Did Sasha Obama Crash Her Expensive New Car Into a Lake?
On 21 December 2017, the web site DefenseUSA.site published a fake news article claiming that Sasha Obama had crashed a Bugatti Veyron into a lake: published   When Barack Obama bought his daughter Sasha a used Bugatti Veyron for Christmas, she apparently loved the new car so much that she immediately took it for a spin. Unfortunately, that car didnt last long. The former President* put his hard-earned speaking fees to work getting the car for his daughter, but it quickly became a $1.1 million piece of fish food when she picked up her friends and promptly crashed it into a lake.  There is no truth to this story. We found no credible reports of Sasha Obama receiving a Bugatti Veyron for Christmas, let alone crashing it into a lake.  The DefenseUSA.site does not appear to carry a readily available disclaimer labeling its content fiction. However, there were several ways to tell that this story was just another piece of fake news (besides the dodgy URL).  For one, the web site claimed that Sasha Obama had crashed her car into "Lake Hope, about 32 miles outside of Washington, D.C." This lake does not exist. There is a Lake Hope in Ohio, but we couldn't find any body of water with that name in the D.C. area.  The article linked to a credible news outlet (though it failed to point to a D.C. paper, choosing instead an Indiana publication, the Washington Times Herald) to give the impression that the information about Sasha Obama's alleged crash came from a genuine news report. However, the link led to the Washington Times Herald's front page, rather than a specific article, and the (giant, all-caps) quoted material is nowhere to be found on the paper's web site:  Washington Times Herald page   Lastly, the story's featured photograph actually shows a Bugati Veyron that a man drove into a lake in October 2009 as part of an insurance fraud scheme.  insurance fraud Ballaban, Michael.  "The Guy Who Crashed a Bugatti Into a Lake Has Been Sentenced to a Year in Federal Prison."
  Jalopnik.  15 December 2015.
Those billboards around Milwaukee featuring Mayor Tom Barretts mug and a claim he saved Milwaukee $25 million are clever if you slow down to read the punch line.If you can do it without driving your car into an embankment, youll see theyare sponsored by the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth and give credit to Barretts once -- and possibly future -- gubernatorial rival, Scott Walker, for making the savings possible.Barrett, the signs smaller print says, got the savings thanks to Gov. Scott Walkers reforms.The billboards hit on a theme voters undoubtedly will hear over and over from Republicans if Barrett takes on Walker in a possible recall election in 2012.The billboards refer to Walkers controversial budget legislation that took health care and pensions out of collective bargaining for most public employees.That allowed local governments and schools to impose cost-sharing for those benefits instead of negotiating with labor leaders.Barretts campaign, reacting tothead, denounced it as completely off base,in a statement toWTMJ4that said: The only thing accurate about that billboard is the picture of Tom Barrett.Whats the truth?Club for Growth didnt respond, but the Journal Sentinel reported in August that the city of Milwaukee will indeed save $25 million in 2012 just on health care costs, in large part by asking employees to pay more.In fact, Barretts budget document said revisions to the citys health insurance -- the ones made easier by Walkers changes -- would help drive overall health care costs down for the first time in more than 20 years.We contacted the same Milwaukee budget official quoted in August 2011, and he told us the city still expects a $25 million drop in health costs.Case closed?The official, city economist Dennis Yaccarino, says the $25 million actually overstates savings related to the Walker budget alone. He said city officials didnt make that clear in early August when a Journal Sentinel reporter first got the number from the city and published the $25 million figure in the context of Walkers changes. Thatstoryran Aug. 8, 2011.The newspaper followed upAugust 21, 2011, quoting city officials saying $6 million of that savings number was from the citys own decision to switch from an insured HMO to a self-funded approach due to projected cost savings. The $6 million switch is noted that way in Barretts budget.The move, we should note, was negotiated with the citys largest union two years ago but was not put in place until now for reasons unrelated to the state budget, according to Yaccarino and Richard Abelson, executive director of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, which represents general city employees.Yaccarino said the city calculated in 2011 that it was paying a profit to its carrier and could keep the money for itself by going self insured. That scenario had not existed until 2011, hence the delay, he said.So that leaves $19 million of savings for Milwaukee from Walkers original budget plan and the amended one he signed, right?Not exactly.Remember, the $25 million figure is just on the health care costs side fo the equation. What about public employees paying more in pension costs? Thats the second part of Walkers limits on collective bargaining over benefits. Milwaukee didnt put them in place due to questions about the legality of the state changes as they apply to Milwaukee. So thats a 0.Finally, city official note Walkers overall budget cut municipal aid, leaving the net savings to the city much reduced from $19 million.But the billboard refers to Walkers reforms, which is the changes tied to  the collective bargaining issue. It is making a narrower claim, on how much was saved from the reforms, not how the city fared overall.Our conclusionBillboards say Walkers reforms allowed Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to save $25 million for the city.The city is that much ahead, but a portion was Barretts doing before Walkers budget was enacted.We rate the claim Mostly True. In the wake of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, 2022, various hoaxes and misinformation circulated online.  hoaxes misinformation These included a misleading claim that the supposed source of many a prophecy, Nostradamus, foresaw the year Elizabeth would die, and that her heir, King Charles III, would abdicate, leaving an unexpected royal on the throne. Nostradamus is the commonly used name of Michel de Nostredame, a 16th-century Frenchman best known in the modern era for being trotted out during global news events, with enthusiasts claiming he predicted them with uncanny accuracy. Nostradamus was falsely credited with predicting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., for example, and also the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster. trotted out falsely credited and also In the case of misinformation spreading in September 2022, not only did some claim he predicted with accuracy the year in which Elizabeth would die, but also that he foresaw the crowning of Prince Harry as king. Neither is true, as we will explain. "A shocking new interpretation of the prophecies of Nostradamus says that King Charless reign could be very short with the bombshell suggestion Prince Harry could take the throne," reported the U.K. tabloid The Daily Star. reported Meanwhile, many shared on social media a screenshot from the 2005 book, "Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies for the Future," by British author Mario Reading. Here is an image of the screenshot being posted:  We point to the words"new interpretation" in the Daily Star's article because it's the operative phrase. The source of the rumor is simply Reading's interpretation of material written by Nostradamus, as seen in the screenshot from his book above. Nostradamus made no predictions specific to British royalty in 2022. The idea that Harry, the second son of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana, would leapfrog over his older brother William and become king can be seen at the bottom of the page in the image above. The reason it drew so much attention was because Reading, who died in 2017, appears to have accurately speculated about what year Elizabeth would die. The preamble is that Queen Elizabeth II will die, circa 2022, at the age of around ninety-six, five years short of her mothers term of life, Reading wrote. But Reading also erroneously predicted, based on Nostradamus' writings, that when Charles took the throne, the Commonwealth  an international association made up of nations like Canada and Jamaica, most of which were once under British rule  would no longer exist. That is not the case. international association Reading went on to interpret Nostradamus as predicting that when Charles took the throne, the pressure on him, together with his advanced age and opposition from some Brits who were angered by his 1996 divorce from Diana, would be overwhelming. And that would lead him to vacate his role.  Reading claimed Nostradamus "makes it very clear" that the man to replace Charles will be an unexpected one. Reading guesses that means William won't take the throne, for whatever reason, and that the next in line would be Harry. This was all speculation, however. Reading included the writing of Nostradamus (called a quatrain) at the top of his chapter. But Nostradamus' writing is vague, and makes no mention of a specific country or ruler. Here is a screenshot from the Google Books version of Reading's work, in which he offers the quatrain and his translation into English: chapter version  Because the actual writing of Nostradamus is vague, we cannot say Nostradamus predicted the circumstances around Elizabeth's death, and we can hardly say he foresaw events that haven't yet happened (and may well never happen). At  the very best, we can say that British author Mario Reading accurately guessed the year that Queen Elizabeth II would die. A note of context: Europe's kings and queens during the life of Nostradamus were contextually very different than the U.K.'s modern royals. If King Charles III "abdicates," it wouldn't exactly spark a bloody power grab, as illustrated by the gory HBO series "Game of Thrones," which is loosely based on medieval power struggles. Modern day royalty in the U.K. is more of a formality than an actual seat of power. It would be an intrigue, no doubt, but would probably have little consequence in the daily lives of U.K. citizens. Moran, Michael. Nostradamus Prediction That Charles Will Abdicate and mystery King Will Reign. Dailystar.Co.Uk, 12 Sept. 2022, https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/nostradamus-predicted-charles-abdicate-mystery-27973773. Reading, Mario. Nostradamus: The Complete Prophesies for the Future. Watkins Media Limited, 2015. In the summer of 2021, an old poem, touching on several conservative talking points including abortion, re-emerged on social media. The poem, entitled "America the Beautiful," was widely attributed to controversial former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore. He lost a U.S. Senate election to Democrat Doug Jones in 2017, after several women accused him of sexual impropriety decades ago, when they were in their teens and Moore was in his 30s. The former judge has denied the allegations.  controversial Roy Moore denied Many Facebook posts in July and August 2021 began with the following introduction:  Some of you may be wondering what Alabama Judge Roy Moore has been doing since he was removed from the bench for refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall. The following is a poem written by Judge Moore...   The poem was also widely shared in 2020, especially after it was posted to Facebook by Sharon Baptist Church in Iron Station, North Carolina. Most of the Facebook posts in 2020 and 2021 included a photograph of a bearded and bespectacled man (shown above) who is, definitively, not Moore. It's not clear who the man is, or why his picture was almost universally associated with the poem in Facebook posts.  posted to Facebook Snopes readers have inquired about "America the Beautiful" for at least a decade, and the poem has been attributed to Moore as far back as 1999. On the website of the Foundation for Moral Law, a non-profit organization started by Moore but now headed by his wife, Kayla, the poem is published along with following assertion: " Copyright 2007 Roy S. Moore": 1999 published America the Beautiful, or so you used to be,Land of the Pilgrims pride, Im glad theyre not here to see,Babies piled in dumpsters, abortion on demand,Oh, sweet land of liberty, your house is on the sand. Your children wander aimlessly poisoned by cocaine,Choosing to indulge their lusts, when God has said abstain.From sea to shining sea this Nation has turned away,From the teaching of Gods Law, and a need to always pray. So many worldly pastors telling lies about our Rock,Saying God is going broke so they can fleece the flock.Weve kept God in our temples, how foolish we have grown,When all the earth is but His footstool, and Heaven is His throne. Weve voted in governments that are rotting to the core,Appointing Godless judges who throw reason out the door.Too soft to put a killer in a well deserved tomb,But brave enough to kill that child before he leaves the womb. You think that Gods not angry, that our lands a moral slum?How much longer will it be before His judgment comes?And how can we face our God, from Whom we cannot hide?What is left for us to do, but stem this evil tide! For if we who are His children, will humbly turn and pray,If we seek His holy face, and mend our evil way,Then God will hear from Heaven and forgive us of our sins.Hell heal our sickly land and those who live within. But, America the beautiful, if you dont then you will see,A sad but Holy God withdraw His hand from Thee.   Moore also recited "America the Beautiful" during his speech at the October 2017 Values Voter Summit, which can be watched here (beginning around 3:00:00).  3:00:00 The assertion of Moore's copyright, and the consistent attribution of the poem to him in various forums over the past two decades, all point towards his authorship. However, the earliest publication of the poem that we could find was dated 1992 and attributed to someone else entirely.  On Oct. 28, 1992, the Victoria Advocate newspaper in Victoria, Texas, published a letter to the editor written by a Richard A. Barsness, in support of anti-abortion politicians. The letter incorporated a nearly identical poem to the one later claimed by Moore, but attributed it to a David Hungerford, as shown below: published   Snopes contacted individuals who might be able to shed further light on Barsness' letter, and the possible involvement of a David Hungerford in the writing of the poem, but we did not receive responses in time for publication. Speaking on behalf of Moore, a staff member at the Foundation for Moral Law told Snopes, "Judge Moore has been writing poetry since the early 1980s and cannot say when this was written." When we pressed the spokesperson on whether that statement meant Moore was continuing to assert that he wrote "America the Beautiful," the spokesperson did not elaborate.  We found only one other attribution of the poem to a David Hungerford, in an undated document hosted on the website of the Calvary Chapel in Eagle, Idaho. By contrast, Moore has been cited as its author on dozens of occasions over the past two decades. undated document However, because the earliest publication of the poem that we could find so far (in 1992) was attributed to David Hungerford, and Moore did not provide evidence that he wrote the poem before then, we cannot rule out the possibility that someone by the name of Hungerford, or even someone else entirely, was the original writer of the poem later claimed by Moore. As such, we are issuing a rating of "Unproven," for now. If definitive evidence becomes available, we will update this fact check accordingly. In her book, The Truths We Hold, California Sen. Kamala Harris asks How can you dream when you are drowning in student loan debt? in a section on the rising cost of living in America. On thecampaign trail, the Democratic presidential hopeful has called student loan debt one of the biggest challenges facing our country and our students. In the Senate, she helped re-introduce theDebt-Free College Act, a bill she says will help reverse the growing student debt crisis. Specifically, it would provide states incentives through matching grants to increase investments in public higher education. The senator then made this eye-popping claim about how fast student loan debt has grown in anews releaseon March 6 announcing her support for the bill: College debt has increased 170 percent since 2006 and now exceeds $1.5 trillion dollars, which is second only to mortgage debt and surpasses even credit card debt. Shetweeteda similar claim a few days later. But is student loan debt really growing that fast? And is it really second only to mortgage debt? We decided to crunch Harris numbers in this fact check. Our research To support the statement, a spokesman for Harris cited a Federal Reservetableshowing the nations cumulative student loan debt for each year from 2006 through 2018. He also cited articles fromThe Washington PostandMarketWatch. The Federal Reserve table shows student loan debt at the end of 2006 was $521 billion. By the end of 2018, the most recent period available, it had grown to $1.57 trillion  which matches with Harris claim that it now exceeds $1.5 trillion. But after calculating the numbers, we found an increase of 201 percent, an even faster rate than the 170 percent Harris referenced. Id say that her statement is mostly correct, said Mark Kantrowitz, a national financial aid expert. The one slight error: She actually underestimates the growth of student loan debt outstanding. Kantrowitz is publisher and vice president of research for SavingforCollege.com, a guide to college savings plans. The only way I get to 170 percent, he added, is if I compare the current debt outstanding to 2007 instead of 2006. That works out to be 170 percent. Hans Johnson, director of the Public Policy Institute of Californias Higher Education Center, also reviewed the data and found a 200 percent increase based on the most current Federal Reserve figures. SOURCE: Federal Reserve student loandata. Why is college debt growing so fast? More students going to college accounts for some of the growth of student loan debt, but only a small portion, Kantrowitz said. In 2006, there were 15.2 million college students. A decade later, that number had increased 11 percent to 16.9 million, he said, citing figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. Kantrowitz added that another factor is that federal grants have slowed as tuition has gone up. States often cut tuition assistance at the first signs of a financial crisis. The average student loan debt was nearly $30,000 for students graduating with a bachelors degree in 2018, Kantrowitz said. That is up from nearly $21,000 in 2006. College debt second only to mortgage debt and surpasses even credit card debt We found this part of Harris statement is accurate. In 2014, PolitiFact Virginiareportedthat student debt began to outpace credit card debt in the second quarter of 2010, citingdatafrom the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At the end of 2018, the nations overall credit card debt was $870 billion and mortgage balances stood at $9.1 trillion, according to thedata. Our rating Sen. Kamala Harris said College debt has increased 170 percent since 2006 and now exceeds $1.5 trillion dollars, which is second only to mortgage debt and surpasses even credit card debt. She actually understated how fast student loan debt is growing. The most recent Federal Reserve figures show its increased 201 percent since 2006. Harris was right about college debt topping $1.5 trillion, and being second only to mortgage debt. We rate her overall statement Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. A budget storm is brewing in Tallahassee, and Senate President Mike Haridopolos is making clear that no agency, program or area may be spared from impending cuts.Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, met with reporters on Jan. 12, 2011, to offer his outlook regarding Florida's $3.62 billion budget shortfall for the coming fiscal year. Haridopolos predicted that it would be difficult to pursue any significant tax cuts -- like those being championed by Gov. Rick Scott -- and that everyone should expect spending cuts.That includes education funding, he warned.More than $3 billion in federal stimulus funds have helped the state fill education budget holes for the past two years, but those funds sunset this spring. And while some additional federal funds are coming available, about $555 million, Florida's budget picture remains bleak, Haridopolos said.Whether you like to admit it or not, half our general revenue goes to education, Haridopolos was quoted as saying in theOrlando Sentinel. It's a very difficult spot to be in, and the reason we wanted to make the adjustments to the class-size amendment defeated by voters in November. Haridopolos was referring to an amendment proposed by the Legislature to ease class-size requirements at Florida schools so the state could save money. That measure failed to receive the needed 60 percent voter approval to pass.For this fact check, we decided to zero in on Haridopolos' claim that half of state general revenue goes to fund education.Understanding the state budget and education fundingIn his claim, Haridopolos is talking about a subset of the state budget, which is a subset of state's share of education funding in Florida, which is a subset of overall education funding in Florida. Oh, and he's not just talking about K-12 spending, but also state spending on the state university system, pre-Kindergarten and student aid programs.We'll walk you through it.Let's start with the state budget, which you can imagine by picturing a three-legged stool.Leg one: General revenue (what Haridopolos is talking about). General revenue makes up about 34 percent of the current state budget. The money mostly comes from sales taxes -- though some comes from telephone and cable taxes, corporate income taxes (which Scott has vowed to phase out), and taxes on property transactions. The state has broad discretion on how general revenue is spent.Leg two: State trust funds. State trust funds make up about 27 percent of the current state budget. That is money collected by the state to be used for a specific purpose. The state gas tax is funneled into a transportation trust fund, for example, to pay for road building projects. Florida Lottery proceeds roll into the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund. (The Legislature, at times, has raided trust funds to help balance the budget. )Leg three: Federal dollars. Federal dollars this year comprise about 39 percent of the state budget. Federal dollars primarily fund the state's Medicaid program, but also help fund education, road projects and the criminal justice system.So while each leg helps fund education programs from pre-K through college, Haridopolos is focusing on the general revenue fund. In the current budget, 56 percent of all state education spending came out of general revenue, and it's the portion of state spending the Legislature can most easily control.Now, here's a second important primer.The state doesn't fund education all by itself. Hardly. Local school districts contribute billions of dollars on their own through local property taxes. Most of those property taxes, believe it or not, are set at rates mandated by the Legislature through something called the Required Local Effort. In short, school districts are forced to collect the amount of property taxes the Legislature decides, or the districts won't get to share in state funding.In addition, there are other property taxes individual school districts have discretion over. None of those funds are technically state revenues for the purpose of this analysis.If this isn't confusing enough already, the context of Haridopolos' statement also is important. He's talking about potential cuts in education funding because of less federal dollars and lower sales tax receipts that are affecting the state's bottom line. One way to offset those cuts would be to raise the Required Local Effort, but the Republican-led Legislature that sets the tax has been opposed to that idea. Drilling down on general revenueNow, sticking to Haridopolos' statement and examining only general revenue, the Senate president is correct.Of the $23.8 billion of general revenue budgeted to be spent between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011, $12.5 billion was directed to education -- pre-K through college.Divide one into the other and you see that education spending currently equals more than 52 percent of general revenue. You can see the full breakdown of general revenue spending on Page 5 ofthis report.Haridopolos spokesman David Bishop said the state expects to receive $22.6 billion in general revenue for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.If you look at the overall state budget, education funding made up about 32 percent ($22.4 billion) of the entire $70 billion state budget in 2010-2011. RulingAs Haridopolos talked in Tallahassee about the grim state budget prospects for this coming year, he said state education funding might see cuts. Part of the problem is just how much of the budget is tied to education funding, he said -- half of the state's general revenue fund.To be honest, Florida's education funding structure is way more complicated than Haridopolos let on. But he's right that the state general revenue fund, which is a little more than a third of the overall state budget, is being used primarily to fund education.We rate this statement True. A number of members of the U.S. Congress have been accused of sexual misconduct over the years, but as a viral Facebook message suggests, have at least 260 of those members really settled sexual assault charges? accused settled   Certainly one reason that this bit of congressional trivia is "little known" is because it is factually inaccurate. This meme refers to a report released by Office of Compliance Director Susan Tsui Grundmann in November 2017, which compiled the amount of money that was paid out between 1997 and 2017 to cover 264 settlements in connection with conduct prohibited under the Congress Accountability Act: report Congress Accountability Act   That report did not state that all 264 settlements involved sexual assault charges, that all 264 settlements involved members of Congress, or that the settlements involved 264 different individuals. The Congressional Accountability Act (CAA) established a Treasury Department fund "to settle workplace harassment and discrimination claims." Although this fund has been used to pay out settlements related to sexual harassment, the CAA also applies to "thirteen civil rights, labor, and workplace safety and health laws." established According to Grundmann, a "large portion" of the aforementioned settlements stemmed from offices outside of the House of Representatives and the Senate and involved everything from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards act to violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act: A large portion of cases originate from employing offices in the legislative branch other than the House of Representatives or the Senate, and involve various statutory provisions incorporated by the CAA, such as the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The statistics on payments are not further broken down into specific claims because settlements may involve cases that allege violations of more than one of the 13 statutes incorporated by the CAA. Although the details of these payments are typically confidential, outrage over the revelation that congress was using taxpayer funds to pay sexual assault settlements persuaded the House Administration Committee to release more details about the settlements. In December 2017, the committee released additional statistics which broke these settlements down into distinct categories. released statistics settlements Those categorized statistics showed that 13 settlements involving claims of sexual harassment or sex discrimination, totaling nearly $300,000, were paid out from the fund between 2003 and 2017: In total, between 2003 and 2017, taxpayers spent $292,652 on 13 settlements involving claims of sexual harassment or sex discrimination, the committee's data shows. This figure does not include settlements agreed to privately between members and their employees, which are sometimes paid in the form of severance out of congressional office budgets. The viral Facebook message incorrectly proclaimed that 260 members of congress had settled sexual assault charges, while in reality some 264 different settlements related to a wide range of workplace violations were paid out between 1997 and 2017. Only a small proportion of those settlements totaling were related to sexual misconduct or discrimination. MacFarlane, Scott.  "264 Congressional Accountability Act Settlements in 20 Years."
  NBC News.  16 November 2017. USA Today.  "Sexual Harassment Fund Exposes Congress."
  27 November 2017. Paige, Leslie.  "When Will the Senate Start Holding Congressional Sexual Harassers Accountable?"
  USA Today.  26 April 2018. PBS.  "$300k in Taxpayer Funds Has Been Spent Settling Sexual Harassment Claims Against Congress, Report Says."
  12 January 2018.
 Przybyla, Heidi.  "House Admin. Committee Reports $342K in Discrimination and Harassment Payouts from 2008 to 2012."
  USA Today.  19 December 2017. In January 2021, Snopes received several inquiries from readers about the accuracy of a widely shared meme that claimed Kevin Seefried, a Delaware man charged with taking part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-U.S. President Donald Trump, was in fact a registered Democrat and supporter of President Joe Biden. Seefried came to the attention of the FBI after photographs showed him carrying a Confederate flag inside the halls of Congress. The meme consisted of one of those photographs, along with the following text: "This 'domestic terrorist,' who brought a Confederate flag into the Capitol during this outrageous attack on America has been arrested in his home state of Delaware. His name is Kevin Seefried. He's a registered Democrat and Biden supporter. Is Pelosi going to impeach Biden now too?"   The popularity of the meme can be seen in the following screenshot, which shows just a selection of Facebook posts containing it: Facebook posts   As evidence in support of the claim that Seefried is a registered Democrat, some Facebook users cited a listing for a "Kevin D Seefried" on the website VoterRecords.com: listing   However, the only credible evidence available strongly indicates that Seefried is a supporter of Trump, who took part in a destructive effort to overturn the lawful and legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won. In court filings, an FBI special agent wrote that Seefried had said he traveled from Delaware to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 "to hear President Trump speak."  Furthermore, the only supposed evidence presented in support of the claim that Seefried is a registered Democrat and Biden supporter is fatally flawed. The voter registration listing came from an unofficial source, and in any case referred to a voter born in 1986, and therefore decades younger than Seefried, who is 51 years old. Since we don't have voter registration information for Seefried, we can't definitively say that he is not a registered Democrat, and so we are issuing a rating of "Unproven." However, the available evidence strongly indicates that, whatever his voter registration might be, Seefried acted in support of Trump and took part in an effort to overturn Biden's legitimate victory  hardly in keeping with the meme's baseless description of him as a "Biden supporter." The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, which led to several deaths, damaged the reputation of the movement  spearheaded by Trump  to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election using baseless conspiracy theories that falsely alleged widespread electoral fraud. widespread electoral fraud As a result, some Trump supporters attempted to distance that movement from the events of that day, falsely claiming that the attack had been planned or perpetrated by left-wing agents provocateurs, in particular antifa (short for "anti-fascist"). We have addressed and debunked several strands of that conspiracy theory, and the "Biden supporter Seefried" meme appears to be just another such example. addressed debunked several strands On Jan. 14, Seefried and his 23-year-old son Hunter were charged with the following three offenses each: charged An affidavit written by an FBI special agent stated that: both Seefried and his son were captured on video breaking into the Capitol through a broken window; that Hunter Seefried had cleared glass from that semi-broken window in order to clear a path for entry; and that once inside, Seefried brandished a Confederate flag through the halls of the Capitol.  affidavit According to the FBI affidavit, the two men were identified because of a tip-off from one of Hunter's co-workers, who claimed Hunter had bragged about his participation in the attack on the Capitol. The co-worker also recognized Hunter's face from a police flier requesting information from the public about persons of interest from the riot. According to the FBI, both men confirmed their involvement in the attack on the Capitol during interviews conducted on Jan. 12. The affidavit states that Kevin Seefried told federal agents he had travelled from Delaware to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 in order to hear Trump speak at a rally at the Ellipse, near the White House, and that he had subsequently marched from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Seefried reportedly told the FBI he had brought the Confederate flag with him from Delaware, where it normally flies outside his house. Worcester County, Maryland court records list Kevin Seefried's month and year of birth as March 1969, meaning he was 51 years old when he was charged. The address listed in those records is located in Laurel, Delaware, and matches the location of his family home, which the Delaware News Journal visited and described in a Jan. 15, 2021 report. report The same residential address is found in Worcester County court records for Hunter Seefried, and those records list his month and year of birth as November 1997, meaning he was 23 years old when charged.  Given that Kevin Seefried is 51 years old, he could not be the same individual listed as a registered Democrat on VoterRecords.com  the only piece of supposed evidence put forward to support the claim that Seefried is a secret Biden supporter. However, Seefried's actual voter registration information, if it exists, was not readily available, so we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that he is registered as a Democrat, notwithstanding his current political views. Snopes contacted attorneys for both Kevin and Hunter Seefried, in an effort to clear up those uncertainties, but we did not receive a response in time for publication.  If we receive information that clarifies Seefried's voter registration status, we will update this fact check accordingly. For now, we're issuing a rating of "Unproven." 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." Many Democrats are eager to debateraising the federal minimum wagebecause its a popular issue to the party base, especially women, says ABC News political commentator Cokie Roberts. When you're talking about the minimum wage, you're talking about women, Roberts said March 31 onNPRsMorning Edition. Two-thirds of the people who receive the minimum wage are female, and this is one of many attempts on the part of Democrats to get out the voters who normally don't vote in an off-year election, to try to get them to the polls this year. Well see whether that works or not. Is her statistic accurate? The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a hub for data on American workers and the unemployed, had just the report, Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2013. The BLS collects this data through a national monthly survey of households called the Current Population Survey. It does not account for overtime pay, tips or commissions workers earn above their hourly wage. Of the 75.9 million Americans who earn hourly wages (and make up half of the nations workforce), 1.5 million earn exactly the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, and 1.8 million earn less than that, according to BLS. Here, were focused on the gender composition of those 3.3 million workers who earn at or below the minimum wage. We found its true that women have a disproportionately high place in the minimum-wage workforce than men. In 2013, 62.4 percent of workers, or 2.06 million people, who earned at or below the federal minimum wage were women. This was down slightly from the year before, when it was 64 percent. Its important to know this data only isolates workers who make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 or below. Many states have set a higher minimum wage for their residents. The BLS measure would not account for minimum-wage earners in California, who earn $8 an hour, or their counterparts in Washington, who earn the highest minimum pay in the country of $9.32. Arecent Congressional Budget Office reportpointed out half of all workers live in states where the minimum wage is more than $7.25 an hour. Still, these caveats do not undermine Roberts point, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which supports increasing the minimum wage. An increased federal minimum wage to $10.10 would set a new floor for all workers in the country, even those in states that set their own minimum wages. And it wouldnt just lift the pay of workers who earn $7.25 an hour, but also those who make slightly more, such as $8 or $9 an hour. Astudy by the Economic Policy Institutefound women would make up 55 percentpercent of workers who would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by the second half of 2016, a congressional proposal backed by the White House. That figure aligns withCBO data, too. If you raise the wage floor, more women will be affected by that, Shierholz said. Thats the bottom line. The discrepancy in pay between men and women known as the gender gap is closer at the bottom of the income distribution than at the top 1 percent of earners, Shierholz said. The gap is closing as a result of more women going to college and stagnated male wages.The White House arguesraising the minimum wage would further tighten the gap because women are overrepresented in low-paying professions. The amount of women in tips-based jobs, such as hairstylists and waitresses, is even higher than the female share of the federal minimum wage workforce, Shierholz said. Employers are allowed to pay workers a minimum of $2.13 an hour as long as their tips or at least $5.12, or the difference between $2.13 and $7.25. The White House also wants an increase in the tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour to $4.90 by 2016 under the proposedHarkin-Miller legislation. Efforts to reach Roberts through ABC News were unsuccessful. Our ruling Roberts said, Two-thirds of the people who receive the minimum wage are female. The actual figure is just a little bit lower. Federal data shows62 percent of people who earn the federal minimum wage or below are women. The federal data has limitations, as it does not account for women in states with a higher minimum wage. One study says that if the federal government raises the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, women will benefit more than men by a 55-45 percent spread. Roberts claim is on the right track but needs some additional information. That falls into a rating of Mostly True. In mid-2017, an article published on the web site Women's News (WNews.world) gained notoriety among social media users, thanks to its outlandish claim that an Indonesian woman deceased for three years not only returned to life and walked among the living, but was actually photographed doing so:  article The text of the article makes reference to a "special rite" used by the locals to bring the corpse back to life: In Indonesia, in the town of Toraja, a woman leaves her grave after being dead for 3 years. Fortunately, this event was caught on camera and its the evidence of how this woman was resurrected after that much time. There is no doubt that this is a frightening and surprising fact. They say that in order to bring her back to life, a special rite is performed in the place of the womans tomb. The premise struck us as both preposterous and familiar, so we dug deeper and found many other versions, including one that was posted to the snopes.com message board in September 2010: posted   We found an even older version posted on an Indonesian blog in November 2009. It included the writer's personal reminiscences around witnessing a "walking corpse" in his or her youth (although the narrative suffers a bit due to machine translation): posted The story of a dead corpse has been around since time immemorial. Hundreds of years ago it was said that there was a civil war in Tana Toraja namely the Toraja West fought against the East Toraja people. In the battle the West Toraja was defeated because most of them were killed, but at the time of going home their entire corpse of the Toraja West was walking, while the East Toraja people though only a few were killed but they took the corpses of their dead brother, Then the war is considered a series. On the next offspring the Toraja people often bury their corpses by way of the corpse walking alone to the grave. The phenomenon of "Walking bodies" that I myself have witnessed directly. The incident occurred around the year 1992 (I'm new grade 3 elementary). At that time in my village there was a man named Pongbarrak whose mother died. Such as Toraja custom the corpse is not directly buried but still has to go through a customary procession of burial (signs solo '). At that time after bathing the dead body of the mother is placed in bed in a special room before it is inserted into the coffin. On the third night the whole family gathered to talk about how the funeral procession would take place. At that time I sat on the porch of the house understand the children so like to pace. But after the meeting is over (around 10 pm), suddenly there is a noise in the house where some mothers shout. Out of curiosity I tried to look into the house and the dead man was walking out of the room, just cash me and my friends screamed hysterically and ran down the stairs. I ran and got my dad hysterically scared. After that I was taken home by father and I do not know what happened next.  Common to every variant we've encountered are references to the Tana Toraja region of South Sulawesi, an island in Indonesia. (If you've ever tasted any of the earthy, subtly spicy coffees imported from Sulawesi, odds are the beans were grown and hand-harvested in Tana Toraja.) Nor is it a coincidence that virtually every travel guide offering information about the remote location spotlights certain "peculiar," "complex," and purportedly "gruesome" funerary practices found there (practices that are indeed so unusual and elaborate that entire books have been written about them and tourists flock to record them on their mobile devices). The more we learned about these traditions, the more we became convinced they were the inspiration for tales about Indonesia's so-called "walking dead." Tana Toraja books flock It's unclear precisely how long the Toraja people, who descended from Austronesian speakers living in central Sulawesi well before Europeans arrived in the 1500s, have inhabited the island. During the 1700s, the Toraja population was driven into the southern mountains (where the majority of them are still concentrated) by another ethnic subgroup, the Buginese. Although most Toraja now identify as Christian or Muslim, many still honor beliefs and customs handed down from their ancestors  beliefs and customs in which death takes center stage. Anthropologist Kelli Swazey described the Torajans' intimate, intricate relationship with the dead in a 2013 TED Talk entitled "Life that Doesn't End with Death": Life that Doesn't End with Death In Tana Toraja, the most important social moments in people's lives, the focal points of social and cultural interaction are not weddings or births or even family dinners, but funerals. So these funerals are characterized by elaborate rituals that tie people in a system of reciprocal debt based on the amount of animals  pigs, chickens and, most importantly, water buffalo -- that are sacrificed and distributed in the name of the deceased. So this cultural complex surrounding death, the ritual enactment of the end of life, has made death the most visible and remarkable aspect of Toraja's landscape. Lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, funeral ceremonies are a raucous affair, where commemorating someone who's died is not so much a private sadness but more of a publicly shared transition. And it's a transition that's just as much about the identity of the living as it is about remembrance of the dead. In Toraja society, Swazey explains, death is seen as a process -- and a lengthy process, at that -- rather than as a singular event: So where we see an unquestionable reality, death as an irrefutable biological condition, Torajans see the expired corporeal form as part of a larger social genesis. So again, the physical cessation of life is not the same as death. In fact, a member of society is only truly dead when the extended family can agree upon and marshal the resources necessary to hold a funeral ceremony that is considered appropriate in terms of resources for the status of the deceased. And this ceremony has to take place in front of the eyes of the whole community with everyone's participation.... Until the funeral ceremony, which can be held years after a person's physical death, the deceased is referred to as "to makala," a sick person, or "to mama," a person who is asleep, and they continue to be a member of the household. They are symbolically fed and cared for, and the family at this time will begin a number of ritual injunctions, which communicates to the wider community around them that one of their members is undergoing the transition from this life into the afterlife known as Puya. So I know what some of you must be thinking right now. Is she really saying that these people live with the bodies of their dead relatives? And that's exactly what I'm saying. A National Geographic video shot in 2016 provides brief glimpses into Tana Toraja death and burial rites (warning: includes graphic scenes of animal sacrifice): rites Of particular interest with regard to the "walking dead" tales we're investigating is the ma'nene ceremony, in which the mummified corpses of dead family members are exhumed, washed, reclothed, and walked through the center of town, examples can be seen both in the latter half of the National Geographic video above and this tourist video uploaded to YouTube in 2016: video Bringing our investigation full circle, Loyola University anthropology professor Kathleen Adams, who spent two years in Tana Toraja observing the lives and culture of its people, confirmed in an interview with Loyola Magazine that the "walking dead" stories represent a corrupted version of the truth: interview What started happening, as best as I can piece together, was migrants who had moved to Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia, who were often second-generation migrants, were coming back, Adams says. The city folk would want a picture next to their deceased relatives, and the images started circulating on Facebook. Toraja became suddenly internationally associated with this idea of the walking dead and zombies. That's not to say that concept is entirely foreign to the culture. "Torajans also tell stories about corpses that walk on their own to their final resting place," Kelli Swazey told us via e-mail: Many Torajans relate that in the past, powerful ritual practitioners could make a corpse walk on its own. This practice is not done anymore, according to many Torajans, because it is a kind of magic that is not appropriate for modern Christians, and the majority of Torajans identify as Protestant Christians today. In addition, there are many stories of other kinds of revenants that the living encounter in Indonesia, so the circulation of these kinds of stories is quite common in the Indonesian media. So, folklore and media sensationalism notwithstanding, do the deceased really rise from their graves and walk in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi? Yes, but no  not literally. They do so only with the help of surviving family members, who continue to demonstrate their love and devotion long after the physical bodies of their loved ones have gone quiet. The photograph does not show an actual zombie. Bennett, Amanda.  "When Death Doesn't Mean Goodbye."
  National Geographic,  March 2016. Gaynor, Anna.  "One Culture's Unique Rituals for the Dead Have a Lot to Teach Us About Life."
  Loyola Magazine.  Accessed 12 July 2017. Kugel, Seth.  "In Indonesia, A Region Where Death Is a Lure."
  The New York Times.  30 July 2015. Swazey, Kelli.  "Life that Doesn't End with Death."
  TED Talks.  April 2013. Tomkiw, Lydia.  "Funeral Tourism in Sulawesi: Is It Ethical?"
  CNN.  27 March 2013. WB, Stephen.  "Walking Dead Version Toraja."
  Mamasa Online.  10 November 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica.  "Toraja."
  Accessed 12 July 2017. Lonely Planet.  "Introducing Tana Toraja."
  Accessed 12 July 2017. Women's News.  "Woman Comes Out from Her Grave and Walks After 3 Years of Being Dead."
  Accessed 12 July 2017.