Are the majority of cruise ships registered under foreign flags?
Snopes is still fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.  fighting Find out Read Submit Become a Founding Member CDC WHO As the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of March 2020 threatened to shut down businesses across America for an extended period of time, the U.S. government faced the difficult task of deciding which industries should be provided economic assistance to keep them afloat for the duration. Public sentiment in some quarters was strongly against government bailouts for businesses such as airlines and cruise companies, on the grounds that over the last several years many of the major operators had spent billions of dollars in profits buying up their own stock rather than paying down their debts. In USA Today, John M. Griffin and James M. Griffin wrote: strongly against Start with the airlines. Rather than using their profits from the past five years to pay off debts and save for a rainy day, the big four  American, United, Delta and Southwest  instead grew their combined liabilities to $166 billion, all while spending $39 billion on share repurchases. That number, which is only from the big four, is almost 80% of what theyre asking for now from U.S. taxpayers. Similarly, the three largest Cruise companies -- Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean -- have liabilities of $47.5 billion and engaged in share repurchases of $8 billion. Had these companies paid down liabilities instead of using stock repurchases to bid up their stock prices, they would have been far better prepared to weather this emergency. Of course, higher share prices made their stock options more valuable. This allowed top airlines executives to pay themselves $666 million in compensation over the five-year period. The top cruise executives managed to haul in $448 million. Now, taxpayers are unwillingly being called upon to bail out their profligate behavior. A widely circulated meme on social media offered another reason why cruise lines were supposedly unworthy of government bailouts -- because although they might be headquartered in the U.S., their ships were foreign-flagged in order to put them out of reach of U.S. law:  That nearly every major cruise line registers their ships somewhere outside the U.S. is hardly a disputable point. As a 2011 news report noted, only a single major cruise ship at the time was U.S.-flagged: news report [O]nly one major cruise ship -- NCL America's Pride of America -- is registered in the United States, according to data from CyberCruises.com. Most of the big boats fly Bahamian flags, but other popular registries include Panama, Bermuda, Italy, Malta and the Netherlands. In fact, according to Cruise Lines International Association, 90% of commercial vessels calling on U.S. ports fly foreign flags. The three cruise lines called out by name in the meme -- Disney, Celebrity, and Carnival -- do indeed engage in this practice. It's not difficult to verify that Disney cruise ships are registered in the Bahamas, Celebrity ships in Malta, and Carnival ships in Panama. Of course, the cruise industry and their critics offer differing reasons for why cruise ships are flagged in countries other than the U.S., with the former asserting that: Bahamas Malta Panama reasons CLIA [Cruise Lines International Association] maintains there are reasons for such policies: "There are many factors that determine where a cruise ship -- or for that matter, any maritime vessel -- is flagged. Those determinations are made by individual cruise lines and other ship operators based on varying factors including the capabilities of the flag to deliver the services needed; representation and reputation of the flag in the international shipping community; the performance of the flag state, which dictates how a ship is prioritized by port states; the pool of seafarers able to meet the needs of the flag; and the flag's fees/charges and taxes," the association said by e-mail. This can be viewed as a robust free-market debate. Some maintain burdensome U.S. regulations have forced cruise operators to plant their flags elsewhere, while others say these corporations are seeking to attract American dollars while skirting American safety and consumer protection laws. On the other hand, an academic paper by Caitlin E. Burke of the University of Florida about "Legal Issues Relevant to Cruise Ships" made no bones of observing that reflagging of ships had long been used as a means of avoiding U.S. federal taxes, labor and safety laws, environmental laws, lawsuits, criminal investigations, and other regulations: paper Aside from the majority revenue generated by U.S. passengers, cruise lines are independent of the U.S. economy. Even though nearly 75 percent of passengers are U.S. citizens, cruise line corporations and their ships are not traditionally American-owned or registered ... (Tomlinson, 2007) Cruise line companies are not concerned about increasing minimum wage, rising insurance premiums, or higher corporate taxes. Cruise lines escape federal taxes and labor laws by registering their corporations and vessels in foreign countries [such as] Panama, Liberia, and the Bahamas. In fact, employees of cruise lines are often mistreated due to lackadaisical labor laws. Worst of all, employees will find little to no recourse pursuing litigation. Likewise, a U.S. citizen passenger faces the same predicament. A vessels country of registration is commonly referred to as the "flag of convenience" (FOC). Flagging a ship under a foreign flag for the convenience of the cruise line is nothing new, nor is it rare. The majority of cruise ships today are registered to Panama, Liberia, or the Bahamas. It is important to pay close attention as many vessels within the same fleet are often registered to different countries. Carnival Corporation, for example, has flagged their cruise vessel Celebration under Panama and Destiny under the Bahamas. Cruise lines often avoid drawing attention to the FOC of by using the term "headquartered in Miami, Florida." It is important to understand that while the majority of these cruise lines have their headquarters in Miami, they are not registered in the U.S. Thus, U.S. laws do not apply and passengers are at the mercy of maritime law. That the practice of ship-reflagging is common and regular is undeniable. Whether cruise lines headquartered in the U.S. but operating ships registered in foreign countries "deserve" government bailouts in a time of pandemic is a subjective issue with no definitive answer, but certainly some critics have argued that they do not: critics Even in a crisis, companies with prudent balance sheets will survive and in time, thrive. Despite what politicians might tell you, the airplanes and ships of imprudent companies are physical property that will not suddenly disappear. They will fly or sail again under the same or different name, but hopefully with cheaper prices, better service and different executives. Like a college student sleeping off a hangover, a crisis is a time to sober up by removing debt from the system. Its not time for another drink. McGee, Bill.  "What Every Cruiser Should Know Before They Book."
  USA Today.  26 April 2011. McGee, Bill.  "Why Are Cruise Ships Registered in Foreign Countries?"
  USA Today.  11 December 2012. van Doorn, Philip.  "Airlines and Boeing Want a Bailout  But Look How Much Theyve Spent on Stock Buybacks."
  MarketWatch.  22 March 2020. Griffin, John M. and James M. Griffin.  "Coronavirus Bailout for Airlines and Cruise lines Is Socialism for the Undeserving Rich."
  USA Today.  20 March 2020. Burke, Caitlin E.  "A Qualitative Study of Victimization and Legal Issues Relevant to Cruise Ships."
  Accessed 23 March 2020.
Claim:  70% of the women who gave birth at Parkland Memorial Hospital in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, 2006] Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:  1. John F. Kennedy died there in 19632. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after3. Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later by coincidence On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day  every day) A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants.' Crikey, that's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas. According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million. The average patient in Parkland's maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay. OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do. Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE. The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child  her previous two were also born at Parkland. Her first two deliveries werefree and the Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost $200 to have them in Mexico. This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away. (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.) How long has this been going on? What are the long-term effects? Well, another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the U.S. illegally  now she is having her own child there as well. (That's right, she's technically a U.S. citizen.) These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, diapers and formula. Most of these things are available to American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable. Because these women are illegal immigrants they do not have to provide any sort of legitimate  identification  no proof of income. An American citizen would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income  an illegal immigrant need only claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word. My husband is a pilot for the United States Navy (yes, he fought in Iraq) and while the health care is good, we Navy wives don't get any of these perks! Car seats? Diapers? Not so much. So my question is this: Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens? Yes it does! As I mentioned, the care I have received is perfectly adequate but it's bare bones, meat and potato medical care  not top of line. Their (the illegals) medical care is free  simply because they are illegal immigrants? Once again, there is no way to verify their income. Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County earn less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the 'free' care is not so easy for Americans.) There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free treatment because they resided outside of Dallas County. So the hospital is going to sue them! Illegals get it all free! But U.S. citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this? As if that isn't annoying enough, the illegal immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a great injustice to her. In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement. Origins:  Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital is familiar even to many non-Texans as the site where both President John F. Kennedy and his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (who was himself shot by Jack Ruby), were transported for emergency life-saving procedures in November 1963. Now, in 2006, Parkland Memorial is well known for its maternity program, which includes nine prenatal clinics and employs 72 doctors training to  become obstetricians-gynecologists and 45 nurse-midwives. According to the Dallas Morning News, in 2005 Parkland Memorial staff delivered 15,590 babies, an average of more than 42 infants per day. In a pair of June 2006 articles, the Morning News reported that a recent patient survey indicated 70% of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants (while a similar New York Times article pegged the yearly tally for 2005 as "at least 56%").  The hospital spent $70.7 million delivering babies born there in 2004, with taxpayers covering about 40% of the costs ($31.3 million) directly, and federal and state funds (primarily Medicaid) making up the remainder.  Because of large payments from the Medicaid system, Parkland still ended 2004 with a $7.9 million surplus in obstetrics. A recent hospital analysis concluded that the average maternity ward patient at Parkland is a 25-year-old, married Hispanic woman giving birth to her second child.  The Parkland staff does not ask maternity patients whether they are illegal immigrants, so the preponderance of illegal aliens among this group has to be inferred through other means.)  (Under the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act [EMTALA], hospitals are obligated to provide care to pregnant women in need of emergency help, and those that fail to do so are subject to fines of up to $50,000 per violation and exclusion from Medicare and state health care programs.)  EMTALA Parkland's policies contrast with those of the public hospital system in neighboring Tarrant County: Uninsured Hispanic immigrants with uncertain immigration status have flocked in recent years to public hospital emergency rooms and maternity wards in Texas, California and other border states. Their care has swelled costs for struggling hospitals and increased the health care bills that fall to states and counties, giving ammunition to opponents of illegal immigration who complain of undue burdens on local taxpayers.  As a result, health care has become one of the sorest issues in the border states' debate over illegal immigration. Facing harsh criticism from residents, public hospitals are confronted with an uneasy decision: demand immigration documents from patients and deny subsidized care to those who lack them, or follow the public health principle of providing basic care to anyone who needs it.  In Texas, two of the biggest public hospitals chose differently.  The Parkland Health and Hospital System, which serves Dallas County, offers low-cost care to low-income residents with no questions asked about immigration status.  "I don't want my doctors and nurses to be immigration agents," said Dr. Ron J. Anderson, the president of Parkland. "We decided that these are folks living in our community and we needed to render the care." In Fort Worth, in neighboring Tarrant County, JPS Health Network requires foreign-born patients to show legal immigration documents to receive financial assistance in nonemergencies, like elective surgery and the treatment of routine or chronic illnesses. Executives said that their first responsibility was to legal residents, but that they were uncomfortable about having to make such distinctions. Administrators from both hospital systems indicated that some of the common assumptions made about immigrants who seek medical care at those facilities (and at other Texas hospitals) are misconceptions: While Texas border hospitals often get "anchor babies"  children of Mexican women who dart across the border to give birth to an American citizen  most illegal immigrants who go to major hospitals in Texas can show that they have been living here for years, said Ernie Schmid, policy director at the Texas Hospital Association. Many immigrant families have mixed status; often a patient with no documents has a spouse or children who are legal.  Most immigrant patients have jobs and pay taxes, through paycheck deductions or property taxes included in their rent, administrators at the Dallas and Fort Worth hospitals said. At both institutions, they have a better record of paying their bills than low-income Americans do, the administrators said.  The largest group of illegal immigrant patients is pregnant women, hospital figures show. Contrary to popular belief here, their care is not paid for through local taxes. Under a 2002 amendment to federal regulations, the births are covered by federal taxes through Medicaid because their children automatically become American citizens.  These cases are not affected by new regulations that went into effect on July 1 [2006] requiring Medicaid patients to provide proof of citizenship, Texas health officials said. They said they believed that only small numbers of illegal immigrants had received other Medicaid benefits.    Last updated:  25 August 2015     Sources:   Jacobsen, Sherry.  "Parkland Is Brimming with Babies."   Dallas Morning News.  11 June 2006.    Jacobsen, Sherry.  "Parkland Will Treat All Moms-to-Be."   Dallas Morning News.  12 June 2006.    Preston, Julia.  "Texas Hospitals' Separate Paths Reflect the Debate on Immigration."   The New York Times.  18 July 2006  (p. A1). Claim:  The U.S. government has agreed to allow China to exercise "eminent domain" as collateral for American debt.   Example:  [Turner, February 2009] The United States of America has tendered to China a written agreement which grants to the People's Republic of China, an option to exercise Eminent Domain within the USA, as collateral for China's continued purchase of US Treasury Notes and existing US Currency reserves! On February 11, Bloomberg Business News reported that China was seeking "guarantees" for its US Government debt (Story Here), and it now appears they got it. Well placed senior sources at the US Embassy in Beijing CONFIRM the formal written agreement was delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her recent trip to China. This means that in the event the US Government defaults on its financial obligations to China, the Communist Government of China would be permitted to physically take  inside the USA  land, buildings, factories, perhaps even entire cities  to satisfy the financial obligations of the US government. [Rest of article here.] here Origins:  The large amount of U.S. debt held by foreign countries such as China has long concerned many Americans, and especially so with the current climate of economic turmoil.  As the Washington Post noted: China is the biggest foreign holder of U.S. debt, which helped finance the spending binge the United States went on before the current economic crisis. Some experts have expressed concern that China's substantial holding of U.S. debt gives it increased leverage in dealings with Washington because any halt in Chinese purchases would make it more difficult to finance the government bailout and stimulus packages. Likewise, as Bloomberg news reported, some Chinese officals have opined that China should ask the U.S. for some economic guarantees as a prerequisite for additional purchases of U.S. securities: China will ask for a guarantee that the U.S. will support the dollar's exchange rate and make sure China's dollar-denominated assets are safe," said He [Zhicheng, an economist at Agricultural Bank of China]. But that's as far as the truth of the item cited in the example block above goes.  The notion that the U.S. has agreed to guarantee its foreign debt by granting China permission to enact "eminent domain" and "physically take land, buildings, factories, perhaps even entire cities" from the U.S. isn't even a sensible claim.   The concept of "eminent domain" in the United States refers to the right of the government to seize private property for public use in exchange for payment of fair market value.  (The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution mandates that "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.")  Thus the idea of enacting eminent domain as a form of debt repayment or guarantee isn't logical: It's akin to a debtor's offering to settle a $5,000 debt by agreeing to sell his creditor $5,000 worth of jewelry for $5,000  at the end of the day, the debtor hasn't given up anything, and his creditor still hasn't collected anything on his original loan amount. mandates Moreover, Executive Order 13406 ("Protecting the Property Rights of the American People") states that the the federal government must limit its use of the taking of private property "to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation" and "not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken." 13406 Aside from functional arguments, the common sense test applies: If the U.S. government had actually guaranteed, in writing, that China could seize private property within the U.S. to satisfy the financial obligations of the U.S. government, that information would be the biggest new story of the day.  So who is reporting this news?  Not any legitimate news outlet  the story appears only in the blog of former radio host Hal Turner (who has previously presented fictitious tales of politically outrageous subjects as actual occurrences, such as proffering fake Amero coins as proof of a secret conspiracy to merge the U.S., Mexico, and Canada into a single entity) and in hundreds of identical Internet replications. Hal Turner Amero Last updated:  8 March 2009    Corsi, Jerome R.  "Did Hillary Really Pledge U.S. Homes to China?"   WorldNetDaily.  2 March 2009.    Kessler, Glenn.  "Clinton Urges Continued Investment in U.S."   Washington Post.  23 February 2009  (p. A12). Claim:  Japanese scientists have successfully cloned a saber-tooth tiger.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, April 2014] Cloning of a Sabre-tooth tiger, real or not?  There are not enough credible sources for this story.   Origins:  In April 2014, the NewsHound web site published an article positing that scientists had, in a procedure similar to the one employed by characters in the fictional Jurassic Park novel and film, successfully cloned a "98% pure" saber-tooth tiger from a frozen specimen of that long-extinct species: article Japanese scientists have successfully cloned a 98 percent pure Saber-Tooth Tiger at the Japanese government-funded laboratory, Riken Center for Development Biology. The baby,  named "Ryu" is said to be in good health and is currently being monitored 24 hours a day by a team of 6 specialists. Tests are ongoing, but it has been confirmed that the baby is 98% pure Saber-Tooth. The team hope to begin work on the second cloned Saber-Tooth Tiger within the next 2 months and when the two reach maturity, they will be breed naturally. This will create a second generation with 98.4% pure Saber-Tooth DNA. The story was easily spotted as nothing more than a hoax for a variety of reasons, chief among them that the NewsHound web site is not a news site at all, and it has, in place of reporting on actual events, reproduced a number of other hoaxes and spoofs as if they were real news, such as long-debunked stories about a Chinese man suing his wife over giving birth to an ugly baby, Apple paying Microsoft [sic] a $1 billion debt all in nickels, a planetary alignment causing gravity on Earth to be negated for five minutes, and Google Earth helping to locate a woman who had been stranded on a desert island for seven years. ugly baby nickels gravity Google Earth Moreover, NewsHound's saber-tooth tiger clone article is itself just a thinly-altered retread of another fabricated story the site published a month earlier, the latter about British scientists' supposedly having cloned a dinosaur from preserved fossils. dinosaur   Last updated:  20 April 2014 Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. here On Inauguration Day, Kamala Harris made history several times over. In being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021, the outgoing California senator became the first Black person, first woman, and first person of South Asian heritage to be elevated to the vice presidency.  Inauguration Day The historic nature of her achievement was placed in stark context in a viral meme that showed Harris, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India and Jamaica, respectively, juxtaposed with a long list of official portraits of white men. (Charles Curtis, who served with Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933, had some Native American heritage and was therefore the first person of color to hold the office of vice president). Charles Curtis The meme also highlighted several purported landmarks in the slow progress of women's rights and racial desegregation in the United States, as follows: Dont understand why its a big deal that Kamala Harris is VP? Until Red box? She would have been enslaved. Until Blue box? She couldnt vote. Until Yellow box? She had to attend a segregated school. Until Green one? She couldnt have her own bank account.   The following screenshot shows a selection of instances of the meme on Facebook and demonstrates its popularity on social media in January 2021: popularity   The vice presidents highlighted in various colors were as follows (along with the dates of their tenure as vice president): Red: Andrew Johnson, March 4 to April 15,1865 Andrew Johnson Blue: Calvin Coolidge, March 4, 1921, to Aug. 3, 1923 Calvin Coolidge Yellow: Richard Nixon, Jan. 20, 1953, to Jan. 20, 1961 Richard Nixon Green: Spiro Agnew, Jan. 20, 1969, to Oct. 10, 1973 Spiro Agnew The claims made in the meme were therefore that: until Johnson's tenure as vice president (in 1865), Harris would have been enslaved due to her racial heritage; until Coolidge's tenure as vice president (1921 to 1923), she would have been denied the right to vote due to her gender; until Nixon's tenure as vice president (1953 to 1961), she would have been forced to attend a segregated school due to her racial heritage; and until Agnew's tenure as vice president (1969 to 1973), she would have been denied the right to her own bank account, due to her status as a married woman.  On the whole, the claims contained a high degree of historical accuracy, though in some cases they over-simplified certain discriminatory practices and made some relatively minor errors in identifying the vice president in office during certain major reforms. As a result, we're issuing a rating of "true." The following is our assessment of each of those claims.   The creator of the meme appears to have chosen the year 1865, and therefore the tenure of Johnson, because that is the year in which the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, was passed. The text of the amendment reads as follows:  text Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress passed the amendment in January 1865, while Johnson was vice president-elect to President-elect Abraham Lincoln, but it was not ratified by the states until December 1865, by which time Johnson had ascended to the presidency after Lincoln's assassination, leaving the vice presidency vacant for the duration of his presidency. So the sequence of events is a bit muddled, but it is certainly reasonable to place the 13th Amendment, and the abolition of slavery, during the Johnson era.  Until the passing of the 13th Amendment, Black people in the United States lacked legal protection against enslavement. That doesn't mean that all Black people before 1865 were slaves, but the vast majority were. Based on figures included in the 1860 U.S. Census (page 14), some 89% of Black people in the country at that time were slaves. page 14 Slavery was far more prevalent in the southern states, but on average, a Black woman in the U.S. shortly before the 13th Amendment had close to a 90% likelihood of being enslaved. From a human rights perspective, Black people had no legal or constitutional protection from slavery, which is likely the thrust of the point made in the meme.   The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was passed by Congress in June 1919 and ratified by the states in August 1920. The text of the amendment read: text The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. On both those dates, Thomas Riley Marshall was vice president, under President Woodrow Wilson. So the meme was incorrect in stating that women could not vote until the vice presidency of Calvin Coolidge. In fact, women voted for the first time in the November 1920 election, which saw Warren Harding and his running mate Coolidge elected president and vice president, respectively.  Thomas Riley Marshall That inaccuracy does not impinge upon the truth of the broader point being made in the meme, namely that Harris, as a woman, would not have been able to vote in the United States until the early 1920s. However, the meme does miss an important additional barrier to voting rights that Harris, as a Black woman, could have faced even after the passage of the 19th Amendment.  While the 15th Amendment in principle gave Black men the right to vote, and the 19th Amendment gave all women the right to vote, states continued to discriminate against Black voters by imposing obstacles such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and "grandfather clauses"  all of which were designed to suppress Black voters. 15th Amendment obstacles It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that such practices were prohibited by federal law, although many activists argue that present-day voter-ID rules continue the legacy of electoral restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on voters of color. Voting Rights Act argue   The creator of the meme appears to have selected the vice presidency of Nixon (1953 to 1961) because that was the period during which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools constituted a violation of the Equal Protection clause in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, in the landmark 1954 ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education. In a follow-up ruling in 1955, the court ordered school districts to arrange for the desegregation of public schools "with all deliberate speed."  declared follow-up ruling Most, though not all, schools were racially segregated in the 19th and early-20th centuries in the United States. So a Black student, such as Harris, would very likely have been forced to "attend a segregated school," as the meme claims. Brown vs. the Board of Education marked the beginning of the end of school segregation, but it did not bring about integration overnight. Over the course of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, state lawmakers and local authorities fought protracted and often bitter battles to resist the Supreme Court's clear mandate. battles So while the meme was right to point out that Black students would be very likely forced to attend segregated schools before the decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education, it's also the case that many Black students were forced to attend segregated schools for many years after the ruling, as well. What changed in 1954 was that the nation's highest court clearly declared that system of racial segregation to be unconstitutional.   The meme appears to refer to the enactment of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in the early 1970s, which made it illegal for financial services companies to discriminate against customers on the basis of anything other than their creditworthiness. The legislation stated that: stated It shall be unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction(1) on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex or marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract)... However, the law wasn't enacted until October 1974, when the office of vice president was vacant. Spiro Agnew resigned in late 1973, after he was charged with bribery and tax fraud, and his replacement, Gerald Ford, ascended to the presidency in August 1974, after Nixon resigned. So the meme is again mistaken on the precise sequence of events. While Agnew was vice president, banks could (and did) legally deny credit to a woman on the basis of extraneous considerations such as her marital status, her husband's income and credit history, and so on. and did The meme also somewhat overstated the restrictions in place before 1974. Women, including married women, could open their own bank accounts before the ECOA was passed, but often faced difficulty and discrimination in doing so. It was particularly difficult for women to obtain a line of credit or a credit card, in her own name. In 1972, the National Commission on Consumer Finance published a report that found the following common discriminatory practices in lending: report What the ECOA changed in 1974, and what the meme appears to allude to, is that banks and lenders could no longer legally engage in such discriminatory practices. Claim:  Letter from Judge David Kithil provides accurate line item criticisms of "Obamacare" health care reform legislation.  Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, November 2009] I have reviewed selected sections of the bill and find it unbelievable that our Congress, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, could come up with a bill loaded with so many wrong-headed elements. We do need to reform the health insurance system in America in order to make coverage affordable and available to everyone. But, how many of us believe our federal government can manage a new program any better than the bankrupt Medicare program or the underfunded Social Security program? Both Republicans and Democrats are equally responsible for the financial mess of those two programs. I am opposed to HB 3200 for a number of reasons. To start with, it is estimated that a federal bureaucracy of more than 150,000 new employees will be required to administer HB3200. That is an unacceptable expansion of a government that is already too intrusive in our lives. If we are going to hire 150,000 new employees, let's put them to work protecting our borders, fighting the massive drug problem and putting more law enforcement/firefighters out there." Other problems I have with this bill include: Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally. Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts. Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN). Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?) Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees. Page 272. section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age. Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception. Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order. Finally, it is specifically stated this bill will not apply to members of Congress. Members of Congress are already exempt from the Social Security system and have a well-funded private plan that covers their retirement needs. If they were on our Social Security plan, I believe they would find a very quick "fix" to make the plan financially sound for the future." Honorable David Kithil Marble Falls, Texas.  Origins:  A number of similar pieces presenting lists of line item criticisms of a pending health care reform bill (H.R. 3200) began circulating on the Internet in mid-2009, and they continue to circulate widely three years later as arguments to oppose the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as "Obamacare." The versions of this item that continue to be spread via e-mail forwards and online postings are wrong in nearly every particular, however:  Although this list is commonly attributed as originating with a letter sent to Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana by Dr. Stephen E. Fraser, an Indianapolis anesthesiologist, or as a letter sent to the River Cities Tribune by David Kithil, a former county judge in Marble Falls, Texas, it is actually the work of Peter Fleckenstein, who issued Peter Fleckenstein the list as a series of Tweets and posted it to his blog in July 2009.  The bill referenced in this list, America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200), was never passed by Congress.  A   completely different bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), became the basis for what is now known as "Obamacare."  Many of the entries in the list are therefore irrelevant and outdated, as they address aspects of health care reform legislation that were never enacted by Congress (particularly the "public option" for a government insurance plan). H.R. 3200 H.R. 3590  Virtually every statement included in this list is exaggerated, misleading, inaccurate, or outright erroneous, as detailed below:    The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally. This is false.  The PPACA, as enacted, doesn't "provide insurance" to anyone  it institutes some regulations on the insurance industry to make medical insurance more broadly available and affordable to Americans, and it requires that Americans enroll in PPACA-qualified medical plans or pay a penalty, but everyone is still responsible for obtaining (and paying for) their own insurance coverage.   Moreover, the section of the unpassed HB 3200 bill referenced in the above statement is 152. PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH CARE, which simply states that "[e]xcept as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act and by subsequent regulations consistent with this Act, all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services."  It doesn't explicity grant or authorize government funds for providing illegal immigrants with health care or health insurance, and another section of the bill specifically states that  "Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."  The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts. This is false. The section of HB 3200 referenced here does nothing more than attempt to provide a framework for simplifying the use of electronic payments for health services, emulating the way that many consumers currently use to make a variety of other payments (e.g., utilities, mortgages, credit card balances).   The bill simply calls for the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to set standards for electronic administrative transactions that would "enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice."  Nothing in this section grants the government "real-time access to an individual's bank account" or the "authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts."  The bill doesn't even require that consumers use an electronic payment system  it simply seeks to make that an option for those who want to use it.   The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN). This statement is misleading, as the section of HB 3200 referenced here is SEC. 164. REINSURANCE PROGRAM FOR RETIREES, which addresses "retirees and ... spouses, surviving spouses and dependents of such retirees" who are covered by "employment-based [health benefit] plans."  It does not specifically provide for subsidizing health insurance for "all union members, union retirees and community organizations"; it sets up a new federal reinsurance plan for any retirees and their spouses who are covered by any employer plan, not just those who are covered under plans run by unions or community groups.  The reinsurance would be available to any "group health benefits plan that ... is maintained by one or more employers, former employers or employee associations."  The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?) This statement misleadingly tries to make HB 3200 sound ridiculous by deliberately eliding the end of the statement it quotes.  What the bill actually says is that"The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for purposes of section 55."  Section 55 is a reference to the Alternative Minimum Tax, and the purpose of this portion of the bill is to mitigate the effects that new health care-related taxes would have on persons making over $350,000 a year.   Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees. This is false. The section of the bill referenced here is an updating of the physician fee schedule for Medicare services, which neither states that "all doctors will be paid the same regardless of specialty" nor that the "government will set all doctors' fees."  All this section does is slightly revise the formula used for determining how much doctors are reimbursed for providing Medicare services, depending upon which of two categories those services fall under.   Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age. This is false. The section referenced here is one which does nothing more than call for a study to determine whether certain classes of hospitals incur higher costs than other hospitals for the cancer-related care they deliver, with the aim of providing "an appropriate adjustment [in payments] "to reflect those higher costs." This section in no way "rations care" provided by "cancer hospitals" based on a patient's age (or any other factor); it simply seeks to pay some hospitals more to compensate for their higher costs in treating cancer patients.  The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception. This is mostly false. As noted by FactCheck, forbids hospital expansion "only for rural, doctor-owned hospitals that have been given a waiver from the general prohibition on self-referral. It does not apply to hospitals in general. The bill provides for exceptions to even this limited expansion ban."   The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. This is false. This statement references a much-distorted portion of the bill that would allow for Medicare to cover voluntary counseling sessions for seniors with their doctors to discuss aspects of end-of-life care such as hospice care, DNR orders, life-sustaining treatments, living wills, and the like (a form of counseling not previously covered by Medicare).  Nothing about such counseling sessions would be mandatory, for Social Security recipients or anyone else.   The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order. This is false. The bill does not "specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order."  It merely defines an "end-of-life order" (i.e., an order for life-sustaining treatment) as a document "signed and dated by a physician [that] effectively communicates the individual's preferences regarding life sustaining treatment."  It is specifically stated this bill will not apply to members of Congress. This is false. HB 3200 did not contain a provision stating that it would "not apply to members of Congress."  The bill likely would have had little or no effect on members of Congress because they belong to a class of federal worker who have the benefit of choosing from a variety of subsidized insurance plans offered through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, but the same requirements for obtaining and having health insurance would have applied to them just as much to other citizens.  The version of the PPACA that was actually passed did indeed require lawmakers to give up the insurance coverage previously provided to them through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and instead purchase health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created.  Variations:  A later version of this piece was prefaced with the false claim that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act limits the amount of Medicare coverage provided to those over the age of 75 or 76.  This claim is covered in a separate article on this site: separate PLEASE PASS THIS OUTRAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST!!! THIS should be readby everyone, especially important to those over 75.......If you areyounger, then it applies to your parents. Your hospital Medicare admittance has just change under Obama Care. Youmust be admitted by your primary Physician in order for Medicare to payfor it! If you are admitted by an emergency room doctor it is treated asoutpatient care where hospital costs are not covered. This is only the tipof the iceberg for Obama Care. Just wait to see what happens in 2013 &2014! Age 76 Today, I went to the Dr. for my monthly B12 shot that I have beengetting for a number of years. The nurse came and got me, got out theneedle filled and ready to go then looked at the computer and got veryquiet and asked if I was prepared to pay for it. I said no that myinsurance takes care of it. She said, that Medicare had turned it down and went to talk to my Dr.about it. 15 minutes later she came back and said, she was sorry but theyhad tried everything they could but Medicare is beginning to turn manythings away for seniors because of the projected Obama Care coming in. Shewas brushing at tears and said, "Someday they too will get old", I am sovery sorry!! Please for the sake of many good people ... be informed please.YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS. Last updated:  11 March 2014 How many Americans make less than $250,000 a year? According to tax statistics, its a pretty overwhelming number.President Barack Obama has been making the most of that statistic as he promotes what he calls the Buffett Rule.Florida, I've told you where I stand, Obama said at a campaign stop in Boca Raton on April 10, 2012. So now it's time for members of Congress to tell you where they stand. In the next few weeks we're going to vote on something we call the Buffet Rule.Obamas proposal is that people who have income of $1 million or more per year should be required to pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent.And if we do that, then it makes it affordable for us to be able to say for those people who make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families do, then your taxes don't go up, Obama said.Under current law, many high earners pay significantly less than 30 percent if their income comesfrom investmentsinstead of earnings.Critics of the Buffett Rule note that it wont bring in enough income to significantly dent the budget deficit. Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the president wanted the rule to support the principle of tax fairness but conceded getting the rule passed would be an uphill battle in Congress.Here, we wanted to fact-check Obamas statement that 98 percent of American families make less than $250,000 a year.The White Houses prepared materials on the Buffett Rule included statistics released annually by the Internal Revenue Service that supported the point.Using statistics from the IRS website, we found that 137,988,219 tax returns out of 140,494,127 -- or 98.2 percent -- reported adjusted gross income of less than $250,000 a year in 2009, the most recent data available.We rate the claim True. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia has courted controversy on various issues by promoting QAnon conspiracy theories, alongside a history of anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic remarks. Years-old views, including a Facebook interaction in which she agreed with a comment that the Parkland shooting was a "false flag" staged event, and a video in which she pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories, have been unearthed. Marjorie Taylor Greene courted controversy interaction 9/11 conspiracy theories One post from 2018 in particular was reported on by Media Matters for America, a watchdog group, where she speculated about a conspiracy surrounding the November 2018 wildfires in California. In the now-deleted post, Greene theorized that a space-based solar generator, used in a clean-energy experiment with the goal of replacing coal and oil, could have beamed the sun's energy back to Earth and started the fires. We have covered similar claims surrounding the wildfires before. reported now-deleted theorized similar claims She said, "there are too many coincidences to ignore" and "oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires."   Greene also speculated that a range of people or groups were involved in this fire, including former California Gov. Jerry Brown, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and Rothschild Inc., an investment firm. She said that Roger Kimmel, who was on the board of PG&E, was also "Vice Chairman of Rothschild Inc," and "If they are beaming the suns energy back to Earth, I'm sure they wouldn't ever miss a transmitter receiving station right??!! I mean mistakes are never made when anything new is invented. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. Could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don't know. I hope not! That wouldn't look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren or Jerry Brown who sure does seem fond of PG&E." The Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family, have long been the targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claiming that Jewish people are in control of the entire world. While Greene specifically did not use the words "Jewish space laser," she heavily implied that the Rothschilds were involved in the laser conspiracy. targets An investigation showed that the California wildfires of 2018 were ignited by PG&E power lines, and then spread with the help of warm temperatures, dry vegetation, and strong winds. showed In late January 2021, CNN reported that dozens of posts from 2018 and 2019 had been removed from Greene's Facebook page. removed Given that Greene did not directly state that "Jewish lasers" caused the fires, but did speculate that laser beams somehow connected to the Rothschild investment firm were a cause, we rate this claim as "Mixture." For years Facebook users have been seeing posts advertising giveaways for the Kroger grocery store chain such as "Get $55 in Free Groceries" coupon offers.  However, such posts are just versions of the common "free coupon" or "free gift card" scams that frequently plague social media. On more than one occasion the Kroger Company has taken to Facebook to warn customers that these coupon offers are not an authorized promotion and to advise them not to visit sites promoting them: Facebook  These fake coupon and gift card offers are typically scams that promise rewards to anyone who follows a simple three-step process: Share the message on Facebook, leave a comment, and like the message. These three steps ensure the scam message circulates to thousands of people on Facebook. @SocialNewsDaily That offer is a scam -- we are not affiliated w/ that website. Our Digital Coupons can be found at https://t.co/rvO3m1IXTf. @SocialNewsDaily https://t.co/rvO3m1IXTf  Kroger Support (@KrogerSupport) October 15, 2014 October 15, 2014  Previous versions of the scam, for example, featured a similar message that invaded Facebook promising a $250 gift card. The message redirected to a web page that was not affiliated with Kroger despite the fact that it was adorned with the company's logo:  This page instructed shoppers to follow "three simple steps" in order to get a free gift card. Once the steps were completed, however, users were not greeted with a coupon code. Instead, they were asked to fill out a brief survey and provide personal information such as home address, telephone number, e-mail address, and date of birth. Users were also required to sign up for credit cards or enroll in subscription programs in order to obtain their "free" gift cards. Kroger has repeatedly warned their customers not to fall victims to this form of scam:   These fraudulent surveys are quite popular on Facebook, and if you frequently use that social network there is a good chance that you'll run into one of these survey scams again. A July 2014 article from the Better Business Bureau lists key factors for identifying fraudulent Facebook posts: article Don't believe what you see. It's easy to steal the colors, logos and header of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure there's a link to their privacy policy. When in doubt, do a quick web search. If the survey is a scam, you may find alerts or complaints from other consumers. The organization's real website may have further information. Watch out for a reward that's too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. Patterson, Emily.  "Customer Survey Scam Lures Victims with Gift Card."
  Better Business Bureau.  4 July 2014. A meme of uncertain origin alerted readers in March 2019 to the growth of the Muslim population within the U.S., warning that "in twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President":  The literal interpretation of this message  that by the year 2040 Muslims will comprise a large enough proportion of the U.S. population they could elect a particular person to the U.S. presidency regardless of how the rest of the country voted  is woefully wrong according to current estimates and projections. The Pew Research Center estimated in January 2018 that about 3.45 million Muslims of all ages were living in the U.S. in 2017, constituting about 1.1% of the total U.S. population. Pew also projected that by 2050  well more than the 20-year period posited by the meme  the U.S. Muslim population would reach 8.1 million, or 2.1% of the nations total population. estimated While 2.1% of the total population may constitute a significant voting bloc, obviously such a bloc would not be nearly large enough to determine the results of a nation-wide election all on its own. Even under the United States' electoral college system for electing presidents, which does not directly depend on popular vote totals, a candidate would still require the support of at least 23 percent of voters to reach the White House. Even that modest figure is more than 10 times greater than the projected Muslim proportion of the U.S. population in 2050. electoral college Moreover, even the modest Muslim population is at a disadvantage when it comes to the electoral college system, as Muslims are not evenly distributed around the U.S. According to Pew, some metropolitan areas such as Washington, D.C., have sizable Muslim communities, and "certain states, such as New Jersey, are home to two or three times as many Muslim adults per capita as the national average." But other states are home to far fewer Muslims. Regardless, without radical changes in immigration laws and patterns (or fecundity), it's simply not plausible that "in twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President." Even if such a huge shift in the religious make-up of the U.S. population were possible in such a relatively short timeframe, it's unclear what readers could or should do in response to the meme's exhortation for them "to make a difference." Repeal the First Amendment's religious liberty protections in order to bar Muslims from voting? Encourage non-Muslim women to engage in a "baby race" to out-populate Muslims? Pass legislation against demographics? For those truly curious about Muslim voting patterns in the U.S., we note the Pew Research Center reported in November 2018 that, "Many more U.S. Muslims identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party than the GOP (66 % vs. 13 %), but the share who are Republican has held steady over the last 10 years, including after the election of President Donald Trump ..." So Muslim voters could conceivably tip an election in favor of a particular major-party candidate in conjunction with that party's base of voters, but they will not be sufficiently numerous to elect a candidate on their own any time in the next few decades. voting patterns https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/03/new-estimates-show-u-s-muslim-population-continues-to-grow/ https://www.npr.org/2016/11/02/500112248/how-to-win-the-presidency-with-27-percent-of-the-popular-vote https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/06/republicans-account-for-a-small-but-steady-share-of-u-s-muslims/ Mohamed, Besheer.  "Republicans Account for a Small But Steady Share of U.S. Muslims."
  Pew Research Center.  6 November 2018. Mohamed, Besheer.  "New Estimates Show U.S. Muslim Population Continues to Grow."
  Pew Research Center.  3 January 2018. Kurtzleben, Danielle.  "How to Win the Presidency with 23 Percent of the Popular Vote."
  NPR.  2 November 2016. Editor's note: Shortly after this article was published, U.S. President Donald Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act. You can read more about Trump's veto here from the Associated Press. The original article continues below. Associated Press House Resolution 6395, or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA), was surprisingly controversial during the final weeks of 2020. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to veto the military budget bill, which passed the House and Senate with more than a two-thirds majority vote, because it did not call for the removal of Section 230, an unrelated piece of legislation that provides internet publishers legal immunity from third-party content.  threatened to veto Section 230 On Dec. 22, 2020, conservative commentator Chuck Callesto claimed that there was another reason Trump might want to veto the bill. Callesto wrote that the NDAA contained a provision that "Nullifies the President's use of the Insurrection Act."   While Callesto presents his claim as if he is quoting directly from the bill, the phrase "nullifies the President's use of the Insurrection Act" does not appear anywhere in the NDAA (which numbers 1,480 pages, not 5,893 as Callesto claimed), the full text of which can be found here.  here Insurrection Act House Amendment 833 It's a bit of a moot point, however, as this amendment did not make it into the final bill. As of this writing, the NDAA does not include any language pertaining to the Insurrection Act.  The Hill reported on Dec. 6 that the amendment pertaining to the Insurrection Act was removed as Congress debated the NDAA: reported The NDAA also includes a modest rebuke of Trumps use of Pentagon funding on his southern border wall. The compromise includes House-passed language capping emergency military construction spending at $100 million annually for domestic projects. Trump took $3.6 billion from military construction funds to build the wall. The compromise jettisoned some rebukes of Trump, including House-passed language to restrict a presidents Insurrection Act powers and block funding for a nuclear test. But this year stands in stark contrast to last year, when most of House Democrats efforts to box in Trump on defense policy were stripped from the final product. In summary, the viral tweet claiming that the NDAA "nullified" the Insurrection Act is based on a House amendment proposed in July that would have restricted (not nullified) the president's use of the Insurrection Act. This amendment, which would have required the president to make certifications to Congress before invoking the Insurrection Act, did not make it into the final form of the legislation.