For the fact-checking websites, 2025 marked the end of an era. Back in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was ending their partnership with websites such as PolitiFact. However, one cannot be 100 percent certain Zuckerberg’s reversal is a purely principled one given President Trump’s return to the White House, so it can be good to remember the worst ten fact-checks of the year just in case Zuckerberg decides to reverse himself in a few years if a Democrat retakes the presidency.
10. Snopes on Jay Jones’s Violent Text Messages (November 11)
Democratic Virginia Attorney General-elect Jay Jones was able to win in November despite a scandal where it was revealed he had sent text messages where he fantasized about killing the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates, wished violence on his family, and discussed urinating on the graves of other GOP state lawmakers. Snopes managed to correctly give the scandal a “true” rating, but not until one week after the election, by which point it was too late.
9. PolitiFact’s Questionable Climate Science (January 21)
When Donald Trump Jr. claimed the California wildfires had nothing to do with climate change, PolitiFact slapped him with a “false” rating. However, in the study PolitiFact itself cited, it was claimed that “Further research is needed to understand how the factors above combined to produce the observed behavior of the January 2025 fires, including the overall contribution of the factors’ climate-change components.”
Additionally, back in 2021, Science Magazine wrote, “One hundred percent of [Santa Ana winds] fires were human caused, and in the past decade, powerline failures have been the dominant cause.”
8. PolitiFact Rates Energy Department ‘False’ For Agreeing With It (September 9)
PolitiFact asserted that an Energy Department X post was “false” for claiming, “Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and the wind is not blowing.”
Deputy editor Louis Jacobson tried to rebut, “Once produced, energy generated from wind and solar can be stored in batteries or in larger pieces of infrastructure such as reservoirs.”
The problem for Jacobson was that the X post linked to a Washington Examiner article where it was clear that the Energy Department agreed, “the secretary claimed that, without proper battery technology, wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially ‘worthless’ when it is dark and when the wind isn’t blowing [emphasis added].”
7. PolitiFact’s Mathematically-Challenged Government Spending Charts (February 25)
When Washington Sen. Patty Murray claimed that GOP tax cuts were the primary driver of the national debt, PolitiFact gave her a “half-true” because she and Democrats voted to extend them.
However, the reason why she was not given a full false was because PolitiFact’s pie chart claimed tax cuts were the biggest contributor despite it lumping “five tax cut bills enacted since 2001” together while separating recession responses, new discretionary spending, and Medicare expansions into three separate categories.
If PolitiFact treated the two equally, it would have been $13.8 trillion in new spending (62 percent) versus $8.4 trillion in tax cuts (38 percent).
6. PolitiFact’s Double Standards on Political Labeling (June 26)
One of PolitiFact’s most annoying features is its double standards when it comes to political labeling. This time, President Trump was given a “false” label for calling Zohran Mamdani a communist despite his inglorious social media history of praising communists and calling to seize the means of production. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for any liberal to be given a “false” label for calling any Republican a fascist or a Nazi.
5. Associated Press Quibbles with Trump’s True Statement About Crime (August 11)
President Trump defended his decision to send the National Guard to D.C. by comparing the city’s crime rate to other cities, but the AP wasn’t happy, “It’s true, but Trump isn’t telling the whole story. Washington does have a higher homicide rate than many other global cities, including some that have historically been considered unsafe by many Americans. But Trump is leaving out important context: the U.S. in general sees higher violent crime rates than many other countries.”
4. Factcheck.org’s Operation Midnight Hammer Dud (June 24)
After the B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, factcheck.org claimed, “People familiar with the report told CNN the facilities’ centrifuges, which enrich uranium, remained largely ‘intact.’”
It also cited “David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told NPR, ‘I think you have to assume that significant amounts of this enriched uranium still exist, so this is not over by any means.’”
However, Albright also told NPR, “I think the purpose of the attack was to take out centrifuges and infrastructure and they feel they accomplished that." Albright also posted on X, “The time Iran would need to build even a non-missile deliverable nuclear weapon has increased significantly.”
That makes sense considering the U.S. dropped 360,000 pounds of bombs on those centrifuges and they are extremely sensitive.
3. CNN’s Daniel Dale Tries To Defend CNN (June 26)
In more bad judgment regarding Iranian centrifuges, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand falsely said that CNN had reported all along that the underwhelming Defense Intelligence Assessment was “low confidence,” which led to a rebuke from Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Dale eventually came in to claim “The Secretary referred to Fake News CNN and then immediately proceeded to effectively confirm CNN's reporting."
CNN’s 'Fact Checker’ finds that CNN’s reporting was vindicated by Hegseth:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 26, 2025
"The Secretary referred to Fake News CNN and then immediately proceeded to effectively confirm CNN's reporting."
So, a CNN employee reports that CNN reporting was accurate.
Just incredible. pic.twitter.com/LajaRxKCBy
2. Snopes Gives Cover to Rep. Tlaib Speaking At Pro-Hamas Conference (December 3)
According to Snopes, it is false to say “that Tlaib had called on supporters of Hamas, a Palestinian militant group that the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization, to 'mobilize and take over America.'"
Except the People’s Conference for Palestine featured several pro-Hamas speakers and Tlaib musing about “seizing power.”
1. Factcheck.org On Sex and Gender (April 7)
When Trump issued an executive order, Factcheck.org objected, “The definition in the executive order ‘should not and cannot apply’ to people with a [Differences of Sex Development], according to a statement from the [Pediatric Endocrine Society]. That’s because some people with a DSD, which is also called intersex, don’t produce sperm or eggs, produce both of them, or produce a reproductive cell that doesn’t match their biological sex development.”
Intersex is not a third sex. Reasonable people can understand that intersex people exist and are separate from the transgender debate, but this has nothing to do with the executive order.
It also lamented the “erasure of gender and gender identity” and suggested the administration was making mountains out of molehills when it comes to so-called “gender-affirming care.”
