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** No Humdrum Vote for Speaker This Year
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The election of a House speaker is typically a humdrum affair.

Each party nominates one of its members to be speaker, and the nominee who receives a majority of the votes cast becomes the speaker. It's a party-line vote and the nominee of the party in power wins. It typically takes one vote -- at least that has been the experience for the last 100 years.

"If no candidate receives the requisite majority, the roll call is repeated until a Speaker is elected," a Congressional Research Service report ([link removed]) explains. "Since 1913, this procedure has been necessary only in 1923, when nine ballots were required before a Speaker was elected."

This year, Republicans put up more than one candidate, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy ([link removed]) -- who has been a House Republican leader for years -- repeatedly fell short of the votes needed to become speaker of the House.

As House Republicans struggled for days to coalesce behind a single person for House speaker, this once-in-a-hundred-year spectacle on the House floor generated multiple votes and dozens of nominating speeches.

It also has generated some factual misstatements.

We found that Republican Reps. Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, Kat Cammack and Scott Perry made false and misleading statements on inflation, energy, fentanyl and Frederick Douglass in their nominating speeches at the start of the 118th Congress. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks also repeated a talking point on the IRS in a related press conference.

Read the full story, "FactChecking the House Speaker Election ([link removed]) ."
HOW WE KNOW
In a recent story, Staff Writer Catalina Jaramillo wrote that anti-vaccine activists had misrepresented 2014 research on Streptococcus pneumoniae. How did she know? She interviewed Dr. Jon McCullers, chair of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and one of the authors of the study. Read more ([link removed]) .
FEATURED FACT
In her story, which debunked a false claim about the flu vaccine, Catalina including this fact from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The flu vaccine prevented an estimated 105,000 hospitalizations and 6,300 deaths associated with influenza during the 2019-2020 season. Read more about the benefits of the flu vaccination here ([link removed]) .
THANK YOU
We want to thank everyone who made a donation to FactCheck.org during our annual fundraising drive ([link removed]) , which we launched on Dec. 19.

In just a two-week period, we received 247 donations totaling more than $50,000. We will provide details in our next quarterly financial disclosure report.

If you would like to support our work, you can make a credit card donation through our “Donate” page ([link removed]) , which is maintained by the University of Pennsylvania. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-3806. Checks can be made payable to “The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania” with a note in the memo field indicating the donation is for FactCheck.org.

Thanks again for all your support!
REPLY ALL

Subject: The COVID vaccine
Reader: Sir, in reading all of your fact check articles, are you implying that there are no negative effects whatsoever, in any human's health, upon getting vaccinated? I am truly looking forward to your answer.

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: We have never said there are "no negative effects whatsoever" from vaccinations. Our articles make clear that while no vaccine or medical product is 100% safe, the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines far outweigh the potential risks.

For example, Science Editor Jessica McDonald and Staff Writer Catalina Jaramillo wrote this in the second and third paragraphs of a recent story:

The vast majority of scientists, public health officials and other experts have endorsed the vaccines because the original randomized controlled trials and subsequent safety and effectiveness studies have shown the shots provide good protection against severe disease and death, with few safety concerns.

Although rare, the main serious side effect of the mRNA vaccines, which are the shots nearly all vaccinated Americans have received, is inflammation of the heart or its surrounding tissue, known as myocarditis or pericarditis. At 106 cases per million doses, the risk is highest for teenage males after the second dose, but is still rare, and most cases appear to resolve within a few months.

You can read their full story here ([link removed]) . You can also review these stories that provide background knowledge on vaccine safety and information on rare adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines:

How do we know vaccines are safe? ([link removed])

How safe are the vaccines? ([link removed])


** Wrapping Up
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Here's what else we've got for you since our last newsletter:
* "NFL Player Damar Hamlin’s Cardiac Arrest Triggers Unfounded Social Media Claims ([link removed]) ": Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and suffered a cardiac arrest moments after taking a hit to his chest during a tackle. While it’s not yet known why his heart stopped, some experts say his condition is most likely due to a heart rhythm problem as a result of that impact. Still, people on social media have baselessly speculated that it was caused by a COVID-19 vaccine.
* "Our Most Popular Articles in 2022 ([link removed]) ": Before we ring in 2023, we look back at the most popular articles that we posted to our website in 2022.
* "No Evidence Flu Vaccine Increases Strep A Infections, Contrary to Online Claims ([link removed]) ": Several European countries have reported an early spike of group A strep infections, mostly among children, including cases of rare but deadly bacterial infections. There is no evidence the increase is being caused by nasal spray flu vaccines, as social media posts baselessly suggest. Flu vaccination may even indirectly prevent strep A.
* "Social Media Posts Misrepresent FDA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Research ([link removed]) ": A vaccine safety surveillance study from the Food and Drug Administration has been misrepresented online. The paper did not establish a link between the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and blood clots, as some have claimed — and to date, other, more robust research has not identified such associations.

Y lo que publicamos en español ([link removed]) (English versions are accessible in each story):
* "Dudosas afirmaciones de DeSantis sobre la vacuna contra el COVID-19 ([link removed]) ": Mientras anunciaba la solicitud de una investigación por parte de un gran jurado sobre “delitos e irregularidades” relacionados con las vacunas contra el COVID-19, el gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, y su panel de expertos contestatarios sugirieron repetidamente que las vacunas eran demasiado riesgosas. Pero tales afirmaciones carecen de fundamento y se basan en análisis erróneos.
* "Estudio de autopsias no demuestra que las vacunas contra el COVID-19 no sean seguras ([link removed]) ": Hasta la fecha, los beneficios de las vacunas de ARNm contra el COVID-19 superan los riesgos, que incluyen un riesgo poco frecuente pero aumentado de miocarditis, o inflamación del corazón. Publicaciones en las redes sociales, sin embargo, citan un estudio alemán de autopsias para sugerir erróneamente lo contrario.

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