Thirty years ago, the United States ranked sixth among advanced economies in the share of women in the workforce. You know where we are today? Twenty-three.
During a visit to Howell, Mich., President Joe Biden touted key agenda items under negotiation in Congress. One of the proposals he wants to see receive final Congressional approval is support for child care, which he said would benefit both children and their parents, including mothers who want to take jobs outside the home. How can we compete in the world if millions of American parents, especially moms, cant join the workforce because they cant afford the cost of child care or elder care? They have to stay home, Bidensaidin the Oct. 5 speech. He went on to say that the United States had fallen behind its industrialized peers in the percentage of women in the labor force. Thirty years ago, the United States ranked sixth among advanced economies in the share of women in the workforce, Biden said. You know where we are today? Twenty-three. Twenty-two countries have a higher percentage of their women in the workforce making a competitive wage than the United States. While our competitors are investing in the care economy, were standing still. Has the United States really fallen so far behind in womens participation in the labor force? Our research shows it has. We asked the White House for a source, and they pointed to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank that studies advanced industrialized nations. The data broadly supports how Biden characterized the shifts between 1990 and 2020. There are multiple ways to measure the phenomenon Biden addressed  notably, what age ranges are used. If you look at the labor force participation rate for all women at least 15 years of age, the United States ranked seventh in 1990, behind Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Canada. But by2020, the United States ranking had fallen to 17th. (Labor force participation rate refers to the percentage of a given group that is either employed or is actively seeking work.) An alternative statistic  the labor force participation rate for women in the prime working ages of 25 to 54  shows an even steeper U.S. decline. In1990, the United States ranked seventh, behind the same six countries. But by2020, the U.S. had fallen to 31st. The White House used a slightly different version of the OECD data than we did, which accounts for the differences in the U.S. rankings. But multiple economists told us that the differences in rankings were minor, and that the trend line was much more important. Specifically, the U.S. percentage of women working basically stagnated over those 30 years, even as 13 nations leapfrogged the U.S. between 1990 and 2020: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. However you define it, I think the president is highlighting genuine trends, said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution. Historically, women in the U.S. gravitated to the labor force earlier than women in other countries did. Right after World War II, only about one-third of U.S. women were in the labor force, but by the late 1990s, that percentage had risen steeply, to the low-60% range. Since then, however, it has plateaued and even fallen modestly overall. By the early 1990s, the United States ranked higher on this measurement than most of its economic peers. Since the 1990s, the downturn has been driven mostly by married women with a college degree, particularly those married to high-earning men, said Stefania Albanesi, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh. Albanesi said her research suggests that a rise in earnings of college-educated men, particularly those at the top of the income distribution, has reduced the pressure for married women to take paying work outside the home. As the U.S. rate began to fall, other nations caught up. Several factors drove these international shifts, economists say. One is that women in other countries have belatedly made gains in educational attainment, giving them a boost in the labor market. But perhaps the biggest difference comes from the lack of social policies in the United States that enable women with children to take jobs. The policies that are common in other industrialized countries but not in the U.S. include publicly provided child care services, an entitlement to paid parental leave, laws giving workers the right to demand a change to a part-time work schedule without exception and without being discriminated against, said Mihaela Pintea, an economist at Florida International University. The upshot of the lack of such policies in the U.S. is that its costly or burdensome for women with kids to remain in the workforce after they have a child, Burtless said. Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University economist, cautioned that its tricky to make cross-national comparisons on labor-force participation. Perhaps the biggest factor complicating Bidens comparison is that countries define part-time work differently. Generally speaking, when looking only at participation among women who work full-time hours, the U.S. ranks higher in international comparisons, Goldin said. If you did this comparison just for full-time work, wed be up there, she said. If you weighted by hours, wed be up there. Pintea added that, despite grim statistics like those cited by Biden, U.S. women who are working may still be better positioned in some ways. Effectively, the U.S. labor market environment pushes women to either skip working entirely or take a full-time job, rather than finding a middle ground. In a lot of other countries, women might work part-time as opposed to full time and may be less likely to be promoted into managerial positions, or may have lower wages than their male counterparts because of their career path, she said. Biden said, Thirty years ago, the United States ranked sixth among advanced economies in the share of women in the workforce. You know where we are today? Twenty-three. The specific rankings vary a bit depending on what measure one uses, though by one measurement, the U.S. position is even worse than Biden said. The general conclusion is the same: The United States used to rank near the top of the pack of industrialized countries in womens participation in the labor force, but over the past 30 years, many other countries have leapfrogged the U.S. in that measurement, as the rate in the U.S. stagnated or even fell. Economists say the U.S. rate has been lagging for several reasons, including a lack of government policies encouraging child care and paid leave and other countries catching up to the United States earlier gains in womens educational attainment. We rate the statement Mostly True.
Claim:  Video shows a suspect in a police shooting committing suicide in an interview room.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, 2004] Is this video real? GRAPHIC IMAGE WARNING: Video shows a suicide by gunshot.  Origins:   Movies and television have planted sensationalized images of certain phenomena into the public consciousness, to the extent that when most of us see the real thing, we're disappointed that it seems so mundane.  In films and television programs, automobile crashes are always slam-bang affairs that inevitably end with one or more cars bursting into flame and exploding; thunder is always a very loud, sharp, and short report which occurs simultaneously with a bolt of lightning (rather  than a slow, distant, gradually increasing rumbling which arrives well after the lightning flash); and gunshots are usually depicted as producing ear-splitting volumes of sound and, when aimed at another human being, resulting in plenty of gore and splatter. It's no wonder, then, that when the above-displayed video of a detainee shooting himself while in police custody began to circulate, many viewers were skeptical of its authenticity  by Hollywood standards, it's so tame as to be almost surreal.   As depicted in the video, an uncuffed suspect enters an interrogation room and sits down in a chair, followed by an officer who dumps some keys and sunglasses on a table, checks his cell phone, and leaves the room momentarily.  The officer returns several seconds later with a bottle of water and a cup of coffee, then hands the water bottle to the suspect, checks his cell phone again, picks up the coffee, and exits the room a second time  leaving the suspect alone and unrestrained, and the door open.  The suspect takes a couple of swigs of water, then calmly reaches into his pants with his other hand, pulls out a large-caliber handgun, and shoots himself in the left temple. But what we see in the video is nothing like what most of us might expect.  The soon-to-be suicide victim is neither visibly nervous nor distraught as he freely pulls out a gun and places it against his head.  (He even replaces the cap on the water bottle before pulling the trigger.)  The weapon does not produce an ear-shattering concussive   sound in the small room, blood and brain matter don't splatter all over the walls, and the victim's body isn't hurtled out of the chair and onto the floor.  The gun makes a sharp popping sound as the suspect shoots himself, blood streams from the victim's head and mouth, his hands drop the gun and water bottle to the floor, and his body slumps but slightly in the chair. Even more unusual to many viewers is the officer's reaction to this event.  He doesn't respond with any of the emotions most of us might feel, such as fear, panic, terror, or disgust.  Nor does he rush to the victim's aid, check him for signs of life, summon help, or otherwise raise an alarm.  "Oh, fuck," he exclaims as he re-enters the room, puts his coffee down on the table, and surveys the scene for a second or two, then adds "Holy fuck."  When a second (unseen) officer inquires  "What did he do?" he responds with, "Nobody shook him" (i.e., nobody searched the suspect for weapons), then calmly retrieves the keys and sunglasses and leaves the room.  Throughout the short video, the officer's actions seem almost nonchalant: he doesn't act the least bit shocked or horrified that a human being has just died a violent death right in front of him. Instead, the foremost thought on his mind seems to be concern that someone's going to get into big trouble for the oversight of allowing a detainee to retain a weapon. (We realize, of course, that all of this would be viewed quite differently from a police perspective.  Officers undergo thorough instruction in the handling and use of firearms, they generally see far more blood and violence on the job than most of us will experience in our lifetimes, and they're trained to respond to emergency situations by following proper procedure rather than reacting with fear or panic.  We're simply presenting the average person's reaction to this video, as reflected in the e-mail we've received from readers who have viewed it.) The circumstances behind this video took place on 19 December 2003, when 47-year-old Ricardo Alfonso Cerna was stopped for a traffic violation at about 9:30 A.M. in Muscoy (a residential suburb of San Bernardino County, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles).  Cerna fled the scene (in his car and then on foot) before shooting the pursuing officer, sheriff's deputy Michael Parham, twice in the abdomen.  (Deputy Parham survived the shooting.)   Cerna was soon arrested by San Bernardino police and taken to sheriff's headquarters on Third Street, where he was placed in an interview room just before 11 A.M. in preparation for questioning by Bobby Dean, head of the San Bernardino County sheriff's homicide unit.   When Dean stepped out of the room briefly to speak with a detective in the hallway, Cerna pulled the .45-caliber handgun out of his pants and shot himself in the head.  Evidently a chain of mistakes led to Cerna, a shooting suspect, being taken into custody without either the arresting officers or the booking officers discovering he had a large, heavy handgun concealed on his person: [Sheriff Gary] Penrod said deputies failed to adequately search Cerna before he was put in a car, and again when he was transferred to the homicide division office. Each receiving deputy may have wrongly assumed the previous officer adequately searched the man, he said.  Penrod said confusion among the three agencies involved  the Highway Patrol, San Bernardino police and the Sheriff's Department  may have contributed to the oversight. "Obviously there was a mistake made," Penrod said by phone. "It was hectic and it was a guy who was cuffed by somebody other than the transporting officer. (This apparently egregious oversight led to conspiracy-theory speculation in some quarters that Cerna had been "executed" by the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, or that the sheriff returned the gun to Cerna and urged him to commit suicide with it  the completely implausible scenario of officers' deliberately handing a loaded gun to a suspect who had already shot one policeman notwithstanding.) executed returned As to how the video of Cerna's suicide made it onto the Internet, sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson said:  [A] ranking official at the department was authorized to show the video during a presentation on officer safety at the FBI's training academy in Quantico, Va., several months ago. Following the presentation, dozens of copies of the video were made at the request of law-enforcement agencies across the country. Officials of those agencies wanted the copies for training purposes. Sheriff's officials do not know who might have leaked the video to the public.  Some of the officers involved in Cerna's arrest and handling were subjected to disciplinary action, but sheriff's officials wouldn't comment on the specifics of that action or identify the officers involved.  Last updated:  19 January 2014    Nelson, Joe.  "Sheriff's Detainee's Suicide Put on Web."   San Bernardino County Sun.  21 December 2004.    Associated Press.  "Arrestee Pulls Hidden Gun, Kills Self."    CNN.com.  20 December 2003. Claim:  President Obama will legalize marijuana if one million people call a designated phone number.  Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, April 2009] Comment: I got a text message this morning saying that Obama would legalize marijuana if it had 1 million supporters. We are supposed to call a phone number to record a vote - phone number 973.409.3274 and press pound - haven't done it, just wanted to check first.   Origins:  With good reason, many people are now wary that any unsolicited e-mail or text message urging them to call an unfamiliar phone number is some form of hoax or scam.  The message reproduced above, claiming that President Obama will legalize marijuana if one million supportive phone calls areplaced to a designated number, is an example of such wariness  many people who have received it are skeptical that it's on the level.  Although the message isn't quite literally true, neither is it really a hoax or a scam. scam The phone number 973-409-3274 is one of many operated by Humor Hotlines, the company that offers such novelty services as the "Rejection Hotline," the "Bad Breath Notification Number," and "The Pissed Off Poet."  This particular number connects callers  Humor Hotlines to the "Marijuana Legalization Endorsement Line," which plays a 30-second recorded message about controversies regarding the legalization of marijuana and then urges the caller to press the pound key (#) if he or she supports the concept of "legalizing marijuana to help save the economy."  The recording states that once a million endorsements have been received, a proposal for the legalization of marijuana will be presented to President Obama and the U.S. Congress. As far as we have been able to ascertain, the Marijuana Legalization Endorsement Line is not a "scam" in the sense that calling it does not result in hidden or exorbitant fees being charged to the caller's bill.  It isn't true that "Obama will legalize marijuana" if the number collects one million supporters, though; merely that a proposal for such will supposedly be created and presented if the phone number records one million positive responses.  We note, however, that this phone poll has no more power to affect anything than any other public petition does, and there are no guarantees that the President or Congress would even see the resultant proposal, As well, President Obama does not have the authority to single-handedly legalize marijuana throughout the United States; such an act would require the overturning of a variety of state and federal laws. Last updated:  5 May 2009 Virus name:  Mimail.i   Real. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2003] YOUR PAYPAL.COM ACCOUNT EXPIRES Dear PayPal member, PayPal would like to inform you about some important information regarding your PayPal account. This account, which is associated with the email address snopes@snopes.com will be expiring within five business days.  We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause, but this is occurring because all of our customers are required to update their account settings with their personal information. We are taking these actions because we are implementing a new security policy on our website to insure everyone's absolute privacy. To avoid any interruption in PayPal services then you will need to run the application that we have sent with this email (see attachment) and follow the instructions. Please do not send your personal information through email, as it will not be as secure. IMPORTANT! If you do not update your information with our secure application within the next five business days then we will be forced to deactivate your account and you will not be able to use your PayPal account any longer. It is strongly recommended that you take a few minutes out of your busy day and complete this now. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE VIA EMAIL! This mail is sent by an automated message system and the reply will not be received. Thank you for using PayPal. Origins:  The message quoted above is not a legitimate message from PayPal  it's a credit card number-stealing redirection scam spread by a virus rather than through direct spamming. scam The message includes an attached file with the filename www.paypal.com.scr; if this attachment is executed, the user is presented with a screen that looks like the following:  Most assuredly, any credit card data entered through this screen is not going to PayPal, but rather is e-mailed to some people who have no business with your personal information.  To add insult to injury, the Mimail virus also combs through files on victims' PCs to find e-mail addresses to which it can mail itself and continue spreading.  (As usual, only users of some version of Microsoft's Windows operating system are affected.) McAfee's Stinger stand-alone virus remover can be used to clean Mimail from infected systems. Stinger Additional Information:     W32/Mimail.i@MM  (McAfee Security)       New Virus Appears as PayPal Scam  (PC World)  Last updated:  29 January 2008 It's a story that seems like it was dreamed up by science fiction writers: An alien satellite has been orbiting Earth for thousands of years, and the government has kept it a secret. Or so the story goes. According to Space.com, the "Black Knight" conspiracy theory goes like this: For about 12,000 years, an alien satellite orbited Earth, surveilling humanity. It was discovered about 120 years ago, but was the subject of a cover-up. Space.com Then in 2017, UFO conspiracy theorists claimed, it was shot down by the Illuminati, a clandestine group they believe secretly controls the world. claimed The "Black Knight" satellite conspiracy theory continues to get attention online. Here's one example, posted to Twitter on Jan. 3, 2022, with the user's name cropped out for privacy:   If there really is an alien craft orbiting Earth and it's the subject of a cover-up, the government is doing a very bad job of it, considering the images that catalyzed the conspiracy theory were taken and shared by NASA. And contrary to what the above post says, the origin of the object in question is known. images We will explain more below, but the object is essentially space junk, and it wasn't shot down, it burned in Earth's atmosphere. According to a debunking of the conspiracy theory published by James Oberg, a former NASA engineer, the image was taken during STS-88, the first shuttle mission to the International Space Station in 1998. The crew of the space shuttle Discovery was sent to space to help assemble the space station. debunking During a space walk in which astronauts were placing thermal covers over trunnion pins, one of the blankets came loose and, to the dismay of the astronauts, drifted away into space. Oberg pointed to video of the moment the thermal cover mishap, which can be viewed here: trunnion pins here  Crookes, David and All About Space. The Black Knight Satellite: A Hodgepodge of Alien Conspiracy Theories. Space.com, 17 Dec. 2021, https://www.space.com/what-is-the-black-knight.html. Oberg, James. "Phantom satellite? What IS it? What ISNT it? WHY the confusion?" 21 Oct. 2014, https://www.jamesoberg.com/sts88_and-black-knight.pdf In October 2019 it came to our attention that an aging platitude about aging, already credited to multiple sources, found a new voice:   The meme appeared on Get Old, a lifestyle blog published by a pharmaceutical company. The same quote has been attributed to Landers on several sites, including Psychology Today. Psychology Today However, the quote does not surface in searches at AnnLanders.com, an advice column launched in 2019 by Landers daughter, Margo Howard. The site is also advertised as an archive of Landers columns. Thats not the only reason to doubt the credit. A similar quote has been attributed to Bob Hope, Anonymous, a wise old man, and Winston Churchill. Snopes investigated that last one in December 2018: Bob Hope a wise old man December 2018 Not so long ago, this particular quote about aging existed on the Internet primarily as a wise saying attributed to Anonymous or Unknown. For example, motivational speaker Bill Benjamin included it as such on his list of Favorite Quotes & Thoughts as far back as 2008. This quote appears in myriad other lists of anonymous sayings as well and was memed into a Churchill quote only fairly recently. 2008 We rate the newer variation of this claim as "Misattributed" because, although Landers could have given some version of this advice during the 47 years she was publishing columns, there is no available evidence to prove that the exact quote originated with her. Unfortunately, Landers (Esther Pauline "Eppie" Lederer) died in 2002 at the age of 83, so we cannot ask her to confirm directly. died Here is advice on aging Landers did recommend for everyone over 60. Again, however, not her words. The list was written by one of her readers. Here is advice Have you seen other variations of this claim? Let us know. Let us know. On 3 August 2016, CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond shared a screenshot via Twitter of an e-mail sent by a frustrated former Trump supporter, claiming that it was impossible for backers to cancel recurring donations to the Trump campaign: Jeremy Diamond INBOX: Help, I set up a recurring contribution to Trump's campaign & want to cancel it: (cc: @realDonaldTrump) pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ  Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016  Diamond's tweet sparked a number of articles and blog posts stating it was "impossible" to cancel recurring Trump campaign donations, based solely or primarily on the anecdotal, secondhand claim made  in that tweet. Among the comments prompted by original tweet sent by Diamond were those left by other purported donors asserting that the claim wasn't exactly accurate:  @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Spreading bogus info. When you contribute, you get receipt with an email + tel number to call if you need help. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump  M G (@MadaGasp) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016  @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump now please stop spreading false information, its all in the email you receive when you contribute @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump  Brian (@Brian_with_a_B) August 6, 2016 August 6, 2016   A large number of commenters expressed skepticism about the report, given that the claim was anonymously  sourced from a single individual: @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Cheap shot: we all know you can contact your bank or other form of payment you use, to cancel right away. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump  Viktor Staudt (@ViktorStaudt) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016  @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump so exactly who was this unknown mystery person that went straight to a journalist? pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP  Patti Hannah (@b6sangel) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016  We were unable to turn up any reports about the issue that antedated Diamond's tweet. If any Trump donors had previously encountered difficulties canceling their recurring donations, they didn't seem to chatter very much about it on social media prior to 3 August 2016 (and ceasing to support Trump as a candidate is only one reason someone might seek to cancel a recurring payment). Diamond appeared to pass the baton on the story overall, updating followers later with a link to an article published by Mic: The folks at @mic took this ball and ran with it. Here's what they found: https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2 @mic https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2  Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 5, 2016 August 5, 2016  Diamond did not provide any further information about the claim, the claimant, or how he verified it before sharing it to Twitter. But Mic attempted to reproduce the problem on 4 August 2016 and gathered more information on the difficulty level of canceling recurring Trump donations. In a series of screenshots the site illustrated their findings, stating it was not possible to delete a stored credit card without replacing it with a separate valid credit card:  After investigating, Mic can confirm that there is no easy option to stop recurring donations on Trump's donation site: We set up a recurring donation of $1 and found no button or other obvious way to cancel payments or remove a credit card from the system  either on the homepage, the "update card" page, or in your contribution confirmation email. Once you're registered, if you try to change your payment information on Trump's site, you will see no option to remove your credit card  only "update" it. Then, when you click on "update card," you see a page that allows you to alter your payment information  but you cannot completely delete your credit card. You are forced to replace it with another valid card: Invalid numbers are rejected. One responder to the original tweet then objected to that claim, stating it was impossible to set up a recurring $1 donation:  .@JDiamond1 You can't set up a $1.00 recurring amt.What else about this story is BS?@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE  ValerieNoFux (@OPFergVal) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016  However, it appears that it is possible to enter any amount as a recurring donation: enter  Mic confirmed that if a putative donor set up an account, then it would be possible for that person to cancel a recurring donation made via Trump's web site: It turns out that there is a way to delete your card from the Trump campaign's system, but it seems you must have first registered an account and created a password: If you did not do so, there is no clear way to cancel your payment. Assuming you did create an account and have logged in, to stop your payment you must click the small gray question mark icon in the upper right corner of the donations page. Then you will see [a separate] screen. In order to delete your card, you must click "manage." Then will you be redirected to the website of the Trump campaign's vendor. There you must click "recurring plans," and only then can you cancel your monthly payment; notably, even after you cancel, there is still no obvious way to delete your card number without replacing it with another valid number. Per Mic's screenshots, that vendor was Revv, and we sent an e-mail inquiry to them to clarify whether it was possible to cancel the recurring payments some other way.  Revv However, even if the web site interface didn't allow for such a cancellation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) notes that the the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) provides for consumers to cancel unwanted recurring payments: notes If you have regular, automatic deductions from your checking account (to pay for expenses such as insurance premiums or utility bills), the EFTA allows you to stop those payments. First, notify the vendor. Next, tell your bank about your request at least three business days before the money is scheduled to be transferred. Your notice to the bank may be oral, but the institution may require you to provide a written follow-up within 14 days to ensure that no additional payments are made. If you fail to provide a written follow-up, the bank is no longer responsible for stopping future payments. Stopping an automatic, recurring payment on a credit card is different. Start by putting in your request with the vendor. But if the vendor continues to charge your credit card, contact your card issuer. You'll have 60 days to dispute the charge, starting when the card issuer sends you the statement with the charges. While it appears to be atypically difficult to cancel a recurring donation to the Trump campaign, it is certainly not impossible, as individuals who create an account can do so via the web interface. Overall, it seemed the problem related more to the interface of a third-party vendor (Revv) to whom the Trump campaign had outsourced donations and not to the campaign itself.  Dennin, James.  "Donald Trump's Campaign Website Won't Let Some Cancel Recurring Donations."
  Mic.  4 August 2016. The sculpture pictured below is real, and it was indeed crafted by an Iraqi sculptor from bronze recovered by melting down statues of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but the accompanying explanatory text is quite misleading: The Iraqi sculptor was not "forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam," he did not produce the memorial shown because he was "so grateful that the Americans liberated his country," and the monument was not his idea. Members of the U.S. Army paid the sculptor, who had previously worked on a few other Saddam statues, to create the work pictured according to a design of their choosing: Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2004] This picture of the statue was made by an Iraqi artist named Kalat, who for years was forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam that dotted Baghdad. This artist was so grateful that the Americans liberated his country, he melted 3 of the fallen Saddam heads and made a memorial statue dedicated to the American soldiers and their fallen comrades. Kalat worked on this night and day for several months. To the left of the kneeling soldier is a small Iraqi girl giving the soldier comfort as he mourns the loss of his comrade in arms. It is currently on display outside the palace that is now home to the 4th Infantry division. It will eventually be shipped and shown at the memorial museum in Fort Hood, Texas.  As part of the U.S. Army's Task Force Ironhorse, the 4th Infantry Division was deployed in Iraq for most of 2003, participated in the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, and saw many of their comrades killed and wounded in the violence that followed the end of major combat operations. In mid-2003, while the 4th Infantry Division was headquartered in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, Command Sgt. Maj. Charles Fuss, the division's top noncommissioned officer, headed up a project to commemorate the unit's dead and conceived of a memorial featuring the figure of a forlorn soldier kneeling to mourn before empty helmet, boots, and rifle  an array of objects that traditionally represents a fallen compatriot: Task Force Ironhorse 4th Infantry    Needing a sculptor to carry out his vision, Sgt. Maj. Fuss and other Americans asked around for local talent, and an Iraqi contractor recommended a 27-year-old artist named Khalid Alussy to them. As it turned out, Mr. Alussy was one of several artisans who had worked on a pair of 50-foot bronze statues of Saddam Hussein on horseback that flanked the gateway on the main road into the presidential palace compound in Tikrit, the site of the 4th Infantry Division's temporary headquarters. Commissioned by 4th Infantry Division officers to fashion the memorial conceptualized by Sgt. Maj. Fuss, Khalid Alussy (whose first name is also rendered in English as 'Kalat') took the assignment not out love for Americans, but because he needed the money: The officers didn't question Mr. Alussy further about his political views. Had they pressed him, they might have learned that he's harshly critical of the U.S. and bitter over an American rocket attack during the war that killed his uncle. In an interview, he says he thinks the war was fought for oil and holds the U.S. responsible for the violence and unemployment that have plagued Iraq since."I made the statues of Saddam  even though I didn't want to  because I needed money for my family and to finish my education," he says, reclining in a room decorated with several of his paintings. "And I decided to make statues for the Americans for the exact same reasons." Mr. Alussy's initial asking price was far higher than the officers had expected. He blamed the steep price of bronze. So the Americans decided to recycle the bronze Hussein-on-horseback twins. "We figured we were going to blow them up anyway, so why not take the bronze and use it for our own statues?" recalls Sgt. Fuss. "That way we could take something that honored Saddam and use it to remember all of those we lost getting rid of him." Without having to supply the metal, Mr. Alussy agreed to do the job for $8,000. By comparison, the former regime paid him the equivalent of several hundred dollars for his work on the Hussein statues. To finance the project, Sgt. Fuss publicized it in the task force's internal newspaper and asked officers to get soldiers to contribute $1 each. Within weeks, he raised $30,000.1 In July 2003, Army engineers blew up the two Saddam statues, cut them into pieces, melted them down, and delivered them to Mr. Alussy's house. (The delivery was done furtively in case Mr. Alussy's neighbors proved to be less than thrilled about his being in the employ of the American military.) Using a photograph of 1st Sgt. Glen Simpson as a model for the depiction of the kneeling soldier, Mr. Alussy began his work on the monument; near the end, another segment was added to his task: As the work neared completion, Sgt. Fuss and the division's commander, Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, decided it needed a clearer connection to Iraq. The general suggested adding a small child to symbolize Iraq's new future, Sgt. Fuss says. When they told the artist they wanted another statue, Mr. Alussy demanded $10,000 more. "He learned capitalism real fast," Sgt. Fuss says.1 After four months' worth of night and weekend labor, Mr. Alussy completed his assignment, and the statues were installed in an entranceway inside the 4th Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit. In February 2004 the statues were flown to the 4th Infantry Division Museum at the unit's home base of Fort Hood, Texas. Museum Fort Hood Somewhere along the line, this coda was added to the original e-mail: Do you know why we don't hear about this in the news? Because it is heart warming and praise worthy. The media avoids it because it does not have the shock effect that a flashed breast or controversy of politics does. But we can do something about it. We can pass this along to as many people as we can in honor of all our brave military who are making a difference. As Steve Blow of the Dallas Morning News pointed out in a later column, the Kalat story and photo ran in that paper on 27 March 2004 and was afterwards picked up and reprinted by newspapers all over the U.S. Additional information:   <!-- Original changelog: Last updated:  25 February 200616 January 2004 Updated: 16 February 2004 11 June 2004 - updated 17 October 2005 - added info about media reporting of story 25 February 2006: reformatted 16 December 2009 - updated Add'l Info links -->   Blow, Steve.  "Sometimes, Facts Get in Way of Media-Bashing."
  The Dallas Morning News.  23 January 2005  (p. B1).   1.  Dreazen, Yochi J.  "In This Monument to Dead, the Medium Really Is the Message."
  The Wall Street Journal.  8 March 2004  (p. A1).   Kibbey, Spc. Benjamin R.  "Changing Faces: Statue Honors Fallen Heroes."
  Army News Service.  6 January 2004.   Miles, Donna.  "Memorial to Honor Fallen Task Force Ironhorse Troops."
  American Forces Press Service.  20 February 2004. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned about the financial crisis of the 2000s before it happened, she claimed during a CNN town hall where she pitched herself as the best option for president in the 2020 election. Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, told an audience of college students that her whole lifes work has been about what's happening to working families. And starting in the early 2000s, the crisis was coming. I was waving my arms, ringing the bell, doing everything I could. I said families are getting cheated all over this country,Warren said April 22 in Manchester, N.H.It started when the mortgage companies targeted communities of color. They targeted seniors. They targeted Latinos. They came in and sold the worst possible mortgages and stripped wealth out of those communities, and then took those products across the nation. I went everywhere I could. I talked about it to anyone who would listen, a crisis is coming. But nobody wanted to listen, Warren said, so the crisis hit in 2007, 2008, and just took us down. We confirmed that Warren did raise the alarm about the looming housing and financial crisis. She spoke about debt, financial lending practices and other factors affecting families and the economy years before the financial crisis peaked in 2008. Millions of peoplelost their jobs and homes during the recent Great Recession, generally regarded as happening from late 2007 to mid 2009. Experts say the financial crisis resulted from a number ofcolliding factors, including an unsustainable housing boom partly driven by an easy availability of mortgages, banks taking on too much risk, government policies and lax regulation. Subprime loans  loans at higher interest rates made to people perceived to be at greater risk for defaulting on loans (including families with low and moderate income and poor credit histories)  played a key role in the housing crisis. Warrens presidential campaigncitedseveralblogpostsand comments to media outlets in 2005 and 2006, and Warrens 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap, co-authored with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, as examples of Warren warning about subprime lending and an imminent housing crisis. Warren has represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate since 2013. Before going to Congress, she taught law at the university level for more than 30 years, most recently at Harvard, specializing in commercial law, contracts, and bankruptcy. Subprime lenders defended their business practices by saying they were helping more families own homes, Warrens book said, but thats little more than public relations hot air. In the overwhelming majority of cases, subprime lenders prey on families that already own their own homes, rather than expanding access to new homeowners. Fully 80 percent of subprime mortgages involve refinancing loans for families that already own their homes,Warren said in the book. For these families, subprime lending does nothing more than increase the family's housing costs, taking resources away from other investments and increasing the chances that the family will lose its home if anything goes wrong. In aJune 2004 interviewwith PBSs NOW host David Brancaccio, Warren spoke about growing household debt, against risky mortgage lending practices and what she regarded as bad advice to Americans by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Warren said Greenspan encouraged families to borrow against their house to pay for basic expenses. I think what the landscape shows is the middle class is under assault in a way that has not happened before in our history, Warren said. Stagnant wages, rising costs, wildly rising debt. It's in everyone's interest to turn that back around. Warrens campaign noted that The New York Times quoted Warren in an October 2005articlethat said homeowners in suburbs were taking on more and more home-equity debt to stay out of bankruptcy. The article said: Professor Warren of Harvard believes that disaster lurks as homeowners borrow against their homes to forestall bankruptcy. When the stock market tumbled five years ago, people in trouble could sell stocks to stay afloat, she said. But home equity doesn't work the same way. As she put it, You can't sell a part of your home like you could a stock in the stock market bubble. Warren told the newspaper that after a new bankruptcy law went into effect that month, filing for bankruptcy would become more difficult: And that means more families are set up to lose their homes. Warren was substantially correct in herassessmentthat home prices were going up rapidly relative to incomes (particularly for households with a one wage earner), said Ed Pinto, co-director of the Housing Center at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. But Pinto disagrees with Warren about what caused the crisis. Warren blames banks and lenders, when in fact Congress andgovernment policiesaimed at making homes more affordable are the root cause, Pinto said. (Check out our2008 in-depth analysison the causes of the financial crisis and how that issue was debated in the 2008 presidential campaign. Then, both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama said they sounded warnings, and both blamed the other for helping cause the crisis.) Warren was also a vocal opponent of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, because she thought the law would hurt consumers, said Deborah Goldstein, an executive vice president at the Center for Responsible Lending, which advocates for consumer financial protections. Risingcredit card debthurt Americans already struggling with mortgage payments. I remember (Warren) talking about credit card abuses and how they were harming families, Goldstein said. People were using credit to manage basic daily expenses. Goldstein said that her group, also concerned about the imminent financial crisis, in the early 2000s communicated with Warren on what could be done about it. I'd give then-professor Warren the credit for banging the drum and ringing the bell early on unfair financial practices, said Ed Mierzwinski, senior director of the Federal Consumer Program at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Warren was the No. 1 go-to academic expert in the mid-to-late '90s and 2000s in the debate over changes to the bankruptcy code, he said. Warren in January 2007testifiedbefore the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, saying that the credit card market was broken and hurt consumers. Warren was chosen in 2008 to lead theCongressional Oversight Panel, established by Congress to review the state of the financial markets and the regulatory system. Warren also helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau emerged from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, designed to enforce federal consumer financial laws and protect consumers. In 2013 and 2014, Goldstein's groupcollaborated with the CFPBin drafting payday lending rules. Speaking of the financial crisis that gained traction in 2007, Warren said, I talked about it to anyone who would listen, a crisis is coming. There is documented evidence that Warren spoke against risky mortgage lending practices, rising debt and other factors that contributed to the financial and housing crisis years before it materialized. We rate Warren's claim True. In January 2020, as the 2020 Democratic presidential primary progressed, we received multiple inquiries from readers about the accuracy of a widely shared claim about U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's professional background.  A social media meme contained the following text: meme "'As Elizabeth Warren closes the night with complaints about cost of college for students, just remember she was paid $400,000 to teach one class' -- Katie Pavlich."   The meme originated in a tweet published on July 30, 2019, by Katie Pavlich, a Fox News contributor and editor of the right-leaning website Townhall. She was referring to Warren's appearance at that evening's Democratic primary debate in Detroit, Michigan. debate Critics of Warren have leveled accusations of hypocrisy against her in the past, and those claims have at times touched on the level of her pay while she taught at Harvard. In 2014, for example, Snopes addressed memes that alleged the U.S. senator "lives in a $5.4 million mansion" and was paid "$350,000 to teach one class," all while purportedly "lecturing" the public on economic inequality. addressed The allegation that Warren was paid $400,000 to teach a single course at Harvard University is one that dates back to her 2012 U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts. In a Senate financial-disclosure statement filed in December 2011, Warren revealed that for "2010 + 2011 to date," Harvard had paid her $429,981 in her capacity as a law professor. disclosure Regardless of one's subjective opinion of the salary paid by Harvard to Warren, it is essential to note that college professors, especially those who work at prominent and reputable institutions like Harvard, are typically expected to do more than just teach courses in return for their salaries, and those salaries can be based on several factors including the volume, quality, and influence of their published research, the level of their expertise and reputation in a particular field, and so on. Similarly, their duties typically extend beyond teaching coursework and conducting research, and can include advising and mentoring students, peer review, organizing and taking part in conferences, moderating or participating in faculty or student groups and organizations, leading or attending departmental meetings, and on occasion representing and boosting the public reputation of their respective institutions by providing expert commentary to the news media  the latter a duty that Warren discharged particularly frequently, before she began her political career. Warren, long recognized as a leading expert in bankruptcy, debt, and consumer law, won several teaching awards, including at Harvard, and wrote or contributed to several dozen academic books, book chapters, and journal articles. One 2010 study found that Warren's academic research was among the most widely cited in the field of bankruptcy and commercial law, in the five years leading up to the 2010 spring semester. awards Harvard several dozen study So while the salary figure presented in Pavlich's tweet (and the subsequent meme) was accurate, it was misleading to claim Harvard was paying Warren more than $400,000 merely "to teach one class." Nonetheless, it is true that the future senator's teaching duties did taper off towards the end of her tenure at Harvard. During the fall 2009 semester, Warren taught contracts law, according to a Harvard course catalog, and she also taught a year-long "Empirical Analysis of Law" course over the fall 2009 and spring 2010 semesters. course catalog In September 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Warren as a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, with responsibility for the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped to conceive and create. As a result, Warren stepped back completely from teaching duties during the fall 2010 and spring 2011 semesters, as reflected in a 2010/11 course catalog. However, she returned to Harvard in July 2011 and taught a course on contracts law during the fall 2011 semester. appointed course catalog taught In 2010, Warren also contributed a chapter entitled "Redesigning Regulation: A Case Study from the Consumer Credit Market" to an academic book entitled "Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation," which was edited by David A. Moss from Harvard Business School and Duke University's Edward J. Balleisen. contributed According to Warren's May 2012 Senate financial-disclosure statements, she took unpaid leave from Harvard during the spring and fall semesters in 2012 (that is, during her Senate campaign), and according to her May 2013 disclosure, her tenure as a Harvard professor ended when she joined the U.S. Senate in January 2013. disclosure  disclosure According to Warren's December 2011 financial-disclosure statement, she was paid more than $400,000 by Harvard in 2010 and 2011. During that period, she taught two courses: one in the spring 2010 semester, and another in the fall 2011 semester. From September 2010 to July 2011, Warren was on leave while helping to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and therefore did not teach during that time. Katie Pavlich's July 2019 tweet, and subsequent memes, accurately described Harvard as having paid Warren around $400,000 (in fact it was closer to $430,000) but failed to specify that the salary covered 2010 and 2011. The tweet also misled readers by claiming Warren had been paid her salary simply to teach classes, because academic salaries typically take into account several factors other than the number of courses taught by a professor, and this is especially so for highly reputable academics such as Warren, at prestigious institutions such as Harvard. Finally, the tweet (and memes) also misrepresented the number of classes Warren taught during the period for which she was paid more than $400,000. It was two, not one. Taking into account that set of facts, we are issuing a rating of "Mixture." Snopes.com.  "Did Elizabeth Warren Lie About Her Native American Heritage to Land a Job at Harvard?"
  30 October 2014. U.S. Senate. "United States Senate Financial Disclosure Report for New Employee and Candidate Reports -- Elizabeth Warren."
  22 December 2011. U.S. Senate.  "United States Senate Financial Disclosure Report for New Employee and Candidate Reports -- Elizabeth Warren."
  11 May 2012. Harvard Law School.  "Elizabeth Warren Wins Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching."
  3 June 2009. Leiter, Brian.  "Top 25 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact, 2005-2009."
  Accessed 22 January 2020. The Obama White House.  "President Obama Names Elizabeth Warren Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."
  17 September 2010. Johnson, Glen.  "GOP Presses Harvard to End Pay for Warren."
  The Boston Globe.  21 September 2011. U.S. Senate.  "United States Senate Financial Disclosure Report for New Employee and Candidate Reports -- Elizabeth Warren."
  14 May 2013. On 8 January 2019, presidential biographer Jon Meacham tweeted what he described as a quote from the year 1924 made by then-Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker during a speech given at a Ku Klux Klan gathering: America should build a wall of steel, a wall as high as Heaven" against the flow of immigrants.--Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker, at a 1924 convention of the Ku Klux Klan, then a powerful force at a time of strain for the white working class. #PastIsPrologue #PastIsPrologue  Jon Meacham (@jmeacham) January 8, 2019 January 8, 2019  The quote spread across the Internet, stripped of its context and in meme form, prompting some readers to query whether the quote and its description were real:   We confirmed that Walker did in fact make this remark in regards to immigrants at a KKK gathering. The statement was part of a speech called "Americanism Applied" and given by Walker at a "Klonvocation" in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1924. It can be found in a book called the Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvokation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The contents of that book have been uploaded to the Internet Archive, and we confirmed its authenticity with the Special Collections branch of the University of California at Davis' library, which also possesses a copy. Internet Archive Meacham's tweet was referencing a protracted partial shutdown of the federal government resulting from an impasse over a demand by President Donald Trump for a budget appropriation of $5.7 billion to fund wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump had been stating on Twitter that his desired wall would be made of steel: A design of our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful! pic.twitter.com/sGltXh0cu9 pic.twitter.com/sGltXh0cu9  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018 December 21, 2018  Although harsh immigration rhetoric and policies have primarily targeted Latino migrants, Walker's comments demonstrate the shifting idea of which immigrant groups are considered favorable. His declaration, in its entirety, stated: "I would build a wall of steel, a wall as high as Heaven, against the admission of a single one of those Southern Europeans who never thought the thoughts or spoke the language of a democracy in their lives." Kinights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.  Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvocation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Held in Kansas City, MO in September 1924.
  1924. Meacham, Jon.  The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.
  Random House, 2018.  ISBN 0399589813. Baker, Kelly J.  "Make America White Again?"
  The Atlantic.  12 March 2016.