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** David Weiss is the Man in the Middle
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Hunter Biden’s agreement to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and enter a pretrial diversion program for a gun charge has triggered Republican claims of a “sweetheart deal.”

At the heart of the allegation is the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, David Weiss, a Republican who -- as Democrats like to point out -- was appointed by then-President Donald Trump.

But, as Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley writes, Trump is trying to flip the script by accusing the state’s two Democratic senators of being responsible for Weiss’ appointment.

Weiss "gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence. Because of the two Democrat Senators in Delaware, they got to choose and/or approve him," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The question about Weiss that Rob asks and answers is this: “So is he a Trump guy? Or the Democrats’ guy? The answer is a little of both.”

Rob explains the Senate tradition known as the blue-slip policy that allows home-state senators to sign off on presidential appointments of U.S. attorneys.

“Nonetheless,” as Rob also writes, “the president — according to the Constitution — ultimately decides whom to appoint.”

Read his full story, “Trump Appointed Weiss with Democrats’ Blessing ([link removed]) .”
HOW WE KNOW
When seeking a specific primary document, we conduct Google searches of certain websites. For example, readers will ask questions such as "Did President Biden say he appointed more Black female judges than 'every other president combined'?" Since we have a partial quote, we can search the White House website by searching in Google for site:whitehouse.gov + biden + "every other president combined." ([link removed]) The first result is a transcript ([link removed]) that
includes that quote.
FEATURED FACT
As of Dec. 31, 2021, foreign investors owned about 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's most recent "Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land" report. “Canadian investors own the largest amount of reported foreign-held agricultural and non-agricultural land, with 31 percent, or 12.8 million acres,” the USDA report said. Chinese investors held less than 1%. Read more ([link removed]) .
WORTHY OF NOTE
David Stewart, editor-in-chief of Tax Notes Today International, hosts a weekly podcast called "Tax Notes Talk." The July 6 podcast was titled "How Fake News Affects the Tax World ([link removed]) ."

The show featured Kathleen DeLaney Thomas of the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill and Erin Scharff of Arizona State University Law School in Phoenix. They co-authored an article called "Fake News and the Tax Law." ([link removed])

Their article identified false tax claims based on fact-checking stories from FactCheck.org and others. It makes "recommendations for how tax administrators and policymakers" can deal effectively with misinformation, which can "shape voter preferences about tax policy, which, in turn, impact the policies themselves."

"Specifically, we argue that insights from the literature on fake news can and should inform how administrators disseminate true tax information to the public," the paper said. "Further, understanding what types of tax laws are easily misunderstood or subject to manipulation should inform substantive tax policy design."

In the podcast, Thomas explained why she and her co-author used fact-checking articles to identify false tax claims.

"Erin and I ourselves could go onto Twitter, for example, and easily find a tweet that we think is fake news, but likely it hasn't been shared very many times or viewed very many times. But for a story to end up on FactCheck.org or PolitiFact, it's on that website because it's essentially gone viral at that point and gotten enough attention, it's ended up on one of these websites," she said. "This created a place for us where we could limit ourselves to the fake stories that had been shared and viewed many times."

You can listen to the podcast here ([link removed]) .
REPLY ALL

Reader: Does the mRNA used by the [COVID-19] vaccine affect your DNA IN YOUR BODY or attach to it in any way?

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: The mRNA vaccines do not change your DNA.

We’ve written about this multiple times, including in “Website Peddles Old, Debunked Falsehood About COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines ([link removed]) .” In that story, Staff Writer Saranac Hale Spencer wrote:

The mRNA vaccines work by instructing the recipient’s cells on how to make spike proteins, prompting the body to generate an immune response that protects against the virus that causes COVID-19. The messenger RNA — the “m” in mRNA stands for messenger — cannot enter the nucleus of a cell, where DNA is located, and it doesn’t have the enzymes that would let it communicate with or integrate into DNA, Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, explained in a video posted shortly after the vaccines became available.

“It is not possible for messenger RNA to alter DNA,” he said. “The chance of that happening is not small, it’s zero.”

Health departments in several other countries — including the U.K., Canada and Australia — have also explained that mRNA vaccines do not change a person’s DNA. We’ve also written about the false claim that the vaccines are “gene therapy” that can change DNA, as have many others.

But the falsehood persists.


** Wrapping Up
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Here's what else we've got for you this week:
* "FactChecking Haley’s Claim on China, U.S. Farmland and Military Installations ([link removed]) ": Nikki Haley said China bought 400,000 acres of U.S. farmland "near our military installations." Chinese investors own a total of 383,935 acres, or about 1% of foreign-held agricultural land in the U.S. It's not the amount near U.S. military installations.
* "Online Post Misrepresents 2020 Wisconsin Voter Data, Turnout ([link removed]) ": Nearly 3.3 million votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, which the state calculated as a record turnout of 73%. A social media post tries to cast doubt on the results by citing incomplete data and claiming it shows “a registered voter turnout of 94%.”
* "Social Media Posts Fabricate DeSantis High School Yearbook Quote ([link removed]) ": Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ high school yearbook photo was posted to Reddit by a person claiming to be a former schoolmate. But Instagram posts show an altered version of the yearbook entry that includes a fake quote from DeSantis referencing rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot and Nintendo 64.

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