In August 2026, a rumor spread that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had declared brass musical instruments to be a national security threat to justify imposing tariffs on them.

The claim: In August 2026, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump declared brass instruments a national security threat and imposed tariffs on them.

One Facebook post about the claim read:

Trump vs trumpets!

This week, the Trump administration declared tubas, trombones, trumpets, and French horns a national security threat.

Brass instruments could soon face a 25% tariff on imports, parts, and accessories, as part of a wider push to expand tariffs on aluminium, steel, and copper. The six-page proposal, published by the Department of Commerce, uses the words “national security” nine times.

(Facebook page Classic FM)

Variants of the claim also spread on Reddit and on X.

The social media posts echoed reports in blog posts and news outlets, including the website of Classic FM, a radio station dedicated to classical music, and HuffPost.

Meanwhile, several curious readers emailed and searched the website seeking to verify the information.

It is true that on Aug. 6, 2026, the Department of Commerce published a request for comment on the Federal Register for a proposed rule to impose tariffs on brass instruments, among other products. The publication cited national security concerns.

However, it was not the instruments themselves the government department appeared to focus on, but the material from which they are made — a copper alloy. The request for comment cited Presidential Proclamation 10962 of July 30, 2025, in which Trump said copper “in all forms” — including its alloys — “is being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States.”

As a result, we’ve rated the claim mostly true.

Background of the proposed tariffs

The request for comment featured a list of several products on which the Commerce Department proposed to impose tariffs. Besides “brass-wind musical instruments and parts and accessories thereof,” the list included fire extinguishers and oxygen tanks.

These imported products needed to be subjected to tariffs because they contained aluminum, steel or copper, the Commerce Department said. All three metals were the target of three separate presidential proclamations in which Trump deemed their importation excessive and a national security threat.

Proclamation 10962 specifically concerned copper “in all forms,” including alloys. The material for brass instruments is an alloy of copper and zinc, which presumably justified their inclusion in the list of imported products worthy of tariffs. The Commerce Department’s request for comment appeared to argue that imposing such tariffs helped protect domestic industries:

As explained in the reports submitted by the Secretary to the President and cited in Proclamations 9704, 9705, and 10962, steel, aluminum, and copper are being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States. Therefore the President ordered adjustments of imports to protect U.S. national security interests by identifying derivative products on which tariffs must be imposed in order to protect the U.S. defense industrial base. The U.S. defense industrial base is critical to protecting U.S. national security interests.

The request for comment also said the Commerce Department would seek to impose 25% tariffs on these products, except for those deemed to be “agricultural equipment,” which would be subject to 15% duties.

By law, the Commerce Department cannot impose this rule before a period ending on Aug. 27, during which it will receive comments on its proposal.

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In July 2026, some social media posts claimed Jeanne Gibson, the inspiration for Rosie the Riveter from World War II, died on July 29, 2026, at the age of 100.

The claim: In July 2026, Jeanne Gibson, the inspiration for Rosie the Riveter, died at 100.

R*I*P Rosie Riveter
by
u/JColt60 in
GenerationJones

Other social media post also referred to Gibson as the inspiration behind Rosie the Riveter. Some social media posts about Gibson’s passing referred to her as “a Rosie the Riveter” instead of the sole inspiration for the character. Some readers searched the site for “Rosie the Riveter,” wondering if the rumor was true.

While it is true that Jeanne Gibson, one so-called “Rosie” in a community of women the character Rosie the Riveter represented as an emblem, died at 100 in July 2026, Gibson wasn’t “the” Rosie the Riveter, and famous depictions of the character were not directly based on her appearance. Therefore, we have rated this claim as a mixture of true and false elements.

On July 29, 2026, Pacific Historic Parks – USS Arizona Memorial posted to Facebook to say that “Rosie the Riveter” Jeanne Gibson, 100, passed away today.” It recognized her as one of more than 6 million women who served as “Rosies” during WWII by taking jobs supporting the war effort and that later on in life she regularly participated in events at Pacific Historic Parks commemorating the Rosies.

A day later, Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park also announced Gibson’s death on Facebook . It noted that just two weeks earlier, Gibson was honored at the park.

According to the two posts, Gibson left for Seattle at 18 in 1944 to weld destroyers for Todd Pacific Shipyards. Later in the war, she moved to Juneau, Alaska, to support the Army Transportation Corps by preparing vital documents that helped keep Allied forces equipped across the Pacific.

Historically, Rosie the Riveter is a name used to refer to all of the women who worked jobs supporting the U.S. in WWII, particularly factory jobs very few women held previously. Organizations such as the Rosie the Riveter Trust and the American Rosie the Riveter Association recognize each woman to have taken on such roles as a “Rosie.”

These organizations also make note of the two best-known pieces of art popularly linked to Rosie the Riveter and their inspirations, neither of which was Gibson.

The Rosie the Riveter Trust says that historians don’t know the original inspiration for a WWII-era poster of a woman flexing her arm below the slogan “We can do it!” that has become famously associated with the name in pop culture.

The American Rosie the Riveter Association says that Mary Doyle Keefe was the inspiration behind a 1943 Norman Rockwell painting titled “Rosie the Riveter.”

According to the National Park Service, the “We can do it!” poster was originally a motivational poster at a Westinghouse Electric factory that wasn’t popular — or popularly identified as depicting Rosie the Riveter — until the 1980s. The Department of Labor says that Rockwell’s painting — which featured a muscular woman with overalls and goggles holding a riveting tool in her lap while eating a sandwich and stepping on a copy of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” — was the most famous depiction of the character during WWII.

Some posts about Gibson passing included an image that appears to show Gibson dressed up as and posed like the woman in the Westinghouse Electric poster. That image appeared to be generated using artificial intelligence tools. Some clues the image was not authentic included errors in the U.S. flag behind her, in which some stars are missing and others are awkwardly positioned. The image appeared to have been partially based on an authentic photo of Gibson.

True:

Gibson was a “Rosie” in the sense that she was one of millions of women who went to work during World War II to support the war effort. She was a passionate advocate for the so-called “Rosies” until her July 2026 death.

False:

Gibson wasn’t the inspiration behind either Norman Rockwell’s 1943 painting “Rosie the Riveter” or a WWII-era motivational poster popularly associated with the character.

We have rated this claim as a mixture of True & False

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It’s not always the case that more options is better. Limit the number of choices you make and your brain will thank you for it, one psychology expert says

Jeans that fit perfectly. The ideal Netflix show for a Tuesday night. Your one and only soulmate. Modern life promises that with enough options, you will happily find the best of everything.

But behavioural scientists say the increasing flood of choices – whether it comes to shopping, social lives or relationships – is doing the opposite.

The idea that more choice is better is baked into Western culture, but research shows that having more options can make people anxious, indecisive and, paradoxically, less happy with what they pick. That is according to Barry Schwartz, an emeritus psychology professor at Swarthmore University in the US state of Pennsylvania and author of The Paradox of Choice.

“There have been hundreds of studies showing that there can be too much of a good thing,” Schwartz says.

To minimise the mental noise, he says, limit the number of choices you make, and your brain will thank you for it.

‘You’re paralysed’

More is often more confusing, Schwartz offers several examples of cases where more options left people worse off.

He pointed to one often-cited study that showed shoppers at a gourmet grocery store bought more jars of artisanal jam when they were presented with six flavours rather than with a wider array of 24. In a follow-up study, students were more likely to complete an extra-credit assignment when they were given six topics to choose from instead of 30.

Schwartz’s research expanded on those findings to learn the emotional responses to this phenomenon.

“Instead of being liberated by all this choice, you’re paralysed,” he says. “You can do anything, and you can’t figure out which of those many things to do.”

People also often end up making worse decisions, since more options suggest more potentially bad outcomes, he adds. And once someone finally decides from all the possibilities, they may be less satisfied with even a good choice because they fear there was a better alternative.

Schwartz says the satisfaction problem is especially acute for people whose aim is to get the best, whom psychologists call maximisers.

“People who are maximisers especially suffer from the proliferation of options,” he says. “Only the best will do.”

The tendency is not true for all people in all situations, Schwartz notes. Car buffs will gladly dive into the details of nearly unlimited choice when buying a new one.

“But you don’t feel that way when it comes to buying jam,” he says.

Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor and neuroscience researcher at the University of Virginia in the US, says the phenomenon occurs because the brain is designed to save people from having to think.

Problem-solving requires more energy than relying on memory, a fact that has roots in evolutionary survival mode, Willingham says. When faced with a goal, whether it be an immediate need – such as responding to a threat – or something longer-term like finding shelter, the mind first searches for what has worked before. The problem-solving part of the brain only kicks in afterwards.

“Another way to put it is that if you’re thinking, things are not going well,” he says.

That explains why sometimes people move through parts of their day on autopilot, he says. Throughout the day, people are confronted with hundreds of situations where they could do something different, but they almost always take the same route to work.

Schwartz says the proliferation of choices has also become tangled with identity in the social media age, where everyone can easily compare their choices to those of others.

“When all you’ve got to choose from is Lee’s and Levi’s, nobody expects the jeans they buy to fit perfectly,” he says. “When there are 2,000 options, well, now, dammit, you do expect your jeans to fit perfectly.”

How ‘satisficing’ can help

Journalist David Epstein says that after researching his book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, he began to shift away from his maximalist tendencies. Now, he limits his opportunities for making choices, such as when he bought 10 of the same well-fitting T-shirts in different colours.

He was following the example of Herbert Simon, a psychologist and 1978 Nobel laureate in economics, who had three sets of clothes and ate nearly the same thing every day. Simon introduced the term “satisficing”, a combination of satisfying and sufficing that means setting good-enough criteria for decisions and moving on.

Epstein sets satisficing rules for himself when shopping online by first focusing on the purpose of the purchase.

“When I find one that does that, I’m buying it, instead of reading all the reviews and getting sucked into, ‘Well, this one has all these other features.’”

Willingham and Schwartz suggest farming out some decisions. If you are looking for a new phone, find a friend who is happy with theirs and buy that one.

For larger decisions like financial planning, you will be happier if you rely on someone else’s professional expertise, Willingham says.

“If you’re thinking, ‘Well, I’m a clever guy, I can figure that out,’ I think nine times out of 10, you’re fooling yourself,” he says.

Schwartz acknowledges that for people who have trouble making decisions, changing is difficult. But it is worth it.

“What happens over time is you find it easier to make decisions, you end up more satisfied with the decisions you make, and all of a sudden, you’ve got an extra two hours in every day,” he says.

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