Did 'Liberals' Set Up a GoFundMe Campaign for Murder Suspect Cristhian Rivera?
In August 2018, police in Iowa charged 24-year-old Cristhian Rivera with the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student who had gone missing while jogging more than a month earlier.  charged The investigation into the disappearance of Tibbetts had been closely followed on a national level for weeks, but the arrest of Rivera, who authorities say is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, prompted some commentators -- led by President Donald Trump -- to bring her death into the realm of politics.  In a short video posted to Twitter, Trump used the murder of Tibbetts to advance his immigration policies, including the long-touted construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico: pic.twitter.com/wYCNmkkaNR pic.twitter.com/wYCNmkkaNR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2018 August 22, 2018  The politicization of Tibbetts' death continued in the days following the arrest of Rivera, whom authorities in Iowa say led them to her remains and has confessed to the murder. On 23 August, the right-wing junk news Facebook page "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme which claimed that "liberals" had started a GoFundMe campaign to collectively raise $5,000,000 for Rivera's bail. It contained what was presented as a screenshot from the GoFundMe website, along with the introductory message: "Liberals raising the bail money for a murder [sic] just #WalkAway." meme "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" added: "Is this for real? Are Democrats raising money for this [piece of shit]?"   #WalkAway is an online campaign which purports to represent individuals who have left the Democratic party, supposedly in dismay at left-wing policies and vehement criticism or disparagement of President Donald Trump. A Twitter tracking tool called Hamilton68, which is run by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, has found that Russian bot networks have boosted the spread of the #WalkAway hashtag.  campaign Russian bot networks The meme was also promoted in several widely-shared tweets, including one posted by the self-described "investigative journalist" Laura Loomer, who has a track record of fabricating and perpetuating conspiracy theories: tweets track record Soooooooo@jihadwatchRS cant have a @gofundme for his journalism, but #MollieTibbettss illegal immigrant murderer can? ? @jihadwatchRS @gofundme #MollieTibbetts We need a very powerful lawyer of group of lawyers to sue these tech companies for violation of public accommodation laws. This is absolutely absurd. pic.twitter.com/dnEOoQcGNv pic.twitter.com/dnEOoQcGNv  Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 23, 2018 August 23, 2018  The meme's central claim is false. Nobody (liberal or otherwise) has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise Rivera's bail (which is, in fact, $5,000,000.) The meme features some sloppy image editing, for example the jarring difference in font between "$117,504" and "of 5,000,000 to make bail."  bail   It also contains mistakes. On the actual GoFundMe website, the feature which shows how much money a campaign has raised always follows the same format: "$9,999 of $99,999 goal," as shown in the example below:   In the GoFundMe mobile app, the same feature is slightly different, always following the format "$9,999 raised of $99,999 goal." Neither the website or app display this meter with a description of the campaign (such as "to make bail") affixed to the end, and they always include dollar signs before every amount (which is not the case in the fake "Cristhian Rivera" meme.) format As well being crudely doctored, the "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" meme does not follow either of these formats, which establishes that it is a fake.  No campaign relating to Cristhian Rivera's bail existed on GoFundMe as of 24 August 2018, as a quick search of the website shows. (Neither did any such campaign exist under "Christian Rivera," as the suspect's name is sometimes misspelled, or "Cristhian Bahena Rivera," his full name.) Furthermore, no such campaign had ever existed. search exist Bahena When a campaign is removed from GoFundMe, it remains discoverable on search engines. For example, in August 2018 GoFundMe deleted a potentially fraudulent campaign purporting to raise funds for medical care for a Trump supporter supposedly attacked with a brick in Arizona. Performing a Google search for the title of the campaign ("Darrell's medical bills") still yields a residual URL for that campaign: campaign     "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" is a hyperpartisan Facebook page which frequently posts misleading or fake content and memes, some of which we have debunked previously.  debunked A separate campaign relating to Rivera (but not mentioning his bail) was launched on 22 August. It, too, used his mugshot but it was titled "Iowa billboard" and aimed to purchase a billboard which would show Rivera's photograph along with the slogan "Vote Democrat: No border. No wall. Just death for you all." campaign Foley, Ryan. "Authorities: Iowa Student Killed by Mexican in US Illegally."
 The Associated Press. 22 August 2018. Palma, Bethania. "Did the #WalkAway Campaign Use Stock Photographs for People It Claimed Left the Democratic Party?"
 Snopes.com. 25 July 2018. O., Caroline. "Pro-Trump and Russian-Linked Twitter Accounts Are Posing as Ex-Democrats In New Astroturfed Movement."
 ArcDigital. 5 July 2018. Palma, Bethania. "Conspiracy Theories Immediately Appear After Santa Fe School Shooting."
 Snopes.com. 18 May 2018. KNXV Phoenix. "Video -- Valley GoFundMe Page Taken Down."
 KNXV/MSN. 23 August 2018.
On 7 February 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, introduced a five-page nonbinding resolution to the U.S. House of Representatives for federal government to recognize its duty to establish a "Green New Deal." resolution The controversial proposal incorporated seven goals previously articulated by Ocasio-Cortez for the U.S. to realize within ten years: Dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources; building a national, energy-efficient, smart grid; upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety; eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities across the country; eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure to ensure universal access to clean water; funding massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases; making green technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely greenhouse gas neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal. The broader proposal also called for sweeping social measures such as "a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one," "basic income programs" and "universal health care programs." proposal On 26 March 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced a preemptive vote in the U.S. Senate on a procedural motion to take up a binding form of the resolution, deriding the Green New Deal as a plan for basically outlawing the only sources of energy that working-class and middle-class families can actually afford" that would kill off entire domestic industries and eliminate millions of jobs. Democrats criticized McConnell's move as a "sham" intended to "quash debate by blocking public hearings and expert testimony about the consequences of inaction on climate change" and to hasten a vote in order to force Senate Democrats to commit to either supporting or rejecting the proposal at a very early stage: criticized Republicans ... set up this vote to highlight potential splits in the Democratic caucus and force lawmakers to splinter from a high-profile, progressive idea. As the thinking goes, if only part of the Democratic caucus wound up backing the idea, Republicans could argue that it didnt actually have enough support from the party ... Additionally, the move was aimed at putting Democrats from more moderate states in a tough position, forcing them to choose between backing a popular liberal idea and potentially turning off some of their constituents. The Senate vote is a perfect example of that kind of superficial approach to government, Ocasio-Cortez said. What McConnells doing is that hes trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups, without working through committee  because he doesnt want to save our planet. Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned. In the event, most Democrats didn't bite. All 53 Republicans in the Senate voted against the plan, but they were joined by just three Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine (who caucuses with Democrats). The remaining 43 Democratic senators all declined to commit and merely voted present in protest of the GOPs action. The procedural motion was thus voted down by a 57-0 margin. voted down A meme circulated online afterwards offensively portrayed Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as a "100% retard" for failing to "even vote for [her] own bill":  The implications of that meme were wrong on two counts: 1) The Senate was not voting on whether to accept or reject Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" resolution. What the Senate voted on was a different form of the resolution, and what they voted against was not the resolution itself but a motion for cloture, the step of agreeing to end debate on a bill so that Senate consideration of it can move forward: not voting cloture This was not the non-binding Green New Deal resolution introduced by Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Feb. 7. Instead, this was a version that McConnell himself introduced, and it was a binding resolution. Instead of voting on whether "it is the sense of the Senate" that the government has a duty to create a Green New Deal, senators would have been skipping ahead to vote on whether the Green New Deal should become "the policy of the United States," without so much as a hearing. a version Under Senate rules, making it binding was the only way McConnell could hold a show vote without the usual process of assigning the legislation to the appropriate committees for discussion and debate. That would put a public spotlight on experts testifying and debate over climate solutions, something McConnell is seeking to avoid. Technically, the Senate voted on whether to end debate on McConnell's motion to proceed to consideration of his version of a Green New Deal resolution. This "cloture" vote wasn't on the substance of the Green New Deal. McConnell's aim was not to actually consider the Green New Deal, which he describes as a "socialist" plan that would "uproot life as we know it." He was hoping the vote would kill talk of a Green New Deal in its infancy, while putting Democrats on the spot. 2) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, not a member of the U.S. Senate, and thus she had no opportunity to vote on the cloture motion at all. In short, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez didn't "neglect" or "forget" to participate in the referenced Green New Deal vote: she wasn't eligible to take part in it because she isn't a member of the Senate. Nor was the vote that took place in the Senate one that directly addressed the merits or deficiencies of her Green New Deal resolution. Daly, Matthew.  "Senate Shuns Green New Deal Amid Claims of Bad Faith."
  Associated Press.  26 March 2019. Nilsen, Ella and Li Zhou.  "Senate Democrats Broadly Shut Down Republican Trolling on the Green New Deal."
  Vox.  26 March 2019. Grandoni, Dino and Felicia Sonmez.  "Senate Defeats Green New Deal, As Democrats Call Vote a Sham."
  The Washington Post.  26 March 2019. Amadeo, Kimberly.  "The Green New Deal and Why It's Happening Now."
  The Balance.  2 April 2019. Lavelle, Marianne.  "Senate's Green New Deal Vote: 4 Things You Need to Know."
  Inside Climate News.  26 March 2019. Claim:  Pronunciation problems plague exchange between traveler and room service in Far East hotel.  Status:  False.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, 2003] This exchange between an English-speaking traveller and a member of the hotel staff in a Far East hotel was recorded in the "Far-East Economic Review" about five years ago. It may take you a while to fathom it all out, but do try. Once you know what it is supposed to be, it really is hilarious!  Room Service:  Morny. Rune-sore-bees.Hotel Guest:  Oh, sorry. I thought I dialed Room Service.Room Service:  Rye, rune-sore-bees. Morny. Djewish to odor sunteen?Hotel Guest:  Uh... yes. I'd like some bacon and eggs.Room Service:  Ow July den?Hotel Guest:  What?Room Service:  Aches. Ow July den? Pry, boy, pooch...?Hotel Guest:  Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry. Scrambled please.Room Service:  Ow July dee baycome? Crease?Hotel Guest:  Crisp will be fine.Room Service:  Hokay. An Santos?Hotel Guest:  What?Room Service:  Santos. July Santos?Hotel Guest:  Ugh. I don't know... I don't think so.Room Service:  No. Judo one toes?Hotel Guest:  Look, I feel really bad about this, but I don't know what "judo one toes" means. I'm sorry.Room Service:  Toes! Toes! Why djew Don Juan toes? Ow bow eenglish mopping we bother?Hotel Guest:  English muffin! I've got it! You were saying toast! Fine. An English muffin will be fine.Room Service:  We bother?Hotel Guest:  No. Just put the bother on the side.Room Service:  Wad?Hotel Guest:  I'm sorry. I meant butter. Butter on the side.Room Service: Copy?Hotel Guest:  I feel terrible about this but...Room Service: Copy. Copy, tea, mill...Hotel Guest:  Coffee! Yes, coffee please. And that's all.Room Service:  One Minnie. Ass rune torino fee, strangle aches, crease baycome, tossy cenglish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy. Rye?Hotel Guest:  Whatever you say.Room Service: Hokay. Tendjewberrymud.Hotel Guest:  You're welcome. Origins:   We've  been seeing this exchange kick about the Internet for several years, almost always baldly presented as a "this really happened!" tale, one replete with small touches indicating the action took place in a Far East Hotel or that this account appeared as a news item in one periodical or another.  Once again, a funny story penned by celebrated comic Shelley Berman has been dressed up to position it as a slice of real   life.  As Mr. Berman says on his web site: "The above dialogue never actually took place in any hotel anywhere in the world. It is an intentionally composed humorous fiction." web site If the name of Shelley Berman seems hauntingly familiar, it's likely because another of his works has also been bruited about the online world, the hilarious "Hotel Soap." Hotel Soap Barbara "room service with a smile" Mikkelson Last updated:  17 December 2005    Sources:   Berman, Shelley.  A Hotel Is a Place.   Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan, 1972.   ISBN 0-8431-10211-X.    Berman, Shelley.  A Hotel Is a Funny Place.   Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan, 1985.   ISBN 0-8431-1418-5. On the evening of Feb. 11, 2024, shortly afterthe Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII,an image of U.S. President Joe Biden with glowing red laser eyes circulated online, along with the caption, "Just like we drew it up."Screenshots of the post indicated that Biden's official account on X (formerly Twitter) made the post. image Screenshots The post referenced the "Dark Brandon" meme  that is, imagerydepicting Biden as a nonhuman villain with laser eyes and is a satirical response to critics. Prior to the championship game, many right-wingconspiracy theorists made posts about Democrats secretly scheming with Chiefs tight Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift to help Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. They believed high-profile Democrats worked with the NFL to rig the season so that Kelce and Swift would end up at the highly watched event and endorse Biden there, CNN reported. Dark Brandon depicting response conspiracy CNN reported (Screenshot via Reddit) Biden's official X account did indeed share the image, a reference to the Dark Brandon meme, along with the words, "Just like we drew it up," after the Chiefs' Super Bowl victory. We thus rated the claim  The original tweet is viewable on Biden's X account and archived here. (The account is distinct from the one he uses for presidential matters, which is @POTUS.) here POTUS Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE  Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024 February 12, 2024  The notion that Biden or Democrats had any role in the outcome of Super Bowl LVIII was nothing but an unfounded conspiracy theory. We reached out to the White House asking what it meant by, or why it authored, the post  which appeared to be trolling people who believed the conspiracy theory to be true. We'll update this report if, or when, we receive a response. unfounded conspiracy theory As wereported before, critics of the president started referring to him as "Brandon" around 2021, and memes depicting him as a cartoonish villain with laser eyessurfacedaround that time, too. As a response, supporters of the president  including White House DeputyPressSecretary Andrew Bates (tweet below) attempted toreclaim the "Dark Brandon" imagery tomock people who genuinely posted it. reported surfaced White House DeputyPressSecretary Andrew Bates reclaim  According to The Associated Press, the "Brandon" name stemmed from an incident in which a reporter mistook a crowd'schant of "F*** Joe Biden" for "Let's go, Brandon" in support of a NASCAR driver. Since then, anti-Biden people have used "Let's go, Brandon" as a rallying cry, putting it on T-shirts, merchandise and more. The Associated Press "Dark Brandon" memes  i.e. images of alaser-eyed Biden  are an apparent attempt by the president's supporters to comment on the conspiratorial nature of some of his critics. Bidenreferencedthe internet trend at the 2023 White House Correspondents Association dinner. referenced Kaczynski, Andrew and Oliver Darcy. "Right-Wing Media Figures Target Taylor Swift with Absurd Conspiracy Theory Ahead of the Super Bowl | CNN Business." CNN, 30 Jan. 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/media/taylor-swift-super-bowl-right-wing-conspiracy/index.html. Accessed 12 Feb. 2024. "'Let's Go Brandon': A Collection of Stories." Snopes, 2 Nov. 2021, https://www.snopes.com//collections/lets-go-brandon/.Accessed 12 Feb. 2024. Navlakha, Meera. "Joe Biden's Laser-Eyed Alter Ego Returns for Super Bowl Meme." Mashable, 12 Feb. 2024, https://mashable.com/article/joe-biden-dark-brandon-meme-taylor-swift-donald-trump.Accessed 12 Feb. 2024. Romano, Aja. "The 'Dark Brandon' Meme  and Why the Biden Campaign Has Embraced It  Explained." Vox, 11 Aug. 2022, https://www.vox.com/culture/23300286/biden-dark-brandon-meme-maga-why-confusing-explained.Accessed 12 Feb. 2024. Sforza, Lauren. "Biden Trolls MAGA Republicans with Super Bowl Tweet." The Hill, 12 Feb. 2024, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4462750-biden-trolls-maga-republicans-super-bowl-tweet/.Accessed 12 Feb. 2024. Thompson, Alex, and Allie Bice. "Dark Brandon Begins: How WH Aides Appropriated the Meme of Their Boss as an Underworld Kin." POLITICO, 8 Aug. 2022, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2022/08/08/how-a-meme-of-biden-as-an-underworld-king-became-appropriated-by-his-aides-00050405.Accessed 12 Feb. 2024. Variations: Origins:  Although many schools will offer some sort of bereavement consideration under exceptional circumstances, no college or university in the United States has a policy awarding a 4.0 average (or anything else) to a student whose roommate dies. This rumor (or at least its widespread distribution) appears to be of fairly recent origin, dating from approximately the mid-1970s. It most likely started out as an expression of the pressures students feel to achieve good grades in the form of a morbid joke (i.e., "Even if the pressures of school cause some people to off themselves, there's no reason we can't profit by it!"), and the joke became a legend when it was spread as true by credulous students, picking up variations along the way. A similar theme of suicide (and student grade consideration for witnessing it) can be found in the pencil suicide legend. pencil Sightings: Dead Man on Campus Dead Man's Curve Additional information:   Bennett, Gillian and Paul Smith.  A Nest of Vipers.
  Sheffield: Univ. of Sheffield Press, 1990.  ISBN 1-85075-256-7  (pp. 69-76). Bronner, Simon J.  Piled Higher and Deeper.
  Little Rock: August House, 1990.  ISBN 0-87483-154-7  (pp. 32-33). Piled Higher and Deeper Brunvand, Jan Harold.  Curses! Broiled Again!
  New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.  ISBN 0-393-30711-5  (pp. 295-298). Curses! Broiled Again! Dickson, Paul and Joseph Gouldon.  Myth-Informed.
  New York: Perigee Books, 1993.  ISBN 0-399-51839-8.  (p. 62). Myth-Informed Reisberg, Leo.  "Hollywood Discovers an Apocryphal Legend."
  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  11 September 1998. On 7 February 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, introduced a five-page nonbinding resolution to the U.S. House of Representatives for federal government to recognize its duty to establish a "Green New Deal." resolution The controversial proposal incorporated seven goals previously articulated by Ocasio-Cortez for the U.S. to realize within ten years: Dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources; building a national, energy-efficient, smart grid; upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety; eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities across the country; eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure to ensure universal access to clean water; funding massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases; making green technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely greenhouse gas neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal. The broader proposal also called for sweeping social measures such as "a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one," "basic income programs" and "universal health care programs." proposal On 26 March 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced a preemptive vote in the U.S. Senate on a procedural motion to take up a binding form of the resolution, deriding the Green New Deal as a plan for basically outlawing the only sources of energy that working-class and middle-class families can actually afford" that would kill off entire domestic industries and eliminate millions of jobs. Democrats criticized McConnell's move as a "sham" intended to "quash debate by blocking public hearings and expert testimony about the consequences of inaction on climate change" and to hasten a vote in order to force Senate Democrats to commit to either supporting or rejecting the proposal at a very early stage: criticized Republicans ... set up this vote to highlight potential splits in the Democratic caucus and force lawmakers to splinter from a high-profile, progressive idea. As the thinking goes, if only part of the Democratic caucus wound up backing the idea, Republicans could argue that it didnt actually have enough support from the party ... Additionally, the move was aimed at putting Democrats from more moderate states in a tough position, forcing them to choose between backing a popular liberal idea and potentially turning off some of their constituents. The Senate vote is a perfect example of that kind of superficial approach to government, Ocasio-Cortez said. What McConnells doing is that hes trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups, without working through committee  because he doesnt want to save our planet. Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned. In the event, most Democrats didn't bite. All 53 Republicans in the Senate voted against the plan, but they were joined by just three Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine (who caucuses with Democrats). The remaining 43 Democratic senators all declined to commit and merely voted present in protest of the GOPs action. The procedural motion was thus voted down by a 57-0 margin. voted down A meme circulated online afterwards offensively portrayed Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as a "100% retard" for failing to "even vote for [her] own bill":  The implications of that meme were wrong on two counts: 1) The Senate was not voting on whether to accept or reject Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" resolution. What the Senate voted on was a different form of the resolution, and what they voted against was not the resolution itself but a motion for cloture, the step of agreeing to end debate on a bill so that Senate consideration of it can move forward: not voting cloture This was not the non-binding Green New Deal resolution introduced by Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Feb. 7. Instead, this was a version that McConnell himself introduced, and it was a binding resolution. Instead of voting on whether "it is the sense of the Senate" that the government has a duty to create a Green New Deal, senators would have been skipping ahead to vote on whether the Green New Deal should become "the policy of the United States," without so much as a hearing. a version Under Senate rules, making it binding was the only way McConnell could hold a show vote without the usual process of assigning the legislation to the appropriate committees for discussion and debate. That would put a public spotlight on experts testifying and debate over climate solutions, something McConnell is seeking to avoid. Technically, the Senate voted on whether to end debate on McConnell's motion to proceed to consideration of his version of a Green New Deal resolution. This "cloture" vote wasn't on the substance of the Green New Deal. McConnell's aim was not to actually consider the Green New Deal, which he describes as a "socialist" plan that would "uproot life as we know it." He was hoping the vote would kill talk of a Green New Deal in its infancy, while putting Democrats on the spot. 2) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, not a member of the U.S. Senate, and thus she had no opportunity to vote on the cloture motion at all. In short, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez didn't "neglect" or "forget" to participate in the referenced Green New Deal vote: she wasn't eligible to take part in it because she isn't a member of the Senate. Nor was the vote that took place in the Senate one that directly addressed the merits or deficiencies of her Green New Deal resolution. Daly, Matthew.  "Senate Shuns Green New Deal Amid Claims of Bad Faith."
  Associated Press.  26 March 2019. Nilsen, Ella and Li Zhou.  "Senate Democrats Broadly Shut Down Republican Trolling on the Green New Deal."
  Vox.  26 March 2019. Grandoni, Dino and Felicia Sonmez.  "Senate Defeats Green New Deal, As Democrats Call Vote a Sham."
  The Washington Post.  26 March 2019. Amadeo, Kimberly.  "The Green New Deal and Why It's Happening Now."
  The Balance.  2 April 2019. Lavelle, Marianne.  "Senate's Green New Deal Vote: 4 Things You Need to Know."
  Inside Climate News.  26 March 2019. Claim:  Text reproduces an open letter to Americans from Russian president Vladimir Putin. INCORRECT ATTRIBUTION Example:  [Collected via e-mail, August 2013] A letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin to the American people has been circulating around the internet for the past couple of days. In the letter, Putin re-introduces Americans to some unpleasant facts about history and life theyd rather forget, such as Nixons reasoning behind massive carpet bombing of millions or North Vietnamese for the purpose of 'looking good' while exiting the war, and how Pakistan has been using the U.S. as a 'false ally' to gain foreign aid, while using the funds to embolden the Taliban in Afghanistan. He calls out Barrack Hussein Obama for having the audacity to meet with gay rights activists while he is in Russia next week, a group Putin despises, while refusing to carve away time to meet with him and solve the Syria issue. He compares the action to the equivalent of him (Putin) coming to the U.S. and meeting with Obamas domestic enemy, the N.R.A.  How do I put this politely? You Americans are dumb. Today, Russia and America are fighting each other over fighting the Muslim radicals. Instead, we should be uniting to crush these violent Islamists, once and for all.  You Americans want to remove my ally, the Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad. To borrow a phrase from your John F. Kennedy, Assad may be a son-of-a-bitch, but hes my son-of-a-bitch. So if you want to destroy him, what are you going to give me in return? If your answer is, "We will give you nothing," well, why would I ever agree to that? That's not negotiation, that's dictation; it's a return to the bad Yeltsin days, when Holy Mother Russia was pushed into the mud like a used whore. [Remainder of the letter can be viewed here.] here Origins:  This "open letter" from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Americans, putatively expressing that politician's viewpoints on U.S. military intervention in the Syrian civil war and other international matters, was published on breitbart.com on 3 September 2013 under the  breitbart.com title "LETS JOIN ONE ANOTHER TO CRUSH THE UNHOLY, UNRULY, JIHADI MUSLIMS" and attributed to Vladimir Putin.  Many readers who encountered this item on that site (and elsewhere) mistook its attribution and first person tone as an indication that the piece was actually written by President Putin himself.   Even though this item may have been cast in the first person and mockingly bylined as something penned by "Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin," it's not an actual open letter to Americans written by the Russian president.  It's a political opinion piece that uses a "literary ventriloquism" device through which an author expresses his viewpoint by putting his words into someone else's mouth  highlighting what the writer wants the audience to understand by presenting the author's words as another person's, as if the audience were "inside the mind of" that other person. Coincidentally, nine days later the New York Times published a (much more temperate) op-ed piece about U.S. military intervention in Syria which was also bylined with Vladimir Putin's name.  According to the UK's Guardian newspaper, the editorial had been offered to the Times by the public relations firm Ketchum (which works on behalf of Russian interests), and the idea for the article and its basic content did indeed come from President Putin, with some of his assistants crafting the final text.  op-ed Last updated:  12 September 2013 In January 2022, an online advertisement showed a picture of former Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway next to the words, "Iconic NFL Players Who Went Broke." online advertisement  The ad was misleading clickbait.  The ad led to a slideshow article on MoneyWise.com that again featured the same photograph of Elway. The headline read, "These Iconic NFL Players Lost It All." article It wasn't until the last page of the long story that Elway was featured. However, it said nothing of him running out of money and going "broke." last page Instead, it referenced that, in 2010, Elway fell victim to a Ponzi scheme by a hedge fund manager named Sean Michael Mueller. The Associated Press reported that "he and a business partner gave Mueller $15 million," and that Mueller was later sentenced to 40 years in prison. fell victim to a Ponzi scheme reported The last page of the MoneyWise.com article also mentioned an ABC News article from 2016 that reported Elway missed out on a potentially huge investment opportunity in 1998. Had he signed a deal with the Broncos to buy an ownership stake in the team, his investment might have been worth around $388 million by the year 2015, potentially a "646 percent return on the 1998 investment, adjusted for inflation." an ABC News article As of early 2022, the former NFL great was employed as the president of football operations for the Broncos and had previously held the title of the team's general manager. the team's general manager There was no evidence that Elway was broke, nor did the lengthy MoneyWise.com article mention any such thing. Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising "arbitrage." The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. submit ads to us Claim:  A transgender teenage girl, Leelah Alcorn, committed suicide and left a note explaining why on her Tumblr.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, December 2014] I read A suicide letter on Face Book supposedly from a 17 year old transgender named Josh Alcorn. Is this a factual story?  Origins:   On 29 December 2014, Cincinnati City Council member Chris Seelbach posted an image on Facebook of a transgender teen girl he identified as Leelah Alcorn, aged 17, and stated: Some very sad news to share. Yesterday, a 17 year old committed suicide by jumping in front of a semi on I-71 near the South Lebanon exit. It has come to light that this person likely committed suicide because she was transgender.  While Cincinnati led the country this past year as the first city in the mid-west to include transgender inclusive health benefits and we have included gender identity or expression as a protected class for many years.... the truth is.... it is still extremely difficult to be a transgender young person in this country. We have to do better. By reading her letter, Leelah makes it clear she wants her death to, in some way, help "trans civil rights movements." Please join me in making a donation (investment in our trans kids) right now to TransOhio. Appended to the post was the full text of an apparent suicide note left by Leelah Alcorn. Its text was published to the teen's Tumblr  account, and it appeared to have been scheduled by her to auto-post to the blog after a particular date and time. That post was followed by an additional note addressing individuals to whom Alcorn was close, and both were visible on her active Tumblr page on the night of 29 December 2014. Tumblr The note began: If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue. Please don't be sad, it's for the better. The life I would've lived isn't worth living in ... because I'm transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy's body, and I've felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally "boyish" things to try to fit in. When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won't do anything but make them hate them self. That's exactly what it did to me. My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help. When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn't receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep. I formed a sort of a "fuck you" attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that's obviously not what I wanted. So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I'm surprised I didn't kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent's disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness. At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn't actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week. After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I've had enough. I'm never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I'm never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I'm never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I'm never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I'm never going to find a man who loves me. I'm never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There's no winning. There's no way out. I'm sad enough already, I don't need my life to get any worse. People say "it gets better" but that isn't true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse. That's the gist of it, that's why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that's not a good enough reason for you, it's good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don't give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren't treated the way I was, they're treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say "that's fucked up" and fix it. Fix society. Please. Goodbye,(Leelah) Josh Alcorn  A local news outlet reported Alcorn was killed through being struck by a tractor-trailer:  reported Joshua Alcorn, 17, of Kings Mills, was in the road near the South Lebanon exit just before 2:30 a.m. when a tractor-trailer operated by Abdullahi Ahmed, 39, of Florence, hit the boy, according to police reports. Alcorn was transported from the scene by the Warren County Coroner's Office. Alcorn's mother acknowledged her death on Facebook, and a photograph of the teen used in news reports matches the physical appearance of the person shown in the picture displayed at the head of this page. The basic circumstances involving the teen, her name, and the details of her death line up with news coverage, and city council member Chris Seelbach later stated several friends of Leelah's and the teen's pastor confirmed she had published the Tumblr message reproduced above. news reports   Last updated:   30 December 2014    Cincinnati.com.  "Boy, 17, Hit and Killed by Semi on I-71."   28 December 2014. Claim:  The plastic strip embedded in U.S. bank notes enable the Feds to tell how much money you have on you.  Examples:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] This past weekend, a friend visiting our house told us that the anti-counterfeiting strip put in newly printed paper money can be used to determine how much cash you are carrying.  She said that the ever-present "they" at the airport have a machine that can determine how much cash you have on your person or in your luggage, and if you are carrying a sufficiently large amount of cash, you will be detained by the police and interrogated until you confess your guilt as a drug smuggler.  [Collected on the Internet, 2003] I did not get this in an e-mail but my bank teller in Kirksville, MO told me this one.  Evidently there is an urban legend floating around that the new "security strip" in the new $20's can be read by satellites with the implication being the Govt. can beam a satellite on you and eventually, when all the bills in circ. will have these, be able to tell how much $ you are carrying around.  This teller told me that she has had customers come in requesting "no new $20s" for this reason! We had a good laugh about it and we both agreed that the Govt. is going to be sorely disappointed if they turned this hypothetical satellite on us! Origins:  The ongoing effort to stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters has led to the inclusion of a number of security features in U.S. currency. One countermeasure in particular has come to be the focus of a widely-believed bit lore: the embedded inscribed security thread. According to scuttlebutt, the purpose of the thread isn't really to make it more difficult for the ill-intentioned to introduce   worthless currency into circulation by fooling its recipients into thinking it genuine, but instead to allow the government to know exactly how much money anyone is carrying at any particular moment. With the use of special scanners, or possibly a beam from a distant satellite, the Feds can quickly count the value of all bank notes being carried on or about one's person and thus track how much money is entering or leaving the country, and with whom. This knowledge, says the behind-the-hand whisperings, is used to finger drug dealers and smugglers. The rumor is bunk. The strip's sole purpose is the foiling of counterfeiters. It, along with a number of other security features worked into the nation's bank notes, make it far harder on the criminal element to produce phony bills that will be mistaken for the real thing. Other features include the microprinting of "The United States of America" within the rim surrounding the portraits on bills, a watermark displayed elsewhere on the bill of the figure in the portrait, and optically variable ink (OVI) which changes from green to black in the number in the lower right-hand corner of the bill when viewed from different angles. As for the suspect strip, it is made of polyester and is inscribed with the denomination of the bill. Nothing about the composition of these strips renders them detectable by scanner or satellite. In 2004, the false belief attaching to this security feature was enhanced by the claim of these bands containing RFID tags. As technology advanced, so did the rumor, leading many to microwave their $20 bills into ashen submission by falling for the canard that nuking their currency would disable these  RFID tags transmitters. Yet the belief about governmental detection of concealed sums via a subterfuge worked into the currency even predates the polyester security threads. In the 1980s, those similarly worried about being tracked by Big Brother fretted over the ink with which bank notes were printed, muttering to themselves that the "magnetic ink" they believed to have been used rendered the bills somehow magnetic and thus detectable by machine. Back then, the concern was more that this magnetic money would serve to pinpoint the location of the person carrying it rather than it give away how much of it was being ported, but it is another form of the same belief. One confirmation that nothing in and of itself is detectable about the polyester strips embedded in bank notes arises out of the news about security technologies now used at some U.S. airports, including Chicago's O'Hare. Were caches of greenbacks already being ferreted out via their embedded threads, descriptions of the BodySearch scanner, a device that uses special "backscatter" X-rays to produce images of items that might be concealed under passengers' clothing, would not always impart the glad tidings that this gizmo reveals the presence of currency as well as narcotics, plastic explosives, and plastic weapons.  While in the main, the "sneakily embedded technology allows for the surreptitious tracking of people or their assets" rumor attaches to currency and blames the government for the supposed spying, the belief also carries to other items and points fingers at other parties.  [Kamradt, 2003] Some students have not picked up their new ID cards through the re-carding project, which ends today, because of a rumor that there is a locator chip inside the IDs so Purdue can track their whereabouts. "To dispel the transponder rumors, I was closely involved in developing the requirements for production of the ID cards and I can ensure students that no secret electronic devices were embedded in these cards," said Terry Schroeder, project manager for the Purdue ID Re-carding Project. "From my understanding, most of the group that met to discuss this issue (as a result of distributed flyers) were wearing aluminum foil beanies."  [Mulkins, 2000] I heard that a person carrying a large number of $100 bills, going through the PikePass readers, could be detected and the exact amount of money determined. The authorities are using PikePass to detect drug dealers and then confiscating the money, even confiscating the money of innocent persons. (PikePass is a prepaid toll device containing a battery and a radio-frequency modulator placed on the windshield of a vehicle.  As a car bearing one travels under a transmitter overhanging a turnpike lane, the device intercepts the signal being broadcast and returns a signal exclusive to that particular PikePass customer. The signal is read, and the toll is subtracted from the customer's account.) PikePass Whereas student ID cards and prepaid toll signalers do at least have a whiff of the enigmatic to their technology, which works to encourage belief that some of that incomprehensibility might be of nefarious intent (we mistrust what we don't understand, after all), this next expression of the rumor is even farther afield: [Collected on the Internet, 1999] I recently received an email telling me that I need to take the labels off my canned good and mark the bare cans with a marker, or at least black out the UPCs. Why? Well, it seems the government has helicopters equipped with scanners that can read the UPCs of the food you have stored. Ostensibly, the government is doing this so they can confiscate food for redistribution in the up coming Y2K breakdown of society. When asked to verify, the poster informed me she was told this by a 'family friend" who flies one of these scanner-equipped helicopters. Of course he doesn't want to be named for his own safety, but he risked telling his dear friends because he loves them. While most folks will laugh off the thought of their soup cans spying on them, the same cannot be said of the belief that their long green is being counted by surveillance satellites sent into orbit by a government intent upon keeping tabs on its citizens  a great many appear to believe that.  Barbara "watch your money, don't worry about your money watching you" Mikkelson Sightings:  In a first-season episode of television's The X Files ("E.B.E.," original air date 18 February 1994), a member of a group that believes the government is up to any number of monstrous conspiracies takes a $20 bill from Agent Scully, holds it up to the light, rips the left side off, and pulls out its security strip, saying, "They use this magnetic strip to track you. Whenever you go through a metal detector at an airport, they know exactly how much you're carrying." Additional information:        Inscribed Security Thread   (Secret Service)        Money Design Features   (Secret Service)        The Redesigned $20 Note   (Bureau of Engraving)   Last updated:  19 May 2011   Garber, Andrew.  "New Airport Gadgets Strip, Sniff, Scan."  The Seattle Times.  23 October 2001  (p. A1).   Kamradt, Kori.  "Officials Dismiss Rumors About New IDs."  The [Purdue University] Exponent .  14 November 2003.   Mulkins, Phil.  "PikePass Can't Count Dope Dealers' Money."  Tulsa World.  28 July 2000.   Webb, Tom.  "U.S. Currency to Get Makeover."  The Denver Post.  14 July 1994  (p. A4).   Zane, Maitland.  "Counterfeit-Proof Cash Makes Its Debut."  The San Francisco Chronicle.  26 July 1991  (p. A1).   The Associated Press.  "O'Hare Officials Install Scanner, Hoping to Replace Body Searches."  St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  23 November 1999  (p. B2). On 7 February 2017, Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education in the new Trump administration by a narrow 51-50 margin, with the tie-breaking vote being cast by Vice President Mike Pence. All of the votes approving DeVos were cast by Republican senators, leading some of her detractors to posit the theory that she had essentially paid for her position via campaign contributions. That theory was illustrated by several charts circulated online that allegedly documented the amount of money DeVos had contributed to various senators:  The above-displayed chart first appeared on Reddit, but the data it incorporates was taken from a report published by the Center for American Progress. That report included another chart showing the DeVos family's campaign contributions: Reddit  A similar report filed by the Center for Responsive Politics stated that "Betsy DeVos and her relatives have given at least $20.2 million to Republican candidates, party committees, PACs and super PACs" since 1989: report In the 2016 cycle alone, the family had given at least $10 million as of late October to a host of GOP candidates and committees. Much of that  $4.4 million  went to super PACs: those supporting the White House bids of Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as well as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, and the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund and the super PAC started by Republican strategist Karl Rove, American Crossroads; the latter two groups helped support numerous Republicans in tight House and Senate races. However, these charts don't show how much Betsy DeVos personally contributed to Republican campaigns.  A second chart from the Center for Responsive Politics documented that Betsy DeVos herself was only responsible for about 7% of these contributions:  It should also be noted that these charts tally cumulative donations made over the span of two and a half decades (although the 2016 campaign cycle comprised the bulk of those donations). None of this information in itself establishes that the contributions were made with the intent of gaining office for Betsy DeVos, or that they had that effect (intended or not).  Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, received $43,200 from the DeVos family but voted "No" during Betsy DeVos' confirmation hearing. And although nearly all the Republican senators who had received contributions from the DeVos family voted "Yes," so did all the Republican senators who had not received any contributions from the DeVos family. The Washington Post posited a much more likely explanation for the confirmation vote breakdown  partisanship: posited If Democrats controlled the Senate, DeVos would have lost her confirmation. Theres every reason to believe that [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell let [Susan] Collins and Murkowski vote no on DeVos for political reasons, holding enough votes in reserve to assure shed win. The motivation was partisan support for a Republican nominee, not that a small fraction of his past campaign financing depended on DeVoss generosity. The Washington Post also noted that while the DeVos family contributed millions of dollars to Republican candidates, their contributions constituted only a sliver of the total money raised by those campaigns:  It's no secret that DeVos and her family have been major donors to the Republican Party over the last few decades. In 1997, DeVos wrote that her family was the "largest single contributor of soft money" to the Republicans: I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party. Occasionally a wayward reporter will try to make the charge that we are giving this money to get something in return, or that we must be purchasing influence in some way. [...] They are right. We do expect some things in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment; we expect a good and honest government. Furthermore, we expect the Republican party to use the money to promote these policies, and yes, to win elections. During DeVos' confirmation hearing in January 2017, Senator Bernie Sanders asked her about how much her family had contributed to the Republican Party over the years, and she averred that an estimate of about $200 million might be accurate: confirmation hearing Sanders: Mrs. DeVos, there is a growing fear, I think, in this country that we are moving toward what some would call an oligarchic form of society, where a small number of very, very wealthy billionaires control, to a significant degree, our economic and political life. Would you be so kind as to tell us how much your family has contributed to the Republican Party over the years? DeVos: Senator, first of all thank you for that question. I again was pleased to meet you in your office last week. I wish I could give you that number. I dont know. Sanders: I have heard the number was $200 million. Does that sound in the ballpark? DeVos: Collectively? Between my entire family? Sanders: Yeah, over the years. DeVos: Thats possible Sanders: Okay. My question is, and I dont mean to be rude. Do you think, if you were not a multi-billionaire, if your family has not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican Party, that you would be sitting here today? DeVos: Senator, as a matter of fact, I do think that there would be that possibility. Ive worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years to be a voice for students and to empower parents to make decisions on behalf of their children, primarily low-income children. Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) told Politico that the DeVos family's contributions were made legally and were properly disclosed: Politico All of that is disclosed, Alexander said. You can ask those senators and evaluate it yourself. Thats the reason we have limits on campaign contributions and we have disclosures of those things. A spokesperson for Florida senator Marco Rubio, who was singled out for having received nearly $100,000 from the DeVos family, defended his acceptance of those contributions: singled "People contribute to Senator Rubio's campaign because they support his agenda. Ms. DeVos is a strong supporter of empowering parents and providing educational opportunity for all, policies Senator Rubio has supported for over a decade. Her nomination was opposed by Democrats who take millions of dollars from the big unions obsessed with denying school choice to low-income children.  Brown, Emma.  "With Historic Tiebreaker from Pence, DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary."
  The Washington Post.  7 February 2017. Alexander, Dan.  "Betsy DeVos Says It's 'Possible' Her Family Has Donated $200M to Republicans."
  Forbes.  17 January 2017. Bump, Phillip.  "The DeVos Vote Is a Bad Case Study for the Power of Campaign Contributions."
  The Washington Post.  7 February 2017. Stratford, Michael.  "DeVos Heads Into Confirmation with a Megadonor's Advantage."
  Politico.  20 December 2016. Noland, Jack.  "Betsy DeVos and Her Big-Giving Relatives: Family Qualifies as GOP Royalty."
  Center for Responsive Politics.  1 December 2016. Boser, Ulrich.  "Conflicts of DeVos."
  Center for American Progress.  12 January 2017.