senate, with only two dissenting votes.
The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Maddox, one of the vessels involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in the South China Sea in 1964. (U.S. Navy)
As public sentiment turned against the Vietnam War, lawmakers became increasingly frustrated about their secondary role in sending U.S. troops abroad. So in 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which was enacted over President Richard Nixon’s veto.
The resolution required the president to report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing armed forces into hostilities and to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces within 60 days unless Congress approves. If approval is not granted and the president deems it an emergency, an additional 30 days are allowed to end operations.
Presidents have often followed the act’s requirements, usually framing any entreaties to Congress as a voluntary bid to secure “support” for military action rather than “permission.”
This has sometimes taken the form of an “authorization for the use of military force” — legislation that amounts to a modern version of a declaration of war.
Presidents who have sought and received such authorizing legislation include:
Ronald Reagan, to oversee the handover of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel to Egypt, and separately to participate in a deployment to Lebanon. The deployment ended with a suicide attack that killed 241 American service members.
George W. Bush, to enter Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, and separately to oust Hussein from power in what became the Iraq War.
Presidents from both parties have used the broad wording of the post 9/11 authorization to support military action against a wide array of targets, using language that approves efforts “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.”
The Venezuela operation did not have any advance authorization by congressional vote.
If Congress wants a bigger role in the process, “they have to force the president’s hand,” said Sarah Burns, a Rochester Institute of Technology political scientist. That means passing legislation that would “make it more consequential that the president didn’t abide by the law,” she said.
A White House social media post misleadingly links deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro with the U.S. fentanyl crisis.
The X post includes a video highlighting parents who lost children to fentanyl overdoses thanking President Donald Trump for capturing Maduro.
“Angel Families thank President Trump for saving lives & capturing Maduro — the kingpin flooding America with deadly fentanyl,” the White House’s Jan. 5 X post said. “Justice is being served.”
U.S. troops captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their Caracas home in the early hours of Jan. 3. The two pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges Jan. 5 in New York federal court.
The White House post isn’t the first time the Trump administration blamed Maduro for trafficking fentanyl to the U.S. Trump has cited the potent synthetic opioid that is responsible for most U.S. drug overdose deaths to justify pressure on Venezuela in the months before Maduro’s capture.
But neither Venezuela nor Maduro plays a role in smuggling fentanyl to the U.S. The majority of U.S. fentanyl comes from Mexico and is made with chemicals from China, according to U.S. government reports and drug policy experts.
The White House did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.
Vice President JD Vance addressed fentanyl in a Jan. 4 X post, the day before the White House’s post, saying cocaine is “the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela,” and, “Yes, a lot of fentanyl is coming out of Mexico. That continues to be a focus of our policy in Mexico and is a reason why President Trump shut the border on day one.”
Drug trafficking experts, government reports say fentanyl does not come from Venezuela
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s annual National Drug Threat Assessmentreportsfor years have pointed to Mexico and China as the countries responsible for illicit fentanyl in the U.S. None of the agency’s reports from 2017 through 2025 list Venezuela as a fentanyl producer or trafficker.
Most illicit fentanyl entered the U.S. via the southern border at official ports of entry, and 83.5% of the smugglers in fiscal year 2024 were U.S. citizens.
“There is no evidence of fentanyl or cocaine laced with fentanyl coming from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America,” David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist who studies violence in Venezuela, told PolitiFact in September.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report also points to Mexico as the country of origin for the most fentanyl seized in the U.S.
U.S. fentanyl overdose deaths recently have dropped. From May 2024 to April 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 43,000 synthetic opioid deaths, most of which were from fentanyl, down from nearly 70,000 in the previous year.
“The United States has been suffering an enormous overdose crisis driven by opioids and fentanyl in particular in recent years,” John Walsh, director for drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group advocating for human rights in the Americas, previously told PolitiFact. “I would say it has zero to do with anything in South America or the Caribbean.”
Maduro’s indictment on drug-related charges doesn’t mention fentanyl
The Justice Department first indicted Maduro in 2020 for alleged drug-related actions dating to 1999. A newly unsealed and updated indictment filed in the Southern District of New York charges Maduro and two co-defendants with narcoterrorism conspiracy and he, Flores and the four other co-defendants with cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns.
The indictment calls Maduro an illegitimate leader who transported cocaine under Venezuelan law enforcement protection, enriching his family and cementing power.
The 25-page document does not mention fentanyl or fentanyl trafficking.
Our ruling
The Trump White House described Maduro as “flooding America with deadly fentanyl.”
Drug experts and official government and international reports point to Mexico and China as the countries primarily involved in producing and trafficking the illicit fentanyl that reaches the U.S. The majority of fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico, is made with chemicals from China, and is smuggled by U.S. citizens via official ports of entry at the southern border.
The U.S. Justice Department indicted Maduro on charges related to cocaine. The indictment does not mention fentanyl.
In January 2026, a Hilton hotel in Minnesota refused service to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Rating:
Context
Everpeak Hospitality independently owned and operated the Hilton franchise that refused to serve ICE agents. Both Hilton and Everpeak Hospitality released statements apologizing for the incident. Everpeak Hospitality said the incident was inconsistent with its policy of “being a welcoming place for all,” and Hilton said the refusal was not “reflective of Hilton values.” After a video appeared online of the hotel continuing to refuse service to a social media user posing as someone looking for a government discount for the Department of Homeland Security, Hilton announced it was “taking immediate action to remove this hotel” from its system.
As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted highlypublicized operations in Minnesota in early January 2026, a rumor spread online across multiple social media platforms (archived, archived) that a Hampton Inn hotel in Lakeville, Minnesota — a suburb of Minneapolis — refused service to ICE agents.
Images purportedly showed social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security accusing Hilton Hotels — the company that owns the Hampton brand — of a “coordinated campaign” to refuse service to DHS law enforcement:
We can confirm that the Hampton Inn in Lakeville refused service to ICE agents. Both Everpeak Hospitality, which independently owned and operated the Hilton franchise in question, and Hilton released statements acknowledging the incident.
The screenshot circulating on social media shows a DHS post (archived) accusing Hilton of a coordinated campaign in Minneapolis to refuse service to DHS law enforcement. The post claimed that when officers attempted to book rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton Hotels “maliciously” canceled their reservations.
“Hey @HiltonHotels — why did your team in Minneapolis cancel our federal law enforcement officer and agents’ reservations?” ICE wrote in a separate X post (archived) that included screenshots of the alleged emailed exchange with the franchise.
The alleged email from the hotel read:
This email is in regards to the reservation you made with the Hampton Inn Lakeville property. We have noticed an influx of GOV reservations made today that have been for DHS, and we are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property. If you are with DHS or immigration, let us know as we will have to cancel your reservation.
Please pass on this info to your coworkers that we are not allowing any immigration agents to house on our property. Reply at your earliest convenience,
[Redacted]
While we cannot verify the screenshots ICE posted authentically depicted the exchange with the Hampton Inn location or confirm the action was “coordinated” or “malicious,” as DHS claimed, we can confirm that the hotel did refuse service to ICE agents, according to the hotel’s official response.
It’s important to note that although the hotel carries the name Hilton, it is an independently operated franchise owned by a group called Everpeak Hospitality.
Hilton and Everpeak Hospitality separately released statements regarding the incident. In twoX posts (archived, archived) on Jan. 5, 2026, Hilton confirmed the location’s actions were not aligned with “Hilton values.”
As of Jan. 6, 2026, Everpeak Hospitality’s website was wiped and replaced with the following message, which Hilton also pointed to:
Everpeak Hospitality Reaffirms Commitment to Welcoming All Guests & Agencies
Everpeak Hospitality has moved swiftly to address this matter as it was inconsistent with our policy of being a welcoming place for all. We are in touch with the impacted guests to ensure they are accommodated. We do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies and apologize to those impacted. We are committed to welcoming all guests and operating in accordance with brand standards, applicable laws, and our role as a professional hospitality provider.
Everpeak Hospitality
(everpeakhotels.com)
We reached out to Hilton seeking information regarding the chain’s position and a spokesperson pointed to a Jan. 6 X post (archived) that said Hilton was taking “immediate action to remove this hotel from our systems.”
The post referenced a “recent video” that raised concerns. It appeared to refer to a video (archived) posted by X user Nick Sortor in which he allegedly visited the hotel location undercover as someone looking for a government discount for DHS after Everpeak released its apology. In the video, front desk staff told him management was still not servicing ICE or DHS agents. Hilton posted the statement above on X in response to this video after DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin reposted it, claiming the incident occurred “many hours” after Everpeak Hospitality and Hilton issued statements “insisting this issue was resolved.”
We were unable to independently verify the incident shown in Sortor’s video or whether it occurred after Everpeak released its statement. It did appear to be true that Hilton removed the Lakeville location from its system following the incident; an archived page displaying the hotel’s details from 2023 was no longer available as of this writing.
It was unclear whether Everpeak Hospitality was in touch with the agents to make sure they were accommodated, as the company’s statement claimed. In a Jan. 5 X post, McLaughlin said neither DHS nor ICE had heard anything from Everpeak Hospitality. On Jan. 6, Snopes asked ICE whether it had heard back from Everpeak Hospitality since then and received the following statement attributed to McLaughlin:
We are glad to see @HiltonHotels take this step.
Discriminatory business practices targeting @dhsgov and deliberately undermining federal law enforcement are unAmerican and have real business consequences.
The federal government has drastically scaled back the number of recommended childhood immunizations, sidelining six routine vaccines that have safeguarded millions from serious diseases, long-term disability, and death.
Just three of the six immunizations the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it will no longer routinely recommend — against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and rotavirus — have prevented nearly 2 million hospitalizations and more than 90,000 deaths in the past 30 years, according to the CDC’s own publications.
Vaccines against the three diseases, as well as those against respiratory syncytial virus, meningococcal disease, flu, and COVID, are now recommended only for children at high risk of serious illness or after “shared clinical decision-making,” or consultation between doctors and parents.
The CDC maintained its recommendations for 11 childhood vaccines: measles, mumps, and rubella; whooping cough, tetanus, and diphtheria; the bacterial disease known as Hib; pneumonia; polio; chickenpox; and human papillomavirus, or HPV.
Federal and private insurance will still cover vaccines for the diseases the CDC no longer recommends universally, according to a Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet; parents who want to vaccinate their children against those diseases will not have to pay out-of-pocket.
Experts on childhood disease were baffled by the change in guidance. HHS said the changes followed “a scientific review of the underlying science” and were in line with vaccination programs in other developed nations.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, pointed to Denmark as a model. But the schedules of most European countries are closer to the U.S. standard upended by the new guidance.
For example, Denmark, which does not vaccinate against rotavirus, registers around 1,200 infant and toddler rotavirus hospitalizations a year. That rate, in a country of 6 million, is about the same as it was in the United States before vaccination.
“They’re OK with having 1,200 or 1,300 hospitalized kids, which is the tip of the iceberg in terms of childhood suffering,” said Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a co-inventor of a licensed rotavirus vaccine. “We weren’t. They should be trying to emulate us, not the other way around.”
Public health officials say the new guidance puts the onus on parents to research and understand each childhood vaccine and why it is important.
Here’s a rundown of the diseases the sidelined vaccines prevent:
RSV. Respiratory syncytial virus is the most common cause of hospitalization for infants in the U.S.
The respiratory virus usually spreads in fall and winter and produces cold-like symptoms, though it can be deadly for young children, causing tens of thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths a year. According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, roughly 80% of children younger than 2 who are hospitalized with RSV have no identifiable risk factors. Long-awaited vaccines against the disease were introduced in 2023.
Hepatitis A. Hepatitis A vaccination, which was phased in beginning in the late 1990s and recommended for all toddlers starting in 2006, has led to a more than 90% drop in the disease since 1996. The foodborne virus, which causes a wretched illness, continues to plague adults, particularly people who are homeless or who abuse drugs or alcohol, with a total of 1,648 cases and 85 deaths reported in 2023.
Hepatitis B. The disease causes liver cancer, cirrhosis, and other serious illnesses and is particularly dangerous when contracted by babies and young children. The hepatitis B virus is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids, even in microscopic amounts, and can survive on surfaces for a week. From 1990 to 2019, vaccination resulted in a 99% decline in reported cases of acute hepatitis B among children and teens. Liver cancer among American children has also plummeted as a result of universal childhood vaccination. But the hepatitis B virus is still around, with 2,000-3,000 acute cases reported annually among unvaccinated adults. More than 17,000 chronic hepatitis B diagnoses were reported in 2023. The CDC estimates about half of people infected don’t know they have it.
Rotavirus. Before routine administration of the current rotavirus vaccines began in 2006, about 70,000 young children were hospitalized and 50 died every year from the virus. It was known as “winter vomiting syndrome,” said Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado. “It was a miserable disease that we hardly see anymore.”
The virus is still common on surfaces that babies touch, however, and “if you lower immunization rates it will once again hospitalize children,” Offit said.
Meningococcal vaccines. These have been required mainly for teenagers and college students, who are notably vulnerable to critical illness caused by the bacteria. About 600 to 1,000 cases of meningococcal disease are reported in the U.S. each year, but it kills more than 10% of those it sickens, and 1 in 5 survivors have permanent disabilities.
Flu and COVID. The two respiratory viruses have each killed hundreds of children in recent years — though both tend to be much more severe in older adults. Flu is currently on the upswing in the United States, and last flu season the virus killed 289 children.
What is shared clinical decision-making?
Under the changes, decisions about vaccinating children against influenza, COVID, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, and hepatitis A and B will now rely on what officials call “shared clinical decision-making,” meaning families will have to consult with a health care provider to determine whether a vaccine is appropriate.
“It means a provider should have a conversation with the patient to lay out the risks and the benefits and make a decision for that individual person,” said Lori Handy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
In the past, the CDC used that term only in reference to narrow circumstances, like whether a person in a monogamous relationship needed the HPV vaccine, which prevents a sexually transmitted infection and certain cancers.
The CDC’s new approach doesn’t line up with the science because of the proven protective benefit the vaccines have for the vast majority of the population, Handy said.
In their report justifying the changes, HHS officials Tracy Beth Høeg and Martin Kulldorff said the U.S. vaccination system requires more safety research and more parental choice. Eroding trust in public health caused in part by an overly large vaccine schedule had led more parents to shun vaccination against major threats like measles, they said.
The vaccines on the schedule that the CDC has altered were backed up by extensive safety research when they were evaluated and approved by the FDA.
“They’re held to a safety standard higher than any other medical intervention that we have,” Handy said. “The value of routine recommendations is that it really helps the public understand that this has been vetted upside down and backwards in every which way.”
Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County, California, said the change in guidance will cause more confusion among parents who think it means a vaccine’s safety is in question.
“It is critical for public health that recommendations for vaccines are very clear and concise,” Ball said. “Anything to muddy the water is just going to lead to more children getting sick.”
Ball said that instead of focusing on a child’s individual health needs, he often has to spend limited clinic time reassuring parents that vaccines are safe. A “shared clinical decision-making” status for a vaccine has no relationship to safety concerns, but parents may think it does.
HHS’ changes do not affect state vaccination laws and therefore should allow prudent medical practitioners to carry on as before, said Richard Hughes IV, an attorney and a George Washington University lecturer who is leading litigation against Kennedy over vaccine changes.
“You could expect that any pediatrician is going to follow sound evidence and recommend that their patients be vaccinated,” he said. The law protects providers who follow professional care guidelines, he said, and “RSV, meningococcal, and hepatitis remain serious health threats for children in this country.”
After U.S. officials arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lauded the operation, saying the state’s large Venezuelan population knows firsthand how “destructive” Maduro’s policies were.
DeSantis also said during a Jan. 5 press conference that Maduro was “releasing people from his prisons and sending them to our southern border under the Biden administration” and that he “deserves to be brought to justice.”
DeSantis repeated the comments the following day, adding that Florida would consider bringing state drug charges against Maduro.
Then and now, we found no evidence, such as in academic or government reports, that Maduro purposely freed Venezuelan prisoners and sent them to infiltrate the U.S. before, during or after Joe Biden’s presidency. Groups that track Venezuelan prisons say they remain overcrowded.
PolitiFact contacted DeSantis for comment but received no response.
Narrative rose to prominence in U.S. after anonymous source in 2022 article
In September 2022, as immigration at the southern U.S. border surged, 13 Republican Congress members sent a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, requesting information on an “intelligence report” they said his department sent to Border Patrol agents.
According to the lawmakers, DHS had told agents to be on the lookout for violent criminals who Venezuela was deliberately releasing from prisons and encouraging to join caravans headed to the U.S.
When we examined the claim at the time, we found its only source was a Sept. 18, 2022, article by conservative news website Breitbart, which credited an anonymous U.S. Customs and Border Protection source who it said was not authorized to speak to the media.
The article vaguely described the DHS intelligence report and did not link to it. The lawmakers sent a second letter to Mayorkas in February 2024 letter, again referring to the intelligence report and asking him to investigate.
We reached out again to DHS and CBP about the report’s existence and asked for a copy. We received no response. In 2022, the fact-checking organization Factchequeado reported that DHS responded to its inquiry about the Breitbart article and said the article’s claims “are not verified.”
Experts say there’s no evidence for the prison claim
Experts in Venezuelan politics said Maduro could have been capable of such actions, and the FBI says some Venezuelan criminals have come to the U.S.
But immigration experts in the U.S. and Latin America and Venezuelan criminologists said the assertion that the government freed Venezuelan prisoners and sent them to the U.S. southern border is baseless.
“There is no evidence that (Maduro’s) government is freeing prisons or sending prisoners to the United States,” Universidad Central de Venezuela criminology professor Luis Izquiel told PolitiFact in 2024.
Mike LaSusa, deputy director of content at InSight Crime, a think tank focused on crime and security in the Americas, previously told PolitiFact that Venezuela’s government “has no known policy of selecting particular migrants to send them to any specific country, including the United States.”
The Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones, an independent nonprofit that tracks Venezuela’s prison population, hasn’t reported that prisons emptied out during the Biden administration. In its 2023 report, the group said 64% of Venezuela’s prisons were overcrowded, estimating there were more than 33,500 inmates imprisoned, compared with a 20,000-person capacity.
The non-governmental organization A Window to Freedom, which has monitored Venezuela’s prison population and conditions for over 25 years, reported that overcrowding in the country’s pretrial detention centers, known as police cells, in 2023 was 189% — a 13% increase from 2022.
On May 5, 2025, the federal National Intelligence Council released a declassified memo that found no evidence that the Venezuelan government under Maduro directed the Tren de Aragua gang or sent its members to the U.S. The gang formed in a Venezuelan prison.
The U.S. does not admit people with criminal convictions who it encounters at U.S. ports of entry unless there are extenuating circumstances. Part of the entry process involves Border Patrol checking immigrants’ backgrounds and taking their fingerprints and other biometric information.
Crime has declined in Venezuela in recent years, but experts say that isn’t evidence Maduro sent freed prisoners to the U.S. It’s because of a confluence of factors, including a humanitarian crisis and a declining economy, pushing close to 8 million people to flee Venezuela since 2014. Most have migrated to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile.
Many of the people who lived in poor and rural areas — who were often victims of crime — have left the country, experts said.
“The opportunities for crime were lost,” Roberto Briceño León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, which monitors crime in Venezuela, told PolitiFact in 2024. “Generalized poverty in the country, the absence of money circulating, the bankruptcy of companies and commerce all made the opportunities for crime in the country drop.”
Our ruling
DeSantis said Maduro “was releasing people from his prisons and sending them to our southern border under the Biden administration.”
We found no evidence, such as academic or government reports, that Maduro freed prisoners and sent them to the U.S.
Immigration experts said Venezuela has no known policy or practice of sending prisoners to any specific country, including the U.S. And groups that track Venezuelan prisons said they remain overcrowded.
Meta Appoints Former Trump Official as Chief Legal Officer Amid EU Tensions
Meta has named C.J. Mahoney, a former U.S. Trade Representative under President Trump and a senior legal executive at Microsoft, as its new Chief Legal Officer. The appointment is seen as part of Meta’s broader effort to strengthen ties with the Trump administration as it faces escalating legal challenges from European Union regulators. Mahoney joins other Trump-aligned officials recently elevated within Meta, including Joel Kaplan and Kevin Martin, suggesting a coordinated strategy to gain U.S. political support against EU digital regulations. Meta continues to face billions in EU fines, and closer alignment with the White House may enhance its legal and political positioning globally. Read More (Social Media Today Rating)
Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett responded on The View to Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent criticism of her public persona, calling the remarks racially motivated. Vance previously questioned Crockett’s authenticity at a Turning Point USA event. Crockett, who is running for U.S. Senate, countered that her appeal among working-class voters is a key reason for the scrutiny, noting her background as a criminal defense attorney and her lived experience with marginalized communities. She accused Republicans of using racialized messaging to discredit her, suggesting their attacks shift depending on the political audience. Read More (Washington Examiner Rating)
New York Times Lawsuit Against Pentagon to Proceed Swiftly
A federal judge is expected to hear The New York Times’ lawsuit against the Pentagon in March, following a Monday filing urging a swift ruling. The Times argues that an October policy by the Department of Defense unconstitutionally restricts independent journalism by limiting access to unapproved information. The newspaper claims the policy undermines press freedoms and amounts to prior restraint. The court’s handling of the case could have broad implications for national security reporting and journalistic access to government data. Read More (Editor & Publisher Rating)
Media Bias Fact Check selects and publishes fact checks from around the world. We only utilize fact-checkers that are either a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) or have been verified as credible by MBFC. Further, we review each fact check for accuracy before publishing. We fact-check the fact-checkers and let you know their bias. When appropriate, we explain the rating and/or offer our own rating if we disagree with the fact-checker. (D. Van Zandt)
Claim Codes: Red= Fact Check on a Right Claim, Blue = Fact Check on a Left Claim, Black = Not Political/Conspiracy/Pseudoscience/Other
Fact Checker bias rating Codes: Red = Right-Leaning, Green = Least Biased, Blue = Left-Leaning, Black = Unrated by MBFC
MOSTLY TRUE
Claim via Social Media: The administration of U.S. Democratic President Joe Biden put a $25 million bounty on Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro.
Snopes rating: Mostly True (In 2020, the first administration of Donald Trump placed a $15 million bounty on Maduro. The Department of Treasury then increased it to $25 million days before the end of Biden’s term in January 2025.)
Claim by Alex Jones: A video shows “millions of Venezuelans flooded the streets of Caracas” to celebrate Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
PolitiFact rating: False (The video predates Maduro’s arrest and comes from 2024 protests over alleged election fraud; reporting shows Caracas streets were largely quiet following Maduro’s capture, with celebrations occurring mainly among Venezuelan expatriates abroad.)
Claim by Donald Trump (R): He was elected “in a landslide” with a broad mandate.
Associated Press rating: Mostly False (Trump won decisively but by historical standards did not achieve a landslide; his electoral vote total was lower than several past presidents and his popular vote share did not reach a majority.)
Claim via Social Media: A legitimate news outlet reported a DNI whistleblower has documents showing Hakeem Jeffries’ office tried to tip Maduro off to the raid.
Lead Stories rating: False (No such report could be found.)
Disclaimer: We are providing links to fact-checks by third-party fact-checkers. If you do not agree with a fact check, please directly contact the source of that fact check.
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On Jan. 5, 2026, the YouTube channel Maddow’s Brief uploaded a video of TV presenter Rachel Maddow reporting that the retail giant Walmart was supposedly planning to pull out of the U.S. market due to downstream affects of tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump. According to the video, the tariffs had caused grocery prices to rise, making it much harder for the company to justify its massive operational presence in the country.
Snopes readers wrote in, asking us to verify whether the video of Maddow was real or fake, and if there was any truth to Maddow’s supposed report about Walmart. We concluded that the video was fake, and there was no truth to the claim Walmart was leaving the country. YouTube removed the video and terminated the channel from its site Jan. 6, 2026.
(YouTube channel Maddow’s Brief)
There were clear indications that the video was generated by an artificial intelligence tool, while searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no that credible news outlets had reported about Walmart’s supposed pivot. Such a business decision coming from Walmart, a company that the AI-generated Maddow accurately described as “essentially synonymous with the American retail landscape,” would make major headlines if true.
Snopes began investigating the video by looking at the channel that uploaded it, Maddow’s Brief. The channel’s description implied that it was a new project of Maddow’s focused on “a deep-dive analysis of the complex, critical, and often overlooked trade relationship between the United States and Canada.”
However, Maddow’s show on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) is called “The Rachel Maddow Show,” not “Maddow’s Brief,” and searching the internet for “Maddow’s Brief” showed that neither Maddow nor reliable news outlets had reported on the channel. This, combined with the channel’s date of creation (Jan. 1, 2026), effectively confirmed that the YouTube channel was not directly affiliated with the TV presenter. To double-check, Snopes looked through recent episodes of “The Rachel Maddow Show” for clips that matched the YouTube video, but came up empty.
The text found in the channel description for Maddow’s Brief and the text in the Walmart video’s description read as tacky and robotic, a potential sign it was AI-generated. Another sign that the videos were produced using AI tools was the YouTube channel’s remarkably fast upload rate, averaging more than one video each day, including over weekends. For comparison, “The Rachel Maddow Show” runs once a week, according to MS NOW.
Finally, while the video’s audio and visuals created a decent illusion of Maddow speaking, it was not perfect. Maddow occasionally “spoke” with weird inflections, while her mouth movements and gestures were sometimes slightly out-of-sync or nonsensical.
Katie Miller, a former White House adviser and wife of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, posted a map of Greenland overlaid with the U.S. flag and captioned with the word “SOON” following the January 2026 U.S. military operation in Venezuela.
Rating:
Following the January 2026 U.S. military strike on Venezuela and capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump and those in his orbit ramped up threats to annex Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark, without ruling out the option of doing so through military action.
According to some social media posts (archived), Katie Miller, a conservative podcaster, former White House adviser and wife of senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, posted to X a map of Greenland overlaid with the American flag and the caption “SOON.” Miller apparently made the post shortly after the U.S. military operation in Venezuela. The claim was shared to X (archived), Reddit (archived) and Instagram (archived).
Snopes readers reached out to ask whether the post was real.
The post about Greenland was real, so we’ve rated this claim true. Miller shared the map (archived) Jan. 3, 2026, less than 24 hours after news broke of the American operation in Venezuela.
That same day, Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark’s ambassador to the U.S., responded to the post (archived) with a brief summary of Denmark’s and the United States’ cooperation on Arctic security. He ended the post by saying, “And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.” Miller did not directly respond to Sørensen’s post.
A day after Miller’s post, Trump told reporters that the U.S. “needs” Greenland. On Jan. 5 Stephen Miller, Katie Miller’s husband and one of Trump’s closest advisers, spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper, who referenced Katie’s Greenland post at about 8:48 into the interview while asking Miller if he would rule out the U.S. ever taking Greenland by force. Miller did not acknowledge his wife’s post, even after Tapper brought it up again during Miller’s answer.
On Jan. 6, Katie Miller referenced the Trump administration’s desire to annex Greenland on X again (archived) by quoting a Trump post on the issue from his first administration.
Several Democrats have claimed that the Trump administration’s Jan. 3 military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, was “illegal,” violating both domestic and international law.
Experts we consulted told us that the operation runs afoul of the United Nations Charter that prohibits unjustified uses of military force by one country against another. Experts also previously told us that the U.S. Constitution, according to an originalist interpretation, requires congressional approval for such use of force abroad. In practice, however, multiple presidents — like President Donald Trump in this instance — have unilaterally ordered military action without input from lawmakers.
In this story, we’ll review some of the legal arguments that have been made.
International Law
Several Democrats have claimed that the Trump administration’s military actions in Venezuela violated international law.
“It’s clearly illegal under international law, right?” Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Jan. 4. “Full stop. U.N. charter. No question there.”
In an interview on CNN on Jan. 5, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called the military action “blatantly illegal.”
“We’ve signed on to a U.N. charter that says you can’t violate sovereign territory in this way, even to arrest somebody who has a indictment against them,” Smith said. “The U.N. Charter is clear. We signed on to the U.N. Charter, so therefore we were clearly breaking the law and doing a regime change operation. That’s not even debatable. And President Trump’s contempt for that law does undermine any sort of legal action going forward. Across the globe, we increasingly send the message the law is just a matter of convenience. Do what you want.”
Numerous experts in international law agree with them.
Specifically, Article 2 (4) of the U.N. Charter states that members “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
In a Jan. 5 statement, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he was “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected” and warned about “the precedent it may set for how relations between and among states are conducted.”
There are 193 members of the U.N., including Venezuela, which has been a member since 1945.
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor Bill Burke-White, an expert on international law, told us via email that the military action in Venezuela was “illegal under international law in every imaginable way.”
“Under international law and pursuant to articles 2(4) and 51 of the UN Charter, the use of force is only justified in two circumstances: authorization by the UN Security Council or an act of self defense in response to an armed attack,” Burke-White said. “Neither applies here.”
“In addition,” Burke-White said, “Maduro (while a despicable individual) was the sovereign leader of Venezuela. He therefore enjoys sovereign immunity, which means a foreign government can not arrest or prosecute him.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump administration officials have called Maduro an “illegitimate” leader. (World leaders widely disputed Maduro’s supposed 2024 election.) And therefore, the administration’s argument goes, he can be criminally prosecuted in the United States.
That is an issue “the American courts are going to have to weigh in on,” Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and the director of its Center for Global Legal Challenges, said in an interview with the New Yorker.
The problem, Hathaway said, “is that merely saying that he’s not head of state doesn’t then justify the use of military force in Venezuela.”
In a Jan. 5 article for Just Security, international law experts Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman agreed.
“The bottom line is, unlike the boat strikes the U.S. military has carried out to date that have occurred in international waters against stateless vessels, this operation, striking Venezuela and abducting its president, is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter,” the three wrote. “That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small States from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war.”
Echoing Burke-White’s comments, they wrote that the only exceptions are with authorization from the U.N. Security Council or “in self-defense against armed attack.” Given there was no U.N. Security Council authorization, “the sole possible legal basis for the operation would be self-defense,” they wrote.
And that is what Trump administration officials are arguing.
Trump Administration Defense
In an interview with Fox News on Jan. 4, U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz dismissed the “hand-wringing” about Article 2 of the U.N. Charter, adding that Article 51 of the charter permits “a nation’s inherent right to self-defense.”
Article 51 of the U.N. charter states, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
“So, in this case, you have a drug kingpin, an illegitimate leader indicted in the United States coordinating with the likes of China, Russia, Iran, terrorist groups like Hezbollah, pumping drugs, thugs and weapons into the United States of America, threatening to invade its neighbors,” Waltz said. “And at the end of the day, was the United States, was President Trump just going to let that status quo continue? Absolutely not.”
Maduro is seen in handcuffs escorted by federal agents as they make their way into an armored car en route to a federal courthouse in New York City on Jan. 5. Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images via Getty Images.
Maduro and his wife were brought to New York and indicted on cocaine-trafficking conspiracy charges.
“We can’t have a country where the people in charge of its military and in charge of its police department are openly cooperating with drug trafficking organizations. We can’t. We’re not going to allow that,” Rubio said. “These things are direct threats to the United States.”
John Bellinger, adjunct senior fellow in international and national security law at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the defense exceptions in the U.N. Charter “do not apply here.”
“President Trump has claimed that President Maduro had sent criminal gangs, including Tren de Aragua, ‘to terrorize American communities nationwide’ but there is no factual support for this statement,” said Bellinger, quoting the president’s Jan. 3 press conference on the military action. Bellinger, who served as the legal adviser for the Department of State and the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration, noted that the administration’s own National Intelligence Council concluded in an April 7 intelligence assessment that the Maduro regime “probably does not have a policy of cooperating with [Tren de Aragua] and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
“The action violated international law,” Tom Dannenbaum, a professor at Stanford Law School with expertise in international law relating to armed conflict, told us via email. “This analysis does not turn on an assessment of the Maduro regime. It depends instead on the strict prohibition of the resort to military force in international relations, except in narrow and specific circumstances, none of which obtains in this case. Serious legal objections to Maduro’s regime do not eliminate the need for a legal basis to use military force in Venezuela. Under international law, the use of force on another state’s territory is presumptively unlawful.”
While the Trump administration has argued the U.S. was defending itself against drug traffickers, Hathaway told the New Yorker that argument “really doesn’t work under international law.”
“There is a right of self-defense under the United Nations charter, which allows states to use force in self-defense against an armed attack,” Hathaway said. “But it’s never been used for something like drug trafficking. And so all of these boat strikes that have been taking place over the past couple of months, which have been justified as self-defense, don’t fall within anything that anyone would recognize as self-defense under international law. Self-defense generally requires that there’s actually an armed attack.”
Dannenbaum similarly disagreed with the argument that Venezuela drug trafficking met the threshold of an armed attack on the U.S.
“Venezuela has not engaged in an armed attack against the United States or any other state on whose behalf the US could claim to be acting,” Dannenbaum said. “Nor is there any reason to believe such an attack was imminent. The concept of ‘armed attack’ captures the ‘most grave’ forms of the use of armed force. This is widely understood to entail direct injurious or destructive action. Even assuming it can be attributed to the state, drug trafficking does not satisfy that threshold and it has never been recognized as doing so, in part because the harm associated with drug use involves multiple points of intervening agency and is too far attenuated from the act of trafficking itself. The fact that drug trafficking is a serious crime does not entail an authorization to use military force against another state, even if that state’s officials are suspected of being involved in the criminal activity.”
The Barr Memo
CNN national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand reported on Jan. 3 that “Trump administration officials are internally pointing to a 1989 legal opinion and the subsequent US invasion of Panama as precedent to justify the operation that was carried out in Venezuela.”
That opinion, written by Bill Barr, then an assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel — who later served as U.S. attorney general in Trump’s first term — argues that the president “has the inherent constitutional authority to deploy the FBI to investigate and arrest individuals for violating United States law, even if those actions contravene customary international law.”
In an article for Just Security, Goodman, founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and a law professor at New York University School of Law, argued that the Barr memo is “flawed” and that it reaches “a radical conclusion that cannot withstand serious scrutiny.”
As for a comparison to the U.S. military action to capture General Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989, the authors of the earlier Just Security article noted several significant differences in that case.
“The United States claimed to be acting by invitation of the rightful Head of State,” the authors wrote. And, they said, “the United States acted after the Panamanian National Assembly declared a state of war against the United States, and after forces under Noriega’s command” had — as noted by President George H.W. Bush at the time– “killed an unarmed American serviceman; wounded another; arrested and brutally beat a third American serviceman; and then brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with sexual abuse.”
Regardless, experts told us the U.S. veto power would block any potential United Nations consequences, such as sanctions. There are, nonetheless, political implications.
“The United States was one of the principal drafters of the UN Charter and is one of five permanent members of the Security Council, entrusted with ensuring international peace and security,” Bellinger told us. “When the United States blatantly violates the UN Charter, it destroys the global respect it has built over many decades as a nation committed to the rule of law and a force for good and encourages other rogue states like Russia and China to ignore the UN Charter. The United States loses its global credibility to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine or a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan when it uses force in violation of the UN Charter based on false justifications.”
Congressional Authorization Required?
Several Democratic lawmakers have also claimed that the operation in Venezuela, without congressional approval, violated domestic law.
“Maduro is a horrible, horrible person, but you don’t treat lawlessness with other lawlessness, and that’s what’s happened here,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a Jan. 4 interview. “They went inside Venezuela, bombed civilian as well as military places, and it’s a violation of the law to do what they did without getting the authorization of Congress.”
Rep. James P. McGovern, the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, made essentially the same argument in a Jan. 3 statement.
“President Trump did not seek congressional authorization for this use of force, and Congress did not grant it. Under our Constitution and the law, that makes this action illegal,” he said.
Hathaway, the director of Yale’s Center for Global Legal Challenges, told the New Yorker that U.S. constitutional law “requires the President to go to Congress to seek authorization before using force against another country.”
Republicans in the Trump administration and in Congress have argued that no congressional authorization was needed.
“This is an operation that did not require prior consent of Congress, prior authorization of Congress,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a Jan. 5 press conference. “It required notification of Congress. It’s well within Article II” of the U.S. Constitution.
Johnson said that he spoke to the president and the secretaries of state and defense “within hours” after the mission commenced. “The first call was from Marco Rubio at about 4 a.m., so they’ve done everything that they were supposed to do. This was an appropriate action,” he said.
The day prior to Johnson’s press conference, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubio himself defended acting without getting the go-ahead from Congress.
“This was not an action that required congressional approval,” Rubio said to the show’s host, Kristen Welker. “In fact, it couldn’t require congressional approval because this was not an invasion. This is not an extended military operation. This was a very precise operation that involved a couple of hours of action. It was a very delicate operation too. It was one that required all these conditions to be in place at the right time in the right place.”
Rubio said going to Congress beforehand could have led to “leaks” that “would have endangered the mission and gotten people killed.”
Going forward, he said, “we will seek congressional approval for actions that require congressional approval … otherwise they will get congressional notification.”
As we’ve written, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution assigns the power “To declare War” to Congress. Meanwhile, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution says that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces.
For our June story, which was about whether Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities was legal, Peter Shane, a constitutional law scholar and adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, told us that “there is so much disagreement about how the Constitution should be interpreted with regard to the unilateral presidential deployment of military force.”
He said in an email, “Under the most persuasive reading of the Founding era, the Constitution does not authorize Presidents to deploy military force abroad without advance congressional authorization.” Yet, he said, it has “long been the position” of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel “that history has ratified unilateral presidential deployments of military force as long as (1) the deployment serves ‘sufficiently important national interests,’ as judged by the President, and (2) the deployment does not portend a ‘prolonged and substantial military engagement, typically involving exposure of U.S. military personnel to significant risk over a substantial period.’”
Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, had a similar interpretation.
“The Constitution says that Congress has the power to declare war, and the records of the Constitutional Convention are pretty clear that the drafters did not want to give one person the power to take the United States into war,” Roosevelt told us for the same story. “However, presidents have done things that count as acts of war under international law without congressional authorization, like the Libya bombings [under then-President Barack Obama], and no one has stopped them, so our practice has departed from the text and original understanding.”
As for notifying Congress of military action, the 1973 War Powers Resolution passed by Congress requires presidents within 48 hours “to report to Congress any introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities,” as the Congressional Research Service has explained.
Once the military action is reported, the resolution “requires that the use of forces must be terminated within 60 to 90 days unless Congress authorizes such use or extends the time period.” It also “requires that the ‘President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing’ U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities.’”
Roosevelt previously told us that the resolution doesn’t mean the president “can do what he wants for 48 hours before notifying Congress, or for 60 days even if Congress doesn’t” give its approval. He said, “That’s not consistent with the Constitution and it’s not consistent with the purpose and policy section of the WPA, which says that the intent is to make sure that the President’s power to engage in military action is exercised ‘only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.’”
He explained that the “48 hour and 60 day windows are supposed to be relevant to presidential responses to attacks, and the President is not supposed to be able to initiate wars at all.”
But the Trump administration says that the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela.
“As Secretary Rubio has said, there is no war against Venezuela or its people,” Waltz, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, said in a U.N. Security Council briefing on Jan. 5. “We are not occupying a country. This was a law enforcement operation in furtherance of lawful indictments that have existed for decades. The United States arrested a narcotrafficker who is now going to stand trial in the United States in accordance with the rule of law for the crimes he’s committed against our people for 15 years.”
However, Trump, who also has said “we’re not” at war with Venezuela, has not ruled out sending troops back into the country.
Legal Debate Is ‘Largely Meaningless’
In the end, Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argued that the debate about the legality of unilateral presidential uses of force has little significance.
“Immediately after these operations happen, every time this happens – Libya, Kosovo, Iran, all of these unilateral uses of force without congressional authorization – we immediately jump to the law and commentators immediately say this is illegal, depending on whether they like the war or not, or they defend it as being lawful, and we have this debate about whether it’s lawful or not, and I frankly think it’s kind of a meaningless debate in almost every circumstance,” he said in a Jan. 5 discussion with Bob Bauer, a legal scholar and New York University School of Law professor of practice.
“The issue is, why has Congress given the president this massive military force without constraints? Why does it continue to acquiesce in the president’s use of force? Why isn’t Congress exercising its constitutional prerogatives and constitutional responsibilities to check these things?” Goldsmith asked. “The lawyers tend to flee to the legal arguments. I think the legal arguments in this context are not terribly meaningful and that the focus should be on the politics of this. And the politics are that Congress has let the president get away with it knowingly across administrations, left and right, Democrat and Republican. And the Democrats tend to complain about Republican uses of force and vice versa. But all of this stuff takes place in the rhetoric of law that I think is largely meaningless.”
He said that unilateral use of force by the president is not an issue that has been adjudicated by the courts and he doubts that it will be.
“So, there’s no judicial force to stop that,” he told Bauer. “Only Congress exercising its political prerogatives, perhaps making legal arguments, can check that.”
Schumer said that he and fellow Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Adam Schiff, as well as Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, will force a Senate vote this week on a war powers resolution that would require congressional approval for further military action in Venezuela.
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Days after the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a viral audio clip appears to show President Donald Trump yelling at advisers to stop the release of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s files.
“Leaked Donald Trump audio about the Epstein files and Venezuela,” reads the caption of a Jan. 5 Facebook post sharing the purported recording that drew over 2 million views.
“(We’re) not releasing the Epstein file, f— Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don’t care what you do, start a f—— war, just don’t let them get out. If I go down, I will bring all of you down,” Trump appears to say.
A reporter can then be heard asking Trump if he is all right, to which Trump says, “I feel great, I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something.”
That part of the recording is authentic. But the first part — about Epstein and Greene — isn’t.
The fake audio matches the audio in a TikTok video from Nov. 18, 2025, before the U.S. captured Maduro on Jan. 3. Fact-checkers from Lead Stories and Snopes found a similar version of the audio first published Nov. 5, 2025 by the @fresh_florida_air TikTok account, which is no longer available. The archived version of that video shows a Sora watermark, which is OpenAI’s video-generating platform. With the launch of Sora 2 on Sept. 30, 2025, the tool can generate audio-only results.
The TikTok account, @fresh_florida_air, posted another version of the “leaked” audio that featured a Sora watermark that said @bradbradt31. PolitiFact searched for that username on the Sora app, but that account is also unavailable.
The TikTok user, @fresh_florida_air, told Snopes that the videos were AI-generated. “My intent is creative expression, not presenting anything as factual,” the user said.
The second part of the audio clip in the Facebook post that features a reporter asking Trump if he’s OK is real, but it was taken out of context. On Nov. 17, 2025, a reporter questioned why the president sounded hoarse. A longer version of Trump’s response reveals he said he had been shouting during trade talks with a foreign country. Trump was not being asked about a leaked audio or the Epstein files.
Our ruling
A viral Facebook post claims to show “leaked Donald Trump audio about the Epstein files and Venezuela.”
The audio was created with artificial intelligence.
PolitiFact found the first part of the clip was generated with OpenAI’s video-generating platform, Sora.
The second part of the clip is real but it’s from November 2025, before Maduro was captured by the U.S. government. At that moment, Trump was not being asked about leaked audio or the Epstein files. We rate this claim False.
Weekly hospitalizations from the virus went from under 7,000 at the start of December to over 33,000 by the last week of 2025, surpassing rates of the past few years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that more than 11 million people have gotten the flu so far this season, resulting in over 5,000 deaths.
Why is it so bad? Doctors said that the surge in flu cases is largely related to a new mutation of the influenza A virus called “subclade K” — a strain that is not well covered by this year’s flu vaccine.
Each year, scientists have to try and predict in the spring what strains to include in the coming season’s flu vaccine. Sometimes they make a good match, but other times, like this year, the virus develops an unexpected mutation that helps it elude the vaccine’s protection.
Although this year’s flu vaccine doesn’t protect as well against the dominant subclade K strain, doctors still say that getting vaccinated is worthwhile.
It can prevent severe disease and death and protects against other strains of the flu that are circulating.
How do scientists decide what goes in the flu vaccine?
There are two major types of influenza that circulate during flu season – influenza A and influenza B. Both can be further broken into subtypes, genetic clades and subclades that describe various different mutations of the virus. A clade is a group of organisms with a common ancestor.
Every year, the flu virus develops mutations to help it sneak past human immune systems. Each year, scientists try to predict, months in advance, what those mutations might be and which strains will circulate in the coming flu season.
The vaccine formula has to be decided far ahead of the fall flu season so there is time for manufacturing and distribution.
“We do all that we can to predict which strains will predominate, but occasionally, strains emerge that are more divergent from what we predicted,” said Dr. Buddy Creech, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program. “That’s the story of this year.”
Why doesn’t the vaccine match?
This year’s vaccine protected against three different strains — two strains of influenza A (subtypes H1N1 and H3N2) and a strain of influenza B (Victoria lineage).
But after the Food and Drug Administration had decided on a formulation in March, the influenza A (H3N2) strain began to mutate.
“This happens almost every two years with one or more of the three vaccine strains,” said Andrew Pekosz, a molecular microbiology and immunology professor at Johns Hopkins University. “While the vaccine gets ‘locked in,’ the virus still circulates in humans and continues to mutate, resulting in the ‘mismatch.’”
The new subclade K strain only became the dominant strainafter the vaccine formulation was decided.
Does the vaccine still offer some protection?
Yes, and doctors say it is still worth getting if you haven’t yet.
“Even when the vaccine is not a perfect match to circulating strains, those who are vaccinated have lower rates of hospitalization and death,” said Dr. Caitlin Li, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
Although there is a mismatch between the H3N2 strain the vaccine was formulated to protect against and the strain that is circulating among the public, that isn’t the case for the other two strains this year’s vaccine protects against — influenza A (H1N1) and influenza B, Pekosz told PolitiFact.
Getting vaccinated offers protection against the other two strains, which are still making people sick this year. “We often see a different influenza strain causing disease late in the influenza season,” Pekosz said. Future you might say thanks!
It’s not too late to get vaccinated, Creech said, especially if you’re “at high risk for complications from infection.”
“Right now, there is no data suggesting it’s either more severe or more contagious,” Pekosz said. But because the virus is better than usual at getting around the vaccine’s defenses, more people than usual are susceptible to infection.
Lower than ideal flu vaccination rates, around 40% nationwide, may also be contributing to the intensity of this flu season.
President Donald Trump amplified the unsubstantiated claim that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ordered a state lawmaker’s assassination.
In June, a gunman attacked Minnesota lawmakers, shooting and killing state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and shooting and injuring state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette.
Vance Luther Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, was arrested June 15 on murder and attempted murder charges in connection with the shootings.
Months later, Trump gave air to unproven conspiracy theories about Boelter’s motivation and mischaracterized the suspect’s connection to Walz.
“Did Tim Walz really have Melissa Hoertman assassinated???” read text on the video Trump shared in a Jan. 3 Truth Social post, misspelling Hortman’s name.
There is no evidence that Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, was involved in the attack, which investigators described as politically motivated. The claim stems from a link between Walz and Boelter that sparked wild theories from conservative influencers. Hortman, a former House speaker, was a member of the state’s Democratic Farm Labor Party, as are Hoffman and Walz.
The Trump administration did not respond to our request for comment.
Hortman’s children asked Trump to remove his post, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported. Republican state Sen. Julia Coleman called for people to reject “baseless conspiracy theories.” Walz and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also condemned Trump’s post.
Months after announcing he would seek a third term as governor, Walz dropped out of the Minnesota governor race Jan. 5, amid questions of fraud in his state.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman, then House speaker, stands in front of a bookshelf in her office in St. Paul, Minn., May 23, 2023. Hortman and her husband, Mark, were fatally shot at their home June 14, 2025.
The video draws on unproven theories about the attack
The video Trump shared included multiple falsehoods, including that Boelter had been “Tim Walz’s aide” and that Boelter worked for Walz “for years.”
Conservative influencers first said Walz was implicated in the attack after noticing that in 2019 Walz reappointed Boelter to serve as a “business member” on the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, a nonpartisan group charged with advising the governor and Legislature on workforce policy. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democratic Farmer Labor Party member, first appointed Boelter to the board in 2016, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.
The board has about 60 members from the public sector, the private sector, organized labor and community-based groups, its website said. The governor appoints 41 of its members.
Walz’s spokesperson told PolitiFact in June that appointments to the workforce board aren’t the same as positions in the governor’s office or cabinet, and that Walz had no relationship with Boelter.
Steve Kalina, who places himself on the other side of the political spectrum from Walz and has served on the governor’s workforce board since 2019, told the Star Tribune in June that the board does not interact with the governor on a regular basis.
“It’s goofy to make those stretches that the suspect was a close tie to the governor, a close appointee,” Kalina said.
The video said that Boelter had written a letter to the FBI saying “it was Tim Walz who forced him” to attack the Democratically-aligned lawmakers.
In July, federal prosecutors said Boelter had confessed to the shootings in a handwritten letter in which he’d also claimed to be acting on secret orders from Walz. Boelter said Walz had instructed him to kill Minnesota’s U.S. senators because “Tim wants to be senator.” Boelter wrote that he acted only after someone threatened his family.
The acting U.S. attorney prosecuting the case against Boelter said the letter was fantasy.
People attend a candlelight vigil for former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, who were fatally shot, at the state Capitol, June 18, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP)
No evidence the killing was linked to Hortman’s immigrant health care vote
The video said Hortman had been killed in part because she voted “to take away health care from illegal immigrants.”
Before she was killed, Hortman voted with Republicans to pass a bill that included a measure removingadults who are in the U.S. illegally from the state’s MinnesotaCare health program. Hortman opposed the measure, but voted for it as part of a budget compromise.
Law enforcement officials have not linked Hortman’s killing to the vote. Officials said Boelter had carefully planned his attack and had a list of dozens of Democratic targets in Minnesota and at least three other states.
After Trump posted the video, Melissa Hortman’s son, Colin, told the Star Tribune that his mother had voted for the bill because it was the only way to avoid a government shutdown.
The video also appeared to conflate Hortman’s health care vote and fraud scandals roiling Minnesota. The state’s oversight of federal and state funds had already been under scrutiny when conservative influencer Nick Shirley claimed in a YouTube video that Somali-run day care facilities in Minnesota had fraudulently taken funds meant to help low-income families afford childcare.
The day care allegations follow other high-profile fraud incidents in Minnesota: In 2022, dozens of people, most of them Somali, were charged in connection with a fraud scheme; prosecutors alleged the group stole $250 million in federal child nutrition programs. Late last year, federal prosecutors announced initial charges related to what they said were other welfare fraud schemes in Minnesota.
The video said the fraud scandals all tie “back to Walz.” It questioned whether Hortman was killed “because she voted against a multibillion-dollar money laundering fraud” that “heavily implicated illegal aliens,” and Somali migrants in particular. An estimated100,000 people who identify as Somali live in Minnesota and the majority are U.S. citizens.
Law enforcement officials have not linked Hortman’s killing to fraud.
Minnesota’s initial probe into the day care fraud claims has not uncovered widespread wrongdoing, CNN reported. State officials reported that the child care centers Shirley’s video accused of fraud were operatingnormally. The Minnesota Star Tribune and CBS News investigated the day care centers in Shirley’s video, finding that at least seven of the businesses’ received citations for various violations, but no evidence of fraud.
Our ruling
Trump shared a video that alleged Walz had Hortman killed.
In 2019, Walz reappointed Boelter to a state board, but we found no evidence the two were closely acquainted or that Walz was somehow linked to the shootings. Boelter was first appointed to the board by Walz’s predecessor. Walz’s spokesperson previously said the governor appoints thousands of people of all political affiliations to boards and commissions and Walz had no relationship with Boelter.
In July, prosecutors said Boelter had alleged in a letter that he was acting on Walz’s orders, but they dismissed the letter’s claim as unsubstantiated fantasy. Prosecutors have named no other suspects in the case.
We rate Trump’s claim that Walz had Hortman assassinated False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Al Jazeera. Trump Targets Somali Americans, Claims They Are ‘Destroying America.’ 4 Dec. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiXL_rBeWp8.
Department of Justice. Six Additional Defendants Charged, One Defendant Pleads Guilty in Ongoing Fraud Schemes. 18 Dec. 2025, https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/six-additional-defendants-charged-one-defendant-pleads-guilty-ongoing-fraud-schemes.
“Walz, Democrats’ 2024 VP Pick, Drops Bid for Third Term as Minnesota Governor; Klobuchar Considers.” AP News, 5 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/tim-walz-minnesota-governor-not-running-fb037492e59e1e376f3be0559c235aec.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Dissolves After Defunding
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a key funder of public media including NPR and PBS, voted to dissolve itself after Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in federal funding. About 70% of CPB’s appropriations supported local TV and radio stations. The defunding, backed by President Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress, marks a culmination of long-standing conservative criticism of public media’s alleged liberal bias. CPB will now focus on distributing its remaining funds and preserving its archives at the University of Maryland. CPB President Patricia Harrison emphasized that the decision was made to protect public media’s integrity amid political attacks. Read More (Associated Press Rating)
Comcast Spins Off Versant Media Group
Comcast has finalized the separation of several of its cable network assets into a new company, Versant Media Group. Mark Lazarus will lead the entity as CEO. Versant is positioned to pursue partnerships and acquisitions in the media landscape, signaling Comcast’s strategic shift in managing its entertainment properties. Read More (MediaPost Rating)
“60 Minutes” Viewership Drops After Shelved CECOT Segment
CBS’s “60 Minutes” lost over 5 million viewers following the controversial decision to pull a segment investigating an El Salvadorian prison linked to the Trump administration. The episode, which was replaced on December 21 after internal editorial concerns about due diligence, had initially attracted 10.35 million viewers. Viewership plummeted to 4.89 million the following week, with a steep decline in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic. The pulled segment had briefly streamed in Canada and featured detainee allegations of torture. Read More (The Desk Rating)
