Blue Owls Aren't Real, Despite Pictures Shared Online
On Nov. 24, 2022, a Facebook user posted a picture of a blue owl. However, blue owls are not real, meaning that the image was a fake. posted  The post from Nov. 24 was shared at least 2,000 times in a little over one week. It was the earliest posting of the picture that we have found so far. On Twitter, the fake blue owl picture, which showed cat-like whiskers for the animal, received hundreds of thousands of likes. For example, this tweet from@jimrosecircus1 was posted on Dec. 1, 2022. It showed nearly 150,000 likes by the next day. The caption read, "I hope you don't mind this adorably majestic blue owl in your newsfeed." tweet  Under the tweet, Twitter added a context note that read, "There is no such thing as blue owl. It looks really good but unfortunately it's not true." On Dec. 2, the @daily__owls Twitter account also posted the fake picture of the blue owl with the misleading caption, "The beautiful Norwegian Blue owl." posted  According to Brittanica.com, "owls vary in color from white through many shades of tan, gray, brown, or rufous (reddish) to deep brown." Despite the beauty of the blue and orange owl in the picture, it's just not real. Brittanica.com Hoax hunter @HoaxEye tweeted of the blue owl image that it may have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The tweet also tagged the user @Valdevia_Art, who added that they believed it was likely not as simple as a color change in Adobe Photoshop. Instead, the user said that it "does seem AI-generated." tweeted added said This wasn't the first time a picture of a purportedly blue owl made its way around social media. In 2021, USA Today's fact-check team debunkeda picture of what online posts referred to as a "blue Philippines owl." VisitCryptoVille.com previously published a story about the same picture five years earlier. debunked picture story Back in 2019, AFP filed a report about a "beautiful blue owl of Madagascar," which also was fake. report At Snopes, we've previously fact-checked photos purporting to show a multicolored "rainbow owl" (fake) and a "rare red owl with blue eyes" (also fake). rainbow owl rare red owl with blue eyes This story will be updated if we find more details about the origins of the blue owl picture. As noted by some knowledgeable Twitter users, it may have simply been generated by AI. @Daily__Owls. Twitter, 2 Dec. 2022, https://twitter.com/Daily__Owls/status/1598613376992792576. @HoaxEye. Twitter, 2 Dec. 2022, https://twitter.com/hoaxeye/status/1598734104396079104. @jimrosecircus1. Twitter, 1 Dec. 2022, https://twitter.com/jimrosecircus1/status/1598366192817045504. "Owl - Appearance and Classification." Britannica.Com, https://www.britannica.com/animal/owl/Form-and-function. Sadeghi, McKenzie. "Fact Check: Viral Image Claiming to Be a Blue Philippine Owl Is Doctored." USA TODAY, 22 Feb. 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/22/fact-check-viral-image-purported-blue-philippine-owl-doctored/4533533001/. Salah, Dr. Muhammad. "Just Admire the Beauty of Allah's Creation!" Facebook, 24 Nov. 2022, https://www.facebook.com/MSalahOfficial/posts/pfbid0TazmyskVgTA2axagkDCMNrAUqheW4LRPz91UvMUaK3v6xywK5JgrQHjLy6YysK61l. "The Blue Owl of the Philippines 19-31." VisitCryptoVille.com, 19 Jan. 2016, https://visitcryptoville.com/2016/01/19/the-blue-owl-of-the-philippines-19-31/. @Valdevia_Art. Twitter, 2 Dec. 2022, https://twitter.com/valdevia_art/status/1598752209935560706. Yan, Rachel. "No, This Is Not a Genuine Photo of a Blue Owl in Madagascar." AFPFact Check, 4 June 2019, https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-genuine-photo-blue-owl-madagascar.
A photograph purportedly showing Ronald Reagan meeting with the leaders of the Taliban (Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movement) at the White House has been shared online for many years, along with a purported laudatory quote from the 40th U.S. president, "These Gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's Founding Fathers":  This enduring memeis wrong on more than one account. The group pictured here are notTaliban leaders, the photograph was not taken in 1985, and Reagan did not compare the pictured group to America's Founding Fathers. (In this particular meme, even the name "Reagan" is misspelled.)  photograph According to the Ronald Reagan Library, the above-displayed photograph was taken in 1983, and it captures then-president Reagan meeting with Afghan rebel leadersto discuss the Soviet presencein Afghanistan. taken leaders Afghanistan While the Reagan administration did help fund and equip the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (and rebel groups elsewhere) so that they could fight against the Soviet occupation, it is inaccurateto say that the former president met with the Taliban, as at that point that group did not exist: fund Mujahideen Taliban This photograph is from 1983, when Reagan and the CIA were dancing around the idea of arming Mujahadin fighters in order to fight back against Soviet incursion in Afghanistan. The result was a well-armed, well-trained group of jihadis who resisted (some say defeated) the onslaught of superior Soviet weaponry. Once the Soviets retreated, the U.S. lost interest and pulled the funding. Osama bin Laden took interest, and filled the vacuum, later fathering the Taliban. The rest, as they say, is history. The quote frequently attached to this photographisaparaphrased version of something said by PresidentReagan, but he was not speaking about either the Taliban or Afghan opposition groups at the time. He made thecomment about contrarebels in Nicaragua duringa speechat theConservative Political Action Conference in 1985: contra speech Conference They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help. I've spoken recently of the freedom fighters of Nicaragua. You know the truth about them. You know who they're fighting and why. They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong. In late May 2023, a number of Twitter accounts retweeted and criticized a post supposedly written on May 28 by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), about farmers: retweeted and criticized  (@Shamrock168339/Twitter)   (@GSchifanelli/Twitter) Contrary to what most of these users apparently assumed, however, the "Farming should be illegal" tweet attributed to AOC was actually posted by a parody account: "Farming should be illegal" tweet AOC parody account  (@AOCpress/Twitter) It was a joke. AOC did not tweet that "Farming should be illegal." No such tweet or sentiment appeared on her official Twitter account. Twitter users were similarly fooled by a previous tweet from the parody account, also fact-checked by Snopes, in which Ocasio-Cortez supposedly said "Printing money is the only way out of inflation." previous tweet fact-checked by Snopes In a May 30 tweet from her official account, Ocasio-Cortez informed the public that the parody account was "impersonating" her and "releasing false policy statements," and noted that Twitter owner Elon Musk "has engaged it, boosting its visibility": May 30 tweet FYI there's a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility. It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 30, 2023 May 30, 2023  This is the @AOCpress tweet that Musk engaged with:  (@elonmusk/Twitter) Snopes has also fact-checked fake tweets attributed to AOC that were created image-editing software. In one such fake tweet that circulated during the COVID-19 pandemic, she allegedly urged that businesses be kept closed until after the 2020 election. In another, she allegedly called for Democrats to commence with "The Purge" (a reference to the 2013 horror film) after U.S. President Joe Biden was elected. businesses be kept closed commence with "The Purge" 2013 horror film For background, here iswhywe sometimes write about satire/humor. why Mikkelson, David. "Did AOC Tweet That Businesses Should Be Shut Down Until the Election?" Snopes, 23 June 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-businesses-closed-tweet/. Palma, Bethania. "No, AOC Didn't Tweet About 'The Purge.'" Snopes, 12 Jan. 2021, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fake-aoc-purge-tweet/. On 1 October 2017, pseudoscientific alternative health website NaturalNews.com, which is geared primarily toward supplement enthusiasts with a discerning taste for deep state conspiracy theories, posted an article ("Dont Look Now, But Arctic Sea Ice Mass Has Grown Almost 40% Since 2012") that attempts to cast doubt on the scientific veracity of global warming by first presenting the following grotesque caricature of a straw man argument: article straw man One of the most popular pieces of "evidence" that climate alarmists just love to bring up to prove the global warming narrative is the "all the ice is melting in the Arctic and the polar bears are dying" line. Weve all seen the documentaries where a polar bear is desperately clinging to a tiny piece of ice and you just know hes going to die soon. They article then presents two observations that make the generally factual point that there has been relatively more sea ice in the Arctic and glacial ice on Greenland in 2017 than there have been at specific times in the recent past: The latest figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, located at the University of Colorado, show that sea ice extent has increased by 40 percent since 2012. [...] [The Danish Polar Portal reports that]: If we rank the annual surface mass balance since 1981 from low to high, the lowest on record was 2011-2012 (38 Gt) and this year is the 5th highest out of the 37 year record. Danish Polar Portal To be clear, the primary data scientists use to document global warming are records of Earth's temperature over time, not doomed polar bear imagery. Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist for the independent, nongovernmental Berkeley Earth research group told us in an e-mail that, in this area, pretty much "all groups who provide estimates" of global temperature unequivocally point to nearly uninterrupted temperature rises since the 1970s, as shown in this comparison of various estimates produced by the climate and energy policy website Carbon Brief: Zeke Hausfather produced   "People interested in global warming are best-served looking at actual global temperatures," Hausfather said. While this temperature trend is uncontroversial and clear, the climate system as a whole is a complex beast with numerous entangled parts. The basic approach to writing a blog post that "debunks" the concept of global warming is to highlight without explanation various parts of that system at a single point in time. NaturalNews.com is no exception to that basic strategy here. Arctic Sea Ice Natural News cites a climate change denial blog called ClimateDepot.com as evidence of the claim that sea ice has grown 40 percent since 2012. In reality, the claim made by this website was more specific and less useful. In a post dated 18 September 2017, Climate Depot stated: stated Arctic sea ice extent is up 40% from this date five years ago. "Sea ice extent" is one of many different metrics used to characterize the presence of sea ice, and is generally defined as "the area of ocean [based on pixels in satellite imagery] where at least 15 percent of the surface is frozen". On the day of 17 September 2017, sea ice extent was indeed higher than it was on 17 September 2012: defined   This does not mean, however, that sea ice has grown almost 40 percent since 2012, nor does it mean that the overall trend in arctic sea ice is toward growth  it hasn't and it isn't. The issue here is that sea ice extent is quite variable from year to year, and thus looking at two discrete points is a fairly useless exercise without the full context. "We don't expect it to monotonically decrease every year," Hausfather told us.  This chart (using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center) shows September sea ice extent compared against the same average used in the maps cited by Climate Depot, showing both this aforementioned variability but also an overall trend of reduced ice extent. Note that the year 2012 was no random year to select for comparison; it is actually the record lowest year in terms of Arctic sea ice extent  making anything compared to it necessarily higher: from   The overall trend of declining sea ice is even clearer when you look at a different measure: sea ice volume (presented by the Polar Science Center, below). Not only do such records show a clear negative trend, they also show just how anomalous 2012 was as a data point: Polar Science Center   In reality, 2017 was the eighth lowest year on record for Arctic sea ice extent since satellite measurements began in 1978. But in no world but the pseudo-scientific fringe internet would the concept of global warming rely on every single year breaking the previous year's record for sea ice minimum. eighth Tom Karl, the former director of NOAAs National Centers for Environmental Information, told us that 2017's sea ice extent was still much lower than the 1980-2010 average (by two standard deviations), and that, despite claims to the contrary, "one can't look at a trend over 5 years and say much about the impact of global warming as other factors are also important on these short time scales." director Glacial Ice on Greenland The NaturalNews.com approach for glacial ice on Greenland was similarly lacking scale and context. The main source for these arguments was a completely legitimate end-of-year report put out by the Danish Polar Portal, a website run by the Danish Meteorological Institute. In that report, the organization makes this factual statement: report Heavy snow and rain in winter with a relatively short and intermittent summer melt season have left the Greenland ice sheet with more ice than has been usual over the last twenty years  in fact we have to go back to the 1980s and 90s to see a year similar to this one in terms of snow fall and ice melt. This statement, and the figures presented by NaturalNews.com, are referring to a metric known as Surface Mass Balance (SMB), which Polar Portal describes: describes Each year glaciers gain ice from snow and freezing rain and lose ice by melt that runs off. Adding these together gives the surface mass budget (SMB) in Greenland, the ice sheet typically gains mass from around September to May and loses more mass than it gains in the ablation [melting] season of June, July and August. Importantly, however, this measurement only presents half the picture in terms of how much mass is being lost from year to year from Greenland's glaciers. That's because it does not include the rather significant portion of ice that breaks  or calves  off into the ocean to melt elsewhere. On average this accounts for about 500 Gt [gigatons] of further ice loss. This, as stated in the Polar Portal post, nearly matches the estimated gain in SMB reported by Natural News, effectively canceling it out. In a post on Carbon Brief, analysts with the Danish Meteorological Society put this years measurement in context: post While the Greenland ice sheet has seen a neutral, or small positive, change in ice for this year, it should be noted that Greenland has lost approximately 3,600bn tonnes of ice since 2002. Like the record of Arctic sea ice earlier, when put in the context of the entire trend of Greenland's ice mass over time (presented by Polar Portal below), 2017's measurement does nothing to change larger and completely unambiguous trends of overall melting: Polar Portal    Further, in the case of Greenland's ice sheet, there is not much of a mystery surrounding the lackluster amount of melting this year; a massive storm  the remnants of Hurricane Nicole  parked itself atop the continent, dumping a large amount of snow on the ice-covered continent: Hurricane Nicole dumping Heavy rain and snow in October in especially eastern Greenland gave record totals of precipitation in the main east coast town of Tasiilaq as the remnants of former hurricane Nicole passed by and, much as with Harvey in Houston this year, got lodged over eastern Greenland for some days. However, after Nicoles extreme precipitation, the rest of the winter was actually pretty average in terms of the amount of snow that fell. Because neither the higher-than-2012 arctic sea ice from 17 September 2017 nor the neutral amount of ice loss in Greenland in 2017 do anything to disrupt the overall trends of decreasing ice, and because climatological science does not require (nor does it expect) ice or temperature records to be broken every single year, we rank the claim that these observations are reasons to doubt the tenets of climate change as false. Watson, Tracey.  "Dont Look Now, but Arctic Sea Ice Mass Has Grown Almost 40% Since 2012."
  Natural News.  1 October 2017. Mottram, Ruth, et al.  "Guest Post: How the Greenland Ice Sheet Fared in 2017."
  Carbon Brief.  1 September 2017. Polar Portal.  "End of the SMB Season Summary 2017."
  12 September 2017. Morano, Marc.  "Massive Arctic Ice Gain (Up 40%) Since Low Point of 2012.
  Climate Depot.  19 September 2012. Hausfather, Zeke.  "State of the Climate: Warm Temperatures and Low Sea Ice Mark First Half of 2017."
  Carbon Brief.  21 July 2017. National Snow and Ice Data Center.  "Arctic Sea Ice at Minimum Extent."
  19 September 2017. Polar Science Center.  "PIOMAS Arctic Sea Ice Volume Reanalysis."
  Accessed 4 October 2017. NASA.  "End-of-Summer Arctic Sea Ice Extent Is Eighth Lowest on Record."
  19 September 2017. NASA.  "NASA Sees Tropical Storm Nicole Going Extra-Tropical."
  18 October 2016. We all dream of rich relatives kicking the bucket and leaving us their fortunes, which is why this "unexpected inheritance" scam works as well as it does. My name is Becky J. Harding, I am a senior partner in the firm of Midland Consulting Limited: Private Investigators and Security Consultants. We are conducting a standard process investigation on behalf of HSBC, the International Banking Conglomerate. This investigation involves a client who shares the same surname with you and also the circumstances surrounding investments made by this client at HSBC Republic, the Private Banking arm of HSBC. The HSBC Private Banking client died in testate and nominated no successor in title over the investments made with the bank. The essence of this communication with you is to request you provide us information/comments on any or all of the four issues: 1-Are you aware of any relative/relation who shares your same name whose last known contact address was Brussels Belgium?2-Are you aware of any investment of considerable value made by such a person at the Private Banking Division of HSBC Bank PLC?3-Born on the 1st of october 19414-Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your eligibility to assume status of successor in title to the deceased? It is pertinent that you inform us ASAP whether or not you are familiar with this personality that we may put an end to this communication with you and our inquiries surrounding this personality. You must appreciate that we are constrained from providing you with more detailed information at this point. Please respond to this mail as soon as possible to afford us the opportunity to close this investigation. Thank you for accommodating our enquiry. Becky J. Harding.For: Midland Consulting Limited.09/02/2004 Imagine being transformed overnight from office drudge to a member of the jet set  it's the stuff of daydreams! (or at least the impetus to buy lottery tickets). Because this urge for the big "something for nothing" runs so deep in us, it makes us vulnerable to the machinations of con men, which is what these e-mailed come-ons areabout.This scam has been part of the grifters' bag of tricks for many a year. It was only a matter of time before it began showing up on the Internet, where those who make their livings by defrauding others have an even easier time vending their cons to the unwary. Though the text quoted above as our example is one of the more common forms this sort of come-on takes in the wilds of cyberspace, the scam can be dressed out any number of ways. How it is worded is far less important than its thrust  its "hook" that you might be entitled to an inheritance you had no reason to expect was coming your way. Although the names change from e-mail to e-mail, the scam itself is immutable: potential victims receive notification they share the surname of a recently deceased person who failed to leave a will. This notification purportedly comes from a representative of a firm of "Private Investigators and Security Consultants," with said representative stating he or she is "conducting a standard process investigation on behalf of[name of large financial entity, such as Barclays or HSBC]." Recipients of those e-mails are then asked three or four questions along the lines of the following: How the about-to-be-scammed answer the questions is unimportant  the queries are there merely to lend a patina of legitimacy to the inquiry. Regardless of whether potential victims respond with the news that none of their relatives have been to Brussels or whether they claim great-uncles whom the family subsequently lost track of after they settled there, the game is now afoot. In either case, they will be assured there is a very real chance significant inheritances are about to come their way, provided one small insignificant detail is first taken care of: payment of a fee to advance the matter. Similar to the Nigerian Scam and the foreign lottery fraud, the promise of untold wealth is used to distract the overly trusting away from the sorry fact that they are being asked to send money. In all three cases, the con works the same way: after being mesmerized by the vision of riches to come, those being taken advantage of are required to open their wallets and whip out their checkbooks to bring about the happy event. Nigerian Scam lottery There is no dead Uncle Fred, no rich deceased Reese. It's all a lie told to part you from your cash. So far we've seen versions of this scam emanating from supposed private investigating firms named Cappa Consultants, Midland Consulting Limited, and De Rosenberg Consulting, but the names the fraud artists choose to adopt for the purpose of parting the unwary from their money are unimportant; it's all a con. The names of genuine banking concerns (such as HSBC and Barclays) are dragged into the fray willy-nilly by the ill-intentioned to make the matter look more credible, but these real entities have nothing to do with the con. Indeed, as one official at HSBC responded to a query about these supposed windfall inheritances: It has come to our attention that a variation on an email is being circulated that has no connection to HSBC Republic. The email claims that HSBC Republic has employed investigators to contact the family of a deceased client who died intestate. To our knowledge such claims have no validity and we strongly recommend that recipients of such emails do not respond to the sender. Regards Web AdministrationHSBC Republic In another form of the scam, folks are contacted through regular mail by "estate locators" who say those receiving their notices are named beneficiaries of unclaimed family inheritances. Recipients are lured into mailing fees for estate reports, which will supposedly explain where their inheritances are located and how they can be claimed. These "estate locators" may also offer to process claims against these estates for a fee. It does occasionally happen someone so contacted does eventually find he or she has a right to claim against the estate of a distant relative who died without leaving a will. But in those cases, the amount garnered generally proves not to have been worth going after (indeed, often less than what was paid to the "locator" for the information). Estates do hire actual "heir locators" to find missing beneficiaries, but those so engaged are paid by the estate, not by the folks they find. There are also heir locators who freelance on a contingency basis, entering into agreements with those they connect with their rightful inheritances for percentages of sums so recovered. While this might sound like the scam being described above it's not  these legitimate heir locators receive payment only after estates are settled and heirs so found have received their bequests. Ergo, if a "locator" is asking you to pay up front, it's a scam. Those still clinging to the hope that there might still be something to their pie-in-the-sky e-mail, that hints at a life of luxury are just in the offing, should pause to consider that professionals in the process of contacting legitimate heirs do so through recognizable law firms, with the contact coming in the form of an actual letter (as opposed to an e-mail) on that firm's letterhead. We find it somewhat amusing that "intestate" (meaning to die without leaving a will) is so often mis-rendered in the e-mails distributed by the defrauders: it either comes out as "in testate" or as "interstate" (which we presume means to die between two highways). What You Can Do: Additional information:  Phony Inheritance Scam  (United States Postal Service) Phony Inheritance Scam  (United States Postal Service) Last updated:  27 November 2011   Choney, Suzanne.  "Key Flaws Reveal Truth Behind New E-Mail Hoax."Copley News Service.  7 July 2003. Bangor Daily News.  "Be Wary of Inheritance Notifications."2 February 2004  (p. A5). Sampling the local fare is a staple on the menu of any politician worth his salt.For that reason alone, John Kasich is fortunate to be governor of Ohio.Ohio is the brass buckle on the burger belt. It is Ground Beef Zero.It is Mondo Carne.Rivals stake competing claims, but Ohio can credit two brothers from Akron, Charles and Frank Menches, for inventing and naming the hamburger in 1885. Menches Brothers Restaurants still feature the original recipe.The oldest burger chain, White Castle, is headquartered in Columbus, not far from the home of Wendy's in Dublin. The founder of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee' chains came from Upper Sandusky. The Big Boy, a meal in one on a double-deck bun, was created as the first double-decker in California, but Manners' in Cleveland and Frisch's in Cincinnati gave it white sauce perfection, inspiring the Big Mac.And so on.When Kasich took his State of the State address on the road last week to Lima, he made a stop that followed the lead of other visitors and then tweeted about it: Enjoyed a quick Kewpee burger before the State of the State in Lima tonight.The Ohio Republican Party tweeted its own comment: Kewpie burgers are delicious. An Ohio institution. And they'll cost less thanks to John Kasich's tax cut.Is that true -- or  a whopper? PolitiFact Ohio dug in with relish.First, we will stipulate that Kewpee burgers are delicious and worthy of the restaurant's slogan: Hamburger pickle on top! Makes your heart go flippity flop!We agree that the diner is an Ohio institution, even though @ohiogop misspelled its name. One of the oldest burger chains in the country, Kewpee was started in Michigan (Wendys founder Dave Thomas once said that the Kewpee near his home in Michigan inspired him to go into the business) but has its headquarters in Lima. Its downtown location is on the National Register of Historic Places.Kasich's tax cut cited by @ohiogop is the sales tax plan that is part of the governor's proposed two-year budget. To help pay for a 20 percent cut in the state's income tax, the plan would cut the state sales tax rate, from 5.5 percent to 5 percent, while widening its scope to nearly all service purchases.Restaurant meals -- such as Kasich's pre-speech Kewpee burger -- are covered by the sales tax. Take-out meals are not taxed, and would not be under Kasich's proposal.In Allen County, where Lima is located, state and county taxes combine for a 6.5 percent sales tax rate, the Ohio Department of Taxation told us. Under Kasich's plan, the rate would drop to 5.8 percent.That would cut the tax on a plain Kewpee burger -- priced at $1.80 each -- from 12 cents to 10 cents, according to the tax collection schedule posted by the Department of Taxation.So what's the take-away?It is accurate to say that a delicious burger eaten at the iconic Kewpee in Lima would cost 2 cents less under Kasich's tax proposal, leaving all other factors unchanged. Someone eating two burgers a week would save enough in 10 months to buy another burger.The price of take-out burgers would remain the same, however. Thats an important clarification that gives the statement a rating of Mostly True. To those who have not witnessed the spectacle themselves (or have merely viewed photographs of it with no explanatory context), the sight of hundreds of Muslims praying in the middle of Manhattan's streets is likely a startling image. Although the pictures are real, they depict a phenomenon that has been taking place regularly for many years and long antedates the presidency of Barack Obama. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, July 2010] Not only London, Paris and Barcelona FRIGHTENING SITUATION - OBAMA IS CHANGING THE FACE OF THE USA PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW ON EVERY WEB SITE YOU ALSO CHAT IN. THIS IS NOT A JOKE - IT IS HAPPENING!!! This is an accurate picture of every Friday afternoon in several locations throughout NYC where there are mosques with a largenumber of Muslims that cannot fit into the mosque - They fill the surrounding streets, facing east for a couple of hours betweenabout 2 & 4 p.m. - Besides this one at 42nd St & Madison Ave, there is another, even larger group, at 94th St & 3rd Ave, etc., etc. - Also, I presume, you are aware of the dispute over building another "high rise" Mosque a few blocks from "ground zero" - With regard to that one, the "Imam" refuses to disclose where the $110 million dollars to build it is coming from and there is a lawsuit filed to force disclosure of that information - November can't come soon enough This is in New York City on Madison Avenue, not in France or the Middle East or Yemen or Kenya. Is there a message here???? Yes, there is, and they are claiming America for Allah. If we don't wake up soon, we are going to "politically correct" ourselves right out of our own country! A Christian Nation cannot put up a Christmas scene of the baby Jesus in a public place, but the Muslims can stop normal traffic every Friday afternoon by worshiping in the streets.... Something is happening in America that is reminiscent of what is happening in Europe. This is Political Correctness gone crazy... "For evil to flourish, all that is needed is for good people to do nothing." Edmund Burke     These photos originated with New York City's annual American Muslim Day Parade, an event first held in 1985 (long before Barack Obama entered the world of politics) and every year since. As the parade's organizers note of its history: Muslim Day Parade New York City is the capital of the world and center of center of economic, business, social and cultural activities. When it comes to social and cultural activities, it houses many ethnic groups from around the world such as Irish, Italian, Latin, Afro-American, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim. Up until 1985, all these groups were celebrating their ethic and cultural heritage in one form or the other, which included street activities, festivals and parades, with the exception of the Muslims.So, in 1984, a few Muslim brothers got together, thought that when there are so many cultural shows and parades are being held in the City then Muslims should also demonstrate their different cultural beauties along with our Islamic values. Muslim representation in the City and State was zero. So they planned about having a United American Muslim Day Parade in New York City which will provide a platform to the Muslim community in this Tri-State area to get together and join the main stream political arena of this country as we have adopted it as our homeland. We are here for good; our children have to carry on our Islamic Values in the future when we will be gone. Late Zakaullah Pirzada, late Imam Qasim Bakiruddin, late Dr. Abdul Quddus, Br. Mohammad A Munim, Dr. Shafi Bezar, Dr. Rashid Jafar and many others were the founding members who organized and incorporated the Muslim Foundation of America, Inc. in 1984, which is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization. MFA Inc. organized its first Muslim Day Parade in 1985 and since then we have been dutifully holding this parade every year on the last Sunday of September. Our parade always has an Islamic theme and a Muslim Grand Marshal. It represents many Muslim nationalities and their cultures. At the end of the parade, we have a bazaar where vendors are selling foods, clothing, books and etc. from different countries. Also included are programs for the kids. The photographs displayed above were taken at the 2009 Muslim Day Parade:  As noted above, the event depicted in the four photographs is an annual one, not a weekly one, and the participating group obtains the required parade permits from New York City authorities. Sitting in front of a mock pharmacy and flanked by people in white lab coats, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on July 24, 2020, that he framed as end-all solutions for Americans who struggle to pay high premium prices for prescription drugs. Of one of the directives, specifically, Trump told a crowd of supporters and reporters at the ceremony: told Under this order, the price of insulin for affected patients will come down to just pennies a day  pennies a day from numbers that you werent even able to think about. Its a massive cost savings. News outlets such as The New York Times and Washington Post described the signing event like it was largely symbolic, since the executive orders are unlikely to take effect this year, if at all (we explain more below). The New York Times Washington Post Meanwhile, at least two conservative media sources, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire and CNSNews  which claims to balance "liberal bias" in mainstream news with its coverage  reported on the president's pledge to slash prescription prices at face value, and highlighted the above-mentioned quote by Trump regarding insulin. Daily Wire CNSNews published the story, "Trump Says Executive Order Will Drop the Price of Insulin Down to Pennies a Day," which mainly quoted the president verbatim, and numerous Snopes readers reached out to us to investigate the claim's accuracy. Namely, diabetic patients wondered whether they would indeed pay less for insulin syringes or insulin cartridges for their pens or pumps because of the president. story pens   According to a Congressional analysis in September 2019, insulin averaged $34.75 per dose in the U.S.  a total that's almost 2.5 times higher than the average price in other countries. First, we'll lay out what was unequivocally true: Trump issued Executive Order on Access to Affordable Life-saving Medications during the July 24, 2020, signing event, and that directive authorized the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make certain changes regarding the cost of EpiPens for Americans with severe allergies and the cost of insulin for those who suffer from diabetes, specifically. It stated: Executive Order on Access to Affordable Life-saving Medications Department of Health and Human Services EpiPens The price of insulin in the United States has risen dramatically over the past decade. ... While Americans with diabetes and severe allergic reactions may have access to affordable insulin and injectable epinephrine through commercial insurance or Federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, many Americans still struggle to purchase these products. Medicare Medicaid Here's some more context: Medicare, the federal program that covers the majority of Americans over age 65 and those with disabilities, offers plans that help diabetic patients cover the cost of some insulin products. Meanwhile, policies for Medicaid, the government-run health insurance system for low-income people, vary state by state  variances that include whether or not the program covers the cost of diabetic enrollees' insulin, or to what extent. state by state Trump's directive pertained to "federally qualified health centers" (FQHC), which are about 1,400 community health care clinics nationwide that treat low-income patients on sliding fee scales and purchase discounted drugs from pharmaceutical companies under an existing federal program, known as 340B. The July 2020 executive order was worded like this: federally qualified health centers 1,400 340B   In other words, the president's order requires participants of the 340B Program to offer insulin at greatly reduced prices to patients with no or little insurance coverage, without providing specifics on how or when the change would take effect. Advisory Board, a news site for health care providers, said in a statement: "Only patients with low incomes; those with high cost-sharing requirements for insulin or epinephrine; those with high, unmet deductibles; and/or those without health insurance would be eligible for the discount." A news release from the HHS said: statement news release This will increase access to life-saving insulin and epinephrine for the patients who face especially high costs among the 28 million patients who visit FQHCs every year, over six million of whom are uninsured. For perspective, about 34.2 million Americans had diabetes as of 2018, which represented about 10.5 percent of the population, according to the American Diabetes Association. So, hypothetically, if the same proportion of people had diabetes within the FQHC population of 28 million patients (a total reported by the HHS), then Trump's executive order could help about 2.9 million people, depending on whether their insurance already covers the treatment. American Diabetes Association So to recap, in regard to the claim in question, it was true to state Trump signed an executive order in July 2020 that aimed to make it easier for low-income diabetic patients to pay for insulin. But nowhere in the federal document did the presidential administration explain its plan for implementing the change, nor the level to which insulin prices would drop. There was no proof that the order would allow any American to someday pay "pennies a day" on the protein hormone. We should note here: In addition to that previously explained executive order, a separate directive signed by Trump on July 24, 2020, touched on a yet-to-be-finalized initiative by the White House to relax international drug importation rules and added insulin to a list of prescription medications that can be imported from Canada. The president characterized that directive, too, as a positive step for people who want lower insulin costs. separate directive yet-to-be-finalized And that brings us to our final point: Much of what Trump celebrated in the July 2020 executive orders had been proposed by his administration prior to the signing ceremony but stalled amid opposition from pharmaceutical companies and political barriers. "[None] of these ideas put forth are new, or in fact any more implementable than before, especially without congressional action, an investor told FeircePharma, a trade publication for the pharmaceutical industry. FeircePharma For instance, in May 2020, Trump unveiled a plan to cap the cost of insulin for Medicare recipients at $35 per month beginning in 2021 (even that initiative would cost patients more than "pennies a day"). But as of this writing, it was unclear exactly how that directive would roll out, and when or if qualifying seniors with diabetes would notice a price difference. The Washington Post reported on July 24, 2020: May 2020 Washington Post The moves [by Trump] are largely symbolic because the orders are unlikely to take effect anytime soon, if they do so at all, because the power to implement drug pricing policy through executive order is limited. Voters will not see an impact before the November elections, and the drug industry is sure to challenge them in court. A couple days after the July signing ceremony, for example, Politico reported that representatives of major drug lobbies refused to meet with the president to discuss one of the four executive orders: a non-specific and controversial proposal to link Medicare payments for certain medicines to lower costs that people pay in other countries. After that refusal on industry leaders' part, investors told MarketWatch that the executive orders were "largely campaign fodder" and "come without the necessary force to meaningfully change prices in the U.S."  Politico reported meet controversial MarketWatch In sum, while it was truthful to claim Trump issued an executive order in July 2020 that was intended to lower the price of insulin for some Americans, it was misleading to claim that all diabetic patients would save money as a result of the directive  the directive only targeted low-income patients who are uninsured or underinsured and seek help from certain federal community health providers. Additionally, it was unclear as of this report when, if at all, that group would actually reap the benefit of the cost savings, and the estimated amount of such was unknown. It would be wrong to state based on available evidence that the executive order alone would drive down prices to "pennies a day." For those reasons, we rate this claim a "Mixture" of truth and falsehoods. White House. "Executive Order On Access To Affordable Life-saving Medications".
 24 July 2020. White House. "Executive Order On Lowering Prices For Patients by Eliminating Kickbacks To Middlemen".
 24 July 2020. White House. "Executive Order On Increasing Drug Importation To Lower Prices For American Patients".
 24 July 2020. White House. "Remarks By President Trump At Signing Of Executive Orders On Lowering Drug Prices".
 24 July 2020. Sanger-Katz, Margot. "As He Woos Drugmakers On Virus, Trump Demands Drug Price Controls".
 New York Times. 24 July 2020. Arter, Melanie. "Trump Says Executive Order Will Drop the Price of Insulin Down to Pennies a Day".
 CNSNews. 24 July 2020. National Conference of State Legislatures. "Diabetes Health Coverage: State Laws And Programs".
 10 January 2016. HHS.gov. "Trump Administration Announces Historic Action To Lower Drug Prices For Americans".
 24 July 2020. American Diabetes Association. "Statistics About Diabetes".
 Accessed 30 July 2020. White House. "Executive Order On Increasing Drug Importation To Lower Prices For American Patients".
 24 July 2020. Luhby, Tami. "Trump Administration Proposes Allowing Imports Of Certain Drugs From Canada".
 CNN. 18 December 2019. O'Donnell, Carl. "Explainer: Trump's Plan To Cut Drug Prices".
 Reuters. 27 July 2020. Abutaleb, Yasmeen and Josh Dawsey. "Trump Signs Executive Orders Aimed At Lowering Drug Prices In Largely Symbolic Move".
 Washington Post. 24 July 2020. Cohen, Joshua. "Trump's Executive Orders On Drug Pricing Contain Caveats And Limitations".
 Forbes. 25 July 2020. Ways And Means Committee Staff. "A Painful Pill To Swallow: U.S. Vs. International Prescription Drug Prices".
 September 2019. Reklaitis, Victor. "Trump's Meeting With Pharma Execs Called Off, As Analysts Say His Moves On Drug Prices Lack Bite". Prestigiacomo, Amanda. "Trump Issues Executive Orders To Slash Insulin, EpiPen Prices; End 'Global Freeloading'.
 The Daily Wire. 27 July 2020. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, vowed that if elected he would forgo the $400,000 annual presidential salary. So far as president Trump has stuck to that promise, handing over checks every three months for various projects overseen by different government departments. vowed In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation.As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months.Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research."  The president donated another quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an Emerging Leaders program focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this time to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in order to help battle the nation's opioid crisis.'Military Cemeteries'In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted:White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage. Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit:News the media didnt report today:Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims:And on 2 August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk's tweet:These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily.AnalysisThere were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims.Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone.Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House "spending report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!"Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation.The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office's Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary.Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows:The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause.... Its what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking! Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! Its so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and wheres the media coverage of this? Oh thats right, they dont cover anything good that the President does. So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today." However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk's viral tweets. The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump's intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president's salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind.The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods -- particularly the section that read as follows:While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries.The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation as being "in the first quarter," and simply replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.e., the entire yearly salary).According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South).A press release described the project in detail:The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred.There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump's donation had nothing to do with it. ConclusionThe claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false.Each of President Trump's actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation's biggest and most widely-read news outlets.The news media has not reported on the president's donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened.  In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland. donated Battlefield In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation. press release addiction program As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months. Washington Post Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research."  The president donated another quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an Emerging Leaders program focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this time to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in order to help battle the nation's opioid crisis. Veterans Affairs salary Associated Press 'Military Cemeteries' In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted: tweet White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage.    Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit: News the media didnt report today: Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018 @realDonaldTrump August 1, 2018 One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims:   And on 2 August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk's tweet: meme   These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily. Gateway Pundit Right Scoop Social News Daily Analysis There were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims. Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone. Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House "spending report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation. The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office's Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary. report Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows: message The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause. ... Its what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking!  Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! Its so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and wheres the media coverage of this? Oh thats right, they dont cover anything good that the President does.  So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today."  However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk's viral tweets.  The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump's intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president's salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind. here The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods -- particularly the section that read as follows: article While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries. The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation as being "in the first quarter," and simply replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.e., the entire yearly salary). According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South). press release A press release described the project in detail: The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred. There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump's donation had nothing to do with it.  Conclusion The claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false. Each of President Trump's actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation's biggest and most widely-read news outlets. The news media has not reported on the president's donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened. U.S. Department of the Interior. "Press Release -- Secretary Zinke Accepts President Trump's Q1 Salary as a Donation for National Park Service."
  3 April 2017. U.S. Department of the Interior. "Press Release -- President Trump's Salary and Matching Funds to Restore Antietam National Battlefield."
  5 July 2017. Lima, Cristiano.  "Trump Donates Third-Quarter Salary to HHS Opioid Efforts."
  Politico.  30 November 2017. Fahrenthold, David A.  "Trump Donates $100,000 of His Salary to a New Federal Grant Program for Infrastructure Projects."
  The Washington Post.  13 February 2018. O'Connell, Jonathan and David A. Fahrenthold, David A.  "10 Key Questions About the Ethical Issues Surrounding President Trump's Company."
  The Washington Post.  6 March 2018. Hoft, Jim.  "Trump Gives $400,000 to Repair Military Cemeteries -- Liberal Media Ignores the Story."
  The Gateway Pundit. 1 August 2018. The Right Scoop.  "Trump Just Donated His Presidential Salary to the Rebuilding of Military Cemeteries."
  1 August 2018. Granger, Aaron.  "Trump Donates His Salary to Rebuild Military Cemeteries -- Media Ignores Story."
  Social News Daily. 1 August 2018. White House Office.  "2018 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel."
  29 June 2018. White House Office.  "2017 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel."
  30 June 2017. Andrzejewski, Adam.  "Trump's Leaner White House Payroll Projected to Save Taxpayers $22 Million."
  Forbes.  2 July 2017. Reints, Renae.  "Trump Donated His 2018 Third-Quarter Salary to an Organization That Funds Alcoholism Research."
  Fortune.  25 January 2019.

 Sullivan, Kate. "Trump Donates Part of His Salary to Department of Homeland Security."
  CNN. 19 March 2019. "Trump Donates 3rd-Quarter Salary to Help Fight Opioid Crisis."
  The Associated Press. 26 November 2019. Updated to include information on President Trump's most recent salary donation. As President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress continued their high-stakes stand-off over raising the debt ceiling and other budget issues, Obama held a press conference to press his case that he's a reasonable guy. One of the main points of contention is whether an agreement should include tax increases of any kind, such as closing tax loopholes or tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans oppose raising taxes.During a press conference on July 15, 2011, Obama was asked if the negotiations would be going better if he had started making his case to the public months ago, pushing a proposal that included tax increases and spending cuts. Obama rejected the premise. You have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach. Eighty percent of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts. So the notion that somehow the American people aren't sold is not the problem, he said. The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically into various positions because they boxed themselves in with previous statements. We won't weigh in on Obama's diagnosis of being dug in, but we were interested in the poll numbers on whether the public supports a balanced approach or not.The most recent poll we found largely supported Obama's statement. A Gallup poll conducted July 7-10, 2011 posed the question this way:As you may know, Congress can reduce the federal budget deficit by cutting spending, raising taxes, or a combination of the two. Ideally, how would you prefer to see Congress attempt to reduce the federal budget deficit: only with spending cuts, mostly with spending cuts, equally with spending cuts and tax increases, mostly with tax increases, or only with tax increases?The answer only spending cuts got 20 percent. The other answers were mostly spending cuts, 30 percent; equal spending cuts and tax increases, 32 percent; mostly tax increases, 7 percent; only tax increases, 4 percent; unsure/other, 6 percent.We'll note that Obama counted in his favor people who favored only tax increases or who weren't sure, so he wasn't completely accurate. If you deduct those groups, only 70 percent support the balanced approach. But the poll did support his overall point.Other polls also showed support for Obama's statement, but not quite at an 80-percent level.A poll from Quinnipiac University conducted July 5-11, 2011, asked: Do you think any agreement to raise the national debt ceiling should include only spending cuts, or should it also include an increase in taxes for the wealthy and corporations?In this case, 67 percent favored including tax increases, while 25 percent favored spending cuts only. Another 8 percent were unsure.In June, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that most people, 46 percent, favored a combination of cuts and tax increases, compared with 26 percent who said cuts alone and 13 percent who said raise taxes. An ABC/Washington Postpoll from April found the number was higher, at 59 percent. We reviewed polls and consulted experts a few weeks ago for a fact-check onwhether people support tax increasesor not. Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who studies polls on taxation, told us polls usually show support for balanced approaches, particularly if people don't have to pay the higher taxes themselves. Generally, combinations of tax hikes and spending cuts are most popular. It seems fair to most people. Spending cuts are favored in the abstract. Tax hikes are favored as long as they don't affect me. Generally, people don't think anybody should have to pay more than a quarter of their income in total taxes, she said. Finally, a few other cautions on poll numbers.Pollsters have long noted that when you ask questions with different wording, you get different results. All the polls we looked at phrased the question slightly differently.A few recent polls also suggested that people find the whole debt ceiling debate confusing, or they aren't following it very closely. A Pew Research Center/Washington Postpoll from May asked people how well they felt they understood what would happen if the government does not raise the federal debt limit; 47 percent said not too well or not at all well. And the July Gallup poll found that 42 percent of respondents were following the issue not too closely or not at all. Getting back to Obama's statement, he said, You have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach. Eighty percent of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts. Even the best poll doesn't show support quite that high -- he would more accurately have accounted for the small numbers that support only tax increases or were unsure, putting the number at 70 percent. But his overall point is correct that polls show most Americans support a balanced approach when given a choice between cutting spending or raising taxes. So we rate his statement Mostly True. In late October 2021, a misleading copypasta meme spread on Facebook that attributed port bottlenecks and shipping delays to "California's liberal trucking laws." The meme circulated on various platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Here is a version of the meme that was posted to Facebook:   The meme above reads, in part: So ships are piling up at Long Beach waiting to get unloaded. The port is jammed full of containers with no place to stack more. The liberal media is blaming it on the trucking industry while the nation's store shelves are becoming bare ... Well there's more to the story. Could Gavin Newsom and California's liberal trucking laws be the blame ? ? The NEWS says the California port situation is caused by a driver shortage. Not so fast: It is in part caused by a California Truck Ban which says all trucks must be 2011 or newer and a law called AB 5 which prohibits Owner Operators. The two state laws mentioned are AB5, a 2019 law intended to prevent employers from wrongly classifying workers as contractors, and something called "California Truck Ban." The meme also mentions a September 2020 executive order by California Gov. Gavin Newsom that seeks to phase out fuel-burning vehicle engines by 2035 in an effort to combat global warming. AB5 executive order The meme is referencing congestion at the ports in San Pedro Bay in Southern California and the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which collectively handle an estimated 40 percent of the nation's imports. The back-up is resulting in something of a crisis in shipping delays right before the 2021 winter holidays. congestion 40 percent crisis The meme above attempts to lay the blame for the crisis at the feet of Newsom, along with California labor and environmental laws. But from a broad perspective, the disruption in the supply chain is a global phenomenon sparked by a confluence of major calamities in 2020 and 2021, including labor shortages, facility closures, and an increased e-commerce demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather, and a massive container ship that had become lodged in the Suez Canal for nearly a week. global phenomenon Here we will look at whether the two laws and executive order mentioned in the meme are to blame for the slowdown at the Southern California ports. There is no law called the "California Truck Ban." But from the description above  that "all trucks must be 2011 or newer"  it appears the post is referencing the California Truck and Bus Regulation. That regulation doesn't currently block registration of vehicles from the year 2010 and older, however. Regulation The Truck and Bus Regulation requires trucks serving the ports to have engines from 2010 or newer as of Jan. 1, 2023. If they don't, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) would deny registrations to non-compliant vehicles. But the rule, which was adopted in 2008, has taken effect gradually over several years. It's not new, whereas the situation at the L.A. and Long Beach ports in the fall of 2021 is acute. requires In an email, Stanley Young, spokesperson for the California Air Resource Board, told Snopes, "As of 2021 only trucks with engines older than 2005 would have their registration denied." Young added that 96 percent of the trucks currently serving the major ports in California are already compliant with the regulation. "Despite what you may have heard or read, there is simply no evidence to support any claims that the current congestion at our ports has any connection to the states efforts to clean up Californias trucks," Young stated. "Since trucks at major California ports have been required to have 2007 or newer engines since 2014, and since these engines are legal until at least 2023, its impossible that any shortage of vehicles at ports is the result of CARB regulations." Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) is a California law that went into effect in January 2020, although it has faced an onslaught of legal challenges preventing it from being implemented. The law is intended to prevent companies like Uber and Instacart from misclassifying so-called gig workers as independent contractors, rather than employees.  Truckers often operate under an "owner-operator" model, in which they own their own vehicles, which they then use to transport goods as contractors for trucking companies. Both the California Trucking Association (CTA) and freight transport company Cal Cartage Express filed legal challenges against AB 5. Cal Cartage lost its case but the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to decide whether to hear a petition by CTA. Until it does, AB 5 remains in limbo for the trucking industry. Matt Schrap, CEO of the the Harbor Trucking Association (which represents drayage truck companies serving the ports of L.A. and Long Beach) said it's not a shortage of truckers that's driving the delays, and pointing the finger at AB 5 doesn't take reality into account. Instead, Schrap said that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns spurred an explosion of online buying that ramped up sharply during the pandemic lockdowns, and the ports of L.A. and Long Beach don't have the infrastructure to handle the sudden influx. explosion "Its like jamming ten lanes of freeway traffic into five lanes," Schrap said in a phone interview with Snopes. Currently, the bte noire for truckers and trucking companies at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach is an excess of empty shipping containers piling up at the ports, which often block truckers from picking up and dropping off cargo. "Were struggling with these empty containers," Schrap said. "That is really whats working us over." Schrap said he expects that the situation will start to improve, because with the sudden attention on the issue, officials are taking steps to help resolve it, like placing fees on cargo ship companies that leave behind empty containers, and potentially allowing empty container stacking on empty parcels of land at the ports. placing fees But these are just Bandaids on a larger problem, which is that the Southern California ports need investment in infrastructure to prevent crises like these, Schrap stressed. "Were in this problem because of the underinvestment in the infrastructure that supports the American consumers buying habits," Schrap said. "It's a temporary solution to a longstanding problem." Newsom issued an executive order in September 2020 seeking to phase out gas-burning vehicles by making all new vehicles sold as of 2035 and beyond zero-emission. But Newsom's order wouldn't make the current fuel-powered trucks illegal as of 2035. The executive order explicitly states that while California will require new vehicles sold as of 2035 and beyond to be zero-emission, older vehicles will not be illegal to own and operate, and can still be purchased and sold. executive order A news release from the governor's office announcing the order states, "The executive order will not prevent Californians from owning gasoline-powered cars or selling them on the used car market." FreightWaves. "CTAs Last Hope To Protect California Trucking From AB5: US Supreme Court," 10 August, 2021, https://www.yahoo.com/now/ctas-last-hope-protect-california-184730483.html.  Goodman, Peter S., and Erin Schaff. Its Not Sustainable: What Americas Port Crisis Looks Like Up Close. The New York Times, 10 Oct. 2021. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/business/supply-chain-crisis-savannah-port.html. Koetsier, John. COVID-19 Accelerated E-Commerce Growth 4 To 6 Years. Forbes, 12 June 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/12/covid-19-accelerated-e-commerce-growth-4-to-6-years/. No SCOTUS Review of California Laws Impact on Trucking Industry. Reuters, 5 Oct. 2021, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/no-scotus-review-california-laws-impact-trucking-industry-2021-10-04/. Lynch, David J. Stubborn Supply Chain Woes Are Resisting Bidens Remedies. Washington Post, 26 October 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/26/supply-chain-ports-fees-biden/.  Swanson, Ana. Angling for a Merry Fishmas Despite Global Shipping Delays. The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/business/economy/global-shipping-delays-shortages.html. Updated to note AB 5 remains in limbo for the trucking industry pending legal actions.