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Trans shooters myth, bikers at Walmart rumor & CDC vaccine chief exit

Plus: Fake stories about Texas floods reached millions on Facebook. Foreign ad companies likely profited

Author

Megan Loe
August 30, 2025

SATURDAY EDITION

Snopes Debunker

A person stands near a large memorial of teddy bears, other stuffed animals and flowers near a street.

Mass shooters are not disproportionately transgender, contrary to claims

After the deadly shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school, some conservative influencers claimed there is an “epidemic” of transgender and nonbinary mass shooters in the U.S. Federal officials have referred to the Minneapolis shooter, Robin Westman, as transgender.

But does the data actually support that narrative?

Snopes reporter Emery Winter dug into public mass shooting databases and what they found tells a different story.

A crowd of people are outside a building that says THE HOUSE OF GOD AND THE GATE.

What we know about Minneapolis shooter Robin Westman's gender identity

Court documents from 2020 show Westman changed their name from Robert to Robin and identified as female, though Westman’s gender identity at the time of the shooting remains unconfirmed.

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A white man wearing what appears to be a military hat stands in front of a large crowd of people saluting at him.

Did 300 bikers shut down Walmart to defend veteran Henry 'Hammer' Morrison?

The Road Warriors Motorcycle Club allegedly came to defend the honor of their founder after he was humiliated at a Walmart store.

A white man wearing a black suit appears to be speaking.

CDC vaccine chief Demetre Daskalakis resigned. Read his letter denouncing RFK Jr.'s leadership

Dr. Demetre C. Daskalakis was one of three top officials at the CDC who resigned after the White House fired the agency's director.

A large crowd of people appear to be listening to something. One holds a sigh that says, "'You Can Make It' helped me survive cancer. THX Will."

Did Will Smith use AI to fake concert crowd in a video? We looked into it

Online users and prominent news media outlets promoted partly misleading information about yet another trending topic.

Staff Pick

Photos of celebrities like Jelly Roll (a white man with face tattoos in the middle of the image), Bruce Springsteen (a white man whose face is shown in the top left of the image) and Coco Gauff (a Black woman whose face is shown in the right of the image) are shown next to large bodies of water and people seemingly trapped in them.

Fake stories about Texas floods reached millions on Facebook. Foreign ad companies likely profited

A slew of fabricated stories duped Facebook users after the deadly floods — and sites promoting them had ties to ad tech firms in Southeast Asia.