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pomt-13911 | You can’t get on an airplane, but more than 2,000 people on that list have been able to buy a gun. | mostly false | /california/statements/2016/jun/24/john-garamendi/gun-claim-california-congressman-doesnt-fly/ | During the chaos of a sit-in protest by Democrats on the House floor this week, California Rep. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, delivered an impassioned, unscripted plea to tighten America’s gun laws. The rare and sometimes raucous demonstration came in the wake of the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting. Garamendi urged a vote on the proposed ‘No fly, no buy’ legislation to ban individuals on the FBI’s "no fly" list from legally purchasing guns. That list is a subset of the FBI’s much larger terrorist watch list. Estimates place about 10,000 Americans on the terrorist watch list and a small fraction on the no fly list. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of individuals from other countries are estimated to be on the comprehensive list. During his speech, Garamendi made a claim about people tied to terrorism buying guns in the U.S. "You can’t get on an airplane, but more than 2,000 people on that list have been able to buy a gun. This is not only crazy; it is downright dangerous," Garamendi told his colleagues on June 22, 2016. Rep. Garamendi makes the claim we fact-checked at the 4:10 minute mark in this video. With his airplane reference, Garamendi appears to be referring to the no fly list. We decided to check whether 2,000 people on that smaller tally have successfully purchased guns in the U.S. Sorting out the facts A U.S. Government Accountability Office analysis of FBI data shows nearly 2,500 successful applications for firearms by individuals on the terrorist watch list over the past decade. Garamendi’s spokesman pointed us to this GAO analysis. We fact-checked a similar statement in December by California Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena. After the San Bernardino shooting, he said, "Since 2004, more than 2,000 suspected terrorists have legally purchased weapons in the United States." We rated Thompson’s claim Mostly True, relying on a similar GAO analysis. We noted, however, that an audit showed many people still on the list are no longer suspected of having ties to terrorism, bringing into question the term "suspected terrorists." The GAO analysis does not say how many people on the smaller no fly list applied for firearms. The office has said in the past it was not able to share that information because the Transportation Security Administration "considers the no-fly list numbers sensitive information," according to a December fact check by the Washington Post. It’s safe to assume, however, that there have been far fewer guns purchased by people on the smaller no fly list than the larger one. We asked Garamendi’s spokesman to further clarify the congressman’s comments, but we have not yet heard back. Our ruling Rep. John Garamendi said this week "You can’t get on an airplane, but more than 2,000 people on that list have been able to buy a gun." He appears to be talking about the TSA’s ‘no fly’ list. Garamendi connected the right number with the wrong register. His claim has a wisp of truth in that people on the larger terrorist watch list, including the much smaller no fly list, have made more than 2,000 successful firearm purchases over the past decade. But it strains reason, and seems mathematically impossible, that most of those purchases came from people on the no fly list. We rate Garamendi’s claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | John Garamendi | null | null | null | 2016-06-24T23:05:48 | 2016-06-22 | ['None'] |
goop-02355 | Justin Timberlake Signing No-Nudity Clause For Super Bowl? | 3 | https://www.gossipcop.com/justin-timberlake-no-nudity-clause-super-bowl-contract-halftime-show/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Justin Timberlake Signing No-Nudity Clause For Super Bowl? | 1:43 pm, October 12, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01563 | Nicole Kidman Upset About Keith Urban Working With Sophie Monk? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/nicole-kidman-keith-urban-sophie-monk-music-working/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Nicole Kidman Upset About Keith Urban Working With Sophie Monk? | 5:57 pm, February 15, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12777 | The sanctions that we put on (Russia) for the Crimea annexation and meddling in Ukraine ... have absolutely crushed the ruble by 50 percent. And GDP from 2014 to 2016 is 50 percent down in Russia, as well. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2017/feb/21/anthony-tata/how-have-sanctions-impacted-russias-economy/ | Since President Donald Trump took office, the Russian military has patrolled the U.S. East Coast with a spy ship, buzzed an American warship with a fighter jet in the Black Sea, and defied an arms control treaty by deploying a new cruise missile. These sorts of military exercises aren’t far out of the ordinary, but they have drawn more attention than usual amid heightened concern about Trump’s ties to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin is testing Trump’s response, just as any country would when its adversary gets a new leader, said CNN national security commentator Anthony Tata, a former Army brigadier general and novelist. Another explanation, Tata said, is Putin is trying to divert attention from Russia’s struggling economy. "Putin is our enemy, there’s no question about that, and his country is imploding," Tata said on CNN Feb. 19. "The sanctions that we put on them for the Crimea annexation and meddling in Ukraine, so they could get more natural resources down there … have absolutely crushed the ruble by 50 percent. And GDP from 2014 to 2016 is 50 percent down in Russia, as well." Speculation abounds regarding whether Trump might roll back sanctions against Russia or soften the U.S. position on Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, so we were curious about Tata’s claim that the sanctions have damaged the Russian economy. Tata has the general trend right — Russia’s economy is struggling, no question — but his numbers are slightly off. Additionally, experts said sanctions may have impacted the Russian economy, but not nearly as much as the drop in oil prices worldwide. Numbers are close Tata claims 50 percent drops for both Russia’s currency and gross domestic product since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, a region of Ukraine. Former President Barack Obama's administration first launched sanctions against Russia in response in March 2014. The European Union soon followed with its own sanctions. Separately, Obama imposed additional sanctions in late 2016, after U.S. intelligence agencies determined Russian actors interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Starting with Russia’s currency, the ruble has lost significant value since the 2014 sanctions were put in place. In February 2014, one ruble was worth about 2.8 cents. Then the value dropped steeply over the next couple years, reaching a low point of about 1.2 cents per ruble in January 2016. That’s an approximately 57 percent drop. However, despite the fact that the sanctions remain in place, the ruble has steadily creeped up over the past year, reaching a value of 1.7 cents per ruble as of Feb. 21, 2017. That’s about 40 percent less than the value before the sanctions went into effect. Russia’s GDP has also fallen over the past couple years. Tata specifically mentioned 2014-16. Russia’s GDP was $2.053 trillion (in U.S. dollars) in 2014, according to the World Bank, dropping to $1.331 trillion in 2015 — a drop of about 35 percent. Adjusted for inflation, however, the drop was more like 3.7 percent because of the struggling ruble. Russia’s 2016 GDP is not yet available, but the Russian government has reported very little change from 2015. Effect of the sanctions The U.S. sanctions against Russia targeted specific individuals, firms and sectors close to Putin. For example, they froze U.S.-held assets that belong to some major Russian companies and banks. Experts had mixed opinions about the extent of the sanctions’ impact on Russia’s economy compared with other factors, notably falling oil prices. Declining oil prices worldwide since 2012 are the primary reason for Russia’s economic woes given the country’s dependence on oil revenue and exports, said Susanne Wengle, a University of Notre Dame professor who studies Russia’s political economy. The Russian government’s revenue is tied to oil prices, so a struggling oil industry significantly affects both the private and public sector, Wengle said. In its long-term budget projections, Russia assumed oil prices above $100 per barrel, but in 2016, prices sometimes dropped below $30. If the sanctions weren’t in place, "the Russian economy would likely have struggled just as much," she said. Beyond oil, Russia strained its budget by intervening in Crimea and depleting its reserves during the global financial crisis in 2008-09, said Sarah Wilson Sokhey, a University of Colorado, Boulder, professor who studies Russian politics and its economy. Although Sokhey doesn’t think the sanctions have had a huge impact on the economy as a whole, she said certain individuals who do international business or who import certain products, especially foods, have taken a hit. For example, Russia banned importing European cheeses as a counter-sanction, so local cheesemakers had to make their own brie instead of getting it from France. "It’s not a trivial thing," Sokhey said of the sanctions. "The Russian government would like to get rid of them, but it’s not something that is seriously hurting them or leading to widespread discontent." Mitchell Orenstein, a University of Pennsylvania professor and expert on the political economy in Eastern Europe, said he believes sanctions have significantly impacted the Russian economy by massively limiting foreign investment in Russia. The sanctions exacerbate the oil crisis by limiting Russian access to technology and capital. "Sanctions are certainly a big part of the economic decline in Russia, which explains why President Putin has made it such a high priority to get rid of sanctions," Orenstein said. "It makes it much less attractive for companies to do business in or with Russia." The International Monetary Fund has said international sanctions and the oil price drop were "dual shocks" to the Russian economy. The organization estimated that all sanctions against Russia for its activity in Ukraine, as well as Russia’s own counter-sanctions, could reduce inflation-adjusted GDP by up to 1.5 percent. For a more thorough rundown of economic analyses regarding the impact of sanctions on Russia, see this Feb. 17, 2017, report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. In an email, Tata told PolitiFact that he did not mean sanctions are the only cause of Russia’s economic problems. Rather, he was making a broader point that Putin is trying to shift eyes away from his country’s economic issues. "Of course, there are other factors, but Putin despises the West in part because of the sanctions," he said. Our ruling Tata said, "The sanctions that we put on (Russia) for the Crimea annexation and meddling in Ukraine ... have absolutely crushed the ruble by 50 percent. And GDP from 2014 to 2016 is 50 percent down in Russia, as well." Russia’s ruble fell more than 50 percent in the year following the start of sanctions in 2014, but it started to regain value in 2016. There are no GDP figures yet for Russia in 2016, but from 2014 to 2015, it fell by about 35 percent. It seems a drop in oil prices are the main driver of Russia’s problems. But sanctions play at least some role — though it’s hard to evaluate exactly how much given the country’s oil crisis. Tata is right that Russia’s economy has struggled in recent years, though his numbers are a little off. More critically, sanctions are only part of the reason for Russia's economic troubles. We rate his statement Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/3dbd454b-ee60-4320-8035-7ea7a751eade | null | Anthony Tata | null | null | null | 2017-02-21T17:00:07 | 2017-02-19 | ['Russia', 'Ukraine'] |
tron-01524 | Seattle Employees Ask for Reduced Hours | truth! & misleading! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/seattle-employees-ask-for-reduced-hours/ | null | government | null | null | null | Seattle Employees Ask for Reduced Hours | Aug 1, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01291 | Student Asked to Change Paper on Jesus | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/jesus-paper/ | null | education | null | null | null | Student Asked to Change Paper on Jesus | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02494 | The Republican leadership in the House has refused to address the issues that matter the most to Rhode Island, such as passing a jobs bill. | pants on fire! | /rhode-island/statements/2014/feb/16/jonathan-boucher/top-rhode-island-democrat-says-republicans-us-hous/ | In this era of high unemployment, it's always about jobs. The issue came up again Jan. 31 when Jonathan Boucher, executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, published a commentary in The Providence Journal attacking the argument by Republican Ian Prior that the state needs Republicans in its congressional delegation, now all Democratic. Boucher argued that the idea of "replacing our delegation with a bunch of Republican freshmen," which wasn't exactly Prior's argument, "is completely absurd." "The House Republicans’ failure and inability to govern caused the first government shutdown in 16 years. The Republican leadership in the House has refused to address the issues that matter the most to Rhode Island, such as passing a jobs bill, extending unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, and passing comprehensive immigration reform." In that list of alleged GOP failures, one stood out to a reader, who emailed us a list of jobs bills that, he said, the Republican-controlled House has, in fact, passed. We were intrigued and decided to see whether Boucher's jobs claim was correct. The list has lots of bills with the word "jobs" in the title, but that doesn't mean the proposals would actually create jobs. In addition, Republicans and Democrats tend to have different views on what constitutes a "jobs bill." For Democrats, that can mean legislation expanding or creating a government training program. For Republicans, that can mean bills shrinking government or eliminating regulations to help businesses. We decided to use a technique employed by PolitiFact National when it looked at a claim made on Facebook in 2011 that congressional Republicans have introduced dozens of bills on social issues and other topics, but "zero on job creation," a claim that earned a Pants on Fire. We went to Congress.gov, run by the Library of Congress. It lists the topics that a bill covers. We looked for topics related to employment and job creation. It's not a perfect gauge, but it's a nonpartisan guide. We also reviewed summaries of the bills and committee reports looking for references to jobs and employment. For example, the SKILLS Act (H.R. 803), intended to streamline work-force development programs, touches on 52 topics from "tobacco use" to "sex offenses." But it also has provisions that deal with "labor and employment," "unemployment," "temporary and part-time employment," "vocational education" and "youth employment and child labor." It passed the House on March 15, 2013. The "Veterans Economic Opportunity Act of 2013" (H.R. 2481) deals with veterans education, employment and rehabilitation. It passed the House on a voice vote on Oct. 28, 2013. And the "Global Investment in American Jobs Act of 2013" (H.R. 2052) is intended to get the feds to come up with a plan for increasing "U.S. global competitiveness without weakening labor, consumer, financial, or environmental protections." It passed the House in a bipartisan vote on Sept. 9, 2013. Some jobs bills were designed to create jobs by encouraging more energy production and distribution, such as proposals to expand offshore oil drilling or push the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which gives some environmentalists heartburn. Others on the list from our GOP reader seemed to have little to do with directly promoting employment, and Congress.gov doesn't list them in any employment-related categories. When we emailed the list of "jobs" legislation to Boucher, he took issue with some of the bills, saying they weren’t really about jobs. Boucher also argued that his statement is true because none of the Republican jobs-related legislation had been enacted. "When I wrote 'passing a jobs bill,' I was clearly referring to a bill that has passed into law," he said in an email statement. "A bill can’t create a single job if it’s not actually passed into law." But that's not what he said in his commentary. He said, "The Republican leadership in the House has refused to address the issues that matter the most to Rhode Island, such as passing a jobs bill." The House, regardless of which party is in control, cannot unilaterally enact laws. Approval by the Senate and (in most cases) the president are also required. The bottom line: The House, under the current Republican leadership, has passed bills with the goal of encouraging employment. Whether one thinks that the bills will do more harm than good is a matter for debate, and beyond the scope of this fact check. Boucher's statement is wrong, enough for a ruling of False. But because he's making a ridiculous defense to justify it, we rate it Pants on Fire! (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | Jonathan Boucher | null | null | null | 2014-02-16T00:01:00 | 2014-01-31 | ['Rhode_Island', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-05158 | Nearly 20 percent of Donald Trump’s voters disagreed with the freeing of slaves in Southern states after the Civil War. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-supporters-pro-slavery/ | null | Ballot Box | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Exit Poll Says 20 Percent of Trump Supporters are Pro-Slavery? | 24 February 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04179 | The children's TV show 'Barney & Friends' was based on a 1930s serial killer. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barney-based-on-serial-killer/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | ‘Barney’ Was Based on a 1930s Serial Killer | 24 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10663 | I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/28/mitt-romney/george-romney-and-mlk-marched-but-not-together/ | Mitt Romney has said several times that he saw his father George Romney march with the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. But the Romney campaign was forced to admit recently that Romney meant "saw" in the figurative sense after the Boston Phoenix , a weekly newspaper, looked into the claim. Romney said it was a figure of speech and that he meant he was aware of his father marching with King. (For the curious, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionary also defines "see" as "to form a mental picture of," "to perceive the meaning or importance of," and "to be aware of.") Three newspapers have tried and failed to find evidence of the two men marching together. The Boston Phoenix first checked Romney's statement and concluded it was false. Subsequent examinations by the Detroit Free Press and the Boston Globe found no news stories linking the two men to the same event. We at Politifact.com reviewed the New York Times archives and found several mentions of Romney's support for King and several articles discussing marches that each participated in separately, but never a mention of the two marching together. The elder Romney was then the Republican governor of Michigan, which has a significant African-American population. King, of course, was the most celebrated civil rights leader of his day. It seems unlikely that the Times would have missed covering a march where the two appeared together. The Globe interviewed Susan Englander, associate director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, who said, "I researched this question, and indeed it is untrue that George Romney marched with Martin Luther King." We spoke with Englander on Dec. 28, 2007, and she said she stood by that statement and does not expect evidence to turn up to contradict it. The Romney campaign has pointed to a line in a history book ("The Republican Establishment: The Present And Future Of The G.O.P., 1967," by Stephen Hess and David Broder, p. 107) that says the elder Romney and King marched in Grosse Pointe. Two witnesses also told Politico, a political news web site, that they remembered the men marching together almost 45 years ago in Grosse Pointe. But newspaper accounts from the time and historians contradict these assertions. There is no other support for the contention that the men were in Grosse Pointe together. But it's also clear that George Romney, who served as governor from 1963 to 1969 and died in 1995, supported King's goals at a time when few politicians did. When King visited Detroit and led a rally of 125,000 people in 1963, Romney issued a proclamation and sent personal representatives. (The Times report noted that Romney was Mormon and did not make public appearances on Sundays.) Two years later, Romney led a march of 10,000 people in Detroit to protest events in Selma, Ala. (King wasn't there.) When King died in 1968, George Romney attended the funeral. "Romney, as a member of the liberal wing of the Republican party, was stalwart civil rights supporter," Englander said. "He consistently supported integration." Given the elder Romney's notable support for King's politics, we can understand how people might believe, many years later, that they did march together. And it's arguably a minor point: You could call it a coincidence of history that they never attended the same event at the same time. Mitt Romney, who would have been 16 in 1963, said recently, "I think the thing that's relevant is that my dad was a champion in the civil rights movement, that he aligned himself with Martin Luther King." That part is true. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney's statement that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King remains problematic at best. If he'd stopped at saying his father was a champion of the civil rights movement, he would have been on solid ground. Balancing the lack of evidence that the two men marched together against the elder Romney's well-documented support of Martin Luther King, we rate Romney's statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2007-12-28T00:00:00 | 2007-12-06 | ['None'] |
goop-00158 | Angelina Jolie Health ‘Deteriorating’ Amid Brad Pitt Custody Battle, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-brad-pitt-custody-battle-health/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Angelina Jolie Health NOT ‘Deteriorating’ Amid Brad Pitt Custody Battle, Despite Report | 3:23 pm, October 9, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03109 | Every engine manufacturer in the United States is now in the state of Texas. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/sep/20/rick-perry/rick-perry-every-engine-maker-texas/ | At a time when everyone wishes the country were producing jobs faster than it has been, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is happy to talk about the track record in his state. "Thirty percent of all the jobs created in America were created in the state of Texas in the last ten years," Perry said on CNN’s Crossfire. Perry listed some of the firms located in Texas. "Companies like Facebook, eBay, Apple -- which is soon to be one of the largest employers in the city of Austin -- Caterpillar," Perry said. "Every engine manufacturer in the United States is now in the state of Texas." That last part caught our ear. They say that everything is bigger in Texas, and the claim that every engine maker in the country now has an operation there seemed worth checking. We called Perry’s office for the evidence behind that statement, and they said he was referring only to Caterpillar. In 2008, the heavy equipment manufacturer announced plans to consolidate the engine work it had been doing in Illinois and South Carolina to a facility in Seguin, Texas. However, Perry's comments on Crossfire were about every engine maker in the country. The Texas Department of Economic Development and Tourism produced a report on the automotive industry in the state. From that we counted three engine makers, Caterpillar, AER Manufacturing, and Toshiba. A fourth one, Hilite, makes engine components in Carrollton, Texas. The U.S. Census Bureau has a survey of County Business Patterns for 2011 that includes tallies of the number of corporations in various industry categories. There are three industry codes that apply to the manufacture of engines for gasoline, diesel and aircraft engines. These codes cover the manufacture of engine parts and engines as a whole, so using them is a bit imprecise. Still, for firms with 20 or more employees, we found 386 nationwide. The figure for Texas is 17. That strongly suggests that there are many more engine makers in the country than there are in Texas. We also looked at firms that belong to the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association and looked at where some of the larger companies had operations. Briggs and Stratton is a top engine maker with plants in Wisconsin, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky. But none in Texas. The story for John Deere is similar. John Deere makes its engines in Waterloo, Iowa. As far as Texas goes, it has a parts distribution center in Dallas. We did find that General Motors has a large presence in Arlington, Texas, although that is an assembly plant where parts made someplace else are put together. General Motors builds its engines in many states including Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. But not Texas. The jet engine company Pratt and Whitney has several facilities in Texas thanks to its work with military aircraft and the Air Force base in San Antonio, but those plants focus on maintenance and repair, not manufacturing. For engine assembly, Pratt and Whitney has plants in West Virginia and several locations in Canada. Our ruling Perry said every engine manufacturer is now in the state of Texas. Using a broad definition from the Census Bureau, we counted 17 firms in Texas that are involved with building engines. However, in that broad line of work , the total number of firms nationwide is well over 350. A sampling of some of the larger engine makers in the United States revealed some notable absences from Texas. We rate the statement False. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2013-09-20T15:51:04 | 2013-09-18 | ['United_States', 'Texas'] |
goop-02323 | Katy Perry Not Clicking With ‘American Idol’ Judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/katy-perry-american-idol-judges-lionel-richie-luke-bryan/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Katy Perry Not Clicking With ‘American Idol’ Judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan? | 1:35 pm, October 20, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00352 | Says a Josh Hawley lawsuit "would take away important prescription drug coverage for seniors through Medicare and end all of the consumer protections under the ACA." | true | /missouri/statements/2018/sep/13/claire-mccaskill/mccaskills-right-hawleys-lawsuit-would-end-afforda/ | A major talking point in Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's re-election campaign has been a pending lawsuit by her opponent, state Attorney General Josh Hawley, to repeal parts of former President Barack Obama's health care law — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "Josh Hawley decided to use your taxpayer dollars to file a lawsuit that would take away important prescription drug coverage for seniors through Medicare and end all of the consumer protections under the ACA," she wrote in an op-edfor the Springfield News-Leader on Aug. 23. We're wary of words so absolute as "all." We wanted to know whether McCaskill was overstating the effects of Hawley's lawsuit. Hawley's lawsuit A 2012 lawsuit to repeal the health care act failed at the Supreme Court because the law had a tax included in its pre-existing conditions mandate as a penalty for not maintaining health coverage. The Supreme Court found that Congress had the power to tax given to them under the Constitution. With the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed in 2017, Congress left the mandate in place but reduced the tax to zero. The lawsuit Hawley signed on to, alongside 17 other Republican attorneys general and two GOP governors, argues that "once the heart of the ACA — the individual mandate — is declared unconstitutional, the remainder of the ACA must also fall," and asks a judge to order an injunction on all Affordable Care Act activity, essentially repealing the entire thing. The results depend on whether the states in the lawsuit can prove that the mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the health care law is so tied up with the mandate that it should go, too. If the lawsuit can prove either or both, insurance companies can go back to pre-Affordable Care Act standards of determining health coverage with pre-existing conditions. Pre-existing conditions "Sen. McCaskill is correct," said Nicholas Bagley, law professor at the University of Michigan Law School. "The states that brought the Texas lawsuit have asked the court to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act — lock, stock and barrel." No consumer protections in the individual health market stipulated under the act would remain because the whole law would be gone. However, consumer protections listed under Medicare and Medicaid would still exist as they are social insurance programs, which means federal or state governments are required by law to guarantee health care to those who fit certain requirements such as old age, unemployment or disabilities. As consumers, those who qualify can't be denied service or have their eligibility or benefits restricted unless Congress were to pass new legislation redefining what is considered a medical necessity. Drug coverage for the elderly Before the health care act, many Medicare recipients dealt with a "doughnut hole" in their drug coverage. This meant that once a person's spending reached a certain amount, a coverage gap began where they were responsible for 100 percent of the cost for future drugs. The act shrunk that percentage. For example, in 2018, if someone spent over $3,750 on prescription drugs, he or she would then pay up to 35 percent for covered prescriptions. Starting in 2019, Medicare enrollees will pay just 25 percent of the cost for name-brand prescriptions after reaching the coverage gap. The senior prescription drug coverage would not be completely repealed with the health care act, as it was the result of former President George W. Bush's Medicare Modernization Act in 2003. Only the monetary limit some Medicare recipients experience could widen. Our ruling McCaskill said that Josh Hawley's lawsuit "would take away important prescription drug coverage for seniors through Medicare and end all of the consumer protections under the ACA." McCaskill's claims about the lawsuit have a ring of truth — Hawley's lawsuit would repeal the entire health care act and hence all of its consumer protections, including those for the doughnut hole. The Republican Congress has not passed any substitute health care plan to replace the act, so it is unclear if Hawley and his fellow Republican attorneys general would have a new system in place with consumer protections like those under the Affordable Care Act. We rate McCaskill's claims True. | null | Claire McCaskill | null | null | null | 2018-09-13T12:41:15 | 2018-08-23 | ['Medicare_(United_States)'] |
pomt-10309 | We could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/05/barack-obama/not-overinflated-though-it-sounds-like-it/ | UPDATED. This item has been updated, but our ruling didn't change. See below. Sen. Barack Obama injected a startling claim into the debate on energy, asserting in a Missouri town hall meeting that the country could save more gas from inflating its tires and tuning up its cars than would be gained from drilling more off its coasts. "There are things that you can do individually, though, to save energy," Obama said in the July 30, 2008, appearance. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated — simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires, and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much." Sen. John McCain and his allies — who advocate lifting the federal moratorium that bans drilling in some areas of the Outer Continental Shelf off the U.S. coasts — immediately mocked Obama for the claim. The McCain campaign even offered to send "Obama Energy Plan" tire gauges to anyone who sent in a donation of $25 or more. The McCain campaign's assumption seemed to be that Obama's claim was utterly implausible. And, we admit, it kind of sounds that way. But is it? Under-inflated tires — to say nothing of poorly tuned cars — are actually a serious problem, as government agencies, industry groups, conservationists and outside experts have been saying for years. (The Obama campaign even cited a number of instances when prominent McCain supporters echoed the call for more public awareness about tire inflation.) "A lot of people are driving around on severely under-inflated tires," said Robert Sinclair, Jr., a spokesman for the American Automobile Association. "Try riding a bicycle with under-inflated tires. It's hard for the human engine to push it ahead. Pump it up, it seems like you're gliding on air." The same thing happens with a car. Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by .4 percent for every 1 pounds-per-square-inch drop in tire pressure, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The best estimate available, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is that at least a quarter of drivers are cruising around on under-inflated tires. In April, the Rubber Manufacturers Association, the Auto Club, the California Highway Patrol and Yokohama Tire Company used those statistics, along with Department of Transportation and Automobile Association of America data, to extrapolate that 2.8-billion gallons of gas are lost every year due to under-inflation of tires. That's an estimate, to be sure, and not one from a published, peer-reviewed study. But remember, Obama said we "could" save all the oil available from offshore drilling in the protected areas — not we "would" — so if the claim is merely plausible he's on solid ground. So how much oil is available offshore? According to the latest assessment from the Minerals Management Service, the mean estimate of undiscovered technically recoverable crude oil in the Outer Continental Shelf areas that are currently under moratorium is about 18-billion barrels (see here .) But it couldn't all be extracted immediately. The agency estimates that if the moratorium were lifted production could start by 2017, and by 2030, oil companies could be producing 2.4-million barrels of oil instead of 2.2-million. That's 200,000 more barrels per day. After refining, a barrel of oil can produce up to 19.5 gallons of gasoline, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. So that's 3.9-million more gallons of gasoline per day, or 1.4-billion gallons of gasoline per year. And remember, an estimated 2.8-billion gallons of gas are lost annually due to under-inflated tires. And we didn't even talk about tune-ups. (Repairing a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test improves gas mileage by 4 percent on average, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Fixing a more serious problem, such as a bad oxygen sensor, can improve mileage by up to 40 percent, the agency says.) All of the numbers in this analysis are estimates, we should emphasize. Oil industry experts told us estimates of the amount of oil offshore and how fast it could be extracted vary widely, and the Energy Information Administration's number is fairly optimistic. Likewise, it's highly unlikely any public awareness effort could change behavior enough to save 2.8-billion gallons of gasoline per day. For these reasons, we ruled this claim to be True. Update: After we published this item, McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb called to dispute it, citing a Government Accountability Office letter of Feb. 9, 2007 that says tire inflation wastes 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline instead of the 2.8 billion estimate we used. The letter says: "The Department of Energy's designated economist on this issue indicated that, of the 130 billion gallons of fuel that the Transportation Research Board estimated were used in passenger cars and light trucks in 2005, about 1.2 billion gallons were wasted as a result of driving on under-inflated tires." That estimate falls just under the estimated 1.4 billion gallons a year from increased offshore drilling. But that doesn't persuade us to change our ruling, for three reasons. First, 1.2 billion gallons in possible savings from proper tire inflation is still in the ballpark of the 1.4 billion gallons from drilling. Given that all of these numbers are estimates, it's hard to say the difference between these two numbers constitutes a falsehood. Second, it would take years of work to start producing 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline from oil pumped offshore -- the Energy Information Administration estimate contemplates production beginning in 2017. And the oil reserves would not be bottomless. Conceivably, the savings from tire-pressure correction could begin immediately and last indefinitely, thus easily overcoming the marginal difference in the estimates provided by the McCain campaign. And finally, none of this takes into account the impact of tune-ups, which Obama mentioned as part of his claim. If Department of Energy estimates of 4 percent mileage improvement for better-tuned cars are true, that alone would push the total savings above the estimated drilling yield. Goldfarb also pointed out that barrels of oil, in addition to yielding 19.5 gallons of gasoline, yield other products as well, such as jet fuel, lubricants and feed stocks. Point taken, but Obama's statement was made within the context of the current drilling debate, which has been about increasing the supply of domestic oil to ease the strain on the U.S. transportation sector. In the end, estimates are all we have to work with here. Estimates of oil production, estimates of gasoline savings. For our purposes in evaluating Obama's claim, all the available evidence shows that he's on solid ground in saying that better car and tire maintenance would save as much gasoline as drilling would generate. We appreciate McCain's campaign pointing out a GAO source we'd missed in our original research, but it's not at odds with our original ruling, True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-08-05T00:00:00 | 2008-07-30 | ['None'] |
goop-01468 | Kendall Jenner “Furious” Over Kim Kardashian Modeling? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kendall-jenner-kim-kardashian-modeling-vogue-untrue/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kendall Jenner “Furious” Over Kim Kardashian Modeling? | 3:24 pm, March 1, 2018 | null | ['Kendall_Jenner'] |
pomt-03237 | According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 71.2 percent of Hispanic registered voters in Texas and over 86 percent of African American registered voters participated in the 2012 elections. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2013/aug/16/john-cornyn/cornyn-echoes-survey-latino-african-american-voter/ | Declaring Texas does not discriminate, Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn charged Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general, with partisan reasons for vowing to restore mandatory federal oversight of voting-related changes in the state. In July 2013, Holder said the Department of Justice would sue to give the federal government a renewed watch-dog role over Texas. Holder spoke after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act that for decades had required Texas and other jurisdictions to win federal pre-approval before implementing changes related to voting. Cornyn, who seeks re-election in 2014, said in an opinion column posted online Aug. 8, 2013 by the Austin American-Statesman that minority voter turnout in Texas is already healthy. "According to a Census Bureau report, 68.2 percent of registered Hispanic voters in Texas went to the polls in the 2000 general election," Cornyn said. "By 2012, with an additional 747,000 Hispanic Texans on the electoral roll, the rate had risen to 71.2 percent. Meanwhile, the rate for African-American Texans rose to over 86 percent in the same period – the highest among all racial groups tracked in the Census Bureau report." An Austin Democratic activist, Burnt Orange Report blogger Katherine Haenschen, expressed skepticism of those 2012 percentages in a blog post--and on Twitter, she asked us to look into them. It's no cinch to break down who voted in Texas in 2012. The state does not track voters by ethnicity and 2012 voter exit polls in the state were not extensive enough to generate estimates for how many Latinos and African Americans cast ballots. Government's post-election survey By email, Cornyn spokeswoman Jessica Sandlin pointed out "The Diversifying Electorate—Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections)," a May 2013 census bureau report on turnout in presidential elections from 1996 through 2012 based on the bureau’s supplemental Current Population Survey undertaken after each of those elections. Nationally, the report said, voting rates for blacks were higher in 2012 than in recent presidential elections, the "result of a steady increase in black voting rates since 1996. Voting rates also increased among Hispanics and Asians across some of the elections," the report said, "although these gains were not nearly as consistent as for blacks." A May 8, 2013, bureau press release led us to detailed charts including one indicating that according to the survey, nearly 1.9 million of more than 2.6 million registered Hispanic voters in Texas, 71.3 percent, turned out in 2012. Also, more than 1.3 million of more than 1.5 million registered African American voters, 86.2 percent, turned out, according to the chart. (Nearly 7 million of more than 8.7 million white registered Texas voters, or 80 percent, turned out, according to the chart, while 220,000 of the state’s 305,000 Asian registered voters, or 72 percent, voted.) These percentages, like Cornyn’s statement, do not represent many citizens eligible to vote who could have voted if they had registered. The survey separately indicates that some 39 percent of the state’s voting-age Hispanic citizens and 63 percent of such African American citizens cast ballots. Over-count? Also, experts have warned that the bureau’s post-election surveys over-estimate turnout. Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Los Angeles-based William C. Velasquez Institute, which focuses on improving the level of Latino political and economic participation, previously told us by telephone there is no perfect way to pinpoint the makeup of any electorate. Gonzalez said then that he respects the bureau’s post-election surveys though they include inflated responses. "It’s the government asking if you’ve voted or registered to vote," Gonzalez said by way of an example. "So there’s an (unquantified) exaggeration factor." More recently, Dallas lawyer Michael Li, a redistricting expert who has helped Democrats, said in a May 11, 2013, blog post that the bureau’s estimates "tend to overstate actual turnout because people don’t like saying they didn’t vote, especially with something as important as a presidential election." Too, some voters fudge when asked if they registered to vote, he wrote. By email, Li pointed us to a May 15, 2013, "Fact Tank" post by the Pew Research Center stating the bureau’s post-election surveys are "considered the best source of information on the demographics of the nation’s electorate." Then again, the center said, the latest survey over-reported total 2012 voters nationally by about 4 million and, it said, African American voters were overcounted, especially in states with the greatest share of blacks in their electorates. "Might this be because non-voting blacks were more eager than non-voting whites to tell survey takers that they voted for the first ever African-American president?" the center wrote. "While there’s no way of knowing for sure, the data are suggestive." The center said that its analysis did not disprove the bureau’s African American turnout finding. "Nor does it negate the long-term turnout trends, which show that black turnout has been rising since 1996," the center said. "It may, however, merit an asterisk alongside the claim that blacks turned out at a higher rate than whites in 2012." In Texas, the bureau survey indicates, more than 8.6 million voters cast ballots. But the Texas Secretary of State says nearly 8 million ballots were cast for president. All told, according to the agency, 59 percent of nearly 13.7 million registered voters cast ballots, compared to 60 percent of 13.6 million registered voters in 2008. In 2008, voter exit polls in Texas indicated that 63 percent of the November voters were white; 20 percent were Latino; 13 percent African American and 2 percent were Asian. Li wrote that the 2012 bureau survey indicates 59 percent of the state’s 2012 voters were Anglo; 22 percent were Hispanic, 16 percent were African American and more than 2 percent were Asian. State voting records, Li wrote, suggest a greater share of Anglo voters and fewer Latino and African American voters. The bureau’s May 2013 report acknowledged the likelihood of discrepancies between its estimates and state voter counts. Ballots sometimes get invalidated during counting and some voters skip voting for president, so their votes would not be rolled into state voter counts, the bureau said. Also, it said, some survey respondents say they voted when they did not, their purpose being to "appear to behave in a socially desirable way." Sandlin said by email that the bureau survey remains the "best option" for gauging Texas voter participation by race. Democratic analysis of voting records There is at least one other way to estimate participation. Li said in his blog post that state records revealing who voted suggest that about half the state’s Latino registered voters and 68 percent of African American registered voters cast ballots. From the same records, he wrote, it looks like Anglos and African Americans turned out in greater relative force than Hispanics. However, Li noted, the records indicate African American turnout trailed Anglo turnout, contrary to the bureau survey results. Also, Li wrote, while the bureau survey indicates Hispanic turnout in Texas trailed Anglo turnout by about 12 percentage points, the voting records suggest Latino turnout lagged by nearly double that. Broadly, he wrote, the number of registered Texas voters "has been relatively flat for the better part of a decade despite burgeoning Hispanic and African-American growth during that same period -- both in total and citizen voting age populations," an indication that minority turnout remains a challenge. Li told us that he relied on Democratic database consultant James Van Sickle of Dallas to reach his characterizations of voters by ethnicity. By telephone, Van Sickle said he drew on various sources to reach conclusions including census data, consumer spending information, voters’ last names and where they live. Seeking more perspective, we emailed pollsters and partisan activists about Cornyn’s claim. Democratic pollster Jeff Smith of Austin replied that his sense is the state’s voter rolls show that 47 percent of Hispanic registered voters turned out compared to 65 percent of African Americans and 61 percent of all Texas voters. He said he identified Hispanic voters based on matching surnames to a file of Hispanic surnames derived from the U.S. Census, also using maiden names when applicable. Black voters were basically identified by another firm, he said. Lynda Tran, a consultant to Battleground Texas, a pro-Democratic group focused on building voter registration and turnout in the state, called Cornyn’s figures accurate, though she said by email that according to the 2012 survey results, Texas ranked 25th in its percentages of Latino citizens who voted and registered Latinos who voted out of 29 states with enough Latino residents to be tabulated by the bureau. Tran said Texas ranked 25th in registered African Americans who voted out of 33 tallied states. Our ruling Cornyn said that according to the census bureau, 71.2 percent of Hispanic registered voters in Texas and over 86 percent of African American registered voters participated in the 2012 elections. This echoes a result from the bureau’s quadrennial post-election survey, though it doesn't account for another result indicating that far fewer Latino and African American voting-age Texans voted--and the survey also tends to overestimate participation. Separately, Democratic analyses of voting records suggest that no more than half of Hispanic registered voters and 68 percent of African American registered voters went to the polls. We rate this statement, which lacks these clarifications and additional information, as Mostly True. | null | John Cornyn | null | null | null | 2013-08-16T10:00:00 | 2013-08-08 | ['Texas', 'African_American', 'United_States_Census_Bureau'] |
afck-00361 | “South Africa was the first African country to legalise same-sex marriages back in 2006. It was the fifth country in the world to take this bold step.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/has-the-anc-moved-south-africa-forward-we-examine-key-election-claims/ | null | null | null | null | null | Has the ANC moved South Africa forward? We examine key claims | 2014-04-30 10:32 | null | ['Africa', 'South_Africa'] |
snes-03732 | Hillary Clinton vowed that she would shut down the NRA and ban handguns if she were elected President. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nra-hillary-clinton-quote/ | null | Guns | null | Dan Evon | null | Hillary Clinton: ‘I Will Get the NRA Shut Down for Good’ | 22 October 2016 | null | ['National_Rifle_Association', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
tron-00319 | Fatima Noor Receives Presidential Appointment to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Post | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/fatima-noor-appointed-to-citizenship-and-immigration-post/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Fatima Noor Receives Presidential Appointment to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Post | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
pomt-05112 | Says "TriMet's own analysis shows that YouthPass does not actually add to the transit agency's costs." | mostly true | /oregon/statements/2012/jun/27/sam-adams/does-trimet-itself-say-free-rides-high-school-stud/ | The TriMet Board recently adopted a budget that does not include free transit passes for Portland high school students. This week, Portland Mayor Sam Adams shot back with a ginormous fee increase on TriMet benches and shelters so he can provide the free passes. The YouthPass program is a big deal to Adams, who says transit access is critical to keeping teenagers in school and connected. In a statement released Tuesday, the mayor argued that providing passes for roughly 13,000 Portland Public Schools high school students doesn’t add to the transit agency’s operating costs. "In fact, TriMet's own analysis shows that YouthPass does not actually add to the transit agency's costs. No new buses, MAX trips, additional routes or drivers are needed to accommodate YouthPass riders," he said. TriMet’s own analysis showed that? This we had to check. PolitiFact Oregon contacted Caryn Brooks, the mayor’s spokeswoman. She turned up an Oct. 25, 2011 memo from an ECONorthwest economist to Claire Potter, TriMet’s director of financial analysis. The memo, commissioned by TriMet, explains the economic impact to the transit agency should it provide the passes without state support. Some quick background: Portland Public Schools has long provided free transit passes for low-income students. The concept was expanded under Adams in fall 2009 to include all PPS students. The state of Oregon paid for most of the $3.4 million program through a business energy tax credit; Portland Public Schools paid $800,000 of that. The arrangement ended in December 2011, at which point the City of Portland, Portland Public Schools and TriMet cobbled a plan to keep it running through the school year. Here’s the part of the ECONorthwest report that the mayor highlights: "The provision of free passes to PPS students likely did not affect TriMet's operating costs in a significant way. Discontinuing the provision of free passes is unlikely to result in operating cost savings." In other words: The report states the agency saves no money if it stops providing free rides. Adams is correct about that. But the analysis also shows that TriMet loses out on a potential $1.9 million in fare money from students in 2012-13. And that’s based on a monthly pass price tag of $27, wrote TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch in an email. The price is scheduled to increase to $30 a month in September. The "additional cost is not what TriMet is concerned about -- it is the foregone passenger revenue, in the range of $2 million," Fetsch said. She’s right that the analysis is about the potential hit to TriMet’s revenue stream. And Adams knows that, because he’s proposed an 8000 percent increase in shelter and bench fees to squeeze $2 million out of TriMet, which he would then use to reimburse TriMet for the cost of the student passes. The mayor’s statement is accurate. But we think it needs additional information. Providing free student passes will not add to TriMet’s operating costs in the form of more drivers or bus routes, but it will deprive the transit agency of revenue once provided by other public agencies. The statement is accurate but needs extra information. We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Sam Adams | null | null | null | 2012-06-27T17:55:27 | 2012-06-26 | ['None'] |
snes-03180 | Actress and comedian Sherri Shepherd has died of a heart attack. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sherri-shepherd-death-hoax/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Celebrity Death Hoax: Sherri Shepherd | 9 January 2017 | null | ['Sherri_Shepherd'] |
farg-00368 | A meme quotes Sen. Chuck Schumer as saying "it’s racist to only allow citizens to vote." | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/10/meme-repeats-false-schumer-quote/ | null | fake-news | Viral image | Angelo Fichera | ['Memes'] | Meme Repeats False Schumer Quote | October 2, 2018 | [' Saturday, September 29, 2018 '] | ['Chuck_Schumer'] |
pomt-03330 | The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t run on your tax dollars. It’s funded solely by stamps and postage. | half-true | /georgia/statements/2013/jul/24/american-postal-workers-union/postal-service-claim-not-fully-target/ | There’s been a lot of conversation lately about proposed cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, particularly the idea of ending Saturday delivery. PolitiFact Georgia reader Wallace Cooper said he was skeptical about a specific claim in a recent television ad about the taxpayer cost of delivering the mail and asked us to do some fact-checking. "Members of the American Postal Workers Union handle more than 165 billion letters and packages a year. That’s about 34 million pounds every day. Ever wonder what this costs you as a taxpayer? Millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions?" a voice says in the 30-second ad. The answer: "Not a single cent." Deliveries are solely funded by stamps and postage, the voice says. The ad was put together by the American Postal Workers Union. The union writes on its website that the ad was created to combat "detrimental legislation." The Postal Service boasts that nothing will keep its mail carriers from their appointed rounds. We at PolitiFact Georgia share a similar intrepid ethic regarding getting to the bottom of a claim. So what did we find? The Postal Service says on the facts page of its website that it does not receive tax dollars for its operations, but some context is necessary here. First, let’s look at its current situation. Before 1971, the Postal Service received annual appropriations from the federal government. Since then, it has operated independently, with revenues generated through the sales of postage stamps and services. But Congress does give the Postal Service $100 million a year to compensate the agency for revenue loss by providing, at congressional direction, free mailing privileges to blind people and overseas voters, a congressional report noted. The $100 million is less than 1 percent of the Postal Service’s annual budget. In 2012, the Postal Service pulled in about $65 billion in revenue, it says on its website. That’s $10 billion less than what collected in 2008, the year the Great Recession took hold. By some reports, the Postal Service is losing $25 million a day. The volume of mail the Postal Service handles has declined by nearly 27 percent since 2008, as Americans rely more on email communications instead of letters. The Postal Service’s debt rose from nothing to $10.2 billion between federal fiscal years 2005 and 2009, according to a congressional report. The federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1 and concludes Sept. 30. Another congressional report found Postal Service operating costs may be the largest reason for its financial troubles. In 2006, Congress passed legislation requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund its future retirees’ health benefits at a cost of approximately $5.6 billion per year. The Postal Service has cut expenses through a hiring freeze, offering early retirement to longtime employees and closing some district offices. It’s also increased revenue in recent years through several increases in the price of a postage stamp. In 2009, the Postal Service began borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury Department to deal with its troubles. Some news accounts report the service reached its borrowing limit of $15 billion in September 2012. Sally Davidow, a spokeswoman for the union, said the Postal Service had to borrow the money to offset the health benefit changes. She argued that health benefits are not part of the Postal Service’s operating expenses. "(The Postal Service) is required to pay that money back," Davidow added. "Borrowing money is different than relying on taxpayers." Davidow argued in the union’s defense that the Postal Service has $46 billion in its retiree health benefits fund, but the federal government won’t let the agency borrow from it. The Postal Service wrote in a November 2012 press release that it had a record fiscal year deficit of nearly $16 billion. The agency attributed about 70 percent of that net loss to the health care requirement. To sum up, the American Postal Workers Union claimed in its television ad that the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t operate on taxpayer dollars and and it’s solely funded by stamps and postage. The Postal Service has borrowed money from the government in recent years, primarily it says, to cover the cost to pre-fund employee health benefits. The first part of the statement is on target. The second part, however, gets a return to sender. We rate this claim Half True. | null | American Postal Workers Union | null | null | null | 2013-07-24T00:00:00 | 2013-07-08 | ['United_States'] |
goop-02840 | Taylor Swift, Harry Styles Getting Back Together, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/taylor-swift-back-together-harry-styles-haylor-2017/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Taylor Swift, Harry Styles NOT Getting Back Together, Despite Report | 10:07 pm, April 25, 2017 | null | ['Taylor_Swift'] |
pomt-02324 | Says Sen. Mitch McConnell is "the No. 1 recipient of contributions from lobbyists this cycle." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/mar/27/alison-lundergan-grimes/does-mitch-mcconnell-receive-more-money-lobbyists-/ | Republicans are hopeful they can win enough Senate seats in November to take control of the chamber, which puts Sen. Mitch McConnell in the driver’s seat to become majority leader next year. But first, the Kentucky Republican needs to get through a tough re-election campaign. Both Republican primary challenger Matt Bevin and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, the presumptive Democratic nominee, have sought to paint McConnell as a Washington insider after three decades in the Senate. Along those lines, in an email to her supporters on March 17, 2014, Lundergan Grimes claimed that McConnell is "the No. 1 recipient of contributions from lobbyists this cycle." There’s going to be a lot of mudslinging in this race and a lot of claims about who is raising money from whom and where. We thought we would start by checking whether McConnell is getting more contributions from lobbyists than anyone in Congress. Campaigns and candidates use "lobbyists" like a dirty word, but you may be asking, "what exactly is a lobbyist?" Glad you asked. Lobbyists are people who are hired to persuade members of Congress on a particular issue. They are brought in by many different industries, from private companies like Microsoft or ExxonMobil, to associations representing local governments, to nonprofits focused on hot-button legislation. Some organizations have in-house lobbyists, and others hire large firms that lobby Congress on a variety of topics. We first checked in with the Lundergan Grimes campaign to see where they got their numbers. They linked us to a report by Open Secrets, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog website run by the Center for Responsive Politics. The report, titled "Sincere or Strategic, Lobbyists Give Big," looked at trends in donations from federally registered lobbyists. If a company or organization spends a certain amount of money lobbying Congress, they’re required to register with the federal government. Open Secrets checks this database against the campaign finance disclosure reports that candidates file. Open Secrets found that the 25 lobbyists who have contributed the most money to campaigns this cycle have already donated $1.9 million. Contributions are not party exclusive; five of those 25 gave strictly to Republicans, 11 gave to Democrats and a handful gave to both. Open Secrets also released a list of the members of Congress who have received the most donations from lobbyists during the campaign cycle (since the start of 2013). With $281,301 in contributions from lobbyists, McConnell topped the list, followed closely by House Speaker John Boehner at $278,380. McConnell has also received another $50,000 from family members of lobbyists. Here’s the top 10: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) $281,301 Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) $278,380 Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) $221,450 Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) $204,400 Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) $194,300 Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) $160,300 Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) $129,433 Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) $123,733 Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) $121,750 Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) $121,486 As you can see, it’s a hodgepodge of Democrats and Republicans rounding out the list, but the two most powerful Republicans in Congress lead the way, by quite a bit. This list doesn’t count the Massachusetts special election race in 2013 to replace Secretary of State John Kerry, won by Democrat Ed Markey. Markey raised about $306,000 from lobbyists between that special election and his 2014 re-election race, so he technically leads the cycle. A spokeswoman for Open Secrets said that when Lundergan Grimes made her statement, the organization had not yet updated their website with Markey’s contributions. Markey's situation, though, is a quirky anomaly, because he was in the unusual position of running twice in one campaign cycle. McConnell isn’t just the top congressional recipient of donations from lobbyists. According to his Open Secrets profile, he has also received more money than any other lawmaker since 2013 from a number of industries. He’s No. 1 in campaign donations from people who work in the fields of — deep breath here — agriculture services, air transportation, auto dealers and manufacturers, building materials, business associations, coal mining, commercial banks, commercial TV and radio stations, electric utilities, food and beverage, food stores, general contractors, health services, home builders, insurance, medical devices and supplies, mining, mortgage bankers and brokers, pharmaceutical and health products, railroads, retirees, steel production and trucking. When he last ran for re-election in 2008, McConnell, who was minority leader at the time, topped the list in two industries, coal mining and tobacco. He was fourth in contributions from lobbyists. It’s worth noting that in 2010 when Majority Leader Harry Reid was up for re-election, he benefited most from lobbyist contributions as well. With $947,000 in donations from lobbyists, Reid received nearly $300,000 more from lobbyists than the next closest lawmaker. So it’s not uncommon for party leaders to receive significant financial backing during their re-election fights. For her part, Lundergan Grimes has received $54,699 from lobbyists, 51st among candidates running in 2014. Our ruling Lundergan Grimes said McConnell is "the No. 1 recipient of contributions from lobbyists this cycle." Based on the analysis from Open Secrets, McConnell tops the chart for 2014. That’s probably a perk of his party position more than anything. As noted, Speaker Boehner is right behind him and Reid was the No. 1 recipient during his 2010 campaign. But that doesn’t change the accuracy of the claim. We rate it True. | null | Alison Lundergan Grimes | null | null | null | 2014-03-27T17:45:31 | 2014-03-27 | ['Mitch_McConnell'] |
goop-02336 | Pregnant Khloe Kardashian “Dumped” By Tristan Thompson, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/khloe-kardashian-not-dumped-tristan-thompson-pregnant/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Pregnant Khloe Kardashian NOT “Dumped” By Tristan Thompson, Despite Report | 10:25 am, October 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03704 | Well over 90 percent of felony cases, all over the nation, are committed by defendants who grew up in father-absent households. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/18/john-duncan/rep-john-duncan-jr-says-90-percent-felons-grew-fat/ | A reader recently sent us a letter he received from his congressman, Rep. John Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., asking us to check a surprising claim. "Well over 90 percent of felony cases, all over the nation, are committed by defendants who grew up in father-absent households," Duncan wrote. Patrick Newton, a spokesman for Duncan, said the letter was based on the congressman's "knowledge obtained from nearly eight years as a criminal court judge dealing with mostly felony cases." The spokesman went on to say that on Duncan’s first day as a criminal court judge in Knoxville, Tenn., chief probation counselor Gary Tullock told him it was actually 98 percent, a figure Duncan lowered slightly in his letter. "Mr. Duncan then went on to preside over 10,000 cases in nearly eight years," the spokesman said. "In each case, he was given a report or information on the defendant’s background. Congressman Duncan says in well more than 90 percent of cases, the defendant was described as being from either a ‘fatherless home’ or a ‘broken home.’ He found Mr. Tullock’s comment to be true through his own experience as a judge, and he fully stands by his remark." We should point out, however, that Tullock’s claim is based on data roughly 35 years old, while Duncan’s observations from his tenure as a judge are now a quarter-century old. That is inconsistent with Duncan’s use of the present-tense "are committed" in the constituent letter. In addition, even if these numbers were true for Knoxville, the statistics wouldn’t reflect conditions "all over the nation," as Duncan said in the letter. And of course, PolitiFact always prefers to deal in hard data. So we took a look at the available research. The few studies that address this question aren’t a perfect match to Duncan’s wording, because the data we have often addresses individuals who are in jail or prison, rather than people who are facing a "felony case." Still, the data is close enough for us to make an educated assessment. First, we looked at data from the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, a sample of 7,000 inmates by the U.S. Justice Department. In 1996, almost 40 percent of the sampled inmates had lived with both parents, with just over 60 percent of inmates saying they grew up with only one parent, with grandparents or in another arrangement. The numbers were similar in 2002 -- 44 percent growing up with both parents and 56 percent growing up in other situations. These numbers suggest that there’s a strong link between growing up in a non-two-parent household and becoming an inmate, but at rates well below the 90 percent Duncan cited. Second, we looked at data from the Justice Department’s Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities. The 2004 survey asked inmates who were parents themselves about what kind of family arrangements they had while while growing up. In state prisons, 43 percent of the inmates said they grew up with both parents, while 57 percent said they grew up in other arrangements. The data was similar for federal prisons -- 45 percent with both parents and 55 percent in other arrangements. Once again, this suggests rates lower than 90 percent Finally, we looked at a study co-authored by Cynthia C. Harper of the University of California at San Francisco and Sara McLanahan, a professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs who has authored a wide range of studies about disadvantaged Americans. They found that once you control for other factors, such as family income, a child growing up in a mother-only household was almost twice as likely as a child growing up in a mother-father household to end up incarcerated. That would put the percentage somewhere around 60 percent, which is broadly in line with the other studies. Sixty percent is a significant number, but it is not as great as the 90 percent figure Duncan cited. When we contacted McLanahan, she said she was skeptical that the 90 percent figure was accurate. "I cannot think of any data that would give this information," she said. Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist and professor of education at the University of Virginia, said that even if Duncan’s statistic were true, "it would be misleading and incomplete," because it does not address how many people grew up in father-absent households and did not commit felonies. "We could point out that 99 percent of felony offenders drank milk as a child, too, but it is easy to see the fallacy here because we have no preconceptions about milk the way we do about father absence," he said. "Father absence is surely an important concern, but it is only one of a number of risk factors for felony criminal behavior." Our ruling The data we found supports Duncan’s impression that growing up in a fatherless home is one of the factors that contributes to eventual incarceration. But the quantitative research does not show the near-certain link between felonies and fatherlessness that Duncan portrays. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | John Duncan | null | null | null | 2013-04-18T10:00:00 | 2013-04-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-14363 | According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 120 Americans on average die from a drug overdose every day. Overall, drug overdose deaths now outnumber deaths from firearms. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/21/joe-pitts/rep-joe-pitts-says-120-americans-die-daily-overdos/ | In a recent Medium post, Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., lamented the toll of addiction in his state and across the country. "According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 120 Americans on average die from a drug overdose every day," Pitts wrote. "Overall, drug overdose deaths now outnumber deaths from firearms." We wondered whether those numbers were accurate, so we took a closer look. The CDC calculates overdose deaths from prescription drugs separately from overdose deaths from illicit drugs. To get the full number, you have to add both categories together. In 2014, there were 25,760 deaths from prescription-drug overdoses. That same year, there were 17,465 deaths from illicit drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The agency does not track overdoses from every illicit drug, so this accounting may understate the full number. Still, it provides a baseline. And if you add together the overdose deaths from prescription and illicit drugs, the sum is 43,225 overdose deaths. Then, if you divide that by 365 days, it works out to more than 118 overdose deaths a day, or just shy of the 120-per-day figure that Pitts cited. That’s close enough for us. We should note that the category of total overdoses includes accidental deaths, homicides, suicides and deaths of undetermined intent. So how do the number of deaths from drug overdoses compare with the number of deaths from firearms? According to CDC, there were 33,599 deaths caused by firearms in 2014. That includes homicides, suicides, legal interventions, accidents and cases of undetermined intentions. So in 2014, there were indeed more overdose deaths (43,225) than there were deaths from firearms (33,599), making Pitts’ second claim correct. Our ruling Pitts said that "according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 120 Americans on average die from a drug overdose every day. Overall, drug overdose deaths now outnumber deaths from firearms." Pitts is very close on the first part, and he’s correct on the second. So we rate his statement True. | null | Joe Pitts | null | null | null | 2016-03-21T17:33:30 | 2016-03-10 | ['United_States', 'Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention'] |
pomt-14919 | We have record numbers of people living in poverty. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/01/carly-fiorina/fiorina-defends-her-gop-debate-remarks-claims-us-h/ | Carly Fiorina said on Fox News Sunday that she "misspoke" when she used a striking but inaccurate statistic about women and unemployment during the third GOP debate. Nonetheless, Fiorina suggested the real culprit is the "liberal media." Numerous fact-checkers, including PolitiFact, debunked Fiorina’s claim that "92 percent of the jobs lost during Barack Obama’s first term belonged to women." To FIorina, that’s quibbling with details to bury the larger truths. "This is what the liberal media tries to do. Let us discredit the messenger so that we ignore the truth of the message," she said Nov. 1. "Here’s the truth of the message: Women are harmed by this administration’s policies. Record numbers of women have lost jobs, are living in poverty, or are living in extreme poverty." Progressive policies, Fiorina continued, have been bad for everyone, regardless of gender: "We have record numbers of people who are no longer working or who have quit looking for work. We have record numbers of people on food stamps. We have record numbers of people living in poverty. Those are the facts. That is the truth." We wanted to check out her claim that there are more people living in poverty now than ever before. What the numbers say Looking at data from the Census Bureau, Fiorina’s right that the number of people living in poverty (46.7 million in 2014) is the highest since the census began keeping track in 1959. However, the poverty rate — the measure typically used — is nowhere near historical highs. There are 8 more million people living in poverty now than in 1959, but the overall population of the United States also grew by 141 million people (from 177 million in 1959 to 318 million in 2014). So the poverty rate actually decreased from 22.4 percent in 1959 to 14.8 percent in 2014. "Most economists would agree that standards of living have increased substantially since 1959, and poverty, especially elderly poverty, was more severe in 1959 than today," said John Iceland, a professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University and author of Poverty in America. Here’s a graph from a Census Bureau report published in September of 2015 that illustrates this point: All the experts we spoke to cautioned against using raw numbers when making comparisons. Instead, analysts typically use rates to correct for the growing population of the nation. "If we use absolute values and not rates, then the following statements are both true: There are more people who are poor than ever today. But GDP is much higher today than it ever was under a Republican president, so the Obama Administration economic policy is a smashing success," said Sheldon Danziger, the president of the nonpartisan Russell Sage Foundation, which funds research on poverty. If we use Fiorina’s preferred measure, we reached a record number of people living in poverty under the watch of every president starting with Richard Nixon, Danziger pointed out. Conversely, said George Washington University economist Tara Sinclair, the number of people not living in poverty has also increased. "No president in the last 40 years has been able to lower the number of people in poverty. Poverty rates fell most under the Bill Clinton Administration than any since Nixon," Danziger said. What’s more, given the economic impact of the recession, poverty is actually lower than expected, in part due to spending in the stimulus package, according to Austin Nichols, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy think tank. "So if Obama had any effect on poverty, it was to lower poverty, though presidents tend to have smaller impacts on broad economic trends than they would like to believe," he said. "In fact, when you use a broader definition of poverty that encompasses noncash aid, poverty hardly changed through the recession, which was a surprise to many who work on these issues." As for Fiorina’s claim that "record numbers of women ...are living in poverty," she’s again accurate that more women live in poverty today than ever (about 162,000 in 2014). But the overall rate has remained relatively unchanged. Here’s a chart using census data that illustrates that point: A Fiorina spokeswoman passed along two articles highlighting the increase in raw numbers and told PolitiFact that the increase should not be trivialized. Our ruling Fiorina said, "We have record numbers of people living in poverty today." In terms of raw numbers, Fiorina is correct that more people live in poverty today than ever in the 56 years the census has been keeping track. However, absolute value is an inappropriate measure for poverty analysis, experts said. If we use the right measure, poverty rate, we see that poverty has decreased significantly since 1959. We rate Fiorina’s claim Half True. | null | Carly Fiorina | null | null | null | 2015-11-01T15:56:09 | 2015-11-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-11596 | America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in just one year. Isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to get a minor permit approved for the building of a simple road? | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jan/30/donald-trump/does-it-take-10-years-get-permit-build-road-donald/ | President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address repeated a long-standing complaint about how excessive bureaucratic red tape holds up the construction of federal projects. In championing a regulatory rollback, Trump noted that the regulatory burden has grown heavier with time. "America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in just one year," he said. "Isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to get a minor permit approved for the building of a simple road?" We decided to look at how long it took to build the Empire State building, and the length of the current permitting process. How long did it take to build the Empire State Building? A historical timeline from the Empire State Realty Trust states that construction began on March 17, 1930. The building was finished one year and 45 days later. So Trump is close in terms of the year-long timeline of construction he gave. However, we were unable to find how long the permitting process took, and the Empire State Realty Trust doesn’t offer any clues. It notes only that several parties formed Empire State, Inc. in 1929, and name Alfred E. Smith, a former governor of New York, to head the corporation. It’s unclear whether or when they applied for a permit. Can it take 10 years to get a permit approved? According to the lead infrastructure aide on the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, the permitting process for how the government builds roads, bridges, rails and pipelines is now an average of under five years. The Wall Street Journal quoted Alexander Herrgott telling a Washington conference in January that he hopes the administration will "take permit delivery times from what is now an average of 4.7 years down to two years." That 4.7 year figure also appeared in a 2015 study by the law firm Arnold & Porter into the government permitting process. The firm found that the average length of an infrastructure project — from the beginning with a governmental environmental study until its completion — spanned 4.7 years. A 2014 Government Accountability Office study, citing third-party estimates, put the average at 4.6 years. However, a study commissioned by the Treasury Department under President Barack Obama found the average time to complete an environmental review was longer than 4.7 years in 2015 — and that duration has grown through recent decades. It cited studies conducted for the Federal Highway Administration, which found the time increased from 2.2 years in the 1970s, to 4.4 years in the 1980s, to 5.1 years in the 1995 to 2001 period, to 6.6 years in 2011. Yet another study, by a pro-deregulation group called Common Good, says infrastructure often takes 10 years to be approved. But according to the Wall Street Journal, "Outside experts say actual review times vary widely based on the scope of a project and other environmental factors." Among the timeframes described in various studies, Trump is picking the high end. It bears repeating that his own White House aide to the Council on Environmental Quality said the average was 4.7 years. The White House also did not provide an example of a "minor permit" for a "simple road" taking 10 years. Our ruling Trump said, "America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in just one year. Isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to get a minor permit approved for a simple road?" The Empire State Building was constructed in one year and 45 days — which means that part of Trump’s claim was pretty close. Recent government studies say the permit approval time ranges from 4.6 to 6.6 years. The only study we found that claims a 10-year approval is common comes from a pro-deregulation group, which raises questions about its reliability. We rate this Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2018-01-30T23:14:07 | 2018-01-30 | ['United_States', 'Empire_State_Building'] |
snes-00952 | Hit the Nigger Baby was once a popular attraction at fairgrounds in the United States. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/racist-carnival-game/ | null | History | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Was a Violently Racist Carnival Game Once Popular in America? | 26 February 2018 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-05748 | The state of Ohio has replaced lethal injection with a head-ripping machine as a form of execution. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/head-shot/ | null | Humor | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did Ohio Replace Lethal Injection with a Head-Ripping-Off Machine? | 19 June 2014 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01462 | Tom Cruise Hired Dating Coach? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/tom-cruise-dating-coach-girlfriend/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Tom Cruise Hired Dating Coach? | 2:43 pm, March 2, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00955 | The current debate over authorizing military action against the Islamic State "would be the first time Congress would place limits on the commander-in-chief's ability to be commander-in-chief." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/19/adam-kinzinger/republican-lawmaker-claims-congress-has-never-set-/ | Months after the Islamic State emerged as a threat in the Middle East, President Barack Obama has asked Congress for authorization to use military force against the radical Islamist group. An administration proposal now before Congress would limit the use of force to three years. The legislation also says it is not authorizing the use of "armed forces in enduring offensive ground operations." In something of an odd-bedfellows pairing, some hawkish Republicans prefer giving the president even wider leeway to go after the Islamic State, sometimes called ISIS or ISIL. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., is among those who say Congress should ease restrictions from the proposal, known as an authorization for the use of military force. "This would be the first time Congress would place limits on the commander-in-chief's ability to be commander-in-chief," Kinzinger said on the Feb. 15, 2015, edition of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. "We don't own his limited strategy. The president has to make that decision, which is why I think he needs the broad power to do what the commander-in-chief does." Republicans wanting to give Obama more power? That caught us by surprise. So we took a closer look at Kinzinger’s statement. Congress, the presidency and war: A brief history Military historians we spoke with took umbrage with Kinzinger’s statement, noting a longstanding tension between the legislative and the executive branches over military powers. In fact, the conflict goes back as far as the Founding Fathers. In the Constitution, Congress was granted the power to declare war and raise and maintain an army and a navy. At the same time, the president was deemed commander-in-chief. Those two roles have competed for centuries. The issue prompted a 1800 Supreme Court case, Bas vs. Tingy, in which the court distinguished between a declared war — a status that the court ruled grants sweeping powers to the president — and military action authorized by other legislative methods. Essentially, the decision said that "in a declared war, the president's actions are unrestricted, except as restricted by the laws of war," said Anthony Arend, professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. By contrast, "in a war declared by other statutory means, Congress can set limits." The last time Congress declared war was World War II. Since then, military operations have been conducted through authorizations for the use of military force (and, in some instances, without congressional approval). Congress used those opportunities to impose limits on how the president could use force. For example, the 1983 resolution that provided authority for President Ronald Reagan to send American troops to participate in a multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon set a time limit of 18 months. Then, in 1991, Congress authorized the use military force to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait. But the agreement stipulated that President George H.W. Bush first had to show congressional leaders that he had used "all appropriate diplomatic and other peaceful means to obtain compliance by Iraq with the United Nations Security Council." And congressional intervention into the president’s powers as commander-in-chief doesn’t begin or end with authorizations. Other types of legislation have played a role as well. In the 1930s, the Neutrality Acts limited President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ability to aid allied nations fighting in World War II. In 1973, Congress passed a law to block any future military operations Southeast Asia unless Congress approved them, essentially ending the United States’ engagement in the Vietnam War. Later, Congress rebuked President Gerald Ford’s request for military aid to Vietnam. The most significant and lasting Vietnam-era congressional response came in 1973, when Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution. The act required presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of sending troops into harm's way and mandated authorization from Congress if military force is to be used beyond 60 days. The Supreme Court has never weighed in on the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution, but every president since it passed "has taken the position that it is an unconstitutional infringement by Congress on the president’s authority as commander in chief," the Congressional Research Service has written. Despite this, presidents have tended to abide by key aspects of the law for pragmatic reasons, hoping to appease Congress and present a united front before utilizing military force. Finally, Congress can use (and has used) the power of the purse to restrict the president’s use of military force. For example, in 1993, Congress prohibited funding for a continuous presence of U.S. forces in Somalia. Kinzinger’s response When we took this to Kinzinger’s office, spokeswoman Catherine Gatewood said the congressman "was talking in the context of fighting terrorism and radical jihadism. In the current war, Congress has never taken a position to limit the president’s ability to fight terrorism, so to do so in his fight against ISIS would be a change in policy." The far more general nature of the statement suggests to us that this is an after-the-fact reinterpretation of his words. But even if we take it at face value, it’s not clear to us that Kinzinger is accurate. He has a point that the 2001 joint resolution that authorized the use of force against al-Qaida was quite broad. In fact, it didn’t even name al-Qaida as the target, but rather gave the president the power to use force against "nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons." That’s pretty open-ended. Still, even that resolution restricted the efforts to terrorist groups or countries directly or tangentially involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. This limitation has at least forced debates on whether Obama needs authorization to continue military action in Syria against the Islamic State. "It is a bit of a stretch to say (the 2001 authorization) covered ISIS, but you could make a case for that," said Richard Stoll, an expert on international conflict at Rice University. "It is better if we’re going to use military force to say, ‘I, as president, may have the power to do this, but it is better if Congress approves it, because it tells the world we stand together.’ " And it is not as though Congress has been absent from the debate on anti-terrorism strategy. For example, President George W. Bush in 2006 signed legislation passed by Congress to outlaw use of torture against terrorism suspects who were sent to Guantanamo Bay. "A lot of the action, when you think about congressional checks on war powers, happens behind closed doors," said William Howell, an American politics professor at the University of Chicago and author of While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers. "There are things Obama and Bush might very well like to do that neither of them followed up on, assuming Congress would intervene and make life difficult for them. When you think about Congress as a player on debates on war, it’s not just resolutions and legislation; a lot of this stuff is anticipatory." Our ruling Kinzinger said that the authorization for use of military force now pending in Congress would represent "the first time Congress would place limits on the commander-in-chief's ability to be commander-in-chief." A plain reading of that statement finds it problematic. Time and time again, Congress has intervened to rein in presidents from taking certain types of actions or continuing combat longer than lawmakers want. To do this, Congress simply has to use the power it is granted in the Constitution, authority that has been affirmed and reaffirmed by courts for centuries. Even the narrower interpretation of the statement that Kinzinger’s office stands by — that it only refers to the war on terrorism — doesn’t hold up. We rate the statement False. | null | Adam Kinzinger | null | null | null | 2015-02-19T14:29:29 | 2015-02-15 | ['United_States_Congress'] |
pose-00322 | Will "endorse the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars." | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/339/support-human-mission-to-moon-by-2020/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Support human mission to moon by 2020 | 2010-01-07T13:26:55 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03942 | There are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns. | pants on fire! | /georgia/statements/2013/feb/20/paul-broun/congressman-uses-wrong-words-gun-claim/ | Some gun control critics are using a similar talking point in the national debate over this issue. PolitiFact Georgia spotted two recent claims on the topic that show the importance of being precise when making an argument on an issue. One speaker got it right. The other person made a more general statement on guns and got it wrong. Our odyssey began when an interesting comment by a state senator started making the rounds at the Georgia Capitol and on Twitter. "There's more murders with hammers last year than...shotguns and pistols and AK-47s," said state Sen. Bill Jackson, a Republican from Appling. Two days after Jackson’s statement, U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, a Republican from Athens, was quoted by Slate.com on the same topic. "There are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns," said Broun, who believes in limited government and is running for the U.S. Senate in 2014. We quickly discovered our partners at other PolitiFact operations have examined similar claims before. Here’s what they found: In January, some Facebook posts began to circulate that were critical of the White House’s proposal to restrict the availability of some weapons. "Facts gun control advocates don’t want you to know. According to the FBI, in 2011, 1,694 were murdered with knives, 726 with hands or feet, 496 with clubs or hammers, 323 with rifles of any type. But Obama wants to ban semi-automatic rifles?" it read. The FBI figures also showed that 356 people were killed with shotguns. PolitiFact reviewed 2011 FBI data on the types of weapons used to commit murders. The numbers posted on Facebook nearly matched the FBI data. The Facebook post of how many people were killed with hands or feet was two below the FBI total of 728. A few weeks later, our partners at PolitiFact Texas examined a similar claim from that state’s attorney general, Greg Abbott. "FBI: More people killed with hammers & clubs each year than rifles," Abbott said in a Twitter post. He supplied a link to a Jan. 3, 2013, Fox News commentary piece that originated on the conservative website Breitbart.com and referred to FBI murder statistics from 2005 through 2011. PolitiFact Texas noted Abbott used selective data to base his claim. That said, PolitiFact Texas noted, it is correct that FBI data indicates that in 2011, more people were killed with "clubs and hammers" than with any type of rifle. They rated his claim True. Our efforts to reach Broun were unsuccessful. Broun’s statement is not as specific as Jackson, whose claim we rated True, and the others. FBI data shows that 6,220 Americans were murdered by handguns in 2011. That’s more than 12 times the number of people killed with clubs or hammers, not including how many people were killed by other types of guns. Broun’s claim that there are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns was less specific. Broun’s general use of "guns" by its nature includes handguns. That makes his statement way off. FBI statistics show that 8,583 people were killed with all guns in 2011 -- most of them (6,220) with handguns. Broun is a congressman who has inserted himself directly into the heated gun debate. And he’s now running for the U.S. Senate. His high-profile run for higher office means that more of his statements will end up in the glare of the spotlight. And some of them could combust. Our rating for Broun: Pants on Fire. | null | Paul Broun | null | null | null | 2013-02-20T06:00:00 | 2013-02-13 | ['None'] |
hoer-00865 | Circulating Message Claims a Dog Died after Playing With a Poisoned Filled Nerf Football | unsubstantiated messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/nerf-football-dog-park-poison.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Circulating Message Claims a Dog Died after Playing With a Poisoned Filled Nerf Football | August 19, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00415 | Jennifer Garner Taking Back Ben Affleck For Sake Of Kids? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-garner-ben-affleck-back-together-kids/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Garner Taking Back Ben Affleck For Sake Of Kids? | 12:18 pm, August 21, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09019 | Florida’s high school graduation rate falls well below the national average. | true | /florida/statements/2010/jul/08/alex-sink/alex-sink-says-floridas-grad-rates-are-low/ | Like any good Democrat, gubernatorial hopeful Alex Sink has a habit of highlighting the state's mediocre public education record. Voters need look no further than her campaign website, where she laments student achievement records. "Florida’s high school graduation rate falls well below the national average," reads her campaign website. "That’s unacceptable, especially as we work to build a new and stronger Florida economy." The campaign did not respond to a request for Sink's source, but we found plenty of information that shows Florida is far from the head of the class when it comes to graduation rates. The National Center for Education Statistics puts the national average graduation rate at 73.9 percent based on the class of 2006-2007 in a 2010 report. It determined Florida, with a rate of 65 percent, was among 11 states and the District of Columbia with graduation rates below 70 percent. In fact, Florida fell below the national average every year from 2001 to 2007. The report only counted traditional diplomas. Diplomas Count 2010, another respected education report, also puts Florida's graduation rate below the national average for every school year from 2005 through 2007, the most recent years available. For example, the graduation rate for Florida's class of 2007 was 62.1 percent. The national rate was 68.8 percent. Only nine other states and the District of Columbia also scored below 65 percent. Diplomas Count reached its results counting only students receiving standard high school diplomas. Recipients of General Educational Development diplomas, certificates of attendance and other nondiploma credentials were treated as nongraduates. We found only one source that somewhat countered Sink's claim, and it's an interesting one -- the Florida Department of Education. Spokesman Cheryl Etters said national reports are not the most credible source of information because each ranking and state may use different "graduate" definitions. For example, Florida counts students who obtain a GED in two of its graduation counts. But Diplomas Count 2010 and other education research groups do not. In all, the state calculates three graduation rates: The regular rate counts all diploma recipients as graduates, including standard and special diplomas and all GEDs. For the 2006-2007 school year the rate was 72.4. The No Child Left Behind graduation rate considers only standard diplomas and GEDs awarded to high school students. It excludes certificates of attendance and GEDs awarded to adult students. That rate was 69.8 in 2007. The National Governors Association rate counts standard diplomas and certificates of attendance, but not GEDs. That rate was 70.3 in 2007. We decided to compare these numbers to the national graduation rates we had for that school year, even though it wouldn't be an exact comparison. Florida's figures all fell below the National Center for Education Statistics 2007 national graduation rate of 73.9 percent, thus backing Sink's claim. Florida's numbers were higher than the national graduation rate of 68.8 percent published in Diplomas Count 2010, but that's most likely because Diplomas Count has a more narrow "graduate" definition. In short, multiple calculations determined Florida's graduation rate falls below the national average. As for the "well below," part of Sink's claim, both the National Center for Education Statistics and Diplomas Count put Florida among the bottom third of all the states. And, while Florida's most recent graduation rates show improvement -- during the 2008-2009 school year, the regular graduation rate rose to 78.6, the No Child Left Behind graduation rate rose to 76.2, and the National Governors Association rate climbed to 76.3 -- national groups have yet to evaluate the latest data, so we can't determine whether Florida has finally surpassed the average national graduation rate. Based on what we know and the latest data, we say Sink passed the test. We give this a True. | null | Alex Sink | null | null | null | 2010-07-08T19:33:39 | 2010-07-08 | ['None'] |
afck-00337 | “In housing, about 3 million housing units and more than 855,000 serviced sites were delivered since 1994 [up to December 2013].” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/2014-sona-claims-revisited-zuma-on-service-delivery/ | null | null | null | null | null | 2014 SONA claims revisited: Zuma on service delivery | 2015-02-12 08:38 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01193 | On the stump, Abbott called the 2001 tuition law "flawed" and said he would not veto a bill to repeal it. But he did not outline how he would suggest fixing it. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/abbott-o-meter/promise/1283/let-law-repeal-2001-change-authorizing-state-colle/ | null | abbott-o-meter | Greg Abbott | null | null | Reform 2001 law authorizing in-state college tuition for unauthorized residents | 2015-01-20T14:00:00 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07519 | Said Planned Parenthood’s early objective was to "help kill black babies before they came into the world." | pants on fire! | /georgia/statements/2011/apr/08/herman-cain/cain-claims-planned-parenthood-founded-planned-gen/ | This presidential election season, Georgia’s homegrown prospect Herman Cain is talking about race. Cain, a black, conservative Republican, recently said the media is "scared that a real black man may run against Barack Obama." And there’s this one about pro-abortion rights group Planned Parenthood: "When Margaret Sanger - check my history - started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world," Cain said during a talk in Washington, D.C., at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group. "It's planned genocide," Cain added. He wants the U.S. Congress to yank funding for Planned Parenthood, which receives about $75 million a year to provide non-abortion health services. Was Planned Parenthood founded to help kill unborn black babies? Cain asked his audience to check his history. So, we did. First, a disclaimer. Cain, who has launched a presidential exploratory committee, was a talk show host on AM 750 and now 95.5 FM WSB, which, like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is part of Cox Media Group. Cain has more political heft than your average talking head. The former CEO of Godfather Pizza beat a six-term U.S. congressman to finish second in Georgia’s 2004 U.S. Senate Republican primary. The Morehouse grad has eight honorary doctorate degrees and has authored four books, and he serves on several corporate boards. Now some history. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is credited with making birth control legal and widely available. Born 1879, Sanger, who was white, blamed her mother’s death on her frequent pregnancies. At the time, speaking about birth control could lead to arrest. She thought that if women could legally control the number of children they bore, their health and economic conditions would improve. We consulted with scholarship, Cain’s camp, anti-abortion groups, Sanger’s biographer, and multiple experts on Cain’s claim. The supposed evidence that Sanger supported black genocide is a loose collection of her most objectionable statements, her ties to the disgraced eugenics movement, and her work on what was called the Negro Project. That effort, started in 1939, brought birth control services (but not abortion) to black communities in the South. These facts don’t come close to supporting Cain’s claim. Eugenics was once a wildly popular theory that the human race can be improved through better breeding and genetics. It drew together backers as diverse as President Theodore Roosevelt and black intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. At its best, the U.S. movement pushed for better prenatal care. At its worst, it enabled forced sterilization laws and let claims that blacks and immigrants were inferior to masquerade as science. Sanger welcomed some of the movement’s more notorious leaders onto the board of a predecessor to Planned Parenthood. She also endorsed paying pensions to women of low intelligence who agreed to be sterilized. But we found no evidence that Sanger advocated - privately or publicly - for anything even resembling the "genocide" of blacks, or that she thought blacks are genetically inferior. Every academic PolitiFact Georgia consulted said that Cain’s claim is wrong. "I have never run into any serious academic reference of Sanger or others wanting to ‘kill black babies,’" Indiana University professor Ruth Engs, a eugenics movement expert, told PolitiFact Georgia in an e-mail. What’s worse, Cain got his facts mixed up. Sanger’s first birth control clinic opened in 1916 in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., which was mostly Irish and Jewish. When she did open a Harlem clinic in the early 1930s, about half of its patients were white. Members of the black establishment, including DuBois and black newspaper the Amsterdam News, supported it. This was hardly the pro-genocide camp. None of these centers performed abortions. Those who think Sanger wanted black genocide cite the Negro Project. But even their strongest evidence, a passage from a letter she wrote advocating that organizers recruit black ministers for the project, does not come close to proving a genocidal plot. Sanger wrote that "We don’t want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs." But her correspondence shows this sentence advocates for black doctors and ministers to play leadership roles in the Negro Project to avoid misunderstandings. Lynchings and Jim Crow laws gave blacks good reason to be wary of attempts to limit the number of children they bore. In Harlem, she hired a black doctor and social worker to quell those fears. The facts of the Negro Project suggest nothing more genocidal than a public health project. Black leaders DuBois and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and the pastor of the influential black Abyssinian Baptist Church were members of its advisory council. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt was supportive. For Sanger to launch a genocidal plot behind their backs and leave no true evidence in her numerous writings would require powers just shy of witchcraft. Really, calling the Negro Project a genocidal plot defies common sense. Why would Sanger try to destroy a race of people by giving them access to the very thing she thought could make life better? Planned Parenthood’s early objective was not to "help kill black babies before they came into the world." Sanger failed to rise above the ethnic and racial paternalism of her time, but that’s a far cry from being genocidal. Cain’s claim is a ridiculous, cynical play of the race card. We rate it Pants on Fire. | null | Herman Cain | null | null | null | 2011-04-08T06:00:00 | 2011-03-15 | ['None'] |
tron-03070 | Ted Cruz’s Father Linked to JFK Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/ted-cruzs-father-linked-jfk-assassin-lee-harvey-oswald/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Ted Cruz’s Father Linked to JFK Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald | Apr 21, 2016 | null | ['Ted_Cruz', 'John_F._Kennedy'] |
tron-03407 | President George Bush’s visit to the inner city at Christmas | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/angeltree/ | null | religious | null | null | null | President George Bush’s visit to the inner city at Christmas | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10683 | Five percent of Americans pay over half the income taxes in this country. Forty percent of Americans pay no income taxes at all. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/13/fred-thompson/thompsons-tax-numbers-add-up/ | Fred Thompson, in arguing that the tax cuts of the Bush administration should be renewed, said that 5 percent of Americans pay over half the income taxes in this country, and that 40 percent of Americans pay no income taxes at all. Both figures are true. The top 5 percent of all payers do pay more than half the income tax. They pay about 59.2 percent of all individual income tax, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan institute run jointly by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. Thompson also said that 40 percent of Americans pay no income tax. This claim is supported by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group that promotes transparency in the tax code and economic growth. There's a small caveat to the 40 percent number — it includes nonfilers, typically taxpayers who don't have to file returns because their incomes are too low. It's logical to assume that most nonfilers don't pay income taxes, but it's possible that some did if they had income taxes withheld by an employer. This is probably a very small number, because people with low incomes have an economic incentive to file a return and get a refund. The U.S. income tax system is progressive, which means that rates increase as income increases. Given that structure, it makes sense that people with higher incomes pay more taxes, and people with low incomes might pay no tax at all. Thompson's numbers are on the money, and we rate them True. | null | Fred Thompson | null | null | null | 2007-12-13T00:00:00 | 2007-12-12 | ['United_States'] |
goop-00734 | Jennifer Aniston Dating Hollywood Director, Pregnant With Baby? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-dating-director-pregnant-baby/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Aniston Dating Hollywood Director, Pregnant With Baby? | 6:14 pm, June 27, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00846 | Says Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "didn't change his position" on a two-state solution. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/mar/22/ron-dermer/israeli-ambassador-tells-us-audience-netanyahu-did/ | Sunday shows fixed their spotlight on newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose campaign-season remarks shutting down a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inflamed tensions with the White House. Now Netanyahu and his delegates are saying the comments were misunderstood. The international uproar started when Netanyahu said a Palestinian state would not happen during his tenure if he won re-election to a fourth term, which widely sounded like a departure from his previously stated support for a two-state solution. After Netanyahu’s Likud Party won enough seats to maintain coalition control of the government, Netanyahu tried to temper his position in interviews with American journalists, but President Barack Obama said he is taking Netanyahu "at his word" when Netanyahu said a two-state solution "wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership." Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday to defend the Israeli leader. Host Chuck Todd asked, "So the president is wrong that he takes the prime minister at his word at what he said before the election?" "He didn't say what the president and others seem to suggest that he's saying," Dermer said. "And he was very clear about it in his interview with Andrea Mitchell. He didn't change his position. He didn't run around giving interviews saying he's now against the Palestinian state." Dermer’s claim seems contrary to widespread analysis of Netanyahu’s record, so we wanted to find out if Netanyahu’s position had changed. What has Netanyahu said Netanyahu is on track to be the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s statehood, elected to a fourth term in office with last week’s close election. Netanyahu had already miffed the Obama administration by accepting an invitation from congressional Republicans to denounce a possible Iranian nuclear deal in a Washington address. The water between them turned even hotter after a video interview published the day before Israel's March 17 general election on NRG, a right-leaning Israeli news website. Netanyahu said in Hebrew, according to a New York Times translation: "I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel. This is the genuine reality that has been created here in the past few years. Those who do not understand that bury their heads in the sand. The left-wing parties do it, bury their heads in the sand, time and again." The reporter asked, "But if you are the prime minister, a Palestinian state will not arise?" "Indeed," Netanyahu said. He went on: "An international initiative will be presented to us, to return to 1967 borders, to divide Jerusalem. Those are real things. It is going to happen. We need to form a strong, firm national government, headed by Likud (his party), to push those pressures away." Reports from the New York Times, Washington Post and others cast these comments as a departure from his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University, when Netanyahu endorsed a two-state solution -- with caveats -- to the conflict. Secretary of State John Kerry had been working on peace talks, of which the agreement of two states is the desired result, but those fell through last year. For supporters of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu’s present-day comments saying the two-state solution would not happen affirmed fears that he was never serious about pursuing that. But was it a true reversal? The backtracking Victory in hand, Netanyahu sought to clarify his comments about his support for a two-state solution in interviews with American media. On MSNBC, he told Andrea Mitchell, "I haven’t changed my policy. I never retracted my speech at Bar-Ilan University six years ago calling for a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. What has changed is the reality. "Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, refuses to recognize the Jewish state, has made a pact with Hamas that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, and every territory that is vacated today in the Middle East is taken up by Islamist forces, so we want that to change so we can realize a vision of real, sustained peace," he said. His rhetoric had been consistent in the closing weeks of the election, as a Likud Party press release, according to the Post, quoted Netanyahu as saying "there will be no withdrawals and no concessions" because evacuated territory would fall to radical Iran-supported terror groups. A similar newsletter distributed by a Likud leader said Netanyahu had dismissed his Bar-Ilan speech as "null and void," according to this New York Times timeline of Netanyahu’s position on this issue. But when the party followed up by saying the support voiced at Bar-Ilan was "irrelevant," his office countered he had "never stated such a thing." Netanyahu doubled down that he did not change his position in an interview with NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, who pointed out that the comments were awkward because presidents before Obama had also pressed for the two-state solution. Inskeep asked if it was still Netanyahu’s position to be against a Palestinian state. "What I said was that under the present circumstances, today, it is unachievable," he said, citing the Palestinian Authority’s government with Hamas. "I said that the conditions have to change." Expert analysis What to make of Netanyahu’s words -- is he a flip-flopper or being taken out of context? Ultimately, it’s hard to know his true position. Jonathan Schanzer, Foundation for Defense of Democracies vice president for research and author of books on the conflict, offered several notes of context. First, and perhaps most importantly, Netanyahu’s support for the two-state solution has always been tepid, Schanzer said. In his first term that started in 1997, he opposed Palestinian statehood. The switch came at the university speech in 2009, and he reaffirmed in October 2014 his support for "a vision of peace of two states for two peoples based on mutual recognition and rock solid security arrangements on the ground" during a visit with Obama at the White House. For him to say now, unequivocally, that there would be no Palestinian state during his time in office may seem to indicate that he is against it on principle, Schanzer said, "but he didn’t say there would never be a two-state solution." To Schanzer, that is a fine distinction. Netanyahu always seemed reluctant to be part of the peace talks brokered by the United States, but he showed up anyway, Schanzer said. For him to acknowledge how poorly the talks have gone, and how unlikely they are to improve given the dwindling tenures of all leaders involved, "is actually a moment of honesty," he said. Still, the potentially candid assessment had convenient timing, as Netanyahu spent his final days of campaigning trying to consolidate Israel’s right-wing voters, who have several political party options unlike the United States. It was also in the election’s final days when Netanyahu warned in a video that Arab-Israelis were voting "in droves" and could threaten conservative rule, which critics saw as steeped in race-mongering. "The point is to say this was certainly done in the heat of the campaign," Schanzer said. "But I also believe that this does not discount the idea of a two-state solution moving forward permanently." Our ruling Dermer pushed back against widespread reports that Netanyahu changed his position on a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the general elections. Dermer said, "He didn't change his position. He didn't run around giving interviews saying he's now against the Palestinian state." His position on this issue is much more complicated than Dermer lets on. Netanyahu has been all over the place. While he originally opposed Palestinian statehood, he has voiced support for a two-state peacemaking strategy as recently as October. Fast forward to this month: Netanyahu told a reporter for a right-leaning website that a Palestinian state wouldn’t happen under his watch. While he didn’t literally say he was "against the Palestinian state," his comments certainly signalled he would not be working toward that anytime soon." He has since clarified his position again, to say he supports the prospect of a Palestinian state, with caveats. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Ron Dermer | null | null | null | 2015-03-22T18:35:43 | 2015-03-22 | ['Benjamin_Netanyahu', 'Israel'] |
pomt-04881 | Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/07/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-barack-obamas-plan-abandons-tenet/ | Forget, for a moment, tax cuts and the fiscal cliff. Mitt Romney wants to talk about welfare. A Romney ad opens with a picture of President Bill Clinton signing the 1996 landmark welfare reform act, which shifted the program from indefinite government assistance to one based on steering people toward employment and self-reliance. The words "unprecedented success" flash on the screen. Clinton and a bipartisan Congress, a narrator says, "helped end welfare as we know it by requiring work for welfare." A leather-gloved laborer wipes sweat from his forehead. "But on July 12," the ad continues, "President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check, and ‘welfare to work’ goes back to being plain old welfare." The July 12 announcement, made by the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, allows states to try different ways of meeting the work requirements of the federal law. Does it really mean "they just send you your welfare check"? We decided to look further. The HHS memo Since 1996, welfare has been administered through block grants to states through a program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. TANF, as it’s called, limits how long families can get aid and requires recipients to eventually go to work. It also includes stringent reporting requirements for states to show they are successfully moving people off welfare and and into the workforce. A memo from George Sheldon, the acting assistant secretary at HHS, said the department wanted to give states more flexibility in meeting those requirements. The memo notifies states "of the Secretary’s willingness to exercise her waiver authority ... to allow states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families." The memo outlined, using the jargon of a federal bureaucracy, the kinds of waivers that would be considered. It suggested projects that "improve collaboration with the workforce and/or post-secondary education systems" and "demonstrate strategies for more effectively serving individuals with disabilities," to give two examples. What does all that mean? "If you can do a better job connecting people to work, we would consider waiving certain parts of the performance measures and use alternate measures," is how Liz Schott, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, translated the memo’s point. (The center supports the plan.) Schott, who studies welfare policy, said TANF sets guidelines for what activities may count toward meeting the law’s work requirements: jobs, job training, internships or school, to name a few. Beyond that, it puts restrictions on how many hours a welfare client may spend at school, or how many consecutive months they can attend before that activity no longer counts toward the work requirement. The result: "States are running less-effective programs than they might be, because they are so driven by performance measurement as it’s set forth in the federal law," Schott said. The waivers, then, would allow for flexibility. For example, someone with a special-needs child might require different work arrangements than are currently allowed. Or a person who needs to improve his or her English skills might need more time to take classes. "It’s really about the underlying program," Schott said. "The real starting place is: What’s the most effective program to get this person to work?" Romney’s assertion In a memo released along with the ad, the Romney campaign says the change "undermines the very premise of welfare reform. It is an insult to Americans on welfare who are looking for an opportunity to build better lives for themselves. And it is a kick in the gut to the millions of hard-working middle-class taxpayers struggling in today’s economy, working more for less but always preferring self-sufficiency to a government handout." Obama, it says, "hopes states will consider approaches that remove work participation rate requirements all together." The HHS letter contains no such language. In several places, it says only proposals from states that "improve employment outcomes" will be considered. It’s important to note, however, that the waivers would not just be a change on paper. Schott said it’s possible that waivers will allow states to get credit under the work requirement for things that don’t count currently. That possibility has critics of the proposal up in arms. Robert Rector, a welfare expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it could ultimately allow "state bureaucrats" to count activities that aren't really work. We should point out that those concerns are at odds with the policy's stated goal of encouraging employment. The Romney campaign also contends that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is not legally allowed to waive the existing work requirements. Rector argues that the part of the law allowing waivers does not cover TANF work provisions. "Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, is deliberately not listed... its provisions cannot be waived," Rector wrote in a July 12 column in the National Review. We think that’s a noteworthy point, but it’s one that a court will have to settle. Our ruling Romney’s ad says, "Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check." That's a drastic distortion of the planned changes to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. By granting waivers to states, the Obama administration is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more successful, not end them. What’s more, the waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to welfare law. The ad tries to connect the dots to reach this zinger: "They just send you your welfare check." The HHS memo in no way advocates that practice. In fact, it says the new policy is "designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families." The ad’s claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire! | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2012-08-07T18:40:21 | 2012-08-06 | ['None'] |
pomt-09843 | 76 percent of Americans want a public health care option. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/20/progressive-change-campaign-committee/groups-claim-overwhelming-support-public-option/ | A Web site called "We Want the Public Option" includes this headline at the top of the home page: "76% of Americans Say We Want the Public Option." The Web site also includes a video that has no voice-over, just a list of signatures supporting a public option in the health care reform plan, plus a smattering of statistics about reform. The signatures were collected by the two liberal groups — Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee — that paid for the ad. The ad aired for the first time on July 23, 2009, in Washington, D.C., and Montana. It's no longer on the air, but the video remains prominent on the Web site. The video opens with this claim: "76% of Americans support President Obama's public health insurance option." That number seemed high to us, especially in the light of recent polls, so we decided to check it. The statistic comes from a poll conducted June 12-15 by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal that asked, "In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance — extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?" About 41 percent of respondents said it was extremely important, and about 35 percent said it was quite important. Add those numbers together, and you get 76 percent. But in the health care debate, June was a long time ago. Since that poll was published, rowdy town hall meetings and a barrage of criticism have made Americans more skeptical of health care reform. The public option has become less popular as well; several surveys done since that first NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll indicate declining support for a public plan. Here are just a few examples: • The Kaiser Family Foundation , a health care think tank, polled 1,205 people July 7-14 and found that 59 percent of people questioned would favor "a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans" and that 36 percent would oppose the idea. • A second NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll done July 24-27 asked 1,011 people whether they "would favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies." Forty-six percent said they would favor the plan while 44 percent said they opposed the idea. The two news organizations asked the same question to 805 people between Aug. 15-17 and found that 43 percent favor a public option and 47 percent who oppose it. Both statistics fall within the three-point margin of error of the July poll. • A New York Times/CBS poll of 1,050 people between July 24-28 asked whether they would "favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans." Around 66 percent favored the idea and 27 percent opposed it. • From July 27-Aug. 3, Quinnipiac University asked 2,409 voters whether they "support or oppose giving people the option of being covered by a government health insurance plan that would compete with private plans." Around 62 percent were in support and 32 percent were opposed. That's down from a July 1 Qunnipiac survey in which 69 percent supported the public option and 26 percent opposed it. House Democratic leaders and the group Health Care for America Now, which is supporting the Democratic plan, say the July and August NBC/ Wall Street Journal polls are misleading because they changed the framing of the question. Instead of asking if the choice of a public plan was important, they simply asked whether respondents were in favor of a public plan. "These polls are not comparable," the group wrote in it blog. "The first poll (June) accurately framed the question — should people be able to choose a public health insurance option. The second poll (July and August) pushed them towards an answer by leaving out the essential question of choice and asking a yes or no question." Regardless, these numbers are all over the map, and the only thing we can say with certainty is that they are each well below the 76 percent figure cited by Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. We also wondered whether the two groups accurately characterized the original NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll in the first place, and we got a mixed response. "It's fine to add those two numbers together," said Karlyn Bowman, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "But [respondents] were responding to a question about choice, not necessarily the idea of a public plan," she said. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, president of the Mellman Group, said that the ad does a "fair reading of the question. Basically, you have 76 percent in favor of a choice." Humphrey Taylor, chairman the Harris Poll, Harris Interactive, agrees that the group characterized the two-month-old poll results correctly, but that "it's a mistake to say that large numbers of people support the public plan, because they don't understand what it would do," Taylor said, noting that "most people don't have an opinion until they are asked." Language often skews opinion polls, Taylor said. When it comes to the public plan, supporters often call it the "public option" while opponents call it a "government-run plan," so the Harris Poll tried to bridge that gap during a survey of 2,276 people between July 9-13. Respondents were asked whether they supported a "public, or government-sponsored, health plan," and the group found that 52 percent were in favor while 30 percent opposed the idea. That brings us back to the ad's original claim that 76 percent favor the public plan. That's a classic case of cherry-picking where they have found the highest number possible. They've also relied on a poll with wording that might lead people to think they were being asked if they favor choice in picking their health plan rather than whether they support a government-run option. Most of the other polls show support, but not nearly the landslide as the June poll. What's more, they continue to display the ad on their Web site even though the poll is sorely out of date and eclipsed by more recent and more precisely worded surveys. By most accounts, there's slightly more support for the public plan than there is opposition, but that support has dwindled throughout the summer. As a result, we give the Progressive Change Campaign Committee a False. | null | Progressive Change Campaign Committee | null | null | null | 2009-08-20T15:22:40 | 2009-08-19 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-07669 | Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/mar/10/rick-santorum/rick-santorum-said-obama-said-any-child-born-prema/ | It may seem early to some voters, but a few Republicans candidates for the 2012 presidential race are already on the trail in Iowa, the first caucus state. One is Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. Santorum recently spoke at a forum hosted by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, emphasizing that conservatives need to remain committed to social values, even though many expect the economy to be the most pressing issue of the election cycle. Opposition to abortion is particularly important, he said. "Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed," Santorum said, according to a column by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. That’s a strong charge, so we decided to check it out. We turned to video from the forum to get Santorum’s complete comments. Part of his comments touched on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a federal law he sponsored in the Senate. "It said that if a child was born out of a, quote, botched abortion, then that child is entitled to medical protection, entitled to treatment," Santorum said. Several states decided to copy the law. Santorum noted that Barack Obama, then an Illinois state legislator, opposed the state version of the law in Illinois. Obama "stood up and said that he opposed this bill because it would impinge on a woman’s rights under Roe v. Wade, and said, in fact, that any child prior to nine months of gestation would be able to be killed, otherwise it would impinge on Roe v. Wade," Santorum said. (See Santorum’s comments on C-SPAN.) "Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed," Santorum said. "Now who’s the extremist in the abortion debate?" We researched Obama’s position on "born alive" legislation extensively during the presidential campaign. Obama favors abortion rights generally, and he opposed the state version of Illinois’ "born alive" measure as a state senator. But he never said that premature children, even those who survived an abortion, could be killed. 'Born Alive' in Illinois When Obama was a state senator, abortion opponents proposed "born alive" legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The proposals’ intent was to require doctors to provide immediate life-saving care to any infant that survived an intended abortion. The legislation, which included multiple bills, specified that an infant surviving a planned abortion is "born alive" and "shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." The bills' supporters said it gave added emphasis to laws already on the books, deterring the death of abortion survivors from neglect. (One of the bills' strongest supporters was a nurse who said she had witnessed infants left to die in dirty utility rooms.) Abortion-rights proponents, on the other hand, said the legislation was a back-door attempt to stop legal abortions. Illinois already had a law on its books from 1975 that said if a doctor suspected an abortion was scheduled for a viable fetus — meaning able to survive outside of the mother's body — then the child must receive medical care if it survives the abortion. The new laws didn't distinguish between viable and nonviable, meaning that an infant of any age that survived an abortion should receive care. Obama, along with other Democrats in the Illinois legislature, opposed the "born alive" laws every time they came up. Over the years, Obama offered several reasons he opposed the legislation. Back in 2001, legislative transcripts show that Obama questioned part of the "born alive" legislation package because he said it would be struck down by the courts for giving legal status to fetuses. In 2002, Obama discussed a different aspect of the legislation, which required a second doctor be present at abortions. Obama said he thought that legislation was intended to make abortion more difficult to obtain, not to provide better care for the "born alive." There is no record of his remarks in 2003 because the bill never made it out of committee, and the committee proceedings were not recorded. The 'neutrality' clause debated The federal legislation (the law Santorum sponsored in the Senate) became law in 2002. The federal legislation included a so-called "neutrality clause," which said the law would not change the legal status or legal rights of anyone prior to being "born alive." Abortion rights advocates said the clause was necessary to make sure the bill would not affect current abortion laws. Obama said as far back as 2004 that he would have supported the federal bill and that he would have supported the Illinois versions if they had included a similar neutrality clause. The laws the full Illinois Senate voted on in 2001 and 2002 did not have such a clause, but 2003 is a different story. The National Right to Life Committee said during the 2008 campaign that the Illinois bill of 2003 did have a neutrality clause. The committee said Obama subsequently misrepresented the bill. Obama responded to that charge in an August 2008 interview. "I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying," Obama said. "I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported, which was to say that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion." Back in 2008, we requested documentation from the Illinois State Archives about the 2003 bill and found that it did have a neutrality clause, as the National Right to Life Committee said. (The clause was added at the committee level, and those records are not available online. But we have posted the documents we received via fax from the State Archives here). But there is an important caveat to add here: We don't know what the discussion was at the 2003 committee meeting because the proceedings weren't recorded, but it seems likely that the federal neutrality clause was not considered sufficient at the state level, because the 2005 Illinois law that eventually passed included a more extensive neutrality clause than the federal legislation. To read more about the differences between the neutrality clauses, read our previous detailed fact-check here. Obama’s comments With Santorum reviving the issue of "born alive" legislation, we went back again to check the transcripts from the Illinois legislature. Obama did say he opposed the bill because it wouldn’t pass constitutional muster under Roe v. Wade. But he never said that "any child prior to nine months of gestation would be able to be killed" or that "any child born prematurely … can be killed," as Santorum said. In fact, Obama said in 2001 that there were "a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion (who) were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns" raised by supporters of the legislation. In 2002, Obama said that he thought Illinois already had laws sufficient to ensure that children that survived abortion received care. The proposed law would have required two doctors instead of one in the case of a live birth to ensure that care would be provided. "If these are children who are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in the room is going to make sure that they’re looked after," Obama said then. At no time did Obama say that children born prematurely can be legally killed. We contacted Santorum’s political action committee, America’s Foundation, for comment. Spokeswoman Virginia Davis said that Obama’s votes against the state measure showed he supported killing children who were born alive. "By his statements and votes, (fully documented by the lead advocate of this legislation in Illinois and at the federal level), and as verified by Factcheck.org, then-state Senator Barack Obama several times voiced opposition to, and voted against legislation that, protected a child scheduled to be aborted -- and was born alive -- from being killed," David said via e-mail. We should note that the Factcheck.org report noted Obama’s positions on the Illinois measures but reiterated his support for the federal legislation. "Whether opposing ‘born alive’ legislation is the same as supporting ‘infanticide,’ however, is entirely a matter of interpretation," the report noted. Our ruling To reiterate what’s not in dispute: Obama opposed "born alive" legislation in Illinois and gave several reasons for opposing the proposals. But at no time did he make the argument that infants who survived botched abortions should be killed. Santorum may feel that abortion is tantamount to infanticide, but that does not give him the license to put words in Obama's mouth that he never uttered. Santorum said, "Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed." Obama didn’t say that. In fact, he said that abortion should be legal, but that children that are born should receive medical care. Obama never said that any child born prematurely can be killed or anything like that. Santorum crosses a line with his rhetoric in distinguishing the difference between his position and Obama’s. We rate Santorum’s statement Pants on Fire. | null | Rick Santorum | null | null | null | 2011-03-10T12:34:36 | 2011-03-07 | ['None'] |
chct-00155 | FACT CHECK: Did The US Lose 70,000 Factories Under Bush And Obama? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/04/12/fact-check-did-the-us-lose-70000-factories-under-bush-and-obama/ | null | null | null | Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 2:54 PM 04/12/2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09361 | As a state rep, I was considered the fourth-most conservative in the Legislature.” half-true /texas/statements/2010/apr/01/rick-green/green-says-he-was-fouth-most-conservative-texas-ho/ Rick Green of Dripping Springs, in an April 13 Republican primary runoff for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court, told a Montgomery County group that voters don’t have to guess his judicial philosophy -- they can look at his legislative voting record. Green served two terms in the Texas House from 1999 to 2003; he lost his seat in 2002 to Democrat Patrick Rose. According to a video of his Jan. 14 Montgomery County remarks posted on his campaign Web site, Green encouraged listeners to check his House history, saying: As a state rep, I was considered the fourth-most conservative in the Legislature.” Is that so? To support his claim, Green's campaign pointed us to the 1999 Texas Conservative Report, a publication of the Free Enterprise PAC, an advocate for limited government and "traditional values." It has since become the Heritage Alliance PAC. The 1999 report tracks dozens of votes made by every legislator in that year's regular session. To evaluate House members, a panel chose 64 votes on "economic, social, governmental and education issues" that the group said “showed signs of a liberal or conservative philosophy.” Lawmakers were graded based on the number of times they voted with the conservative position. Green and two other members of the 150-member House voted the group's preferred way 88 percent of the time; only three members leaned the group's way more often. (The average score was 43 percent.) By that measure, Green shared the “fourth-most conservative” honors with GOP Reps. John Davis of Houston and Charlie Howard of Sugar Land. Senators were rated separately, leaving Green's statement open to interpretation whether he was claiming to be the fourth-most conservative in the whole Legislature (which would be an overstatement) or just the House (which was accurate). The report lists 28 criteria that define how positions were identified as conservative, including if legislation made government more efficient, strengthened the family's importance as the foundation of the nation, reduced the overall tax burden or protected a citizen's ability to make a living. In summarizing its ratings, the group highlighted 12 votes on topics ranging from property taxes to abortion to standardized testing. One vote was on a bill that would have expanded the state's hate crimes law by, among other things, enhancing criminal penalties and specifying which groups would be protected against bias crimes, including those targeted because of their "race, color, disability, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, status as a pregnant person, gender, or sexual preference." The Free Enterprise PAC said "nay" was the conservative vote in this case because the measure would have given "special rights to an individual or group" and did not support "traditional Judeo/Christian moral values." Green was in the minority in voting no. That bill eventually failed, though a hate crimes measure later passed into law during the 2001 legislative session. Green also received a thumbs-up from the group for voting against a bill requiring people younger than 18 to wear a bicycle helmet when riding on public roads or paths. That measure did not become law. All in all, Green was one of 32 House members the group designated a Leader of Excellence in 1999. Not noted by Green in Montgomery County: Based on some of his votes in the 2001 legislative session -- Green's last -- he slipped in the group's conservative rankings. Not that Green became a liberal. The group's 2001 report states that Green took its favored position 65 percent of the time, compared to a House average of 34 percent. He tied with three others as the 11th-most conservative House member. Thirty members sided more often with the group's preferred positions. Green, who served on Heritage Alliance's board of directors from March through November 2009, was not designated a Leader of Excellence by the group in 2001 because he sided with it in less than 70 percent of the rated votes. As before, the group's 2001 report spotlights 12 votes, which covered topics ranging from the death penalty to the minimum wage to mental illness. The votes included two that the group penalized Green for, both voice votes, in which passage is determined by choruses of "ayes" and "nays" on the House floor. The first was on a proposal to mandate that health insurance policies in Texas cover anorexia and bulimia as serious mental illnesses, and the second was on a bill requiring the state attorney general's office to use gender-neutral terminology in publications. Neither became law. For both, the group's preferred position was to oppose them. When we asked Heritage Alliance President Richard Ford how the group was able to tell tell whether a legislator had voted yes or no in those instances, he said he could not recall how those votes were treated because the report was done so long ago. We have a hunch why the group marked Green as voting the wrong way on the two bills. After a voice vote is held, individual members may request that their vote be separately recorded as for or against. It appears that Free Enterprise gave conservative credit only to the lawmakers who did that on those two measures, and Green was not one of them, according to the House Journal. His wife, Kara Green, the campaign's treasurer, said her husband did not support either measure. Summing up: Green accurately recaps his conservative ranking — albeit by a single group, the Free Enterprise PAC, during his first of two terms. He omits the fact that he was not considered fourth-most conservative in his second term, according to the group. We rate his statement as Half True. | null | Rick Green | null | null | null | 2010-04-01T19:27:57 | 2010-01-14 | ['None'] | null | null | null |
pose-01175 | With a $2 million appropriation, teams of expert teacher mentors could be deployed to poor-performing schools to coach educators by teaching alongside them in the classroom. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/abbott-o-meter/promise/1265/establish-pilot-program-make-reading-improvement-t/ | null | abbott-o-meter | Greg Abbott | null | null | Establish pilot program to make reading improvement teams available to help schools | 2015-01-20T10:00:00 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01198 | Voters should be asked to approve a proposed constitutional amendment allowing the Economic Stabilization Fund to be used to cover current-biennium revenue shortfalls, retire existing state debt, make one-time infrastructure payments or to cover expenses related to disasters as declared by the governor. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/abbott-o-meter/promise/1288/change-allowed-uses-state-rainy-day-funds/ | null | abbott-o-meter | Greg Abbott | null | null | Change allowed uses of state rainy day funds | 2015-01-20T14:00:00 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05272 | A couple on crystal meth ate parts of a homeless person. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/couple-meth-homeless-man/ | null | Junk News | null | Brooke Binkowski | null | Couple High on Meth Eats Homeless Man? | 3 February 2016 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01398 | Jennifer Aniston “Too Humiliated To Go Out” Following Justin Theroux Split? | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-justin-theroux-split-humiliated-not-true/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Aniston “Too Humiliated To Go Out” Following Justin Theroux Split? | 5:51 pm, March 13, 2018 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston'] |
pose-00828 | In a Plain Dealer survey, FitzGerald pledged he would make public each year his calendar of appointments, meetings and county-related travel. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/ohio/promises/fitz-o-meter/promise/860/make-public-his-calendar-of-appointments/ | null | fitz-o-meter | Ed FitzGerald | null | null | Make public his calendar of appointments | 2011-01-20T13:56:11 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03147 | Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán donated millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/el-chapo-hillary-clinton-donation/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Did El Chapo Donate Millions to Hillary Clinton’s Campaign? | 13 January 2017 | null | ['Mexico', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton', 'Sinaloa_Cartel'] |
pomt-08087 | Says that in his first 17 months as president, the United States doubled its world-leading $500 million a year commitment to fighting global AIDS. | true | /texas/statements/2010/dec/16/george-w-bush/president-bush-says-united-states-doubled-its-comm/ | President George W. Bush devotes a chapter of his memoir, Decision Points, to his interest in stopping AIDS abroad. "When I took office, the United States was spending a little over $500 million a year to fight global AIDS," Bush writes. "That was more than any other country. Yet it was paltry compared with the scope of the pandemic." In May 2001, he writes, he endorsed the creation of a Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, making an initial U.S. pledge of $200 million, an amount increased to $500 million by early 2002. And in June 2002, he writes, he announced the International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative. "In 17 months," Bush said, "we had doubled America's commitment to fighting global AIDS." By the time Bush completed his second term, in early 2009, such annual U.S. spending exceeded $5 billion, according to a breakdown posted online in February 2010 by the Kaiser Family Foundation. But we wanted the back story. We started from an October 2009 PolitiFact inquiry, per a statement by U2's Bono, who credited Bush with tripling U.S. spending against AIDS in Africa. In 2008, the United States accounted for more than half (51.3 percent) of all the the global AIDs relief disbursed by governments around the world, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS. When adjusted for the relative size of the countries' economies, the United States ranked fourth highest, considerably higher than most European countries. The only ones that spent more proportionately were the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Bono's homeland, Ireland. Kaiser spokesman Craig Palosky passed along a June 2004 report, "Analysis of aid in support of HIV/AIDS control, 2000-2002," whose authors include a program run by the United Nations. A table in the report shows the United States donated the most money to the AIDS fight in 2000, accounting for $329 million in such funding. The United Kingdom ranked a distant second, at $117 million. In 2003, Bush initiated a $15 billion plan to address global AIDS relief, mostly for countries in Africa where the AIDS epidemic is staggering. And then in 2008, Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — more than tripled the HIV/AIDS relief budget to $48 billion over five years. We asked Eric Lief, a former senior advisor with the U.N. Joint Program on HIV/AIDS, to analyze Bush's statement about funding. (Lief now works for the Henry L. Stimson Center, a non-partisan public policy institute.) Via e-mail, he said: "The Bush administration showed real leadership on global HIV/AIDS. U.S. funding grew exponentially during the eight Bush years. But global funding is still far short of anything close to global need." For particulars, Lief pointed us to a December 2006 Congressional Research Service report, "Trends in U.S. Global AIDS Spending: FY2000-FY2007." In fiscal 2000, the year before Bush was sworn in as president, annual U.S. spending on global HIV/AIDS assistance and to combat TB and malaria totaled $236.1 million, the report says. It totaled $564.5 million in fiscal 2001 and a little more than $1 billion in fiscal 2002. Subtracting out what Lief told us was the share of funding focused on battling TB and malaria, we estimated AIDS-specific funding at $518 million for fiscal 2001 and $930 million the year after--amounting to an increase of about 80 percent. Finally, we heard back from David Drake, a representative of Bush's publisher, the Crown Publishing Group, after asking him for evidence behind Bush's statement. Drake said in an e-mail that by the end of June 2002, Bush had committed $500 million to the Global Fund and another $500 million to the International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative. A former Bush adviser, Jay Lekfowitz, writes in a January 2009 article in Commentary magazine that the initiative was intended to increase the availability of preventive care, including drug treatments, and to devise delivery systems that would reach pregnant women and newborn children in two Caribbean nations and eight African ones (with four to be added later). Drake said Bush announced the second $500 million on June 19, 2002, just before the end of his 17th month as president. He was sworn in Jan. 20, 2001. We rate Bush's statement True. | null | George W. Bush | null | null | null | 2010-12-16T06:00:00 | 2010-11-09 | ['United_States', 'HIV/AIDS'] |
pomt-01392 | Says President Barack Obama’s recent New York fundraising trip "cost between $25 million and $50 million." | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2014/oct/14/donald-trump/trump-obama-fundraising-trip-cost-25-50-million/ | With President Barack Obama’s low approval ratings already weighing down Democrats in the mid-term elections, his Republican critics like nothing better than giving voters more reasons to think less of him. Accordingly, billionaire and occasional presidential aspirant Donald Trump called out Obama for the cost of his recent New York fundraising trip. "He raises a million dollars and it costs between $25 million and $50 million, and they close up the entire city of New York," Trump said Oct. 13 on Fox News’ Fox and Friends. We reached out to Trump to learn where he got his numbers and didn’t hear back. But we wondered, would a one-day New York trip cost between "$25 million and $50 million"? The president made a one-day trip between Washington and New York on Oct. 7. According to the White House schedule, from take-off at Andrews Air Force Base to return took a bit over nine hours. In New York and Connecticut, Obama attended two events for the Democratic National Committee and one for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Obama traveled to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York via Air Force One, which is the call sign for one of two 747 jets specially equipped with communications gear so the president is always able to respond in an emergency. According to a 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service, the policy arm of Congress, the hourly cost of Air Force One is $179,750. On domestic trips, a cargo aircraft and a backup aircraft normally accompany Air Force One. For the purposes of Trump’s calculation, that would put the total cost of the air travel between $360,000 and $1.6 million, assuming a range of two and nine hours of usage time for Air Force One. Note: Under the rules of presidential travel, when the purpose of a trip is political, not official, the president’s political organization reimburses the government. For airfare, the price is based on the cost of a commercial ticket for the president and all those who accompany him. In this case, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee would be on the hook. In addition to the aircraft, there would have been a Secret Service cost, but those figures are classified. There also would be security costs for the New York Police Department. To get a fuller picture of what the cost of presidential travel is, we have to go back to 1999 for a more comprehensive accounting. That year, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s auditing division, looked at the price tag for three foreign trips taken by President Bill Clinton. Again, these numbers don’t include the Secret Service expenses, or the pre-trip planning. But they do include pretty much everything else. (We adjusted the 1998 dollars to account for inflation.) Trip Total days Daily cost (2014 dollars) Africa - six nations 12 $5.1 million/day Chile 5 $3 million/day China 9 $3 million/day Foreign travel requires much more staff and equipment than the one-day jaunt Obama made to New York City. In Africa, for example, the Marines sent a helicopter squadron. The Air Force deployed five additional planes and ran refueling missions. The Chilean trip pulled in about 600 staffers from a variety of agencies. There were hotels and meals to pay for. While we can’t know all the details of Obama’s New York jaunt, there is no evidence that it approached the complexity of either of the lower cost trips in the GAO report. And if those trips halfway around the world came in at about $3 million per day (in today’s dollars), it is extremely likely that a back-and-forth to New York would cost less. Much less. Bottom line: Presidential travel is expensive, but Trump’s estimate of Obama’s fundraising trip to New York is wildly high, based on everything we know. Our ruling Trump said Obama’s recent New York fundraising trip cost between $25 million and $50 million. Trump provided no evidence, likely because all the available information points to a total that would be way, way lower than $25 million, let alone $50 million. We rate the claim Pants on Fire. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2014-10-14T13:53:21 | 2014-10-13 | ['New_York_City', 'Barack_Obama'] |
bove-00222 | Video Of Students Beaten In Allahabad, UP Goes Viral As Valsad, Gujarat | none | https://www.boomlive.in/video-of-students-beaten-in-allahabad-up-goes-viral-as-valsad-gujarat/ | null | null | null | null | null | Video Of Students Beaten In Allahabad, UP Goes Viral As Valsad, Gujarat | Aug 11 2017 3:35 pm, Last Updated: Aug 16 2017 1:32 pm | null | ['Allahabad', 'Gujarat'] |
pomt-05421 | Says "Austin has the lowest property tax rate by far of the five major cities in Texas." | half-true | /texas/statements/2012/may/01/lee-leffingwell/lee-leffingwell-says-austin-has-lowest-property-ta/ | Two days before city staffers discussed raising Austin’s property tax levy, Mayor Lee Leffingwell touted the city’s rate in a televised debate. Facing off against mayoral opponents Brigid Shea and Clay Dafoe in an April 16, 2012, forum on KXAN-TV, Channel 36, Leffingwell said, "The City of Austin has the lowest property tax rate by far of the five major cities in Texas, including Fort Worth, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio." Does that add up? By email, Leffingwell campaign consultant Mark Littlefield and city spokesman Reyne Telles told us that Leffingwell used data from a chart prepared by city staff for its annual five-year financial forecast. Littlefield sent us that chart plus a second one showing estimated tax bills in each city. Ed Van Eenoo, Austin’s city budget officer, told us by email that his office created the charts with 2011 tax rates, home values and sales price information from county appraisal districts and the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. We checked the numbers with the districts and center, and found Austin’s property tax rate was the lowest, considerably, of Texas’ five biggest cities, as Leffingwell said. The full list: Fort Worth, 85.5 cents per $100 of appraised value; Dallas, 79.7 cents; Houston, 63.875 cents; San Antonio, 56.5569 cents, Austin, 48.11 cents. But tax rates are only part of the equation when it comes to figuring out how hard a homeowner’s pocketbook gets hit. Here, in fact, is the equation, from Austin’s budget office: Take your house’s dollar value; subtract any homestead or other exemptions; divide by 100; then multiply by the tax rate -- with the tax rate expressed in dollars; for example, 0.4811 rather than "48.11 cents." We calculated how much typical homeowners had to pay in 2011 using two different measures: average appraised values from each county tax appraisal districts, and median sales price from the center, which gets data from real estate professionals across the state. Although exemptions affect many tax bills, we excluded them here because they vary with each homeowner and each city, county and taxing jurisdiction. In 2011, Austin had both the highest median sale price and the highest average appraised value among the five cities. But because of the city’s low tax rate, Austin’s tax bill (excluding exemptions) on an average-value home was second-highest, and its tax bill on a median sales-price home came in fourth. Calculated using 2011 median sales price and 2011 city tax rate, Dallas had the highest bill -- $1,262 on a $158,400 house -- followed by Houston’s $982 on a $153,700 house, Fort Worth’s $946 bill on a $110,600 house, Austin’s $918 on a $190,900 house and San Antonio’s $856 on a $151,300 house. Using the same tax rates and 2011’s average appraised values, Dallas was first again, with a $1,441 bill on a $180,847 house, followed by Austin’s $1,224 bill on a $254,328 house, Houston’s $1,057 on a $165,535 house, Fort Worth’s $968 on a $113,247 house and San Antonio’s $725 on a $128,151 house. Median home sale price, 2011 2011 city tax bill using median sale price Average appraised home value, 2011 2011 city tax bill using average appraised value 1. Austin, $190,900 1. Dallas, $1,262 1. Austin, $254,328 1. Dallas, $1,441 2. Dallas, $158,400 2. Houston, $982 2. Dallas, $180,847 2. Austin, $1,224 3. Houston, $153,700 3. Fort Worth, $946 3. Houston, $165,535 3. Houston, $1,057 4. San Antonio, $151,300 4. Austin, $918 4. San Antonio, $128,151 4. Fort Worth, $968 5. Fort Worth, $110,600 5. San Antonio, $856 5. Fort Worth, $113,247 5. San Antonio, $725 Because averages can be skewed by a few very high or low values, taking the median value offers a way to dampen the effect of those extremes. Medians represent a "middle" value -- median sales price would be the dollar amount at which half a city's homes sold for more and half sold for less. The city's tax bill chart used median sales prices, except for Austin, where the median appraised home value was available, and factored in homestead exemptions. Reckoned that way, Austin’s tax bill again came out second-highest. Of course, cities are only one of the entities taking a chomp out of your property taxes. Depending on where your house is, county government, school districts, community colleges and possibly many others get a bite. The Austin owner of a $190,900 home in 2011, for example, paid $2,371 to the Austin school district; $927 to Travis County; $181 to Austin Community College; and $151 to Central Health (Travis County’s healthcare district) on top of the $918 city tax bill. Also, Austinites recently learned that 2013 might bring an increase in the city’s rate. The Austin American-Statesman reported April 18 that the owner of a median-value home would pay $33 more under a tax rate of 49.95 cents per $100 of property -- the rate city staffers said Austin would need to cover its costs next year. Leffingwell responded to the news with a statement that he would look for ways to cut spending rather than raise the property tax rate. That 49.95-cent rate for 2012 is still lower than the other cities’ 2011 rates, but it’s too early to know what all the 2012 rates -- and home values -- will be. Our ruling Leffingwell’s right on the rates. Austin had the lowest 2011 city property tax rate among Texas’ five biggest cities. Yet rates alone are not the only, or even best, indicator of how much residents have been socked by property taxes. Comparing each city’s average-value home in 2011, for instance, Austin would have extracted the second-highest tax payment. Without this context, Leffingwell’s rate comparison misrepresents this pocketbook issue. His claim rates Half True. | null | Lee Leffingwell | null | null | null | 2012-05-01T16:25:25 | 2012-04-16 | ['Texas', 'Austin,_Texas'] |
pose-00488 | Obama and Biden are calling for legislation that would allow withdrawals of 15% up to $10,000 from retirement accounts without penalty (although subject to the normal taxes). This would apply to withdrawals in 2008 (including retroactively) and 2009. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/508/allow-penalty-free-hardship-withdrawals-from-retir/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Allow penalty-free hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts in 2008 and 2009 | 2010-01-07T13:27:00 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'Joe_Biden'] |
pomt-05900 | In just a few decades, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, other mandatory spending programs, and paying interest due on the debt will eclipse our entire budget. | true | /oregon/statements/2012/feb/03/kurt-schrader/will-entitlement-programs-and-debt-swamp-federal-r/ | Members of Congress and politicians like to use dramatic language to describe the nation’s fiscal problems. Federal spending, they say, is like "a runaway train." The GOP’s front-runner for president, Mitt Romney, famously said, "We’re inches away from no longer having a free economy." The rhetoric on the nation’s deficit is similar. "A government that loses its sovereignty to its bondholders cannot long guarantee its people’s prosperity – or secure their freedom," the budget written last year by House Republicans said. Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat, is a bit more restrained, though his prediction is equally grim. "In just a few decades, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, other mandatory spending programs, and paying interest due on the debt will eclipse our entire budget,’’ he says on his congressional website. "There will be NO money left for defense, Pell Grants, support for K-12 education, police and firefighters, economic development, transportation infrastructure, and everything else which creates and sustains a country for our children," he says in words meant to envision a fiscal nuclear winter. It is grim and dark to be sure. But is it true? To answer it, we have to narrow the discussion. Schrader’s assertion that there will be "NO money left" for popular programs dealing with education, public safety and infrastructure is impossible to answer because Congress has broad discretion for appropriating dollars to those activities -- or raising taxes to pay for them. And even amid desperate fiscal meltdowns Congress has excelled at finding ways to pay for popular programs. So let’s examine the first part of Schrader’s claim - that in a relatively short time, the cost of the big entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - and interest payments on the national debt will "eclipse our entire budget." If you take the statement at its literal meaning, it is false. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest are always part of the annual budget. Just like rent or mortgage, groceries and credit card debt are always part of a household budget. The spending can never eclipse the budget because the items are always contained within the total budget. Schrader’s staff says the language is imprecise but the meaning isn’t - that entitlements and debt will swamp federal revenues in the near future. It’s one of those, "It’s not what we say, it’s what we mean" moments. Taken that way there is a lot of data to support the idea. In fact, independent budget analysts using federal data say Schrader is being generous. According to budget simulations run by the Government Accountability Office, the total cost of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and debt service would exceed total revenues in 2026 for the first time in history. The fiscal year 2012 budget released last year by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee said this: "In 1970, these major entitlements consumed about 20 percent of the budget – a number that has grown to over 40 percent today. Unless action is taken to reform these programs, they will continue to crowd out all other national priorities until they break the federal budget." Other government reports look at individual pieces. But together they reach the same conclusion. The Congressional Budget Office, for example, noted similar concerns in a long-term outlook released in June. The federal debt is growing, reaching 62 percent of gross domestic product at the end of 2010. The non-partisan budget office noted similar growth trends for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, concluding "the total amount of benefits scheduled to be paid under current law will grow faster than the economy." The numbers are clear as are the trends. With the explosive growth in entitlements and the government’s need to borrow more to keep pace, there is little doubt that the lines will cross soon on the graph of revenues versus spending. The only question is when. To rule, we need to decide first if the distinction between "the budget" that Schrader referred to and total revenues, which includes the debt and all the entitlement programs, is a difference that matters. We think that, while his language could have been more precise, the average person would understand what he was talking about. Context matters in PolitiFact rulings, and in context, his remarks make his meaning clear. On the math, Schrader’s estimate of "a few decades" is very reasonable, under present circumstances. For that reason we rate this claim: True. | null | Kurt Schrader | null | null | null | 2012-02-03T16:13:50 | 2012-02-02 | ['Medicare_(United_States)', 'Social_Security_(United_States)'] |
vees-00377 | THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS: Lascanas did say he regrets trusting Trillanes, airstrike video NOT clear if Hapilon is dead | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/week-fake-news-lascanas-did-not-say-he-regrets-trusting-tril | null | null | null | null | Trillanes,Lascanas,Marawi,maute,isnilon hapilon | THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS: Lascanas did NOT say he regrets trusting Trillanes, airstrike video NOT clear if Hapilon is dead | September 08, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11534 | Says he is "one of America's leading consumer lawyers." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2018/feb/15/tim-burns/tim-burns-who-mostly-represents-businesses-suing-i/ | Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Tim Burns, a Democrat outspoken about his liberal political views, describes himself as the grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers who is running for "people who struggle." In his first TV ad, released Feb. 6, 2018, the Madison attorney portrays himself in a similar vein when the narrator says: Meet Tim Burns. He grew up without much and became one of America’s leading consumer lawyers. But if you’re picturing an attorney who mainly represents individuals,that’s not Burns. Burns, who faces left-leaning Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Rebecca Dallet and conservative Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Michael Screnock in the Feb. 20, 2018 primary, has represented individuals in some class-action lawsuits. But his specialty is representing big businesses, not consumers, that sue their insurance companies. And leaving aside the claim in his TV ad, Burns has often described himself as having major business clients, not as a consumer lawyer. Overview of Burns’ legal background A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of Burns’ legal background found: He has a law practice that focuses on suing insurers. His clients have included a mining company that couldn’t get an insurance payout when a Colorado quarry collapsed in a landslide and all mining ceased; and Stryker Corp., a Michigan manufacturer suing its insurer because the insurer denied coverage for injury claims filed by people who alleged the company’s "Uni-knee" knee replacement product was defective and caused injuries. Burns told the Journal Sentinel about representing Stryker: "I wasn’t representing the client against the little guy. I was representing the client against the big insurance company. … What I’m trying to do is to get the insurance company to pay for the problem because insurance companies have promised to pay for problems." But, to be clear, in that case Burns was not representing an individual suing a hip replacement manufacturer. Rather, he was representing the manufacturer in a lawsuit, with the manufacturer trying to get its insurance company to pay individuals for claims about injuries caused by its products. That’s in contrast to consumer attorneys such as Milwaukee lemon law lawyer Vince Megna, who built his career by suing car dealers and manufacturers, and ran for the Supreme Court in 2013. Burns’ evidence To back Burns’ claim about being a consumer lawyer, his campaign began its description of Burns’ legal work to us by saying he built a national practice representing policyholders, "otherwise known as insurance consumers." Burns himself told us: "I’m using a dictionary definition of consumer," in that businesses consume insurance. "I am 100 percent a consumer lawyer," he said. But the usual understanding of a consumer -- particularly in the context of Burns’ campaigning as a fighter for ordinary people -- is an individual. The understanding is not that a business is a consumer simply because it buys insurance. Burns’ campaign also cited to us a page from the website of Perkins Coie; Burns is a partner in the Seattle-based law firm’s Madison office. That page says the firm’s insurance recovery attorneys (Burns is one) have helped shape "pro-policyholder law." But the page doesn’t mention consumers. In contrast, the firm touts having represented "leading companies in almost every industry, including Fortune 500 and Global 500 companies, as well as public sector policyholders." Burns’ campaign also cited a handful of cases in which Burns represented individuals. In a 2015 lawsuit, for example, he and other lawyers represented a New York man in a class-action lawsuit. The suit claimed MetLife was not setting aside the required reserves for the purpose of paying potential insurance claims and that MetLife should reimburse him and the other class members for premiums they paid. But by and large, Burns’s clients are not individuals, but businesses -- as he himself has stated on at least three occasions. Burns’ own statements 1. Answering candidate questions from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, Burns emphasized his business clients when he wrote: I’ve built a national practice as one of America’s leading attorneys in standing up to massive insurance companies. I have been hired by major businesses in three dozen states and 10 foreign countries to handle their most sensitive insurance issues, but I’ve also represented regular working people in class actions seeking to hold insurance companies accountable for financial fraud …. In the current field of candidates and on the current Supreme Court, I have the most experience working with American businesses by far. I’ve been hired by the many of the top manufacturing, banking, and investment companies in the world or their boards of directors to advise them on their most sensitive issues concerning liability and insurance. 2. His campaign website also touts major clients, saying: Tim is one of America's leading attorneys in standing up to large insurance companies. Tim has been hired by major clients in three dozen states and ten foreign countries to handle their most sensitive issues. 3. The profile Burns put on the business networking site LinkedIn says: Tim Burns is a member of the Insurance Recovery Practice group at Perkins Coie LLP. The Insurance Recovery Practice group has more than thirty lawyers who devote their practice to representing corporate policyholders in insurance coverage matters. And Burns’s profile on his law firm’s website also cites business: Tim is favorably ranked in the 2006 (Illinois), 2007 (recommended in "Insurance" nationally), and 2008 to 2016 (Band 2 - nationally) editions of Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business. The picture is clear. Our rating Burns says he is "one of America's leading consumer lawyers." The bulk of his legal work is not representing individual consumers, but rather large businesses that are suing their insurers. We rate Burns’ statement False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tim Burns | null | null | null | 2018-02-15T06:00:00 | 2018-02-06 | ['United_States'] |
vees-00485 | Asked in a press conference in Beijing on Oct. 19 on how he would enhance the Philippine-China relations, Duterte said the Philippines’ alliance with the West was due to a war propaganda most Filipinos grew up with. | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-president-duterte-foreign-service-grad | Records obtained by VERA Files showed Duterte is not listed as an AB Foreign Service graduate. | null | null | null | Duterte,foreign service degree | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Is President Duterte a Foreign Service graduate? | October 29, 2016 | null | ['Beijing'] |
pomt-05273 | Says he "restored prayer and the pledge in our schools." | half-true | /texas/statements/2012/may/25/jeff-wentworth/jeff-wentworth-says-he-restored-prayer-and-pledge-/ | In a TV ad, Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth’s campaign shows a woman assuring a friend in a coffee shop that Wentworth, who seeks re-election, is "a solid conservative." She lists Wentworth accomplishments, including that "he restored prayer and the pledge in our schools." We were curious about that claim, in part because voluntary student prayer has been protected, though a landmark 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision barred school-organized prayer which it called a violation of the First Amendment. In a telephone interview, Wentworth said his ad is based on his 2003 proposal, passed into law, giving students a regular opportunity to pray and requiring that they recite the U.S. pledge of allegiance and the pledge to the Texas flag. The approved proposal requires students to recite the U.S. and Texas pledges of allegiance once each school day, to be followed by a one-minute moment of silence in which "each student may, as the student chooses, reflect, pray, meditate or engage in any other silent activity that is not likely to interfere with or distract another student." The law also says that during the quiet time, school employees are to "ensure that each of those students remains silent and does not act in a manner that is likely to interfere with or distract another student." With a written request from a parent or guardian, the law says, a student can be excused from saying the pledges. There is no opt-out for the minute of silence. Wentworth’s proposal made mandatory a moment of silence that had been optional under a 1995 law. That law did not explicitly mention prayer as something students could do during that time. But lawmakers in 1995 also added a section to the Texas Education Code stating: "A public school student has an absolute right to individually, voluntarily, and silently pray or meditate in school in a manner that does not disrupt the instructional or other activities of the school." So, the measure authored by Wentworth resulted in students having daily minutes of silence, permitting prayer, and in their reciting the pledges. But were both practices "restored," as his ad says? Certainly, Wentworth told us, in that his proposal was intended to restore customs he had appreciated growing up in San Antonio. The 1962 court decision ended school prayer as he’d known it, he said, though no court decisions limited students from saying the pledges. Still, he said, constituents had come to him concerned their children were not saying the pledges; practices varied from school district to school district and school to school. "I decided it needed to be uniform and required across the state," he said. We failed to pin how many schools were holding minutes of silence or already had students reciting either pledge before Wentworth acted. News accounts suggest, though, that the U.S. pledge was being recited in multiple schools and minutes of silence were occasionally observed. An April 15, 2003, Houston Chronicle news article said the Houston school district and most area districts such as Fort Bend and Clear Creek allowed principals to determine whether students recited the pledge and observed a minute of silence. The story also said: ** Students in all Pearland district schools recited the pledge to the Texas and U.S. flags daily. ** All 44 schools in the Conroe district daily recited the pledge (though the story did not specify which pledge). ** Most schools in the Katy district recited the pledge (also unspecified) and observed a minute of silence. On April 24, 2003, the Chronicle reported that most schools in the Cypress-Fairbanks, Klein, Magnolia, Spring and Tomball districts reserved a time for students to recite the U.S. pledge. None observed a minute of silence on a regular basis. A May 8, 2003 Chronicle news story quoted Diane Jackson, the Spring Branch school district executive administrator for government engagement, policy and administration, saying that most of the district’s 45 schools already had students say the U.S. pledge, while some also observed a moment of silence. An Aug. 4, 2003, El Paso Times news article reported that students in most El Paso County schools said the pledge of allegiance daily before the requirement was passed. Most did not observe a moment of silence, the story said. A September 2, 2003, Dallas Morning News article said that in the area’s schools, many students had recited the pledge of allegiance for years, but the mandated moment of silence would be a change. The story quoted Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas and a House sponsor of the Wentworth measure, saying that the previous year, about half the elementary school students in Dallas County had regularly said the pledge, though hardly any students said the Texas pledge. Debbie Ratcliffe, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, told us that the agency was not aware of any data collected on the pre-2003 prevalence of pledge recitations, though she believes it was common for students to say at least the U.S. pledge. Joy Baskin, director of legal services for the Texas Association of School Boards, told us in a telephone interview that she did not know of research on earlier practices, but said she thinks it was widespread for boards to require students to recite the U.S. pledge every day. Wentworth said during the 2003 legislative session that the minute-of-silence requirement was not a move to bring organized prayer back into the classroom. "The goal is to instill loyalty and patriotism in public school students, and give them the opportunity to have 60 seconds of quiet at the beginning of the school day" Wentworth was quoted as saying in an April 9, 2003, Dallas Morning News news article. The story also quoted Wentworth as saying: "It is not school prayer. The language of the bill is very clear about that. … It would not allow audible prayer." Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, objected during Senate debate of the bill, according to an April 10, 2003, San Antonio Express-News news article, and said: "What you're doing is mandating prayer in schools." The story says Wentworth disagreed, pointing to language in the legislation statingl that students could use the minute to reflect, pray, meditate or engage in any other silent activity that's not distracting. "This bill does not mandate prayer in public schools," Wentworth said, according to the article. "Of course it does," Hinojosa said. "Of course it doesn't," Wentworth said. Wentworth told us that he that he made those comments to prevent his measure -- modeled on a Virginia law that passed court muster -- from potentially being construed as a violation of the 1962 Supreme Court ruling, not because he believed it did not allow students to pray. "We’re talking about a very fine legal line," he said. The Texas law survived a 2006 court challenge by a Dallas-area couple with three children attending school in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch district. In a lawsuit, the family said the required moment of silence violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment — "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." A Sept. 22, 2008, Austin American-Statesman news article, quoted David Croft, the father, as saying: "It's clear if you watch the video and read the transcripts of the legislative debates that the main purpose of this law is to create school-sponsored silent prayer, and that with a wink and a nod they're just sort of calling it a moment of silence." A 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed moments of silence in public schools so long as the practice is motivated by a secular purpose, the Statesman article says. In January 2008, the Statesman story says, U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn found a nonreligious purpose for the quiet time, though she said that she had to hunt for it. "The Texas Legislature was less than clear in articulating the secular purpose of the Texas moment of silence law," Lynn ruled, according to the article. Still, the article says, Lynn was reassured by legislative debate indicating the silent time was meant to make schools "more reflective and more reverent," prepare students for the "seriousness of the day" and create "a common moment of preparation, deliberation and meditation." In 2009, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the lower court’s decision, saying the moment-of-silence law had a secular purpose. In our interview, we asked Wentworth if it’s an overstatement to say he personally restored prayer and the pledge. He replied that while he was the author of the law and led the charge, many members were involved. "All of this is a team sport," he said. "Legislation is not passed by any one member of the House or the Senate." For perspective on the impact of the Texas law on students’ right to pray, we contacted Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington. Haynes said by telephone: "Of course, state and school-sponsored prayer remain unconstitutional. (Wentworth) couldn’t possibly be restoring state-sponsored prayer. And students’ freedom to pray has never been illegal; they are free to pray alone or in groups as long as they don’t disrupt or interfere with rights of others." Our ruling Wentworth authored a measure mandating a daily chance for students to pray, though school-led or organized prayers like the ones of his youth remain unconstitutional. Also, Texas lawmakers affirmed the right of students to pray or meditate on their own nearly a decade earlier. Aside from requiring students to be quiet for a minute, the Wentworth-originated law resulted in students reciting the pledge, as his ad says, though it seems like that had was already occurring in some schools. Finally, Wentworth did not personally achieve the touted changes, though he was a key advocate. We rate his claim Half True. | null | Jeff Wentworth | null | null | null | 2012-05-25T17:25:56 | 2012-05-09 | ['None'] |
pomt-03430 | Says he can be on the ballot for Congress while serving time in jail. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/25/stephen-nodine/can-convicted-felon-run-congress-jail/ | By day, Stephen Nodine works at a law office in Bay Minette, Ala. By night, he is an inmate at the Baldwin County Jail where he is serving a two-year sentence for perjury. This would be of little interest except Nodine says he might want to run for Congress and represent Alabama’s 1st Congressional District. Nodine notified the media of his interest last week, and in an email to PolitiFact, he said, "I can run, but it seems some party leaders don't want me to." Nodine is right that Republican officials in Alabama have not embraced his candidacy -- more on that in a bit. But we thought we should take a moment and ask, is Nodine correct when he says he can run for office? Nodine is not the first man behind bars to seek the chance to serve the public while serving time. In 2002, former Rep. James Traficant, I-Ohio, took 15 percent of the vote even though he had just started an eight-year sentence for bribery, racketeering and other crimes. Going farther back in history, Matthew Lyon was successful in 1798. He had been convicted of libel, ran for Congress from prison and won. The Constitution lists three conditions one must meet to be a candidate for the House of Representatives -- you must be at least 25 years old, have been a citizen for at least seven years and live in the state you hope to represent. These are all that are required, and states may not add to them, for example, by prohibiting a felon from running for office. According to a 2002 Congressional Research Service report, these conditions "are fixed and may not be supplemented by Congress nor by any State unilaterally." States have more leeway when it comes to setting rules for who may hold state level office, but they have none at the federal level. The Supreme Court, in a case involving term limits, made it clear that states may not interfere. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. vs. Thornton, the court struck down an amendment to the Arkansas constitution that limited those elected to Congress to three terms in the House and two in the Senate. The court explained in its decision that not only states but even Congress itself could not "impose additional qualifications (that) would violate that ‘fundamental principle of our representative democracy . . . that the people should choose whom they please to govern them,’" according to an analysis in the Brigham Young University Law Review. So when Nodine says he can run, he’s right. But getting his name on the ballot is a different matter. The Republican primary hurdle Nodine is no stranger to politics. He was a county commissioner in Mobile County. His emailed announcement of his interest in running came with photos of him and President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Nodine’s fall from grace came in 2010 when he was indicted in connection with the death of a long-time mistress. In a deal with prosecutors, Nodine pleaded guilty to felony perjury, and a charge of criminally negligent homicide was dropped. He now says he had a moral failing but was "wrongfully accused." (Read an overview of the case from the Mobile Press-Register.) Nodine is an ardent Republican and should he run, he plans to compete in the GOP primary in a special election to fill the seat of Rep. Jo Bonner, R- Ala., who will resign in mid August. Nodine isn't slated for release until more than a year after that. But the Alabama Republican Party chairman, Bill Armistead, vowed that Nodine won’t get very far. "I can tell you that as chair, I see no circumstances where I would support a convicted felon being a candidate for the Republican Party," Armistead said. The state GOP has its own rules for qualifying candidates. To run as a Republican, a person must affirm, "I have not been convicted of a felony under the laws of the United States or of another state." Nodine unambiguously falls short. "This would be stopped at the time of an attempt to qualify," Armistead said. Armistead said he’s confident that the party has the right to determine who may participate in its own primary. He said when Democrats tried to run as Republicans, party leaders blocked them with no challenge. On the other hand, he said he’s never faced this exact situation before. The issue is whether a state party could exclude a person who would otherwise pass muster by federal standards. We asked a few experts in election law for their opinions, and while their views vary, Nodine clearly has his work cut out for him Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News, said Nodine might well prevail should the court find that the party plays a vital role in the electoral process. "I just re-read U.S. Term Limits vs. Thornton," Winger said, "I now feel confident that the Alabama Republican Party can't exclude the candidate. The U.S. Supreme Court said that indirect attempts (to exclude) are just as unlawful as direct attempts." But Winger said Nodine can expect a fight. "There is no real clarity in the law, because obviously parties can ban candidates from their primary ballot for Congress if the candidates aren't members of the party. It's possible the Alabama state courts would let the party exclude the person, but if the person appeals to federal court I believe he will win." David Schultz, a law professor at Hamline University, said this is an area of contested law. "There is a big debate over how far parties can go in terms of governing internal affairs," Schultz said. "Could they pick their own dates for conventions, how they select their officers? Yes. But once it gets to primaries run by the state and to general elections, then the choices parties make are subject to more regulation." Schultz’s summary on whether the Alabama GOP has the legal right to block Nodine? "This is a cool issue -- right at the edge of the law." But Justin Levitt, professor at Loyola Law School, has more discouraging news for Nodine. "Nodine is right that federal law protects his right to run," Levitt said, "But it doesn't likely protect his right to run as a Republican, or even to run for the right to run as a Republican standard-bearer." So long as parties don’t discriminate in ways banned by the Constitution -- on the basis of race or religion for example -- then they can do much as they please, Levitt said. To be clear, this dispute centers on the primary, not the general election. For a general election, there are two ways to get on the ballot -- as the nominee of a party or by getting enough Alabama voters to sign a petition. Nothing would prevent Nodine from running as an independent in a general election; nothing except the need to gather the signatures of 5,938 voters who live in the 1st Congressional District, the minimum number required under Alabama law. A final irony The Constitution might affirm Nodine’s right to run for office, but it grants states broad authority over deciding who may vote. Alabama law disenfranchises anyone who is behind bars, on probation or on parole. Nodine is definitely still in jail. This leads to the potentially paradoxical situation that should he get on the ballot, he wouldn’t be able to vote for himself. Interestingly, his inability to vote also further hamstrings any plans for a primary bid. The Alabama GOP requires that a candidate declare that "I am not subject to disqualification from registering and voting." Our ruling Nodine claimed that he "can run" for office. As a legal matter, he is correct. The Constitution enshrines the idea that the people get to decide who shall represent them, and the only limits are age, citizenship and residency. In terms of federal law, Nodine can indeed run. His desire to run as a Republican puts him in murkier waters. Political parties enjoy a certain independence. The opinions of the legal experts we reached ranged from thumbs up to thumbs down on Nodine’s chances in court. But even on the more optimistic end, the court battles would be decided long after the election Nodine cares about is over. In the broadest sense, Nodine has the legal right to run for office from jail, but significant barriers lie between that right and his name appearing on the ballot. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Stephen Nodine | null | null | null | 2013-06-25T12:13:00 | 2013-06-21 | ['United_States_Congress'] |
pomt-11603 | No private business was conducted on public property. That issue is a contract dispute. | false | /illinois/statements/2018/jan/29/bruce-rauner/how-hands-has-rauner-been-his-investments/ | Details contained in a lawsuit brought against Gov. Bruce Rauner by a former business associate have called into further question the governor’s insistence that he no longer plays a role in his business investments. Appearing before the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board Monday, Rauner was asked to address an account from former associate Harreld "Kip" Kirkpatrick III describing how the two discussed the business investment on which Kirkpatrick’s case centers. "No private business was conducted on public property," Rauner told the Tribune during a mini-debate with his rival in the March Republican primary, state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton. "That issue is a contract dispute, contract dispute. It’s not an investment decision. A contract dispute that stemmed from before I was governor." Pressed on whether he spoke with Kirkpatrick at all about that dispute, the governor doubled down: "I was not doing private business on state property," he said. "It’s not an investment decision, it’s not about making investments. Not about assets." Kirkpatrick’s lawsuit was filed last October under court seal, an unusual move that kept its allegations hidden from public view. At the time, Rauner told reporters he had nothing to do with the lawsuit because he had signed "blind trust commitments" before taking office that ceded control of his investments to a New York investment house. We fact-checked that claim at the time, rating it Half True. Despite the name Rauner used, he hadn’t really set up a blind trust that would have prevented him from managing his money. Rauner instead signed a power of attorney in which the governor retained the authority to handle his investments along with the New York firm. But the issue flared again in recent days after a Cook County judge removed the lawsuit seal, revealing that Kirkpatrick claimed he and Rauner were fighting over how to divvy up a $67.5 million settlement pot involving a separate legal dispute tied to an investment both had stakes in. In the lawsuit, Kirkpatrick claimed he met twice with Rauner in 2015 to discuss their differences, including once on the back porch of the governor’s mansion in Springfield. So if Kirkpatrick’s version of events is correct, how then can Rauner claim he has been hands-off with his investments? We decided to take a closer look. A matter of (blind) trust The particulars of the investment spat between Rauner and Kirkpatrick are only peripheral to the credibility questions raised by Rauner’s actions. What is central is an action taken by Rauner just days before he assumed office in 2015 aimed at easing public concerns that his vast wealth might conflict with his actions as governor. Back then, Rauner, a multimillionaire private equity investor, announced that he had entered into "blind trust commitments" in which he authorized a New York investment house to handle his financial affairs. The move came against the backdrop of his refusal to release detailed tax records that could clearly show how his money was handled. The name Rauner gave that instrument was somewhat misleading. He did not enter into a blind trust, which would have required him to cede control over his investments to a third party. Instead, what Rauner did was sign a power of attorney in which Rauner retained the authority to manage his investments along with the New York firm. When Kirkpatrick filed his lawsuit in October, Rauner invoked his blind trust commitments to suggest the legal action, including the sealing of the court file, was not his doing and he knew little about it. We rated that Half True because the power of attorney he signed did not preclude him from involvement and, with the file sealed, there was no way to check his claim. But when the file was unsealed recently, pieces of Rauner’s story began to unravel. For instance, Rauner insisted in October that he was not behind the push to keep the case allegations sealed and out of view. But filings from Kirkpatrick’s lawyers contradict that claim. They contend that the governor invoked a confidentiality provision in a business agreement with Kirkpatrick to request that the complaint be filed under seal. What’s more, a report by The Associated Press confirmed one part of the allegations leveled by Kirkpatrick: Rauner’s state-paid scheduler had arranged a meeting between the governor and Kirkpatrick on May 11, 2015, at the executive mansion in Springfield. Rauner spokeswoman Rachel Bold did not respond directly when we reached out to the governor’s office last week to clarify whether he still denied speaking with Kirkpatrick or whether he simply disputed Kirkpatrick’s account of their meeting. "This is a contract dispute that stems from before Governor Rauner took office," she wrote in an email. "The governor is seeking to enforce the terms of that contract. Court filings dispute Mr. Kirkpatrick’s allegations, including his characterizations of any conversations." Bold added that the governor "is not involved in day-to-day investment decisions." She responded almost word-for-word again Monday when we reached out for clarification following Rauner’s remarks at the Tribune. Our ruling Rauner said, "No private business was conducted on public property." At its core, the question raised by the lawsuit against Rauner is simple to address. He has claimed from his first days as governor that he would have no involvement in managing an investment portfolio worth hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Kirkpatrick’s lawsuit contends Rauner violated that pledge. In defending himself, Rauner has appeared evasive and is now attempting to parse the difference between personal involvement with an investment and personal involvement with a contract dispute stemming from an investment. It is a distinction without a difference. Rauner is being disingenuous and obtuse, and we rate his statement as False. | null | Bruce Rauner | null | null | null | 2018-01-29T19:00:00 | 2018-01-29 | ['None'] |
pomt-00553 | Says Scott Walker runs a state government that bans "employees from talking about climate change." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2015/jun/16/forecast-facts/group-says-scott-walker-bans-employees-talking-abo/ | If a website from a progressive group is to be believed, state workers in Wisconsin cannot even say the words "climate change." So the scottaway.com website, developed by an operation called Forecast the Facts, allows readers to click a red button on the screen and get alternative words to use, like "weather roulette" and "extended Popsicle season." One tongue-in-cheek offering: "In the U.S., FREE OUTDOOR HEATING is predicted to cause more heat waves, flooding, wildfires, sea level rise and drought." Forecast the Facts, a project of the progressive Citizen Engagement Laboratory, says it developed the website in response to government denial of climate change. "Governors Rick Scott (FL) and Scott Walker (WI) both run state governments that ban employees from talking about climate change," the group said on the site. Scott’s administration is reported to have an unofficial policy banning employees at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and other agencies, from using "climate change" or "global warming" in official communications. But we are interested here in Wisconsin and Walker, who is a top GOP presidential contender. Are state government employees in Wisconsin banned from talking about climate change? The genesis of the claim In April, we rated True a claim by the group NextGen Climate that Tia Nelson, executive secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, was prohibited from talking about global warming while on state time. The board manages state lands and a trust that funds school libraries and makes loans to school districts. The board employs 10 full-time staff members. On April 7, the board voted 2-1 to approve a resolution that banned its staff from "engaging in global warming or climate change work while on BCPL time." The resolution grew out of concerns that Nelson had spent time advocating for climate change policies as part of her role as co-chair of Gov. Jim Doyle’s now disbanded task force on global warming. The board is to vote Tuesday June 16, 2015, on a measure that would change the ban from "engaging in global warming or climate change work" to engaging in "policy advocacy" on the board’s time. About the board But Walker is not on the board. Its members, as defined by the state constitution, are three other statewide elected officials -- Attorney General Brad Schimel and state Treasurer Matt Adamczyk, both Republicans, and Secretary of State Doug LaFollette, a Democrat. Thus, the board is not even part of the executive branch. Its 10 employees represent about .0003 percent of the state’s about 30,000 total employees. Cullen Werwie, communications director for the state Department of Administration, said no cabinet agency under Walker had such a ban. And we could not find any such evidence either. On the flip side, we did find examples of government engaging in conversation about climate change -- such as on the Department of Natural Resources’ web page, which talks about climate change and the Great Lakes, and the Department of Transportation documents related to its long-term transportation plan. A search for the terms "climate change" or "global warming" on wisconsin.gov sites yielded more than 1,000 results. A tenuous connection When we asked Forecast the Facts for back up to its claim, it sent an audio recording of the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands meeting and vote. But that board, of course, is separate from Walker. And the group’s claim was broader, referring generally to state government employees, not just those in one department. Brant Olson, the campaign director for the group, could not name any other part of state government with such as ban in place. Instead, the group cited a quote from Laurel Patrick, the governor’s spokeswoman, in a New York Times article about the board’s ban: "Generally, Governor Walker does not think it is unreasonable to enact policies requiring board staff to focus on board-related activities." Olson said the quote showed the climate change ban was "clearly a decision he endorses." While we were reporting this item, though, the group swapped in some new words. The language on the web site was changed to read: "Governors Rick Scott (FL) and Scott Walker (WI) both support state agencies that reportedly ban employees from talking about climate change." Even that could be outdated if the public lands board passes the measure to amend its rule. Our rating Forecast the Facts said Walker runs a state government that bans "employees from talking about climate change." But the group could only name one obscure agency, outside of the governor's jurisdiction, that has such a rule in place. The rule was aimed at barring its workers from doing climate-change work while on state time. And that rule is poised to be amended. Meanwhile, we found plenty of examples where state agencies were discussing climate change. We rate the claim False. | null | Forecast the Facts | null | null | null | 2015-06-16T05:00:00 | 2015-06-02 | ['None'] |
tron-02946 | President Trump Orders FBI Raid on CDC Headquarters | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/trump-orders-fbi-raid-on-cdc-headquarters/ | null | politics | null | null | ['conspiracy', 'donald trump', 'medical'] | President Trump Orders FBI Raid on CDC Headquarters | Jan 25, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14800 | The world food demand is going to double sometime between now and 2070. | true | /missouri/statements/2015/nov/30/roy-blunt/sen-roy-blunt-right-about-future-demand-food/ | U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, attended the 2015 Missouri State Fair on Aug. 20 in Sedalia and won the support of agricultural associations, while opposing government regulations on agriculture. Surrounded by agricultural organization leaders, Blunt opposed the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan. "The world food demand is going to double sometime between now and 2070. Nobody is better prepared to take advantage of that than we are, unless we let the regulators get in the way," Blunt said. We thought his estimation of the growth in demand sounded like an extreme claim and wanted to see the research. World food demand David Tilman is an author of the article "Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture," and regents professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota. He’s conducted research focused on global food consumption and its effects. "The senator is correct," Tilman said, "Globally, increasing incomes and population mean that we likely will need to double the global production of crops within the next 40 to 50 years" Projections from the United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, the University of Minnesota and many other researchers have found that world food demand, or the amount in which food production must increase, will double by sometime between 2050 and 2070. Why the growth? Global population is going to grow to almost 9.6 billion by 2050, and more than half of this is expected to occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, where one-quarter of the population is undernourished. Globally, income and urbanization has been growing rapidly for the past five decades, and with that comes increased demand for food and a change in diets. Global gross domestic production is projected to continue to grow at about 2.9 percent every year, with the most drastic changes occurring in developing countries. Researchers, including Tilman, have found that calorie and protein consumption is directly related to per capita GDP. In 2000, the richest countries were consuming 256 percent more calories and 430 percent more protein than the world's poorest nations. So as global GDP grows, as does population, so will the demand for world food. Also a steady increase in global income often leads to a change in diet. China’s long-growing increase in meat consumption, for example, is a result of increased income and is a trend observed throughout other developing nations. Population and diet change alone will cause a 69 percent increase in calorie demand by 2050, researchers say. Our ruling Blunt said, "The world food demand is going to double sometime between now and 2070." The scientific community agrees. We rate this claim to be True. | null | Roy Blunt | null | null | null | 2015-11-30T09:54:28 | 2015-09-04 | ['None'] |
pomt-04683 | Says House Republicans "tried to change the definition of rape." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/06/gwen-moore/gop-house-members-tried-redefine-rape-democratic-r/ | U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin was among women members of the House who made brief speeches Sept. 4, 2012, at the Democratic National Convention. Moore said she is working to end violence against women, then blasted her Republican colleagues, declaring: "No victim of domestic violence or bullying -- man or woman -- should feel unprotected in America. Yet when Democrats acted to strengthen the Violence Against Women Act, Republicans in the House moved to weaken it. In other legislation, they have even tried to change the definition of rape." Let’s hit the pause button. Did House Republicans try to redefine what constitutes rape and, as the claim suggests, thus affect what would put a perpetrator in prison? Definition evolves We'll begin by noting that the definition of rape has not been constant. The "legal definition of rape has evolved over centuries, and clearly, we’re not done fighting over it," Stanford University historian Estelle Freedman wrote in The Washington Post a couple of weeks before Moore’s speech. She noted that in the 1980s, for example, states began to outlaw marital rape. In October 2011, PolitiFact National rated as Half True a claim by Vice President Joe Biden that murder and rape in Flint, Mich., increased after the police force in that city was reduced. Our colleagues noted that the FBI’s definition of rape -- "the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will" -- was particularly limited when compared to the definition of other law enforcement agencies, in that it excluded male victims and other types of sexual assaults. Three months later, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting definition of rape was being revised to be more inclusive and to better reflect state codes. Noting that the previous definition of rape had been in place since 1927, he said the new definition is: "The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." Moore’s claim To back Moore’s claim, Moore spokeswoman Nicole Williams cited two pieces of legislation relating to federal funding for abortions. So, although Moore’s statement was broad -- House Republicans "tried to change the definition of rape" -- what she cites as evidence is much narrower, having to do with how rape is defined when federal money is used to pay for abortions. 1. No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act Williams cited an August 2012 article in Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, on legislation regarding federal funding of abortions in cases of rape. The article said the bill was co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Republican Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, and GOP U.S. Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri. (Akin, a U.S. Senate candidate, was denounced for saying in August 2012 that pregnancies are rare in cases of "legitimate rape." He apologized but resisted calls to drop out of the race.) Ryan and Akin were among the co-sponsors of the legislation, which would have limited federal funding of abortions to victims of "forcible" rape and certain other circumstances, PolitiFact New Jersey found in rating a claim by New Jersey Democratic Party chairman John Wisniewski as True. PolitiFact New Jersey found that the legislation, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, was first introduced in July 2010. With Democrats controlling the House, the bill didn't move forward. In January 2011, after Republicans won a majority in the House, Smith reintroduced the legislation. Ryan and Akin -- along with 225 other mostly Republican House members -- again co-sponsored it. The Boston Globe reported that the bill narrowed an exemption to the Hyde Amendment, which allows federal dollars to be used for abortions in cases of rape and incest. Smith’s bill would have limited the incest exemption to minors and covered only victims of "forcible rape." House Republicans never defined what constituted "forcible rape" and what did not, the Globe said, but the term "forcible rape" ignited an outcry among various critics, who said the phrase would exclude victims rapes involving drugs and victims of statutory rape. Statutory rape occurs when an individual, regardless of age, has consensual sexual relations with an individual not old enough to legally consent. Smith dropped the forcible rape term from the bill. The revised bill passed the House, but the Democrat-controlled Senate never voted on it. When Ryan was asked by Fox News in August 2012 about why he sought the forcible rape language, he said the bills were aimed at stopping taxpayer funding of abortion and that "forcible rape" was "stock language" used in various bills. He said he agreed with it being removed from the legislation he supported, but didn’t elaborate on what he meant by stock language. Among those coming to Ryan’s defense was The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. It noted, as other media have, that the intent of the word forcible was to prevent taxpayer-funding of abortions in the case of statutory rape, such as when a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old have consensual sex. PolitiFact Texas reached a similar conclusion in September 2012 when it rated as Half True a claim by a pro-Democratic political action committee that Ryan, Akin and Texas House Republicans backed a bill to distinguish between rape and forcible rape. According to the text of the 2010 and 2011 bills and numerous news stories, our colleagues said, "the main purpose of the legislation was not redefining rape but limiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortion." 2. Protect Life Act Moore’s spokeswoman also cited the Protect Life Act, saying it also would have restricted to forcible rape the exceptions for when federal funding can be used for abortions. The January 2011 bill, which passed the House but didn’t become law, would have amended President Barack Obama’s health care reform law to prevent federal payment to health plans that include abortion coverage, according to PolitiFact National. Our rating Moore said House Republicans "tried to change the definition of rape." Her statement contains an element of truth, in that GOP members sought to change when federal money for abortions could be used in cases of rape, by using the term "forcible rape." But the claim ignores critical facts that would give a different impression -- the House Republicans’ effort was not to change the definition of rape, per se, but rather to restrict the use of federal funds in abortions. We rate Moore’s statement Mostly False. | null | Gwen Moore | null | null | null | 2012-09-06T14:32:44 | 2012-09-04 | ['None'] |
snes-03229 | Princess Leia's "hair buns" in Star Wars were inspired by those of a Mexican revolutionary. | mostly true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/origins-princess-leias-hairstyle/ | null | Entertainment | null | Arturo Garcia | null | The Origins of Princess Leia’s Hairstyle | 30 December 2016 | null | ['Mexico'] |
snes-03409 | A gruesome image depicts children kidnapped and killed by organ traffickers in Thailand. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/image-child-organ-trafficking-victims-thailand/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Is This an Image of ‘Child Organ Trafficking Victims’ in Thailand? | 6 December 2016 | null | ['Thailand'] |
pomt-13648 | Through the Clinton Foundation, "the Clintons are now worth in excess of $100 million." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/07/america-rising-now/pro-trump-super-pac-ad-wrong-clinton-wealth/ | A super PAC backing Donald Trump, Rebuilding America Now, released a new ad attacking Hillary Clinton. It’s running in the battleground states of Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, and it hits both Hillary and Bill Clinton on their personal finances. The ad, which PAC chairman and Florida Gov. Rick Scott unveiled on NBC’s Meet the Press, opens with a clip of Hillary Clinton saying that when she and Bill left the White House, they were dead broke (a claim we rated Mostly False). As the logo of the Clinton Foundation appears on the screen, the narration begins. "A foundation was created, and money started to roll. Speeches, connections and donations. Misogynistic regimes, Wall Street insiders, corrupt dictators. They all had one thing in common: Their check cleared. The Clintons are now worth in excess of $100 million." Anyone watching the ad would get the sense that somehow through the Clinton Foundation, the Clintons amassed a net worth of over $100 million in about 15 years. That’s misleading, for a few reasons. Let’s start with the $100 million-plus in net worth. We reached out to the super PAC, through its website and with an email to one of the Republican strategists behind it, to get its sources and did not hear back. The ad itself points to something published in Fortune on Feb. 2, 2015. We couldn’t find a matching article. We did find a later article from September 2015 in Fortune that estimated Hillary Clinton’s net worth at about $30 million. In October 2015, Forbes wrote, "After layering years of disclosures on top of annual tax returns, Forbes estimates their combined net worth at $45 million." The most current estimate comes from Hillary Clinton’s federal financial disclosure filing, something she had to provide as a presidential candidate. That form states explicitly that the assets of both the candidate and his or her spouse must be included. The values are reported in ranges. On the low end, the Clintons reported assets of $11.3 million. On the high end, they might have as much as $52.7 million. The couple listed no liabilities. Kathleen Clark, a specialist in government ethics law at Washington University in St. Louis, said the only significant item those forms don’t include is real estate. "You don’t need to report the value of the home you live in," Clark said. "And that goes for a second home, too. So long as you don’t rent it out for income." The Clinton’s own two homes, one in New York and one in Washington, D.C. Together they are worth about $9 million. When we add it up, the highest amount we could find is about $62 million. The Clintons have done very well. Between multi-million dollar book contracts and speaking fees of $225,000 or more, they have earned an estimated $230 million in the 15 years since they left the White House. But income is not wealth. As high as those earnings are, that still doesn’t bring them close to the $100 million mark, much less take them beyond it. We found several articles that said Bill Clinton has a net worth of $80 million, but none said how they got that number. By law, his assets must also be disclosed on his wife’s federal filing. The ad’s claim about the role of the Clinton Foundation is suggestive but unclear. The foundation has grown rapidly, raising over $2 billion to fight AIDS, reduce hunger and poverty, and rein in climate change. It has received millions from several Middle Eastern kingdoms, mega-wealthy businessmen and major corporations. The ad doesn’t say how that money translates into cash for the Clintons. In point of fact, according to the foundation’s tax filings and its website, none of the Clintons are paid by the foundation. Our ruling The super PAC Rebuilding America Now, a pro-Trump entity, said that the Clintons built a net worth of over $100 million after creating the Clinton Foundation. While some unsourced articles have used that number, official documents and the assessments of other, more rigorous reports show a net worth between $11 million and about $53 million. Even after accounting for the value of their two homes, the highest figure we found was $62 million. There is no evidence that money given to the Clinton Foundation has made its way into the Clintons’ pockets. The Clintons have become wealthy since its creation, but the ad hints darkly at shady dealings without proof. The statement twists a grain of truth to paint a misleading picture. We rate this statement Mostly False. Editor's note: After we published, the Super PAC Rebuildng America Now sent us their supporting material on wealthy donors to the Clinton Foundation, speaking fees, and a corrected link to an article citing the Clintons' net worth. That article stated the amount as an estimate without any source provided. The fact-check and rating remain unchanged. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/9b3c130e-a1a9-4ec6-b341-3af704b071d7 | null | Rebuilding America Now | null | null | null | 2016-08-07T17:24:25 | 2016-08-07 | ['Bill_Clinton', 'Clinton_Foundation'] |
pomt-04366 | Now remember, property taxes went up 70 percent in the 10 years before I became governor. | mostly true | /new-jersey/statements/2012/oct/22/chris-christie/chris-christie-says-property-taxes-jumped-70-perce/ | Whether on the national stage or back home in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie often peppers the crowd with statistics while describing the fiscal woes of New Jersey before he took office. Among his arsenal of numbers is the rate of increase in the state’s property tax bills. At an Oct. 16 town hall meeting in West Milford, Christie unsheathed that figure as he said his reforms are constraining property taxes. "We're announcing $116 million dollars today in additional savings to local governments statewide. Here's why. The savings are possible because of the reforms we put in place: 2 percent cap on property taxes. The property tax rates are starting to come in from across the state. They came in from Burlington County the other day, 1.7 percent increase countywide in property taxes. The cap's working," he said. "Now remember, property taxes went up 70 percent in the 10 years before I became governor. So you’re having [a] 7 percent a year average." Did New Jersey’s property taxes -- the nation’s highest -- jump by 70 percent in a decade? Homeowners may not be surprised to learn that the increase was actually slightly more. Though, when property tax rebates are factored in, the increase is roughly 50 percent. Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said in an e-mail that the governor’s statement is "unequivocally true and a glaring illustration of the uncontrolled rise in property taxes in the decade before we arrived in Trenton -- caused by unrestrained spending and overgenerous benefits and the expansion of government at the local and state level." The average property tax bill in New Jersey was roughly $4,240 in 1999, according to data from the state Department of Community Affairs. By 2009 -- the year before Christie took office -- the average property tax bill had climbed to about $7,280. That’s a more than 71 percent increase. But there’s also another chapter to the story of New Jersey’s property taxes: rebates. In previous fact-checks, experts told us reductions in property tax rebate programs could be viewed as tax hikes, since they’re intended to reduce the property tax burden of homeowners. In 1999, when the NJ Saver program was started under former Gov. Christie Whitman the average rebate check mailed to homeowners was $111. By 2009, the average rebate was $1,037. When you deduct those rebates from the average property tax bill, the increase over the decade before Christie took office is less than 70 percent. In 1999, homeowners paid an average of about $4,130 in property taxes, with the rebate. In 2009, that figure jumped to roughly $6,240, an increase of more than 51 percent. It’s worth noting Christie stopped delivering checks for property tax relief during his first year in office and changed the program so the rebates came as a credit deducted off property tax bills. In 2011, the average property tax bill was $7,759. With the credit, the average bill was $7,519. Our ruling Christie said: "property taxes went up 70 percent in the 10 years before I became governor." In the decade before Christie took office, the average property tax bill climbed more than 70 percent, from roughly $4,240 to about $7,280. But when property tax rebates are taken into account, the increase is less, jumping roughly 50 percent in a decade. Either way, Christie is on point that property taxes increased significantly from 1999 to 2009. We rate this statement Mostly True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2012-10-22T07:30:00 | 2012-10-16 | ['None'] |
faan-00003 | “Canada’s unemployment rate is at its lowest level since the 1970s.” | factscan score: true | http://factscan.ca/justin-trudeau-unemployment-rate-lowest-level/ | This is true, but it’s not the first time. Canada’s lowest unemployment rate since the 1970s is 5.8 per cent. Recently, monthly unemployment rates – in December 2017 as well as February-July 2018 – have dipped to 5.8 per cent. Ten years ago and for a shorter period, in October 2007, the rate fell to the same low. | null | Justin Trudeau | null | null | null | 2018-09-21 | gust 14, 2018 | ['Canada'] |
snes-04323 | Police Give Instructions for Citizens Rescuing Dogs from Hot Cars? | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dogs-hot-car-police-message/ | null | Critter Country | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Police Give Instructions for Citizens Rescuing Dogs from Hot Cars? | 3 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01770 | Drake, Kendall Jenner Did Get “Cozy” At Golden Globes After-Party, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/drake-kendall-jenner-cozy-golden-globes-after-party/ | null | null | null | Holly Nicol | null | Drake, Kendall Jenner Did NOT Get “Cozy” At Golden Globes After-Party, Despite Report | 12:43 pm, January 21, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01401 | Letter to Coke over America the Beautiful | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/coca-cola-ad-super-bowl-2014/ | null | food | null | null | null | Letter to Coke over America the Beautiful | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
hoer-00142 | Long Island Terror Email | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/long-island-terror.html | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Long Island Terror Email Hoax | December 2009 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14929 | Most Americans are now getting their news from Facebook. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2015/oct/29/rebecca-kleefisch/most-people-get-their-news-facebook-gop-wisconsin-/ | Republican Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch was asked at a Marquette University Law School forum why polls indicate that most Wisconsin residents think the state is headed in the wrong direction. Kleefisch told the audience Oct. 21, 2015 that she thought the polls reflected Wisconsinites’ concerns about where the nation is headed. Then she suggested that some of the good economic news in the state isn’t getting enough attention -- and made an interesting claim about Facebook, saying: "One of the things that we don’t hear a lot about is the fact that wages are actually up four and a half percent year over year here in Wisconsin. I haven’t read that article. I read it in my briefing binder; we hear our cabinet secretaries talk about it. But it’s not one of those things that’s on Facebook every day. Most Americans are now getting their news from Facebook. We need to be talking about the things that matter to our neighbors." When we asked Kleefisch about the Facebook claim, she said "should have qualified and sourced" what she stated. She said she was actually relying on a poll about where millennials get their news about politics and government, not where all Americans get their news generally. But let’s investigate this a little, looking at some scientific polls. The polls The poll Kleefisch said she relied on was reported in June 2015 by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That survey, done in March and April of 2014, found that most millennials -- 61 percent -- reported getting news about politics and government from Facebook in the previous week. Millennials were born from 1981 to 1996, and were between the ages of 18 and 33 at the time. We found some other polling, however, that surveyed for all Americans and for news generally, not just news about politics and government. Those polls do not show that most Americans get news from Facebook. 1. A March 2015 Pew poll found that 41 percent of American adults get news from Facebook. Pew emphasized to us that that does not suggest that Facebook is the main source of news for that group. 2. A poll done for the American Press Institute in January and February 2014 asked respondents if they had found news in the previous week from a list of various sources that were read to them. When asked if they got news directly from news organizations, such as a newspaper or TV newscast, websites or news wires, 88 percent said yes. Only 44 percent said they had gotten news in the past week from social media, through platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. 3. Gallup in June 2013 used an open-ended question to ask respondents to identify their main source of news. Some 55 percent of the respondents said TV; that was the most popular answer. Only 21 percent said the Internet as their main news source, including 2 percent who identified Facebook, Twitter or other social media. Nine percent said the print version of newspapers. Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, told us there are two points to keep in mind: Overall, most Americans get their news from many sources, even if TV still is the most common, and people use different sources for different types of news. "We seek it out and we bump into it and, actually, no one place dominates," he said. Facebook is not a source of news -- since it distributes rather than produces news -- but it is likely the top pathway to news for people under age 35. Our rating Kleefisch said at a public forum: "Most Americans are now getting their news from Facebook." The lieutenant governor told us she misspoke and should have qualified her statement to make it about millennials -- Americans roughly between the ages of 18 and 33. One poll found that 61 percent of them reported getting political news on Facebook in the previous week. But in terms of Americans overall getting news of all types, not just political news, we found no polls indicating that a majority get news from Facebook. We rate Kleefisch’s statement False. More on polling U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., said "60 percent of all Americans do not want to see Planned Parenthood defunded." True. GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said the number of people who "believe in socialism ... is increasing." Half True. Conservative commentator Karl Rove said that at this point in 2012, "Rick Perry was ahead at 29.9 percent, and we had seven more leads before it finally settled on Mitt Romney." Mostly True. | null | Rebecca Kleefisch | null | null | null | 2015-10-29T05:00:00 | 2015-10-21 | ['United_States', 'Facebook'] |
pomt-04433 | Tennessee students now cover about 67 percent of the cost of their education at public universities, and some 60 percent at community colleges. | true | /tennessee/statements/2012/oct/13/john-g-morgan/official-says-students-not-state-paying-most-colle/ | It’s well known that college tuition, at both public and private schools, has risen rapidly over the past several years. The steep increases have occurred across the nation, and Tennessee’s public institutions are no different, largely as a result of declining state appropriations But when John Morgan, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, told a U.S. Senate committeethat Tennessee students now pay 67 percent of the costs of their educations at the state’s universities and 60 percent at community colleges, we were curious. When many parents of today’s students were public college students themselves two, three or four decades ago, the ratio was the reverse: state appropriations comprised up to 70 percent of the costs, and students and their parents picked up the rest. Did the burden shift that much? In a word, yes. Morgan was precisely on mark with his testimony, as expected from a higher education administrator who spent 10 years as state comptroller, state government’s chief auditor and financial watchdog. The latest figures available from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, for the 2011-12 school year, show that student tuition and fees comprised 67 percent of the sum of revenue that state universities receive from state appropriations and from tuition and fees, and 60 percent at the community colleges. TheTHEC Fact Bookfor 2011-12, which is full of interesting information about public higher education in Tennessee, is available for review onTHEC’s website. It’s important to note that those figures do NOT include what students pay for meal plans, residence halls and books and supplies – expenses that are not subsidized by taxpayers and which can be triple the costs of tuition at public schools. When those costs are included, students and parents are paying far more than two-thirds of the total costs of attending public institutions. But Morgan was discussing only tuition and mandatory fees. Students’ share of the costs has been steadily rising while the state’s share has been declining. Through the mid-1980s, the state paid about 70 percent of what its public colleges and universities cost on a per-student basis. But that share has been decreasing ever since, through both Democratic and Republican control of the state Capitol. By 2000, the state share had declined to 57 percent at its universities and 68 percent at its community colleges. By the 2011-12 school year, the state share was down to about one-third at the universities and to 40 percent at the community colleges. The tipping point when Tennessee students began paying more of the costs than taxpayers occurred in 2003 at the four-year schools and in 2009 at the two-year campuses, THEC says. When contacted for this article, Morgan said that "even with the rise in tuition over the last five years or so, on a per full-time equivalent basis, our institutions have less money to spend than they did five or so years ago," at least through last year. "State reductions, along with a rise in enrollments, have forced us to become more efficient in a way," Morgan said. He added:"Whatever the case, I believe we are at a point where we can’t raise tuition much beyond general-inflation increases without impacting enrollment. We may already be seeing that effect this year: enrollment is down on average across our system although historically enrollments rise during recessions and flatten out or decline somewhat during recoveries. From a public policy standpoint, if Tennessee’s future is dependent on increasing education attainment, we are going to have to find a way to make it affordable. I’m hopeful that is a conversation we have as a state this year." Gov. Bill Haslam is focusing on higher education this year, although much of his work thus far has been on ensuring that public institutions produce graduates with skills to enter the state’s workforce. So far at least, about his only talk of affordability has been a promise to try to increase state funding and efficiencies on public campuses, which would reduce the pressures to raise tuition. It will be interesting to see how much influence Morgan, who has spent most of his career helping inform the public policy of the state, will have on that discussion. Our ruling Parents of aspiring college students who remember the days when tuition covered just one-third the per-student costs at state colleges and universities may be shocked to learn that, at least in Tennessee, students now pay 67 percent of the costs of their education through tuition and fees. That’s the point that one of Tennessee’s top higher education officials told a Senate committee, and the research backs him up. We rule this statement True. | null | John G. Morgan | null | null | null | 2012-10-13T18:38:30 | 2012-09-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-14831 | 8 Syrians caught at Texas border in Laredo. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2015/nov/20/greg-abbott/greg-abbott-claims-syrians-caught-mexico-border-re/ | Gov. Greg Abbott, at the forefront of a push-back by more than half the nation's governors against the U.S. admitting Syrian refugees, declared that fresh apprehensions at the Texas-Mexico border illuminate his concerns. In a Nov. 18, 2015, Twitter post, the Texas Republican said: "THIS is why Texas is vigilant about Syrian refugees." His tweet pointed to a headline on a story posted that night by the conservative Breitbart.com: "8 Syrians caught at Texas border in Laredo." Refugees from Syria -- where four years of civil war has displaced millions of people, according to the United Nations -- have been a hot topic of late. On Nov. 16, 2015, Abbott was among what proved to be 31 of the nation's governors declaring refusals to admit Syrian refugees to their states, for fear militants would mix in. That followed unsubstantiated reports that Syrians were involved in the Paris massacre that killed more than 130 people in Paris Nov. 13, 2015. Such reports were based on the discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of an attacker, which The Washington Post reported Nov. 17, 2015 was not authentic. Worth noting too, Republican officials in Texas have occasionally expressed concern that ISIS -- the terrorist militia waging war in Syria and Iraq -- could send members over the Texas border to attack the United States. When we checked, those fears were based on false assertions, like that ISIS was operating a base in Mexico, Border Patrol caught ISIS members, or that Muslim prayer rugs were found on the Texas border. But the morning after Abbott weighed in, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, took to TV to say there was no need for worry. Still, we wondered: Could it be that Syrian insurgents were snagged at the Rio Grande? Abbott’s source Abbott spokesman John Wittman declined to comment when asked about how the governor reached his conclusion or if the governor believed the described Syrians posed a security threat. Wittman also didn’t say if Abbott had relied on sources aside from the Breitbart story he noted in his tweet. Breitbart’s story, headlined "Exclusive--Confirmed: 8 Syrians caught at Texas border in Laredo," cited two individuals described as federal agents but not identified in the story who reportedly advised that "eight Syrian illegal aliens attempted to enter Texas from Mexico in the Laredo sector" on Monday, Nov. 16, 2015, two days before Abbott posted his tweet. The story further quoted Hector Garza, a Border Patrol agent and president of a South Texas chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol personnel. According to the post, Garza said agents in the Laredo area were "concerned" because they had "heard about Syrians being apprehended in the area from other federal agents," although he also said he couldn’t confirm that Syrians had lately been apprehended. By email Nov. 20, 2015, Garza told us he couldn't comment because he was on patrol. In an email, Brandon Darby, editor of Breitbart Texas and the lead reporter on the story, said his sources used the word "caught" because they said the Syrians "only acknowledged being Syrian after they were called out." Darby also noted that "caught" has a "plethora of acceptable definitions," which he supplied via email, though he declined to specify which he had intended to convey. Federal narrative We asked key federal agencies for their takes on the reported detentions. In an emailed statement responding to our query, the Department of Homeland Security, the umbrella agency for Border Patrol, said two Syrian families presented themselves at the Laredo port of entry and were taken into custody for further processing. "Please emphasize that they PRESENTED themselves," the statement said. We also touched base with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which previously doused speculation about terrorists crossing the border in October 2014. Spokesman Tom Vinger, by email, referred us to the Border Patrol. Meantime, Rick Pauza, a Border Patrol spokesman at the Laredo point of entry, said by phone the eight Syrians described in the Breitbart report "identified themselves truthfully" and did not evade agents. Darby, informed of this response, told us by email, "CBP, unfortunately, has a history of being deceptive with the public." He also pointed out a June 2014 article he authored for Breitbart titled "Customs and Border Protection agency caught lying to public." The morning after Abbott posted his tweet, McCaul discussed reports of the Syrians in Laredo on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. "It was a Syrian refugee family that went to the Laredo port of entry in my state and basically turned themselves in for political asylum," McCaul said, meaning they were seeking shelter from imminent harm in their home country. "They were not infiltrating to conduct terrorist operations." Appropriate border crossing procedures If Syrians were looking for asylum, was walking to the border a reasonable way to do it? Mana Yegani, a Houston immigration lawyer, told us by phone that one way of seeking asylum is to appear at a port of entry. "This is very common," Yegani said. "That’s the way you seek refuge. You cross the border and walk to a border patrol agent." Typically, she said, after asylum-seekers present themselves to agents, they are sent to detention centers and interviewed by federal asylum officers, who evaluate their cases for admittance to the United States. The process usually takes three to six months, she said. The website for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services directs asylum seekers on how to proceed. "STEP ONE: Arrive in the U.S.," it says. We asked Homeland Security if any Syrians had sought asylum in the U.S. before. A spokesperson pointed us to fiscal year 2013 data--the most recent available--which showed that 811 Syrians were granted asylum during that period, up from 364 in 2012 and 60 in 2011, the year the Syrian civil war began. In all, 3.2 percent of the 25,199 asylum-seekers welcomed by the United States were Syrian in 2013. It’s rare for a Syrian to cross the border lacking required papers, other statistics suggest. According to a September 2014 report by Homeland Security, 72 of the 662,483 "aliens apprehended" by the government in the fiscal year through September 2013 were Syrian citizens--up from 57 the year before, down from 114 two years earlier. In the fiscal year through September 2014, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement reported removing nine Syrians from the U.S.--compared to, say, nearly 177,000 people from Mexico and more than 120,000 individuals from Central America. Possible factors So there might not be many Syrians approaching Laredo. We wondered why Syrians would try to enter that way regardless. Joshua Landis, president of the Syrian Studies Association and director of the Center for Middle East Studies, said by phone there was no reason to be surprised by Syrian asylum seekers. "The amount of destruction in their country is just stupefying," he said. A four-year-long civil war between government forces and various rebel groups, including ISIS, has intensified in recent months with bombing campaigns by the United States, Russia, Jordan, France, Saudi Arabia and others, leaving much of the country in shambles. According to an Oct. 27, 2015, report by the United Nations, the conflict has left 13.5 million people, including 6 million children, in need of protection and aid. Landis said half the homes in Syria had been destroyed, while 30 percent of schools remain operational and electricity and clean water are scarce commodities. Our ruling Abbott tweeted that Syrians were "caught" by federal agents at the border in Laredo which, he said, explains why "Texas is vigilant about Syrian refugees." His implication was that the potential terrorists were trying to infiltrate Texas, giving fuel to his decision to tell the federal government the state intended not to accept Syrian refugees. Eight Syrians were taken into custody at the port of Laredo, we confirmed. But Homeland Security officials said the Syrians had turned themselves in to a Border Patrol agent, seeking asylum. So, Abbott's statement has an element of truth -- Syrians landed in U.S. custody -- but it leaves an incorrect implication of how and why they got there. We rate the claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Greg Abbott | null | null | null | 2015-11-20T17:15:07 | 2015-11-18 | ['Texas', 'Syria'] |
pomt-10362 | McCain tells of a fellow Vietnam POW who was beaten for fashioning an American flag that became an inspirational symbol to fellow POWs. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jul/02/chain-email/fellow-pow-backs-up-mccains-story/ | A chain e-mail making the rounds recounts a moving anecdote Sen. John McCain has related about a fellow Vietnam prisoner of war who was severely beaten by guards for fashioning a makeshift American flag that became an inspirational symbol to fellow POWs. The e-mail message encourages those who receive the e-mail to "pass this on... and on... and on!" And it leaves little doubt about its political intent, as it closes with the line, "oh...and then you have this clown, who refuses to place his hand on his heart and say the pledge. ..." This is an obvious, and misguided, swipe at Sen. Barack Obama, who has frequently been attacked in chain e-mails for allegedly refusing to place his hand on his heart when saying the Pledge of Allegiance. We at PolitiFact already debunked that myth. But here we will check the accuracy of McCain's POW anecdote, which was forwarded to us by several PolitiFact readers. Here's how the chain e-mail reads, in part: "One of the men who moved into my (POW) room was a young man named Mike Christian. ... Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed on the inside of his shirt. "Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. "I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event. "One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it. "That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could. "The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room. "As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country. "So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world. You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country." McCain relates this same anecdote in his book, Faith of My Fathers, in nearly identical fashion. And the story is backed up by another POW, Leo K. Thorsness, albeit with a couple small differences in detail. Thorsness was an Air Force fighter pilot who was shot down on his 93rd mission and spent six years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. When people ask if he lived with McCain at the Hanoi Hilton, Thorsness likes to correct: "John lived with me. I got there first." Thorsness, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in the Vietnam War, recalled to PolitiFact "the day when Mike Christian found this slimy old rag, an old dirty handkerchief" while in the yard outside the cell. Thorsness said Christian spent days cleaning up the handkerchief, and used blue ink and ground up red roof tiles for color. Then, he took threads from his blanket and sewed on stars with a bamboo needle. It took a good bit of imagination to make out that it was an American flag, Thorsness said, "but we all knew what it was." When Christian finished the flag and showed it to his fellow POWs, Thorsness said, "I think every one of us snapped to attention." It was a tough group of men, he said, and yet there were very few dry eyes. Sometimes, he said, it was hung up on a cell wall and men would salute it and say the Pledge of Allegiance. "To everyone there, it was very meaningful," he said. Christian knew full well that he would eventually be caught and punished, Thorsness said. Christian hid the makeshift flag in an extra sleeve of his pajamas. But it was discovered by the guards and confiscated during a surprise inspection. That night, the guards came for Christian, Thorsness said, and "they beat him mercilessly through most of the night. They beat the hell out of him. But Mike was one tough guy." And soon after, Thorsness said, Christian was back at it again making another flag. "Anyone who witnessed that was moved," Thorsness said. "It made a lasting impression." Christian died in a Virginia home fire in 1983. Thorsness was later elected to the state Senate in Washington in 1988. During a flag amendment debate, Thorsness spoke publicly for the first time about Mike Christian's flag. "Every other senator turned their heads and looked at me," Thorsness said. The story was later published in 1992 in Reader's Digest. Several details in Thorsness' account differ from McCain's recollection, such as whether the handkerchief was a rag found in the prison yard or, as McCain tells it, part of a care package allowed in by the guards. But the stories are substantially the same. We rule McCain's story True. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2008-07-02T00:00:00 | 2008-05-18 | ['United_States', 'Prisoner_of_war', 'John_McCain'] |
snes-02959 | Bruce Springsteen wrote an open letter apologizing for letting Donald Trump become president. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bruce-springsteen-trump-letter/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Bruce Springsteen Pen a Letter Apologizing for Letting Trump Win the Presidency? | 11 February 2017 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Bruce_Springsteen'] |
pomt-02560 | The extra point is almost automatic. … (The NFL) had five missed extra points this year out of 1,200 some odd attempts. | true | /punditfact/statements/2014/jan/31/roger-goodell/nfls-goodell-extra-point-almost-automatic/ | An NFL.com host recently derided the extra point as the "penny" play of professional football. The smaller but surer choice of a team’s post-touchdown scoring options, it’s just kind of there. Some think it serves little purpose than being the perfect opportunity to run for the fridge or restroom. What’s an NFL exec to do to keep the game spicy and folks glued to their seats? One idea is to spike the extra point. "The extra point is almost automatic," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a recent interview on NFL.com. "I believe we had five missed extra points this year out of 1,200 some odd (attempts). So it's a very small fraction of the play, and you want to add excitement with every play." Goodell mentioned a proposal that would replace the kicked PAT (point after touchdown) and award teams an automatic seven points for a touchdown instead. Then, a coach could gamble by going for an extra point with a run or pass play in the end zone. If they make it, they score eight. If they miss, their score goes back down to six. We are sports-, politics- and stats-loving nerds here at PunditFact, not game-callers, so we’ll conceal our two-cents on the proposal. The reason for it, though, left us intrigued. In honor of the Super Bowl, we wanted to know if Goodell was right about the rarity of missed extra points. Stats are widely available from places like ESPN and the NFL. In this case, they confirm Goodell’s point that the extra-point attempt is mostly a one-point gimme, with just five misses in 1,267 attempts in the 2013 regular season. Of the five missed attempts, four were blocked. Sept. 22: The Green Bay Packers blocked Cincinnati Bengals kicker Mike Nugent’s extra-point attempt in the fourth quarter. Cincinnati won anyway, 34-30. Sept. 22: The Pittsburgh Steelers stuffed a fourth-quarter attempt by Chicago Bears kicker Robbie Gould. The missed PAT was NBD for the Bears, who won 40-23. Nov. 3: Minnesota Vikings kicker Blair Walsh missed his third try for an extra point late in a close game against the Dallas Cowboys. The Vikings lost 27-23. Dec. 8: The Detroit Lions lost to the Philadelphia Eagles 34-20 in a matchup marred by heavy snow. The snow was so intense that Lions kicker David Akers missed his only attempt of the day. He slipped and fell, bringing to mind Charlie Brown, as the Eagles blocked his try. (GIF!) Dec. 22: Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Josh Scobee got a PAT blocked by the Tennessee Titans just before halftime. The Jaguars went on to lose 20-16. The missed PATs by the Jaguars and Vikings could have potentially made a difference in the outcome of the game. Instead of having to shoot for a touchdown to win, those teams could have fought for field-goal range and tried to tie up the game by closing the margin to three points. The league-wide record for missed extra points in 2013 was a low in recent years, down from six misses in 2012, seven in 2011 and 11 in 2010. The latter year was particularly memorable, with the Washington Redskins botching the snap on a PAT attempt that would have tied the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with just seconds to play. And even though it’s comical or crushing depending on your allegiance, let’s relive the notorious wide-right extra point by the New Orleans Saints in 2003. The Saints had the chance to tie up the game against the Jaguars after a near-miraculous touchdown of three lateral passes and no time left on the clock. But nope. Our ruling Let’s sum up our findings: Is the point-after touchdown attempt an almost pre-determined outcome that propels kickers to the top of scoring charts? Yes. More pertinently, did Goodell have his stats straight? Also yes. In football terms, Goodell’s claim is up and it’s GOOD! At PunditFact, we call that True. | null | Roger Goodell | null | null | null | 2014-01-31T15:57:00 | 2014-01-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-06040 | Tampa is "the strip club capital of the world." | false | /florida/statements/2012/jan/13/ellyn-bogdanoff/tampa-strip-club-capital-world/ | Fill in the blank: Tampa is known around the world for ______. Is it professional sports teams? Bern's Steak House? Busch Gardens? Kind of feels like we’re dancing around something. Wait, that's it -- strip clubs! Tampa's reputation as a mecca for lusty dance came up in discussion of another vice this week -- gambling. State Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, a Fort Lauderdale Republican, wanted to thwart claims that new destination resort casinos she supports would tarnish Florida’s family-friendly rep. "People do not go to South Beach to see Mickey Mouse. They just don't," she said at the end of debate on her gambling bill Monday. "They go there for different reasons. We have the strip club capital of the world in Tampa. I hate to say it out loud, but we do. We have not ruined our family-friendly image." We've heard the same claim about Tampa for years. Maybe visitors remember the clubs because a few are on major roads. On Dale Mabry Highway just north of 275, the Mons Venus boasts "the Most Beautiful Women in the World!" Across the street, 2001 Odyssey's space ship building hovers over the surroundings. Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, said she doesn't think the title is a fair assessment. "I think that we are more lenient in some of what we allow," she said, "but I'm not sure we are the capital." A bit of evidence-based fact-checking seemed in order. We started by turning to local officials in Tampa, asking how many strip clubs are in the city. Adult stores and clubs -- or places showing "specified anatomical areas" -- must receive special permits for adult use, and pay a business tax, officials said. But the city could not pull a list of clubs of "special cabarets" within its limits, citing computer limitations. The city provided a list of businesses that have paid a business tax for "special cabarets," but there were only five businesses listed. That's not a complete picture of the city's strip clubs. Tampa Police didn't have a count either. We then turned to the business world for an answer, finding Clearwater-based E.D. Publications, a national magazine for the adult entertainment industry. (The "E.D." stands for Exotic Dancer.) The group publishes nationwide guides to night clubs, directories of industry vendors and rosters of touring entertainers. Associate publisher Dave Manack didn't hesitate when asked if Tampa is the strip club capital of the world. "No," he said. "Not even close. Tampa might not even make the Top 20. For anyone in the industry who knows, it’s really not a top market for strip clubs." Cities like New York, Las Vegas or Miami would have much more of a claim on the title, he said. According to the magazine's count, Tampa has 20 night clubs, and the entire Tampa Bay area has 30. Meanwhile, Miami has 30 in the city and 50 in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale corridor. (City of Miami officials did not return calls.) New York City has 45, not including Long Island or New Jersey. Las Vegas has 40 clubs. (We actually tallied 34 licensed nude and topless clubs in the Las Vegas region from local officials there, so counting clubs is not an exact science.) Manack ticked off several strikes against Tampa's claim to the title: Tampa doesn't have as many clubs as larger cities, and high-end national chains like Rick's Cabaret and the Spearmint Rhino have taken a pass on Tampa. The city's clubs are spread out, and because it has no tight-knit cluster to form a party circuit, it has trouble marketing itself as a destination for bachelor parties and conventioneers. Pinellas County shares some of the blame, too, he said. Local rules make it difficult to open high-end clubs near the beaches where dancers can significantly disrobe. "Literally, you could see more at the beach. It does hurt the clubs there," he said. A spokeswoman with another industry group, the Association of Club Executives, also discounted Tampa's place in the strip club world. "Manhattan has many more clubs than the Tampa area," said spokeswoman Angelina Spencer. "And if you’re going to talk about the true strip club capital of the world, it would be Las Vegas." Her association, a political and legal advocacy group for club owners based in Washington, keeps a census that includes 3,829 clubs nationwide, but it will not release numbers by locality. If Tampa isn't the strip club capital of the world, we wondered if perhaps it might be No. 1 on a per capita basis. That metric would account for Tampa being a smaller city than New York or Miami. But a 2006 economic development study from the Tampa Bay Partnership found the city was merely No. 3 for strip clubs on a per capita basis, ranking behind Las Vegas, and -- even more deflating -- Cincinnati. Tampa strip club king Joe Redner told us the title was actually bestowed on the city by opponents of strip clubs who were trying to stop clubs from opening. "It's a misnomer," he said. "That’s what people said when they wanted to get rid of the strip clubs. That's what they labeled us." One opponent is David Caton, executive director of the Florida Family Association. He said that when he looked into the issue six or seven years ago, Tampa had more strip clubs than any other city in the country. His count included businesses that show full nudity and nude modeling shops. But that's at odds with what the 2006 study found. Still, there is a reason Tampa is known nationally for strip clubs, said Manack of E.D. Publications, and that's Joe Redner. "He is one of the most well-known figures in the history of the adult nightclub industry," Manack said. "He's known as a crusader for personal freedom and freedom of speech, and he’s never been afraid of a fight." Bogdanoff told us the strip club capital title was something she heard and read. "It seemed to me that it was pretty well understood," she said. Our ruling Look, we won't lie: We were kind of hoping this claim might be Pants on Fire, if for no other reason than the potential play on words. Hot Pants on Fire! Pants(less) on Fire! Pants off Fire. But we're not quite there, in large part because we were unable to find precise strip club data for Tampa. That said, while people might say Tampa is the strip club capital of the world, the evidence is bare. Experts say Tampa isn't even the strip club capital of Florida. We rate the statement False. | null | Ellyn Bogdanoff | null | null | null | 2012-01-13T12:21:42 | 2012-01-09 | ['None'] |
snes-00411 | In June 2018, FEMA deployed barges to Hawaii, to transport victims of the Kilauea volcano to an "internment camp." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fema-barges-hawaii-volcano/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did FEMA Use Barges to Incarcerate People Fleeing a Volcano in Hawaii? | 26 June 2018 | null | ['Hawaii', 'Kīlauea'] |
pomt-05968 | There are 86 languages spoken at Miami Dade College. | true | /florida/statements/2012/jan/24/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-miami-dade-college-students-speak-86/ | Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are trying to woo Spanish-speaking voters despite taking stances that have alienated some Hispanics. One of the debate moderators pounced on that hypocrisy at the Jan. 23, 2012, debate in Tampa. Here’s how Beth Reinhard of the National Journal (and a former Miami Herald politics writer) posed her question: "All of you favor making English the official language of the United States, which could mean that ballots and other government documents would not be available in Spanish. But, Speaker Gingrich, you’re sending out press releases in Spanish; Governor Romney, you’re advertising in Spanish. Why is it okay for you to court voters in Spanish, but not okay for the government to serve them in Spanish? Speaker Gingrich?" "Well, first of all, you immediately jump down to a very important language, but not the only language," Gingrich answered. "The challenge of the United States is simple. There are 86 languages in Miami Dade College, 86. There are over 200 languages spoken in Chicago. Now, how do you unify the country? What is the common bond that enables people to be both citizens and to rise commercially and have a better life and a greater opportunity?" To unify the country, Gingrich said, "I think it is essential to have a central language that we expect people to learn and to be able to communicate with each other in." Reinhard: "So to be clear, you would only have ballots in English?" Gingrich: "I would have ballots in English. And I think you could have programs where virtually everybody would be able to read the ballots." We couldn’t resist checking Gingrich’s detail that "there are 86 languages in Miami Dade College." Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told us in an email that Gingrich was referring to the number of languages spoken by students. First, a word about Miami Dade College. The school calls itself the "largest and most diverse college in the nation." Its website states that it enrolls more minorities than any other college or university in the country, including the most Hispanics. Miami Dade College spokesman Juan Mendieta told us that the 174,000 students speak 85 languages in addition to English, for a total of 86 languages for the 2010-11 year. Those students come from 181 countries. Both numbers are based on what students reported during the admissions process, he said. "It could be potentially more languages -- these are the languages students said they speak," Mendieta said. Mendieta said: "It’s basically representing every one of the four corners of the earth. At graduation we parade across the stage the flags representing the study body. … The last flag on stage, which brings down the house, is the American flag." The college reported in 2010 that English was the native language of half the students, Spanish was the native language of 43 percent, and Creole/French was the third-most common. Among the less common: Assamese (a language spoken in India), Breton (a Celtic language spoken in parts of France) and Wolof (an African language). The 86 languages spoken by students at Miami Dade College were also cited in a proposed 2010 U.S. Senate resolution congratulating Miami Dade College on its 50th anniversary. The college’s diversity and size make it a common stop in recent years for presidents and presidential candidates from both parties. The college was expecting a visit from Romney on Jan. 25, 2012, and a group of students were planning to attend an event with Gingrich at the Univision studio on Jan. 25, said Mendieta. Gingrich said, "There are 86 languages in Miami Dade College, 86." We found that in this case Gingrich has a good memory for detail. We rate this claim Verdad, or Vrai, or True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/ea16445b-aab3-4ec2-b95e-f7a440067dbb | null | Newt Gingrich | null | null | null | 2012-01-24T15:44:43 | 2012-01-23 | ['None'] |
snes-03973 | Donald Trump was born in the Philippines, and not Queens, New York, as he claims. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-born-in-the-philippines/ | null | Politicians | null | Dan Evon | null | Was Donald Trump Born in the Philippines? | 22 September 2016 | null | ['New_York_City', 'Philippines', 'Queens', 'Donald_Trump'] |
snes-04305 | John Kerry made disparaging remarks after viewing Ronald Reagan's casket as the former president's body lay in repose at his presidential library. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/grave-words/ | null | Politicians | null | David Mikkelson | null | John Kerry Insults Ronald Reagan’s Memory | 28 July 2004 | null | ['Ronald_Reagan', 'John_Kerry'] |
pose-00568 | Return Florida's state and local expenditure burden to at least the 2004 level before spending ballooned out of control. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/scott-o-meter/promise/591/return-floridas-state-and-local-spending-to-at-le/ | null | scott-o-meter | Rick Scott | null | null | Return Florida's state and local spending to at least the 2004 level | 2010-12-21T09:36:20 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01706 | Uncompensated care has "gone down by 30 percent just in the first few months" of Medicaid expansion in the states that adopted it. | true | /virginia/statements/2014/aug/10/george-barker/sen-george-barker-says-uncompensated-care-has-fall/ | Virginia Democrats believe they have found evidence showing states that expand their Medicaid rolls are better off than those that reject expansion. Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, told those gathered for an expansion rally in Woodbridge that hospitals in Medicaid expansion states have fewer patients who can’t pay. "Those states who have adopted Medicaid expansion, and half of the states have -- what they have seen just in the first few months of this calendar year, 2014 – is a reduction in uncompensated care," he said. "That means people who show up at the hospital, show up at the emergency department, are uninsured and can’t pay anything – charity care that’s provided by the hospital – that’s gone down by 30 percent just in the first few months." This seems to be an important point for their case, so we wondered about the origin of the figure. First, let’s remember how we got here. The Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare -- gives states the option of expanding Medicaid eligibility. Uncle Sam will pick up the entire tab for new enrollees during the next two years, that slowly declines to 90 percent with state’s picking up the remaining cost.Virginia has estimated that as many as 400,000 state residents could join Medicaid’s rolls. The Republican-controlled House of Delegates refused to broaden the program, saying the federal government can’t be trusted to pay its promised share. That led to a months-long stalemate between the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate on the state’s two-year budget. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, who earned a Promise Broken by signing a budget that did not include expansion, is exploring whether he can broaden the program without the consent of the legislature. Uncompensated care is a key reason Virginia hospitals have pleaded with legislators to expand Medicaid. Across the country, uncompensated care totaled $45.9 billion in 2012, the most recent year for which data was available, according to the American Hospital Association. It was 6.1 percent of hospitals’ expenses that year. When we asked Barker about his claim, he sent us a link to an article from Governing magazine. The article cites a study from the Colorado Hospital Association that looked at 30 states, 15 with Medicaid expansion and 15 without. In the states with expansion, hospitals had charity care decreases from an average of $2.8 million per hospital in the first quarter of 2013 to $1.9 million per hospital in the first quarter of 2014, a 32 percent drop. And out-of-pocket charges decreased from 4.7 percent of all charges to 3.1 percent of all charges -- a 34 percent drop. Meanwhile, Medicaid charges surged from 15.3 percent to 18.8 percent, a 19 percent jump. While the survey covered a short period of time, the difference between hospitals in states with Medicaid expansion and those without was stark. States that balked at Medicaid expansion saw little change in their uncompensated care levels, the study found. Governing also linked to Arkansas Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe’s May 31 column in which he stated 42 hospitals in the state reported an average of 30 percent decline in uncompensated care. For emergency room visits, the hospitals had an average of 24 percent drop in uncompensated care. Beebe said the survey "was not comprehensive for every acute-care center in the state, but it’s a good snapshot of early progress." Tenet Health, a publicly traded company with 80 hospitals in 14 states, reported that its hospitals in four states that expanded Medicaid saw a 33 percent decline in uninsured and charity admissions in the first quarter this year. In the second quarter, which ended in June, the numbers improved even more. With hospitals in five states that expanded Medicaid, the company had a decline in uninsured and charity admissions of 54 percent. Meanwhile, Medicaid admissions increased 23 percent. We also found an Arizona Daily Star article reporting on a survey of hospitals in the state done by the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. In the first four months of 2014, the association’s hospitals reported a 31 percent drop in uncompensated care expenses compared to the same period in 2013. So this seems to be a broader trend. This is how the law was intended to work, said Gayle Nelson, director of hospital community benefit program at The Hilltop Institute, part of University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "This was all part and parcel of the same anticipation that this would happen," she said. "The need for uncompensated care would reduce and the funds needed to address uncompensated care would also be reduced … This is good news. Of course, in those states where uncompensated care is reduced, that presumably leaves some resources freed up to be used in other ways." The Governing article said the trend was positive, but hospitals are hoping it’s enough to offset cuts called for in the Affordable Care Act. The biggest piece of this will be $39 billion in cuts to the Disproportionate Share Hospital program, which helps hospitals that serve the poor. In Virginia, this primarily means the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University hospitals. Our ruling Barker said hospitals in states with Medicaid expansion have already benefited from a 30 percent drop in uncompensated care. The evidence is based on the first three months after Medicaid expansion took effect and from a few sources. It’s early, but he accurately reported the results. The statement is True. | null | George Barker | null | null | null | 2014-08-10T09:35:45 | 2014-07-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-12015 | North Carolina is home to "two rivers of the top five most polluted rivers" in the U.S. | false | /north-carolina/statements/2017/sep/20/billy-richardson/nc-democrat-says-states-rivers-are-among-top-5-mos/ | It’s one thing to say a couple of North Carolina’s rivers — the Neuse and the Cape Fear — are in danger of becoming very polluted. A report from one reputable environmental advocacy group supports that, and other groups are worried too. It’s another thing to say what state Rep. William "Billy" Richardson said about the Cape Fear and Neuse Rivers on Aug. 31. Richardson, a Fayetteville Democrat, urged his fellow legislators to commit more funding to the state Department of Environmental Quality during a speech on the state House floor. "There are 250,000 rivers in this country," Richardson said. "Two rivers of the top five most polluted rivers are right here in North Carolina." He was referring to the Cape Fear and the Neuse. Are the Cape Fear and the Neuse among America’s top five most-polluted rivers? And where is this "most polluted rivers" list he alludes to? We’ll get to that. First, some background on why Richardson and others, including Gov. Roy Cooper, are so worried about the Cape Fear, in particular. This summer it came to light that the Chemours plant near Fayetteville may have improperly dumped a chemical called GenX into the Cape Fear, which provides drinking water for much of southeastern North Carolina. GenX is used to make Teflon, the nonstick substance that Chemours makes at its Fayetteville Works plant. The state is accusing the company and its predecessor, DuPont, of failing to inform regulators that they were releasing GenX into the river — and earlier this month the state sued Chemours over the discharges. Meanwhile, Cooper and other Democratic legislators want to allot more resources to DEQ so the department can research the spill’s effects. But they’re mad because the Republican-controlled legislature in June cut DEQ’s budget by $1.8 million over the next two years, and DEQ’s leader says the department doesn’t have the funds needed to deal with the Cape Fear chemical pollution long-term. Enter Richardson and his claim about North Carolina being home to two of the top five "most polluted" rivers in the country. The dangers of hog waste Richardson wasn't immediately available for comment. His assistant, Leigh Lawrence, said Richardson was referencing the 2017 edition of the American Rivers organization’s annual "America’s most endangered rivers" list. The list ranks the Cape Fear and Neuse together as the seventh most endangered rivers in America. On the phone, Lawrence acknowledged that Richardson might’ve misspoke but that he "cares deeply" about the environment, referencing a bill he filed earlier this year to try to protect part of the Cape Fear from regulation rollbacks. Richardson, for his part, later called PolitiFact to say that he once saw a list of America's most polluted rivers that supports his argument – but that he's had trouble finding it. Regardless of any lists or rankings, he said, the rivers have serious issues that need to be addressed. "My intention was not to mislead anyone," Richardson said. "Between the numerous articles that point to the troubles on the Neuse and Cape fear basin ... and then you throw in GenX, it’s clear we’ve got a huge issue that we’re not dealing with." Nonetheless, American Rivers told PolitiFact that their "most endangered" list shouldn’t be viewed as a "most polluted" list. In fact, the first page of the report says: "This report is not a list of the nation’s 'worst' or most polluted rivers, but rather it highlights rivers confronted by critical decisions that will determine their future." "The big difference between ’most polluted’ and ‘most endangered’ is that when we list a river as ‘most endangered’ it is because there is a decision that is coming up that depending on how that decision is made will have a major impact on the river," said Peter Raabe, the group’s conservation director for rivers of Southern Appalachia and the Carolinas. In this case, American Rivers is calling on state lawmakers to restore funding to a program that helps farmers move hog waste lagoons out of the floodplain. Hog waste lagoons are outdoor basins where farmers store hog waste. The group’s "most endangered" report doesn’t mention GenX, but is very concerned about hog waste getting into the rivers. The Neuse and Cape Fear River basins "have endured two 500-year floods from hurricanes in less than 20 years, during which dozens of animal waste lagoons within the 100-year floodplain were flooded or breached, discharging millions of gallons of raw animal waste directly into the rivers," the report says. Hurricane Matthew, specifically "partially submerged 10 industrial hog facilities with 39 barns, 26 large chicken-raising operations with 102 barns, and 14 open-air pits holding millions of gallons of liquid hog manure, releasing untreated waste directly into the rivers." The North Carolina Pork Council, for its part, told The Washington Post in October that reports of spills were exaggerated and that there’d been zero waste pits breached and just 11 flooded. Endangered vs. polluted Raabe, among other environmental experts PolitiFact spoke with, said it’s difficult to determine which rivers are the "most polluted" because there are different types of pollution that are all similarly bad. "There are so many things that ‘pollute’ our rivers — GenX, 1,4-Dioxane, untreated sewer water, heavy metals, algal growth, bacteria, wastewater from failing septic, too much water, too little water, spills from oil pipelines, spills from trucks on highways, etc.," Raabe said. "The Neuse and the Cape Fear Rivers have a lot of issues that need to be addressed but so do all the streams that have been impacted by human activity." Should residents be worried? City and county water treatment plants do a great job of testing for and eradicating many pollutants from the water, he said. "The problem is, that water is only treated for pollutants we know about. Chemicals like GenX and many other contaminants of emerging concern are not tested for," Raabe said. Other pollution rankings? So American Rivers doesn’t have a "most polluted" list. PolitiFact wondered if the federal government tracks which rivers are the most polluted. Turns out, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the federal government body that aims to protect human health and the environment) "does not rank waterbodies and we don't keep a list of the most polluted rivers," spokeswoman Enesta Jones said. Experts at other environmental groups that PolitiFact spoke with – including the Upper Neuse Riverkeeper, Environment America and the EPA – echoed Raabe in saying it’s difficult to determine which rivers are most polluted. Every two years, state governments are required to tell the EPA which of their local rivers are impaired. Davina Marraccini, an EPA public affairs specialist, warned the public against comparing reports. "Note that because of differences in state assessment methods, the information on the website should not be used to compare water quality conditions between states or to determine water quality trends," Marraccini wrote in an email. Through Google searches, PolitiFact couldn’t find a comprehensive, definitive list by a reputable organization that describes a North Carolina river as one of the "top five most polluted." Our ruling Richardson said that N.C. is home to two of the "top five" most-polluted rivers in the state. His assistant acknowledged that he might've misquoted the American Rivers "most endangered" list – but PolitiFact looked around to see if other data might support his claim. There’s evidence that the Neuse River and Cape Fear River, in particular, are threatened not only by waste from local farms but by a chemical that state regulators want to investigate. However, PolitiFact found no basis for Richardson’s claim that North Carolina rivers rank among the top five most polluted in the United States. We rate this claim false. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Billy Richardson | null | null | null | 2017-09-20T13:52:44 | 2017-08-31 | ['United_States', 'North_Carolina'] |
vogo-00607 | Fact Check TV: District 8 Campaign and Firefighters' Overtime | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/fact-check-tv-district-8-campaign-and-firefighters-overtime/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact Check TV: District 8 Campaign and Firefighters' Overtime | April 12, 2010 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06311 | George Allen's flat tax "plan would actually shrink revenues further than the Perry (flat tax) plan." | false | /virginia/statements/2011/nov/14/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-says-george-allen-flat-tax-plan-shrinks-/ | Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine recently took aim at Republican rival George Allen’s support of a flat tax. In an Oct. 31 news release, Kaine’s campaign linked a statement by Allen to a flat tax proposal recently made by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination. Perry’s plan would allow people to opt out of the current tax system and pay a flat 20 percent federal levy on their income. During a Fox News interview on Oct. 30, the governor did not dispute host Chris Wallace’s assertion that the flat tax proposal, by the estimates of Perry’s campaign, would reduce federal revenue by $4.7 trillion from 2014 to 2020. "I think Americans are ready for Washington, D.C., to quit spending money," Perry said. The next day, Kaine’s campaign put out a statement saying Allen supports a 17 percent flat tax -- lower than Perry’s 20 percent. "That means Allen’s plan would actually shrink revenues further than the Perry plan, forcing even harsher cuts to programs that Virginians depend on," the news release said. We wondered if Kaine was correct in saying Allen backs a flat tax plan that would cut revenues more than Perry’s proposal. Under the Texas governor’s plan, flat tax filers would receive a $12,500 exemption for each dependent and would not pay levies on capital gains and social security benefits. Perry’s proposal would preserve deductions on mortgage interest and charitable contributions, as well as state and local taxes, but phases them out for people with incomes of more than $500,000. He would also drop the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. Flat tax supporters say the lower levies would fuel economic expansion; critics say the plans would sap more revenues than can be made up by added growth. An analysis of Perry’s plan by economic consultants John Dunham and Associates, done at the behest of the Perry campaign, said it could drain about $5 trillion in federal revenues through 2020. What, exactly, is Allen proposing? We’re not sure, and Allen’s campaign isn’t providing many clues. Kaine, in the news release, based his contention that Allen backs a 17 percent flat tax on a statement Allen made during a June 14, 2011, news conference when he released his economic platform. Allen endorsed the concept of an optional flat tax. There are a lot of people who would actually like to say, "Alright, here is my income, multiply it by, say, .17, and file it on one page,’" he said. The Kaine campaign provided us with transcripts and tapes of two other appearances where Allen used the 17 percent flat tax example. In both cases, Allen used the word "say" before he uttered 17 percent, creating some hedge room. Dan Allen, an Allen policy adviser, said the candidate’s wording shows he was throwing out a hypothetical number. A variety of flat tax plans throughout the years have called for flat tax rates of 17 to 25 percent, Dan Allen said. The text of George Allen’s economic proposals, titled "The Blueprint for America’s Comeback," calls for a flat-tax alternative but offers no details. We asked Allen’s campaign for specifics -- such as what percentage of income should be subject to a flat tax and what deductions and exemptions should be allowed. But Dan Allen said the Republican has never settled on a single flat tax plan to support. "To say there’s one Allen plan is not accurate," said Dan Allen, who is not related to George Allen. He referred us to George Allen’s 2010 book, "What Washington can Learn from the World of Sports," in which the Republican said he’s supported a variety of flat tax proposals. One plan lauded in Allen’s book would establish an optional flat levy on combined federal payroll and income taxes, set at 25 percent of gross income. Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said he suspects that proposal would drain more revenue than Perry’s plan because it affects two levies. Perry’s proposal only applies to income tax, not payroll tax. Williams wrote earlier this month that Perry’s proposal "would dramatically reduce tax revenues," by a much as $1 trillion in 2015. But he told us he can’t definitively say whether Allen would cut off more government revenue than Perry because he doesn’t know the details of what Allen is proposing. Our ruling: Kaine says Allen’s flat tax "plan would actually shrink revenues further" than a flat tax proposal made by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Kaine is correct is in saying Perry endorses a 20 percent flat tax on income, but stretches the truth when he says Allen has made a proposal that would set the rate lower. Allen, while endorsing the concept of an optional flat tax, has offered no plan of his own. The basis of Kaine’s charge are Allen’s statements that a flat tax rate could be set at "say, 17 percent." That’s hardly a plan or an endorsement of a flat tax rate, so there’s no substance to compare to Perry’s proposal. We don’t fault Kaine for demanding specificity from Allen. But Kaine goes too far when he tries to create a plan for Allen based on inconclusive statements. We rate Kaine’s claim False. | null | Tim Kaine | null | null | null | 2011-11-14T20:00:00 | 2011-10-31 | ['None'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.