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President Trump has ordered the construction of concentration camps in the U.S.

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The web site Learn Progress published an article in January 2017 reporting that President Trump was building 'concentration camps' in the United States: BREAKING: Donald Trump is Having Feds Build 'Concentration Camp' Detention Centers. Why? We've all been outraged over the fact that Donald Trump is moving full-steam ahead on his Muslim immigration ban. If you thought that was bad, then wait 'til you hear what the Orange Tyrant is doing next. Donald Trump is now setting his sights on punishing undocumented immigrants in America. Shockingly, Trump just signed a directive to create new camps - concentration camps - where such immigrants will be held for deportation. This article was based on an executive order signed by President Trump on 25 January 2017. That order did include a provision regarding the construction of more detention centers along the U.S.-Mexican border, but the headline of Learn Progress' article placed the term 'Concentration Camps' in quotes, making it seemed as if the detention centers were to be something new and (onerously) different on the American landscape. President Trump's executive order would not create the United States' first detention centers for immigrants. As of this writing, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operate 111 detention facilities in the United States, many of which are situated along the U.S.-Mexican border: Sec. 5. Detention Facilities. (a) The Secretary shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately construct, operate, control, or establish contracts to construct, operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico. (b) The Secretary shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately assign asylum officers to immigration detention facilities for the purpose of accepting asylum referrals and conducting credible fear determinations pursuant to section 235(b)(1) of the INA (8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(1)) and applicable regulations and reasonable fear determinations pursuant to applicable regulations. (c) The Attorney General shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately assign immigration judges to immigration detention facilities operated or controlled by the Secretary, or operated or controlled pursuant to contract by the Secretary, for the purpose of conducting proceedings authorized under title 8, chapter 12, subchapter II, United States Code. Sec. 6. Detention for Illegal Entry. The Secretary shall immediately take all appropriate actions to ensure the detention of aliens apprehended for violations of immigration law pending the outcome of their removal proceedings or their removal from the country to the extent permitted by law. The Secretary shall issue new policy guidance to all Department of Homeland Security personnel regarding the appropriate and consistent use of lawful detention authority under the INA, including the termination of the practice commonly known as 'catch and release,' whereby aliens are routinely released in the United States shortly after their apprehension for violations of immigration law. Although labeling such detention facilities as 'concentration camps' is problematic (for many the term conjures up images of the inhumane treatment, torture, and murder that took place in such camps established by Nazi-era Germany), the United States has been criticized for the reported treatment of detainees in American facilities: The U.S. government has the largest immigration detention system in the world, and that is nothing to be proud of. The underlying problem with immigration detention is that most detainees are only guilty of being in the U.S. without authorization, which is a civil offense, not a crime. Yet detainees are treated like criminals, held behind bars and barbed wire, often in remote locations. In fact, in at least one respect, immigration detainees are treated worse than criminals: Criminal defendants have the right to a speedy adjudication and to court-appointed legal counsel. Immigration detainees do not. Detention punishes people in disproportionate relation to their alleged infractions, and contributes to the misconception that undocumented immigrants are criminals.

nan

President Trump has ordered the construction of concentration camps in the U.S.

Neutral

The web site Learn Progress published an article in January 2017 reporting that President Trump was building 'concentration camps' in the United States: BREAKING: Donald Trump is Having Feds Build 'Concentration Camp' Detention Centers. Why? We've all been outraged over the fact that Donald Trump is moving full-steam ahead on his Muslim immigration ban. If you thought that was bad, then wait 'til you hear what the Orange Tyrant is doing next. Donald Trump is now setting his sights on punishing undocumented immigrants in America. Shockingly, Trump just signed a directive to create new camps - concentration camps - where such immigrants will be held for deportation. This article was based on an executive order signed by President Trump on 25 January 2017. That order did include a provision regarding the construction of more detention centers along the U.S.-Mexican border, but the headline of Learn Progress' article placed the term 'Concentration Camps' in quotes, making it seemed as if the detention centers were to be something new and (onerously) different on the American landscape. President Trump's executive order would not create the United States' first detention centers for immigrants. As of this writing, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operate 111 detention facilities in the United States, many of which are situated along the U.S.-Mexican border: Sec. 5. Detention Facilities. (a) The Secretary shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately construct, operate, control, or establish contracts to construct, operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico. (b) The Secretary shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately assign asylum officers to immigration detention facilities for the purpose of accepting asylum referrals and conducting credible fear determinations pursuant to section 235(b)(1) of the INA (8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(1)) and applicable regulations and reasonable fear determinations pursuant to applicable regulations. (c) The Attorney General shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately assign immigration judges to immigration detention facilities operated or controlled by the Secretary, or operated or controlled pursuant to contract by the Secretary, for the purpose of conducting proceedings authorized under title 8, chapter 12, subchapter II, United States Code. Sec. 6. Detention for Illegal Entry. The Secretary shall immediately take all appropriate actions to ensure the detention of aliens apprehended for violations of immigration law pending the outcome of their removal proceedings or their removal from the country to the extent permitted by law. The Secretary shall issue new policy guidance to all Department of Homeland Security personnel regarding the appropriate and consistent use of lawful detention authority under the INA, including the termination of the practice commonly known as 'catch and release,' whereby aliens are routinely released in the United States shortly after their apprehension for violations of immigration law. Although labeling such detention facilities as 'concentration camps' is problematic (for many the term conjures up images of the inhumane treatment, torture, and murder that took place in such camps established by Nazi-era Germany), the United States has been criticized for the reported treatment of detainees in American facilities: The U.S. government has the largest immigration detention system in the world, and that is nothing to be proud of. The underlying problem with immigration detention is that most detainees are only guilty of being in the U.S. without authorization, which is a civil offense, not a crime. Yet detainees are treated like criminals, held behind bars and barbed wire, often in remote locations. In fact, in at least one respect, immigration detainees are treated worse than criminals: Criminal defendants have the right to a speedy adjudication and to court-appointed legal counsel. Immigration detainees do not. Detention punishes people in disproportionate relation to their alleged infractions, and contributes to the misconception that undocumented immigrants are criminals.

nan

In May 2018, Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Christopher Barnett advocated euthanasia for disabled people and those on benefits.

Neutral

A Tulsa-based businessman running for governor of Oklahoma was the center of controversy in May 2018, when posts appeared on his campaign's Facebook page in which he appeared to call for disabled people in receipt of government benefits to be euthanized or left to 'starve and die.' Christopher Barnett, who runs several small businesses in Oklahoma and is running as a Republican on platform of free speech and cuts to public spending, has claimed that his account was hacked and denies personally writing the posts. On 13 May 2018, a Facebook user posted a series of screenshots of posts from the 'Chrisforgov' Facebook page, which has since been suspended: In one post, Barnett's account posted a poll which asked: 'Should a person be required to apply for 2 jobs a week if receiving Food stamps and take any job offered to them to gain employment and if they refuse, they lose their food stamps?' In another post, someone wrote: 'The ones who are disabled and can't work ... why are we required to keep them up? Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn't make everyone a slave to the government.' In a third post, written in response to another user's comment (which isn't shown) the following was posted from Barnett's account: ...I firmly believe we should have assisted suicide in the US. I also ask the legitimate question of why should we have to keep up people who cannot contribute to society any longer? Obviously, I'm not saying the Government should put these people down, I'm just saying that we shouldn't keep them up. If they can take care of themselves without Government assistance, great. If not, let them starve and die. Easy as that. Yet another post, captured by the Oklahoma City television station KFOR, proclaimed: As the next Mayor of Oklahoma, I'm going to enact a mandatory nationwide lottery that euthanizes 1 out of every 100 people in the world. This will be the only Government program that is truly 100% equal to everybody. The lottery will take place once every year. On the years the lottery doesn't take place, we will have a purge where all crimes will be legal for 12 hours. In an e-mail, Barnett denied ever having written any of these posts: Our Facebook page was recently compromised, we have been the victims of some very sick people. There is no truth to me running for 'Mayor of Oklahoma' as there is no such thing. I have never advocated for killing anyone, despite what has been put out there. I do not want to euthanize poor people, sick people, or people on Government assistance. Christopher's husband, George Barnett (also known as Trey), was an administrator of the campaign page and reportedly had his personal Facebook accounts suspended as well. In a statement posted on his campaign web site, Chris Barnett wrote that he had received 'thousands of death threats' in the days after the screenshots were posted. He told us he and his husband had hired a '24/7 security detail' to keep them safe and had placed 'armed guards' outside their businesses as well. In response to our questions, Barnett told us he does not support involuntary euthanasia in any circumstances, but he does support assisted suicide (due to the experience of 'watching [his] father die from cancer'), and does believe governments have a duty to prevent the deaths of people who are disabled, cannot work, or cannot pay for food. Barnett also told us he had reported the alleged hacking of his account to both Facebook and law enforcement. When asked which agency he reported the hacking to, he replied, 'Our security team is handling that.' He also said he had reported the alleged death threats to law enforcement but again did not specify which agency. Without evidence of a hack, or proof that Barnett personally wrote the statements published on his campaign page, we cannot determine what was the true source of the controversial posts. Barnett is clear about whom he suspects to be responsible for the alleged hacking of his Facebook account, as well as most of the purported death threats. In an e-mail, he told us: 'This was a very well played move by someone, likely from the University of Tulsa or the law firm of Hall Estill...' Representatives for both the university and the law firm told us they were unable to respond to any of Barnett's allegations due to ongoing litigation. We asked Barnett to provide proof of the death threats and evidence to support his claim that they had 'mostly' come from the University of Tulsa and the Tulsa-based law firm Hall Estill, as well as his claim that 'Democrats have promised to assassinate [him] if [he] is elected.' Barnett told us 'this is a security matter that we cannot discuss,' but added that he hoped to be able to publish evidence of the purported threats at a later date. Barnett is suing both the University of Tulsa and Hall Estill in federal court as part of a messy, years-long legal saga which began with a production of The Glass Menagerie, a delayed dinner date, and - somewhat fittingly - a series of Facebook posts. 'Christopher Blackstone' Trey Barnett was a theatre major at the University of Tulsa in September 2014, and he was a lighting designer on a production of the classic Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie. On the night of 27 September, he accompanied faculty and fellow students to the on-campus theater to continue work on the production, which was scheduled to open two weeks later. Some students arrived late, however, which delayed the start of their work and ultimately caused Trey Barnett to be late in meeting Christopher Mangum (then his fiancé) for dinner, Senior Vice Provost Winona Tanaka would later recount. (To avoid confusion, we're going to refer to Christopher Barnett using his maiden name for the remainder of the article, even though the couple were married in December 2014.) That night, Mangum vented his frustration in a post on Barnett's Facebook page, criticizing the chair of the theatre department for not taking 'better control' of her students, denouncing one theatre professor as 'unqualified,' and musing that 'TU really needs to fire' her, as well as attacking a theatre student for being 'morbidly obese' and 'giving alcohol to underage minors.' This wasn't the first time that Mangum had posted scathing criticisms of the University of Tulsa's theatre program on social media. In March 2014, under the pseudonym 'Christopher Blackstone,' he accused a second theatre professor of being 'corrupt' and having an affair while she was on a theatre trip to Ireland with Barnett, seven other students, and Mangum himself. The following month, he once again posted to his fiancé's Facebook page, accusing the theatre department of being 'quite careless and extremely disorganized' in its supervision of a class project involving painting the walls of an off-campus building. These postings came to a head in September when figures within the theatre program filed complaints against Trey Barnett. The following month university officials decided Barnett had breached the school's harassment policy by not removing his fiancé's posts from his Facebook page, despite repeated requests. The University of Tulsa suspended Trey Barnett until January 2016, by which time the student who was the target of some of Mangum's attacks was expected to graduate. Barnett was also barred from finishing his theatre degree, which he was close to completing, meaning that if he did return to the university in 2016 he would have to effectively start his studies from scratch with a new major. The suspension garnered coverage from Inside Higher Ed and drew condemnation from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), who wrote: 'Punishing someone for the speech of a friend or relative might be par for the course in a dictatorship, but it has no place on our nation's college campuses.' In January 2016, Barnett filed a lawsuit against the school in Tulsa County District Court, alleging breach of contract, a violation of his right to due process, negligence (for allegedly failing to conduct a proper investigation) and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He is demanding more than $75,000 in damages in a case which was still before the court as of May 2018. The university has denied almost every factual claim made by Barnett. The school is represented in that case by the law firm Hall Estill. 'The Lies of Susan' At the same time, the couple were engaged in a separate battle with another local educational institution - Tulsa Community College (TCC). In early 2015, a few months after Trey Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa, Mangum contacted TCC with a request to rent its theater for a play called 'The Lies of Susan,' which Barnett was going to put on. This appears to have set off red flags among TCC and University of Tulsa faculty, according to e-mails released later. The head of the university's theatre department, whose complaint about Barnett paved the way for his suspension, is named Susan Barrett. Her husband, Bill Carter, works in the theatre department at TCC. 'Wow, now you are 'art,'' a University of Tulsa colleague wrote to Barnett in July 2015. In an email sent to us, Mangum acknowledged that his husband's former department head was 'going to be the inspiration for the main character.' The couple never got the space, and the play was never performed, but the story did not end there. In July 2015, Mangum filed an open records request with TCC, asking for any and all email correspondence between TCC faculty member Bill Carter and his wife, University of Tulsa professor Susan Barrett. The college sent him some emails, but not all of them, withholding messages of a personal or private nature. From there, Mangum's requests mushroomed. He asked the college for a copy of any contract it had with a local attorney; consistently disputed the search fees charged to him; and requested all emails held on TCC's servers containing the words 'nigger,' 'terrorist,' 'queer,' 'fag' and 'fagot' [sic], in order to 'see if discrimination and racism' were taking place at the college. When Mangum found out that the woman in charge of records requests at TCC also worked for the city's water and sewage authority, he then filed a records request with the city of Tulsa, asking for all emails sent to or from her email address, later noting that they would 'answer more of [his] questions about the city's drinking water.' In July 2017, two years after his first open records request, Mangum sued TCC, asking Tulsa County District Court for a declaration that TCC's policy on records requests was a violation of the Oklahoma Open Records Act, as well as an injunction ordering the college to end its allegedly narrow interpretation of the law. As of May 2018, that case was also pending. 'This does NOT make me feel safe' On 4 January 2018, the lawsuit took a dramatic turn - one which would spawn yet another legal battle, provoke troubling questions about Mangum's behavior, and prompt a sharp escalation in his allegations against the University of Tulsa and attorneys at Hall Estill. That morning, Mangum was taken out of court by Sheriff's deputies and detained for a short period, before being released and returned to the courtroom. In transcripts, Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Jeb Joseph, who is representing TCC in the open records case, explained that his office had received information about possible 'threats' made by Mangum: Agents from our office at the Attorney General's office had communications this morning, it's my understanding, with the sheriff's office here in Tulsa...We have - the Attorney General's office - been informed by counsel in another case, that is tangentially related to this one, involving the same or similar plaintiffs, that in that case, the plaintiff has made physical and verbal and written threats to counsel in that case,...and/or people involved in that litigation. We asked Mangum whether this was true, or if he had ever said or done anything, even as a joke, which could have been interpreted as a threat. He responded, 'No.' We could find no record of him ever having been prosecuted for making threats or engaging in intimidation or harassment. However, court records and e-mails sent between members of the Tulsa theatre community reveal a pattern of behavior that some of Mangum's legal adversaries clearly found concerning. During Trey Barnett's litigation against the University of Tulsa, Mangum started a web site called UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, which he promoted by sending thousands of leaflets to local residents, and even taking out billboard advertisements bearing the web site's name. In September 2017, he told local news web site Tulsa World that the billboards were costing him $7,500 a month. On the web site, Mangum posted documents from the couple's ongoing lawsuits, but also launched relentless personal attacks on almost everyone involved in each case. He called University of Tulsa administrators and attorneys from their law firm Hall Estill 'Nazis' and 'racists,' claiming they were members of the Ku Klux Klan and 'hate gay people.' 'I think that these people are worse than Adolf Hitler,' Mangum wrote of Hall Estill attorneys. In a series of bizarre postings, he lashed out at the appearance and even personal hygiene of his legal adversaries, calling one University of Tulsa professor a 'cat lady' whose 'house smelled of cat urine and feces,' and labelling one attorney at Hall Estill 'morbidly obese,' writing that 'the man smelled like big macs during the court hearing.' Mangum took to posting the home addresses and names of relatives of Hall Estill attorneys, as well as figures from the University of Tulsa and TCC. He took photos of opposing attorneys from inside the courtroom and posted them online, in one instance posting a photograph of a Hall Estill attorney and a woman Mangum identified as his wife. He made deeply personal comments and allegations about the purported criminal history of one attorney's wife and daughter. In one instance, he even posted about the death of that attorney's son, writing that 'karma is a bitch,' and 'he is dead because of you.' In an email sent in response to our enquiries, Mangum defended these postings, saying 'it shows how ridiculous it sounds to make someone responsible for something they have no control over,' and likened this to Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa over comments Mangum had made. He told us he posted this type of content because he is 'defending [himself] against their attacks and trying to bring the truth to light.' 'People choose to read my website and they choose to get upset because they do not like the content. I've not done anything illegal,' he added. Mangum told us he posted various home addresses as a 'demonstration of how transparency works,' and defended his repeated descriptions of his adversaries as 'Nazis' and 'little Hitlers,' saying: 'To take away someone's rights and try to take away their livelihood because of who they are is exactly what the Nazis did.' Mangum is an avowed gun lover and owns several firearms. In the midst of several bitter legal disputes, some of his public pronouncements on that subject have clearly caused concern to those he and his husband are suing. In April 2015, while engaged in a dispute over renting theatre space from TCC, he mused on Facebook about his desire to purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and buy a safe for all his guns. 'Does that make me a terrorist or a radical or a threat to society?' he asked, adding that he was looking for 'something powerful.' A few months later, a University of Tulsa theatre professor highlighted the Facebook posts in an e-mail to department chair Susan Barrett, which was later disclosed under Mangum's open records requests. The professor said she was 'concerned' by them, writing, 'While there was no explicit threat, this does NOT make me feel safe,' and adding: 'I don't think [the University of Tulsa] will do a thing until Chris comes in with that big gun and mows us all down.' In February 2015, the same professor asked Barrett for a security guard to be assigned to the theatre building, citing her concerns about Mangum. On UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, Mangum later posted a photograph of himself holding an AR-15 rifle and carrying a holstered handgun: When asked why he had posted a photograph of himself holding firearms on a web site devoted to a lawsuit that had no connection to gun rights, Mangum told us he was only using the picture 'to show who the author [of the posts] is' and that others had 'put meaning behind it.' Although Mangum was only briefly taken out of court for questioning by a sheriff's deputy in January 2018, he saw the episode as proof of a conspiracy between the University of Tulsa, Hall Estill, the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, and the Tulsa County Sheriff's office to silence and intimidate him in the context of the ongoing litigation. The next day, he filed yet another lawsuit, this time accusing the university, the law firm, and two particular attorneys of unlawful seizure, false imprisonment, civil conspiracy and other charges relating to the January courtroom incident. The case was sent to federal court in February, where both the university and the law firm have rejected almost every factual claim made by Mangum, and argued for his suit to be thrown out. As of May 2018, the case is still before the U.S. District Court for the northern district of Oklahoma. The 'false imprisonment' lawsuit marked a striking escalation in the couple's contentious history with the University of Tulsa and its law firm, Hall Estill. In May 2018, those allegations reached a new peak of seriousness when Mangum accused them of hacking into his gubernatorial campaign Facebook page, posting inflammatory comments on his behalf, and then sending him hundreds of death threats. The Republican primary in the Oklahoma gubernatorial election is scheduled for 26 June 2018. Mangum is unlikely to feature among the contenders in a ten-way race which - as of May - was led by Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb, former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, and businessman Kevin Stitt.

nan

In May 2018, Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Christopher Barnett advocated euthanasia for disabled people and those on benefits.

Neutral

A Tulsa-based businessman running for governor of Oklahoma was the center of controversy in May 2018, when posts appeared on his campaign's Facebook page in which he appeared to call for disabled people in receipt of government benefits to be euthanized or left to 'starve and die.' Christopher Barnett, who runs several small businesses in Oklahoma and is running as a Republican on platform of free speech and cuts to public spending, has claimed that his account was hacked and denies personally writing the posts. On 13 May 2018, a Facebook user posted a series of screenshots of posts from the 'Chrisforgov' Facebook page, which has since been suspended: In one post, Barnett's account posted a poll which asked: 'Should a person be required to apply for 2 jobs a week if receiving Food stamps and take any job offered to them to gain employment and if they refuse, they lose their food stamps?' In another post, someone wrote: 'The ones who are disabled and can't work ... why are we required to keep them up? Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn't make everyone a slave to the government.' In a third post, written in response to another user's comment (which isn't shown) the following was posted from Barnett's account: ...I firmly believe we should have assisted suicide in the US. I also ask the legitimate question of why should we have to keep up people who cannot contribute to society any longer? Obviously, I'm not saying the Government should put these people down, I'm just saying that we shouldn't keep them up. If they can take care of themselves without Government assistance, great. If not, let them starve and die. Easy as that. Yet another post, captured by the Oklahoma City television station KFOR, proclaimed: As the next Mayor of Oklahoma, I'm going to enact a mandatory nationwide lottery that euthanizes 1 out of every 100 people in the world. This will be the only Government program that is truly 100% equal to everybody. The lottery will take place once every year. On the years the lottery doesn't take place, we will have a purge where all crimes will be legal for 12 hours. In an e-mail, Barnett denied ever having written any of these posts: Our Facebook page was recently compromised, we have been the victims of some very sick people. There is no truth to me running for 'Mayor of Oklahoma' as there is no such thing. I have never advocated for killing anyone, despite what has been put out there. I do not want to euthanize poor people, sick people, or people on Government assistance. Christopher's husband, George Barnett (also known as Trey), was an administrator of the campaign page and reportedly had his personal Facebook accounts suspended as well. In a statement posted on his campaign web site, Chris Barnett wrote that he had received 'thousands of death threats' in the days after the screenshots were posted. He told us he and his husband had hired a '24/7 security detail' to keep them safe and had placed 'armed guards' outside their businesses as well. In response to our questions, Barnett told us he does not support involuntary euthanasia in any circumstances, but he does support assisted suicide (due to the experience of 'watching [his] father die from cancer'), and does believe governments have a duty to prevent the deaths of people who are disabled, cannot work, or cannot pay for food. Barnett also told us he had reported the alleged hacking of his account to both Facebook and law enforcement. When asked which agency he reported the hacking to, he replied, 'Our security team is handling that.' He also said he had reported the alleged death threats to law enforcement but again did not specify which agency. Without evidence of a hack, or proof that Barnett personally wrote the statements published on his campaign page, we cannot determine what was the true source of the controversial posts. Barnett is clear about whom he suspects to be responsible for the alleged hacking of his Facebook account, as well as most of the purported death threats. In an e-mail, he told us: 'This was a very well played move by someone, likely from the University of Tulsa or the law firm of Hall Estill...' Representatives for both the university and the law firm told us they were unable to respond to any of Barnett's allegations due to ongoing litigation. We asked Barnett to provide proof of the death threats and evidence to support his claim that they had 'mostly' come from the University of Tulsa and the Tulsa-based law firm Hall Estill, as well as his claim that 'Democrats have promised to assassinate [him] if [he] is elected.' Barnett told us 'this is a security matter that we cannot discuss,' but added that he hoped to be able to publish evidence of the purported threats at a later date. Barnett is suing both the University of Tulsa and Hall Estill in federal court as part of a messy, years-long legal saga which began with a production of The Glass Menagerie, a delayed dinner date, and - somewhat fittingly - a series of Facebook posts. 'Christopher Blackstone' Trey Barnett was a theatre major at the University of Tulsa in September 2014, and he was a lighting designer on a production of the classic Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie. On the night of 27 September, he accompanied faculty and fellow students to the on-campus theater to continue work on the production, which was scheduled to open two weeks later. Some students arrived late, however, which delayed the start of their work and ultimately caused Trey Barnett to be late in meeting Christopher Mangum (then his fiancé) for dinner, Senior Vice Provost Winona Tanaka would later recount. (To avoid confusion, we're going to refer to Christopher Barnett using his maiden name for the remainder of the article, even though the couple were married in December 2014.) That night, Mangum vented his frustration in a post on Barnett's Facebook page, criticizing the chair of the theatre department for not taking 'better control' of her students, denouncing one theatre professor as 'unqualified,' and musing that 'TU really needs to fire' her, as well as attacking a theatre student for being 'morbidly obese' and 'giving alcohol to underage minors.' This wasn't the first time that Mangum had posted scathing criticisms of the University of Tulsa's theatre program on social media. In March 2014, under the pseudonym 'Christopher Blackstone,' he accused a second theatre professor of being 'corrupt' and having an affair while she was on a theatre trip to Ireland with Barnett, seven other students, and Mangum himself. The following month, he once again posted to his fiancé's Facebook page, accusing the theatre department of being 'quite careless and extremely disorganized' in its supervision of a class project involving painting the walls of an off-campus building. These postings came to a head in September when figures within the theatre program filed complaints against Trey Barnett. The following month university officials decided Barnett had breached the school's harassment policy by not removing his fiancé's posts from his Facebook page, despite repeated requests. The University of Tulsa suspended Trey Barnett until January 2016, by which time the student who was the target of some of Mangum's attacks was expected to graduate. Barnett was also barred from finishing his theatre degree, which he was close to completing, meaning that if he did return to the university in 2016 he would have to effectively start his studies from scratch with a new major. The suspension garnered coverage from Inside Higher Ed and drew condemnation from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), who wrote: 'Punishing someone for the speech of a friend or relative might be par for the course in a dictatorship, but it has no place on our nation's college campuses.' In January 2016, Barnett filed a lawsuit against the school in Tulsa County District Court, alleging breach of contract, a violation of his right to due process, negligence (for allegedly failing to conduct a proper investigation) and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He is demanding more than $75,000 in damages in a case which was still before the court as of May 2018. The university has denied almost every factual claim made by Barnett. The school is represented in that case by the law firm Hall Estill. 'The Lies of Susan' At the same time, the couple were engaged in a separate battle with another local educational institution - Tulsa Community College (TCC). In early 2015, a few months after Trey Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa, Mangum contacted TCC with a request to rent its theater for a play called 'The Lies of Susan,' which Barnett was going to put on. This appears to have set off red flags among TCC and University of Tulsa faculty, according to e-mails released later. The head of the university's theatre department, whose complaint about Barnett paved the way for his suspension, is named Susan Barrett. Her husband, Bill Carter, works in the theatre department at TCC. 'Wow, now you are 'art,'' a University of Tulsa colleague wrote to Barnett in July 2015. In an email sent to us, Mangum acknowledged that his husband's former department head was 'going to be the inspiration for the main character.' The couple never got the space, and the play was never performed, but the story did not end there. In July 2015, Mangum filed an open records request with TCC, asking for any and all email correspondence between TCC faculty member Bill Carter and his wife, University of Tulsa professor Susan Barrett. The college sent him some emails, but not all of them, withholding messages of a personal or private nature. From there, Mangum's requests mushroomed. He asked the college for a copy of any contract it had with a local attorney; consistently disputed the search fees charged to him; and requested all emails held on TCC's servers containing the words 'nigger,' 'terrorist,' 'queer,' 'fag' and 'fagot' [sic], in order to 'see if discrimination and racism' were taking place at the college. When Mangum found out that the woman in charge of records requests at TCC also worked for the city's water and sewage authority, he then filed a records request with the city of Tulsa, asking for all emails sent to or from her email address, later noting that they would 'answer more of [his] questions about the city's drinking water.' In July 2017, two years after his first open records request, Mangum sued TCC, asking Tulsa County District Court for a declaration that TCC's policy on records requests was a violation of the Oklahoma Open Records Act, as well as an injunction ordering the college to end its allegedly narrow interpretation of the law. As of May 2018, that case was also pending. 'This does NOT make me feel safe' On 4 January 2018, the lawsuit took a dramatic turn - one which would spawn yet another legal battle, provoke troubling questions about Mangum's behavior, and prompt a sharp escalation in his allegations against the University of Tulsa and attorneys at Hall Estill. That morning, Mangum was taken out of court by Sheriff's deputies and detained for a short period, before being released and returned to the courtroom. In transcripts, Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Jeb Joseph, who is representing TCC in the open records case, explained that his office had received information about possible 'threats' made by Mangum: Agents from our office at the Attorney General's office had communications this morning, it's my understanding, with the sheriff's office here in Tulsa...We have - the Attorney General's office - been informed by counsel in another case, that is tangentially related to this one, involving the same or similar plaintiffs, that in that case, the plaintiff has made physical and verbal and written threats to counsel in that case,...and/or people involved in that litigation. We asked Mangum whether this was true, or if he had ever said or done anything, even as a joke, which could have been interpreted as a threat. He responded, 'No.' We could find no record of him ever having been prosecuted for making threats or engaging in intimidation or harassment. However, court records and e-mails sent between members of the Tulsa theatre community reveal a pattern of behavior that some of Mangum's legal adversaries clearly found concerning. During Trey Barnett's litigation against the University of Tulsa, Mangum started a web site called UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, which he promoted by sending thousands of leaflets to local residents, and even taking out billboard advertisements bearing the web site's name. In September 2017, he told local news web site Tulsa World that the billboards were costing him $7,500 a month. On the web site, Mangum posted documents from the couple's ongoing lawsuits, but also launched relentless personal attacks on almost everyone involved in each case. He called University of Tulsa administrators and attorneys from their law firm Hall Estill 'Nazis' and 'racists,' claiming they were members of the Ku Klux Klan and 'hate gay people.' 'I think that these people are worse than Adolf Hitler,' Mangum wrote of Hall Estill attorneys. In a series of bizarre postings, he lashed out at the appearance and even personal hygiene of his legal adversaries, calling one University of Tulsa professor a 'cat lady' whose 'house smelled of cat urine and feces,' and labelling one attorney at Hall Estill 'morbidly obese,' writing that 'the man smelled like big macs during the court hearing.' Mangum took to posting the home addresses and names of relatives of Hall Estill attorneys, as well as figures from the University of Tulsa and TCC. He took photos of opposing attorneys from inside the courtroom and posted them online, in one instance posting a photograph of a Hall Estill attorney and a woman Mangum identified as his wife. He made deeply personal comments and allegations about the purported criminal history of one attorney's wife and daughter. In one instance, he even posted about the death of that attorney's son, writing that 'karma is a bitch,' and 'he is dead because of you.' In an email sent in response to our enquiries, Mangum defended these postings, saying 'it shows how ridiculous it sounds to make someone responsible for something they have no control over,' and likened this to Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa over comments Mangum had made. He told us he posted this type of content because he is 'defending [himself] against their attacks and trying to bring the truth to light.' 'People choose to read my website and they choose to get upset because they do not like the content. I've not done anything illegal,' he added. Mangum told us he posted various home addresses as a 'demonstration of how transparency works,' and defended his repeated descriptions of his adversaries as 'Nazis' and 'little Hitlers,' saying: 'To take away someone's rights and try to take away their livelihood because of who they are is exactly what the Nazis did.' Mangum is an avowed gun lover and owns several firearms. In the midst of several bitter legal disputes, some of his public pronouncements on that subject have clearly caused concern to those he and his husband are suing. In April 2015, while engaged in a dispute over renting theatre space from TCC, he mused on Facebook about his desire to purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and buy a safe for all his guns. 'Does that make me a terrorist or a radical or a threat to society?' he asked, adding that he was looking for 'something powerful.' A few months later, a University of Tulsa theatre professor highlighted the Facebook posts in an e-mail to department chair Susan Barrett, which was later disclosed under Mangum's open records requests. The professor said she was 'concerned' by them, writing, 'While there was no explicit threat, this does NOT make me feel safe,' and adding: 'I don't think [the University of Tulsa] will do a thing until Chris comes in with that big gun and mows us all down.' In February 2015, the same professor asked Barrett for a security guard to be assigned to the theatre building, citing her concerns about Mangum. On UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, Mangum later posted a photograph of himself holding an AR-15 rifle and carrying a holstered handgun: When asked why he had posted a photograph of himself holding firearms on a web site devoted to a lawsuit that had no connection to gun rights, Mangum told us he was only using the picture 'to show who the author [of the posts] is' and that others had 'put meaning behind it.' Although Mangum was only briefly taken out of court for questioning by a sheriff's deputy in January 2018, he saw the episode as proof of a conspiracy between the University of Tulsa, Hall Estill, the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, and the Tulsa County Sheriff's office to silence and intimidate him in the context of the ongoing litigation. The next day, he filed yet another lawsuit, this time accusing the university, the law firm, and two particular attorneys of unlawful seizure, false imprisonment, civil conspiracy and other charges relating to the January courtroom incident. The case was sent to federal court in February, where both the university and the law firm have rejected almost every factual claim made by Mangum, and argued for his suit to be thrown out. As of May 2018, the case is still before the U.S. District Court for the northern district of Oklahoma. The 'false imprisonment' lawsuit marked a striking escalation in the couple's contentious history with the University of Tulsa and its law firm, Hall Estill. In May 2018, those allegations reached a new peak of seriousness when Mangum accused them of hacking into his gubernatorial campaign Facebook page, posting inflammatory comments on his behalf, and then sending him hundreds of death threats. The Republican primary in the Oklahoma gubernatorial election is scheduled for 26 June 2018. Mangum is unlikely to feature among the contenders in a ten-way race which - as of May - was led by Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb, former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, and businessman Kevin Stitt.

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In May 2018, Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Christopher Barnett advocated euthanasia for disabled people and those on benefits.

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A Tulsa-based businessman running for governor of Oklahoma was the center of controversy in May 2018, when posts appeared on his campaign's Facebook page in which he appeared to call for disabled people in receipt of government benefits to be euthanized or left to 'starve and die.' Christopher Barnett, who runs several small businesses in Oklahoma and is running as a Republican on platform of free speech and cuts to public spending, has claimed that his account was hacked and denies personally writing the posts. On 13 May 2018, a Facebook user posted a series of screenshots of posts from the 'Chrisforgov' Facebook page, which has since been suspended: In one post, Barnett's account posted a poll which asked: 'Should a person be required to apply for 2 jobs a week if receiving Food stamps and take any job offered to them to gain employment and if they refuse, they lose their food stamps?' In another post, someone wrote: 'The ones who are disabled and can't work ... why are we required to keep them up? Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn't make everyone a slave to the government.' In a third post, written in response to another user's comment (which isn't shown) the following was posted from Barnett's account: ...I firmly believe we should have assisted suicide in the US. I also ask the legitimate question of why should we have to keep up people who cannot contribute to society any longer? Obviously, I'm not saying the Government should put these people down, I'm just saying that we shouldn't keep them up. If they can take care of themselves without Government assistance, great. If not, let them starve and die. Easy as that. Yet another post, captured by the Oklahoma City television station KFOR, proclaimed: As the next Mayor of Oklahoma, I'm going to enact a mandatory nationwide lottery that euthanizes 1 out of every 100 people in the world. This will be the only Government program that is truly 100% equal to everybody. The lottery will take place once every year. On the years the lottery doesn't take place, we will have a purge where all crimes will be legal for 12 hours. In an e-mail, Barnett denied ever having written any of these posts: Our Facebook page was recently compromised, we have been the victims of some very sick people. There is no truth to me running for 'Mayor of Oklahoma' as there is no such thing. I have never advocated for killing anyone, despite what has been put out there. I do not want to euthanize poor people, sick people, or people on Government assistance. Christopher's husband, George Barnett (also known as Trey), was an administrator of the campaign page and reportedly had his personal Facebook accounts suspended as well. In a statement posted on his campaign web site, Chris Barnett wrote that he had received 'thousands of death threats' in the days after the screenshots were posted. He told us he and his husband had hired a '24/7 security detail' to keep them safe and had placed 'armed guards' outside their businesses as well. In response to our questions, Barnett told us he does not support involuntary euthanasia in any circumstances, but he does support assisted suicide (due to the experience of 'watching [his] father die from cancer'), and does believe governments have a duty to prevent the deaths of people who are disabled, cannot work, or cannot pay for food. Barnett also told us he had reported the alleged hacking of his account to both Facebook and law enforcement. When asked which agency he reported the hacking to, he replied, 'Our security team is handling that.' He also said he had reported the alleged death threats to law enforcement but again did not specify which agency. Without evidence of a hack, or proof that Barnett personally wrote the statements published on his campaign page, we cannot determine what was the true source of the controversial posts. Barnett is clear about whom he suspects to be responsible for the alleged hacking of his Facebook account, as well as most of the purported death threats. In an e-mail, he told us: 'This was a very well played move by someone, likely from the University of Tulsa or the law firm of Hall Estill...' Representatives for both the university and the law firm told us they were unable to respond to any of Barnett's allegations due to ongoing litigation. We asked Barnett to provide proof of the death threats and evidence to support his claim that they had 'mostly' come from the University of Tulsa and the Tulsa-based law firm Hall Estill, as well as his claim that 'Democrats have promised to assassinate [him] if [he] is elected.' Barnett told us 'this is a security matter that we cannot discuss,' but added that he hoped to be able to publish evidence of the purported threats at a later date. Barnett is suing both the University of Tulsa and Hall Estill in federal court as part of a messy, years-long legal saga which began with a production of The Glass Menagerie, a delayed dinner date, and - somewhat fittingly - a series of Facebook posts. 'Christopher Blackstone' Trey Barnett was a theatre major at the University of Tulsa in September 2014, and he was a lighting designer on a production of the classic Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie. On the night of 27 September, he accompanied faculty and fellow students to the on-campus theater to continue work on the production, which was scheduled to open two weeks later. Some students arrived late, however, which delayed the start of their work and ultimately caused Trey Barnett to be late in meeting Christopher Mangum (then his fiancé) for dinner, Senior Vice Provost Winona Tanaka would later recount. (To avoid confusion, we're going to refer to Christopher Barnett using his maiden name for the remainder of the article, even though the couple were married in December 2014.) That night, Mangum vented his frustration in a post on Barnett's Facebook page, criticizing the chair of the theatre department for not taking 'better control' of her students, denouncing one theatre professor as 'unqualified,' and musing that 'TU really needs to fire' her, as well as attacking a theatre student for being 'morbidly obese' and 'giving alcohol to underage minors.' This wasn't the first time that Mangum had posted scathing criticisms of the University of Tulsa's theatre program on social media. In March 2014, under the pseudonym 'Christopher Blackstone,' he accused a second theatre professor of being 'corrupt' and having an affair while she was on a theatre trip to Ireland with Barnett, seven other students, and Mangum himself. The following month, he once again posted to his fiancé's Facebook page, accusing the theatre department of being 'quite careless and extremely disorganized' in its supervision of a class project involving painting the walls of an off-campus building. These postings came to a head in September when figures within the theatre program filed complaints against Trey Barnett. The following month university officials decided Barnett had breached the school's harassment policy by not removing his fiancé's posts from his Facebook page, despite repeated requests. The University of Tulsa suspended Trey Barnett until January 2016, by which time the student who was the target of some of Mangum's attacks was expected to graduate. Barnett was also barred from finishing his theatre degree, which he was close to completing, meaning that if he did return to the university in 2016 he would have to effectively start his studies from scratch with a new major. The suspension garnered coverage from Inside Higher Ed and drew condemnation from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), who wrote: 'Punishing someone for the speech of a friend or relative might be par for the course in a dictatorship, but it has no place on our nation's college campuses.' In January 2016, Barnett filed a lawsuit against the school in Tulsa County District Court, alleging breach of contract, a violation of his right to due process, negligence (for allegedly failing to conduct a proper investigation) and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He is demanding more than $75,000 in damages in a case which was still before the court as of May 2018. The university has denied almost every factual claim made by Barnett. The school is represented in that case by the law firm Hall Estill. 'The Lies of Susan' At the same time, the couple were engaged in a separate battle with another local educational institution - Tulsa Community College (TCC). In early 2015, a few months after Trey Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa, Mangum contacted TCC with a request to rent its theater for a play called 'The Lies of Susan,' which Barnett was going to put on. This appears to have set off red flags among TCC and University of Tulsa faculty, according to e-mails released later. The head of the university's theatre department, whose complaint about Barnett paved the way for his suspension, is named Susan Barrett. Her husband, Bill Carter, works in the theatre department at TCC. 'Wow, now you are 'art,'' a University of Tulsa colleague wrote to Barnett in July 2015. In an email sent to us, Mangum acknowledged that his husband's former department head was 'going to be the inspiration for the main character.' The couple never got the space, and the play was never performed, but the story did not end there. In July 2015, Mangum filed an open records request with TCC, asking for any and all email correspondence between TCC faculty member Bill Carter and his wife, University of Tulsa professor Susan Barrett. The college sent him some emails, but not all of them, withholding messages of a personal or private nature. From there, Mangum's requests mushroomed. He asked the college for a copy of any contract it had with a local attorney; consistently disputed the search fees charged to him; and requested all emails held on TCC's servers containing the words 'nigger,' 'terrorist,' 'queer,' 'fag' and 'fagot' [sic], in order to 'see if discrimination and racism' were taking place at the college. When Mangum found out that the woman in charge of records requests at TCC also worked for the city's water and sewage authority, he then filed a records request with the city of Tulsa, asking for all emails sent to or from her email address, later noting that they would 'answer more of [his] questions about the city's drinking water.' In July 2017, two years after his first open records request, Mangum sued TCC, asking Tulsa County District Court for a declaration that TCC's policy on records requests was a violation of the Oklahoma Open Records Act, as well as an injunction ordering the college to end its allegedly narrow interpretation of the law. As of May 2018, that case was also pending. 'This does NOT make me feel safe' On 4 January 2018, the lawsuit took a dramatic turn - one which would spawn yet another legal battle, provoke troubling questions about Mangum's behavior, and prompt a sharp escalation in his allegations against the University of Tulsa and attorneys at Hall Estill. That morning, Mangum was taken out of court by Sheriff's deputies and detained for a short period, before being released and returned to the courtroom. In transcripts, Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Jeb Joseph, who is representing TCC in the open records case, explained that his office had received information about possible 'threats' made by Mangum: Agents from our office at the Attorney General's office had communications this morning, it's my understanding, with the sheriff's office here in Tulsa...We have - the Attorney General's office - been informed by counsel in another case, that is tangentially related to this one, involving the same or similar plaintiffs, that in that case, the plaintiff has made physical and verbal and written threats to counsel in that case,...and/or people involved in that litigation. We asked Mangum whether this was true, or if he had ever said or done anything, even as a joke, which could have been interpreted as a threat. He responded, 'No.' We could find no record of him ever having been prosecuted for making threats or engaging in intimidation or harassment. However, court records and e-mails sent between members of the Tulsa theatre community reveal a pattern of behavior that some of Mangum's legal adversaries clearly found concerning. During Trey Barnett's litigation against the University of Tulsa, Mangum started a web site called UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, which he promoted by sending thousands of leaflets to local residents, and even taking out billboard advertisements bearing the web site's name. In September 2017, he told local news web site Tulsa World that the billboards were costing him $7,500 a month. On the web site, Mangum posted documents from the couple's ongoing lawsuits, but also launched relentless personal attacks on almost everyone involved in each case. He called University of Tulsa administrators and attorneys from their law firm Hall Estill 'Nazis' and 'racists,' claiming they were members of the Ku Klux Klan and 'hate gay people.' 'I think that these people are worse than Adolf Hitler,' Mangum wrote of Hall Estill attorneys. In a series of bizarre postings, he lashed out at the appearance and even personal hygiene of his legal adversaries, calling one University of Tulsa professor a 'cat lady' whose 'house smelled of cat urine and feces,' and labelling one attorney at Hall Estill 'morbidly obese,' writing that 'the man smelled like big macs during the court hearing.' Mangum took to posting the home addresses and names of relatives of Hall Estill attorneys, as well as figures from the University of Tulsa and TCC. He took photos of opposing attorneys from inside the courtroom and posted them online, in one instance posting a photograph of a Hall Estill attorney and a woman Mangum identified as his wife. He made deeply personal comments and allegations about the purported criminal history of one attorney's wife and daughter. In one instance, he even posted about the death of that attorney's son, writing that 'karma is a bitch,' and 'he is dead because of you.' In an email sent in response to our enquiries, Mangum defended these postings, saying 'it shows how ridiculous it sounds to make someone responsible for something they have no control over,' and likened this to Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa over comments Mangum had made. He told us he posted this type of content because he is 'defending [himself] against their attacks and trying to bring the truth to light.' 'People choose to read my website and they choose to get upset because they do not like the content. I've not done anything illegal,' he added. Mangum told us he posted various home addresses as a 'demonstration of how transparency works,' and defended his repeated descriptions of his adversaries as 'Nazis' and 'little Hitlers,' saying: 'To take away someone's rights and try to take away their livelihood because of who they are is exactly what the Nazis did.' Mangum is an avowed gun lover and owns several firearms. In the midst of several bitter legal disputes, some of his public pronouncements on that subject have clearly caused concern to those he and his husband are suing. In April 2015, while engaged in a dispute over renting theatre space from TCC, he mused on Facebook about his desire to purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and buy a safe for all his guns. 'Does that make me a terrorist or a radical or a threat to society?' he asked, adding that he was looking for 'something powerful.' A few months later, a University of Tulsa theatre professor highlighted the Facebook posts in an e-mail to department chair Susan Barrett, which was later disclosed under Mangum's open records requests. The professor said she was 'concerned' by them, writing, 'While there was no explicit threat, this does NOT make me feel safe,' and adding: 'I don't think [the University of Tulsa] will do a thing until Chris comes in with that big gun and mows us all down.' In February 2015, the same professor asked Barrett for a security guard to be assigned to the theatre building, citing her concerns about Mangum. On UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, Mangum later posted a photograph of himself holding an AR-15 rifle and carrying a holstered handgun: When asked why he had posted a photograph of himself holding firearms on a web site devoted to a lawsuit that had no connection to gun rights, Mangum told us he was only using the picture 'to show who the author [of the posts] is' and that others had 'put meaning behind it.' Although Mangum was only briefly taken out of court for questioning by a sheriff's deputy in January 2018, he saw the episode as proof of a conspiracy between the University of Tulsa, Hall Estill, the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, and the Tulsa County Sheriff's office to silence and intimidate him in the context of the ongoing litigation. The next day, he filed yet another lawsuit, this time accusing the university, the law firm, and two particular attorneys of unlawful seizure, false imprisonment, civil conspiracy and other charges relating to the January courtroom incident. The case was sent to federal court in February, where both the university and the law firm have rejected almost every factual claim made by Mangum, and argued for his suit to be thrown out. As of May 2018, the case is still before the U.S. District Court for the northern district of Oklahoma. The 'false imprisonment' lawsuit marked a striking escalation in the couple's contentious history with the University of Tulsa and its law firm, Hall Estill. In May 2018, those allegations reached a new peak of seriousness when Mangum accused them of hacking into his gubernatorial campaign Facebook page, posting inflammatory comments on his behalf, and then sending him hundreds of death threats. The Republican primary in the Oklahoma gubernatorial election is scheduled for 26 June 2018. Mangum is unlikely to feature among the contenders in a ten-way race which - as of May - was led by Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb, former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, and businessman Kevin Stitt.

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In May 2018, Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Christopher Barnett advocated euthanasia for disabled people and those on benefits.

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A Tulsa-based businessman running for governor of Oklahoma was the center of controversy in May 2018, when posts appeared on his campaign's Facebook page in which he appeared to call for disabled people in receipt of government benefits to be euthanized or left to 'starve and die.' Christopher Barnett, who runs several small businesses in Oklahoma and is running as a Republican on platform of free speech and cuts to public spending, has claimed that his account was hacked and denies personally writing the posts. On 13 May 2018, a Facebook user posted a series of screenshots of posts from the 'Chrisforgov' Facebook page, which has since been suspended: In one post, Barnett's account posted a poll which asked: 'Should a person be required to apply for 2 jobs a week if receiving Food stamps and take any job offered to them to gain employment and if they refuse, they lose their food stamps?' In another post, someone wrote: 'The ones who are disabled and can't work ... why are we required to keep them up? Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn't make everyone a slave to the government.' In a third post, written in response to another user's comment (which isn't shown) the following was posted from Barnett's account: ...I firmly believe we should have assisted suicide in the US. I also ask the legitimate question of why should we have to keep up people who cannot contribute to society any longer? Obviously, I'm not saying the Government should put these people down, I'm just saying that we shouldn't keep them up. If they can take care of themselves without Government assistance, great. If not, let them starve and die. Easy as that. Yet another post, captured by the Oklahoma City television station KFOR, proclaimed: As the next Mayor of Oklahoma, I'm going to enact a mandatory nationwide lottery that euthanizes 1 out of every 100 people in the world. This will be the only Government program that is truly 100% equal to everybody. The lottery will take place once every year. On the years the lottery doesn't take place, we will have a purge where all crimes will be legal for 12 hours. In an e-mail, Barnett denied ever having written any of these posts: Our Facebook page was recently compromised, we have been the victims of some very sick people. There is no truth to me running for 'Mayor of Oklahoma' as there is no such thing. I have never advocated for killing anyone, despite what has been put out there. I do not want to euthanize poor people, sick people, or people on Government assistance. Christopher's husband, George Barnett (also known as Trey), was an administrator of the campaign page and reportedly had his personal Facebook accounts suspended as well. In a statement posted on his campaign web site, Chris Barnett wrote that he had received 'thousands of death threats' in the days after the screenshots were posted. He told us he and his husband had hired a '24/7 security detail' to keep them safe and had placed 'armed guards' outside their businesses as well. In response to our questions, Barnett told us he does not support involuntary euthanasia in any circumstances, but he does support assisted suicide (due to the experience of 'watching [his] father die from cancer'), and does believe governments have a duty to prevent the deaths of people who are disabled, cannot work, or cannot pay for food. Barnett also told us he had reported the alleged hacking of his account to both Facebook and law enforcement. When asked which agency he reported the hacking to, he replied, 'Our security team is handling that.' He also said he had reported the alleged death threats to law enforcement but again did not specify which agency. Without evidence of a hack, or proof that Barnett personally wrote the statements published on his campaign page, we cannot determine what was the true source of the controversial posts. Barnett is clear about whom he suspects to be responsible for the alleged hacking of his Facebook account, as well as most of the purported death threats. In an e-mail, he told us: 'This was a very well played move by someone, likely from the University of Tulsa or the law firm of Hall Estill...' Representatives for both the university and the law firm told us they were unable to respond to any of Barnett's allegations due to ongoing litigation. We asked Barnett to provide proof of the death threats and evidence to support his claim that they had 'mostly' come from the University of Tulsa and the Tulsa-based law firm Hall Estill, as well as his claim that 'Democrats have promised to assassinate [him] if [he] is elected.' Barnett told us 'this is a security matter that we cannot discuss,' but added that he hoped to be able to publish evidence of the purported threats at a later date. Barnett is suing both the University of Tulsa and Hall Estill in federal court as part of a messy, years-long legal saga which began with a production of The Glass Menagerie, a delayed dinner date, and - somewhat fittingly - a series of Facebook posts. 'Christopher Blackstone' Trey Barnett was a theatre major at the University of Tulsa in September 2014, and he was a lighting designer on a production of the classic Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie. On the night of 27 September, he accompanied faculty and fellow students to the on-campus theater to continue work on the production, which was scheduled to open two weeks later. Some students arrived late, however, which delayed the start of their work and ultimately caused Trey Barnett to be late in meeting Christopher Mangum (then his fiancé) for dinner, Senior Vice Provost Winona Tanaka would later recount. (To avoid confusion, we're going to refer to Christopher Barnett using his maiden name for the remainder of the article, even though the couple were married in December 2014.) That night, Mangum vented his frustration in a post on Barnett's Facebook page, criticizing the chair of the theatre department for not taking 'better control' of her students, denouncing one theatre professor as 'unqualified,' and musing that 'TU really needs to fire' her, as well as attacking a theatre student for being 'morbidly obese' and 'giving alcohol to underage minors.' This wasn't the first time that Mangum had posted scathing criticisms of the University of Tulsa's theatre program on social media. In March 2014, under the pseudonym 'Christopher Blackstone,' he accused a second theatre professor of being 'corrupt' and having an affair while she was on a theatre trip to Ireland with Barnett, seven other students, and Mangum himself. The following month, he once again posted to his fiancé's Facebook page, accusing the theatre department of being 'quite careless and extremely disorganized' in its supervision of a class project involving painting the walls of an off-campus building. These postings came to a head in September when figures within the theatre program filed complaints against Trey Barnett. The following month university officials decided Barnett had breached the school's harassment policy by not removing his fiancé's posts from his Facebook page, despite repeated requests. The University of Tulsa suspended Trey Barnett until January 2016, by which time the student who was the target of some of Mangum's attacks was expected to graduate. Barnett was also barred from finishing his theatre degree, which he was close to completing, meaning that if he did return to the university in 2016 he would have to effectively start his studies from scratch with a new major. The suspension garnered coverage from Inside Higher Ed and drew condemnation from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), who wrote: 'Punishing someone for the speech of a friend or relative might be par for the course in a dictatorship, but it has no place on our nation's college campuses.' In January 2016, Barnett filed a lawsuit against the school in Tulsa County District Court, alleging breach of contract, a violation of his right to due process, negligence (for allegedly failing to conduct a proper investigation) and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He is demanding more than $75,000 in damages in a case which was still before the court as of May 2018. The university has denied almost every factual claim made by Barnett. The school is represented in that case by the law firm Hall Estill. 'The Lies of Susan' At the same time, the couple were engaged in a separate battle with another local educational institution - Tulsa Community College (TCC). In early 2015, a few months after Trey Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa, Mangum contacted TCC with a request to rent its theater for a play called 'The Lies of Susan,' which Barnett was going to put on. This appears to have set off red flags among TCC and University of Tulsa faculty, according to e-mails released later. The head of the university's theatre department, whose complaint about Barnett paved the way for his suspension, is named Susan Barrett. Her husband, Bill Carter, works in the theatre department at TCC. 'Wow, now you are 'art,'' a University of Tulsa colleague wrote to Barnett in July 2015. In an email sent to us, Mangum acknowledged that his husband's former department head was 'going to be the inspiration for the main character.' The couple never got the space, and the play was never performed, but the story did not end there. In July 2015, Mangum filed an open records request with TCC, asking for any and all email correspondence between TCC faculty member Bill Carter and his wife, University of Tulsa professor Susan Barrett. The college sent him some emails, but not all of them, withholding messages of a personal or private nature. From there, Mangum's requests mushroomed. He asked the college for a copy of any contract it had with a local attorney; consistently disputed the search fees charged to him; and requested all emails held on TCC's servers containing the words 'nigger,' 'terrorist,' 'queer,' 'fag' and 'fagot' [sic], in order to 'see if discrimination and racism' were taking place at the college. When Mangum found out that the woman in charge of records requests at TCC also worked for the city's water and sewage authority, he then filed a records request with the city of Tulsa, asking for all emails sent to or from her email address, later noting that they would 'answer more of [his] questions about the city's drinking water.' In July 2017, two years after his first open records request, Mangum sued TCC, asking Tulsa County District Court for a declaration that TCC's policy on records requests was a violation of the Oklahoma Open Records Act, as well as an injunction ordering the college to end its allegedly narrow interpretation of the law. As of May 2018, that case was also pending. 'This does NOT make me feel safe' On 4 January 2018, the lawsuit took a dramatic turn - one which would spawn yet another legal battle, provoke troubling questions about Mangum's behavior, and prompt a sharp escalation in his allegations against the University of Tulsa and attorneys at Hall Estill. That morning, Mangum was taken out of court by Sheriff's deputies and detained for a short period, before being released and returned to the courtroom. In transcripts, Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Jeb Joseph, who is representing TCC in the open records case, explained that his office had received information about possible 'threats' made by Mangum: Agents from our office at the Attorney General's office had communications this morning, it's my understanding, with the sheriff's office here in Tulsa...We have - the Attorney General's office - been informed by counsel in another case, that is tangentially related to this one, involving the same or similar plaintiffs, that in that case, the plaintiff has made physical and verbal and written threats to counsel in that case,...and/or people involved in that litigation. We asked Mangum whether this was true, or if he had ever said or done anything, even as a joke, which could have been interpreted as a threat. He responded, 'No.' We could find no record of him ever having been prosecuted for making threats or engaging in intimidation or harassment. However, court records and e-mails sent between members of the Tulsa theatre community reveal a pattern of behavior that some of Mangum's legal adversaries clearly found concerning. During Trey Barnett's litigation against the University of Tulsa, Mangum started a web site called UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, which he promoted by sending thousands of leaflets to local residents, and even taking out billboard advertisements bearing the web site's name. In September 2017, he told local news web site Tulsa World that the billboards were costing him $7,500 a month. On the web site, Mangum posted documents from the couple's ongoing lawsuits, but also launched relentless personal attacks on almost everyone involved in each case. He called University of Tulsa administrators and attorneys from their law firm Hall Estill 'Nazis' and 'racists,' claiming they were members of the Ku Klux Klan and 'hate gay people.' 'I think that these people are worse than Adolf Hitler,' Mangum wrote of Hall Estill attorneys. In a series of bizarre postings, he lashed out at the appearance and even personal hygiene of his legal adversaries, calling one University of Tulsa professor a 'cat lady' whose 'house smelled of cat urine and feces,' and labelling one attorney at Hall Estill 'morbidly obese,' writing that 'the man smelled like big macs during the court hearing.' Mangum took to posting the home addresses and names of relatives of Hall Estill attorneys, as well as figures from the University of Tulsa and TCC. He took photos of opposing attorneys from inside the courtroom and posted them online, in one instance posting a photograph of a Hall Estill attorney and a woman Mangum identified as his wife. He made deeply personal comments and allegations about the purported criminal history of one attorney's wife and daughter. In one instance, he even posted about the death of that attorney's son, writing that 'karma is a bitch,' and 'he is dead because of you.' In an email sent in response to our enquiries, Mangum defended these postings, saying 'it shows how ridiculous it sounds to make someone responsible for something they have no control over,' and likened this to Barnett's suspension from the University of Tulsa over comments Mangum had made. He told us he posted this type of content because he is 'defending [himself] against their attacks and trying to bring the truth to light.' 'People choose to read my website and they choose to get upset because they do not like the content. I've not done anything illegal,' he added. Mangum told us he posted various home addresses as a 'demonstration of how transparency works,' and defended his repeated descriptions of his adversaries as 'Nazis' and 'little Hitlers,' saying: 'To take away someone's rights and try to take away their livelihood because of who they are is exactly what the Nazis did.' Mangum is an avowed gun lover and owns several firearms. In the midst of several bitter legal disputes, some of his public pronouncements on that subject have clearly caused concern to those he and his husband are suing. In April 2015, while engaged in a dispute over renting theatre space from TCC, he mused on Facebook about his desire to purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and buy a safe for all his guns. 'Does that make me a terrorist or a radical or a threat to society?' he asked, adding that he was looking for 'something powerful.' A few months later, a University of Tulsa theatre professor highlighted the Facebook posts in an e-mail to department chair Susan Barrett, which was later disclosed under Mangum's open records requests. The professor said she was 'concerned' by them, writing, 'While there was no explicit threat, this does NOT make me feel safe,' and adding: 'I don't think [the University of Tulsa] will do a thing until Chris comes in with that big gun and mows us all down.' In February 2015, the same professor asked Barrett for a security guard to be assigned to the theatre building, citing her concerns about Mangum. On UniversityofTulsaLawsuit.com, Mangum later posted a photograph of himself holding an AR-15 rifle and carrying a holstered handgun: When asked why he had posted a photograph of himself holding firearms on a web site devoted to a lawsuit that had no connection to gun rights, Mangum told us he was only using the picture 'to show who the author [of the posts] is' and that others had 'put meaning behind it.' Although Mangum was only briefly taken out of court for questioning by a sheriff's deputy in January 2018, he saw the episode as proof of a conspiracy between the University of Tulsa, Hall Estill, the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, and the Tulsa County Sheriff's office to silence and intimidate him in the context of the ongoing litigation. The next day, he filed yet another lawsuit, this time accusing the university, the law firm, and two particular attorneys of unlawful seizure, false imprisonment, civil conspiracy and other charges relating to the January courtroom incident. The case was sent to federal court in February, where both the university and the law firm have rejected almost every factual claim made by Mangum, and argued for his suit to be thrown out. As of May 2018, the case is still before the U.S. District Court for the northern district of Oklahoma. The 'false imprisonment' lawsuit marked a striking escalation in the couple's contentious history with the University of Tulsa and its law firm, Hall Estill. In May 2018, those allegations reached a new peak of seriousness when Mangum accused them of hacking into his gubernatorial campaign Facebook page, posting inflammatory comments on his behalf, and then sending him hundreds of death threats. The Republican primary in the Oklahoma gubernatorial election is scheduled for 26 June 2018. Mangum is unlikely to feature among the contenders in a ten-way race which - as of May - was led by Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb, former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, and businessman Kevin Stitt.

nan

If 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November, he would end suspensions on specific work visas, like the H-1B and J-1 visas, imposed by the Trump administration.

Neutral

Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. While not a key topic in the 2020 election debates, immigration and visas have been a major policy area for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. Spearheaded by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who was behind family separation at the border, more hardline immigration policies are in the works for a possible second Trump term. As a result of a June 2020 Trump proclamation, many foreign workers in the U.S., or workers hoping to enter the country, found their status in jeopardy, leading to questions about whether they should be looking forward to a Joe Biden presidency. Reddit users were discussing if Biden would reverse Trump policies such as the recent suspension of work visas like the H-1B and J-1. Many are under the impression that Biden would 'lift all such bans' the moment he takes office. If Joe Biden wins, will he allow visas Trump banned like H1B and J1? from JoeBiden To answer this, we dug into Biden's immigration platform, and found that while he plans to reverse most of Trump's immigration policies, many of the specifics remain uncertain. First, we'll break down the Trump proclamation from the summer of 2020. Due to the economic disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the administration declared that 'the present admission of workers within several nonimmigrant visa categories also poses a risk of displacing and disadvantaging United States workers during the current recovery.' Consequently the administration suspended the issuance of visas for foreign workers in the H-1B, H-2B, J, and L visa categories until Dec. 31, 2020. These visas largely cater to highly skilled labor, including in the medical and technology sectors. In October 2020, after a number of business groups filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction. District Judge Jeffrey S. White stated the president does not possess the power of a monarch to cast aside immigration laws passed by Congress. The preliminary injunction remains in effect pending trial, unless overturned on appeal, and applies only to the plaintiffs. So only the businesses who filed the lawsuit can qualify to receive visas for their employees. Biden reacted to the new rule during a presidential town hall with members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, which is often impacted by such policies. He made his remarks around the 1:03:30 mark, when he addressed what he would do about immigration as soon as he entered office. He said, 'streamlining the naturalization process, make it easier for qualified green card holders to move through his backlog, and by the way, he just ended H-1B visas the rest of this year. That will not be in my administration. The people who have come on this visa have built this country.' It is not clear yet how Biden would reverse or change this policy, given that if he were elected, Trump would still have administrative powers until Jan. 20, 2021. The visa suspension would last through December 2020. During what is known as the 'lame duck' presidency - the period after an election and before the inauguration when administrations are transitioning - many predict Trump could pass more controversial orders. But Biden's immigration platform plans to overturn many of Trump's policies. He aims to make both permanent and temporary work visas more accessible. He says he will 'modernize' the country's immigration infrastructure, provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people, and will call for a moratorium on deportations in the first 100 days of his presidency. In one small, but key issue, however, Biden appears to toe the line. Another rule, promulgated by the Department of Labor in October, raised the minimum salary requirement for a visa to $208,000. This policy would effectively remove entry-level positions from the H-1B applicant pool. This rule was also challenged by a number of universities and organizations in a lawsuit.t A motion hearing is scheduled for Nov. 23, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. But, according to Biden's platform: High skilled temporary visas should not be used to disincentivize recruiting workers already in the U.S. for in-demand occupations. An immigration system that crowds out high-skilled workers in favor of only entry level wages and skills threatens American innovation and competitiveness. Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labor market and not used to undermine wages. By focusing on 'wage-based allocation,' this policy could have the similar effect of crowding out lesser paid jobs in favor of higher paid ones, which would make it difficult for international students hoping to join entry-level positions in the U.S. labor market. But the details and impact of this reform are yet to be determined. We reached out to the Biden campaign to learn more, and will update this post if that information becomes available. On major immigration issues, Biden remains opposed to Trump, claiming to reverse many of his key policies during the early days of a Biden presidency. He expressed opposition to Trump's proclamation pertaining to work visas, but did not offer details about the timeline or whether he would support ending suspensions on the other visa categories listed. As a result, we rate this claim a 'Mixture.'

nan

If 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November, he would end suspensions on specific work visas, like the H-1B and J-1 visas, imposed by the Trump administration.

Neutral

Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. While not a key topic in the 2020 election debates, immigration and visas have been a major policy area for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. Spearheaded by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who was behind family separation at the border, more hardline immigration policies are in the works for a possible second Trump term. As a result of a June 2020 Trump proclamation, many foreign workers in the U.S., or workers hoping to enter the country, found their status in jeopardy, leading to questions about whether they should be looking forward to a Joe Biden presidency. Reddit users were discussing if Biden would reverse Trump policies such as the recent suspension of work visas like the H-1B and J-1. Many are under the impression that Biden would 'lift all such bans' the moment he takes office. If Joe Biden wins, will he allow visas Trump banned like H1B and J1? from JoeBiden To answer this, we dug into Biden's immigration platform, and found that while he plans to reverse most of Trump's immigration policies, many of the specifics remain uncertain. First, we'll break down the Trump proclamation from the summer of 2020. Due to the economic disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the administration declared that 'the present admission of workers within several nonimmigrant visa categories also poses a risk of displacing and disadvantaging United States workers during the current recovery.' Consequently the administration suspended the issuance of visas for foreign workers in the H-1B, H-2B, J, and L visa categories until Dec. 31, 2020. These visas largely cater to highly skilled labor, including in the medical and technology sectors. In October 2020, after a number of business groups filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction. District Judge Jeffrey S. White stated the president does not possess the power of a monarch to cast aside immigration laws passed by Congress. The preliminary injunction remains in effect pending trial, unless overturned on appeal, and applies only to the plaintiffs. So only the businesses who filed the lawsuit can qualify to receive visas for their employees. Biden reacted to the new rule during a presidential town hall with members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, which is often impacted by such policies. He made his remarks around the 1:03:30 mark, when he addressed what he would do about immigration as soon as he entered office. He said, 'streamlining the naturalization process, make it easier for qualified green card holders to move through his backlog, and by the way, he just ended H-1B visas the rest of this year. That will not be in my administration. The people who have come on this visa have built this country.' It is not clear yet how Biden would reverse or change this policy, given that if he were elected, Trump would still have administrative powers until Jan. 20, 2021. The visa suspension would last through December 2020. During what is known as the 'lame duck' presidency - the period after an election and before the inauguration when administrations are transitioning - many predict Trump could pass more controversial orders. But Biden's immigration platform plans to overturn many of Trump's policies. He aims to make both permanent and temporary work visas more accessible. He says he will 'modernize' the country's immigration infrastructure, provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people, and will call for a moratorium on deportations in the first 100 days of his presidency. In one small, but key issue, however, Biden appears to toe the line. Another rule, promulgated by the Department of Labor in October, raised the minimum salary requirement for a visa to $208,000. This policy would effectively remove entry-level positions from the H-1B applicant pool. This rule was also challenged by a number of universities and organizations in a lawsuit.t A motion hearing is scheduled for Nov. 23, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. But, according to Biden's platform: High skilled temporary visas should not be used to disincentivize recruiting workers already in the U.S. for in-demand occupations. An immigration system that crowds out high-skilled workers in favor of only entry level wages and skills threatens American innovation and competitiveness. Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labor market and not used to undermine wages. By focusing on 'wage-based allocation,' this policy could have the similar effect of crowding out lesser paid jobs in favor of higher paid ones, which would make it difficult for international students hoping to join entry-level positions in the U.S. labor market. But the details and impact of this reform are yet to be determined. We reached out to the Biden campaign to learn more, and will update this post if that information becomes available. On major immigration issues, Biden remains opposed to Trump, claiming to reverse many of his key policies during the early days of a Biden presidency. He expressed opposition to Trump's proclamation pertaining to work visas, but did not offer details about the timeline or whether he would support ending suspensions on the other visa categories listed. As a result, we rate this claim a 'Mixture.'

nan

A video shows a Muslim man kicking a woman down a set of stairs.

Neutral

In October 2016, a security camera at an underground subway station in Berlin captured footage of a man kicking a woman down a flight of stairs. The video was published by the German newspaper Bild in December 2016 in a report about senseless violence in the city: A spokesperson for the Berlin Police Workers' Party, told Bild : 'The incident shows in a brutal and shocking way how quickly everyone in every city in this city can become a victim of senseless violence. 'If we can not get more police off the streets and build the necessary pressure from the judiciary through tougher punishments, we run the risk that more and more people believe in our city is the law of the strongest.' While the attacker was not identified in the original report, several web sites picked up on the video and shared it along with the claim - which was apparently made up and shared with the video without any proof or corroborating information at all - that it showed a Muslim immigrant kicking a woman down the stairs. RightWingNews.com, for instance, shared the video on 9 December 2016, along with the sensational title 'JUST FOR FUN! Muslim Migrants Kick German Girl Down Flight Of Stairs - Caught On CCTV [VIDEO].' At the time this article was published, however, nobody had been arrested for the crime, and no attacker had been identified. On 12 December 2016, German police announced that they were questioning somebody connected to the attack: On 17 December 2016, Berlin Police announced that they had arrested a suspect allegedly responsible for the attack. He was not identified in the police report, but German media named him Svetoslav Stoykov, a 27-year-old from Bulgaria. Neither the man's religion nor his motivation for the attack were confirmed in the report.

nan

Target's stock price has plummeted due to a boycott over the store's transgender restroom policy.

Neutral

In late April 2016, a series of sensational articles were published by conservative outlets such as Breitbart, Freedom Outpost, and MRCTV, all reporting that Target's stock was 'imploding' due to a boycott over the store's policy to allow transgender individuals to use the restroom that corresponded with their gender identity: Target's stocks are imploding as over 1 million people have now signed the boycott pledge against the company for its bathroom and changing room policy to allow members of both sexes and those who are confused about their gender. Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, the organization that hosts the petition, said that there were nearly 75 people per minute who were adding their names to the petition. 'That's a million families who are going to spread the word about Target, so they may not get those customers back,' Wildmon said. Target's 'management is just going to have step up here [and] say 'We're selling hammers and hats, we're not into social engineering,'' he added. These claims stem from three specific questions: did Target's price drop concurrently with the boycott? Did this drop qualify as an 'implosion' of stock price? Did the boycott directly effect Target's stock price? Target reaffirmed its commitment to inclusivity on 19 April 2016, and the American Family Association announced a boycott of Target stores the following day. A chart of Target's stock price during this time frame from MarketWatch does show that the store's stock price dipped the day it explained its transgender restroom policy: However, correlation is not causation, and this graph isn't solid proof that the boycott was the sole cause of (or even a major reason for) Target's stock drop. A closer look at the store's stock prices over the past year shows that their stock price has dropped dozens of times for different and varied reasons. Stocks are in a constant state of flux, and most drops or increases in price can't be tied to one specific event: Furthermore, these reports claim that Target's stock price 'imploded' or 'plummeted' in the wake of the boycott. While these terms are subjective, the drop in stock price Target experienced post-bathroom was not unusually large: in mid-May 2016, their stock price was the same as it had been three months earlier. It should also be noted that WalMart, one of Target's biggest competitors, did not see an increase in stock price during this same period, and their stock took a similar hit on 19 April 2016 (although the store's price rebounded a few days later). While it is true that Target's stock price dipped around the same time that the American Family Association announced a boycott against the store, in the absence of further proof, it is unclear how closely the two events were related, or indeed, whether they were related at all.

nan

Police shootings kill more white Americans than Black Americans.

Neutral

In September 2016, the ongoing issue of police shootings and race came to a head after a white police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed 40-year-old African-American man. Similar shootings throughout the U.S. have been caught on camera and widely shared via social media, prompting the development of the Black Lives Matter movement to address a seemingly constant stream of American police officers killing unarmed black people. The issue has also inspired some critics to disingenuously counter that white people are the ones who are killed most frequently by police officers, as expressed in a 21 April 2015 Washington Times article: An analysis shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force. Any 'analysis' of police killings will of course show that in absolute numbers, more white people are killed in police shootings than black people, because (non-Hispanic) whites comprise a roughly five times greater share of the U.S. population (62% vs. 13%). So any 'analysis' that is based on nothing more than absolute numbers and does not take demographics into account is inaccurate and misleading Because the federal government doesn't keep an accurate log of police shootings, news outlets such as the Washington Post and journalists such as D. Brian Burghart have begun tracking such data independently. The Post described the statistical breakdown of fatal police shootings in 2015 thusly: According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. According to Fatal Encounters, the database created by former Reno News & Review editor and journalism instructor Burghart (which tracks all deaths resulting from interactions with police), a total of 1,388 people were killed by police in 2015, 318 (23%) of them black, and 560 (40%) of them white. So roughly 23 percent of those killed by any police interaction in 2015 were black and just over 40 percent were white. According to those statistics (adjusted for racial demographics), black people had a 2.7 higher likelihood of being killed by police than whites. The grim trend has carried over into 2016. Of the 1,034 people killed and tracked by Burghart's Fatal Encounters database so far this year, 215 were black while 338 were white, so thus far in 2016 black Americans have been three times more likely than white people to die in interactions with police. That statistic holds for figures sent to us by Burghart compiled between Jan. 1, 2013 to Sept. 21, 2016, with suicides-by-cop removed. Burghart told us: I think it's pretty obvious that black people are killed at much higher rates than white people. I'm not going to say that white people are underrepresented in these numbers, since I think all people are overrepresented in this data, but it's clear that black people are highly overrepresented. Other factors that are also prevalent in analyses of deadly use of force by police officers include age, gender, mental illness, and the circumstances of the deaths. In 250 of the fatal shootings recorded by the Post in 2015, the victims showed signs of mental illness. Men were far more often killed than women. In 782 instances, the person killed was armed with some type of 'deadly weapon.' In 28 instances, no record was made of the victim's race.

nan

Police shootings kill more white Americans than Black Americans.

Neutral

In September 2016, the ongoing issue of police shootings and race came to a head after a white police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed 40-year-old African-American man. Similar shootings throughout the U.S. have been caught on camera and widely shared via social media, prompting the development of the Black Lives Matter movement to address a seemingly constant stream of American police officers killing unarmed black people. The issue has also inspired some critics to disingenuously counter that white people are the ones who are killed most frequently by police officers, as expressed in a 21 April 2015 Washington Times article: An analysis shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force. Any 'analysis' of police killings will of course show that in absolute numbers, more white people are killed in police shootings than black people, because (non-Hispanic) whites comprise a roughly five times greater share of the U.S. population (62% vs. 13%). So any 'analysis' that is based on nothing more than absolute numbers and does not take demographics into account is inaccurate and misleading Because the federal government doesn't keep an accurate log of police shootings, news outlets such as the Washington Post and journalists such as D. Brian Burghart have begun tracking such data independently. The Post described the statistical breakdown of fatal police shootings in 2015 thusly: According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. According to Fatal Encounters, the database created by former Reno News & Review editor and journalism instructor Burghart (which tracks all deaths resulting from interactions with police), a total of 1,388 people were killed by police in 2015, 318 (23%) of them black, and 560 (40%) of them white. So roughly 23 percent of those killed by any police interaction in 2015 were black and just over 40 percent were white. According to those statistics (adjusted for racial demographics), black people had a 2.7 higher likelihood of being killed by police than whites. The grim trend has carried over into 2016. Of the 1,034 people killed and tracked by Burghart's Fatal Encounters database so far this year, 215 were black while 338 were white, so thus far in 2016 black Americans have been three times more likely than white people to die in interactions with police. That statistic holds for figures sent to us by Burghart compiled between Jan. 1, 2013 to Sept. 21, 2016, with suicides-by-cop removed. Burghart told us: I think it's pretty obvious that black people are killed at much higher rates than white people. I'm not going to say that white people are underrepresented in these numbers, since I think all people are overrepresented in this data, but it's clear that black people are highly overrepresented. Other factors that are also prevalent in analyses of deadly use of force by police officers include age, gender, mental illness, and the circumstances of the deaths. In 250 of the fatal shootings recorded by the Post in 2015, the victims showed signs of mental illness. Men were far more often killed than women. In 782 instances, the person killed was armed with some type of 'deadly weapon.' In 28 instances, no record was made of the victim's race.

nan

Police shootings kill more white Americans than Black Americans.

Neutral

In September 2016, the ongoing issue of police shootings and race came to a head after a white police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed 40-year-old African-American man. Similar shootings throughout the U.S. have been caught on camera and widely shared via social media, prompting the development of the Black Lives Matter movement to address a seemingly constant stream of American police officers killing unarmed black people. The issue has also inspired some critics to disingenuously counter that white people are the ones who are killed most frequently by police officers, as expressed in a 21 April 2015 Washington Times article: An analysis shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force. Any 'analysis' of police killings will of course show that in absolute numbers, more white people are killed in police shootings than black people, because (non-Hispanic) whites comprise a roughly five times greater share of the U.S. population (62% vs. 13%). So any 'analysis' that is based on nothing more than absolute numbers and does not take demographics into account is inaccurate and misleading Because the federal government doesn't keep an accurate log of police shootings, news outlets such as the Washington Post and journalists such as D. Brian Burghart have begun tracking such data independently. The Post described the statistical breakdown of fatal police shootings in 2015 thusly: According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. According to Fatal Encounters, the database created by former Reno News & Review editor and journalism instructor Burghart (which tracks all deaths resulting from interactions with police), a total of 1,388 people were killed by police in 2015, 318 (23%) of them black, and 560 (40%) of them white. So roughly 23 percent of those killed by any police interaction in 2015 were black and just over 40 percent were white. According to those statistics (adjusted for racial demographics), black people had a 2.7 higher likelihood of being killed by police than whites. The grim trend has carried over into 2016. Of the 1,034 people killed and tracked by Burghart's Fatal Encounters database so far this year, 215 were black while 338 were white, so thus far in 2016 black Americans have been three times more likely than white people to die in interactions with police. That statistic holds for figures sent to us by Burghart compiled between Jan. 1, 2013 to Sept. 21, 2016, with suicides-by-cop removed. Burghart told us: I think it's pretty obvious that black people are killed at much higher rates than white people. I'm not going to say that white people are underrepresented in these numbers, since I think all people are overrepresented in this data, but it's clear that black people are highly overrepresented. Other factors that are also prevalent in analyses of deadly use of force by police officers include age, gender, mental illness, and the circumstances of the deaths. In 250 of the fatal shootings recorded by the Post in 2015, the victims showed signs of mental illness. Men were far more often killed than women. In 782 instances, the person killed was armed with some type of 'deadly weapon.' In 28 instances, no record was made of the victim's race.

nan

In the 1960s, NASA rejected Hillary Clinton's childhood dream of becoming an astronaut because the space agency did not accept women astronauts at the time.

Neutral

An oft-repeated story by former U.S. Secretary of State, first lady, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is of the time when she wrote a letter to NASA as a child, expressing her dream of becoming an astronaut. NASA responded, she claimed, explaining they did not have any women astronauts. Clinton has repeated this many times over the years, with the details recounted largely the same. In one speech, honoring Amelia Earhart in 2012, she said: Now some of you may know that when I was a little girl growing up in Illinois, I was interested in all kinds of stories about women. And my mother ... was a real fan of Amelia Earhart's, and actually told me about Amelia Earhart. And then when we decided, under President Kennedy's leadership, that our nation was going to go to the moon and we were going to have an astronaut program, I wanted to be an astronaut. So when I was about 13, I wrote to NASA and asked what I needed to do to try to be an astronaut. And of course, there weren't any women astronauts, and NASA wrote me back and said there would not be any women astronauts. And I was just crestfallen. But then I realized I couldn't see very well, and I wasn't all that athletic, so probably - (laughter) - I wouldn't be the first woman astronaut anyway. The Washington Post investigated this story in 2015, reaching out to NASA and the Clinton campaign. Neither could reproduce the correspondence that Clinton described, given that the interaction took place around half a century ago. But NASA did argue that such an interaction likely did take place, and they had no reason to doubt Clinton's story. Agency officials said such a response was consistent with their policy at the time. 'In 1962, the requirements for being an astronaut included being a military test pilot with a degree in engineering,' spokesperson Lauren Worley said. 'More than 50 years later, NASA's astronaut corps reflects our nation's diversity.' NASA did not have a women's astronaut program then. The first American woman who went to space was Sally Ride in 1983, while Susan Helms was the first woman crew member aboard the space station in 2001. The Washington Post did share an excerpt from NASA's research about a failed private screening for women astronauts in the 1960s: Dr. Randy Lovelace had been running (in 1960/61) a private screening program for potential women astronauts that was abruptly terminated in September 1961. That fall, there were many questions raised about why the program had been ended - with many fingers in the press and on Capitol Hill pointing at NASA. In the summer of 1962 there were congressional hearings on the topic. What had actually happened in September 1961 is that Dr. Lovelace had tried to run further tests on his women astronaut aspirants at Pensacola Naval Air Station. (It should be noted that most of the women weren't completely aware the Dr. Lovelace had no official backing for this effort.) Before committing resources to these tests the U.S. Navy asked NASA if this was an official program. Surprised NASA officials said no, and the Navy refused to let Dr. Lovelace run the tests at Pensacola. In discussions between NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and U.S. Navy officials that fall, Dryden's position was that 'NASA does not at this time have a requirement for such a program' but that it might investigate the possibility 'at some time in the future.' This was the official policy on women astronauts and NASA response letters to women throughout the 1960s reflect this perspective. The Washington Post reviewed archived documents from that time and found a number of similar responses from NASA that gently encouraged the girls writing to them, while maintaining their policy of not planning to train female astronauts. One example was a letter found in Ride's collection. It was sent to Ride by a woman named Linda Halpern who had written to NASA in 1962, and she received a response from the agency that said: 'while many women are employed in other capacities in the space program - some of them in extremely important scientific posts - we have no present plans to employ women on space flights because of the degree of scientific and flight training, and the physical characteristics, which are required.' A NASA spokesperson responded to our questions with the following statement: 'Unfortunately, because so many letters of this kind were received, we do not have a record of a letter to or from Mrs. Clinton in the 1960s, but we have no reason to doubt her account.' NASA also shared with us, correspondence between former astronaut Marsha Ivins and the space agency from 1970, written when Ivins was in college: Although there is plenty of circumstantial evidence showing that it was likely that NASA sent Clinton such a response, there is no way to verify the actual correspondence decades later. We thus rate this claim as 'Unproven.'Recent Updates Mar. 1, 2021: Added comments from NASA and correspondence from former astronaut Marsha Ivins.

nan

In the 1960s, NASA rejected Hillary Clinton's childhood dream of becoming an astronaut because the space agency did not accept women astronauts at the time.

Neutral

An oft-repeated story by former U.S. Secretary of State, first lady, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is of the time when she wrote a letter to NASA as a child, expressing her dream of becoming an astronaut. NASA responded, she claimed, explaining they did not have any women astronauts. Clinton has repeated this many times over the years, with the details recounted largely the same. In one speech, honoring Amelia Earhart in 2012, she said: Now some of you may know that when I was a little girl growing up in Illinois, I was interested in all kinds of stories about women. And my mother ... was a real fan of Amelia Earhart's, and actually told me about Amelia Earhart. And then when we decided, under President Kennedy's leadership, that our nation was going to go to the moon and we were going to have an astronaut program, I wanted to be an astronaut. So when I was about 13, I wrote to NASA and asked what I needed to do to try to be an astronaut. And of course, there weren't any women astronauts, and NASA wrote me back and said there would not be any women astronauts. And I was just crestfallen. But then I realized I couldn't see very well, and I wasn't all that athletic, so probably - (laughter) - I wouldn't be the first woman astronaut anyway. The Washington Post investigated this story in 2015, reaching out to NASA and the Clinton campaign. Neither could reproduce the correspondence that Clinton described, given that the interaction took place around half a century ago. But NASA did argue that such an interaction likely did take place, and they had no reason to doubt Clinton's story. Agency officials said such a response was consistent with their policy at the time. 'In 1962, the requirements for being an astronaut included being a military test pilot with a degree in engineering,' spokesperson Lauren Worley said. 'More than 50 years later, NASA's astronaut corps reflects our nation's diversity.' NASA did not have a women's astronaut program then. The first American woman who went to space was Sally Ride in 1983, while Susan Helms was the first woman crew member aboard the space station in 2001. The Washington Post did share an excerpt from NASA's research about a failed private screening for women astronauts in the 1960s: Dr. Randy Lovelace had been running (in 1960/61) a private screening program for potential women astronauts that was abruptly terminated in September 1961. That fall, there were many questions raised about why the program had been ended - with many fingers in the press and on Capitol Hill pointing at NASA. In the summer of 1962 there were congressional hearings on the topic. What had actually happened in September 1961 is that Dr. Lovelace had tried to run further tests on his women astronaut aspirants at Pensacola Naval Air Station. (It should be noted that most of the women weren't completely aware the Dr. Lovelace had no official backing for this effort.) Before committing resources to these tests the U.S. Navy asked NASA if this was an official program. Surprised NASA officials said no, and the Navy refused to let Dr. Lovelace run the tests at Pensacola. In discussions between NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and U.S. Navy officials that fall, Dryden's position was that 'NASA does not at this time have a requirement for such a program' but that it might investigate the possibility 'at some time in the future.' This was the official policy on women astronauts and NASA response letters to women throughout the 1960s reflect this perspective. The Washington Post reviewed archived documents from that time and found a number of similar responses from NASA that gently encouraged the girls writing to them, while maintaining their policy of not planning to train female astronauts. One example was a letter found in Ride's collection. It was sent to Ride by a woman named Linda Halpern who had written to NASA in 1962, and she received a response from the agency that said: 'while many women are employed in other capacities in the space program - some of them in extremely important scientific posts - we have no present plans to employ women on space flights because of the degree of scientific and flight training, and the physical characteristics, which are required.' A NASA spokesperson responded to our questions with the following statement: 'Unfortunately, because so many letters of this kind were received, we do not have a record of a letter to or from Mrs. Clinton in the 1960s, but we have no reason to doubt her account.' NASA also shared with us, correspondence between former astronaut Marsha Ivins and the space agency from 1970, written when Ivins was in college: Although there is plenty of circumstantial evidence showing that it was likely that NASA sent Clinton such a response, there is no way to verify the actual correspondence decades later. We thus rate this claim as 'Unproven.'Recent Updates Mar. 1, 2021: Added comments from NASA and correspondence from former astronaut Marsha Ivins.

nan

Bahamians fleeing the destruction of Hurricane Dorian in late summer 2019 were forced to leave a boat to the U.S. because they didn't have visas.

Neutral

Reports that Bahamians without travel visas were being ordered to disembark from a ferry headed to the U.S. after Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahaman islands in September 2019 prompted some readers to question whether the Trump administration's harsh stance on immigration had seeped into Hurricane Dorian relief efforts with the imposition of new entry requirements. But the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency blamed the incident on the ferry operator's failure to coordinate with U.S. authorities as requested. The incident of Sept. 8, 2019, was captured on video by WSVN reporter Brian Entin, who posted it via his Twitter account. In the video, a voice can be heard on the loudspeaker of a ferry docked in Freeport, Bahamas, which was getting ready to transport Dorian evacuees to Florida, instructing passengers lacking U.S. visas to disembark: Another announcement just made ordering any Bahamian without a US visa to disembark ferry - not allowed to evacuate. They were told before boarding it was ok with Bahamian passport and clean police record. Something has now changed. pic.twitter.com/m7CnZxoiMM - Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 9, 2019 The video raised questions about whether the Trump administration had implemented a new policy requiring Bahamians traveling to the U.S. to possess travel visas, even as they were fleeing the impacts of a hurricane that left several dozen of their fellow residents dead. President Donald Trump himself added to the confusion with remarks that made it appear he was cracking down on Bahamian-storm evacuees. But CBP officials rushed to clarify that was not the case. The agency released a statement saying that CPB 'was notified of a vessel preparing to embark an unknown number of passengers in Freeport and requested that the operator of the vessel coordinate with U.S. and Bahamian government officials in Nassau before departing The Bahamas.' CBP noted in their statement that 1,500 other evacuees had arrived in Florida and were processed smoothly the day prior to the incident captured on video. Entin interviewed officials from CBP in Florida once the ferry arrived, who said that had the ferry operator, Balearia Caribbean, coordinated with them, the problem could have been avoided: Just interviewed @CBPFlorida when we got off ferry in FL. They say they would have accepted and processed the Bahamians, and blame the ferry company Balearia. CBP says they tried to coordinate with Balearia but company 'made a business decision' to take the evacuees off the boat. pic.twitter.com/ONkgdcJvS3 - Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 9, 2019 We reached out to Balearia Caribbean for comment and did not receive a response. However, the company did issue an apology, with CNN quoting them as saying, 'We boarded these passengers with the understanding that they could travel to the United States without visas, only to later [be] advised that in order to travel to Ft. Lauderdale they required prior in-person authorization from the immigration authorities in Nassau.' Many Bahamians don't need travel visas to enter the U.S. and can receive clearance prior to traveling if they meet certain requirements, including possession of a valid passport and lack of a criminal record. In the aftermath of the incident, acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan took to Twitter to clarify that this situation has not changed: Those evacuating from the Bahamas who are U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, and those with proper documentation to enter the U.S. are being processed at U.S. Ports of Entry. No visa document requirements have changed. - Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) September 8, 2019 Morgan further stressed during a press conference that CBP was engaged in a humanitarian mission in the Bahamas: 'If your life is in jeopardy and you're in the Bahamas ... you're going to be allowed to come to the United States, whether you have travel documents or not.'

nan

Bahamians fleeing the destruction of Hurricane Dorian in late summer 2019 were forced to leave a boat to the U.S. because they didn't have visas.

Neutral

Reports that Bahamians without travel visas were being ordered to disembark from a ferry headed to the U.S. after Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahaman islands in September 2019 prompted some readers to question whether the Trump administration's harsh stance on immigration had seeped into Hurricane Dorian relief efforts with the imposition of new entry requirements. But the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency blamed the incident on the ferry operator's failure to coordinate with U.S. authorities as requested. The incident of Sept. 8, 2019, was captured on video by WSVN reporter Brian Entin, who posted it via his Twitter account. In the video, a voice can be heard on the loudspeaker of a ferry docked in Freeport, Bahamas, which was getting ready to transport Dorian evacuees to Florida, instructing passengers lacking U.S. visas to disembark: Another announcement just made ordering any Bahamian without a US visa to disembark ferry - not allowed to evacuate. They were told before boarding it was ok with Bahamian passport and clean police record. Something has now changed. pic.twitter.com/m7CnZxoiMM - Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 9, 2019 The video raised questions about whether the Trump administration had implemented a new policy requiring Bahamians traveling to the U.S. to possess travel visas, even as they were fleeing the impacts of a hurricane that left several dozen of their fellow residents dead. President Donald Trump himself added to the confusion with remarks that made it appear he was cracking down on Bahamian-storm evacuees. But CBP officials rushed to clarify that was not the case. The agency released a statement saying that CPB 'was notified of a vessel preparing to embark an unknown number of passengers in Freeport and requested that the operator of the vessel coordinate with U.S. and Bahamian government officials in Nassau before departing The Bahamas.' CBP noted in their statement that 1,500 other evacuees had arrived in Florida and were processed smoothly the day prior to the incident captured on video. Entin interviewed officials from CBP in Florida once the ferry arrived, who said that had the ferry operator, Balearia Caribbean, coordinated with them, the problem could have been avoided: Just interviewed @CBPFlorida when we got off ferry in FL. They say they would have accepted and processed the Bahamians, and blame the ferry company Balearia. CBP says they tried to coordinate with Balearia but company 'made a business decision' to take the evacuees off the boat. pic.twitter.com/ONkgdcJvS3 - Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 9, 2019 We reached out to Balearia Caribbean for comment and did not receive a response. However, the company did issue an apology, with CNN quoting them as saying, 'We boarded these passengers with the understanding that they could travel to the United States without visas, only to later [be] advised that in order to travel to Ft. Lauderdale they required prior in-person authorization from the immigration authorities in Nassau.' Many Bahamians don't need travel visas to enter the U.S. and can receive clearance prior to traveling if they meet certain requirements, including possession of a valid passport and lack of a criminal record. In the aftermath of the incident, acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan took to Twitter to clarify that this situation has not changed: Those evacuating from the Bahamas who are U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, and those with proper documentation to enter the U.S. are being processed at U.S. Ports of Entry. No visa document requirements have changed. - Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) September 8, 2019 Morgan further stressed during a press conference that CBP was engaged in a humanitarian mission in the Bahamas: 'If your life is in jeopardy and you're in the Bahamas ... you're going to be allowed to come to the United States, whether you have travel documents or not.'

nan

Bahamians fleeing the destruction of Hurricane Dorian in late summer 2019 were forced to leave a boat to the U.S. because they didn't have visas.

Neutral

Reports that Bahamians without travel visas were being ordered to disembark from a ferry headed to the U.S. after Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahaman islands in September 2019 prompted some readers to question whether the Trump administration's harsh stance on immigration had seeped into Hurricane Dorian relief efforts with the imposition of new entry requirements. But the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency blamed the incident on the ferry operator's failure to coordinate with U.S. authorities as requested. The incident of Sept. 8, 2019, was captured on video by WSVN reporter Brian Entin, who posted it via his Twitter account. In the video, a voice can be heard on the loudspeaker of a ferry docked in Freeport, Bahamas, which was getting ready to transport Dorian evacuees to Florida, instructing passengers lacking U.S. visas to disembark: Another announcement just made ordering any Bahamian without a US visa to disembark ferry - not allowed to evacuate. They were told before boarding it was ok with Bahamian passport and clean police record. Something has now changed. pic.twitter.com/m7CnZxoiMM - Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 9, 2019 The video raised questions about whether the Trump administration had implemented a new policy requiring Bahamians traveling to the U.S. to possess travel visas, even as they were fleeing the impacts of a hurricane that left several dozen of their fellow residents dead. President Donald Trump himself added to the confusion with remarks that made it appear he was cracking down on Bahamian-storm evacuees. But CBP officials rushed to clarify that was not the case. The agency released a statement saying that CPB 'was notified of a vessel preparing to embark an unknown number of passengers in Freeport and requested that the operator of the vessel coordinate with U.S. and Bahamian government officials in Nassau before departing The Bahamas.' CBP noted in their statement that 1,500 other evacuees had arrived in Florida and were processed smoothly the day prior to the incident captured on video. Entin interviewed officials from CBP in Florida once the ferry arrived, who said that had the ferry operator, Balearia Caribbean, coordinated with them, the problem could have been avoided: Just interviewed @CBPFlorida when we got off ferry in FL. They say they would have accepted and processed the Bahamians, and blame the ferry company Balearia. CBP says they tried to coordinate with Balearia but company 'made a business decision' to take the evacuees off the boat. pic.twitter.com/ONkgdcJvS3 - Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 9, 2019 We reached out to Balearia Caribbean for comment and did not receive a response. However, the company did issue an apology, with CNN quoting them as saying, 'We boarded these passengers with the understanding that they could travel to the United States without visas, only to later [be] advised that in order to travel to Ft. Lauderdale they required prior in-person authorization from the immigration authorities in Nassau.' Many Bahamians don't need travel visas to enter the U.S. and can receive clearance prior to traveling if they meet certain requirements, including possession of a valid passport and lack of a criminal record. In the aftermath of the incident, acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan took to Twitter to clarify that this situation has not changed: Those evacuating from the Bahamas who are U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, and those with proper documentation to enter the U.S. are being processed at U.S. Ports of Entry. No visa document requirements have changed. - Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) September 8, 2019 Morgan further stressed during a press conference that CBP was engaged in a humanitarian mission in the Bahamas: 'If your life is in jeopardy and you're in the Bahamas ... you're going to be allowed to come to the United States, whether you have travel documents or not.'

nan

In a 1990 episode, 'The Simpsons' predicted future real-life campaigns to censor and cover up replicas of Michelangelo's 'David' statue.

Neutral

Several times in recent years, various websites and online 'listicles' have claimed that, among other uncanny predictions, the Simpsons once pre-empted the real-life censorship of Michelangelo's 'David' statue. In particular, in 2017 the comedian and former NFL punter Pat McAfee devoted a five-minute segment on his podcast to reviewing and promoting various claimed instances where the classic animated sitcom was remarkably prescient about events that were yet to happen. He said: 'The censorship of Michelangelo's David: 1990 [it occurred on the show], 2016 it happened.' Likewise, in a 2018 article listing more than 30 occasions when 'real life has imitated 'The Simpsons,'' the Daily Telegraph wrote: Itchy and Scratchy also featured heavily in the 1990 episode Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, in which Marge led a censorship campaign, horrified by the show's violence. She later realised the censorship had gone too far, after Michelangelo's David was taken to a Springfield museum, and local citizens protested against the statue's nudity. In 2001, a Florida-based shop put a replica of Michelangelo's David outside its front door. A handful of citizens objected to the 'indecent' statue and successfully campaigned to have David's private parts covered with a cloth. More recently, in 2014, an elderly British couple, Clive and Joan Burgess, received complaints from neighbours and faced an intervention from their local council, after they placed a replica of the statue in their front garden. In May 2019, Business Insider published a list of '18 Times 'The Simpsons' Accurately Predicted the Future,' including the bowdlerization of 'David': 'An episode from 1990 titled 'Itchy and Scratchy and Marge' showed Springfieldians protesting against Michelangelo's statue of David being exhibited in the local museum, calling the artwork obscene for its nudity. The satire of censorship came true in July 2016, when Russian campaigners voted on whether to clothe a copy of the Renaissance statue that had been set up in central St. Petersburg.' The basic facts, dates, and descriptions of events laid out in these articles and in McAfee's podcast were accurate. The episode in question was Season 2, Episode 9, 'Itchy and Scratchy and Marge,' and it did indeed first air on Dec. 20, 1990. In the episode, Marge rails against the ultra-violence and obscenity of the 'Itchy and Scratchy Show,' and leads a campaign of censorship against the cartoon. The writers brilliantly examine and expose the relativity and subjectivity of taste, obscenity, and moral standards in culture, and Marge's crusade spirals out of control, culminating in a local group picketing Michelangelo's 'David' for its nudity. It's also true that, as McAfee alluded to, a campaign took place in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in 2016 that aimed to remove a replica of the statue, or cover up the male figure's genitals - not a far cry from the kind of campaign depicted in the 1990 'Simpsons' episode. However, the difficulty in claiming that Matt Groening and his writers 'predicted' the censorship of Michelangelo's 'David' lies in the fact that campaigns to cover up nude works of art in general, and 'David' in particular, have existed for centuries. The prevalence of fig leafs on classical statues is testament to that, as Alexxa Gotthardt wrote for the website Artsy in 2018: Take Michelangelo's famous sculpture 'David' (1501-04), a muscular, starkly naked depiction of its namesake biblical hero. The work scandalized the artist's fellow Florentines and the Catholic clergy when unveiled in Florence's Piazza della Signoria in 1504. Soon after, the figure's sculpted phallus was girdled with a garland of bronze fig leaves by authorities. 60 years later, just months before Michelangelo's death, the Catholic Church issued an edict demanding that 'figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting ... lust.' The clergy began a crusade to camouflage the pensises and pubic hair visible in artworks across Italy. Their coverups of choice? Loincloths, foliage, and - most often - fig leaves. It has became known as the 'Fig Leaf Campaign,' one of history's most significant acts of art censorship. A more recent example, described by the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, came in the mid-1800s, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany presented Queen Victoria with a 6-meter-high cast of the original statue: 'The story goes that on her first encounter with the cast of 'David' at the Museum, Queen Victoria was so shocked by the nudity that a proportionally accurate fig leaf was commissioned. It was then kept in readiness for any royal visits, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks.' Rather than 'predicting' the censorship of Michelangelo's 'David,' the writers of 'The Simpsons' were merely describing and satirizing moral crusades of that kind, which had already been happening for hundreds of years, and happened to continue to take place in the nearly 30 years since the episode first aired.

nan

In a 1990 episode, 'The Simpsons' predicted future real-life campaigns to censor and cover up replicas of Michelangelo's 'David' statue.

Neutral

Several times in recent years, various websites and online 'listicles' have claimed that, among other uncanny predictions, the Simpsons once pre-empted the real-life censorship of Michelangelo's 'David' statue. In particular, in 2017 the comedian and former NFL punter Pat McAfee devoted a five-minute segment on his podcast to reviewing and promoting various claimed instances where the classic animated sitcom was remarkably prescient about events that were yet to happen. He said: 'The censorship of Michelangelo's David: 1990 [it occurred on the show], 2016 it happened.' Likewise, in a 2018 article listing more than 30 occasions when 'real life has imitated 'The Simpsons,'' the Daily Telegraph wrote: Itchy and Scratchy also featured heavily in the 1990 episode Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, in which Marge led a censorship campaign, horrified by the show's violence. She later realised the censorship had gone too far, after Michelangelo's David was taken to a Springfield museum, and local citizens protested against the statue's nudity. In 2001, a Florida-based shop put a replica of Michelangelo's David outside its front door. A handful of citizens objected to the 'indecent' statue and successfully campaigned to have David's private parts covered with a cloth. More recently, in 2014, an elderly British couple, Clive and Joan Burgess, received complaints from neighbours and faced an intervention from their local council, after they placed a replica of the statue in their front garden. In May 2019, Business Insider published a list of '18 Times 'The Simpsons' Accurately Predicted the Future,' including the bowdlerization of 'David': 'An episode from 1990 titled 'Itchy and Scratchy and Marge' showed Springfieldians protesting against Michelangelo's statue of David being exhibited in the local museum, calling the artwork obscene for its nudity. The satire of censorship came true in July 2016, when Russian campaigners voted on whether to clothe a copy of the Renaissance statue that had been set up in central St. Petersburg.' The basic facts, dates, and descriptions of events laid out in these articles and in McAfee's podcast were accurate. The episode in question was Season 2, Episode 9, 'Itchy and Scratchy and Marge,' and it did indeed first air on Dec. 20, 1990. In the episode, Marge rails against the ultra-violence and obscenity of the 'Itchy and Scratchy Show,' and leads a campaign of censorship against the cartoon. The writers brilliantly examine and expose the relativity and subjectivity of taste, obscenity, and moral standards in culture, and Marge's crusade spirals out of control, culminating in a local group picketing Michelangelo's 'David' for its nudity. It's also true that, as McAfee alluded to, a campaign took place in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in 2016 that aimed to remove a replica of the statue, or cover up the male figure's genitals - not a far cry from the kind of campaign depicted in the 1990 'Simpsons' episode. However, the difficulty in claiming that Matt Groening and his writers 'predicted' the censorship of Michelangelo's 'David' lies in the fact that campaigns to cover up nude works of art in general, and 'David' in particular, have existed for centuries. The prevalence of fig leafs on classical statues is testament to that, as Alexxa Gotthardt wrote for the website Artsy in 2018: Take Michelangelo's famous sculpture 'David' (1501-04), a muscular, starkly naked depiction of its namesake biblical hero. The work scandalized the artist's fellow Florentines and the Catholic clergy when unveiled in Florence's Piazza della Signoria in 1504. Soon after, the figure's sculpted phallus was girdled with a garland of bronze fig leaves by authorities. 60 years later, just months before Michelangelo's death, the Catholic Church issued an edict demanding that 'figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting ... lust.' The clergy began a crusade to camouflage the pensises and pubic hair visible in artworks across Italy. Their coverups of choice? Loincloths, foliage, and - most often - fig leaves. It has became known as the 'Fig Leaf Campaign,' one of history's most significant acts of art censorship. A more recent example, described by the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, came in the mid-1800s, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany presented Queen Victoria with a 6-meter-high cast of the original statue: 'The story goes that on her first encounter with the cast of 'David' at the Museum, Queen Victoria was so shocked by the nudity that a proportionally accurate fig leaf was commissioned. It was then kept in readiness for any royal visits, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks.' Rather than 'predicting' the censorship of Michelangelo's 'David,' the writers of 'The Simpsons' were merely describing and satirizing moral crusades of that kind, which had already been happening for hundreds of years, and happened to continue to take place in the nearly 30 years since the episode first aired.

nan

Red Bull released an advertisement in October 2019 in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Neutral

In October 2019, as a number of companies found themselves under fire over comments about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a video supposedly showing a cartoon advertisement for the energy drink Red Bull went viral, along with the claim that the company had released it to show its support for civilian protesters there: Red Bull sides with Hong Kong from r/HongKong While Red Bull has previously released similar advertisements in at least two other languages, we were unable to find any evidence that the Hong Kong version is an official Red Bull advertisement, or that it was recently released in explicit support of the protests in Hong Kong. The Red Bull 'freedom' advertisement has been released in a variety of languages over the years. The earliest version appears to have been released in Germany in 2016. When a Romanian version was released the following year, the website Paginademedia reported that the ad had been created by Kastner & Partners, a German agency that has been working with Red Bull since 1985, and that it was later 'adapted' into Romanian. The biggest difference between these two versions (as well as subsequent versions in other languages) can be seen in the final flag as it flies over the heads of riot police. In German, the flag is adorned with the word 'freiheit.' In Romania, the flag read 'libertate.' In Portuguese, it read 'liberdade.' These words can be translated to 'freedom': While we've come across several versions of this advertisement in other languages, we've only been able to confirm that Red Bull was officially connected to the Portuguese and German versions. The Portuguese version is still on the company's website. The fact-checking project at the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with Asian Network of News & Information Educators (ANNIE), found a print version of the German advertisement displayed in a gallery at Red Bull's Hangar 7 at the Salzburg Airport in Austria. Although it seems possible that Red Bull was behind the versions of this advertisement for Italy, Romania, and Hong Kong, we haven't been able to find versions of those videos on any official Red Bull property. Some of these edits may have been made by people unaffiliated with the company in order to support a local protest. Furthermore, the Hong Kong version of this ad that went viral in October 2019 did not originate with a post from an official Red Bull account. It does not appear on Red Bull's Hong Kong website nor on the brand's Hong Kong-based social media accounts. If this advertisement is truly an official Red Bull ad, it's likely that it was created circa 2016 and is unrelated to the current protests in Hong Kong. We reached out to Red Bull for comment but did not hear back by press time.

nan

Red Bull released an advertisement in October 2019 in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Neutral

In October 2019, as a number of companies found themselves under fire over comments about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a video supposedly showing a cartoon advertisement for the energy drink Red Bull went viral, along with the claim that the company had released it to show its support for civilian protesters there: Red Bull sides with Hong Kong from r/HongKong While Red Bull has previously released similar advertisements in at least two other languages, we were unable to find any evidence that the Hong Kong version is an official Red Bull advertisement, or that it was recently released in explicit support of the protests in Hong Kong. The Red Bull 'freedom' advertisement has been released in a variety of languages over the years. The earliest version appears to have been released in Germany in 2016. When a Romanian version was released the following year, the website Paginademedia reported that the ad had been created by Kastner & Partners, a German agency that has been working with Red Bull since 1985, and that it was later 'adapted' into Romanian. The biggest difference between these two versions (as well as subsequent versions in other languages) can be seen in the final flag as it flies over the heads of riot police. In German, the flag is adorned with the word 'freiheit.' In Romania, the flag read 'libertate.' In Portuguese, it read 'liberdade.' These words can be translated to 'freedom': While we've come across several versions of this advertisement in other languages, we've only been able to confirm that Red Bull was officially connected to the Portuguese and German versions. The Portuguese version is still on the company's website. The fact-checking project at the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with Asian Network of News & Information Educators (ANNIE), found a print version of the German advertisement displayed in a gallery at Red Bull's Hangar 7 at the Salzburg Airport in Austria. Although it seems possible that Red Bull was behind the versions of this advertisement for Italy, Romania, and Hong Kong, we haven't been able to find versions of those videos on any official Red Bull property. Some of these edits may have been made by people unaffiliated with the company in order to support a local protest. Furthermore, the Hong Kong version of this ad that went viral in October 2019 did not originate with a post from an official Red Bull account. It does not appear on Red Bull's Hong Kong website nor on the brand's Hong Kong-based social media accounts. If this advertisement is truly an official Red Bull ad, it's likely that it was created circa 2016 and is unrelated to the current protests in Hong Kong. We reached out to Red Bull for comment but did not hear back by press time.

nan