{"count":18528,"next":"http://www.politifact.com/api/factchecks/?page=2","previous":null,"results":[{"id":19383,"url":"/factchecks/2020/sep/30/joe-biden/joe-biden-base-debate-attack-over-us-china-trade-d/","slug":"joe-biden-base-debate-attack-over-us-china-trade-d","ruling":{"slug":"mostly-false","ruling":"Mostly False","thumbnail":"https://static.politifact.com/CACHE/images/politifact/rulings/meter-mostly-false/b7738b2b59177882eb8cbea926ad37ab.jpg","ruling_graphic":"https://static.politifact.com/politifact/rulings/meter-mostly-false.jpg"},"speaker":{"slug":"joe-biden","thumbnail":"https://static.politifact.com/CACHE/images/politifact/mugs/AP_19138732015030/e5a78d6c95b215c26ef2678ad9f5e9fd.jpg","photo":"https://static.politifact.com/politifact/mugs/AP_19138732015030.jpg","full_name":"Joe Biden","first_name":"Joe","last_name":"Biden"},"targets":[],"statement":"“We have a higher deficit with China now than we did before.”","ruling_slug":"barely-true","ruling_headline":"Joe Biden off-base on debate attack over US-China trade deficit","publication_date":"2020-09-30T01:36:18-04:00","statement_date":"2020-09-29","statement_context":"the first presidential debate","ruling_comments":"

During the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden went after President Donald Trump over trade with China, an issue Trump often uses against Biden.

"You take a look at what he's actually done, he's done very little," Biden said. "His trade deals are the same way. He talks about these great trade deals. You know, he talks about ‘The Art of the Deal,’ China has perfected the art of the steal. We have a higher deficit with China now than we did before."

In reality, the U.S. deficit with China in goods and services, the most inclusive trade measurement, was smaller under Trump in 2019, the most recent full year, than it was in any of the final three years of the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president.

Here’s the year-by-year data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis:

See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

While the trade deficit in goods and services with China improved under Trump between 2018 and 2019, it’s still large in an absolute sense. China bought in excess of $300 billion more in goods and services from the United States in 2019 than the United States did from China.

Biden’s campaign pointed to a more limited figure — trade in goods only — which shows that the trade deficit with China has generally been higher under Trump than it was under Obama.

But even here, the U.S. made progress under Trump in 2019 in whittling down the goods deficit. The goods deficit was $375 billion in 2017, $418 billion in 2018, and $345 billion in 2019. The 2019 figure was similar to the level it was in 2016, the final year of the Obama administration.

Our ruling

Biden said, "We have a higher deficit with China now than we did before."

The most inclusive measurement, for goods and services, shows that the U.S. trade deficit with China was smaller under Trump in 2019, the most recent full year, than it was in any of the final three years of the Obama administration.

Looking only at goods shows the trade deficit was generally higher under Trump than it was in the Obama years, but it declined in 2019 to around the level as the final year of the Obama administration.

We rate the statement Mostly False.

U.S. Census Bureau, "Trade in Goods with China," accessed Sept. 29, 2020

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, "International Trade in Goods and Services," accessed Sept. 29, 2020

During a heated exchange near the start of the first 2020 presidential debate, President Donald Trump said that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had forgotten the name of his college and falsely claimed that he had gone to Delaware State University, a historically Black university.

Trump’s claim was putting words in Biden’s mouth. The former vice president never said that he attended Delaware State.

Trump appeared to be referring to a remark that Biden made at a town hall in Florence, S.C., where he said that he got his "start" at DSU. In context, it’s clear that Biden wasn’t implying that he went to the university, but referencing the support he received from the school in 1972 when he announced his run for U.S. Senate on the campus.

The university itself pushed back on conservative media outlets reporting that Biden falsely claimed to have attended the school.

For the record, Biden attended the University of Delaware.

We rate this claim False.

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more.

Delaware News Journal, No, Joe Biden did not say he attended Delaware State University, Sep. 29, 2020

In an article on his website and in a tweet, conservative radio host Todd Starnes said Joe Biden already knows what he’ll be asked in the presidential debate.

"Word on the street is that Joe Biden got tonight’s debate questions in advance," Starnes tweeted Sept. 29, the morning of the first debate between President Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee Biden.

See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

There is no basis for the accusation.

Fox News host Chris Wallace is the debate moderator and the network rejected the idea that anyone shared questions with Biden or his team.

"This is entirely false and any assertion otherwise is patently absurd," a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.

As evidence, Starnes cited a Sept. 24 interview with Jerome Corsi. Corsi, a conservative who has shared conspiracy theories himself gave no firm source. (PolitiFact has rated three of Corsi’s claims False and one Pants on Fire)

"The information I've just gotten, and I think it's mostly it's always been accurate, is that Joe Biden has been given the questions from Fox's Chris Wallace," Corsi said. "He's being prepared on the exact questions, he's gonna be asked."

On Sept. 22, Wallace released the topics for the debate. They include:



\t

\t The Trump and Biden records

\t



\t

\t

\t The Supreme Court

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\t

\t

\t COVID-19

\t



\t

\t

\t The economy

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\t

\t

\t Race and violence in our cities

\t



\t

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\t The integrity of the election

\t



Starnes’ tweet has over 25,000 likes, and other websites and Facebook users repeated his claim.

Starnes denies making a statement of his own about Biden.

"We quoted verbatim from the report Mr. Corsi made to KXEL and we did so accurately," Starnes said.

He said he had reached out to Fox News, and did not get a reply. When Fox News released a statement, he put that at the top of his website article.

Our ruling

Starnes said Biden received debate questions in advance. Fox News host Wallace did release a list of debate topics, but no questions. Fox News said the claim is "entirely false."

The accusation is based on hearsay.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire.

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here , for more.

Todd Starnes, tweet, Sept. 29, 2020

Todd Starnes, Biden Has Been Given Debate Questions in Advance, Says Jerome Corsi, Sept. 29, 2020

KXEL, Corsi interview, Sept. 24, 2020

Factcheck.org, Baseless Online Claims Target Biden Ahead of First Debate, Sept. 29, 2020

The Commission on Presidential Debates, Moderator Announces Topics for First Presidential Debate, Sept. 22, 2020

Statement, Fox News, Sept. 29, 2020

InfoWars, REPORT: JOE BIDEN HAS BEEN GIVEN TONIGHT’S DEBATE QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE, Sept. 29, 2020

New York Times, Right-Wing Sites Falsely Claim Biden Got Debate Questions in Advance, Sept. 29, 2020

Email exchange, Todd Starnes, Sept. 29, 2020

Time for another high-stakes political event? Then it must be time for conspiracy theories to flood social media timelines. Watch out.

No, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden does not have a medical device implanted in his skull that he turns on after reaching into his pocket so he can hear someone on the other end give him answers to questions. That’s a bogus claim shared on Facebook ahead of the first presidential election debate between Biden and President Donald Trump.

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

There are a lot of false claims packed into the nearly 1,000-word post claiming to prove how Biden "is cheating." The Sept. 28 post tries to build on Trump’s narrative that Biden is mentally unfit to be president.

Part of the post said:

"This is going to sound like something out of a science fiction movie but bear with me. This is totally real, and I’ll prove it to you.

"Joe Biden has a medical device implanted in his skull.

"It’s called the Esteem Hearing Implant which you can learn about HERE. It’s an implant that goes into the skull above the ear and it has two micro-wire probes that are injected into the nerves inside the ear canal. It’s FDA-approved and it uses bone conduction to enhance hearing (sound waves vibrate off the bones of the skull, and the wire probes send the signal directly into the ear, basically). It’s wireless and it’s controlled by the push of a button, so the user can turn it on and off with a little device… that fits in your pocket. And that’s how the experts at Bombards Body Language spotted this trick. …

"When Joe Biden gets confused, he reaches into his pocket and turns on the implant. Whoever is talking to him on the other end instructs him to smile and then starts relaying answers to him until he gets back on track. Joe hears it because the implant receives a wireless signal and vibrates the bones in his skull."

The post does not offer any link to learn more, despite its suggestion that it has a source.

Envoy Medical on Twitter Sept. 29 said that the claims about its hearing implant were inaccurate and that its device "cannot secretly and wirelessly transmit conversations." The company said:

"There is a false story circulating on the internet and in social media that claims that Envoy Medical’s Esteem Hearing Implant can be used to wirelessly transmit conversations or information into the ear.

"The Esteem Hearing Implant is not capable of this type of wireless communication and cannot be used in the manner described. The implant is a completely internal hearing device that improves the hearing of adults diagnosed with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss."

Biden’s campaign also refuted Trump campaign claims that Biden won’t agree to an ear inspection and that Biden wanted multiple breaks during the 90-minute debate. "Of course he’s not wearing an earpiece and we never asked for breaks," Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, told reporters Sept. 29.

In December 2019, Biden’s primary care physician, at Biden’s request, issued a summary of his medical and surgical history. It did not mention any skull implant or hearing aid and said that his head, ears, eyes, nose and throat "are normal."

Our ruling

A Facebook post claimed Biden has a medical device implanted in his skull so he can hear someone give him answers to questions.

That’s a fabricated and baseless claim.

We rate it Pants on Fire!

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here , for more.

Archive of Sept. 28, 2020 Facebook post

Email interview, Joe Biden’s press office, Sept. 29, 2020

JoeBiden.com, Biden’s medical and surgical history

Twitter, @mviser tweet, Sept. 29, 2020

Twitter, @EnvoyMedical tweet, Sept. 29, 2020

Twitter, @TeamTrump tweet, Sept. 29, 2020, @TrumpWarRoom tweet, Sept. 29, 2020

How do you get people to vote? With the 2020 election just around the corner, voter turnout is a hot topic. The Green Party platform calls for a voting system rework.

Kelley Dragoo, the Green Party candidate for Missouri’s lieutenant governor seat, said in a YouTube video that a different method of voting, called ranked choice, saves money and mitigates the problem of having to pick a "lesser of two evils," among other benefits.

Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank candidates from most to least preferred on the ballot, meaning that people can vote for multiple candidates at the same time. If a clear winner is decided in the first tally, that’s the winner of the election. If there isn’t a clear winner, the votes are recounted with the least popular candidate eliminated. Votes that ranked the now eliminated candidate as their first preference then go toward those voters’ second preference instead. So on and so forth until a majority winner is decided.

Ranked-choice voting, Dragoo said, "is a really viable option and it's something that would better our voting process. It increases voter turnout and voter engagement, which is really what we need right now."

Is ranked-choice voting really the silver bullet to voter turnout and engagement?

Hard to say. We decided to do some digging.

Looking at trends

Ranked-choice voting is an umbrella term. Instant runoff voting, preferential voting and the alternative vote are all titles that refer to ranked-choice voting.

Ranked-choice voting exists in municipal elections as well as Maine’s state elections. The method has existed in smaller elections since the 1940s, but most city and statewide adoptions of ranked-choice voting only date back to the 2000s.

We asked Dragoo for a source on her claim. In an email, she cited Fairvote and RankedChoiceVoting.org. Both are organizations that advocate for ranked-choice voting, using research from universities and government agencies as well as their own studies.

Fairvote cites a 2016 study by professor David Kimball at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The study found that ranked-choice voting was associated with a roughly 9 percentage point increase in voter turnout in municipal elections, but did not find that ranked-choice had a significant impact on voter turnout in general elections.

Fairvote’s research on the subject suggests that ranked-choice voting is associated with higher turnout. Fairvote clarifies that they did not attempt to control for factors that can also drive turnout, such as election competitiveness.

Voter engagement is exactly what it sounds like: people’s likelihood to talk about or engage with the election both in and outside the political space. A study by Fairvote found that people were more likely to discuss local elections in cities that implemented ranked-choice voting.

However, a study from San Francisco State University tracked San Francisco’s mayoral elections from 1995 to 2011 and found that instant runoff voting requires voters to know more about the candidates, increasing information costs and widening the gap in voter turnout between racial and age groups.

Factors at Play

Voter turnout and engagement both have a lot of moving parts. It’s hard to link just one element of an election process to an increase in either because so many things can influence an election.

So, we spoke to an expert. James Endersby is a professor of political science at the University of Missouri who studies elections and is writing a book on ranked-choice voting.

Endersby finds that when a new voting system is adopted, we tend to see a short-lived increase in voter turnout. "And then people sort of say, ‘well, it’s politics as usual’ and it goes back down to the same levels again," he says.

The novelty of a new system isn’t the only thing that confounds the data. In 2018, Maine introduced ranked-choice voting in its congressional elections and saw an increase in turnout. But there was also an overall higher turnout in 2018 across the country, so that can’t be attributed to just ranked-choice voting.

Another factor worth considering is the competitiveness of elections. Fairvote finds that a competitive ranked-choice vote election can drive turnout. However, competitive elections see increases regardless of what system they are using.

Lastly, Endersby finds that a lot of the numbers just aren’t in yet. "There's not really good data, because we don't have good denominators. It all depends on how the cleaning of the registration records go, in terms of how many people vote," he says.

It’s hard to draw a conclusion about the effect of ranked-choice voting on turnout and engagement nationwide when studies have city sample sizes. As it is now, there are too many factors that get in the way of accurate data on the subject. With time, we may see a noted increase, but it’s too early to call.

Our ruling

Dragoo said ranked-choice voting "increases voter turnout and voter engagement."

The evidence suggests only that it could or that it can in certain circumstances. The number of candidates, the competitiveness and scale of the election, and the new ways in which we vote all drive voter turnout and engagement in the short term.

It’s hard to say whether ranked-choice voting definitively increases voter turnout and engagement on a large scale and in the long term because the data isn’t there yet.

We rate Dragoo’s statement Mostly False.

University of Missouri St. Louis, "Voter Participation with Ranked Choice Voting in the United States", Oct. 2016

San Francisco State University, "Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections", Nov. 2016

Fairvote, "Voter Turnout and Participation" Accessed Sept. 5, 2020

Fairvote, "Ranked Choice Voting 101" Accessed Sept. 19, 2020

Fairvote, "Fairvote Civility Report #7" June 2016

Fairvote, "What Affects Voter Turnout Rates" Accessed Sept. 18, 2020

RankedChoiceVoting.org, "What is Ranked Choice Voting" Accessed Sept. 19, 2020

Maine Public, "A Boatload Of Ballots: Midterm Voter Turnout Hit 50-Year High" Nov. 8, 2018

New York Times, "Why Ranked-Choice Voting is Having a Moment" Feb. 10, 2020

United States of America Politics and Policy, "Utah’s new kind of ranked-choice voting could hurt political minorities — and sometimes even the majority" Accessed Sept. 6, 2020

United States of America Politics and Policy, "The Alternative Vote can increase representation of women and people of color in US elections" Accessed Sept. 6, 2020

Vox, "2018’s record-setting voter turnout, in one chart" Nov. 19, 2018

Vox, "Laboratories of Democracy: San Francisco voters rank their candidates. It’s made politics a little less nasty." Jul. 31, 2019

Campaign Legal, "Ranked Choice Voting" Accessed Sept. 13, 2020

Interview, James Endersby, Professor of Political Science, Sept. 15, 2020

On Sept. 15, Anthony Rogers made a hefty claim on Facebook against his opponent, Democrat Cori Bush.

"Cori Bush is a career criminal and a con artist. Think twice before you fall for the bulls---, St. Louis," said Rogers, the Republican candidate for Missouri’s 1st District.

He included a picture of Bush’s cases on a page in Casenet, a database for court cases. The picture shows eight court cases his opponent was involved in. Bush has 11 cases in all — but all of them are civil, not criminal.

A criminal is someone who commits an offense against the state — a crime — as opposed to a civil case, where one person or institution sues another, according to the American Bar Association. A con artist, according to Merriam-Webster, is "a person who tricks other people in order to get their money."

Bush’s 11 cases happened between 1999 and 2018. The types of cases are listed in Casenet as tax actions, landlord actions and contract actions. For instance, Convergence Receivables LC received a default judgment against Bush and had her wages garnished. The company is one of a group of businesses known as debt buyers that purchase past-due accounts from businesses and then try to collect from individuals. Bush’s cases show that she’s been in debt on multiple occasions — for rent, credit cards and tax issues.

"They look like a variety of collection actions," University of Missouri law professor Frank Bowman III said. "I mean, it looks like she certainly had some trouble paying her bills from time to time."

Bush’s website attributes the delinquencies to her financial issues as a single mother.

"Cori Bush’s tax burden was more than she could afford as a working class, single mother who was also paying off student loans for her nursing degree," the website reads.

The site acknowledges that Bush has dealt with lawsuits for not paying taxes and says Bush has also experienced homelessness.

Bowman says these cases probably deal with delinquent or late payments, such as for local tax bills.

He also says Rogers should be careful about calling people criminals.

"When you accuse someone of a crime, actually committing a crime, and they have not committed a crime, I mean, normally that's libelous," Bowman said.

Rogers’ response

When shown that all of Bush’s cases are civil and not criminal, Rogers said he still supports what he said in his Facebook post: that she is literally a criminal.

In an email and an interview with Rogers, the candidate gave a number of claims about why Bush is still a con artist and criminal. Here’s what Rogers said.



\t

\t Bush has not sent in her personal financial disclosure to the House of Representatives.

\t



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\t

\t She pays herself with campaign contributions.

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\t

\t She says she’s a pastor, but doesn’t work for a church.

\t



\t

\t

\t She says she is a nurse but was "disbarred."

\t



We looked into each of his claims.



\t

\t According to the House of Representatives Office of the Clerk, Bush sent in her personal financial disclosure on Aug. 15. She was three months late. There is a $200 fine for every 30 days the disclosure is overdue, though House rules allow for extensions, according to the House of Representatives Committee on Ethics. It is unclear if Bush got an extension, as her team would not comment. Candidates are only prosecuted if they do not submit their disclosure at all, or if they falsify their disclosure documents.

\t



\t

\t

\t According to the FEC, it is legal to use campaign contributions as a salary. So far, Bush has reported wage expenses of $25,285 from her 2020 campaign.

\t



\t

\t

\t According to Bush’s website, she is an ordained pastor, and pastored at Kingdom Church International in St. Louis, which she founded, from 2013-2015. Now she "has since taken her faith-based work directly into the streets, where she serves as a spiritual support for the unhoused community."

\t



\t

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\t According to Bush’s website, she did lose her certification as a nurse. After paying her outstanding tax debts, her nursing license was reinstated.

\t



Our ruling

Rogers called Bush a "career criminal and a con artist" on Facebook, but there is no evidence to suggest that Bush is either. The court cases Rogers provided as evidence were all civil cases.

None of the purported evidence provided by Rogers to back his claim held up to the facts, either. When told of our findings, Rogers insisted he was still right.

Due to his denial of the facts and baseless claims, we rate Rogers’ claim False.

Interview, Anthony Rogers, Republican Candidate for Missouri District 1, Sept. 21, 2020

Interview, Frank Bowman III, University of Missouri School of Law Professor Sept. 16, 2020

Open Secrets, Cori Bush Campaign, Sept. 16, 2020

U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Clerk, Financial Disclosures, Sept 21, 2020

U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Clerk, General Information About Financial Disclosures, Sept 23, 2020

U.S. House of Representatives Committee of Ethics, FAQs About Financial Disclosure, Sept. 25, 2020

U.S. House of Representatives Committee of Ethics, Failure to File or Filing False Disclosure Statements, Sept. 25, 2020

Casenet, Cori Bush, Sept. 16, 2020

Facebook, Anthony Rogers’ Post, Sept. 15, 2020

Federal Elections Commission, Disbursements, Sept. 16, 2020

Federal Elections Commission, Personal Use, Sept. 22, 2020

Cori Bush’s website, FAQs, Sept. 20, 2020

Merriam-Webster, Criminal definition: Sept. 23, 2020

Merriam-Webster, Con Artist definition, Sept. 23, 2020

American Bar Association, How Courts Work, Sept. 27, 2020

On Sept. 27, an image of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson appeared on Facebook. He looks relaxed in a chair on a beach, smiling with a book by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in hand. A domed building looms on a hill behind him.

"Epstein Island," wrote an account that shared the image, referring to the private Carribean island owned by the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But the photo in the post is doctored and it was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The original image comes from the season five premiere of "Ballers," the HBO show in which Johnson plays a former athlete turned manager.

But the building that appears in the image on Facebook — which looks like the blue-striped building on Little St. James, the island owned by Epstein — is not in the original.

That building also doesn’t appear in similar shots from "Ballers" that Warren’s campaign tweeted the night the show premiered. (She’s a big fan of the show.)

"You love to see it: @TheRock reading ‘This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class’ by @ewarren," her campaign’s Twitter account wrote in August 2019.

Johnson isn’t the first celebrity to be tangled in a social media hoax wrongly connecting some actors to Epstein. This particular allegation came only a few hours after Johnson, a retired professional wrestler who described himself as "a political independent and centrist for many years," publicly endorsed Biden for president.

But this picture of him on the beach is doctored. We rate this Facebook post Pants on Fire.

Facebook post, Sept. 27, 2020

The Rock Facebook post, Sept. 27, 2020

Boston Magazine, The Rock was spotted reading Elizabeth Warren’s book on Ballers, Aug. 26, 2019

Vanity Fair, Ballers pays sneaky homage to superfan Elizabeth Warren, Aug. 26, 2019

Team Warren tweet, Aug. 26, 2019

NBC News, Jeffrey Epstein’s bizarre blue-striped building on private island raised alarm, Aug. 1, 2019

A surge in coronavirus cases in September pushed Wisconsin near the top of a dubious national ranking — most new COVID-19 cases per capita.

Predictably, that spurred a related jump in the percentage of COVID-19 tests yielding positive results in the state.

The rise has prompted renewed scrutiny of the state’s COVID-19 response. Some claim this is proof Gov. Tony Evers’ mask mandate isn’t working, while others say it means we aren’t taking the threat — or the mask mandate — seriously enough.

But the conservative MacIver Institute took another tack, zeroing in on the formula used to establish the positivity rate to claim that errors by the state Department of Health are what is actually causing the increase in that key measure.

"Bad Math Driving Wisconsin’s Exploding Positive Test Rate," declared a Sept. 23, 2020, headline that was shared widely on social media.

The MacIver story went on to make a series of claims building on that thesis:

"A fundamental flaw in how the Evers’ Administration calculates Wisconsin’s daily COVID-19 positive test rate has excluded hundreds of thousands of test results and led to a wildly distorted picture of the state’s progress in confronting the virus," said the story’s first paragraph.

It later quoted Ryan Westergaard, DHS chief medical officer, as explaining the positivity rate is calculated by dividing the number of positive cases by the number of people tested — not the total number of tests.

The MacIver piece calls this a "shocking admission."

But it’s only shocking if you haven’t been paying close attention. This is how DHS has consistently calculated test positivity, and since mid-August the department has even explicitly laid this out in the COVID-19 dashboard.

What’s more, it’s an acceptable way — even the preferred way, by some — to do the calculation, since it weeds out multiple tests of the same person.

Here’s why this "bad math" claim is ridiculous.

Rate calculation hasn’t changed amid spike

The most obvious error in this claim is blaming math for the "exploding positive test rate."

The seven-day average of tests with positive results — a more reliable marker than daily totals since it smooths out daily jumps caused by changes in testing volume — rose slowly through August, from about 6% to 8%. It then spiked starting in September, pushing the seven-day average close to 20% by the end of the month.

The MacIver piece posits this is due to errant calculations. But this rate has been calculated the same way throughout this entire stretch.

So whatever one’s objections to the methodology, if the same formula is used at the beginning and the end of a given time period, and the rate increases dramatically in that span, the increase is real.

The MacIver piece notes in its critique that test positivity is important because it’s one of six so-called "gating" criteria Evers is using to shape state policy on the pandemic. If test positivity is being used incorrectly, that would make it harder to achieve the thresholds set by Evers, and for the state to reopen fully.

Test positivity is, indeed, one of the criteria.

But the MacIver implication that it lacks legitimacy falls flat. The criteria doesn’t call for a specific percentage level to be met. Rather it calls for a downward trajectory for 14 days. And, as we noted, the same measuring stick — the formula — has been used throughout.

State approach to test positivity is widely used, even preferred

That brings us to the heart of this claim, that DHS is using "bad math" in calculating the percentage of positive tests. The MacIver piece itself elaborates on this, asserting, "If the goal is to calculate the daily positive test rate, then DHS is using the wrong numerator and denominator."

DHS calculates percent positivity by dividing the number of people with positive test results by the number of people tested in a given span. (Their dashboard includes daily counts as well as a seven-day and 14-day average.)

The MacIver piece asserts this is incorrect, saying the state should instead be basing the calculation off the raw number of tests, which would deliver a lower percentage.

But the state’s approach is actually both widely used and preferred because it prevents people who are tested often from skewing the data.

These aren’t people who feel sick or exhibit symptoms and seek a test — the typical sort of person tested. Rather, these are people who are tested regularly based on their position (such as a front-line health care worker) or situation (such as living in a nursing home where an outbreak has occurred).

Counting each of those negative test results would give an unrealistic picture of how frequently positive tests are occurring in the population — the core question all testing is trying to answer.

"Our data report individuals tested," Westergaard said in a June 11, 2020, media briefing. "So, if an individual was tested more than once because they were being followed to see if they cleared the infection or if they were tested a couple times weeks apart, they would be considered a single case and not multiple cases in our data."

Johns Hopkins University, which operates a COVID dashboard has become a go-to national resource in the pandemic, endorses this approach. Officials there said some places aren’t using it only because their data doesn’t allow them to break it down this way.

"We feel that the ideal way to calculate positivity would be number of people who test positive divided by number of people who are tested," says an explainer posted on the Johns Hopkins dashboard. "We feel this is currently the best way to track positivity because some states include in their testing totals duplicative tests obtained in succession on the same individual, as well as unrelated antibody tests. However, many states are unable to track number of people tested, so they only track number of tests."

The CDC also notes this is a standard way of approaching test positivity calculations. Their website lists it as one of three formulas used by various agencies.



\t

\t The CDC calculates positivity by dividing the number of positive tests by the total number of tests taken. It notes it only uses this approach because it doesn’t have access to the data state and local health departments have to identify — and separate out — repeat tests from the same individual.

\t

\t

\t Some states divide the number of people with positive tests by the total number of tests taken.

\t

\t

\t Some states use Wisconsin’s approach, dividing the number of people with positive tests by the number of people tested.

\t



The New York Times — which also runs a COVID dashboard — notes at least 18 states report tests like Wisconsin, based on the number of people tested, rather than the number of tests.

None of this national context was included in the MacIver piece.

DHS spokeswoman Elizabeth Goodsitt said Sept. 29, 2020, the agency was in the process of launching an updated dashboard that shows test positivity calculated using both approaches — number of people and number of tests. She said both measures "are informative to the response effort in Wisconsin."

One more quick note for some general context on this metric.

The COVID Tracking Project, another dashboard operator, said in a Sept. 22, 2020, blog post that test positivity is useful but also "one of the most commonly misunderstood metrics for monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic." It notes percent positivity rates can vary greatly based on who officials decide to test.

"The choice of who gets tested is based on state- or county-specific criteria, but is often made based on how sick people appear to be, which in turn influences test positivity," the blog post said. "If a state only tests people who have clear symptoms of the virus, it will likely have a higher test positivity than one that is also testing asymptomatic people."

Our ruling

A MacIver article widely shared on Facebook says "bad math" is to blame for Wisconsin’s "exploding positive test rate."

This is wrong on multiple fronts.They’re asserting manipulated math is behind the increase in test positivity, but it’s actually because the number of people testing positive has risen based on human behavior.

There is no "bad math." The state DHS uses a methodology (tallying people tested rather than raw tests) that is widely used by health agencies around the country. It is considered a more accurate approach because it assures people who are tested on a regular, even daily, basis — such as health care workers — don’t skew the data.

And whatever the quibbles with the methodology, this wouldn’t cause the increase in the test positivity rate because the formula DHS used to calculate the rate was the same throughout the time period.

That makes this claim both false and ridiculous, or as we call it, Pants on Fire.

See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

MacIver Institute, Bad Math Driving Wisconsin’s Exploding Positive Test Rate, Sept. 23, 2020

Wisconsin Department of Health Services, COVID-19: Wisconsin Summary Data, accessed Sept. 28, 2020

Archive.org, archived version, COVID-19: Wisconsin Summary Data, Aug. 10, 2020

New York Times, Covid in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count, accessed Sept. 28, 2020

DHSWI YouTube channel, COVID-19 Media Briefing - 6/11/2020, June 11, 2020

Email exchange with Elizabeth Goodsitt, DHS spokeswoman, Sept. 29, 2020

The COVID Tracking Project, Test Positivity: So Valuable, So Easy to Misinterpret, Sept. 22, 2020

Johns Hopkins University, Daily state-by-state testing trends, accessed Set. 28, 2020

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Calculating Percent Positivity, Sept. 3, 2020

Pepsi has come under fire for nearly two decades for its supposed decision to release cans showing an excerpt from the Pledge of Allegiance — minus the phrase "under God."

And yet, Pepsi never has issued such a can, nor has it ever announced plans to do so. The accusation, which is again circulating on social media, is fabricated and based on another soda company’s patriotic promotion 19 years ago.

"So no one forgets," reads a Sept. 23 Facebook post. "Don’t buy the new Pepsi can coming out with pics of the Empire State building and the Pledge of Allegiance on them. Pepsi left out 2 little words in the pledge ‘Under God.’ Pepsi said they didn't want to offend anyone. So if we don't buy them, they won't be offended when they don't receive our money with the words ‘In God We Trust’ on it."

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The claims in the post are false and have been around since 2002.

Pepsi has never released a can that featured the Empire State Building and/or a truncated excerpt from the Pledge of Allegiance. These inaccurate claims against Pepsi appeared after Dr Pepper unveiled a can in November 2001— in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — that featured an image of the Statue of Liberty and the words, "One Nation … Indivisible."

At the time, Dr Pepper was owned by Cadbury Schweppes PLC not PepsiCo, Inc., which owned Pepsi. Pepsi and Dr Pepper were separate companies 2001 and remain separate today.

At one point, Pepsi released a statement titled, "False rumor alert: patriotic cans," according to Snopes.com.

"You’ve received an erroneous email about a "patriotic can" that Pepsi allegedly produced with an edited version of America’s Pledge of Allegiance. The truth is, Pepsi never produced such a can," the statement said. "A patriotic package used in 2001 by Dr Pepper (which is not a part of PepsiCo) was inappropriately linked to Pepsi."

Cadbury Schweppes also issued a statement noting that its patriotic Dr Pepper can in fact left out most of the 31 total words in the pledge:

"The special packaging was designed to reflect our pride in this country's determination to stand together as one. The Statue of Liberty and Pledge of Allegiance were chosen as two of the greatest symbols of American freedom. Only three words were used from the Pledge of Allegiance. Those three words were in concert with the patriotic mood of the nation."

The limited edition patriotic can was retired in February 2002 and would not be used again, the statement said.

The design that sparked outrage was from a Dr Pepper can, not a Pepsi can as the post claims. There is also no evidence Pepsi intends to release a can design featuring a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance or the Empire State Building.

We rate this claim False.

Facebook post, Sept. 23, 2020

Snopes.com, "Did Pepsi Omit ‘Under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance?" Feb. 9, 2002

Web Archive, "Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages press release ‘To Dr Pepper Consumers,’" accessed Sept. 29, 2020

The Guardian, "Pepsi distances itself from Dr Pepper row," Sept. 18, 2002

Tampa Bay Times, "Patriotic Pepsi cans don't exist," Aug. 31, 2005

The Florida Times-Union, "Fact Check: Did Pepsi produce a can with the Pledge of Allegiance with the words ‘under God’ omitted?" Dec. 13, 2012

Dr Pepper website, "Corporate Information," accessed Sept. 29, 2020

New York Times, "Cadbury to Purchase Dr Pepper," Jan. 27, 1995

Britannica, "PepsiCo, Inc." accessed Sept. 29, 2020

Dr Pepper Snapple Group, "Our Company History," accessed Sept. 29, 2020

Pepsico, "Product information: Beverages," accessed Sept. 29, 2020

In 2016, Senate Republicans refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, then-President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

The seat was eventually filled by Neil Gorsuch, whom President Donald Trump nominated after taking office. Garland, shut out, kept his post as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

But reports suggesting a possible Garland score-settling were off base. And Garland is not investigating a tax evasion case against Trump, as a recent Facebook post claims.

"Holy Cow!" begins the post before referring obliquely to the president. "Guess who’s investigating Turnip’s tax evasion case? None other than … Merrick Garland. I know he’ll be utterly fair. It’s just kind of sweetly karmic that it’s his case."

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

First, Trump has not been charged with tax evasion. The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently suggested in a court filing that it has grounds to investigate the president and his business for tax fraud, but that’s a case over the president’s financial records that’s being fought in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The claim in this Facebook post appears to stem from efforts by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to review Trump’s financial information. In April 2019, the committee subpoenaed several years of the president’s financial information from Mazars, an accounting firm that prepared Trump’s financial statements. The request came after Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, claimed Trump had inflated his net worth as he unsuccessfully tried to buy the Buffalo Bills football team.

Trump responded by suing the accounting firm and the House committee’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to keep the records private.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Congress was within its rights to request the records as part of an investigation into whether the president illegally inflated or deflated amounts on his financial statements.

Trump appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where Garland served as chief judge.

At the time, publications such as Newsweek reported that Trump’s "subpoena appeals now head to Merrick Garland’s court." Vanity Fair published a story with the headline: "Trump begs Merrick Garland to keep his financial lies private." The magazine also tweeted the story, writing: "Trump’s fate now rests in the hands of Merrick Garland, the judge whose Supreme Court seat Republicans effectively stole."

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, took issue with that framing.

"Dear internet," he tweeted at the time. "Chief Judge Garland is one of 11 active judges, and 17 judges total who currently hear appeals on the D.C. Circuit as part of three-judge panels. The odds that his case goes to a panel including Garland, specifically, are … modest."

And in fact, the case didn’t wind up with Garland. In October, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the House committee could subpoena Trump’s records. Garland was not on the panel. Two judges appointed by Democratic presidents — David Tatel and Patricia Millett — wrote the ruling for the court. Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by Trump, dissented.

The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in July that the House can subpoena the records if it meets rigorous standards. The Supreme Court then kicked the case back to the appeals court for further review. It’s now being briefed again before the three-judge panel, Vladeck told us.

The panel does not include Garland, who stepped down as chief judge in February but continues to serve on the court.

"The only way he’d even be involved in this case at this juncture is if it goes before the en banc (full) court rather than the three-judge panel, which seems more than a little unlikely," Vladeck said in an email.

We rate this Facebook post False.

Facebook post, Sept. 29, 2020

The New York Times, Shadow of Merrick Garland hangs over the next Supreme Court fight, Sept. 19, 2020

NPR, Senate confirms Gorsuch to Supreme Court, April 7, 2017

Cornell Law School, Tax evasion, visited Sept. 29, 2020

Newsweek, Donald Trump’s subpoena appeals now head to Merrick Garland’s court, May 21, 2019

The New York Times, Trump could be investigated for tax fraud, D.A. says for first time, Sept. 21, 2020

CNN, House Committee subpoenas Trump financial information from accounting firm, April 15, 2019

USA Today, Michael Cohen: President Trump inflated net worth as part of effort to buy Bills, Feb. 27, 2019

Washington Post, House oversight committee postpones subpoena deadline for Trump financial records until court ruling, April 23, 2019

House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Cummings issues statement on ruling that Mazars must comply with Oversight Committee subpoena Trump’s records, Oct. 11, 2019

Vanity Fair, Trump begs Merrick Garland to keep his financial lies private, May 21, 2019

Vanity Fair tweet, May 21, 2019

Steve Vladeck tweet, May 21, 2019

Washington Post, Appeals court rules against Trump in fight with Congress over president’s accounting firm records, Oct. 11, 2019

Wall Street Journal, Appeals court says house can subpoena Trump accounting records, Oct. 11, 2019

U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia, Merrick B. Garland, visited Sept. 29, 2020

Politico, House mounts last-ditch bid for Trump’s financial records, Aug. 31, 2020

NPR, Legal fight over Trump’s financial records grinds on even as tax details spill out, Sept. 29, 2020

Email interview with Stephen Vladeck, Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts, University of Texas at Austin, Sept. 29, 2020