Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Feasting on Food Stamps; NewsGuard's Reality Check, October 31, 2025

Ines Chomnalez, NewsGuard's Reality Check ; Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Feasting on Food Stamps

"False Claim of the Week: 59 Percent of U.S. Residents Without Legal Status Collect Federal SNAP Food Benefits

NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” highlights a false claim from NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints proprietary database of provably false claims and their debunks. The claim that 59 percent of U.S. residents without legal status collect federal SNAP food benefits is NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” due to its widespread appearance across social media platforms and websites, its high engagement levels, and the high-profile nature of the sources promoting it. Those three factors, as well as both its significant subject matter and potential for harm, makes it our False Claim of the Week.

Debunk: Millions of Immigrants Without Legal Status Are Not Receiving SNAP Benefits, Contrary to Conservative Claims

What happened: Citing a report on the Newsmax network, conservative social media accounts are claiming that 59 percent of U.S. immigrants without legal status collect Supplement Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps. Some users advancing this claim said it shows that the federal nutrition program should be gutted.

Context: On Oct. 1, the federal government entered a shutdown, pausing funding to the federal Agriculture Department (USDA), which is responsible for issuing SNAP benefits. SNAP provides low-income Americans with electronic cards they can use to purchase food.

• Because of the government shutdown, the USDA said in an Oct. 27 statement that no new benefits would be issued to the 42 million Americans who receive SNAP assistance, starting on Nov. 1. On Oct. 31, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the administration must continue to make the payments for now.

A closer look: On the Oct. 27 episode of the Newsmax primetime show “Finnerty,” host Rob Finnerty said, “Fifty-nine percent of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps, meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.” Other conservatives soon began spreading the claim.

• Conservative X user @overton_news posted the Newsmax clip on Oct. 27, quoting Finnerty’s statement that “59% of ALL illegal aliens are collecting food stamps” in the caption. The post received 1 million views and 45,000 likes in less than one day.

• The same day, conservative news site TheGatewayPundit.com published an article headlined, “DEMOCRAT BACKFIRE: The Government Shutdown Has Awakened the Public About How Many People Are on Food Stamps.” The article included the above quote from Finnerty advancing the false claim, and added, “It really is shocking and now that Democrats have prolonged the shutdown, more people are going to be talking about this.”

Actually: Residents without legal status are not eligible to collect SNAP benefits, according to the USDA’s website.

• The site states, “SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented non-citizens.”

Although Finnerty did not provide any evidence for his claim, it appears to be based on a misinterpretation of a statistic, previously cited accurately by conservative social media users, from the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a think tank that supports tight immigration limits.

• CIS stated in a 2023 report: “Our best estimate is that 59 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants, also called the undocumented use at least one major [welfare] program.”

• As the quote indicates, CIS was describing households receiving assistance from any “major” welfare program — not just SNAP. CIS defined “major” programs as assistance in the form of cash, Medicaid, housing, and food (including the nutrition program for women, infants, and children known as WIC, as well as school meals).

Broken down by specific welfare program, the CIS report estimated that 0.9 percent of U.S. households led by non-legal residents receive SNAP benefits. The report did not clarify whether that percentage was composed of non-legal residents obtaining SNAP benefits illegally, or of legal residents lawfully collecting the benefits but who live in a household headed by a non-legal resident.

Newsmax did not respond to an email from NewsGuard requesting comment on the matter."

Vaccine Skepticism Comes for Pet Owners, Too; The New York Times, October 27, 2025

  Emily Anthes and Teddy Rosenbluth, The New York Times; Vaccine Skepticism Comes for Pet Owners, Too

"Over the last several years, the anti-vaccine movement has gained ground in the United States, fueled, in part, by the politicization of the Covid-19 vaccines and the increasing power of vaccine critics like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Childhood vaccination rates have fallen. Once vanquished diseases, like measles, have come storming back. And vaccine mandates are under fire: Last month, Florida announced plans to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren.

But antipathy toward vaccines is also spilling over into veterinary medicine, making some people hesitant to vaccinate their pets.

“I talk to thousands of veterinarians every year across the country, and the majority are seeing this kind of issue,” said Dr. Richard Ford, an emeritus professor at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine who helped write the national vaccine guidelines for cats and dogs.

The phenomenon has clear parallels to the anti-vaccine movement in human medicine and could, experts fear, lead the nation down a familiar path, resulting in a loosening of animal vaccination laws, a decline in pet vaccination rates and a resurgence of infectious diseases that pose a risk to both pets and people."

Better Safe than Sorry? Tylenol, Pregnancy, and Ethics; The Hastings Center for Bioethics, October 2, 2025

Rita Dexter, Sophie Schott, Miranda R. Waggoner and Anne Lyerly, The Hastings Center for Bioethics; Better Safe than Sorry? Tylenol, Pregnancy, and Ethics

"Bioethicists have a big job to do in the current climate, where experts are dismissed and pseudoscience is weaponized to serve a political agenda."

What is AI slop? A technologist explains this new and largely unwelcome form of online content; The Conversation, September 2, 2025

Adam Nemeroff, Assistant Provost for Innovations in Learning, Teaching, and Technology, Quinnipiac University, The Conversation ; What is AI slop? A technologist explains this new and largely unwelcome form of online content

"You’ve probably encountered images in your social media feeds that look like a cross between photographs and computer-generated graphics. Some are fantastical – think Shrimp Jesus – and some are believable at a quick glance – remember the little girl clutching a puppy in a boat during a flood? 

These are examples of AI slop, low- to mid-quality content – video, images, audio, text or a mix – created with AI tools, often with little regard for accuracy. It’s fast, easy and inexpensive to make this content. AI slop producers typically place it on social media to exploit the economics of attention on the internet, displacing higher-quality material that could be more helpful.

AI slop has been increasing over the past few years. As the term “slop” indicates, that’s generally not good for people using the internet...

Harms of AI slop

AI-driven slop is making its way upstream into people’s media diets as well. During Hurricane Helene, opponents of President Joe Biden cited AI-generated images of a displaced child clutching a puppy as evidence of the administration’s purported mishandling of the disaster response. Even when it’s apparent that content is AI-generated, it can still be used to spread misinformation by fooling some people who briefly glance at it.

AI slop also harms artists by causing job and financial losses and crowding out content made by real creators."

Books by Bots: Librarians grapple with AI-generated material in collections; American Libraries, September 2, 2025

Reema Saleh  , American Libraries; Books by Bots: Librarians grapple with AI-generated material in collections

"How to Spot AI-Generated Books

Once an AI-generated book has made it to your library, it will likely give itself away with telltale signs such as jumbled, repetitive, or contradicting sentences; glaring grammatical errors or false statements; or digital art that looks too smooth around the corners.

Of course, if you can get a digital sneak-peek inside a book before ordering, all the better. But if not, how can you head off AI content so it never arrives on your desk? The following tips can help.

• Look into who the author is and how “real” they seem, says Robin Bradford, a collection development librarian at a public library in Washington. An author with no digital footprint is a red flag, especially if they are credited with a slew of titles each year. Also a red flag: a book with no author listed at all.
• Exercise caution regarding self-published books, small presses, or platforms such as Amazon, which filters out less AI-generated content than other vendors do.
• Think about whether the book is capitalizing on the chance that a reader will confuse it with another, more popular book, says Jane Stimpson, a library instruction and educational technology consultant for the Massachusetts Library System. Does it have a cover similar to that of an existing bestseller? Just as animated Disney movies get imitated by low-budget knockoffs, popular titles get imitated by AI-generated books.
• Check if there is mention of AI use in the Library of Congress record associated with the book, says Sarah Manning, a collection development librarian at Boise (Idaho) Public Library (BPL). If the book has been registered with the US Copyright Office, its record may mention AI."

‘Public health is in trouble,’ says high-ranking CDC leader who resigned in protest; PBS News, August 28, 2025

Amna Nawaz, Aznar Merchant , PBS News; ‘Public health is in trouble,’ says high-ranking CDC leader who resigned in protest

"Amna Nawaz:

• So let's just start with your decision. Why did you feel the need to resign?

• Dr. Debra Houry:

  It was such a tough decision. I love the CDC. The work we do is so important.

  But I had just felt we had reached a tipping point when it came to our science and our data and being able to do the work we needed to do. I was concerned about the future of CDC and my ability to be a leader at the CDC and to do what was needed to be done on the inside. I thought my voice and the voice of my colleagues that also resigned with me would be more powerful on the outside.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What does reaching that tipping point, as you put it, mean to you?

  You saw Dr. Monarez's lawyers reference the unscientific and reckless directives. What does that mean to you?

  • Dr. Debra Houry:

    Yes, so we have an immunization committee meeting coming up in a few weeks. And many of us, myself included, were concerned about some of the recommendations might walk back vaccines in our country.

    To me, that's one of the tipping points. I think another tipping point is just the loss of Dr. Monarez. We hadn't had a CDC director for several months. When she came on board, she brought scientific rigor and some new ideas around public comment and how to really make sure data drove the decisions.

    When she had done some of these changes, she was brought to the secretary's office for discussion. And, at that point, I became concerned that she wouldn't be able to implement changes that were needed at CDC, and without that leadership, it would just leave us vulnerable again. And I thought that was the point to say, enough is enough and to really raise that Bat Signal that public health and CDC is in trouble.

    
    

    • Amna Nawaz:

      You have also said previously that her firing makes it easier for Secretary Kennedy's appointees to change vaccine recommendations. You just mentioned fearing a walk-back in some of those vaccine policies.

      What does that mean specifically? What could we see ahead?

    • Dr. Debra Houry:

      So, if we don't have a CDC director, and if there's not an acting CDC director, then the secretary would sign recommendations like he did for the last ACIP, or vaccine committee, meeting.

      So things like the COVID vaccine or hepatitis B vaccine, they could choose to change ages on it or the populations that have access to it. I'm just concerned about changing vaccine access in our country and that we need to focus more on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, shared decision-making around vaccines, and not talking about misinformation around vaccines.

      
      

      • Amna Nawaz:

        And changes to things like the hepatitis B vaccine, are those conversations you were a part of during your time there? Those are being discussed?

      • Dr. Debra Houry:

        So I know that the work groups have been asked to look at hepatitis B. They're in the middle of pulling a systematic review together right now.

        So I would imagine that means they will be discussed. My concern is, we have pulled evidence reviews together before for the ACIP meetings, that we had one that was pulled down and not discussed. I think it's really important when we do work at CDC for our data, our science and our evidence reviews to be publicly posted, so the public can also review them and understand.

        And, to me, that is transparency and something we were trying to move towards, particularly with the secretary's commitment to radical transparency. That would mean having publicly available data and documents."

Trump’s answer to numbers he doesn’t like: Change them or throw them away; The Washington Post, August 14, 2025

Cat Zakrzewski

, 

David Ovalle

, 

Scott Dance

 and 

Laura Meckler

, The Washington Post; Trump’s answer to numbers he doesn’t like: Change them or throw them away

"President Donald Trump presented inaccurate crime statistics to justify a federal takeover of D.C. police. He announced plans for the census to stop counting undocumented immigrants. And he ordered the firing of the official in charge of compiling basic statistics about the U.S. economy after a weak jobs report.

This month marked an escalation in Trump’s war on data, as he repeatedly tries to undermine statistics that threaten his agenda and distorts figures to bolster his policies. The latest instances come on top of actions the administration has taken across federal health, climate and education agencies to erase or overhaul data collection to align with the administration’s agenda and worldview.

The president’s manipulation of government data threatens to erode public trust in facts that leaders of both parties have long relied on to guide policy decisions. A breakdown in official government statistics could also create economic instability, restrain lifesaving health care and limit forecasts of natural disasters. Trump has routinely spread misinformation since the start of his political career, but his efforts in his second term to bend data to support his agenda have invited comparisons to information control in autocratic countries."

Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt; The Guardian, August 12, 2025

Dan Milmo , The Guardian; Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt

"A US medical journal has warned against using ChatGPT for health information after a man developed a rare condition following an interaction with the chatbot about removing table salt from his diet.

An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported a case in which a 60-year-old man developed bromism, also known as bromide toxicity, after consulting ChatGPT."

Scientists decry Trump energy chief’s plan to ‘update’ climate reports: ‘Exactly what Stalin did’; The Guardian, August 7, 2025

Mark Oliver , The Guardian; Scientists decry Trump energy chief’s plan to ‘update’ climate reports: ‘Exactly what Stalin did’

"The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing growing criticism from scientists who say their “worst fears” were realized when Wright revealed that the Trump administration would “update” the US’s premier climate crisis reports.

Wright, a former oil and gas executive, told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins earlier this week that the administration was reviewing national climate assessment reports published by past governments.

Produced by scientists and peer-reviewed, there have been five national climate assessment (NCA) reports since 2000 and they are considered the gold standard report of global heating and its impacts on human health, agriculture, water supplies and air pollution.

“We’re reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those reports,” said Wright, who is one of the main supporters of the administration’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda to boost fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of the climate crisis.

Wright was speaking days after his agency, the Department of Energy, produced a report claiming concern over the climate crisis was overblown. That energy department report was slammed by scientists for being a “farce” full of misinformation."