The University of Washington is trying to weather a storm of setbacks for disinformation researchers

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Claim: An April thread on X reporting suspicious entries in the Washington Voter Registration Database claimed that more than 200 voters were registered at a single home in Seattle.

The truth: the database had a typo. The desired address was the site of Compass Housing Alliance in Seattle, which provides a fixed address for the homeless.

Spread: By the next day, the tweet had been shared over 2,000 times on X. It was also posted on and linked to Truth Social as a way to avoid bans on sharing addresses on X.

Overseas voters

The claim: In a Sept. 23 post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Democrats are “preparing to cheat” by encouraging Americans overseas to vote.

The truth: It’s true that Democrats had encouraged Americans living abroad to vote through a program called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. But federal laws still require first-time voters to prove their identity before voting by mail, and there is no evidence that overseas voters have become a vector for voter fraud.

Spread: The rumor likely sparked from a Sept. 6 post on the notoriously inaccurate far-right website Gateway Pundit. It was pushed by the Federalist, a right-wing media site, and an account apparently impersonating former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, before it was eventually echoed by Trump himself.

Assassination attempt

The Claim: After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks on July 13, anti-Trump accounts began to fuel speculation that it was all staged for Trump’s political advantage.

The truth: Reporters quickly confirmed that the assassination attempt was real and that the shooter had been identified and killed.

Spread: Rumors peaked in the first two hours after the shooting as confusion and speculation reigned, and largely subsided once reliable reports emerged. But on TikTok, X and Bluesky, anti-Trump accounts — in both English and Spanish — continued to look for things to be suspicious of, ranging from the photographer’s position to the color of the blood on Trump’s ear.

Hurricane claims

The Claim: Dark and dark forces can control the weather and intentionally steered the course of Hurricane Helene directly toward the Republican-dominated rural areas of Florida and Georgia.

The truth: While human-caused climate change likely contributed to Hurricane Helene’s severity, there is nothing to suggest that anyone intentionally—or could—control a hurricane.

Spread: The conspiracy theory began to heat up on Sept. 28 when @MattWallace888, an X account with more than 2.2 million followers, began posting misleading maps and mocking the idea that the hurricane’s course was a coincidence. Soon, TikTok videos making the same claim garnered over 1 million views. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Georgia, joined the chorus on Oct. 3 with a tweet that said, “Yes, I can control the weather.”