Is This Photo of Crowded Train Station from 2022 or 1941?
In the days after Russia launched a deadly invasion on Ukraine, a photograph started circulating on social media that supposedly showed hundreds people on a crowded train station platform attempting to flee the country. The photograph was frequently shared with a caption stating: "This is not a photo from 1941. This is a photo from March 2022."   This photograph was truly taken in early 2022 during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  The caption accompanying the photograph appears to compare the current situation in Ukraine to the millions of people across Europe who were forced to flee Nazi aggression during World War II and the Holocaust. In the BBC's March 2022 coverage of Ukraine's modern-day refugees, they noted that the scene was reminiscent of what these people's grandparents experienced roughly 80 years ago: BBC's March 2022 coverage of Ukraine's modern-day refugees On the westbound platforms, the refugees huddle in crowded corridors and stairwells hoping to board trains that will take them to safety in Poland, Hungary or Slovakia. Among them are groups of Roma Gypsies who come from Kharkiv, where Russian shelling is killing civilians. Like everybody else they fled only with what they could carry, an assortment of holdalls and rucksacks. In Lviv, these scenes summon up the restive ghosts of Europe's past. The city is filled with people whose parents or grandparents experienced genocide and totalitarianism in the last century. Tens of thousands of Roma were murdered by the Nazis during World War Two. The above-displayed photograph was taken in Kharkiv, Ukraine, as millions of people were attempting to flee the country. Tim Mak, NPR's investigative correspondent in Ukraine, was one of the first to share the picture online. Mak said the news organization received the picture from an aide to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNydj7j0mxQHere's another report from NBC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLsy4h_WYyoNBC News reported that more than 2 million people have fled Ukraine following Russia's invasion. It's unclear how many passed through this specific train station.  The exact death toll in Ukraine is also hard to pin down. A U.S. official told CBS News on March 10, about two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, that thousands of Ukrainians civilians and soldiers had already been killed.  CBS News Thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers are also believed to have been killed over the past two weeks. The U.S. official said 2,000-4,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed. In the city of Mariupol  where an airstrike hit a maternity hospital on Wednesday  some 1,200 people have died over the course of Russia's nine-day siege of the city, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's office said, according to The Associated Press. A similar rumor was circulated online about Ukraine's Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater. That rumor featured two photographs, one taken recently in 2022 and another taken during World War II: https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1500751560166588416?s=21These photographs are both real and taken during the referenced times. Another photograph showing defense measures outside of the Odessa Opera House in Ukraine during World War II can be seen here. Several news reports have featured the defensive measures outside of this historical building in 2022, including the following video of Odessa opera singers taking a moment to sing in between filling up sand bags and handing out rations:  Odessa Opera House in Ukraine during World War II can be seen here  Engel: Terrified Crowds Rush To Kyiv Train Station To Escape City. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLsy4h_WYyo. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. Occupation of Kiev  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1939-1941/occupation-of-kiev. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. Ukraine: People Fleeing Country Gather at Kharkiv Train Station. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNydj7j0mxQ. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. Up to 6,000 Russians May Have Been Killed in Ukraine so Far, U.S. Official Estimates. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-death-toll-invasion/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. Video: Ukrainian Man Describes Fleeing from Kharkiv with His Family - CNN Video. www.cnn.com, https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/03/09/ukraine-russia-kharkiv-refugees-interview-ctw-intl-vpx.cnn. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. Why Is the U.K. Slow to Accept Ukrainian Refugees? NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/2-million-flee-ukraine-nations-face-scrutiny-response-refugee-crisis-rcna17920. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. Farmer, Ben, et al. Theatre of War: Odesas Opera Staff Join Ukraine Resistance Effort. The Telegraph, 9 Mar. 2022. www.telegraph.co.uk, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/theatre-war-odesas-opera-staff-join-ukraine-resistance-effort/. History of the Theatre. Odessa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, https://operahouse.od.ua/en/about/history/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022. It Is Terrible: For Ukraines Jews and Roma, War Revives Old Traumas. BBC News, 4 Mar. 2022. www.bbc.com, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60613433.
As we've noted many times in these pages, one common way in which people attempt to demonstrate the aptness of a particular social or political viewpoint is to put its expression into the mouth of a revered historical figure.  [Collected via e-mail, April 2008] This quote is going around the internet. I would like to know if it really came from Cicero as claimed. "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."  Cicero, 55 BC Surely if one of great minds of our civilization, someone who lived hundreds (or even thousands) of years ago, said the very same thing we're thinking today, then surely that's proof we've hit upon some eternal truth that should be sagaciously heeded. In short, attributing apocryphal quotations to everyone from Confucius to Abraham Lincoln is an attempt to capitalize on the maxim that "great minds think alike." One prime representative of this phenomenon is the passage reproduced above, which warns about the perils of governments' overspending their budgets and lavishing too much money on foreign aid and welfare programs. For the last half century it has been attributed to Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero and widely quoted by politicians and pundits seeking to bolster their arguments in favor of fiscal conservatism. For example, Louisiana representative Otto Passman, who for thirty years "pursued a relentless battle against spending for foreign aid" in the U.S. Congress, read these words into the Congressional Record on April 25, 1968: read these words into the Congressional Record Mr. Speaker, the record shows that in all ages where republican forms of government have been lost, it has been through the pretense of a share-the-wealth program, a blind faith in public officials, and apathy on the part of those who could act but did not. To mention only one of many, many examples from past history, may I quote from a statement made by Cicero over 2,000 years ago: The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence. History reveals that public officials heeded not the warning  therefore, the government collapsed. On March 29, 1971 the Chicago Tribune published a letter from a reader who invoked the same words to make a similar point: Someone said years ago: "The more things change, the more they are the same." Today's problems are not new. The Roman Empire faced bankruptcy 2,000 years ago, as more and more power was concentrated in central government and government spending grew. Cicero spoke out against the trend. This great Roman senator said: "The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. The mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence." Romans ignored Cicero; Rome fell. History is great if we learn from it. It is not too late for the United States to heed those words out of the past. Those words were never uttered by Cicero, however; and the reason no one ever quoted them as such until about fifty years ago is because they weren't written until 1965. They sprang from the pen of Taylor Caldwell, a fiction writer best known for historical novels such as Captains and the Kings, her 1972 best-selling chronicle of the rise to wealth and power of an Irish immigrant named Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh (which was also made into a popular television mini-series in 1976). popular television mini-series Caldwell penned several novels based on real-life religious and historical figures, including Genghis Khan (The Earth Is the Lord's), Cardinal Richelieu (The Arm and the Darkness), Saint Luke (Dear and Glorious Physician), Saint Paul (Great Lion of God), Aspasia (Glory and the Lightning), and Judas Iscariot (I, Judas). Her 1965 effort A Pillar of Iron was a historical novel about the life of Cicero, the great Roman statesman who "is a pillar of iron as he publicly maintains his search for honor and justice under law in the face of plots against his life and his country." Although A Pillar of Iron often drew directly from the recorded speeches and letters of Cicero for its dialogue, it was nonetheless a work of fiction, and the now famous statement from Cicero about "balancing the budget" was an invention of Caldwell's and not a reproduction of Cicero's own words. In fact, the novel doesn't even present these words as something spoken by Cicero, but rather as a summation of Cicero's political philosophy presented as a preface to an imagined conversation between Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida: Reared in republican virtues, Cicero found himself frequently confounded by Antonius. Antonius heartily agreed with him that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that public debt should be reduced, that the arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled, that assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, that the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on the government for subsistence, and that prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible. But when Cicero produced facts and figures how all these things must and should be accomplished, by austerity and discipline and commonsense, Antonius became troubled. "But this  or that  would bring hardship on this  or that  class," Antonius said. "The people are accustomed to lavish displays in the circuses and the theaters, and the lotteries, and free grain and beans and beef when they are destitute, and shelter when they are homeless and a part of the city is rebuilt. Is not the welfare of our people paramount?" "There will be no welfare of the people if we become bankrupt," said Cicero, grimly. "We can become solvent again, and strong, only by self-denial and by spending as little as possible until the public debt is paid and the Treasury refilled." "But one cannot  if one has a heart at all  deprive the people of what they have received for many decades from government, and which they expect. It will create the most terrible hardships." "Better that all of us tighten our girdles than Rome fall," said Cicero. As Jess Stearn observed in In Search of Taylor Caldwell, this imagined historical conversation was reflective of Caldwell's own political outlook much more than Cicero's: "She was a conservative politically, believing the spoils belonged to those who toiled for them. There were not free lunches. She abhorred the welfare philosophy that gave handouts to free-loaders, decrying rewards for indolence and incompetence." Or, as John Blundell aptly quipped in Ladies for Liberty, "Taylor Caldwell gives us fiscal policy, civil service reform, cuts in aid to less developed countries, and welfare reform all in one sentence." The reproductions of Caldwell's words as a historical quote from Cicero have altered the original a fair bit over the years: the admonition that "prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible" was quickly dropped from the end of the sentence; "people" have replaced "mobs" as the ones who should be "forced to work and not depend on the government for subsistence"; the proclamation that the "arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled" now refers to generic "officialdom" rather than military figures; and the warning that this advice need be followed "lest Rome become bankrupt" has mutated into the more ominous-sounding "lest Rome fall." Blundell, John.  Ladies for Liberty: Women Who Made a Difference in American History.
  New York: Algora Publishing, 2013.  0-875-86865-7  (p. 145). Caldwell, Taylor.  A Pillar of Iron.
  Lake Oswego, OR: eNet Press Inc., 2013.  ASIN B00CEINOCW. Collins, John H.  "False Quotations."
  Chicago Tribune.  20 April 1971. Connolly, Jerry.  "Warning from the Past."
  Chicago Tribune.  29 March 1971  (p. 14). Lueck, Thomas J.  "Otto Passman, 88, Louisiana Congressman Who Fought Spending."
  The New York Times.  14 August 1988. Stearn, Jess.  In Search of Taylor Caldwell.
  New York: Stein & Day, 1981.  0-812-82791-0. Tench, Helen.  "Cicero's Rome Quarried for a Scholarly Novel."
  Ottawa Citizen.  14 August 1965 (p. 24). Congressional Record [House].  "History's Warning."
  25 April 1968  (p. 10635). Claim:  Starbucks has joined Monsanto in a lawsuit against Vermont to avoid the implementation of GMO labeling regulations. : : Starbucks is a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a group challenging Vermont over GMO labeling requirements.      : Starbucks has joined forces with Monsanto to sue the state of Vermont over GMO labeling requirements.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, November 2014] Starbucks doesn't think you have the right to know what's in your coffee.  So it's teamed up with Monsanto to sue the small U.S. state of Vermont to stop you from finding out.    Origins:  In November 2014, a petition claiming coffee  giant Starbucks had "teamed up" with agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto to sue the state of Vermont over a GMO (genetically modified organism) labeling law began to circulate heavily on social media sites. Given the massive popularity of Starbucks and broad worry over genetically modified foods, the petition caused concern amid many Starbucks drinkers over whether their daily latte habit was somehow funding big agribusiness bullies. General consumer unease with what are often unclear links between large corporations as well as growing distaste for massive food conglomerates made the claim particularly unsettling to many social media users. Most consumers lack the luxury to make all their own foods and drinks at home, and to some extent, we all place our trust in large companies to do right by their customers in choosing safe ingredients and not abusing their financial strength by bullying less-powerful entities. A quick scan of Twitter reveals widespread belief Starbucks has suddenly decided to abandon its socially and nutritionally conscious consumer base to join forces with Monsanto, but is that really the case? Most of the chatter points back to the petition, initiated by a group called SumOfUs. On its Facebook about page, SumOfUs describes its mission: SumOfUs We are a movement of consumers, investors and workers counterbalancing the power of large corporations to forge a just, sustainable path for the global economy. The relevant petition can be found on the SumOfUs website: SumOfUs Starbucks doesn't think you have the right to know what's in your coffee. So it's teamed up with Monsanto to sue the small U.S. state of Vermont to stop you from finding out. Hiding behind the shadowy Grocery Manufacturers' Association, Starbucks is part of a lawsuit that's aiming to block a landmark law that requires genetically-modified ingredients be labeled. Amazingly, they are claiming it's an assault on their corporate right to free speech. Even a local Vermont company, Green Mountain Coffee, has joined in. The quoted portion makes it clear Starbucks isn't the entity driving the lawsuit at which the petition takes aim. The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a large food industry group of which Starbucks is one of more than 300 members, is the trade organization behind the litigation in question. To call the group "shadowy" is somewhat misleading: GMA has a web site that presents their clear stance on the issue of genetically modified foods and labeling and that included a 2014 membership directory openly listing Starbucks and Monsanto as members.  (The online membership directory link is no longer accessible from GMA's web site, and the organization did not respond to our inquiry about it.) web site membership directory The petition explains (in essence) why Starbucks has been singled out among GMA-affiliated companies as a target of consumer pressure:  SumOfUs members have already chipped in to support Vermont's legal defense fund, and we need to keep it up. Monsanto might not care what we think  but Starbucks does. If we can generate enough attention, we can push Starbucks to withdraw its support for the lawsuit, and then force other companies to do the same. Sign the petition to tell Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee to withdraw their support for the lawsuit against Vermont, and stop fighting accurate food labeling. Vermont is a small, entirely rural state with just 600,000 people. It's a classic David and Goliath fight  Vermont vs. Monsanto and Starbucks, some of the most powerful corporations in the world. The petition references Vermont's Act 120, voted upon in April 2014 and signed into law on 8 May 2014. Under the provisions of the new law, Vermont is poised to became the first state to require labeling of all foods containing genetically modified ingredients by 1 July 2016. Act 120 On 13 June 2014, the GMA issued a press release stating its intent to challenge the law in Vermont, positing the law was unconstitutional and citing the First Amendment. In its statement, the trade group expressed concern more states would follow Vermont's lead and adversely affect the food industry by imposing labeling standards that serve no health or safety interest: press release Today, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), along with the Snack Food Association, International Dairy Foods Association and the National Association of Manufacturers, filed a complaint in federal district court in Vermont challenging the state's mandatory GMO labeling law.  GMA issued the following statement in conjunction with the legal filing. "Vermont's mandatory GMO labeling law  Act 120  is a costly and misguided measure that will set the nation on a path toward a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling policies that do nothing to advance the health and safety of consumers. Act 120 exceeds the state's authority under the United States Constitution and in light of this, GMA has filed a complaint in federal district court in Vermont seeking to enjoin this senseless mandate. "Act 120 imposes burdensome new speech requirements  and restrictions  that will affect, by Vermont's count, eight out of every ten foods at the grocery store. Yet Vermont has effectively conceded this law has no basis in health, safety, or science. That is why a number of product categories, including milk, meat, restaurant items and alcohol, are exempt from the law.  This means that many foods containing GMO ingredients will not actually disclose that fact. "The First Amendment dictates that when speech is involved, Vermont policymakers cannot merely act as a pass-through for the fads and controversies of the day. It must point to a truly "governmental" interest, not just a political one. And the Constitution prohibits Vermont from regulating nationwide distribution and labeling practices that facilitate interstate commerce. That is the sole province of the federal government. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency have both the mandate and expertise to incorporate the views of all the stakeholders at each link in the chain from farm to fork." On 9 November 2014, musician Neil Young stated that he was no longer going to patronize Starbucks due to the GMA lawsuit. On 15 November 2014, Starbucks addressed the claims. The coffee chain sent a tweet with a link to a longer statement: Neil Young Starbucks is not a part of Monsanto's GMO lawsuit to stop food labeling https://t.co/mEsQHqukMA Starbucks News (@Starbucksnews) November 16, 2014 Starbucks is not a part of Monsanto's GMO lawsuit to stop food labeling https://t.co/mEsQHqukMA https://t.co/mEsQHqukMA  Starbucks News (@Starbucksnews) November 16, 2014 November 16, 2014  The statement indicated Starbucks asked the petition be edited to reflect their position and lack of involvement in the lawsuit against the state of Vermont: Starbucks is not a part of any lawsuit pertaining to GMO labeling nor have we provided funding for any campaign. And Starbucks is not aligned with Monsanto to stop food labeling or block Vermont State law. The petition claiming that Starbucks is part of this litigation is completely false and we have asked the petitioners to correct their description of our position.  Starbucks has not taken a position on the issue of GMO labeling. As a company with stores and a product presence in every state, we prefer a national solution. Grocery Manufacturers Association spokesman Brian Kennedy said that Starbucks is an "affiliate member" of the GMA and is not involved in actions such as the Vermont lawsuit: As an affiliate member, [Starbucks] is not involved in any policy, governance, or legal work with the Association, which includes the lawsuit in Vermont. In summary: Although Starbucks is a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the lawsuit targeted by the petition was initiated by that group and not by Starbucks or Monsanto; and direct collusion between Starbucks and Monsanto on the issue is neither evident nor germane to the dispute between the state of Vermont and the GMA.  Last updated:  17 November 2014 Claim:  List reproduces various "Marxist" statements made by Hillary Clinton.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, August 2007] A little history lesson:   If you don't know the answer make your best guess  Answer all the questions before looking at the answers. Who said it? 1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." A.  Karl MarxB.  Adolph HitlerC.  Joseph StalinD.  None of the above 2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." A.  LeninB.  MussoliniC.  Idi AminD.  None of the Above 3) "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." A.  Nikita KhrushevB.  Josef GoebbelsC.  Boris YeltsinD.  None of the above 4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground." A.  Mao Tse DungB.  Hugo ChavezC.  Kim Jong IlD  None of the above 5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed." A.  Karl MarxB.  LeninC.  MolotovD.  None of the above 6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." A.  PinochetB.  MilosevicC.  Saddam HusseinD.  None of the above Answers: (1) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/29/2004(2) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  5/29/2007(3) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/4/2007(4) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/4/2007(5) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  6/4/2007(6) D.  None of the above.  Statement was made by Hillary Clinton  9/2/2005 Be afraid.  Be very, very afraid and voteAnybody (woman) that would vote for her just because they think it's time for a female president has got to be out of their lunatic mind! Origins:  This list of purported "Marxist" quotes by former first lady, senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is (like many collections of utterances from various political figures) difficult to rate as strictly "true" or "false": She did make the statements reported above, but they have all been stripped of any explanatory context, and some of them had portions elided, creating potentially misleading impressions about the nature of those statements.  Below we verify the source and complete wording of each statement on this list and provide the context in which it was made.  (All of these entries  date from between 2004 and 2007, during which time Hillary Clinton represented the state of New York in the U.S. Senate.)  "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." This statement by Senator Hillary Clinton was not (as commonly assumed) addressed to the general public, but rather to a group of relatively well-to-do Democrats attending a June 2004 fundraiser for California senator Barbara Boxer.  Her statement specifically referred to a desire to repeal tax cuts that had recently been enacted by the Bush administration, cuts which many Democrats had criticized as favoring the wealthy: tax cuts Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters  some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend  to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress. "Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."  "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few ... And to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." This entry is a pieced-together passage from a 29 May 2007 economic policy speech given by Senator Clinton on the subject of "Modern Progressive Vision: Shared Prosperity."   The supposedly "Marxist" nature of this statement is undercut when the sentences that immediately followed it (affirming support for a free market economy) are included for context: speech It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an "on your own" society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a "we're all in it together" society. Now, there is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed.  When we get our priorities in order and make the smart investments we need, the markets work well.  "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own in order to create this common ground." "I certainly think the free-market has failed." The above three statements are all out-of-context passages taken from a 4 June 2007 CNN "Presidential Forum" conducted with three Democratic presidential hopefuls, senators John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.  The second statement was part of a straightforward expression of the need to for people to reach a consensus (through metaphorically giving up some of their political "turf," not literally giving up their possessions) on how to proceed in order to tackle an issue such as universal health insurance, while the first statement is another pieced-together quote that omits the contextual references to the issues of health care, dependence on foreign oil, and climate change:  Presidential Forum We can set the vision. We can even work to articulate the goal. But the pathway is extraordinarily complicated because of how we live today andhow we think of ourselves in relation to our fellow citizens. Take health care. I think we could get almost unanimous agreement that having more than 45 million uninsured people, nine million of whom are children, is a moral wrong in America. And I think we could reach that agreement, and then we would have to start doing the hard work of deciding what we were going to do to make sure that they were not uninsured, because an uninsured person who goes to the hospital is more likely to die than an insured person. I mean, that is a fact. So, what do we do? We have to build a political consensus. And that requires people giving up a little bit of their own turf, in order to create this common ground. The same with energy  you know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil, and the need to deal with global warming, and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation, and just let business as usual go on. And that means something has to be taken away from some people. The third statement was part of a passage in which Senator Clinton listed a number of entities (including churches, schools, and the government, as well as the free market) that she felt had failed in helping young people to make responsible decisions (particularly in reference to abortion): Q: Could you see yourself, with millions of voters in a pro-life camp, creating a common ground, with the goal ultimately in mind of reducing the decisions for abortion to zero? A: Yes. Yes. And that is what I have tried to both talk about and reach out about over the last many years, going back, really, at least 15 years, in talking about abortion being safe, legal, and rare. And, by rare, I mean rare. And it's been a challenge, because the pro-life and the pro-choice communities have not really been willing to find much common ground. And I think that is a great failing on all of our parts, because, for me there are many opportunities to assist young people to make responsible decisions. There is a tremendous educational and public outreach that could be done through churches, through schools, through so much else. But I think it has to be done with an understanding of reaching people where they are today. We have so many young people who are tremendously influenced by the media culture and by the celebrity culture, and who have a very difficult time trying to sort out the right decisions to make. And I personally believe that the adult society has failed those people. I mean, I think that we have failed them in our churches, our schools, our government. And I certainly think the, you know, free market has failed. We have all failed. We have left too many children to sort of fend for themselves morally.  "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." This passage was taken from a 2 September 2005 appearance by Senator Clinton in front of constituents in Elmira Heights, New York, where (in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) she expressed her opinion about the need for federal regulatory oversight of the oil industry in order to curb high gasoline prices and U.S. dependence on foreign oil: The anxiety and anger felt by motorists was evident at nearly every turn in her travels throughout the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. She made clear she shared the concern. "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in our entire economy that they're being watched," she said in explaining her call for an inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission. "I think human nature left to itself is going to push the limit as far as possible, and that's what you need a government regulatory system for: to keep an eye on people to make the rules of the game fair, to make a level playing field and not give anybody some kind of undue advantage." Clinton criticized the new energy bill, which she opposed, as inadequate to solve the country's long-term energy problem. She said the United States has regressed over the past three decades, since the first oil shocks of the early 1970s. "We've had 30 years to do some things we haven't done," she said. "In fact we've gotten, we've gone backwards in many respects. "I am tired of being at the mercy of people in the Middle East and elsewhere, and I'm tired frankly of being at the mercy of these large oil companies," Clinton said.   Last updated:  30 March 2015    Fouhy, Beth.  "San Francisco Rolls Out the Red Carpet for the Clintons."   Associated Press.  29 June 2004.    CNN.  "The Situation Room: Sojourners Presidential Forum."   4 June 2007. Claim:  The federal government is planning to eliminate 16 states from the U.S.  Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, September 2013] The America you know and love could look completely different in a matter of weeks. Under a plan circulating the D.C. corridor right now, up to 16 states are at risk to be terminated due to epic fiscal mismanagement. These states would simply be wiped from existence and merged into their neighbors. We've even seen the redrawn map of the U.S. and it's nothing less than terrifying. California may be forced to become a part of Mexico without any state strong enough to absorb it! Origins:  This item about a plan "circulating the D.C. corridor right now" to eliminate 16 states from the U.S. is nothing but more of the usual financial scarelore put out in conjunction with an investment come-on by the folks at Wall Street Daily.  This latest panic piece  is offered in a Wall Street Daily video featuring a number of talking heads issuing scary-sounding statements about how the "U.S. government is only months away from a total financial collapse," then lurches head-on into tinfoil hat territory by describing some nebulous plan supposedly being hatched in Washington (by whom, exactly, is never explained) to carve the United States into ten economic regions, eliminating 16 states in the process by merging them into neighboring states (and, apparently, getting rid of a 17th state by kicking Hawaii out of the U.S. altogether).   video And according to Wall Street Daily, this remarkable, radical transformation of the United States, which hasn't yet been discussed, proposed, or voted upon by Congress, and which has somehow escaped the notice of the entire of the U.S. news media (other than Wall Street Daily, of course), is going into effect in a mere matter of weeks, by 15 October 2013:  Not surprisingly, this "redrawn map of the United States" just happens to correspond exactly with a map of administrative regions for the government agency most frequently mentioned in crazy conspiracy theories, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): FEMA  Aside from its sheer ridiculousness, this purported scheme for the federal government to enact a forcible redrawing the United States has a major problem in that it isn't possible, because the U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits it.  Article IV, Section 3 of that document declares that states cannot be formed from, or merged with, other states without the consent of both Congress and the legislatures of the affected states: declares New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress. So, if this is nothing but nonsense, what's the point to it?  The point is that if you make up a bunch of stuff that sounds sufficiently alarming, and you promote your product as something that will help protect people against this scary thing that isn't really happening, you might be able to lure some gullible folks into sending their money (i.e., a "very limited, introductory offer" price of $49.50, plus a yearly "discounted rate" of $79) to you: money It's crucial that you obtain a copy of the redrawn map of the United States and spread the word quickly about its existence. Circulate it amongst your friends and family. Let them know that this threat is real. That soon, the very state that they call their home... where they've raised their family, paid taxes and planned their future in, may soon no longer exist. Whether or not your state is targeted for termination, its essential that you begin taking steps, such as the ones contained inside the Mayflower Maneuver, to best position yourself for the future. And that means staying informed continually about this developing situation. Last updated:   18 September 2013 The newly installed House speaker, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., recently took toMediumto set the stage for a forum in Columbia, S.C., on Republican efforts to fight poverty. The forum, hosted by the Jack Kemp Foundation,drew six 2016 Republican presidential candidates former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, retired physician Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. In his Medium column, Ryan wrote that a new direction was needed on government anti-poverty efforts. Weve been fighting the War on Poverty for 50 years now, he wrote. And I dont think you can call it anything but a stalemate. The federal government has spent trillions of dollars. And yet today, if you were raised poor, youre just as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago. Im not saying we havent made progress. We have. But today we have a safety net that catches people falling into poverty. What we need is a safety net that lifts people out of poverty that helps them earn a good paycheck so they can support themselves. Here, well check Ryans statement that today, if you were raised poor, youre just as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago. When we asked Ryans staff for their evidence, they pointed us to an academic paper by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez and Nicholas Turner, Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility from January 2014. Chetty and Hendren are at Harvard, Kline and Saez are at the University of California-Berkeley, and Turner was with the U.S. Treasury Department. The paper, based on extensive analysis of income and educational-attainment data, found that intergenerational mobility has remained extremely stable since the generation of Americans born in 1971. We find that children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution (relative to their parents) as children born in the 1970s, the authors wrote. When we asked one of the co-authors, Saez, whether Ryans summary left out anything important, he said no. Yes, this is broadly correct, Saez told PolitiFact. Saez said the paper shows the odds of staying in the bottom one-fifth of the income distribution when your parents were in the bottom one-fifth have stayed stable for the past four to five decades. The paper and Saez in the interview both noted one caveat  that the consequences of the pattern Ryan is citing have worse effects today because inequality has grown over the same period. Because inequality has risen, the paper notes, the consequences of the birth lottery  the parents to whom a child is born  are larger today than in the past. However, this caveat doesnt undermine Ryans point. If anything, it accentuates it. (We're also not penalizing Ryan for rounding up the study's length to 50 years.) Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist and chief economist at the jobs site Indeed, said the paper Ryan chose is a credible one within the profession. These are the authors I would turn to when looking at intergenerational mobility. Our ruling Ryan wrote that today, if you were raised poor, youre just as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago. His support for this claim  a respected academic paper published in 2014  found exactly what Ryan described. We rate the claim True. A new mailer about a referendum to fund a transportation overhaul for metro Atlanta makes it appear as if voters had a hand in this plan to raise their taxes.Voters will decide July 31 whether they want to pay a 1 percent sales tax to build an estimated $7.2 billion worth of roads, highway interchanges, mass transit infrastructure and other projects to ease traffic in a region thats choking on it.More than two dozen local leaders spent months hammering out that list of projects through state-created regional roundtables. The mailer, which appeared in a PolitiFact Georgia reporters home mailbox April 3, said the average Joe had a say, too. [O]ver 200,000 ordinary citizens were given the opportunity to identify projects they preferred, it said.Its enough to make a populist swoon. But 200,000 people? Is that even possible?PolitiFact Georgia called up the Metro Atlanta Voter Education Network, which sent out the mailer on the proposed transportation special local option tax, or T-SPLOST. The nonprofits mission is to educate voters about the referendum.A MAVEN spokeswoman said the Atlanta Regional Commission, the regions planning agency, contacted 1.3 million residents last year for telephone town hall meetings about the plan.Part of ARCs mission is public outreach, so it regularly tallies the number of residents it involves, spokeswoman Julie Ralston said.Our research shows ARC has a track record for doing so. It counted residents who participated inPlan 2040, which identified transportation projects the region will need in the next three decades. It posted numbers on the projects website.T-SPLOSTs website, news accounts and ARC news releases chronicle the series of 10 evening telephone town hall meetings in June.ARC contracted with Telephone TownHall Meeting, a Denver-area company that uses Web and telephone technology to hold virtual meetings. Members of Congress often use the meetings to connect with voters back home.Telephone TownHall Meeting owner Curt Cerveny told us how the meetings typically work:The company calls tens of thousands of land lines and cellphones for their target households. Some numbers dont work. Others send the call to voicemail or a fax machine. Sometimes, people hang up.About 15 percent to 20 percent of the time, someone picks up and listens in for at least one minute, Cerveny said. Usually, listeners spend eight to 10 minutes on the line.The T-SPLOST town halls attempted to reach 1.3 million registered voters, an ARCreportsaid. The town halls took place by county.It was the biggest call we had ever done, Cerveny said. It was kind of ahead of its time.Some 134,400 households participated. They stayed on the line for an average of 10.59 minutes. Presenters took 213 live questions. (This PolitiFact Georgia scribe received one of those calls on her cellphone. She was in her car, stuck in gridlock. )This number does not include calls that went to voicemail. These households received messages telling voters how they can have a say in the project. The report did not state the number of listeners per call.This amounts to about 10 percent participation, or slightly less than what Cerveny said was typical.ARC launched other outreach efforts. In March and April 2011, 126 residents of the affected counties participated in a series of 12 focus groups. In July, about 200 attended a 3 -hour town hall meeting. In September, 12 public meetings were attended by about 1,700 people, according to ARC meeting notes.An online survey generated9,600 responses. Interested residents could also consult the projects website,www.atlantaregionalroundtable.com.Local governments and private organizations also conducted their own outreach. ARC collaborated with more than 80 of them to get the word out, Ralston said.One is the Livable Communities Coalition, an Atlanta nonprofit that works on regional growth strategies. A very conservative estimate is that its efforts reached 5,000 people, said Jim Stokes, the groups interim executive director.To conclude:Since ARC tried to reach 1.3 million people through its telephone town halls and managed to get about 10 percent of them, we think its safe to say that more than 200,000 were given the opportunity to participate.In addition, some 20,000 participated in meetings, online surveys and other outreach efforts organized by the planning agency. Local governments and other organizations performed outreach as well.This is a lot of ordinary citizens, but their influence had limits. The decision rested with the regional roundtable. Members could accept -- or ignore -- public comments as they saw fit.That said, MAVENs mailer stopped short of saying that these voters controlled the process. Furthermore, its participation estimate is conservative. Its statement earns our highest rating -- True. Claim:  Former football coach Lou Holtz penned an essay about 'Two Americas." INCORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED Example:  [Collected via e-mail, December 2014]  Did Lou Holtz really say this or is it yet another hoax? See the text below. I tried to search for it on your site and can not find it.  The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works and the America that doesn't. The America that contributes and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves and the have nots, it's the dos and the dont's. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society and others don't. That's the divide in America. It's not about income inequality, it's about civic irresponsibility. It's about a political party that preaches hatred, greed, and victimization in order to win elective office. It's about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. That's not invective, that's truth, and it's about time someone said it. The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting "income inequality." He noted that some people make more than other people, and that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that's not just. That is the rationale of thievery.  It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America. It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal. The Democrats have not empowered their followers; they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victim-hood and anger instead of ability and hope. The president's premise  that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful  seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices, because, by and large, income variations in society are a result of different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure. Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income. You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college  and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education. You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course. Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take. My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but, our lives also have had an in equality of effort. While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant. He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine. Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes. It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away; it is freedom, the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure. The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy. Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing. Even if the other guy made a lifetime's worth of asinine and short sighted decisions. Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort. The simple Law of the Harvest  as ye sow, so shall ye reap  is sometimes applied as, "The harder you work, the more you get." Obama would turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society. Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way. He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity. He and his party speak of two Americas, and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes; it is divided by the differences in our efforts. It is a false philosophy to say one man's success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man's victimization. What Obama offered was not a solution, but separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That's what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow. Two Americas, coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln's maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand. [Click here to expand text]. [Click here to expand text] Origins:  Shortly after President Obama gave a speech about income inequality in December 2013, writer Bob Lonsberry published an  speech essay on his web site titled "Two Americas" about the "The America that works, and the America that doesnt." essay The article didn't initially gain too much attention, but that situation changed when the text of Lonsberry's essay started circulating via e-mail with former football coach Lou Holtz's name featured prominently at the top in ways that inaccurately suggested he was the article's author, such as "Lou Holtz Nails It!", "Told As Only a Coach, An Old Coach Can," "Lou Holtz on America Today," and "Lou Holtz's Viewpoint."  As Bob Lonsberry has confirmed, however, the "Two Americas" essay was not penned by a famous former football coach. It was written and originally published by Lonsberry on his own web site on 9 December 2013.   Last updated:  30 December 2014 A June 2023 Twitter thread from Democratic presidential primary challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that began with a video of him performing pushups also stated an allegedly science-based fact  that the average American gained 29 pounds during the lockdowns of the early COVID-19 pandemic. There are several ways in which this statement is false. Twitter thread  First, Kennedy misrepresented the findings of the survey he cited. Second, that survey  even when read correctly  does not properly address the question Kennedy claimed it addresses. And third, published clinical data suggest the pandemic did not have a significant overall effect on weight and, instead, followed a trend of an increase in the average weight of Americans that has existed since well before the pandemic. In an email to Snopes, Kennedy conceded that this critique was valid. "I appreciate you catching my mistake and alerting me," he wrote. The statistic Kennedy (partially) quoted comes from a 2021 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association. That study found that 42% of people gained unwanted weight during the pandemic, and within that subset of people the average weight gain was 29 pounds. 2021 survey APA's survey of U.S. adults, conducted in late February 2021 by The Harris Poll, shows that a majority of adults (61%) experienced undesired weight changesweight gain or losssince the pandemic started, with 42% reporting they gained more weight than they intended. Of those, they gained an average of 29 pounds (the median amount gained was 15 pounds) and 10% said they gained more than 50 pounds, the poll found. majority of adults (61%) experienced undesired weight changes When the pool of individuals you are looking at includes only people who reported gaining weight (and not, for example, the people who say they lost or maintained weight during the same period of time) the number is going to be significantly higher. Kennedy's claim relies on the notion that the only Americans that existed during the pandemic are those who gained weight. This same survey indicated that "18% of U.S. adults report undesired weight loss, with an average weight loss of 26 lbs." same survey In response to our question about his use of this data, Kennedy responded to Snopes by email stating that he was in error. "I made an error in describing 29 lbs as a national average," he wrote. The APA survey did not gather weight data on any individual. Instead these data stem from surveys carried out by the APA, Stress In America, that measure "attitudes and perceptions of stress among the general public". This particular survey, the Pandemic Anniversary Survey, was conducted roughly a year into the pandemic in February 2021. It had a sample size of just over 3,000 individuals: Stress In America sample size The Pandemic Anniversary Survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association between Feb. 19 and 24, 2021, among 3,013 adults age 18+ who reside in the U.S.  The survey questions were designed to identify perceptions of stress, not to quantify standardized measurements of weight. Reports of undesired weight gain, in this sort of study, are entirely self-reported. Even if used in good faith, such a survey would not be an appropriate gauge of actual trends of weight gain or loss in America. In contrast to the APA study and its 3,000 participants, a research paper published by the Epic Health Research Network (EHRN) analyzed anonymized medical data collected from nearly 20 million patients across America at multiple times before, at the onset of, and during the pandemic, as explained in the July 2021 publication: research paper These data come from Cosmos, a HIPAA Limited Data Set of more than 111 million patients. [...] Data are pooled from 128 healthcare organizations representing 640 hospitals that span 49 states and cover 19,573,285 patients. This includes 15,663,833 patients in the year prior to the pandemic and 14,922,615 patients over the course of the pandemic. Cosmos, its website says, is the "largest integrated database of clinical information in the United States." Composed of anonymized clinical records, the dataset is a product of a software company that manages medical records in many American hospitals. Epic Research is an arm of this collection of companies publishing papers based on their Cosmos dataset. says many American hospitals In the study, the researchers found that an almost equal number of individuals gained weight as lost weight during the pandemic: found We evaluated weight change for adults during the pandemic compared to weight change for adults in the year prior to the pandemic. A weight loss or gain of 2.5 pounds, which we define as a normal fluctuation or "no change," was most common, both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. Nearly as many patients lost weight (35%) as gained weight (39%) during the pandemic. By utilizing data from before the pandemic, from the start of the pandemic, and from during the pandemic, the researchers were also able to compare rates of weight gain or loss year by year. As described in the study, the period of time from the onset of the pandemic into May 2021 brought slightly higher average body weight than the preceding time period, but this was in line with a national trend of increasing average weight: described The average adult weight over time has increased, as shown in Figure 3 [below]. The slight increase in the average adult weight during the pandemic period of less than one pound is consistent with the previous trend. Weight change patterns were similar regardless of age and sex.  Their findings also put the extremity of Kennedy's claim in perspective. The clinical data indicates that only about 2% of individuals gained more than 27.5 pounds during the early pandemic: only about 2%  Because no study actually says that the average American gained 29 pounds during the early pandemic, because the study used to reach that conclusion  even if interpreted correctly  is ill-suited for the purpose Kennedy used it, and because nationwide clinical data suggest otherwise, the claim is False. Alban, Chris, et al. Pandemic Pound Theories Don't Hold Weight. https://epicresearch.org/articles/pandemic-pound-theories-dont-hold-weight. Accessed 6 July 2023. Epic Cosmos. https://cosmos.epic.com/. Accessed 6 July 2023. Jennings, Katie. "The Billionaire Who Controls Your Medical Records." Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2021/04/08/billionaire-judy-faulkner-epic-systems/. Accessed 6 July 2023. "One Year on: Unhealthy Weight Gains, Increased Drinking Reported by Americans Coping with Pandemic Stress." APA, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/03/one-year-pandemic-stress. Accessed 6 July 2023. Slightly More Than 6 in 10 U.S. Adults (61%) Report Undesired Weight Change Since Start of Pandemic. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/03/march-weight-change. Accessed 6 July 2023. "Stress in America." APA, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress. Accessed 6 July 2023. The insecticide chlorpyrifos, sold under the brand names Lorsban, Dursban, and others, has been the subject of regulatory battles for decades. It was first introduced as a pesticide in 1965, and it remains the most commonly applied pesticide in the United States. In 1996, the Clinton administration signed into law the Food Quality Protection Act, which mandated regular scientific reviews and safety evaluations of existing pesticides based on childrens health safety benchmarks. One of the actions resulting from this review was a 2000 ban on chlorpyrifos for nearly all residential and indoor uses: Lorsban 1965 remains 2000 This action comes after completing the most extensive scientific review of the potential hazards from a pesticide ever conducted. This action  the result of an agreement with the manufacturers  will significantly minimize potential health risks from exposure to Dursban, also called chlorpyrifos, for all Americans, especially children. Following this ruling, the EPA additionally ruled that chlorpyrifos would remain classified as safe for use in other agricultural and industrial settings. This latter ruling resulted in a September 2007 petition to the EPA filed by the Pesticide Action Network of North America and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both of which jointly requested that the agency ban the pesticide or issue final rulings on their acceptable levels (legally termed tolerances) in food. In September 2015, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals mandated that the EPA respond to this petition by either banning the chemical completely or issuing final rulings on tolerances of the chemicals residue on food products by October 31, 2015. mandated Following this court order, the EPA conducted a lengthy review and delivered a proposal on 6 November 2015, which suggested  as requested by the petition  that all currently published tolerances regarding chlorpyrifos residue on food should be revoked: proposal EPA is proposing to revoke all tolerances for residues of the insecticide chlorpyrifos [including] tolerances for residues of chlorpyrifos on specific food commodities; on all food commodities treated in food handling and food service establishments in accordance with prescribed conditions; and on specific commodities when used under regional registrations. The agency is proposing to revoke all of these tolerances because EPA cannot, at this time, determine that aggregate exposure to residues of chlorpyrifos, including all anticipated dietary exposures and all other non-occupational exposures for which there is reliable information, are safe. In March 2017, before the EPAs proposal was implemented, Scott Pruitt  the new EPA administrator under President Donald Trump  reversed course and argued the previous administrations scientific rationale was dubious, denying the petition: reversed course In October 2015, under the previous Administration, EPA proposed to revoke all food residue tolerances for chlorpyrifos, an active ingredient in insecticides. This proposal was issued in response to a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network North America. The October 2015 proposal largely relied on certain epidemiological study outcomes, whose application is novel and uncertain, to reach its conclusions. The decision to deny the petition faced renewed scrutiny because the CEO of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, had been appointed by Trump to a White House manufacturing working group, and his company subsequently donated $1 million to Donald Trumps inauguration fund. Liveris also was scrutinized over reports that he met with Pruitt prior to his announcement reversing the ban.  appointed reports On 19 November 2017, using text from a viral Chelsea Handler tweet, the progressive Facebook Page "Really American" launched a petition with a call to action: using text   We explore each component of this memetic claim: Chlorpyrifos Was Invented by the Nazis as a Nerve Agent false. Chlorpyrifos is a specific chemical that belongs to a broader class of chemicals called organophosphates. While the Nazis were at the forefront of developing this broader class as both weapons and insecticides, they can not be credited with inventing chlorpyrifos specifically. In the 1930s, a German researcher named Gerhard Schrader at German chemical producer IG Farben (infamous for producing the gas most commonly employed at Nazi death camps) discovered that organophosphates interact with cholinesterase, an enzyme that aids in the production of an important neurotransmitter in animals. IG Farben interact Originally this effect was explored as a way to produce an insecticide, but one of Schrader's formulations, named Preparation 9/91, ended up being extremely toxic to humans. Schrader himself required hospitalization as a result of his own interaction with it. This discovery was reported to Nazi authorities, who mandated that all German researchers report any scientific development that could have military applications to the regime. required  Shraders discovery led to the discovery and production of some of the worlds most infamous organophosphate nerve gases, including Tabun and Sarin gases. Other countries, including Britain and the United States, also began research into organophosphates during WWII as weapons. After the war ended, research resumed into organophosphate use as an insecticide. led Chlorpyrifos, a specific formulation of an organophosphate, is included as one of many chemicals assigned to the Dow Chemical company in a 1963 patent which lists United States-based researcher Raymond Rigterink as the inventor. The only connection that chlorpyrifos has to the Nazi regime is its foundational work on the biological effects of organophosphates that researchers performed prior to, and during, WWII. Many nations built on this work after the war. patent Chlorpyrifos Causes Brain Damage Unproven, but likely. That organophosphates can be toxic to humans is nothing new. The idea, in developing such a chemical for use an insecticide, is to engineer an organophosphate that is below the threshold for affecting the human nervous system (via its effect on cholinesterase, something scientifically referred to as AChE inhibition) but is still toxic to insects. AChE inhibition From a scientific standpoint, the main controversy surrounds the potential residual effects that chlorpyrifos may have on the neurological development of fetuses and young children, which some studies have documented even at levels well below what is currently considered acceptable. In their 2016 decision to ban all tolerances for the chemical on food, the Environmental Protection Agency stated: In summary, the EPAs assessment is that the [Columbia Center for Childrens Environmental Health, CCCEH] study, with supporting results from the other 2 U.S. cohort studies and the seven additional epidemiological studies reviewed in 2015, provides sufficient evidence that there are neurodevelopmental effects occurring at chlorpyrifos exposure levels below that required for AChE inhibition. The primary study cited by the EPA was conducted by the Columbia Center for Childrens Environmental Health and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. This study compared fetal exposure to chlorpyrifos (based on sampling of blood in the mother's umbilical cord) to differences in brain development:  study We investigated associations between [chlorpyrifos, CPF] exposure and brain morphology using magnetic resonance imaging in 40 children, 5.911.2 y, selected from a nonclinical, representative community-based cohort. Twenty high-exposure children (upper tertile of CPF concentrations in umbilical cord blood) were compared with 20 low-exposure children on cortical surface features [...]. In a press release this study, CCCEH said: press release Even low to moderate levels of exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos during pregnancy may lead to long-term, potentially irreversible changes in the brain structure of the child [...] Changes were visible across the surface of the brain, with abnormal enlargement of some areas and thinning in others. The disturbances in brain structure are consistent with the IQ deficits previously reported in the children with high exposure levels of [...] CPF, suggesting a link between prenatal exposure to CPF and deficits in IQ and working memory at age 7. previously reported [...] Notably, the brain abnormalities appeared to occur at exposure levels below the current EPA threshold for toxicity, which is based on exposures high enough to inhibit the action of the key neurological enzyme cholinesterase. The present findings suggest that the mechanism underlying structural changes in the brain may involve other pathways. There have been several large-scale studies that show a similar association between exposure to chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates to neurological problems, and there have been several studies proposing hypotheses about why such an association exists, but there lacks a rigorous consensus on the later point. The Pruitt EPA, in essence, has used this uncertainty to punt a decision on its neurological effects to a later review date: lacks date Following a review of comments on both the November 2015 proposal and the November 2016 notice of data availability, EPA has concluded that, despite several years of study, the science addressing neurodevelopmental effects remains unresolved and that further evaluation of the science during the remaining time for completion of registration review is warranted to achieve greater certainty as to whether the potential exists for adverse neurodevelopmental effects to occur from current human exposures to chlorpyrifos. EPA has therefore concluded that it will not complete the human health portion of the registration review or any associated tolerance revocation of chlorpyrifos without first attempting to come to a clearer scientific resolution on those issues. As noted, Congress has provided that EPA must complete registration review by October 1, 2022. Because the 9th Circuit's August 12, 2016 order has made clear, however, that further extensions to the March 31, 2017 deadline for responding to the Petition would not be granted, EPA is today also denying all remaining petition claims. Pruitt highlighted specific methodological problems and uncertainties scientists raised during their 2016 review, but importantly neglected to mention that at the time of the panels meeting, they still concluded that the ban was necessary  even if the mechanistic aspects of chlorpyrifos danger are not yet settled. Jim Jones, the former head of the EPA chemical safety unit, contended in an interview with the New York Times that the science behind the neurological risks of chlorpyrifos is not questioned:  neglected interview They are ignoring the science that is pretty solid, Mr. Jones said, adding that he believed the ruling would put farm workers and exposed children at unnecessary risk. Speaking of the EPAs reversal, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a statement suggesting that Pruitts decision was not based on science, arguing an ethical responsibility to use science for the good of humanity: arguing Science should be used to prevent harm and to protect lives. The decision to put the agenda of a corporation over the lives and wellbeing of Americans is an egregious failure of our government to use strong, independent science to protect public health and safety. Chlorpyrifos Was Supposed to Be Banned in 2017, but Trump Is Now Allowing It True. In a broad sense, the "blame" for this chlorpyrifos ban reversal belongs only indirectly to Trump himself. He did, however, appoint anti-regulation crusader Scott Pruitt as administrator of the EPA, who subsequently decided to exercise his executive authority to reject the chlorpyrifos petition and reverse the previous EPAs ban, which is a power afforded to Pruitt through the United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act: anti-regulation afforded Act: Under section 408(d)(4) of the FFDCA, EPA is authorized to respond to a section 408( d) petition to revoke tolerance either by issuing a final rule revoking the tolerances, issuing a proposed rule, or issuing an order denying the Petition. If Pruitt had not exercised this authority, the EPA had a court-mandated deadline to make a ruling on the matter by 31 March 2017. Prior to this deadline, Pruitt issued his own ruling rejecting the work done by previous advisory boards. Had a different administrator been in charge, that call may have been very different.  to make a ruling As a result of Trump and Pruitts actions, chlorpyrifos will continue to be allowed to be sprayed on food items, but it should be noted that this represents no change in current policy; it merely blocks what would likely have been the implementation of a change that would have otherwise taken effect in March 2017. Dow Chemicals Gave President Trump $1 Million for His Inauguration True. Dow Chemicals donated one million dollars to Trumps inaugural committee, a donation described by political news site TheHill.com as among Trumps largest. Dow also donated $250,000 to the 2005 George W. Bush inaugural committee (whose administration also sought to limit regulation on chlorpyrifos), but not to either the 2009 or 2013 Obama inaugural funds. described 2009 2013 Responding to an April 2017 report alleging that Dow attempted to kill efforts to study the negative effects of chlorpyrifos, Dow contended that the gift was legal and not part of an influence campaign: report Rachelle Schikorra, the director of public affairs for Dow Chemical, said any suggestion that the companys $1 million donation to Trumps inaugural committee was intended to help influence regulatory decisions is completely off the mark. Dow actively participates in policymaking and political processes, including political contributions to candidates, parties and causes, in compliance with all applicable federal and state laws, Schikorra said. Dow maintains and is committed to the highest standard of ethical conduct in all such activity. Although it is clear that Dow Chemicals actively lobbied against a chlorpyrifos ban, we cannot rule on claims that their $1 million donation influenced Trump or Pruitt to change their view on the issue. lobbied While some aspects of the text included in the Chelsea Handler tweet and Really American petition, such as chlorpyrifoss connection to Nazi Germany and the scientific degree to which irreversible brain damage has been alleged, include some uncertainty, the bulk of its claims are true. The EPAs scientific community was certain enough, despite questions about methods or mechanisms, to agree with the petition that chlorpyrifos posed a risk to neurological health and should be banned. President Donald Trump, who did receive a significant amount of money from Dow Chemicals for his inauguration, unilaterally reversed this decision through his administrator Pruitts actions. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.  "Chlorpyrifos: Production, Import/export, Use, and Disposal.
  Accessed 27 November 2017. Environmental Protection Agency.  "Chlorpyrifos.
  Archived from 19 January 2017. Environmental Protection Agency.  "Dursban Announcement.
  8 June 2000. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  "Pesticide Action Network North America; Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
  10 August 2015. Regulations.gov.  "Tolerance Revocations: Chlorpyrifos.
  6 November 2016. Environmental Protection Agency.  "EPA Administrator Pruitt Denies Petition to Ban Widely Used Pesticide.
  29 March 2017. Biesecker, Michael.  "Pesticide Maker Tries to Kill Risk Study."
  Associated Press.  20 April 2017. Associated Press.  "EPA Chief Met with Dow Chemical CEO Before Deciding Not to Ban Toxic Pesticide.
  30 June 2017. Everts, Sarah.  "The Nazi Origins of Deadly Nerve Gases."
  C&EN.  17 October 2016. Rauh, Virginia A. et al.  "Brain Anomalies in Children Exposed Prenatally to a Common Organophosphate Pesticide"
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  30 April 2012. Columbia Center for Childrens Environmental Health.  "Insecticide Linked to Altered Brain Structure.
  30 April 2012. Environmental Protection Agency.  "Transmittal of Meeting Minutes of the April 19-21 2016 FIFRA SAP Meeting Held to Consider and Review Scientific Issues Associated with Chlorpyrifos: Analysis of Biomonitoring Data?
  21 April 2016. Environmental Protection Agency.  "Chlorpyrifos; Order Denying PANNA and NRDC's Petition to Revoke Tolerances.
  March 2017. Lipton, Eric.  "E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agencys Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide."
  The New York Times.  29 March 2017. Union of Concerned Scientists.  "How Dow Chemical Influenced the EPA to Ignore the Scientific Evidence on Chlorpyrifos.
  April 2017. Goodell, Jeff.  "Scott Pruitt's Crimes Against Nature."
  Rolling Stone.  27 July 2017. Wilson, Megan R.  "Corporate Donors to Trump Inaugural Revealed."
  Rolling Stone.  2 February 2017. On 2 June 2015, New York firefighter Michael O'Connell took to Facebook to ask social media users for help in locating a helmet that had been stolen from his house a few years prior. O'Connell posted a photograph of his son with the helmet and explained that he had worn it throughout his FDNY career, including during 9/11 and its aftermath: Facebook   This was my FDNY helmet I wore my entire career including 9/11/01. It was stolen from my home a while back. I know it's a long shot but if enough people share maybe it turns up or is sent back so I can keep it in my family! Thanks! The NYC Wire Fire Facebook page helped spread O'Connell's message by resharing his post with the caption, "In case anyone comes across this ... maybe the thief is stupid enough to try to sell on eBay." Within a week, the message reportedly reached more than 8 million people and had been reshared hundreds of thousands of times. Unfortunately, despite the wide dissemination of this Facebook post, it did not result in the return of O'Connell's FDNY helmet. Facebook reportedly AM New York reported on 24 June 2015, a few weeks after the Facebook post went viral, that while O'Connell had not been reunited with his helmet, he did receive an outpouring of support from the community and two replica helmets from "good Samaritans hoping to sooth the sting" of his loss: reported Retired firefighter Michael O'Connell's social media campaign to retrieve his stolen FDNY helmet has gotten him the next best thing -- two replicas thanks to some good Samaritans. "There are still amazing people in this world!," O'Connell said. O'Connell, 39, recently turned to Facebook to track down the significant memento that he wore at Ground Zero following 9/11 and hoped to leave to his three children. What came back instead were two painstakingly created replica helmets from good Samaritans hoping to soothe the sting of his loss and an avalanche of human kindness and compassion. "I'm taking the good out of this story, not the bad," said O'Connell, who was forced to retire from the FDNY after being diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that attacks the lungs and lymphatic system, in 2007. "We live in an amazing world. So many people are willing to help. I hope people recognize this more than all the hate out there," he said. Although this FDNY firefighter's message was originally posted in June 2015, social media users have continued to share his plea on Facebook over the ensuing years. In April 2019, for example, a screenshot of O'Connell's message that was posted by the "Ramsey, New Jersey Volunteer Fire Department" racked up more than 600,000 shares. Ramsey, New Jersey Volunteer Fire Department When viewers learned that this message was nearly four years old by the time they encountered it in April 2019, they were left wondering if O'Connell had ever been reunited with his firefighter helmet. Unfortunately, that's not the case. O'Connell told us in April 2019: "I appreciate everyones support in this matter. Unfortunately, my helmet was never returned! Hoping that it will make its way back home one day as I am a retired FF who has fallen sick to my work on September 11th and this was the helmet that I wore that day and throughout my career!" Stepansky, Joseph.  "FDNY Firefighter's Helmet Worn During 9/11 Stolen from Long Island Home."
  New York Daily Post.  3 June 2015. Feeney, Sheila Anne.  "Retired FDNY Firefighter Michael O'Connell Searching for 9/11 Helmet."
  AM New York.  3 June 2015. Feeney, Sheila Anne.  "Retired FDNY Smoke Eater Michael O'Connell Receives Two Helmets for the One He Lost."
  AM New York.  24 June 2015.