Foiled Child Abduction in Tupelo Rumor
Claim:  E-mail claims a Mexican woman attempted to abduct a tot from a store in Tupelo, Mississippi. Status:  False. Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, 2006] Ok this is freaky but it really happened at the mall in Tupelo. Everyone please beware this Holiday Season. A couple of weeks ago a lady with two kids was shopping at JCPennys in the mall here at Tupelo.  One of her sons was pretty small and he was in a stroller buckled in and the other one was older and he was walking beside her. A mexican woman came by and told the lady how cute her little baby was...well the lady told her "Thank You" and went on her way. A couple of minutes later the mexican woman approched the lady again telling her how cute her little baby boy was. The lady again replied with thank you. As the lady turned her back to look at a piece of clothing the oldest son started screaming. The lady turned around to find that the mexican lady had unbuckled the baby and grabbed him out of the stroller and took off with him.  The lady ran after them and caught the mexican woman as the was getting out the door with her son. The only way that she caught her was the mexican woman had long hair and she pulled it and knocked her down. The lady held her in her custody until the authorities arrived. The lady  was shocked when the authorities asked her if she wanted to press charges. The lady replied back with heck yeah this is my son your talking about. Come to find out the mexican lady was here illegally. They are coming here to steal our kids and carry them across the border to sell to the black market... scary I know....but I had to pass on. Now you do the same.. Thanks and have a Great Day  This really happened to a relative of a girl that goes to church with me. They have the lady in custody that tried to take the baby. She was hispanic and finally admitted that she was taking the baby across the border to sell it. This was last Wednesday night, Nov. 15 at the JC Penneys at Barnes Crossing. They did not catch anyone that was accompanying the lady andwe don't know if she gave up any names. So there could still be predators out there. Warn everyone you know with small children. Very scary... Last night as our family was out eating out at a local resturant , one of my aunts shared with us a very disturbing event that happened this past Wednesday night at JC Penny. A lady was shopping with her 2 small children  one a baby in a stroller and the other a toddler that was just old enough to talk. The lady had her children both right next to her as she was looking at clothes and the toddler said "Mama that lady just got my sister". This mother started chasing this Hispanic lady and finally caught her by reaching out and grabbing her hair from behind. She then started screaming this woman has my baby. Security came and took care of the horrible situation and told the Mom - we can almost bet you the lady had a car waiting outside with a driver and ready to take off and sell your baby on the black market in Mexico. This mother's grateful thought was Thank Goodness my toddler could talk and tell me - because she never thought this could happen since her children were right next to her within arms reach. I am sure with the Holiday Season approaching us all, the distractions as we shop will be more - but I hope this will help us all to stay a little more alert while out and about doing our shopping. And better Yet lets all each day Ask for the Lord to Guide and protect us and our families! Origins:  In November 2006, these accounts describing a foiled child abduction at a store in Tupelo, Mississippi, began arriving in our e-mail. Akin to other Internet-circulated tales about attempted childnappings at large stores (such as the venerable canard about kids being pulled in store washrooms to be drugged and have their hair dyed by those attempting to make off with them, or the 2006 hoax about a failed child grab at a Blockbuster in North Texas), this one also proved to be a fiction. dyed Blockbuster According  to Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson and Tupelo Police Chief Harold Chaffin, the story about a Mexican woman who initially admired a shopper's baby, then grabbed it from the stroller and ran off with it was pure invention. There hadn't been any such incident  no brave mom who seized the would-be abductor by her long hair and held her until police arrived, no baby-stealing illegal immigrant now behind bars awaiting trial, no ring of kidnappers frequenting Tupelo-area stores in search of product for a Mexican black market in American infants. The Mall at Barnes Crossing, a venue where the alleged foiled abduction was said to have taken place, did succeed in tracing the e-mails to their source. Mall manager Jeff Snyder indicated no legal action was contemplated against the rumor's originator, but he noted that this could well be the last time the Mall would be inclined to be so lenient regarding damage done to its reputation. The false story spread from inbox to inbox because it invoked not just the specter of the child-abducting stranger (a frightening enough figure all on its own) but melded into it a bogeyman of the moment, the illegal immigrant from south of the border. While illegal immigration into the U.S. from Mexico has long been a problem, prior to 2006 it was less of a concern to those not living in border states. In 2006, however, the illegal immigration issue was pushed to the center of the political arena, with some of that pushing taking the form of unsubstantiated rumors positioning all those who come into the U.S. on the sly as violent criminals. The fictive Mexican woman of this tale is presented as a kidnapper of small children, and not even one propelled by misguided maternal desire into taking youngsters so she could become their mother, but one motivated purely by avarice, in it for the cash that selling the purloined tots would bring. She is wholly and irredeemably evil and therefore held up as an example of the sort of person a "look the other way" attitude towards illegal immigration has allowed into the country. Her theft is not merely that of social services, it is of defenseless children; the cost of having her here is not merely a small increase in taxes paid by the typical family, but the risk that the next tot she or her compatriots snatch will be yours. Barbara "bogeyman the barricades" Mikkelson Last updated:  15 December 2006    Sources:  Gray, Lloyd.  "Today's Falsehoods Spread Faster, Wider."  Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.  10 December 2006  (p. B4).
As U.S. President Donald Trump accelerated unsubstantiated attacks on the legitimacy of mail-in voting during the summer of 2020, numerous Snopes readers asked us to investigate whether the leader of the U.S. Postal Service was carrying out a nefarious scheme to help Trump win another presidential term. mail-in voting In late July and early August, various rumors surfaced regarding Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman whom the Postal Service's governing board selected to run the agency in May 2020. For example, a viral tweet thread alleged: viral tweet My mailman just confirmed they have all officially been told to "SLOW THE MAIL DOWN," per trump's Postmaster General. ...He says that there is backed up mail ALL OVER THE FLOOR. He's never seen anything like it. It has ALREADY begun. But as long as we keep each other informed, we can beat their dirty tricks with INFORMATION.   The claim's underlying notions were these: DeJoy was a political ally to the Republican president, and the new postmaster general had used his new authority to order Postal Service carriers and clerks to slow deliveries to help Trump win the 2020 November election. A backlog of ballots in the weeks or days before Election Day, critics of the president worried, could lead to votes going uncounted or deemed invalid due to state laws governing mail-in election deadlines. state laws What follows is an examination of federal documents obtained by Snopes  including letters by members of Congress, campaign finance reports, and internal memos to Postal Service employees  as well as interviews with postal union representatives and a Postal Service spokesperson, to determine the legitimacy of those questions. DeJoy could not be reached for an interview for this report.  Note: Snopes not only investigated DeJoy's relationship to Trump, but his financial stake in companies that compete with the Postal Service to evaluate if, or to what extent, his past investments provided any evidence of a plan to undermine the Postal Service's longstanding mission: to provide mail service to every American, no matter their address or income. Yes. DeJoy, who lives in Greensboro, donated more than $1.2 million to the Trump campaign between August 2016 and February 2020, according to campaign finance reports compiled by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Federal Elections Commission It's unclear when or how DeJoy developed a relationship with Trump, and why he decided to support the billionaire's political pursuits. In a 2005 interview with Greensboro's local newspaper, DeJoy  then-CEO of New Breed Logistics, a distribution and warehousing company  appeared less supportive of Trump, saying his self-important attitude on the reality-TV show "The Apprentice" was destructive. 2005 interview The Apprentice "I'd be fired," DeJoy said, if he was a contestant. Nonetheless, by early 2017, DeJoy was among his state's top donors to Trump (see below for The Charlotte Observer's list that ranks DeJoy at No. 3 with a total contribution of $111,000). And by October of that year, DeJoy had become close enough to the president to host him and other donors for fundraiser at his Greensboro house. top donors Greensboro house.     Also, by that time, DeJoy's wife, Aldona Wos, had been appointed by the president to serve as vice chair of a White House commission that oversees paid fellowships in federal offices, according to the couple's foundation website. foundation website In addition to his contributions to Trump's political campaigns specifically, DeJoy has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes or campaigns over decades, the FEC records show. The Postal Service's governing board, a group appointed by the president with confirmation from the Senate, selected DeJoy as Postmaster General on May 6, 2020, after what it described as an extensive nationwide search for qualified candidates. At the time of that decision, Trump had appointed all six board members  Chairman Robert Duncan, John Barger, Ron Bloom, Roman Martinez IV, Donald Moak, and William Zollars  since the early days of his presidency. what it described Robert Duncan John Barger Ron Bloom Roman Martinez IV Donald Moak William Zollars  DeJoy, who was in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Charlotte when the board made its announcement, made the following donations since the start of 2020, according to filings from the FEC: National Republican Congressional Committee. National Republican Congressional Committee Facebook In sum, considering DeJoy's record of donations, as well as evidence of him hosting a Trump fundraiser at his Greensboro home in fall 2017, it is accurate to claim that the new postmaster general is a political ally to the Republican president.  home The answer to this question is less clear. In summer 2020, the viral claim about DeJoy  that he had directed carriers to delay mail to benefit Trump's reelection campaign (which we unpack below)  took on another layer: that DeJoy had also allegedly invested $70 million of his own money in delivery companies that compete with the Postal Service. another layer allegedly     That allegation, which we deemed true (see the explanation below), was particularly worrisome for critics of Trump and DeJoy, who believed the alleged holdings were more proof of the two leaders conspiring together  this time in an attempt to privatize the Postal Service. critics Here's some context before we dive into DeJoy's personal assets: Conservative Republicans have long pushed to remove government from mail services that they believe should be left to the private commercial market. Since Trump took office, he has called the Postal Service "a joke" or Amazon's "delivery boy," considering its package rates, and has floated the idea of eventually privatizing the agency. a joke delivery boy eventually privatizing the agency Meanwhile, others fear dismantling the federally-mandated mail service would disproportionately affect people who live in rural areas, where private companies such as FedEx and UPS either charge higher rates or do no shipments at all. At the same time, the Postal Service  which does not receive tax dollars for its operating expenses  faces a worsening financial situation due to a 2006 congressional mandate that required the agency to prepay health care benefits of retirees, as well as a decline in first-class mail customers. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated those long-standing problems, forcing several post offices nationwide to completely close or scale back hours. congressional mandate coronavirus pandemic scale back hours For instance, on April 9, 2020, roughly one month before DeJoy was selected to lead the Postal Service, then-Postmaster General Megan Brennan said the agency was preparing for a $13 billion revenue shortfall due directly to COVID-19 and an additional $54.3 billion in losses over 10 years. Considering those projections, she said the agency could run out of cash this fiscal year  or the end of September  without federal intervention. (Brennan announced her retirement in October 2019, after more than 30 years with the agency.) April 9, 2020 announced her retirement The former Postal Service leader made those comments shortly after federal leaders negotiated a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package, called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which, initially, included a $13 billion one-time boost for the mail service. But, purportedly at the urging of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and aides to Trump, congressional leaders removed that provision from the stimulus package, and instead included a $10 billion loan that the Trump administration could leverage in its favor. Then, on July 29, 2020, The Washington Post reported that under DeJoy's leadership, the postal agency gave Mnuchin's office's proprietary information about the Postal Service's most lucrative private-sector contracts, such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS, in exchange for the loan money. economic relief package Steven Mnuchin The Washington Post By that time, Congressional leaders and Trump were battling yet again over another emergency relief package; Democrats proposed a $25 billion boost for the Postal Service but then lowered that amount to $10 billion during talks with Republicans. On Aug. 13, 2020, during an interview on Fox Business Network, the president said frankly the tug-and-pull over Postal Service funding was part of his administration's plan to try to make it harder for the agency to handle the expected surge in mail-in ballots in the November election. If we dont make a deal, that means they dont get the money, Trump told host Maria Bartiromo, referring to the false claim that Democrats are are proposing a universal mail-in voting system. That means they cant have universal mail-in voting; they just cant have it. told Which brings us to DeJoy's assets, and the above-mentioned claim that he had "$70 million invested in companies that compete with USPS." For the basis of this analysis, we considered private companies that provide shipping or distribution services, such as DHL, the FedEx Corporation, and United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS), business competitors with the post office. For more than 30 years, DeJoy was the CEO of New Breed Logistics, a supply chain business that contracted with a variety of public and private companies, including the Postal Service. In 2014, XPO Logistics acquired DeJoy's company, and he served on the company's executive team or board of directors until May 2018. According to internal documents, which we obtained using the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) database of company filings, XPO Logistics considered its competitors to include DHL, FedEx, UPS, and J.B. Hunt Transport Services.  XPO Logistics DHL FedEx UPS J.B. Hunt Transport Services Aside from that evidence, which proved DeJoy's former company competed for business with organizations that also competed with the Postal Service, Snopes uncovered a letter from his wife, Wos, to a White House legal advisor on January 3, 2020, that listed her family's financial assets, known as "Attachment A." According to that list, the family had stock in companies including UPS, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., and XPO Logistics, Inc. letter She wrote the letter in response to a nomination by the Trump administration to serve as U.S. ambassador to Canada, and she said she would divest from all holdings in the document within 90 days of her confirmation. However, as of this writing, Wos had not been sworn into the position. The letter, which was available via the Office of Government Ethics, read: nomination Office of Government Ethics   As of June 15, 2020, the day DeJoy assumed his role as postmaster general, The Washington Post reported the couple had between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in Postal Service competitors or contractors. XPO Logistics represented the vast majority of those investments, and the couple's combined stake in UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt, for examples, was roughly $265,000. The Washington Post reported On DeJoy's first day, the Senate's top Democrat, Charles Schumer of New York, said in letter to the Postal Service's board of governors' chairman: "[DeJoy's] financial interests in companies that have business ties with the Postal Services, as well as his extensive campaign fundraising efforts, raise questions" over his ethical conflicts of interest and partisan interests. letter By that point, a spokeswoman for DeJoy told journalists he had resigned as finance chair for the Republican National Convention, and would "comply with any financial divestitures that are required" for the new leadership position. told journalists In sum, reports proved the DeJoy family at one point had millions of dollars in assets in companies that compete or contract with the Postal Service, which lend credibility to the viral assertion. But the exact amount of such investments was unclear, and as of this writing, it was unknown if or to what extent the couple had divested any of the financial holdings. Not exactly  but there is some truth to the claim. Upon our analysis, the rumor seems to have stemmed from a series of directives DeJoy gave Postal Service employees since he took over the agency. On his first day, for example, he addressed the agency in a video that alluded to impending changes under his leadership that aimed to create a "viable operating model," though he did not go into specifics. video Then, in mid-July, he issued several memos to employees, including a "New [Postmaster General's] expectations and plan." Those messages to all managers, clerks, and carriers nationwide appeared to be the source of the claim, and detailed changes to how and when the Postal Agency would deliver mail. A July 10, 2020, internal document to managers, which Snopes received from the American Postal Workers Union and refers to an "operational pivot" for the agency, said the following, for example: American Postal Workers Union The initial step in our pivot is targeted on transportation and the soaring costs we incur due to late trips and extra trips, which costs the organization somewhere around $200 million in added expenses. $200 million in added expenses The shifts are simple, but they will be challenging, as we seek to change our culture and move away from past practices previously used. But perhaps most relevant to the claim, the DeJoy-sponsored directives included instructions for employees to leave letters or packages at distribution centers if they delayed carriers from their routes  contradicting previous rules for deliveries  and said the Postal Service would no longer pay employees overtime to complete all mail deliveries. The July 10, 2020 memo said:  contradicting One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that  temporarily  we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks [in Processing and Distribution Centers], which is not typical. We will address root causes of these delays and adjust the very next day. Any mail left behind must be properly reported, and employees should ensure this action is taken with integrity and accuracy. As we adjust to the ongoing pivot, which will have a number of phases, we know that operations will begin to run more efficiently and that delayed mail volumes will soon shrink significantly. We also considered a separate message to employees in July 2020 that said, under a new initiative, carriers in certain regions would not sort any mail during the morning and instead clock in, retrieve sorted mail from the previous day and limit time in the office as much as possible. Then, when they returned from the streets, they would sort all available mail for the next day. July 2020 The agency said the extra spending on employees' overtime or delivery trips had not improved "our performance scores," without going into detail on what that meant, and framed the changes as necessary steps to improve its financial position. A July 27, 2020, public statement from DeJoy said: said public statement Given our current situation, it is critical that the Postal Service take a fresh look at our operations and make necessary adjustments. We are highly focused on our public service mission to provide prompt, reliable, and efficient service to every person and business in this country, and to remain a part of the nations critical infrastructure. David Partenheimer, manager of media relations for the Postal Service, told Snopes that the postmaster general was not doing any media interviews regarding the initiatives, nor about the underlying claims of this report. In a roughly 760-word email to us, however, Partenheimer reemphasized what the agency viewed as the need for the adjustments, and said: "We acknowledge that temporary service impacts can occur as we redouble our efforts to conform to the current operating plans, but any such impacts will be monitored and temporary ... and corrected as appropriate." Soon after the directives, American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein told us in a phone interview that employees and customers across the country were noticing mail delays. In the Philadelphia region, for instance, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported situations where residents were going upwards of three weeks without receiving packages and letters, and postal union leaders and carriers said mail was piling up at offices, unscanned and unsorted. Mark Dimondstein employees Philadelphia Inquirer "When you ... say this is what you have to do as workers, then that's what we have to do  [the change] runs counter to everything that the Postal Service is about, which is we treat the mail as our own; we get it to the customer as quickly as we can," Dimondstein said. "They've never seen mail backed up like this  it's not being moved." That meant, while DeJoy had not told carriers to "slow the mail down" verbatim, he initiated changes to how and when carriers go about doing their job that the Postal Agency said would cause temporary mail delays. However, it would be inaccurate to assume all slow deliveries under DeJoy's leadership were a result of the July 2020 directives specifically, when they could also be linked to reduced hours for some post offices or other circumstances. Roughly three months before the 2020 presidential election, voting rights groups and outspoken critics to the president believed the new directives by DeJoy occurred at a convenient time for Trump: when a record number of Americans were preparing to vote by mail and avoid potential exposure to the COVID-19 coronavirus by casting ballots at in-person polling places. Specifically, they worried the new requirements for post office carriers and clerks would lead to backlogs of mail-in ballots and thus create challenges for elections officials who, in the majority of states, must invalidate ballots that reach them after Election Day  even if they were postmarked before that date. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, for example, led colleagues in writing a letter to DeJoy on July 20, 2020, that said: Rep. Carolyn Maloney "While these changes [to mail service] in a normal year would be drastic, in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner  an unacceptable outcome for a free and fair election." We asked Dimondstein, APWU president, whether he believed the July directives by Postal Service leadership were somehow linked to a plan to cause mail service chaos before the November election and help Trump win reelection. He said: What we do know for truth is this administration is, in written record, proposing and planning to sell the post office to private corporations, i.e. privatizing. ...That was June 2018. We also know as a fact that ...that [there are] calls for reduced service, increased prices, and less workers' rights and benefits. So if you take those two things together, certainly if they're implemented, then they're going to cause delays in mail; they're going to cause service being undermined. ... written record This is a fact: [DeJoy is] what's considered a mega-donor of the Trump administration and the Republican party. ... Anything that undermines the Postal Service' [service to customers] ... has us concerned that it could be linked back to those who have an agenda to eliminate [the Postal Service]. But I can't sit here and tell you that that's a fact. Partenheimer said any notion that DeJoy made decisions for the Postal Service under directions from Trump (which include claims that he issued the July 2020 changes that resulted in delays to help Trump's re-election campaign) were "wholly misplaced and off-base." He said the Postal Service, typically an apolitical agency, remains committed to "fulfilling our role in the electoral process" in places where politicians allow voters to cast ballots by mail and "to delivering Election Mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards." He elaborated: "[Despite] any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down Election Mail or any other mail. Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail consistent with our standards." Days later, he said in a statement to news media that certain deadlines concerning mail-in ballots, may be incompatible with the Postal Services delivery standards, especially if election officials dont pay more for first-class postage. To the extent that states choose to use the mail as part of their elections, they should do so in a manner that realistically reflects how the mail works, he said. news media Then, on Aug. 18, 2020, DeJoy issued a statement in which he said he would temporarily suspend initiatives "that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic," including the controversial July 2020 directives that eliminated overtime and some delivery trips. The statement read: statement To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded. I want to assure all Americans of the following: In addition, effective Oct. 1, we will engage standby resources in all areas of our operations, including transportation, to satisfy any unforeseen demand. In sum, it was accurate to state that DeJoy, a political ally to Trump, ordered Postal Service workers to leave late-arriving mail at distribution centers for delivery the following day and eliminate extra trips in July 2020  a change the Postal Service was expecting to cause temporary mail delays  although no verifiable evidence proved those directives were part of a deliberate scheme to disenfranchise voters in the November 2020 election. Additionally, there was no proof to show the changes aimed to help Trump win reelection. For those reasons, we rate this claim "Unproven." Ye Hee Lee, Michelle and Bogage, Jacob. "Postal Service Backlog Sparks Worries That Ballot Delivery Could Be Delayed In November".
 The Washington Post. 30 July 2020. Naylor, Brian. "Pending Postal Service Changes Could Delay Mail And Deliveries, Advocates War".
 NPR. 29 July 2020. Naylor, Brian. "Pending Postal Service Changes Could Delay Mail And Deliveries, Advocates War".
 NPR. 29 July 2020. USPS Contributor. "What Is The History Behind The Unofficial USPS Motto?"
 Postal Posts. 11 September 2015. USPS. "Postmaster General Statement On Operational Excellence And Financial Stability".
 27 July 2020. Office of Inspector General. "U.S. Postal Service's Processing Network Optimization And Service Impacts".
 USPS. 16 June 2020. Dawsey, Josh, et. al. "Top Republican Fundraiser And Trump Ally Named Postmaster General, Giving President New Influence Over Postal Service".
 The Washington Post. 6 May 2020. Bogage, Jacob. "Postal Service Memos Detail 'Difficult' Changes, Including Slower Mail Delivery".
 The Washington Post. 14 July 2020. Naylor, Brian. "New Postmaster General Is Top GOP Fundraiser".
 NPR. 7 May 2020. Hummel, Marta. "New Breed CEO No One's 'Apprentice' Louis DeJoy Is A Big Supporter Of George W. Bush But Says The Clinton Era Was His Most Profitable".
 News & Record. 7 January 2005. Heckman, Jory. "USPS Board Names Logistics Executive As New Postmaster General".
 Federal News Network. 6 May 2020. Gordon, Aaron. "USPS Plans To Slash Hours At Many Post Offices, Hoping To Save A Buck".
 Vice. 29 July 2020. Cohen, Rachel. "USPS Workers Concerned New Policies Will Pave The Way To Privatization".
 The Intercept. 29 July 2020. Derysh, Igor. "With Trump Donor In Charge, Postal Service May Shut Locations And Cut Service Before Election Day".
 Salon. 31 July 2020. Rushing, Ellie. "Mail Delays Are Frustrating Philly Residents, And A Short-Staffed Postal Service Is Struggling To Keep Up".
 The Philadelphia Inquirer. 2 August 2020. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney. "Maloney, King Lead Bipartisan NY Delegation Call For Immediate Help For The Postal Service".
 28 April 2020. House Committee On Oversight And Reform. "Senior Democrats Request Information On Postal Service's Operational Changes".
 20 July 2020. Bogage, Jacob. "Trump Ally Takes Over Crisis-Ridden Postal Service As Top Senate Democrat Demands Inquiry On Hiring".
 The Washington Post. 15 June 2020. Murphy, Brian. "NC Businessman, A Big-Time GOP Donor, Is Tapped To Lead US Postal Service".
 The News & Observer. 7 May 2020. Shear, Michael. "Mail Delays Fuel Concern Trump Is Undercutting Postal Service Ahead Of Voting".
 The New York Times. 1 August 2020. Sargent, Greg. "Trump Just Told Us How Mail Delays Could Help Him Corrupt The Election".
 The Washington Post. 31 July 2020. Reichmann, Deb, and Izaguirre, Anthony. "Trump Admits He's Blocking Postal Cash To Stop Mail-In Votes."
 Associated Press. 14 August 2020. USPS. "Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Statement."
 18 August 2020. This report was updated to include an interview by Trump with Fox Business Network on Aug. 13, 2020, where he acknowledged that he was intentionally blocking Postal Service funding in an attempt to make it harder for the agency to process mail-in ballots in the November presidential election. This report was updated to include a statement by DeJoy on Aug. 18, 2020, in which he announced the suspension of certain initiatives "to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail." 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. On 8 August 2017, NewsMax author Ed Klein published an article ("Hillary's Plea Bargain") heavily insinuating that Hillary Clinton had been quietly offered a plea bargain due to the Justice Department's belief that the former candidate was prosecutable on "a number of counts." That claim rested on a solitary anonymous source, purportedly a "Clinton lawyer." That designator was not further qualified or explained, and it seems contradictory that a lawyer purportedly working on Clinton's behalf would leak such a potentially damaging tidbit about his client to the author of several anti-Clinton books. Klein claimed that "discussion" of a plea took place in July 2017 between the unnamed lawyer and "a high-ranking Justice Department" official: The Justice Department has reopened the investigation of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified material on her private email system while she was secretary of state, and is considering offering her a plea bargain if she will agree to plead guilty to charges of breaking the law, according to a Clinton attorney ... During the exploratory talks with the prosecutor, the Clinton attorney was told that despite former FBI Director James Comey's decision last July not to prosecute Hillary, the Justice Department has reexamined the email case and believes there are ample grounds for prosecuting Hillary on a number of counts. Under the Justice Department's plea offer, Hillary would be required to sign a document admitting that she committed a prosecutable crime. In return, the DOJ would agree not to bring charges against Hillary in connection with the email probe. Also as part of the agreement, the Justice Department would not proceed with an investigation of Hillary's pay to play deals with foreign governments and businessmen who contributed to the Clinton Foundation or who paid Bill Clinton exorbitant speaking fees. The article concluded with a stipulation that the source had "cautioned that normally a plea is offered by a prosecutor only upon arraignment," whereas Clinton had not been charged with any crime. No other news reports we located carried a version of the claim that was not sourced from Klein's article, and his Twitter header suggests that he is perhaps emotionally invested in the prospect of Clinton's theoretical indictment: header   Despite doubling down on his remarks about the Clinton investigation, there seemed to be a discrepancy in communication, because after the article was published, he told [America Talks Lives Miranda] Khan that the Department of Justice was considering reopening it, not that they had reopened it. They are seriously thinking of reopening this investigation and therefore if she doesnt take the plea agreement, which I agree with you, she almost certainly wont, I think they will then proceed with this investigation and this is going to drag on for a long time and in a way balance the investigation thats going on with President Donald Trump and his campaign advisers regarding so-called collusion with the Russians. The outlet was far from the first to take issue with Klein's sourcing and attribution. In 2012, Politico reported: reported On the other hand, his Clinton book was strewn with serious factual errors, truncated and distorted quotes, and the overall themes don't gibe with any other serious accounts of Clinton's life. The disdain for Klein's previous efforts haven't necessarily broken along political lines. Of the same tome, conservative New York Post columnist John Podhoretz said in 2005: said Curious and revealing. Because if any book in recent memory reads as though it has been written out of greed  a greedy hunger to separate millions of conservative book buyers from their hard-earned 25 bucks  it is Ed Klein's "The Truth About Hillary." This is one of the most sordid volumes I've ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn't have to suffer through another word. It's June 2005. Hillary Clinton has been a major public figure in the United States for nearly 15 years. Somehow I imagine that if, indeed, she had "embraced" lesbianism "as a revolutionary concept" during her college years  years that have been written about exhaustively  we would have heard about it before now ... We also probably would have heard by now that Bill Clinton learned Hillary was pregnant with Chelsea by reading about it in an Arkansas newspaper. This detail is offered up by a single source  an "investment banker from New York"  in the course of a story about how Bill "raped" Hillary while on vacation in Bermuda in 1979. Coupled with the claim was a second assertion that Clinton never bothered to inform her husband she was pregnant. In 2005, Klein (in his own words) "dial[ed] back" during an interview about the passage on C-SPAN2, essentially retracting the claim in its entirety: interview HOST: OK. Is it true that Bill Clinton found out that his wife was expecting by reading the newspaper? KLEIN: Yes. HOST: Tell us a little bit more about that. KLEIN: Well, let me actually dial back. HOST: All right. KLEIN: I suspect that Bill Clinton knew that his wife was pregnant since she was pregnant for three months by the time the announcement came out. But it is true that the announcement was not made in the names of Governor and Mrs. Clinton or Governor and Ms. Rodham as she was then known, but was made in her name alone, and that she made the announcement and Bill Clinton said to my source, whom he was speaking to on the phone, "Guess what, you'll never  you'll never believe this, but I'm sitting here reading that Hillary has announced she's pregnant." That's how he found out that she  HOST: The announcement had been made. KLEIN: The announcement had been made. In 2014, The Guardian reviewed a subsequent Clinton book, Blood Feud: reviewed On a sunny afternoon in May last year, we are told, Hillary Clinton gathered six girlfriends from Wellesley's class of 1969 for a boozy lunch at Le Jardin du Roi, a bistro near her home in Chappaqua, New York. Recently liberated from the State Department, Clinton is said to have let loose on her erstwhile boss, accusing President Obama of having no hand on the fucking tiller. Klein discloses breathlessly that the wines had been carefully chosen by Roi, the owner of the restaurant, and that Roi waited on Hillary personally and prepared a special vegan dish for her after the former first lady told him that she was trying to lose weight. There is, however, a problem with this centrepiece of Blood Feuds prologue. Le Jardin du Roi was not named after the backyard of a man called Roi. It means The Garden of the King, or The Kings Garden in French. Its just the name of the restaurant, a puzzled staff member told the Guardian when reached by telephone. The name of the man who owns the restaurant is Joe. This is not the first glaring factual error to have made its way into Kleins reporting. It is not even the first time a mistake has been made in the very first anecdote of one of his books ... Two publishing industry sources familiar with the situation confirmed a report by BuzzFeed [in 2014] that Blood Feud had been dropped by its original publisher, William Morrow, because the content did not pass a vetting by in-house lawyers. When youre at an imprint of HarperCollins, which is part of NewsCorp, they take that stuff very seriously, and they check all of your sources and notes and they want to know where you got stuff, said one. Klein's suggestion that Hillary Clinton was to be indicted and had already been offered a plea deal quickly travelled through hyperpartisan corners of the Internet, but a number of criticisms of Klein's relationships with facts and sources have dogged his work from at least 2005, with numerous prominent conservative journalists among his most vocal critics.  Klein, Ed.  "Hillary's Plea Bargain."
  NewsMax.  8 August 2017. Podhoretz, John.  "Smear For Profit."
  New York Post.  22 June 2005. Swaine, Jon.  "Edward Klein: The Difference Between The Truth And A Lie."
  The Guardian.  14 July 2014. Taylor, Sarah.  "Report: Hillary Clinton Email Investigation Reopened  Clinton Purportedly Offered Plea Deal."
  The Blaze.  9 August 2017. Thrush, Glenn.  "Ed Klein's Obama Book Debuts At #1 On Times List -- Knocks Caro To #2."
  Politico.  24 May 2012. A photograph dating from 1948 depicting an apparent show of "charity" on the part of the Ku Klux Klan towards an elderly black couple in Alabama continues to circulate online, although details behind the actual encounter are sparse. The photograph shows 106-year-old Jack Riddle and his wife, Rosie, both former slaves, seated in front of a group of Klansmen (including one dressed as Santa Claus), flanking a radio the group had reportedly given to the couple as a gift:  The image, which was published in newspapers in California and Pennsylvania (among other states), has resurfaced periodically on social media platforms, although it is typically accompanied by little in the way of information about how and why the Klansmen approached the Riddles with their "gift."  John Giggie, an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama, told us that the photograph is "the type of image that Klan members would dream of" at the time: It captures the Klan fantasy of returning to a time when black Americans were enslaved and white Americans could lord over them with impunity. The given year of the image is important -- 1948 -- as it marks the emergence of the Dixiecrats, who left the Democratic Party in 1948 over its rising interest in civil rights. In that context, the photo functions as a warning to blacks and those who would support them in their freedom struggle. Giggie added that the photograph also "screams hyperbole": The idea of former slaves literally clasping the hands of a Klansmen  dressed as Santa Claus, no less -- and sitting next to a radio seems to create a studied photo in which the Klan is merging examples of American modernity with those of its enslaved past. There is also the nagging sense that this is simply an absurd parody of Klan bravado. The idea of former slaves sitting with Klansmen seems to at least suggest a mockery of Klan pretensions of power and acceptance. Time magazine also published a brief item about the pictured meeting on 3 January 1949 under the heading "Manners and Morals:" published In Talladega, Ala., a white-hooded delegation of Ku Kluxers and a white-bearded Santa Claus presented a radio to Jack Riddle, a 107-year-old Negro and his wife, Josey, 86, so they could have their wish, to "hear the preachers." Grand Dragon Samuel Green explained that this demonstrated the "heart of a Klansman," called in photographers to take the most incongruous picture of the week.  A separate photograph of the encounter was collected in the book From the Picture Press, published by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1973: collected  The museum's caption for the photograph stated that Green and his cohorts "publicized the 'good will' visit ten days before it occurred." However, at least one related clipping posted online has, at the very least, been misattributed. Some blog posts concerning the Riddles' photograph cite a brief op-ed attributed to the Milwaukee Journal newspaper on 26 December 1948: Because the klan's professions and practices vary so much, we suggest that northerners maintain a healthy skepticism about any regeneration of the klan. It will take more than pretty words, and a few gifts to Negroes, to wipe out the record of terror, intimidation and violence that has been synonymous with the name klan. And as for that radio gift to Jack Riddle, the klan's good will toward the Negro will be more convincing when it is concerned with the welfare, the education and the civil rights of all Negroes. The problem of Jack Riddle not having a radio set is only a very small part of the over-all picture of the Negro in the south.  In 1995, the Journal merged with the Milwaukee Sentinel to become the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. When we contacted that successor newspaper regarding the 1948 clipping, assistant managing editor for visual journalism Sherman Williams told us that "This article does not appear in the 12/26/48 edition of The Milwaukee Journal. The article does not match the typography or style of the newspaper then." The photograph was also copyrighted by Getty Images, who told us that it was originally shot by a photographer from the Keystone Press Agency. At least two phone numbers listed under that name are invalid, while emails sent to addresses listed under Keystone did not produce responses prior to publication. copyrighted According to an obituary published in Jet magazine in January 1953, Jack Riddle died at the age of 111. published Time.  "Manners and Morals."
  3 January 1949. West Virginia Memories.  "Old Newspaper Articles (and Book Mentions) About American Slaves, Former Slaves, And Their Descendants (N-Z)."
  Accessed 27 November 2018. Szarkowski, John.  From the Picture Press.
  Museum of Modern Art, 1973.  ISBN 087070334X. Claim:  African-Americans are entitled to a $5,000 slavery reparation tax credit.  Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2002] This goes out to all my friends, family, and everyone in the African American community. Once you receive this message please write down the number and then pass it along to every AfricanAmerican you know. As you my know, all African Americans living here in the United States are descendants of slavery,therefore our government has finally passed a bill to pay all descendants back. The way they are paying us back is through a refund called the, "Black Inheritance Tax Refund/40 Acres and a Mule". When you call this number you'll give them your name, address, and phone number and they'll send you out a packet, which includes further details and information on how to receive the refund. I was informed that it will take only two weeks to receive the packet and then two weeks to receive themoney. Now, if you know our government I bet they are not expecting a lot of people to call for this refund, and they may be right, because many of us will not be informed of this. Therefore, this is why I am taking it upon myself to pass on this information, so our community will soon be informed through word-of-mouth about what has been owed to our ancestors all these years. Black Inheritance Tax Refund 1-800-441-5629 press #3 to direct you to the appropriate line open betweenEast Coast: 8am and 12amWest Coast: 5am and 9pm Expect to wait anywhere from 5mins-25mins (There will not be any music to entertain you while you wait!) Ps: You must be 18 years or older and I'm assuming a legal residence of the United States. So, request an application for yourself, husband, wife, sister, brother, father, mother, etc, or just pass the number along. God Bless You All and please check this out!!!!!!!! Origins:  In 2000, bogus letters claiming certain senior citizens were eligible for slavery reparations or higher Social Security payments were circulating in black churches in the South and elsewhere. The letters claimed blacks born before 1928 were eligible for a $5,000 "Negro Inheritance Tax Refund" due to a "Slave Reparation Act," and folks born between 1911 and 1926 might be entitled to higher monthly Social Security payments.  This was but one of the many forms the "slavery reparation tax credit" misinformation has taken over the years.  An April 1993 Lena Sherrod commentary entitled "Forty Acres and a Mule" which appeared in Essence magazine dealt with the concept that reparations were owed to the descendants of African-Americans who were forced to work unpaid for 246 years, and that African-Americans were owed a tax rebate for years of legalized racial discrimination.  Sherrod wrote: The government also owes African-Americans a tax rebate for the 60 years of segregation and Jim Crow that followed slavery. Although we were consigned by law to second-class citizenship, we were still forced to pay first-class taxes . . . the delinquent tax rebate [is] now estimated . . . to be at $43,209 per household."  Since de facto racial discrimination continues to function as a hidden Black tax, it ought to be deductible. So when income-tax time rolls around, on line 59 of form 1040  which asks you to list 'other payments'  simply enter $43,209 in 'Black taxes' and compute accordingly. This commentary undoubtedly helped to foster the belief that a real income tax deduction was available as a form of reparation to the descendants of slaves. In 2002, people were being urged in e-mail to call an 800 number. Yet it's all the same  hoax. No matter whether you got the letter from your church or read about the give-back in a magazine, the "reparations credit" does not and never has existed. Those who claim the deduction because they are black can be subject to fines and penalties, so really, really think twice before trying to wring it out of Uncle Sam. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can fine a taxpayer $500 for filing a frivolous claim. Moreover, if the tax department fails to catch the erroneous deduction at the time of filing, it has an additional six years to right its error. Upon catching the error, the taxmen would not only strike off the deduction, but would calculate interest owed on the new balance of tax due, dating it to the year of the original return. (For example, if you claimed the credit in 1994, and the IRS caught it in 1998, your 1994 return would be re-computed to remove the effect of the bogus deduction. You'd now get a bill from the IRS for the re-computed difference between tax paid and tax due, plus all the interest that had piled up on it across those four years, and maybe even a $500 penalty for trying to pull the wool over the tax department's eyes.  Eeesh.) IRS offices across the nation have received thousands of requests daily for Form 2439, which some people have been mistakenly led to believe reimburses the descendants of slaves. Form 2439 is actually for shareholders trying to claim undistributed capital gains.  Form 2439 Though word of the phony benefits is most often spread by well-meaning individuals whose only motivation is ensuring those who are supposedly in line for the break hear about it, at times unscrupulous tax preparers have stepped in to turn what is already a heart-wrenching disappointment into an out-and-out fraud perpetrated on the unwary by charging fees of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars to "help" people apply for these nonexistent benefits.  In a common version of this take-down, a con man promises his unwary clients that he can obtain up to $40,000 in "slave reparation" credits for them from the government and offers to file the necessary tax forms on their behalf in exchange for a percentage of their refunds.  He then loads up his clients' tax returns with all manner of deductions and credits they're not entitled to take and thereby scams the government into sending them refund checks.  When the IRS later goes over the returns more thoroughly and starts clamoring for their money back, the victims are left holding the bag. The $43,209 "Black tax refund" figure one sometimes hears bandied about is said to be based on the estimated value of "40 acres and a mule," a reparation supposedly laid out in an 1866 bill which lore claims was passed by Congress but was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. The truth is a bit more complicated than that. The origins of the belief that the U.S. government promised 40 acres of land and a mule to freed slaves after the Civil War are indefinite.  One possible source of this claim is Special Field Order No. 15, issued in January 1865 by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, which set aside a coastal strip of land from Charleston, South Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, for the exclusive use of freed slaves, with each freed-slave family receiving a 40-acre chunk of this holding. As Eric Foner noted in his history of Reconstruction: Special Field Order No. 15 Sherman was neither a humanitarian reformer nor a man with any particular concern for blacks. Instead of seeing Field Order 15 as a blueprint for the transformation of Southern society, he viewed it mainly as a way of relieving the immediate pressure caused by a large number of impoverished blacks following his army. The land grants, he later claimed, were intended only to make "temporary provisions for the freedmen and their families during the rest of the war," not to convey permanent possession. Understandably, however, the freedmen assumed that the land was to be theirs, especially after Gen. Rufus Saxton, assigned by Sherman to oversee the implementation of his order, informed a large gathering of blacks "that they were to be put in possession of lands, upon which they might locate their families and work out for themselves a living and respectability." Debate continues over whether Sherman acted solely on his own authority in issuing Special Field Order No. 15 or whether he had the approval of the War Department (or even President Lincoln himself), but the end result was that a new policy (known as Howard's Circular 15) issued by the White House in September 1865 ordered the restoration of land to pardoned owners and thereby took away from freedmen the land appropriated for them by Sherman under Special Field Order No. 15  (The order made no provisions for giving mules to freedmen, but Foner notes that after issuing it, "Sherman later provided that the army could assist [freedmen] with the loan of mules.") Another possible source of the "40 acres and a mule" belief is the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau (originally the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands), a federal agency established as a subsidiary of the War Department  in March 1865 (a month before the end of the Civil War) to deal with issues concerning refugees and freedmen within states under reconstruction, including the management of abandoned and confiscated property.  One of the provisions of the Freedmen's Bureau Act directed that the bureau's commissioner should "have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land."  However, this act did not propose giving property to freed slaves (the land was to be leased to freedmen for three years, then made available for purchase by them), nor did it make any mention of mules.   Freedmen's Bureau Freedmen's Bureau Act President Johnson did not veto the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which was passed by Congress in March 1865 and signed by President Lincoln.  (Johnson did not assume the presidency until Lincoln's assassination the following month.)   Two events occurred in February 1866, both of which have been misstated as overturning the "forty acres" provision of the Freedmen's Bureau Act:  An amendment to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill (also known as the "Second Freedmen's Bureau Act") proposed by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, to add "forfeited estates of the enemy" to the land available to blacks, was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Representatives.  (At that time, the only group of slaveholders who were compelled to provide their former slaves with land were Indians who sided with the Confederacy.)  President Johnson vetoed the Freedman's Bureau Bill, which sought to extend the life of the bureau indefinitely (it had originally been chartered only for one year after the end of the Civil War) and to greatly increase its powers.  Congress passed the bill again (in modified form) over Johnson's veto in July 1866. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 did in fact make land in five southern states available to freed blacks, but only public land, not plantations or other property confiscated from former slaveholders.  Unfortunately, most of the land still available in the South for homesteading was too swampy and too far away from transportation links to be of much good to freedmen, and even then the largest portion of this inferior land was claimed by whites (often for quick resale to lumber companies).   Although the notion of a "Black Inheritance Tax Refund" has long since been debunked and disclaimed, it nonetheless lives on and continues to cause headaches to the IRS and taxpayers alike.  In April 2002, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had received more than 100,000 tax returns seeking nonexistent slavery-tax credits and had mistakenly paid out more than $30 million in erroneous refunds in 2000 and 2001.  And in April 2005, the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office obtained a temporary restraining order enjoining a New York man from preparing income tax returns for others because he had "been including bogus tax credits such as reparations for African-American slavery and segregation." Barbara "taxing the imagination" Mikkelson Last updated:  27 May 2011    Brown, Timothy.  "Black Churches in the South Targeted in Mail Hoax."   The Associated Press.  31 August 2000.     Deibel, Mary.  "IRS Warns Black Taxpayers About Reparation-Claim Scam."   The Washington Times.  7 October 2000  (p. A2).     Fennell, Edward.  "Slavery Reparations Program Labeled Lie."   The [Charleston] Post and Courier.  24 September 2000  (p. B1).    Foner, Eric.  Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution.  New York: Harper & Row, 1988.  ISBN 0-060-91453-X  (pp. 70-71, 245-246).     Foner, Eric and John Garraty.  The Reader's Companion to American History.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.  ISBN 0-395-51372-3  (pp. 987-988).      Josar, David.  "IRS Warns Against Trying to Get Refund for Reparations."   The Detroit News.  28 August 1996  (p. D1).     Kessler, Glenn.  "IRS Paid $30 Million in Credits for Slavery."   The Washington Post.  13 April 2002  (p. A1).     La Hay, Patricia.  "Slavery Reparations Tax Break Is Illegal."   The Arizona Republic.  9 August 1997  (p. A1).     McLeod, Ramon.  "Even Street Gangs Are Among Those Involved in Fraud."   The San Francisco Chronicle.  13 April 1996  (p. A17).     Moore, Linda.  "League Explains Nonrole in Slavery Reparations Hoax."   The [Memphis] Commercial Appeal.  15 September 2000  (p. C2).     Oubre, Claude F.  Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.  ISBN 0-807-10298-9.     Sherrod, L.G.  "Forty Acres and a Mule."   Essence.  April 1993  (p. 124).     Stiehm, Jamie.  "IRS Official Warns of Tax Hoax Using Slave Reparations."   The Baltimore Sun.  12 February 2002.     The Associated Press.   "Blacks Targeted in Slavery Reparation Scam."   6 October 2000.     Chicago Sun-Times.  "Reparations Scam Preys on Ignorance."   17 July 1996  (p. 47).     Chicago Tribune.  "Tax Myths Don't Add Up at IRS."    23 February 1997  (p. C7).     Reuters.  "Man Barred from Making Slavery Tax Claims."    15 April 2005. A few days before the release of "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," a movie starring Tom Hanks about children's television host Fred Rogers, a representative for Ancestry.com told CBS News that the two men were related: CBS News Tom Hanks bears a shocking resemblance to children's television star Fred Rogers, who he plays in the upcoming film "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." But the similarities are more than just good casting  the performers are actually related, according to a discovery made by Ancestry.com. Hanks is sixth cousins with Rogers, and they share the same great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Johannes Mefford, a company representative told CBS News. The company utilized its database of over 20 billion online historical records to form Hanks' family tree, the representative said. We have no reason to doubt Ancestry.com's claim. However, some readers may not quite understand just how distant a distant cousin really is.  The genealogy website reported that Rogers and Hanks are sixth cousins who share a 5x great-grandfather (or a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather). Here's how Ancestry.com described Hanks relationship to Rogers:    Fred Rogers and Tom Hanks are sixth cousins sharing the same 5x great-grandfather, Johannes Mefford, who immigrated from Germany to America in the 18th century. Johannes raised a family of patriots; three of his sons (including Tom Hanks and Fred Rogerss ancestors) served in the Revolutionary War. Fred Rogerss 4x great-grandfather, William Mefford, served in the navy and was captured by the British in 1782. He endured life on a prison ship in Barbados and Antigua until he was released ten months later. Tom Hankss 4x great-grandfather, Jacob Mefford, joined the War as a private and participated in a skirmish at Chesapeake Bay. So, Rogers and Hanks not only share the same ancestor, they also descend from two brothers who fought for Americas independence. While it may be "true" to say that Hanks and Rogers are related, phrasing their relationship this way is a bit misleading.  We found varying estimates about just how closely related sixth cousins really are, but the general conclusion was that these "relatives" were very distant. For instance, a study by Ancestry DNA in 2014, based on British birth rates and census data, found that the average person in Britain had about 175,000 sixth cousins.  found While it's true that Hanks and Rogers are related, they are distant cousins who probably don't share much in terms of DNA. But don't let that take away from Hanks' performance as Rogers in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood":  We reached out to the Association of Professional Genealogists and the International Society of Genetic Genealogy. We will update this article when more information becomes available. Garrand, Danielle.  "Tom Hanks Discovers He's Related to Mister Rogers Days Before 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; Released."
  CBS News.  20 November 2019. Mirror.  "Average British Person Has 193,000 Living Cousins Says New Research."
  17 June 2015. Correction [21 November 2019] A table about the probability of sixth cousins sharing DNA was mischaracterized and removed from the article. In late August 2022, the internet was awash in heated commentary abut the Biden administration's plan to forgive some federal student loan debt. plan For example, after conservative commentator Ben Shapiro voiced his opinion against student loan forgiveness, others clapped back with an accusation that he himself had received a federal loan that was later forgiven. The viral news site Uproxx, for example, published a headline that read, "Student Loan Debt Forgiveness Hater Ben Shapiro Got His Ass Handed To Him By Someone Who Pointed Out That He Had Over $20K Of PPP Loan Debt Forgiven." voiced headline Many on social media shared a partial screenshot from a database tracking Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans provided by the non-profit news agency ProPublica.  Here is one example from Twitter, with the Twitter user's name cropped out for privacy:  The ProPublica database entry has much more information that would make it clear that the "Ben Shapiro" in question is not Ben Shapiro the commentator. The person with that name who received $20,832 in PPP loans is a Los Angeles real estate agent. We reached out to real estate agent Ben Shapiro for comment, and will update this story if and when we receive a response. database entry We searched both the U.S. Small Business Association's PPP database and ProPublica's database to see whether Shapiro's network of websites (The Daily Wire) received any PPP money and found no evidence that they did. We reached out to Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and will update when and if we receive a response. Shapiro called the allegation a "lie" in a Twitter post responding to the rumor:  There is additional context to this controversy, namely that the loans in question are very different in purpose and structure. PPP loans were given out during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, with the intent of preventing businesses from shedding employees or going under. They were designed to be forgiven  that is, if businesses used the money to pay workers and bills like rent and utilities, they didn't have to pay the loan back, and their debt would be considered satisfied. (Snopes received PPP money). Student loans, on the other hand, were designed to fund higher education, with the expectation that they would be paid back in full. used received In March 2023, several media outlets and conservative pundits began sharing images of what they described as a deleted 2018 tweet from climate activist Greta Thunberg's account. That tweet, quoting from a now-deleted article, said, "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." tweet  Climate skeptics jumped on the deleted tweet as evidence of climate alarmism, insinuating that Thunberg's tweet suggested that, if climate science was accurate, humanity should be extinct at the time of this reporting. insinuating  Several problems exist with that narrative. First and foremost is the fact that the tweet and the article it linked to never said that humanity would vanish in 2023. Second, and also of crucial importance, is the "top climate scientist" referenced in the underlying article never actually said what these reports asserted him to have said. Here, Snopes untangles the controversy.  Yes, on June 21, 2018, Thunberg tweeted a link to a now deleted article on the website GritPost bearing the headline, "Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don't Fix Climate Change by 2023." The GritPost article rehashed content originally published on Forbes about a seminar given by James Anderson, a Harvard University professor of atmospheric science, at the University of Chicago in 2018. tweeted deleted article content As reported by Forbes, Anderson's talk focused on the need for a massive effort to curb climate change over the next five years: reported People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions, Anderson said in an appearance at the University of Chicago. Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation of industryan acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth's poles. This has to be done, Anderson added, within the next five years. The assertion that humanity would collapse as a result of this inaction stemmed from statements Forbes attributed to Anderson about declining Arctic ice: Forbes attributed "The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero," Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years. "Can we lose 75-80 percent of permanent ice and recover? The answer is no." Based on Internet Archive records, the GritPost article to which Thunberg linked was deleted sometime after July 2020. Thunberg deleted her tweet sometime after Mar. 7, 2023. Thunberg did not respond to Snopes' request for comment. July 2020 sometime after The claim that a top climate scientist allegedly predicted the collapse of humanity in 2023 has been popular with climate skeptics since Anderson allegedly made the claim in 2018. The Forbes article and Thunberg tweet were both widely lampooned for their alarmism at the time. When 2023 came and humanity still persisted, these same actors were ready to relish the moment, as summarized by Newsweek: summarized [Charlie] Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, on March 12, 2023, wrote: "One of the best headlines of the year so far... 'Greta Thunberg deletes 2018 tweet saying world will end in 2023 after world does not end.'" Filmmaker [Dinesh] D'Souza, on March 12, 2023, added: "Climate Radical Greta Thunberg Caught Red Handed: Deletes 2018 Tweet That Says World Will End Without Action by 2023." [Brigitte] Gabriel, founder of ACT for America, on March 11, 2023, also said: "Greta Thunberg deleted this tweet because it exposes her for being a fraud. Make sure the entire world sees it." All of these tweets misread the claim repeated by Thunberg, GritPost, and Forbes. The point, as these individuals or outlets reported, was that humanity had to reach certain carbon emission benchmarks by 2023, or else catastrophic events decades to centuries later would be guaranteed because of feedbacks in the climate system. As Forbes described: The answer [to the question "can we lose 75-80 percent of permanent ice and recover"] is no in part because of what scientists call feedbacks, some of the ways the earth responds to warming. Among those feedbacks is the release of methane currently trapped in permafrost and under the sea, which will exacerbate warming. Another is the pending collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which Anderson said will raise sea level by 7 meters (about 23 feet). Conflating the years scientists claim to be so-called "tipping points" with the year in which the end result of those tipping points is supposed to emerge is a rhetorical tactic common in climate-denial circles. Snopes has previously reported on the imprecise quotes contained in a 1989 Associated Press article misused in a similar way. a similar way Regardless of any Thunberg tweet, the claim allegedly made by Anderson that "the chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero" has also recently been shared as evidence of climate "fraud," suggesting Anderson made a failed prediction:  The Forbes article was the only place in which the content of Anderson's seminar was reported, but Anderson toldThe Associated Press that he never made that argument, and that his words were wildly misinterpreted in media reports: Anderson told "That is a complete fabrication of what I said," Anderson wrote, referring to the claims he said humanity would be wiped out in five years. He said that during the seminar, he was displaying the most recent observations of Arctic sea ice volume  specifically the ice floating on the Arctic Ocean  and made the statement that "the current observed rate of floating ice loss volume, there will be no floating ice remaining by 2022." The focus of the statement was on the floating ice volume and the observed rate of disappearance at that time, he said. "Thus the statement was clear to those in attendance that the reference was to floating ice volume in the data shown on the slide, not arctic ice in general," Anderson clarified, adding, "so, the 'wiping out of humanity by 2022' is a total distortion of what I said or meant at the University of Chicago colloquium in 2018. I would never make such a statement." Thunberg deleted a tweet that repeated an imprecise paraphrase of a climate scientist's 2018 seminar talk. While it is factual that she deleted this tweet, claims that the tweet argued humanity would end in 2023 are false. As such, we rate this claim as a "Mixture" of truth. McMahon, Jeff. "We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says." Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/15/carbon-pollution-has-shoved-the-climate-backward-at-least-12-million-years-harvard-scientist-says/. Accessed 17 Mar. 2023. Norton, Tom. "Fact Check: Did Greta Thunberg Delete Claim That Humanity Will End by 2023?" Newsweek, 13 Mar. 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-greta-thunberg-delete-claim-that-humanity-will-end-2023-1787420. "Posts Distort 2018 Greta Thunberg Tweet on Climate Danger." AP NEWS, 16 Mar. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-greta-thunberg-deleted-tweet-675395214080. Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct If We Don't Fix Climate Change by 2023. 1 May 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20180501150731/https://gritpost.com/humans-extinct-climate-change/.
 Update [3/22/2023]: Updated to read that Thunberg deleted the tweet sometime after Mar. 7, 2023. In February 2021, online advertisements appeared to falsely claim that Matt Lauer was long-time journalist Katie Couric's husband. Couric and Lauer previously worked together on the "Today" show on NBC. She left the program in 2006. In November 2017, Lauer was fired from his NBC job as a co-anchor on "Today" for "inappropriate sexual behavior." fired The misleading ads pictured Couric and Lauer together with various texts. For example, one of the ads read: "[Photos] Meet The Man Katie Couric Is Romantically Involved With In 2021."   Another ad said something similar: "[Photos] Meet Katie Couric's Husband."  Both ads were misleading clickbait that led to lengthy slideshow articles. The first one took readers to the Sport Pirate website. Couric and her real husband, John Molner, appeared after more than 80 pages. real husband appeared The second ad went to the Refinance Gold website. It took 266 clicks to reach the page with Couric and Molner: American TV royalty and CBS Evening News host Katie Couric lost her first husband, Jay Monahan in 1998, as he passed away from colon cancer. But she did find love again with John Molner. Apparently, she asked her friend to set her up with a doctor, but they though [sic] that she would be a better match with their banker firmed, John. In 2012, Molner finally called Katie to set up a date and they fell for each other. The couple has been happily married since 2014, and have a blended family now, as each of them have two kids from their previous marriage. Lauer never showed up in either story. The strange inclusion of Lauer appeared to simply be a strategy by the advertisers to draw in readers with a misleading picture. It's true that Couric's first husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998. He was 42 years old. Over the years, she posted remembrances on social media: died  She left NBC in 2006 to host the "CBS Evening News." At CBS News, she also contributed as a correspondent on "60 Minutes." She later worked for ABC News and Yahoo! News. In 2014, Couric announced on Twitter that she and John Molner had married: announced  In the past, Couric and her current husband hosted a cooking show called "Full Plate." As of February 2021, she was hosting the podcast, "Next Question with Katie Couric." hosted podcast 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