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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Politics & government fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about politics & government. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

12,751 published reviews in this topic

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

Claim: Palanivel Thiagarajan not commented on rs 1000 aid for women family heads

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The fact-check investigated a social-media news card attributing to Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan the statement that providing women ₹1,000 per month was not possible. It focused on whether the card was authentic and whether Thiagarajan had made the attributed comment—not on whether the aid had already been implemented. The review notes that the proposal was a DMK election promise and that, at the time described, it had not yet been put into effect. It also says Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had affirmed that the monthly payment would be provided. To check the card, the publisher says it asked Thanthi TV’s digital division for confirmation; that division said the channel had not issued it. The review also reports that Thiagarajan’s side responded on Twitter. In the quoted post, his office called the message being circulated in his name false and said the 2021 election promise would be fulfilled. Based on those checks, the review concluded that the news card and the attribution were false.

FACTLYPolitics & government

Video of US Vice President Kamala Harris criticising the Modi government

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video circulating on social media that purported to show US Vice President Kamala Harris criticising the Modi government. FACTLY’s review identifies the woman in the video as Vijaylakshmi Nadar, not Harris, and places the footage at a City Council Meeting in Troy, Michigan. It describes Nadar as the Bureau Chief of The India Observer, a web news portal. To identify the footage, the review says it used reverse image searches on screenshots from the viral video and found a YouTube video with the same visuals in better resolution. FACTLY reports that the longer video was a Troy City Council Meeting held on 11 October 2021. In that recording, the speaker’s introduction identifies her as “Vijaya Nadar,” rather than Kamala Harris. The review also reports finding another YouTube video with the same speech, whose title identifies the speaker as Vijaylakshmi Nadar and describes her role at The India Observer. It says it found a similar video criticising the Modi government on a Twitter handle with the same name. These details link the circulating clip to Nadar and the council-meeting footage, rather than to Harris. The review concludes that the woman in the video is not the US Vice President.

FACTLYPolitics & government

Visuals of BJP leaders beaten by the public in Uttar Pradesh

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video presented as showing BJP leaders being beaten by the public in Uttar Pradesh. FACTLY’s review says the footage instead shows a clash between BJP and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) workers in Jangaon, Telangana, during an anti-Modi protest. The review describes the protest as a response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks in Parliament about Telangana’s formation and the Andhra Pradesh bifurcation. To check where the footage came from, the review says it performed a reverse image search on screenshots from the video. That search led to the same visuals in a video published by the Times of India, which identified them as footage of the Jangaon protest and clash between TRS and BJP workers. This provenance supports the review’s conclusion that the location and participants were misrepresented in the social-media claim. The review gives further context for the confrontation: BJP workers tried to stop TRS workers from burning an effigy of Modi at a Jangaon crossroads, after which the parties’ workers clashed. Thus, the footage does show a confrontation involving BJP workers, but the source describes it as a clash with TRS workers in Telangana—not BJP leaders being beaten by the public in Uttar Pradesh.

המשרוקיתPolitics & government

חוק קמיניץ לא הוקפא. מאז שהוא חוקק צומצמו למעלה מ-50% מהתחלות הבנייה במגזר הערבי

Publisher’s rating: נכון

The statement was made by Bezalel Smotrich in a radio interview, in response to a suggestion that the Kaminitz Law had been frozen by the previous government. The review examined both parts of his reply: whether the law had been suspended, and whether illegal construction starts had fallen by more than half. The law is Amendment 116 to the Planning and Building Law, passed in 2017 to enable administrative enforcement and strengthen penalties for building violations. The review found that the law itself remained in force, although enforcement policy was eased in some respects. In 2020, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit adopted changes that gave priority to enforcement in agricultural areas and temporarily extended an exemption for certain older residential buildings. The review describes these as changes in enforcement priorities and policy, not a suspension of the law; it also notes that enforcement in some residential areas could be carried out by other authorities. For the numerical claim, the review used data from the Land Enforcement Authority and compared 2018 with 2021. In its stated coverage—excluding the South and Judea and Samaria districts, where enforcement policy differed—it reports that illegal construction starts in the Arab and Druze communities fell from 505 to 135, a 73% decline. The figures therefore support a decrease exceeding 50% for that combined population, while the wording is more precise than the claim’s reference to the Arab sector alone. The review also reports a 72% decline across the overall population in the same dataset.

dpaPolitics & government

De vader van Klaus Schwab was een hooggeplaatste nazi.

Publisher’s rating: Er is geen bewijs dat Eugen Schwab een hoge functie binnen de nazihiërarchie vervulde. De beschikbare documenten wijzen eerder in de andere richting, maar deze zijn ook niet sluitend. Klaus Schwab zelf was in ieder geval te jong om een rol in nazi-Duitsland te spelen.

RMIT ABC Fact CheckPolitics & government

"Our particular [national integrity commission] bill suggests that the powers of the commission are well in excess of a royal commission."

Publisher’s rating: Overblown

Anne Ruston made the claim in an Insiders interview while defending the government’s proposed Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC). The review assessed her statement against the government’s November 2020 exposure-draft bill, which Ruston said was the version the government intended to introduce. It considered the CIC’s powers broadly, rather than treating the comparison as limited to investigative or coercive powers. The review’s verdict was that her claim was overblown: the proposed body would have some powers comparable to a royal commission, but its overall powers could not be described as “well in excess.” The review contrasted the relatively brief Royal Commissions Act, which it said left commissioners scope to use their powers broadly, with the much longer CIC bill and the constraints it imposed. For the CIC’s public sector division—covering most of the public service, parliamentarians, higher education providers and research bodies—the bill would not allow public hearings or give the commission the power to publish a final report. The review also identified restrictions on the conduct and people that could be investigated, the public reporting of the commission’s work, and how investigations could be initiated and carried out. The comparison was not one-sided: the review reported that experts considered several proposed coercive powers comparable to those of royal commissions, including compelling witnesses and evidence, penalizing failures to appear, and applying for search warrants and telecommunication intercepts. But it also reported expert concerns that restrictions on the CIC’s work and a proposed annual budget below the cost of many single-issue royal commissions limited its practical powers. Those qualifications explain why comparable coercive tools did not establish that the proposed commission’s powers overall were well in excess of a royal commission’s.

FACTLYPolitics & government

Video of a Samajwadi Party leader making provocative statements against the Thakur and Brahmin community in Uttar Pradesh

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video presented as showing a Samajwadi Party leader threatening Thakur and Brahmin communities if his party came to power in Uttar Pradesh. FACTLY identifies the speaker as Samajwadi Party leader Rajesh Yadav and says the circulated version was edited. In the fuller video, Yadav was describing the conduct of the local MLA’s father in Katra, rather than making the remarks as threats by a future SP government: “In the original video, Samajwadi Party leader Rajesh Yadav was describing the behaviour of the local MLA’s father in Katra. Rajesh Yadav made these statements of Thakurata and Pandita attributing to the Katra MLA’s father.” The review says the viral clip was assembled by merging different parts of Yadav’s speech. It describes the surrounding subject as alleged atrocities and problems caused by goons in Katra, and reports that Yadav said an SP government would take those goons to task. This context changes the meaning conveyed by the short clip: the words about Thakurata and Pandita were attributed to the MLA’s father, not presented as Yadav’s own proposed policy toward those communities. FACTLY states: “The viral video was created by merging different video clips of Rajesh Yadav’s speech.” FACTLY reports that it searched for the video using keywords and found an original version shared on journalist Abhinay Kumar Guptha’s Facebook page. It also says Guptha and other news channels confirmed that the circulating video was edited. After the clip went viral, Yadav said it was edited and described it as a political conspiracy; on 09 February 2022, he filed a complaint with Shahjahanpur police and the Election Commission. The review’s conclusion rests on the original-video context and the reported editing, not solely on Yadav’s denial.