Feinstein didn't tweet about vaccines before her death
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, died Sept. 29 after serving in Congress for more than 30 years. The Democrat was elected San Francisco's first female mayor in 1978, and she was the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee.
A post that showed up on social media after she died appeared to have been made by Feinstein. It was dated two days before her death.
“Just received the new Flu and COVID vaccine, make sure to get yours!” the Sept. 27 X (formerly Twitter) post reads.
Responses included “Not surprised” and “Wow. And then 3 days later ...”
But this tweet was fabricated. A spokesperson for Feinstein told Reuters it wasn't posted by the senator, and it doesn't appear on any of her social media accounts.
The handle on the fake account is @dianefeinstein, which misspells her first name.
Feinstein's office told the San Francisco Chronicle the senator died of natural causes.
No immigrant payments
Recent social media posts falsely claim the U.S. government is handing thousands of dollars to people who enter the country illegally.
“According to a release by the legal immigration group ALIPAC, the Biden administration is giving some illegal aliens payments of $2,200 per month!” read a post on X.
With rare exceptions, people who enter the U.S. illegally are not eligible for benefits.
“They can mostly only access emergency, in-kind things like shelter and food during a hurricane or other emergency, or emergency health care,” Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, told The Associated Press.
The false information came from an Aug. 21 Tucker Carlson interview with retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, posted to X.
Macgregor told the AP his information came from an article posted on a Houston radio station website. However, the story was posted a week after he did the interview with Carlson.
Towers don't brainwash
A TikTok video, shared in a Sept. 20 Facebook post, features a woman talking about U.S. patent No. 5356368A, claiming the government uses 5G cell towers to control people's minds.
She reads a section of the patent that states, “It induces desired states of human consciousness.”
But that particular patent, filed by the Monroe Institute in 1991, has nothing to do with cell towers.
“There is absolutely no connection between the contents of the patent referenced in the Facebook post and 5G towers, or any other towers for that matter,” Monroe Institute Executive Vice President Paul Citarella told PolitiFact. “This is just pure fabrication.”
“That patent covered some specific techniques for creating brainwave entertainment audio signals,” Citarella said. “Please note that these signals are delivered through regular audio just like any other music you might listen to. They are not broadcast over the air in any manner.”
Kids didn't vanish
A video circulating on social media shows children vanishing while riding a school bus.
“All the children Mysteriously Disappear from this Bus,” reads the text included with the video. Other similar videos show part of a church congregation suddenly vanish and a little girl on a swing disappear.
The videos were created by Turning Point Ministries to show a visual depiction of the Rapture, the belief that Jesus will return to Earth to bring believers to Heaven.
Turning Point spokesperson Shannon Mann told the AP the videos are “a CGI dramatization of the anticipated prophetic event called the Rapture.” She said Turning Point is “thrilled that some of these pre-enactment videos have gone viral.” However, some users removed the campaign's web address and shared the clips “on their own without any context.”
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.