A viral Facebook post about COVID-19 falsely claims that in New York “every contaminated corpse belongs to the state” and will be incinerated without any “wakes or memorial services to pay your last respects.” The state is allowing funeral services with limited visitors; cremation is not mandated.
President Donald Trump continued his misleading attacks on Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as it ravages the state.
Hitting back at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pleas for the federal government to provide more ventilators, President Donald Trump misleadingly claimed Cuomo rejected a 2015 recommendation to purchase 15,000 ventilators and instead “established death panels” and “lotteries.”
Posts on social media falsely claim that the Trump family is “disallowed from operating ANY charity” in New York because they “stole from a kids cancer charity.” That inaccurately describes the outcome of a court case involving the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and conflates it with allegations about the Eric Trump Foundation.
President Trump downplayed the findings in a case against his namesake charitable foundation, claiming the judge had found only “some small technical violations.” Actually, the judge ruled that Trump “breached his fiduciary duty” to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in service of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Memes and videos misrepresent a New York City law by suggesting that everyone in the city will be “banned” from using the term “illegal alien,” or face a $250,000 fine. Actually, the city has only clarified that immigration status can’t be used to discriminate against people in certain situations under a decades old law.
A baseless claim that Attorney General William Barr visited the prison where accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was being held has been circulating online. But the sole source of that claim — a former mob associate — told us he has no idea if Barr went to the prison.
A misleading meme states that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received “about 16,000 votes” while running for office in 2018. She won her seat with 110,318 votes in the general election. She received 16,898 votes in the district’s Democratic primary.
Headlines shared widely on social media misleadingly tell readers New York City will “ban” hot dogs. A city spokesman told us a plan to phase out government purchases of processed meats and reduce purchases of beef “would not impact hot dogs” sold “at baseball games, street vendors, restaurants, etc.”
A Facebook post falsely describes a video of an interdenominational rally against Islamophobia as a “Muslim rally … demanding their Sharia Rights.”