Fact check: Dr Rachel Levine not featured on the March 2021 cover of Vanity Fair

by Reuters
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 09:29 GMT

Dr. Rachel Levine, physician general nominee, is seen at the State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania May 4, 2015. Levine, a transgender woman who teaches pediatrics and psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine, faces the Pennsylvania Senate for a confirmation hearing after being appointed physician-general. Picture taken May 4, 2015. REUTERS/Daniel Shanken

Image Caption and Rights Information
Social media users have been sharing screenshots of a fake tweet by Dr. Rachel Levine saying that she is honored to be on the cover of Vanity Fair in March

Social media users have been sharing screenshots of an alleged tweet by Dr. Rachel Levine, Secretary of Health for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and U.S. President Joe Biden’s new assistant health secretary pick, saying that she is honored to be on the cover of Vanity Fair in March. This screenshot has been digitally altered as Levine tweeted no such thing.

Examples can be seen here and here

The alleged tweet reads: “Thank you Vanity Fair for honoring me on the cover of your magazine this March. My dream of becoming @POTUS one day just took a step forward.”

Levine, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine (here) who has led Pennsylvania’s response to the coronavirus outbreak as the commonwealth’s top health official, was named by President Biden as assistant health secretary for the new administration, becoming the first openly transgender official to be confirmed by the Senate (here). 

The tweet includes a photograph of the magazine with Levine on the cover.

The Twitter account seen in the screenshot (@DrRachelLevine) has been suspended by Twitter twitter.com/DrRachelLevine. Levine’s official account can be seen  twitter.com/SecretaryLevine. No such tweet appears there.

Vanity Fair has all issues available on its website  archive.vanityfair.com/. The March 2021 issue here has singer-songwriter Billie Eilish on the cover. On Jan. 15, Vanity Fair tweeted (here) that Eilish would be on the cover.  

Levine has addressed the mockery and often transphobic misinformation targeted at her in the past (here, here). 

VERDICT

False. Dr. Rachel Levine is not featured on the cover of the March 2021 issue of Vanity Fair.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work  here.

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