Fact check: False claim Biden administration wants to ban gas stoves

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: The Biden administration wants to ban gas stoves

A Jan. 17 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) claims the Biden administration is eyeing a new initiative.

"The Biden administration wants to ban your gas stoves and then gaslight you into thinking it’s normal," reads the caption on a video from the personal account of Fox News host Steve Hilton. "Newsflash: it’s not!"

The post was liked more than 100 times in eight days.

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Our rating: False

The White House press secretary said the president does not support banning gas stoves almost a week before Hilton's post was published. While a commissioner for the Consumer Product Safety Commission floated the idea of banning gas stoves, the commission later released a statement saying it does not plan to ban them.

Biden spokeswoman says he doesn't support stove ban

Claims that the Biden administration is looking to ban gas stoves appear to stem from comments Richard Trumka Jr., a commissioner with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, made in a Jan. 9 Bloomberg article. He said the body could consider a ban as part of efforts to address concerns about air pollution from indoor appliances such as gas stoves.

“This is a hidden hazard,” he told Bloomberg. “Any option is on the table. Products that can't be made safe can be banned.”

Biden never voiced support for such a measure, though. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed the issue during a Jan. 11 press briefing at the White House.

"The president does not support banning gas stoves," she said in response to a question about whether the president was worried about the climate impact of gas stoves. "And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves. So, I just want to be very clear on that."

That comment was made six days before Hilton's Instagram post.

Trumka and the commission quickly walked back the comment as well. The day the article ran, Trumka tweeted that he was talking about future regulations.

“To be clear, CPSC isn't coming for anyone's gas stoves,” he wrote. “Regulations apply to new products.”

Alexander Hoehn-Saric, the chair of the commission, later elaborated on the commission's position in a Jan. 11 statement.

“Research indicates that emissions from gas stoves can be hazardous, and the CPSC is looking for ways to reduce related indoor air quality hazards,” the statement said. “But to be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”

Fact check: TV station tweet about gas stoves and cardiovascular events is fabricated

While the responses from Jean-Pierre, Hoehn-Saric and Trumka rule out removing existing gas stoves, they did acknowledge that the agency was looking at regulations for new gas stoves.

USA TODAY reached out to Hilton for comment.

The Associated Press, PolitiFact and Reuters also debunked the claim that the Biden administration was planning to ban gas stoves.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: False claim Biden administration wants to ban gas stoves