Category: Fact Checking

In February 2026, multiple social media posts claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer. 

The claim spread on X and Facebook, with several posts claiming Netanyahu was in a “critical” condition:  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NETANYAHU has been diagnosed with BLOOD CANCER just yesterday, plunging into a CRITICAL health condition that has stunned the nation and world leaders. This MAJOR development raises urgent questions about Israel’s leadership stability amid ongoing regional tensions.

(Facebook user BreakingPoint 360)

There was no credible evidence or official confirmation that Netanyahu has blood cancer. He has been the subject of similar rumors about his health in the past. We reached out to his office for a response to the claim and will update this story if we receive one. Given the lack of verified information, we’ve left this claim unrated.

As of this writing, no reputable news outlets had reported that Netanyahu was diagnosed with blood cancer. On Feb. 15, 2026, Netanyahu spoke at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He did not appear to be in “critical” condition, as the above Facebook post claimed, though we could not make a determination about his health based on appearances alone. 

A Google News search for “Netanyahu” and “cancer” brought up old health coverage about the Israeli prime minister. In December 2024, The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli news outlet, said Netanyahu underwent prostate removal surgery after he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection resulting from a benign prostate enlargement. His office reportedly said at the time that he received antibiotic treatment that “successfully eradicated the infection.” 

In February 2025, Netanyahu’s office released his medical report, which was covered by The Jerusalem Post. The report noted that, contrary to online rumors, he did not have prostate cancer. According to the report, Netanyahu underwent a pacemaker implantation in July 2023 and a 2024 examination determined he was not dependent on it. 

We asked the prime minister’s office for access to the report and will update this story if we receive it.

For further reading, Snopes has covered numerous rumors about Netanyahu. 

Sources

President Donald Trump has said that Americans are now paying or will pay “the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs,” thanks to the administration’s negotiations with pharmaceutical companies. The administration has announced discounted cash prices for a small number of brand-name drugs. There isn’t evidence Trump’s deals so far have led to broad decreases in drug prices, nor is it certain they will in the future.

Despite these caveats and ambiguities, Trump often has presented lower drug prices as a fait accompli. “We now are paying the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs,” he said in a Jan. 27 speech in Iowa. “Every other president tried for it. They didn’t try very hard. They didn’t get anything. I got it done.” 

“The American people were effectively subsidizing the cost of drugs for the entire world, and it’s not going to happen any longer,” he said during the Feb. 5 launch for TrumpRx, the new federal website pointing people toward cash prices negotiated by the administration for brand-name drugs. “We ended it.” 

The TrumpRx website makes similarly sweeping statements, claiming that the approach of basing U.S. prices off of prices in other countries — referred to as most favored nation, or MFN, pricing — is “guaranteeing huge savings for Americans.”

Trump’s efforts may have lowered prices for some consumers buying certain drugs. But experts told us there’s no guarantee of substantial savings for Americans in general.

Thus far, the Trump administration’s drug price negotiations have resulted in voluntary agreements with 16 companies, though many of the details remain unclear. Under those agreements, drug manufacturers have promised to offer discounts on select drugs to people who pay cash and are not using insurance. Companies have also agreed to launch new drugs or to offer Medicaid drugs at MFN prices. In exchange, the companies have said, they have been promised exemptions from tariffs and other benefits, such as exemptions from future mandatory MFN pricing.

“With rare exception,” the negotiations with drugmakers “don’t appear to have translated into actual savings for people at the pharmacy counter or for public or commercial payers yet,” Rena Conti, a health economist at Boston University, told us. These exceptions include certain weight loss and fertility drugs, which are often not covered by insurance to begin with and are now being offered at reduced cash prices, she said.

There is no single, easily tracked measure of drug prices in the U.S., making it challenging to assess broad claims about whether drug prices are rising or falling. Companies provide list prices, but individuals, health insurers and the government rarely pay these prices, often benefiting from rebates or other discounts. 

That said, there are no signs of widespread slashing of list prices in the U.S. “Typically in January, we will see price increases for already-launched brand drugs, and just like we’ve seen in previous years, we saw prices rise,” Conti said. The median list price increase for hundreds of brand-name drugs so far in 2026 was 4%, which is the same median increase as in 2025, according to the research firm 46brookyln.

When we asked whether Trump is claiming that Americans in general are now paying the lowest prices, a White House spokesperson asserted they would in the future. “We are going to be paying the same if not lower than other wealthy nations,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Either via TrumpRx or once the MFN deals are codified upon passage of Great Healthcare Plan.”

The Great Healthcare Plan is a series of health policy proposals, released Jan. 15, which Trump has called on Congress to pass as legislation. To lower drug prices, the plan calls for “codifying” MFN deals. The Trump administration has also said it will add more drugs to TrumpRx, and in December the administration released proposals to apply MFN pricing to a subset of Medicare beneficiaries.

It is unclear how or whether the MFN deals will be codified, however. Nor is it a given that even a widely applied MFN policy would reduce prices substantially.

Trump’s claim that he is the first president to lower drug prices also ignores past efforts that have had some success.

Separate from the MFN pricing efforts, the Trump administration has continued to negotiate lower Medicare prices for some specific drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act. However, this law was passed in 2022 under the Biden administration. 

And rather than promoting these Medicare negotiations, the Trump administration is “talking about this unclear political pressuring that the White House is applying in general in the health industry and specifically on drugs,” Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, told us. AEI is a conservative-leaning think tank. “Is there any way to actually objectively measure the impact of any of that? I don’t think there is.”

Below, we explain what we know and don’t know about the impacts of Trump’s MFN negotiations and proposed policies on drug prices.

TrumpRx Features Some Savings Amid Misleading Messages

There is some support for Trump’s claim that he has lowered drug costs, in the case of a few specific drugs being offered at relatively low cash prices.

However, TrumpRx, the website the administration built to promote these cash prices, echoes Trump’s exaggerated claims about the scope of the price reductions.

TrumpRx shows cash prices for 43 drugs from five manufacturers that made deals with the administration. People can either print a coupon to use at pharmacies or, in some cases, go to a manufacturer’s website to make the purchase.

GoodRx, a prescription drug coupon site that launched in 2011, has partnered with the administration to provide many of the TrumpRx-branded coupons, and people can in some cases use GoodRx to access coupons providing the same Trump administration-negotiated prices.

The TrumpRx website advertises the “lowest cash prices” and shows discounts of 50% to 93% off the list price. But most people, particularly those with insurance coverage, don’t pay the list price.

“Manufacturers have agreed to discount prices on some drugs that are not well covered by insurance or already have generic competition, and that’s not nothing, but it’s not necessarily going to help a lot of people, right now anyway,” Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF, told us. KFF is a nonpartisan health policy organization. She explained that most people with health insurance will fare better using their insurance than paying in cash.

For example, a person with health insurance who pays a flat copay for medications is unlikely to get a better price by going to TrumpRx, two economists from the University of Washington explained in an opinion piece published in STAT. In fact, the TrumpRx website says: “If you have insurance, check your co-pay first—it may be even lower.”

People with insurance also benefit from caps on their spending in the form of deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, the economists wrote, as well as prices for drugs negotiated by their insurers. But for now, drugs purchased via TrumpRx are not counted toward deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums. “A family might hit their out-of-pocket maximum by midyear using insurance, after which their insurer pays 100% of the prescription cost for the rest of the year,” the economists wrote. “Under TrumpRx, the family would pay full freight all year long, with no ceiling on their out-of-pocket spending.”

One group of people who are sometimes asked to pay list prices for drugs are those without insurance or whose insurance does not cover a specific drug, Cubanski explained.

But even for those without insurance or whose insurance doesn’t cover a certain drug, Conti said, there are better deals available on the U.S. market for some drugs featured on TrumpRx. “The majority of drugs that are listed on the TrumpRx website actually have generic competition, and for consumers it pays to shop,” she said. “You can get a better deal by simply buying the generic, even when this coupon is being offered.”

GoodRx or Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs, another website that negotiates with drug manufacturers, offer cheaper cash prices for generic versions of at least 18 of the 43 brand-name drugs promoted on TrumpRx, according to a review by STAT. TrumpRx does not notify people that generics may be cheaper than the brand-name drugs.

Conti did highlight some drugs for which cash prices appear to be “good deals.” These include insulin, the fertility drug Gonal-F and the GLP-1 weight loss drug Zepbound. Patients may benefit from low-cost insulin, which is offered at $25 per 10 milliliters, if they have gaps in their insurance coverage or have a health plan requiring high out-of-pocket payments, she said. Fertility and GLP-1 drugs for weight loss cost more but are often not covered by insurance even for those who have it, so patients may benefit from buying them for reduced cash prices.

Gonal-F is now available on TrumpRx at $168 for the lowest strength, compared with its list price of around $966. There were already discounts available for people paying for the drugs without insurance, but “the price that’s listed on the TrumpRx coupon is lower than the price being offered by the specialty pharmacy, even with other special discounts available,” Conti said.

Zepbound is being offered for $299 per month for the lowest dose, reduced from a list price of $1,087. (However, the lowest dose of the drug had previously been available for $349 per month for cash buyers.)

Cubanski said the latest weight loss medication discounts “can be seen as a pretty direct byproduct of negotiations between the manufacturers and the White House,” but said that the makers of these drugs have been “steadily offering increasing discounts” even before the negotiations. This is partly because for a while, there were shortages of the drugs, she explained, and companies have been allowed to market relatively inexpensive compounded versions, even though the drugs are under patent and do not have generics.

“The competitive pressures in the GLP-1 market have likely been responsible to some degree for bringing down cash pay prices,” Pragya Kakani, a health economist and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, told us. She added that it is “challenging to disentangle the effects from the Trump administration’s MFN initiatives vs. pre-existing competitive pressures.” 

Claims Touting Lowest International Prices Are Difficult to Verify

As for the claim on the website that TrumpRx is offering the “world’s lowest prices,” or the lowest in the developed world, this is challenging to check.

The Trump administration has provided limited information on how the prices were arrived at during the closed-door negotiations with drug companies. We asked the White House for more detail on what international prices the TrumpRx prices are being compared with, and a spokesperson told us the administration was using prices from other G7 nations but did not provide more details.

Cubanski said it is difficult to check whether prices are the lowest, as “there’s not a lot of transparency in drug pricing internationally.” It’s possible to find prices, but it’s unclear what rebates or discounts countries have negotiated off of these prices.

Conti agreed, adding that in many cases, brand-name drugs may not even be offered in other countries because other countries drop brand-name drugs once a generic is available. Since many of the drugs now promoted on TrumpRx are available as generics, it is challenging to determine international prices.

People can make statements about offering the lowest drug prices internationally “because it’s impossible to check,” Conti said.

Medicaid Deals With Unclear Impact

The Trump administration has also said that as part of the MFN deals, companies agreed to sell drugs at MFN prices to Medicaid programs. A voluntary initiative invites companies to negotiate prices for certain drugs “aligned with those paid in select other countries,” according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website. The initiative launched in January, a spokesperson for the agency told us.

It remains unclear exactly what drugs are being offered to Medicaid at these prices and what companies and states are participating, Cubanski said. The CMS spokesperson told us that the agency hasn’t yet published a list with these details.

It’s also not clear MFN prices would compare favorably to the prices the programs are already getting. “States pay among the lowest prices through the Medicaid program for prescription drugs of all payers in the U.S.,” Cubanski said. “So whether the so-called most favored nation price that pharmaceutical companies will be offering on specific medications is lower than what states are currently paying isn’t really something that we’re able to rigorously quantify.”

The average net Medicaid prices for top-selling drugs are 65% lower than those in Medicare Part D, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, Kakani said.

Furthermore, Cubanski said, “People on Medicaid pay very little if not nothing for prescriptions, so the savings would be to the state and federal government, not to people with Medicaid directly.”

Conti said that the larger current issue for drug affordability for people on Medicaid is that provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will lead to health care coverage losses. The CBO estimated that the law would increase the number of uninsured people in the U.S. by 10 million over 10 years, with 7.5 million of those due to changes to Medicaid. “The administration is weakening insurance protections at the same time that they are offering out the hope of these potential deals,” she said.

No Evidence of Impact on Private Insurance

Despite the discounts for a limited group of cash payers, experts said that the Trump administration’s MFN deals do not so far directly affect drug affordability for those with private insurance.

“The biggest affordability challenges are ones that are related to very high-cost brand drugs,” Conti said. “It’s not obvious that much of what the administration is pursuing right now is going to really make a difference for people who are commercially insured and who are using these high-cost brand drugs.”

Kakani said that the MFN deals have only addressed commercial insurance in a limited way, to the degree that the negotiations might indirectly influence negotiations between drugmakers and insurers. However, she added that the TrumpRx prices “are unlikely to be lower than net prices commercial plans were already negotiating,” as many of the drugs “face significant competition.”

Recently, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has argued that the cash discounts the Trump administration has negotiated will translate into wider price reductions, including for people with private insurance, due to increased transparency.

“Now that everyone knows the true worldwide most favored nation drug prices, it’s going to allow employers, insurers and everyone in between to be able to take out the middlemen and drive those prices down,” Oz said in a Feb. 6 CNN interview. He suggested on CNN two days later that if employers saw a drug price on TrumpRx that was lower than what they were paying, they would ask for that price.

However, Conti disagreed that transparency would uniformly lead to better deals for Americans. She explained that the current opaque system likely allows some Americans to get particularly good deals on drug prices, because plans and pharmacy benefit managers are negotiating and passing on some savings as lower out-of-pocket costs and premiums.

“If we move towards more radical transparency in this system, yes, there are consumers that will benefit, absolutely,” she continued. “But it also might erode the company’s willingness to offer really good deals” to some payers.

Uncertainty About Broader MFN Policies

Trump has often said that drug prices will dramatically fall due to MFN policies, referring to discounts of as much as 80% or 90%.

As we have said, proposed MFN strategies range from voluntary deals to launch new drugs or offer Medicaid drugs at lower prices to mandatory MFN pricing for some Medicare beneficiaries or a “codified” MFN strategy.

However, experts said that many details are missing regarding these strategies. Drugs are often launched in the U.S. before they are available in other countries, Conti said. It’s unclear how the U.S. will ensure it is getting the lowest prices internationally if there are no prices in other countries yet.

In the case of Medicare, CMS has proposed mandatory pilot programs testing MFN prices for some beneficiaries. But it’s unclear what drugs and companies will participate. Drug companies that voluntarily agreed to Medicaid MFN pricing may be exempted, Cubanski said, which “could potentially undercut savings.” CMS has estimated that its two initiatives — impacting drugs given by physicians or prescription drugs picked up at pharmacies — will generate around $12 billion of savings to Medicare over seven years and $14 billion over six years. “That’s not nothing, but given that Medicare spends roughly $200 billion per year approximately on drugs,” Cubanski said, the programs don’t “really move the needle all that much.”

As for broader, mandatory MFN pricing, it could face political headwinds, Cubanski said. “Historically, Republicans have not been in support of efforts to regulate drug prices,” she said, and pharmaceutical companies would also be expected to push back.

Even if widely implemented, MFN pricing may or may not lead to widespread and substantial reductions in drug prices.

A survey of health policy experts published Feb. 4 in Health Affairs found that around half thought MFN pricing would “substantially reduce” average net prescription drug prices in the U.S. for branded drugs, even if such a policy were broadly implemented. 

“The overall takeaway was it’s really hard to predict what the effect of this policy is going to be, and the simplistic idea that this is going to suddenly reduce drug prices by … 80%, 90% are probably just that – overly simplistic,” said Kakani, the study’s lead author.

Companies would likely change their international strategies in response to a broad MFN policy, Kakani said. Companies could make it more difficult for the U.S. government to determine what other countries were paying, by issuing rebates in other countries and not disclosing them; they could delay product launches abroad, particularly in countries with very low prices, to set a higher benchmark; or they could increase international prices to a degree that the U.S. did not pay significantly less than before.

Kakani added that drug prices in the U.S. are not as high as Trump’s 80% or 90% discount claims have implied, when compared with other countries. A RAND report, based on 2022 data, found that on average, U.S. prices are 2.78 times higher than in other developed countries, and 4.22 times higher when looking at brand-name drugs before adjusting for discounts by manufacturers, as we’ve written in the past. Generic drugs had lower prices overall in the U.S. than in most countries.

Antos pointed to practical challenges to setting MFN prices. For example, he said it is unclear how the proposed Medicare programs to try out MFN pricing are supposed to work. “CMS doesn’t have the authority to force Germany to tell them everything about their pricing, and they also don’t have the ability to get Pfizer to open its books,” he said.

“Trying to tie it to some kind of European price is doing it the hard way,” Antos said, suggesting that if the U.S. wants price controls, it could just ask more broadly for the already-good prices it gets for Medicaid. “We have domestic reference pricing right here.”

While Trump claimed that it would be other countries that now pay higher prices, Antos said that “by and large” manufacturers “are not in a position to renegotiate a price” with other countries. (As part of tariff negotiations, the U.K. did agree to increase what it pays for new drugs, although it’s unclear what will happen with drug prices in other countries overall.)

Antos said that regardless, any attempt at price setting is “not going to necessarily translate into lower prices at the drug store for most people.” 

And it will be difficult to evaluate whether U.S. policies are making a difference for consumers. If copays or deductibles went down, for example, perhaps insurance companies would make up for this by slightly increasing the growth rate of premiums, Antos said, which would be hard to quantify because premiums go up each year and are driven by hospital and doctor costs.

“In other words, it’s very hard to know what the net impact of any of these policies is,” he said.

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Claim:

Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “destroyed” their careers after arresting a Black federal judge in her driveway without a warrant in Alexandria, Virginia.

Rating:

In February 2026, posts circulated online (archived) claiming that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had “destroyed” their careers after arresting a Black federal judge in her driveway without a warrant.

One Facebook profile shared the claim alongside a 40-minute long video, titling the post, “ICE Agents Careers Destroyed After Arrest of Black Federal Judge in Her Driveway Without a Warrant.”

The claim primarily circulated on Facebook (archived, archived) and TikTok (archived, archived). Snopes readers also wrote in asking us to verify the claim and video.

According to these videos, ICE agents Craig Delano and Tara Schofield arrested federal judge Nadine Ashford in her driveway in Alexandria, Virginia, without a warrant, an incident the posts claimed led to a trial and a combined ten-year prison sentence for the agents.

Search engine queries on Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo returned no results for reputable news reports about Ashford’s alleged arrest and the trials of Delano and Schofield (archived, archived, archived, archived). “Nadine Ashford” did not appear in a government register of federal judges. The video that circulated alongside the claim also appeared to have been generated using artificial intelligence.

Given the above, we rate this claim false.

Stories claiming ICE agents arrested a Black judge and later faced legal consequences have circulated online in multiple forms since at least Feb. 5, 2026. The details shift between versions, including the names of the judge and agents involved, as well as the location of the alleged incident (archived, archived). One version came from a YouTube channel that said in its video description it used AI to illustrate its stories. We found no evidence that any version of the “Nadine Ashford” story was true.

Video and narration showed signs of AI

The video that several TikTok and Facebook pages shared alongside the claim about Ashford’s arrest was AI-generated.

At the start of the video, the supposed ICE agent appears to hold a flashlight or a similar object in his right hand. That object appears to morph in and out of existence as the agent’s hand moves — a common artifact in AI-generated footage.

A frame-by-frame analysis of the clip at around 9 seconds in also revealed several frames where the ICE agent’s hand was distorted in an unnatural way, another known sign of AI manipulation.

(TikTok user @news.media09)

The video’s narration also appeared to be AI-generated. At approximately 19 seconds, the narrator reads, “…gated communities in the DC metro area,” but leaves an unnaturally long pause between “DC” and “Metro.” Such unnatural cadence is typical of AI-generated audio.

At time code 4:20, the narrator reads, “Neighbors were watching and someone had already pressed record,” pronouncing “record” like criminal record, not the action of pressing record on a recording device. This error would have been obvious to a person reading out the text who understood the context, but less so to an AI text-to-speech tool.

Snopes previously debunked a similar staged video that claimed to show police pulling over a judge and smashing her taillight during a traffic stop.

Claim:

Footage from NASCAR’s Daytona 500 victory celebration on Feb. 15, 2026, authentically depicted NBA legend Michael Jordan touching the backside of driver Tyler Reddick’s young son.

Rating:

Context

While the video is authentic, social media posts about Jordan’s intent are speculative.

NASCAR driver Tyler Reddick raced NBA legend Michael Jordan’s team, 23XI, to Daytona 500 victory on Feb. 15, 2026, placing first in one of the biggest U.S. racing events of the year. 

In footage of the celebration following the win — during which Reddick and Jordan lifted the trophy together alongside the rest of their team — Jordan appeared to touch Reddick’s son’s backside in a way many people online said was inappropriate.

The video spread on multiple platforms (archived, archived, archived, archived), racking up millions of views and reactions.

Many people searched Snopes for confirmation that the video was authentic. The footage was indeed real, meaning not generated with artificial intelligence or otherwise edited; official NASCAR video (at 4:00:03) shows the moment during the team’s celebration (archived):

Jordan grabbed the child’s backside about nine times and then brushed his leg approximately eight times before the child turned around and bounced with excitement, looking out into the crowd. Because of this, we’ve rated this claim true. However, posts about Jordan’s intent were speculative.

The child, Reddick’s son, was seen interacting with Jordan multiple times throughout the video. At 3:58:33, for example, Jordan lifted him onto the platform and wrapped his arm around the child’s shoulder.

Reddick addressed the circulated footage during a radio interview on Feb. 17 with SiriusXM’s Stephen A. Smith, who asked Reddick about the “media backlash” following the celebration with his family. Reddick responded:

From my perspective, I’ve gotten to know Michael and his family very well over the years I’ve been here with 23XI, and I don’t see what other people see when it comes to this. For me, it’s a huge moment; this is the biggest moment of my career. It’s a huge moment for my family and for his family, and I just put that off to the side and think about the look on [Michael Jordan’s wife] Yvette’s face and the whole family and his whole group when they got to victory lane too, and just how happy everybody was celebrating together. So, that’s where I’m at with it.

We reached out to 23XI Racing as well as Jordan’s and Reddick’s representatives for further comment and will update this story if we receive a response.

Several social media users claimed the most widely circulated clip lacked context: that the child was splashed with Gatorade and ice during the celebration and that Jordan was attempting to dislodge ice from his shirt or something similar. 

While it is true that the child was splashed during the celebration and his shirt appeared to be wet in the clip, it was unclear whether this had anything to do with Jordan touching his backside. As of this writing, Jordan has not offered any public explanation as to why he touched Reddick’s son.

In February 2026, a rumor resurfaced on social media claiming that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was having an affair with Corey Lewandowski, a former campaign manager for President Donald Trump who has been described in some news reports as Noem’s “de facto chief of staff.” 

The posts cited a Feb. 12 Wall Street Journal report that discussed the pair’s rumored relationship. As of this writing, both Noem and Lewandowski are married with children, a detail highlighted in the online claims.

Multiple Snopes readers reached out to us and searched our website with questions about the alleged romantic relationship between Noem and Lewandowski.

The rumor has circulated online since at least September 2021, when the conservative website American Greatness reported (archived) that the two were allegedly involved in an extramarital affair, citing multiple anonymous sources.

It resurfaced two years later when British tabloid newspaper Daily Mail published an article (archived) claiming the pair had engaged in a yearslong “clandestine affair.” On the same day, MeidasTouch also published an article (archived) and Facebook post about the alleged romantic relationship, citing the Daily Mail’s reporting.

In September 2022, Lewandowski accepted a plea deal to resolve allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward a Republican Party donor at a Las Vegas event, as The Associated Press reported. The AP added that he did “not admit to any wrongdoing.” More recently, he has faced scrutiny in his role as a special government employee with DHS. 

Snopes was unable to independently verify whether Noem and Lewandowski were having or were ever engaged in an affair. Reports making the claim have primarily relied on anonymous sources — therefore, we were unable to scrutinize their allegations — and both of them have publicly denied the rumor on multiple occasions.

In an emailed response to Snopes, an unnamed DHS spokesperson said, “This Department doesn’t waste time with salacious, baseless gossip.” 

The White House referred us to comments Trump made during a Feb. 16, 2026, press gaggle, in which he suggested he was unaware of the rumored affair. 

Below is a breakdown of the reports about an alleged affair between Noem and Lewandowski.

Noem dismissed affair rumor after American Greatness report

On Sept. 28, 2021, American Greatness published a report (archived) citing anonymous sources who alleged Noem and Lewandowski had been involved in a monthslong relationship. One source reportedly told the conservative website that some members of Congress referred to the affair as “an open secret.”

American Greatness did not provide further details about the alleged affair in its article.

The following day, Noem, who was serving as South Dakota’s governor at the time, dismissed the rumor on Twitter (now X) by calling it “total garbage and a disgusting lie.” Multiple news media outlets reported her response.

(Twitter, now X)

“These old, tired attacks on conservative women are based on a falsehood that we can’t achieve anything without a man’s help,” Noem tweeted. “I love [my husband] Bryon. I’m proud of the God-fearing family we’ve raised together. Now I’m getting back to work.”

Daily Mail reports reignited speculation

In September 2023, the Daily Mail published an article (archived) claiming the pair had been engaged in a “years-long clandestine affair” that began “in 2019, if not before.”

According to the newspaper, neither Noem nor Lewandowski denied the affair when initially contacted. The outlet reported that Noem released a statement criticizing the article’s timing while Lewandowski did not respond to a request for comment. However, a spokesperson for Noem reportedly pushed back after the article was published, insisting the two never had an affair, the Daily Mail reported.

The British tabloid claimed that its investigation “uncovered extensive evidence” of a romantic relationship, including “dozens of trips that mixed business with pleasure, flights on donors’ private planes, and stays at luxury resorts where their intimacy was observed and noted.”

According to the Daily Mail, former Trump operative Charles Johnson described one such incident, writing in a Substack post that he had seen the pair behaving “in a very flirtatious manner” during an August 2020 meeting of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) at The Cloister resort on Sea Island, Georgia. Although it was not possible to find the exact post in which Johnson reportedly said this, he did post a Substack article in which he claimed Noem and Lewandowski “seemed to be dating” at the Sea Island event “despite being married to other people” (archived).

Johnson reportedly told the Daily Mail that he saw Noem “discreetly take Lewandowski’s hand and put it in her lap” as he “put his arm on her back.”

The newspaper alleged that the pair became “virtually inseparable companions on the Trump [2020] campaign trail” and that their relationship was an “open secret” at the White House and among GOP lobbyists and political consultants at the time.

In another example, the tabloid said Noem and Lewandowski attended the Republican Governors Association event at the St. Regis in Aspen, Colorado, in summer 2021. Sources reportedly told the paper that Noem missed several events she was expected to attend, with one person alleging she was “holed up” with Lewandowski at a nearby hotel.

However, it was not possible to independently verify the details in the Daily Mail article.

After the report was published, a spokesperson for Noem denied the allegation, calling it “false.” In a statement provided to Sioux Falls Live, a news media outlet based in South Dakota, Noem’s spokesperson also criticized the Daily Mail for allegedly failing to publish Noem’s denial of the affair and accused the outlet of relying on a reporter with a history of “questionable journalistic integrity.”

The statement read, in part:

It is shameful that Sioux Falls Live would report based on a false and inflammatory tabloid rumor. It was also false that Governor Noem did not deny the allegation to the Daily Mail. They failed to print the denial and failed to appropriately correct the story when that failure was pointed out to them.

As Governor Noem said during her endorsement speech for President Trump: ‘Yes, I will be attacked for speaking the truth to all of you tonight. Yes, I expect Joe Biden, these candidates, their political operatives, and the media will perpetuate ugly, hateful misinformation in an attempt to destroy me and my family because of my opinions. It’s nothing new. I’m getting used to it honestly.’

Unfortunately, the Daily Mail piece was par for the course for this individual’s history as a reporter with questionable journalistic integrity.

In April 2025, the Daily Mail published another report (archived) claiming Noem and Lewandowski were living in rental apartments located across the street from each other in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

A resident of Noem’s building reportedly told the tabloid: “I’ve seen them together here both in the elevator and in common areas.”

The Daily Mail also published photos that it claimed showed Lewandowski leaving Noem’s apartment complex with a duffel bag.

In April 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Lewandowski denied the alleged affair.

WSJ report further revives rumor

A Wall Street Journal report published on Feb. 12, 2026, revived rumors about Noem and Lewandowski’s relationship. 

According to the news outlet, the pair’s “close relationship had already made Trump and his top advisers uncomfortable.” The Wall Street Journal also reported that Lewandowski wanted to serve as Noem’s chief of staff, but “Trump rejected the idea due to reports of a romantic relationship between the two — which he has continued to bring up,” citing unnamed officials. 

The report further claimed that Lewandowski spends time at Noem’s government-owned waterfront home on a military base in Washington, and that the pair “do little to hide their relationship inside the department.” Unnamed sources also told the Wall Street Journal that Noem and Lewandowski allegedly use a luxury 737 MAX jet to travel around the country. 

Snopes was unable to independently verify the claims made in the Wall Street Journal’s report.

During a Feb. 16 press gaggle with Trump, a reporter referenced media reports about Noem’s alleged relationship with Lewandowski, asking the president whether it was a “bad look” for his administration and whether Noem would remain in her role.

Trump responded, “I don’t know about that. I mean, I haven’t heard that. I’ll find out about it, but I have not heard that.” 

A White House spokesperson referred Snopes to Trump’s comments during the press gaggle.

For further reading, Snopes has previously addressed numerous rumors about Noem, including a false claim that she said the Bible was written in English.

Sources

Images circulated online in February 2026 allegedly depicting U.S. President Donald Trump with young girls, which social media users claimed (archived) were unredacted images from the Department of Justice’s Epstein files released in countries outside the U.S., such as France. 

The DOJ began releasing batches of the files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in December 2025 following a surge of public pressure for access. Both text and images in the files were heavily redacted, which according to a notice on the DOJ’s online library of the files was to protect survivors’ identities.

The claim that other countries had access to unredacted files spread on multiple platforms (archived, archived), racking up millions of views. Dozens of users in the comments appeared to believe the claim. 

The earliest post (archived) of the claim we found appeared on Feb. 5, 2026 — days before a small group of U.S. lawmakers reviewed unredacted Epstein files. The claim that other countries were releasing unredacted files appeared alongside two images allegedly showing Trump with two young girls in the post, which read, “WARNING: this is way worse than you can imagine. Other countries are releasing the Epstein files unredacted. It’s bad, folks.”

(Threads user @bodycoachderek)

Other accounts more specifically claimed France released unredacted files. “Trump can control the US DOJ, but other countries like France have the unredacted version,” said one X post (archived) with nearly 4 million views.

There was no evidence countries outside the U.S., such as France, have official access to unredacted Epstein files and have released them, revealing previously unseen images.

We reached out to the DOJ seeking comment on whether the department had released any files to other countries, and a department official responded, “The department has not shared the files with any nation, and those photos of the President are fake.”

Snopes also reached out to the French Ministry of Justice and did not immediately receive a response. We will update this story if we do. Until then, we’ve left this claim unrated.

There was also no evidence that either of the two images that circulated with the claim, both of which appeared to show Trump with young girls, were ever included in any Epstein file releases. Both images had signs of artificial intelligence generation.

Have other countries released unredacted Epstein files? 

The only evidence we found of the claim appeared on social media from unreliable, unofficial accounts. If nations other than the U.S., such as France, were releasing unredacted Epstein files, credible news media outlets would have reported the news. 

A straightforward Google search regarding whether France released unredacted Epstein files failed to reveal pertinent results. Top results were primarily related to U.S. lawmakers reviewing unredacted files and European leaders facing their own investigations for ties to Epstein. A search replacing “France” with “Europe” revealed similar results.

(Google)

The Threads account that posted the earliest version of the claim we could find appeared dubious — it did not appear to have any credibility in an official capacity. The account appeared to belong to a fitness coach based near Seattle, and the user’s profile and posts were highly politically charged. Several indicated use of artificial intelligence. We contacted the account seeking comment on the claim and images’ origin and will update this story if we receive a response.

In short, claims that France had access to unredacted files were groundless. The claim spread from unreliable accounts and neither credible news media outlets nor political leaders made any official statements regarding the claim.

No evidence images of Trump with girls were authentic

The two images first appeared online together in February 2026, and as far as Snopes was able to determine, they were likely to have been generated with AI.

They contained classic hallmarks of AI generation such as unnatural light patterns, abnormally smooth skin and irregular facial features. For example, a magnified look at the girl pictured above reveals one eye appears bigger and more defined than the other eye, and a shadowed blur extends outward from her face unnaturally.

(Threads user @bodycoachderek)

The second image appeared to be a screenshot of a TikTok post, but Snopes was unable to find the original image on TikTok. The children pictured wore similar white dresses and haircuts, indicating possible conformity with a general AI-generation prompt. Shadows in the child’s hair pictured in the lower image also appeared to exactly mirror themselves — further evidence of AI-generation.

(Threads user @bodycoachderek)

In sum …

There is no evidence countries outside the U.S., such as France, released unredacted Epstein files. The DOJ said in an email to Snopes that it did not “share the files with any nation.”

Many AI images depicting Trump with young girls have circulated over the years, and while we were unable to definitively determine the images were AI-generated or AI-altered, the two images contained clear visual indications of AI.

One of the sticking points in the standoff between Democrats and Republicans over funding for the Department of Homeland Security has been the Trump administration’s expanded use of administrative warrants to forcibly enter people’s homes to make immigration arrests. Democrats argue the new DHS policy runs afoul of the Constitution and have demanded immigration officers obtain judicial warrants — a higher legal bar that requires a judge’s approval — to forcibly enter a home.

The Trump administration contends that immigrants in the country illegally who have received a final order of removal from immigration judges are not entitled to Fourth Amendment protections — a position many immigration law experts dispute. And several lawmakers have argued that the additional requirement for judicial warrants would significantly curtail immigration enforcement efforts.

Funding for DHS lapsed on Feb. 14 as Republicans have balked at Democrats’ demands to rein in several immigration enforcement measures. Among other requests, Democrats are asking for a ban on ICE agents wearing masks, requirements for displaying identification and using body-worn cameras, and the use of judicial warrants on private property. As Congress failed to pass legislation on Feb. 13, parts of DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Coast Guard, will be affected by the lapse in funding. ICE has enough money to keep operating due to billions in funding from the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last summer.

Debate over the use of administrative versus judicial warrants has emerged as one of the main impediments in the negotiations.

During a press conference on Jan. 30, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries emphasized that Democrats would “not walk away from” their demand that “judicial warrants should be required before ICE can storm homes and rip people out of their cars.” On Feb. 4, Jeffries joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in writing a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to propose “targeted enforcement,” where “DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant.” In the letter, Jeffries and Schumer proposed 10 “common sense solutions that protect constitutional rights and ensure responsible law enforcement.”

Meanwhile, during a Feb. 1 interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson called the Democrats’ demand for judicial warrants “completely unacceptable,” stating that “immigration has always been enforced through administrative warrants.” Also, on Feb. 3, House Speaker Johnson said that “adding an entirely new layer of judicial warrants” was “unimplementable.”

We’ll explain the differences between the two types of warrants and how the Trump administration’s use of administrative warrants has departed from past practices.

Judicial vs. Administrative Warrants

According to the National Immigration Law Center, judicial warrants are “formal written [orders] authorizing a law enforcement officer to make an arrest, a seizure, or a search.” They are issued by state and federal courts and signed by judges or magistrate judges. As these warrants allow search, seizures and arrests on private property, they are more specific than administrative warrants, and include details like the address, time frame and targets of the search.

Administrative warrants authorize law enforcement officers with federal agencies to make an arrest or seizure, but not a search. “An administrative warrant does not confer authority to enter a home or private area,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service explained in a 2021 report, linking to a 2007 DHS letter.

“Administrative warrants are not reviewed or signed by a federal judge or even an immigration judge, they are reviewed and signed by immigration officers,” John Gihon, an immigration attorney and past chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Central Florida Chapter, told us in an email.

There are two forms of administrative warrants, known as I-200 and I-205 forms. According to the American Immigration Council, I-200 forms are issued to arrest “anyone federal agents believe to be present in the United States in violation of federal immigration law.” Conversely, the I-205 form “authorizes an immigration officer to arrest and deport someone who has previously been ordered removed from the United States.”

Under the Trump administration, immigration arrests by ICE have increased considerably, and agents can more quickly obtain administrative, versus judicial, warrants, experts said.

Regarding Speaker Johnson’s characterization of judicial warrant requirements as “unimplementable,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and U.S. immigration policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us in a phone interview that when you consider “the number of arrests that the Department of Homeland Security says that they made last year, which is in the hundreds of thousands … if they had to get judicial warrants for all of those people, that would certainly be a significant administrative burden.”

Historically, Sen. Johnson’s statement that immigration enforcement has “always” been conducted with administrative warrants is accurate. According to Gihon, “immigration law has always been enforced through [administrative] warrants,” as “[u]nder the Immigration and Nationality Act, a judicial warrant is not required to make an immigration arrest.”

However, the Trump administration has determined — contrary to the practice of previous administrations — that administrative warrants allow immigration officers to “arrest illegal aliens with final orders of removal in their homes,” as DHS has said. This position has raised concerns about the Fourth Amendment.

Fourth Amendment and Rights of Noncitizens

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” That has historically prevented immigration agents with only an administrative warrant from forcibly entering homes.

In an analysis updated on Feb. 4, Hannah James, a counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, wrote that “the home receives the highest protection under the Fourth Amendment,” and reiterated that the ability to enter a home with a judicial versus an administrative warrant is “very different from a Fourth Amendment perspective.”

However, in January, the Associated Press obtained a leaked May 12, 2025, memo written by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, in which he said: “Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”

Lyons was referring to the I-205 warrants, which target noncitizens with a final order of removal. According to an American Immigration Council fact sheet, final orders of removal are issued when “an immigration judge finds a noncitizen to be removable” and the noncitizen fails to file an appeal within 30 days, waives the right to appeal or has an appeal dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. The government can then choose to execute the removal order, where it notifies the noncitizen to surrender to ICE for deportation or face arrest.

In using the I-205 warrant, the DHS memo said, immigration officers should knock on a resident’s door and identify themselves. Then, they should “allow those inside the residence a reasonable chance to act lawfully. Should the alien refuse admittance, ICE officers and agents should use only a necessary and reasonable amount of force to enter the alien’s residence, following proper notification of the officer’s or agent’s authority and intent to enter.”

In a Feb. 4 DHS press release setting “the record straight on administrative warrants,” DHS stated that there is “broad judicial recognition that illegal aliens aren’t entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens.” Accordingly, the press release said, “While administrative warrants may satisfy the Fourth Amendment for any arrest of an illegal alien, ICE currently uses these warrants to enter an illegal alien’s residence only when the alien has received a final order of removal from an Immigration Judge.”

Therefore, immigration enforcement agencies have claimed the power to use administrative warrants to enter private homes to arrest noncitizens with final orders of removal. However, immigration experts told us this interpretation runs contrary to constitutional protections, particularly the Fourth Amendment.

Bush-Joseph told us that “the understanding had been that immigrants, like U.S. citizens, were protected by the Fourth Amendment from forcible entry into their homes without a judicial warrant.”

James wrote that the Supreme Court “has never held, nor suggested, that undocumented immigrants within the United States receive lesser Fourth Amendment protection than citizens or noncitizens with legal status.” James explained that “among lower courts, the [prevailing view] is that undocumented immigrants within the United States have the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens.”

On Feb. 3, Speaker Johnson described his frustration with limitations on administrative warrants, specifically when someone runs into a private home. Johnson commented that “the controversy has erupt where if someone is … going to be apprehended and they run behind a closed door and lock the door. I mean, what is ICE supposed to do?”

The DHS press release echoed such concerns, arguing that “[b]ecause Congress hasn’t created a mechanism to obtain a judicial warrant, this meant that under previous presidential administrations, ICE would sit outside the homes of fugitive aliens waiting for them to come outside before arresting them.” DHS said, “Illegal aliens quickly identified this loophole” and would “openly taunt the ICE officers” waiting outside.

When asked about the situation Johnson described, Gihon said via email, “Prior to the current Trump term, immigration officers were trained not to enter private residences or private areas of public property without consent or an exception to the 4th amendment’s warrant requirement.”

We reached out to Johnson’s office for comment, but did not receive a response.

The May 2025 DHS memo said that “standard exceptions to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement apply equally in the context of Form I-205 warrants,” including getting consent to go into a person’s home and “exigent circumstances,” such as “hot pursuit,” risks of evidence destruction or potential violence, attempts to flee, and “a substantial risk of harm to the persons involved or to the law enforcement process if the officer or agent must wait for a warrant.”

According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, the hot pursuit doctrine “provides that police may pursue a fleeing felony suspect into a home, when they have probable cause to make an arrest and when they set that arrest in motion in a public place.”

However, Gihon told us that the hot pursuit exception wouldn’t apply to arrests for civil immigration violations. “The U.S. Supreme Court has held that hot pursuit does not even extend to all criminal offenses,” he said, citing the 2021 Supreme Court case Lange v. California.

Referring to the DHS concerns about judicial warrants, James wrote that “DHS’s view that it lacks sufficient access to judicial warrants is not a valid basis for the agency to dispense with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment,” and that “constraints on ICE’s ability to obtain judicial warrants … may very well reflect Congress’s decided judgment that civil immigration violations should not be pursued by entering people’s homes.”

Finally, regarding the DHS position that ICE can use administrative warrants to enter a person’s residence when there is a final order of removal, Gihon told us that he was unaware of “any previous controlling interpretation of administrative or constitutional law” that would permit such entry.

Ultimately, the issue could be decided by the courts. James wrote that “the case law in this area is sparse,” citing three rulings by District Courts. “The paucity of case law is likely in part because DHS has historically conceded that administrative arrest warrants do not authorize ICE officers to enter people’s homes to arrest them. As a result, courts have rarely had occasion to comment on the issue.”

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Claim:

In April 2009, Jeffrey Epstein emailed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in China, saying he “loved” a torture video.

Rating:

Context

Epstein wrote “I loved the torture video” to Dubai-based tycoon Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem. Netanyahu was not in China at the time of the email. In April 2009, Netanyahu met with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Jerusalem.

In early 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of millions of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein revealed numerous email exchanges the disgraced financier allegedly had with prominent individuals. Days after the release, numerous social media users shared an April 2009 email Epstein sent in which he praised a “torture video” he received from someone who was in China. 

Many people online claimed the recipient, whose name was initially redacted, was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they said was in China at the time of the email exchange. Screenshots of the files circulating online indicate the email exchange occurred on April 24 and 25, 2009. The exchange is as follows:

EPSTEIN: where are you? are you ok , i loved the torture video

REDACTED EMAIL ADDRESS: I am in china I will be in the US 2nd week of may 

Some social media users who shared the rumor included a screenshot of a purported news article, which they suggested showed the Israeli prime minister was in China in April 2009. Another screenshot of a Wikipedia article shows Netanyahu was in the United States on May 18, 2009, which some users claimed further supported the theory he was the person emailing with Epstein.

(X user @jakeshieldsajj)

Epstein did send the above email about a “torture video” to an unknown recipient who claimed to be in China. However, Netanyahu was not the person exchanging emails with Epstein. He was not in China at the time, according to various sources. The person in the email was a Dubai-based business tycoon. As such, we rate this claim false.

In mid-February 2026, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., identified the recipient of the “torture video” email as Dubai-based tycoon Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and noted that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that identification. Bin Sulayem subsequently resigned from his position as chairperson of DP World, a logistics company.

According to the Epstein email files released by the DOJ, Epstein sent the email in question to a redacted recipient on April 24, 2009. On April 25, Epstein also wrote back saying, “Hope to see you,” after the recipient said they would be in the U.S. in May. 

(Department of Justice)

The article shared on social media clearly stated that on April 23, 2009, Netanyahu met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Jerusalem — not China. An archived copy of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ news release about their meeting can be found here. 

On May 18, 2009, Netanyahu met then-U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., where they gave shared remarks to the press. On May 19, Netanyahu met with congressional leaders, according to news reports. By May 20, he was back in Jerusalem, The New York Times reported.

It’s unlikely Epstein would have been planning to meet Netanyahu within that time frame. Between 2008 and 2009, Epstein was serving an 18-month sentence in a Palm Beach County, Florida, jail for sex crimes involving a minor. According to a Washington Post investigation, Epstein was allowed to leave jail to go to his office during the day and return at night as part of a work-release program. He served 13 months in jail and was released in July 2009. 

Snopes has reported extensively on various claims related to the Epstein files.

Sources

Claim:

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi stole a dog from a Hurricane Katrina survivor who lost their parents in a murder-suicide and sued the child’s grandparents when they attempted to get it back.

Rating:

What’s True

According to reports, Bondi adopted a dog from a Florida animal rescue after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Months later, the dog’s owners found the animal and asked Bondi to return it. She refused, and the owners, who were caring for their grandchildren whose parents died before the storm, sued to get the pet back.

What’s False

The dog’s owners sued Bondi, not the other way around. Bondi never faced criminal charges of theft in relation to her adoption of the dog.

What’s Undetermined

Since 2006, numerous news media outlets have reported that the owners’ grandchildren lost their parents to murder-suicide. Obituaries also show that both parents died on the same day. However, it was not possible to independently verify whether the couple died in a murder-suicide. Snopes contacted The Atlantic magazine, which wrote about the alleged murder-suicide, and a coroner in Louisiana for more information.

In February 2026, after The Atlantic magazine published an in-depth feature about U.S Attorney General Pam Bondi, a claim (archived) circulated online that Bondi once stole a dog from a Hurricane Katrina survivor who lost their parents in a murder-suicide and then sued the dog’s owners when they attempted to get it back. 

For example, the Facebook page Occupy Democrats wrote:

BREAKING: Pam Bondi once tried to steal a dog from an orphan hurricane victim and then sued his grandparents when they tried to get it back!

[…]

Bondi adopted a dog from a shelter in 2005, Master Tank, who had been lost after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. But Master Tank belonged to the four-year-old grandson of Steve and Dorreen Couture, who was recovering from losing his parents in a murder-suicide and was left homeless by the hurricane. 

Versions of the claim circulated on X, Instagram, Threads and Bluesky, while Snopes readers also contacted us seeking the truth behind the rumor.

According to court records from Pinellas County, near Tampa, Florida, Steven and Dorreen Couture from Louisiana sued Bondi in 2006 after they claimed she refused to return their dog. The couple reportedly lost their home in Hurricane Katrina and had to give their two dogs to a local shelter. By the time they located the pets to take them to their new home, an animal rescue in Florida had adopted both animals out. 

Bondi adopted one of these dogs, a St. Bernard named Master Tank, and initially refused to give him back to the Coutures. According to court records, the resulting lawsuit settled out of court and Bondi and another woman returned the pets to the Louisiana family in 2007. 

The court records show Bondi did not sue the Coutures and never faced criminal charges in relation to her adoption of Master Tank.

Since 2006, numerous news media outlets, including The Atlantic, have reported that the owners’ grandchildren lost their parents to murder-suicide. Obituaries also show that both parents died on the same day. However, it was not possible to independently verify whether the couple died in a murder-suicide. Snopes contacted The Atlantic and the relevant coroner in Louisiana for confirmation.

We also reached out to Bondi for more information about the court case. We await replies to our queries.

Therefore, we’ve rated this claim a mixture of true, false and undetermined elements.

Coutures gave dogs up after Hurricane Katrina

The Ocala Star-Banner newspaper in Florida reported that Steven Couture said he handed over two dogs — a St. Bernard named Master Tank and a shepherd mix named Nila — over to a temporary rescue in St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans, in September 2005 with the understanding they would hold them “for at least six months” for him. Instead, the next month, Bondi adopted Master Tank and another Florida woman named Rhonda Rineker adopted Nila from a rescue in Pinellas County, according to the report.

The Coutures reportedly tracked Master Tank and Nila to the Tampa Bay area in January 2006 after learning they were no longer in Louisiana.

On June 27, 2006, days before the Coutures filed a lawsuit against Bondi, Rineker and the Humane Society of Pinellas County, Steven Couture made a public plea to Bondi and Rineker to “please give me my dogs back,” the Tampa Bay Times reported.

The paper reported: “Couture, with cameras pointing at him, said Tuesday he is a carpenter who is neither wealthy nor poor. He said his two grandchildren have lost their parents and their home in the past several years.”

Despite that plea, a court battle followed before the parties settled out of court on Aug. 30, 2007, according to court records. The terms of the agreement reportedly remained confidential but ultimately meant Bondi and Rineker returned Master Tank and Nila to the Coutures that month.

Bondi’s Florida AG campaign marred by dog lawsuit

During the lawsuit over Master Tank and Nila, Bondi reportedly fought to keep the St. Bernard, alleging that he was dying from heartworms and that the Coutures had neglected him even before the storm. At one point in the proceedings, Bondi reportedly claimed the dog she had adopted was not Master Tank — meaning the Coutures could not claim him. The judge in the case ruled that the dog Bondi adopted was, in fact, Master Tank.

The eventual return of the dogs only temporarily eased relations between the Coutures and Bondi.

In late 2010, as Bondi ran for Florida attorney general, Dorreen Couture appeared in a two-minute campaign ad (archived) for the Florida Democratic Party where she recounted the story about Bondi and Master Tank. Couture said in the ad that Bondi was “a woman that will use her power to get what she wants in the legal system just to destroy a family. Because that’s what she was doing, she was destroying us.”

Couture also reportedly told the Tampa Bay Times that Bondi had promised to supply Master Tank with food and medicine for the rest of his life but failed to do so. According to the report, in September 2010 she said Bondi “did for the first few months. After that, she was supposed to have her first visitation that September and she canceled.”

In that same article, Bondi reportedly said she had received “a tremendous amount of support from people and animal rights activists, and no criticism at all” after the Master Tank lawsuit and did not expect the Democratic candidate for attorney general of Florida to bring the topic up “at all” during the campaign.

In sum …

Though Dorreen Couture claimed in the September 2010 article that Bondi “stole” her dog, Bondi never faced criminal charges in relation to her adoption of Master Tank. It was unclear whether Bondi knew that owners might come looking for Master Tank when she adopted him. 

Numerous news media outlets have reported that Dorreen and Steven Couture looked after their grandchildren because their parents died in a murder-suicide before Hurricane Katrina hit. According to online obituaries, Steven Michael Couture, the son of Steven Couture, died on Oct. 3, 2004. His fiancée, Bambi Beth Frilot, died the same day. Snopes reached out to the coroner in the couple’s home of St. Bernard Parish to confirm their causes of death and await a reply.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Bondi adopted a new St. Bernard puppy in 2008. She last posted (archived) about that dog, Luke, on her Instagram page on Christmas Eve 2016. Master Tank was reportedly 10 years old in 2010.

Sources

In January and February 2026, criticism of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement intensified amid the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents and reports of children being detained. That criticism extended to tech companies rumored to work with the administration of President Donald Trump, such as Amazon-owned doorbell camera company Ring, which social media users claimed had partnered with security technology company Flock.

For example, a Reddit psot (archived) read: “Ring has partnered with Flock. ICE has access to Flock. If you still have a Ring camera – get rid of it.” The thread included a poster of a Ring camera that said, “ICE thanks YOU for YOUR cooperation.”

Users shared (archived) similar claims on TikTok (archived), Bluesky (archived), LinkedIn (archived), Threads (archived) and Reddit (archived).

Ring’s Super Bowl commercial (archived), which promoted a “Search Party” feature using Ring outdoor cameras in the immediate area to search for missing pets, breathed new life into the claims in February 2026. Worries that the advertised feature was a gateway into a mass surveillance network using Ring cameras prompted fresh posts on Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived) that referred to Ring doorbells as ICE cameras.

The social media posts largely referred to a partnership between Ring and Flock announced in October 2025. A Flock news release described the partnership as a way for law enforcement officers to ask a community for Ring footage through Flock’s systems. 

Ring and Flock announced they were canceling their planned partnership for the time being in February 2026. Both companies noted that the integration never launched and Flock never received a video from Ring as a result.

“Ring has no partnership with ICE, does not give ICE videos, feeds, or back-end access, and does not share video with them,” Sam McGee, an Amazon spokesperson for Ring, told Snopes in a January email. McGee added at the time that the company was working on ensuring that its integration with Flock would be built for the use of local public safety agencies only.

Some social media users appeared to believe that the canceled partnership meant the end of Search Party and/or community requests, however; Ring continued to offer both features without Flock’s partnership.

Tech companies often have checkered histories with the management of user data. Because we cannot definitively rule out that ICE doesn’t have and will never have some way to access the doorbell footage of Ring customers, Snopes is not giving this claim a rating.

The fate of the Ring-Flock partnership

In October 2025, Ring and Flock announced a partnership to integrate the community requests feature of Ring’s Neighbors app with Flock’s systems used by law enforcement for investigations. The partnership was canceled in February 2026.

Ring’s smart doorbells allow people to see and talk to people at their front door through their phones. Its Neighbors app — which is separate from its standard doorbell app and is available to both Ring customers and non-customers — allows users to send and receive safety alerts about where they live. The app has a voluntary “community requests” feature that allows local law enforcement to send users in a certain area a request for Ring video footage from a specific time for an investigation.

Law enforcement doesn’t know who declines or ignores a request, Ring said in its announcement.

Flock Safety is known for its automated license plate recognition and video surveillance products primarily built for use by law enforcement. Flock also offers software, such as Flock Nova and FlockOS, that allows agencies to search and organize data for investigations. Through Flock’s software platforms, law enforcement officers can compile data such as license plates, photos and last known location of a suspect, and can make requests to other law enforcement agencies for whatever information they may have.

The partnership, according to the companies’ announcements, would have allowed law enforcement officers to use Flock’s systems to send community requests through the Neighbors app. If someone responded, the agency making the request would have received the footage directly through Flock’s system. When the companies announced the partnership, they said the rollout of the integration would happen “in the coming months.”

Flock was not the first company of its kind to partner with Ring for community requests. In April 2025, Ring announced it planned on introducing community requests in partnership with Axon, which offers law enforcement data collection and evidence management systems similar to Flock’s.

The Amazon spokesperson told Snopes that Ring has required local public safety agencies to include in their requests a specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code and details about what is being investigated since the program’s September 2025 launch. All of an agency’s community requests are visible on its Neighbors app profile. People using the app can turn off community requests notifications and personal feed visibility if they wish, according to Ring.

Flock’s history with ICE

Neither Flock nor Ring has an on-the-record partnership with ICE. Flock said in a blog post in January 2026 that it “does not have a contract with with ICE or any sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security” and it “does not share customer data with any entity, federal or otherwise, without their permission, and does not grant access to customer data without a customer’s explicit choice and control.”

At the same time, Flock says the data in its systems is owned by its customers, who can do with that data whatever they’d like. Some of Flock’s customers have reportedly shared this data with ICE.

“Any access to Flock by a federal agency, if it occurs at all, must be explicitly granted by a local customer and must comply with applicable law,” Flock wrote in its blog post. “Flock’s role is not to encourage or discourage collaboration with any federal entity.”

Flock allows customers to opt-in to a national data-sharing network between local police departments. Since its inception, any agency that has wanted to use the nationwide data search has also had to agree to share its own data to the network. According to Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, Flock informed his office in August 2025 that 75% of its law enforcement customers have this network enabled.

In May 2025, 404Media, a technology-focused news site, reported that ICE was searching Flock’s network through agreements and favors with local police departments, with those departments making searches on behalf of ICE or giving ICE agents access to accounts they could use to make the searches.

Later in 2025, local media outlets and other organizations reported that Flock audit logs showed that data from local police departments was included in immigration-related searches by other police departments on Flock. These searches included data from police departments that hadn’t agreed to share their data with ICE.

This prompted some communities to cancel or suspend their contracts with Flock, turn off Flock’s cameras or stop their participation in the national data-sharing network. For its part, Flock has introduced keyword filters meant to block searches in communities where local laws prohibit law enforcement agencies from sharing information for specific types of investigations, such as those involving abortion or immigration.

Ring’s policies and history

McGee, the Amazon spokesperson, told Snopes over email that ICE can’t make requests for videos through the community requests feature: “This feature is designed for local public safety agencies only. No videos are shared with local public safety agencies through Community Requests unless a customer explicitly chooses to do so.”

According to Ring’s law enforcement guidelines page, Ring “may produce” video from customers’ devices for law enforcement “in response to valid and binding search warrants.” Ring notifies users when it shares their footage with law enforcement unless it is prohibited from doing so, according to the company’s privacy page.

That privacy page noted that “on rare occasions Ring will provide information to law enforcement on an emergency basis when there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.” These emergency requests could be a means for Ring to send law enforcement user video without first requiring a warrant.

Ring’s law enforcement guidelines page noted that Ring has access only to videos belonging to users with an active subscription at the time of the recorded incident. Ring said subscribers are able to set how long the recordings on their device are saved and that Ring retains those recordings for however long the customer sets. Ring does not record or store a customer’s video without a subscription, according to its privacy policy.

That means that so long as Ring follows its company policy, ICE would not have access to doorbell video recordings from a Ring customer without a subscription simply because those recordings would not exist.

Ring doesn’t have a spotless history with customer data. In 2024, it settled with the Federal Trade Commission “over charges the company allowed employees and contractors to access consumers’ private videos” and failed to secure customer data to prevent hackers from accessing them.

While Ring’s advertised Search Party feature gives the customer the choice to share their video with neighbors, it relies on Ring automatically searching neighbors’ outdoor Ring camera footage with an AI tool designed to identify and detect the missing pet. As of this writing, the Search Party info page on Ring’s website does not say that Ring must receive a customer’s consent before combing their footage with this AI, although it does state that users can opt out of the feature.

Claim:

Nearly 32 years after the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, a forensic study concluded he died by homicide, not suicide.

Rating:

Context

The study — a November 2025 article in the International Journal of Forensic Sciences — is real, though Snopes has not independently verified its conclusions. Seattle-area officials ruled Cobain’s death a suicide shortly after it happened in 1994, and no other credible source has disproven that conclusion. A spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department said over email in February 2026 its investigation into Cobain’s death remained closed.

In early 2026, a rumor circulated online that a forensics study concluded the late Nirvana singer and frontman Kurt Cobain died not by suicide, as law enforcement authorities determined in 1994, but by homicide. 

The claim spread on X, with posts relaying the supposed conclusions of the study without providing links to it. One post connected the theory to singer Courtney Love, his wife and mother of his child (archived):

Kurt Cobain didn’t kill himself. 

Forensics now say: no blood, overkill heroin, arranged scene. Homicide. 

His Nirvana publishing rights? Worth over $250M. 

If he divorced Courtney, she’d lose it all. 

But if he died married to her? She gets everything.

Another X post listed alleged details of the study (archived):

Organ damage consistent with oxygen deprivation from a heroin overdose, not an instant gunshot death. 

Unusually clean hands despite a shotgun blast to the head. 

Shell casing found in an impossible location. 

Heroin kit neatly organized with capped syringes.

Cobain was found dead in Seattle on April 8, 1994. The Seattle Police Department concluded he died about three days before by suicide. According to news reports and police documents, he shot himself with a Remington Model 11 20-gauge shotgun after injecting himself with a large dose of heroin. 

It is true that, on Nov. 6, 2025, a group of forensics professionals published an article, “A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Kurt Cobain Death,” that contradicted SPD’s findings and concluded Cobain was the victim of a homicide. “The evidence does not support the current classification [of suicide], and a modern forensic review is warranted,” one of the study’s authors, Michelle Wilkins, said in an emailed statement.

Snopes has not independently verified the report’s conclusions, and no other credible source has disproven SPD’s conclusion that Cobain killed himself. A spokesperson for the police department said via email in February 2026 its investigation into the singer’s death remained closed. “Kurt Cobain died by suicide in 1994,” police department spokesman Eric Muñoz said in an email. “This case is closed.”

Report claims to provide ‘new insight’ into Cobain’s death

For years, Nirvana fans contacted SPD and the FBI asking them to reexamine Cobain’s death. Some people suspected the singer did not kill himself but rather was the victim of a homicide. In 2021, the FBI published a 10-page batch of documents that included one such letter. 

In 2014, SPD released more photographs and documents as part of a reexamination that the department said confirmed Cobain died by suicide. In 2016, the department shared five more photographs of the shotgun Cobain used to kill himself. In 2023, SPD published Cobain’s autopsy report. 

The article alleging Cobain’s death was a homicide appeared in a November 2025 issue of the International Journal of Forensic Sciences, a journal that describes itself as peer reviewed. The article’s abstract read:

The police reports, 37 scene images released in 2014, followed in 2016 by 5 images of a SPD detective holding Cobain’s shotgun, and the recent disclosures of the autopsy (December, 2023) and firearm/ toolmark (January 2025) reports, have provided new insight into the manner of Cobain’s death. 

Kurt Cobain, based solely on publicly available discovery and analyzed through a multidisciplinary critical method, was a homicide victim. His body was moved from the site of the homicide and staged to appear as a suicide.

The authors alleged that SPD’s interpretation of the crime scene as a suicide did not adequately explain some evidence, such as the locations of bloodstains and the position of Cobain’s clothing.

The authors proposed a different explanation, which they called the “homicide scenario.” According to that scenario, “Cobain was accosted by an assailant with a syringe who injected a lethal dose of heroin into his left dorsal proximal forearm. He collapsed, and while supine on the floor, the 20-gauge shotgun with the compensator on its muzzle was forcefully inserted into his mouth.” 

Later, the article read, “The body was carried by two persons from the site of the homicide to the place in the greenhouse where the body was found.” 

The study did not name any suspects.

About the authors

To learn more about the study, Snopes contacted its principal author, Bryan Burnett, who is an independent forensics specialist. Burnett is not affiliated with any research institution, as of this writing.

Burnett forwarded our inquiry to Wilkins. “Prior to publication, the paper was shared confidentially with several internationally respected forensic pathologists and investigators for informal scientific input,” Wilkins wrote, without providing names. “Their feedback supported the need for further review, and many noted that our questions were forensically appropriate given the evidence record.”

Wilkins said now that the paper is published, the team is “collaborating with other globally recognized experts,” such as Michael Tsokos, a German forensic pathologist who has led prestigious forensics research units in Germany and hosts a true crime television series “Todesrätsel mit Tsokos und Liefers“ (“Death Mystery with Tsokos and Liefers,”; Jan Josef Liefers is an actor). We reached out to Tsokos to ask about this alleged connection, and we will update this report if we receive a response.

The team responsible for the study included Pietro Zuccarello, of Italy’s Universitá Pegaso, who specializes in forensics and toxicology (Pegaso is one of the largest online universities in Italy, accredited by the Italian Ministry of Education); Cataldo Raffino, a medical examiner at a national institute in Italy, and Gabriele Rotter, who heads forensic chemical investigations for Italy’s national police (Rotter was a speaker at the Global Congress on Forensic Science and Research in Valencia, Spain, in November 2025). 

Claim:

Images posted online in February 2026 showed a legitimate post from Fox News host Jesse Watters calling for victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring to “have a good laugh about it” because “the past is the past.”

Rating:

In February 2026, an image of a purported X post from Fox News host Jesse Watters circulated online. In the post, Watters supposedly suggested that victims of the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein needed to move on with their lives. 

“They’re all adults now,” the alleged post read. “The past is the past. The healthiest thing one can do is have a good laugh about it.”

Snopes readers wrote in, looking to find out whether Watters made that post. We found no evidence that he did. A spokesperson for Fox News confirmed it was fake. 

The post was dated Feb. 15. No such post appeared on Watters’ X account. Searching Google (including a reverse image search), Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo similarly turned up no results.

If Watters had posted such a statement — even if he later deleted it — news outlets likely would have documented it, given its content. For instance, when hosts of the Fox News show “The Five” made crude remarks about Epstein on Feb. 12 (which included Watters describing Epstein as someone who “helps people with their problems; sometimes those problems are ‘you need a girl,’” and Greg Gutfeld calling Epstein a “sex rabbi”) the left-leaning watchdog organization Media Matters posted the clip on its website.

The fake X post was likely an attempt to capitalize off of what Watters and other Fox hosts said about Epstein on “The Five,” with the goal of making money from social media platforms by going viral. 

Epstein was charged with sex trafficking minors before he died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019. 

Snopes has reported on numerous claims related to the U.S. government’s release of documents on Epstein in late 2025 and early 2026. Among them, we’ve found fake, AI-generated images of President Donald Trump in a room of blindfolded girls and of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dining with Epstein. 

Sources

CNN. 138K Views · 1.1K Reactions | NATO Chief Mark Rutte Got the World’s Attention after Referring to President Trump as “Daddy” after He Used the Analogy of Two Children Fighting to Describe the Conflict between Iran and Israel. In a Press Conference, Rutte, Explained His Reason for Using the Term “Daddy.” Trump Spoke about the Moment at a Press Conference, and the White House Leaned into the Term in a Social Media Post. Https://Cnn.It/4endErS | CNN. 2025. www.facebook.com, https://www.facebook.com/reel/655264850864337/.

Daddy Tee. https://www.trumpstore.com/men/t-shirts/daddy-tee. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.

Marcotte, Amanda. “Why MAGA Calls Trump ‘Daddy.’” Salon.Com, 18 Aug. 2025, https://www.salon.com/2025/08/18/why-maga-calls-trump-daddy/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ogshare&utm_content=og.

The White House. “America’s Back. Daddy’s Home. .” Instagram, June 2025, https://www.instagram.com/reels/DLYtWvTRrR5/.

———. “Send to Your Valentine 💘.” Facebook, 14 Feb. 2026, https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/posts/send-to-your-valentine-/122166138818723345/.

———. “Send to Your Valentine 💘.” Instagram, 14 Feb. 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DUwIYBQkR3-/.

White, Ro. “The Gay B C’s of Sex: D Is for Daddy.” Autostraddle, 3 Nov. 2022, https://www.autostraddle.com/daddy-definition/.

@WhiteHouse. Send to Your Valentine 💘. 14 Feb. 2026, https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2022772546395840716?s=20.

WOODS, ONTARIA. Tucker Carlson Compares Trump to Angry Dad ‘Spanking’ a ‘Bad Little Girl’ at Rally | CNN Politics. 2024. www.cnn.com, https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/24/politics/video/tucker-carlson-trump-dad-spanking-digvid.

X. “About Profile Labels and Checkmarks on X.” X Help Center, https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/profile-labels#:~:text=The%20grey%20checkmark%20indicates%20that%20an%20account%20represents%20a%20government/multilateral%20organization%20or%20official.%20Some%20of%20these%20accounts%20may%20be%20subscribed%20to%20Premium%20Organizations.