Category: Fact Checking

After a gunman shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 26, 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that the Trump administration had granted the shooting suspect, identified by officials as an Afghan national, asylum months earlier.

The gunman launched an “ambush style” shooting attack the Guard troops near Washington’s Farragut Square, located minutes from the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump was in Florida at the time of the shooting.

Trump said during a call with U.S. service members the following day that Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries. The other shooting victim, 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, remained hospitalized in critical condition at the time of this writing, according to reliable news reports.

One X user who shared the claim about the suspect’s asylum status wrote: “MAJOR BREAKING: MAGA is stunned into silence as officials confirm the National Guard shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, entered the U.S. in 2021 and was vetted and granted LEGAL ASYLUM by the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION in April 2025.”

The claim also spread on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking whether the claim was true.

Major news outlets including Reuters, CNN, CBS and The New York Times all reported that U.S. authorities had granted the shooting suspect, identified by officials as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, asylum in the U.S. in April 2025. Reuters attributed this information to a “government file” seen by the outlet, and CNN, CBS and the Times all cited anonymous government sources.

The Associated Press attributed its reporting that Lakanwal received asylum in April 2025 to #AfghanEvac, a charity that works with the U.S. government to resettle eligible Afghan residents in the U.S. following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The group’s director, Shawn VanDiver, told Snopes via email that #AfghanEvac got its information from anonymous U.S. government sources. 

On Nov. 27, Trump did not directly answer a reporter’s question about whether his administration granted Lakanwal asylum. Trump said, “When it comes to asylum, when they’re flown in, it’s very hard to get them out. No matter how you want to do it, it’s very hard to get them out. But we’re going to be getting them all out now.”

Snopes does not rely on anonymous sources in our reporting. We were unable to independently verify the claim that the Trump administration granted Lakanwal asylum roughly seven months before the fatal shooting in Washington, D.C. Therefore, we leave this claim unrated.

We reached out to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which handles asylum applications, and the U.S. State Department, which ran the Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts that worked to resettle eligible Afghan citizens after the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, to ask them to confirm the claims about Lakanwal’s asylum status. We await replies to our queries.

Biden-era program allowed suspect into US

According to Homeland Security Kristi Secretary Noem, Lakanwal arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2021, around a week after the U.S. completed its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Noem said Lakanwal came to the U.S. under “Operation Allies Welcome,” a Biden administration effort to support “vulnerable” Afghans and those who had worked with American troops in Afghanistan to resettle in the U.S. 

In a statement (archived) reported by ABC News’ Jay O’Brien on X, CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly said Lakanwal worked with “the U.S. Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar.”  

According to a fact sheet about “Operation Allies Welcome,” most Afghans who authorities allowed access to the U.S. “as part of the evacuation effort” would be paroled for humanitarian reasons “for a period of two years.”

The USCIS said on its website that humanitarian parole allowed an individual temporary lawful presence in the U.S. but did not grant “immigration status or a path to lawful permanent residence (a Green Card holder) or another lawful immigration status.”

The #AfghanEvac group said Lakanwal was in the early stages of getting a Special Immigrant Visa, though the group could not confirm when he submitted this application. Afghan-SIV applicants must fulfill various criteria that include having worked with U.S. or international security forces “for a period of at least 12 months between October 7, 2001, and December 31, 2024.”

A successful Afghan-SIV application would grant the applicant permanent legal status in the U.S. and a path to U.S. citizenship. It was unclear whether Lakanwal’s application was successful, though he would not have needed to apply for asylum, as he reportedly did in 2024, if it was.

News reports did not account for how Lakanwal remained in the U.S. between 2023, when a two-year humanitarian parole through “Operation Allies Welcome” would have expired, and 2024, when he reportedly filed his application for asylum that was allegedly granted in 2025. Asylum grants the holder a pathway to permanent residence in the form of a green card, which could eventually be converted to citizenship.

Suspect faced murder charge

On Nov. 28, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said it would charge Lakanwal with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed and three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Authorities had not confirmed what led to the shooting. Lakanwal reportedly lived in Washington state with his wife and five children. 

Following the shooting, USCIS immediately stopped processing (archived) “all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals” in order to review security and vetting protocols.

On the afternoon of the shooting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would order an additional 500 National Guard soldiers to be stationed in Washington, D.C. 

Sources

Claim:

A video circulating online in late October 2025 authentically showed rapper Tupac as a guest on an unreleased episode of “Sesame Street.”

Rating:

In late October 2025, a video circulated online purportedly showing various clips of the late rapper Tupac Shakur appearing as a guest in an unaired episode of the educational children’s television show “Sesame Street.”

A network of social media profiles called Tuna Edits posted the compilation on TikTok (archived), YouTube (archived), Facebook and Instagram. All the posts were captioned: “Unaired episode.” Snopes readers also emailed us asking if the footage was real.

In short, there was no evidence Shakur ever appeared on an aired or unaired episode of “Sesame Street.” Many aspects of the video showed that it was generated using artificial intelligence (AI) software. As such, we have rated the footage as fake.

Snopes contacted Tuna Edits to ask about the compilation. We will update this story if we receive a response.

Debunking the clips

The video of the rapper’s alleged unaired appearance on “Sesame Street” featured quirks typical of AI-generated videos.

One clear example was Shakur changing his outfit in each clip. One or two wardrobe changes would not be unusual for an episode, but 10, as seen in the compilation, would be an unrealistic amount.

Trademark “Sesame Street” characters also appeared slightly abnormal. For example, Cookie Monster, who is noseless, had an orange nose, and at one point Big Bird appeared to have a nose on the end of his beak, as shown below. Similarly, around the 0:31 mark, the top of Shakur’s head disappeared then reappeared (also shown below).

(YouTube channel @Tuna_edits4/Snopes Illustration)

The compilation appeared to be created using AI organization OpenAI’s video generation model, Sora 2. Clips made using this tool contain a moving Sora watermark to differentiate them from authentic footage. This watermark appeared briefly at the 0:06 mark of the Tuna Edits footage, hovering over a child’s foot in the bottom left corner, as shown below. It also appeared over the top of Shakur’s jeans at the 0:24 mark.

(YouTube channel @Tuna_edits4/Snopes Illustration)

The posts did not explain why the episode went unaired, nor did they mention how it was allegedly recovered and published.

A Google News search uncovered no results suggesting the rapper had ever appeared on an episode of “Sesame Street,” aired or unaired. He also did not feature on the list of “Sesame Street Guest Stars” on the Muppet Wiki fandom page. (This list should not be considered exhaustive, though if he had appeared on the show he likely would have been included, given his celebrity status).

Tuna Edits

Tuna Edits has posted numerous fake videos featuring Shakur, like this one (archived) showing scenes of the rapper acting in a movie about aliens, titled, “Thugs in Black.”

The network of social media profiles has also posted footage (archived) mimicking animated cartoons. However, Sightengine, a tool for detecting AI-generated content, gave a screenshot from one of these clips a 99% likelihood of being AI-generated. (It is worth nothing that AI detectors are not completely reliable.)

The Tuna Edits YouTube and Facebook account bios (archived, archived) also featured a call for donations to “help bring more Tuna Edits animations to life.” It appeared that the person or people running the accounts might have intended to pass off their videos as authentic to bring in more donations.

Snopes has looked into numerous claims regarding Shakur, including the rumor that he was friends with the late conservationist Steve Irwin and that a photo allegedly showed him with 9/11 mastermind and former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Walmart heiress Christy Walton paid for NYT anti-Trump protest ad. Here’s everything we know

June 11, 2025

The full-page ad reportedly encouraged readers to attend a “No Kings” protest on June 14, 2025.

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For years, internet users have shared various explanations for the origin of the name “Black Friday,” the common term for the popular shopping day just after Thanksgiving. 

For example, in late October 2025, one Instagram user posted a video (archived) claiming the term originated from an 1869 financial crisis and underwent a series of transformations before settling into its current meaning. The caption of that post read:

Black Friday started in 1869, when greedy Wall Street men tried to corner the gold market and crashed the U.S. economy. In the 1950s, Philly cops used it to describe post-holiday chaos. Then corporations rebranded it as a shopping holiday. But consumerism isn’t freedom. It’s control. Boycott the lie.

The post’s version of the history of Black Friday was an accurate — if simplified — summary of the major developments in the meaning of the term. Below, we’ll walk you through the evidence for how the modern Black Friday took shape, as well as some myths about the name that emerged over time.

History of the Term

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which has an extensive entry on the term, English speakers have attached the adjective “black“ to the name of a day of the week to “denote a specific past date associated with disaster, defeat, ruin, etc.“ since the 1570s. The specific term Black Friday first appeared in print in 1610 when schoolchildren used the phrase to refer to any Friday on which exams took place.

Starting in the 1860s, the term took on an economic connotation when stockbrokers and journalists applied it to two notorious financial panics, one in the U.K. in 1866 and one in the U.S. in 1869.

It’s not clear exactly when Americans began to use the phrase to denote the day after Thanksgiving, which takes place on the fourth Thursday of November. However, as multiple researchers and reporters have noted in their own investigations into the history of the term, the earliest known published appearance of the phrase to describe that specific day was in an article in a November 1951 issue of “Factory Management and Maintenance,“ an industrial trade magazine.

That article, titled “Tips to Good Human Relations for Factory Executives,“ contained a section titled “What to Do About ‘Friday-After-Thanksgiving’“ that began:

“Friday-after-Thanksgiving-itis“ is a disease second only to the bubonic plague in its effects. At least that’s the feeling of those who have to get production out, when the “Black Friday“ comes along.

This article made no mention of holiday shopping; it simply acknowledged that factory workers who were scheduled to work the day after Thanksgiving frequently called in sick, leaving the factories short-staffed. In other words, the article’s author used the term Black Friday in the same way English speakers had been using it for centuries already: to refer to an especially bad day.

The earliest evidence for the term being used as shorthand for an exceptionally busy shopping day marking the start of the holiday season rush came about a decade later. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, two competing origin stories emerged to explain the term’s modern use. 

According to one story, Philadelphia police and/or retail employees coined the term to describe what was, for them, a reliably frustrating workday, whereas the other story credits shop owners and bookkeepers for the name, who chose it because, on that day, entries in their account ledgers went from red, signifying debt or losses, to black, signifying profits.

In the 2010s, a third explanation for the name gained traction on social media, in which it was claimed that Black Friday reflected the discounted auctions of Black slaves that, before the abolition of slavery in the U.S., were allegedly held on that day. As we found when we investigated this claim in 2013, it was not supported by any concrete proof and made little sense in a historical context. 

Philadelphia Police, Taxi Drivers and Retail Employees

As multiple writers who have investigated the history of Black Friday have noted, the available evidence suggests that the association of the day after Thanksgiving with holiday shopping began in and around Philadelphia in the 1950s. 

At first, residents of eastern Pennsylvania referred to the resulting surge in sales and traffic as “Big Friday“ — at least in print, as multiple newspaper articles from the 1950s attest. According to a 1960 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the annual shopping boom resulted, at least in part, from that newspaper’s annual tradition of running local retailers’ first holiday ads of the season on Thanksgiving Day.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-philadelphia-inquirer/158986966/

Article from Nov 25, 1960 The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 

Over the following years and decades, Philadelphians who had jobs that required them to interact with the onslaught of shoppers — specifically, retail workers, taxi and bus drivers and police officers — came up with another, less cheerful term, according to newspaper reports of the era. That term was Black Friday.

In a 1970 article, for example, a Philadelphia traffic patrolman told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “policemen and cab drivers“ called the day Black Friday because it was “supposed to be the worst day for traffic out of the whole year.“

Similarly, five years later, The New York Times — in its earliest use of the term Black Friday to describe the holiday, according to the newspaper’s official X account — credited “Philadelphia police and bus drivers“ with inventing the term. That article also noted that out-of-town traffic from fans traveling to see the Army-Navy football game, traditionally held in Philadelphia the Saturday after Thanksgiving, contributed to the road and around town.

And in 1985, a manager at Wanamaker’s, a Philadelphia department store, told a reporter for the Evening Sun in Hanover, Pennsylvania, that his employees called the day Black Friday because it was “really a tough day on them … the analogy is to a black cloud hanging over them.“

Red to Black

As the term Black Friday caught on, journalists and executives in the retail world began to point to a more positive explanation for the term. Interviewed for the same 1970 Philadelphia Inquirer article mentioned above, a Wanamaker’s public relations director told the reporter that the “only thing black“ about the day was “the color of the ink used to record it in the store ledgers.“

The P.R. director was referring to the accounting custom of using black ink to report profits and red ink to report losses or debts. In other words, he meant that Black Friday got its name because it was profitable for companies.

Over the following decades, as Black Friday spread beyond the Philadelphia area, that story came to eclipse the explanation that the day’s nickname originated from exasperated police officers and retail workers. In 1980, for example, a reporter for the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, wrote:

Since most businesses do 70 percent of their sales between now and Christmas, this is obviously the time when all the money is made, putting the stores “in the black.“

Similarly, in 1989, a reporter for the Press of Atlantic City, New Jersey, wrote that Black Friday “supposedly received its name because it’s the day American retailers post a profit, or, in accounting lingo, break into the black, for the year.“

The explanation that the name Black Friday refers to the day’s profits is reasonable on its surface, but as the journalist Kevin Drum concluded when he looked into the history of the bookkeeping explanation in a 2011 blog post, it ultimately holds less water than the explanation that the term originated from frustrated Philadelphia-area police, taxi and bus drivers and retail employees who had to face the crowds at work that day.

One of several pieces of evidence Drum cited for this conclusion was an email he received from a woman who said she had briefly worked at Wanamaker’s, the department store, in 1971. In the email, the woman wrote:

The feeling of impending doom me to this day. The experienced old ladies that had worked there for years called it “Black Friday.“ I’m quite sure it had nothing to do with store ledgers going from red to black.

Slave Sales

Decades after the first published examples of the term Black Friday emerged as shorthand for the annual shopping holiday that falls the day after Thanksgiving, a new alleged explanation of the term’s origin appeared on social media, where it circulated largely in meme form starting around 2013. According to this new explanation, the “Black“ in Black Friday originally referred to Black slaves, who were allegedly sold at a discount nationwide on the day after Thanksgiving.

As we found when we investigated the claim in 2013, there was no historical evidence to support this explanation. In fact, Thanksgiving only became a national holiday in October 1863 — 10 months after Abraham Lincoln ended legal slavery in the U.S.’s remaining slave states by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.

Furthermore, as we noted above, there is no evidence that the term Black Friday was associated with shopping until the middle of the 20th 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Although the slave sale explanation makes little historical sense and has been the subject of multiple independent debunkings beyond our own, it has still continued (archived) to circulate (archived) on social media for more (archived) than a decade. 

In one notable example, the singer Toni Braxton posted (archived) the claim in meme form on her Facebook account in November 2014, commenting: “No Black Friday for me …” At the time of this writing, that post had received around 39,000 likes, 408,000 shares and 19,700 comments.

In summary, the available evidence does not tell us exactly who first called the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday — or why. However, newspaper reports from the middle of the 20th century strongly suggest the term first emerged in and around 1950s and 1960s Philadelphia, and specifically among police, cab and bus drivers and retail employees whose jobs required them to face the hordes of holiday shoppers that filled the city’s streets and stores. 

Either way, their choice of the term Black Friday was grounded in centuries of English speakers using it to denote a particularly disastrous or unfortunate day — a likely reason why, by the 1980s, retail executives began to promote their own more positive explanation of the name.

Sources

Claim:

In late November 2025, WNBA star Brittney Griner was jailed after being stopped at an airport in Brussels with a large amount of contraband.

Rating:

On Nov. 24, 2025, a claim circulated online that WNBA star Brittney Griner of the Atlanta Dream was jailed after being arrested at a Brussels airport carrying prohibited goods.

For example, one Facebook user, whose post had amassed thousands of reactions and comments, wrote (archived):

Britney Griner is back in jail after being stopped at an airport in Brussels with “a large amount of illegal contraband.”

This time, it wasn’t drugs. It was counterfeit sports cards that would be nearly undetectable in the United States.

“This may sound like something very silly,” said Belgian Customs Director Josef Barrone, “But we’re talking about millions of US dollars in fraud. She had fourteen Michael Jordan rookie cards in mint condition.”

The Jordan cards were just the beginning. If convicted, Griner could spend up to six years in prison.

The claim also appeared in multiple X posts (archived, archived).

Some readers seemed to take the claim at face value. However, there was no evidence Griner had been arrested in Brussels while carrying contraband. Searching for the terms “Brittney Griner,” “jail,” “Brussels,” and “contraband” on Google News uncovered no results (archived) suggesting the story was true. If it were, numerous news media reports would have existed; however, this was not the case.

Rather, the claim originated (archived) with a Facebook page called America Loves Liberty — an account that stated in its Facebook Intro that “Nothing on this page is real.” It said the content it posted is “used ALLOD material.” ALLOD is the acronym for a Facebook page called America’s Last Line of Defense, which used to include a label stating the page contained satirical and parody content (that was later replaced with an “Entertainment website” label).

The America Loves Liberty post also included an image with a “RATED SATIRE” label in the bottom right corner.

(Facebook page America Loves Liberty)

The satirical rumor appeared to be inspired by Griner serving a prison sentence in Russia after being convicted of smuggling and possessing cannabis in 2022. The three-time Olympic gold medalist was released that December.

Snopes has addressed numerous satirical claims originating from ALLOD, including a fabricated rumor that Griner received $62,000 in student loan forgiveness despite having a net worth of $140 million. We have also debunked several claims shared by America Loves Liberty.

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.

Sources

On April 16, 2015, according to screenshots later shared on social media, future U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted a post that used sexist language to question then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s ability to lead the nation.

“If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” the alleged post read.

More than a decade later, in November 2025, during Trump’s second term as president, the post resurfaced, and Snopes readers searched the site looking to see whether it was real.

Snopes found no evidence suggesting the post was fake — it was quoted in 2015 and 2016 reports by The Associated Press and Politico, and several screenshots of the post exist online.

However, Trump purportedly quickly deleted the post (both Associated Press articles note this), and Snopes could not find firsthand proof it was real. It was not visible on an April 17, 2015, snapshot of Trump’s Twitter profile from the Internet Archive, and it pre-dated archives of Trump’s tweets that would have preserved the post. 

Because there is only secondary evidence supporting the tweet’s legitimacy, we’ve left this claim unrated.

In November 2025, Democrats on the House of Representatives Oversight Committee released thousands of emails linked to the deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In 2019, Epstein died in his jail cell in what was ruled a suicide after being arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.

One particular email between Epstein and his brother Mark Epstein, which Snopes verified was included in the release, asked whether “Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.” Some social media users claimed “Bubba” was referring to former President Bill Clinton, leading to rumors that at some point Trump and Bill Clinton had engaged in oral sex. (Mark Epstein later said that “Bubba” did not refer to Clinton).

The 2015 post from Trump resurfaced accordingly, given Bill Clinton’s history with Monica Lewinsky. 

Sources

Erika Kirk and JD Vance spark affair rumors, but there’s no evidence they’re true

Oct. 31, 2025

Online users alleged people were trying to “replace” Vice President JD Vance’s wife, second lady …

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After the U.S. Congress voted to release all of the files connected to the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case in late 2025, social media users began recirculating a painting of former President Bill Clinton purportedly found in the financier’s New York City apartment. 

The image and its alleged connection to Epstein spread on Reddit, Facebook and X. 

The painting is authentic — as in, Australian-American artist Petrina Ryan-Kield genuinely created it using oil on canvas, not with artificial intelligence or photo editing tools. As of this writing, prints of the painting, titled “Parsing Bill,” were available to purchase from the prominent online art gallery Saatchi. A photograph also showed Ryan-Kield standing next to the work at the 2012 Tribeca Ball, an annual art exhibit run by the New York Academy of Art and a popular event for New York socialites.

However, it was not possible to independently verify that Epstein once hung the portrait in his apartment, as these rumors originated with unreliable tabloid reports. We first rated this claim “unproven” in 2019, shortly after Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors, according to the FBI. As of this writing, we have yet to find new information definitively proving Epstein owned such a portrait. In addition, Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, denied ever seeing the painting in Epstein’s apartment during a July 2025 interview with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Since we generally no longer use the “unproven” rating, we thus have not rated this claim. 

In a 2019 interview with Snopes, Ryan-Kield could not corroborate reports that Epstein owned the painting. Here’s what she said in an email: 

In 2012, as a grad student at the New York Academy of Art, I painted pictures of Presidents Clinton and Bush as part of my Master’s thesis. When the school put on a fundraiser at the Tribeca Ball that year, they sold my painting to one of the attendees. I had no idea who the buyer was at the time. As with most of my paintings, I had completely lost track of this piece when it was sold seven years ago. So it was a complete surprise to me to learn yesterday that it wound up in Epstein’s home.

Ryan-Kield reportedly told Artnet News that Clinton’s attire in the painting is a reference to Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress, a central part of the media circus around his affair with his former intern, who later became an anti-cyberbullying activist. According to ArtNet, Ryan-Kield said the painting, as part of a series of work she made, was supposed to be about “how opposition parties caricature presidents.” 

Origin of rumor

On Aug. 14, 2019, the Daily Mail reported that Epstein “had a bizarre portrait of Bill Clinton in a dress hanging in his Manhattan mansion,” adding: 

The picture depicting the former president apparently lounging on a chair in the Oval Office, wearing red heels and posing suggestively in a blue dress redolent of Monica Lewinsky was in a room off the stairway of the Upper East Side townhouse. The dress is also strikingly similar to one worn by Hillary Clinton at the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors.

The Mail included a photograph, purportedly taken by an anonymous source at Epstein’s apartment in October 2012. The image appeared to show a view of the painting hanging on a wall through an open doorway. 

The New York Post later corroborated the Daily Mail’s reporting in an Aug. 14, 2019, story that cited unidentified law enforcement sources: 

Jeffrey Epstein had an oil painting of Bill Clinton in a blue dress — lounging on a chair in the Oval Office — hanging up in his Manhattan townhouse, according to law enforcement sources.

“It was hanging up there prominently — as soon as you walked in — in a room to the right,” a source told The Post. “Everybody who saw it laughed and smirked.”

Neither the Daily Mail nor the New York Post are considered reliable sources. 

Ghislaine Maxwell denies knowing about painting 

Aside from the unreliable source of this rumor, Maxwell’s denial that she ever saw the painting — if true — also introduces reasonable doubt Epstein displayed the painting in his home, given her close relationship with him. 

Here’s the relevant part of her interview with U.S. Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche, available through the Department of Justice (see Page 107 of this PDF): 

TODD BLANCHE: When — when the Southern District of New York case kind of became public and there was a search warrant of Mr. Epstein’s house, there was like a — there was some sort of painting or picture with Mr. Clinton in like a blue dress that had been signed. Did you know — do you know where he got that picture or that painting? 

GHISLAINE MAXWELL: The first I saw it was in the press. 

TODD BLANCHE: So you never observed that in his —

GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No. 

TODD BLANCHE: — brownstone? 

GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No. I thought it was hideous. 

TODD BLANCHE: What’s that again? 

GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I thought it was hideous. 

TODD BLANCHE: And — but you had never — so you don’t know, sitting here today, where Mr. Epstein got it?

GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No. 

TODD BLANCHE: The circumstances in which he got it? 

GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No.

Blanche did not immediately respond to a question about how he knew of the painting, including whether he based his question off of tabloid reports or if he spoke to New York law enforcement to confirm the reports before asking Maxwell about it.

A claim that U.S. President Donald Trump launched a “tirade” against Black Friday, the annual post-Thanksgiving sales event, after mistaking it for an act of mass civil disobedience circulated online in November 2025. 

For example, the Facebook page NewsThump posted (archived) an article on the topic on Nov. 24, three days before Black Friday.

That article also spread on Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived), as well. Snopes readers searched our site, wanting to know if the claim was true.

The claim about Trump’s alleged tirade against Black Friday originated with NewsThump (archived) — a news website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. Its Facebook bio states: “Satire (not news, obviously, but we have to put this here because of the idiots)” 

NewsThump’s article based its reporting on X and Truth Social posts that Snopes found no trace of on the president’s accounts on those platforms using X search and Trump’s Truth, a website that archives the president’s Truth Social posts. Additionally, NewsThump has republished the same story since at least 2017.

The outlet has a history of making up stories for satirical purposes.

Richard Smith, the editor of NewsThump, previously told Snopes about the site’s work that:

We always want people laughing because they’re “in on the joke” with us, rather than being deceived into believing the joke is literally true. However, we currently live in a time when the behaviour of certain public figures is at times so entirely ridiculous that exaggerating their behaviour for comedic effect, even to what most would consider ludicrous lengths, can still have an air of plausibility about it. Which says far more about their behaviour than the intent of any comedy writer.

Snopes previously reported on another article from the NewsThump that claimed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said emails from the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that allegedly mentioned the president were about “a different Donald Trump.”

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.

Claim:

In November 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detained White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s brother’s ex-fiancee, Brazilian national Bruna Caroline Ferreira.

Rating:

Context

DHS confirmed the detainment to several news media outlets, and we found an individual with her name and birthplace housed in a Louisiana ICE facility as well as primary evidence corroborating claims regarding the relationship between Karoline Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt, and Ferreira — though Ferreira’s sister and Michael Leavitt both reportedly said the relationship ended years earlier.

On Nov. 25, 2025, news broke that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s brother’s ex-fiancee, Bruna Caroline Ferreira, was allegedly in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. 

According to multiple reports, Ferreira and Michael Leavitt had an 11-year-old son together — though they reportedly separated years prior. Ferreira’s lawyer said they shared custody of the child.

The claim originated with Boston’s National Public Radio station, WBUR (archived), before it spread to multiple news media outlets, including The New York Times (archived) and The Associated Press (archived). Several highly–circulated posts (archived, archived, archived) on social media received millions of views:

Multiple reports reportedly relied on testimony from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, as well as Ferreira’s lawyer and her sister, and below we break down what primary evidence was available as of this writing.

We reached out to the DHS, ICE and Ferreira’s lawyer’s firm seeking corroboration of their statements reported in the media, and have not received responses as of this writing. We also reached out to the White House for comment and did not immediately receive a response. We will update this story if we do.

DHS said in a statement:

ICE arrested Bruna Caroline Ferreria, a criminal illegal alien from Brazil. She has a previous arrest for battery. She entered the U.S. on a B2 tourist visa that required her to depart the U.S. by June 6, 1999. She is currently at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center and is in removal proceedings. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation.

Ferreira’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, told The New York Times that Ferreira, 33, was born in Brazil and entered the U.S. with her family as a child on a tourist visa that required her to leave the U.S. in 1999. Pomerleau told The Washington Post:  “She was arrested, was never told why, and shipped to the South.”

We searched Ferreira’s name in an ICE detainee database and found someone with her name from Brazil detained at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, which is consistent with reports claiming ICE was holding her at a center in Louisiana:

(ice.gov)

Ferreira’s sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, told The Boston Globe that Michael Leavitt and her sister broke up more than a decade ago, though she said they shared custody of their son, who she said lived primarily in New Hampshire. Dos Santos Rodrigues launched a GoFundMe fundraiser for Ferreira’s release that features photos of Ferreira with a child who appears to be her son:

(gofundme.com)

Michael Leavitt, who reportedly told the media he didn’t want to speak on camera for the sake of his son’s privacy, told New Hampsire TV news station WMUR that their son had not spoken to Ferreira since she was was detained but that the two had maintained a relationship.

We searched for primary evidence of the relationship between Micheal Leavitt and Ferreira, and found an October 2014 article in The Salem News detailing how Michael Leavitt won $1 million in a fantasy football contest. In a photo, Ferreira appears beside him and their son:

(salemnews.com)

Some reports, such as The Guardian’s, quoted an anonymous White House source who reportedly claimed Michael Leavitt and Ferreira’s son “has lived full time in New Hampshire with his father since he was born. He has never resided with his mother.”

However, in the 2014 Salem News story, Ferreira said (emphasis ours), “I need the lights fixed on the back of my car. And we need a lamp for my son’s room. Other than that, we don’t really need much. We have our health. We have a nice condo. We really are blessed.”

Several reports claimed Ferreira reportedly had a battery offense on her record, an accusation her lawyer denied.

In sum, we found someone with the same name and country of origin as Ferreira detained in a Louisiana ICE facility. While Karoline Leavitt has not, as of this writing, made any public statement regarding her reported familial connection to Ferreira, we found primary evidence corroborating Michael Leavitt and Ferreira’s history. Additionally, Michael Ferreira reportedly confirmed the details of Ferreira’s arrest in a conversation with a New Hampshire TV station.

Sources

In late November 2025, online rumors purported that the U.S. Department of State, headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, declared that things like access to abortion; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and LGBTQ+ rights would now be considered human rights violations under the administration of President Donald Trump. 

Users on social media, particularly on Facebook (archived, archived) shared the alleged news, with some proclaiming, “Donald Trump is now trying to redefine human rights as the opposite of human rights.”

The rumor suggested the State Department had issued new directives to its embassies across the globe. According to reporting by Reuters: 

A senior State Department official said that new instructions to U.S. officials on the report mandate they include “infringements on human rights in foreign countries,” including on arrests or official investigations over speech as well as the state subsidization of abortions or abortion drugs and the total estimated number of annual abortions.

Officials are also mandated to note the enforcement of diversity, equity and inclusion policies that “‘provide preferential treatment’ to workers on the basis of race, sex, or caste.”

Snopes was not able to independently verify the new guidance delivered to U.S. diplomats, and the State Department has not yet responded to our inquiries, so we have opted not to put a rating on this claim. We will update this article if we learn more.

However, credible media outlets such as The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Reuters, Forbes, the BBC, CNN, NPR and NBC News have all reported on the updated directives from the State Department regarding its annual reporting of human rights violations across the globe.

In sum, reporting indicated the Trump administration upended longstanding practices in what is covered in the State Department’s annual “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” which was released in August 2025, delayed from March 2025. 

In August 2025, the AP reported that “the delay occurred because the Trump administration decided in March to ‘adjust’ the reports, which had been compiled during the Biden administration. Among other deletions, the reports do not include accounts from individual abuse survivors or witnesses.”

Following the delay but prior to the report’s release, NPR wrote that State Department employees were “directed to ‘streamline’ the reports by stripping them down to only that which is legally required” so as to align them with U.S. policy and executive orders issued by Trump.

The August 2025 report signified apparent changes in what the U.S. considered human rights violations, but according to media reports, official updated guidance was delivered to diplomats in November 2025, sparking the wave of social media posts on the subject.

Snopes’ independent review of the 2024 report showed significantly scaled-back information compared with years prior. This included the lack of any introduction from Rubio, a summary of the report from the department’s figurehead that had been present in past years.

Instead, the administration is reportedly turning the focus of the report to “emphasizing entitlements ‘given to us by God, our creator’ and issuing new guidance for U.S. diplomats to scrutinize the prevalence of abortion and gender-transition surgery among children,” according to The Washington Post.

The Post further reported that courts in the U.S. — and outside of the country — frequently rely on these reports, which cover 198 countries and have been compiled for about five decades. Indeed, the report was first mandated in 1974 and reports as far back as 1999 are available to view on the State Department’s website.

Multiple outlets reported an identical statement from State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott in which he said of the updates, “In recent years, new destructive ideologies have given safe harbor to human rights violations. The Trump administration will not allow these human rights violations, such as the mutilation of children, laws that infringe on free speech, and racially discriminatory employment practices, to go unchecked.”

“Mutilation of children” is a reference to transgender youth, and “racially discriminatory employment practices” refers to DEI initiatives, both of which have been publicly targeted by the Trump administration. 

In addition, the BBC reported that the new instructions also said countries that subsidize abortion or facilitate mass migration are infringing on human rights.

Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization that “investigates and reports on abuses happening in all corners of the world,” wrote of the Trump administration’s updates: 

On August 12, 2025, the State Department released its ‘Country Reports on Human Rights Practices’ covering the year 2024. The report omits several categories of rights violations that were standard in past editions, including women, LGBT people, persons with disabilities, corruption in government, and freedom of peaceful assembly. The administration has also grossly mischaracterized the human rights records of abusive governments with which it has or is currently seeking friendly relations.

Human Rights Watch pointed to the report’s categorization of the war in Gaza, in which the “State Department disregards the Israeli authorities’ mass forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, their use of starvation as a weapon of war, and their deliberate deprivation of water, electricity, medical aid, and other goods necessary for civilians’ survival, actions that amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.” 

Further, the organization argued, “The State Department also fails to mention vast damage and destruction to Gaza’s essential infrastructure and the majority of homes, schools, universities, and hospitals.”

Indeed, an independent review of the “2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza” revealed no mention of the above. Further, a section of the report under the subheading “War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Evidence of Acts that May Constitute Genocide, or Conflict-related Abuses” featured only one sentence: “Terrorist organizations Hamas and Hizballah continue to engage in the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict.”

In comparison, the same section of the 2023 report ran nearly 2,000 words, including detailed coverage of the conditions of prisons and detention centers. 

Other changes were highlighted by the Congressional Equality Caucus, a collection of members of the United States House of Representatives who aim to “promote equality for all people regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics.” 

For instance, the caucus pointed out that “the report says there ‘were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses’ in Hungary in 2024, even though Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government continued its anti-LGBTQ rights crackdown.” Reporting from the AP in 2024 showed growing backlash from the European Union to the Hungarian government’s anti-LGBTQ+ stance, which continued with legislation passed in March 2025 that would allow for the banning of LGBTQ+ Pride events. 

The caucus also said the report did not accurately reflect what would traditionally be classified as human rights violations in years past, such as “Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Law” and that “Brazil has the highest number of reported murders of transgender people in the world.”

Based on the reporting available, it appeared the State Department, through omission and changes in reporting requirements, attempted to modify what would be considered a human rights violation from the perspective of the U.S. government. However, as we have not been able to independently review the alleged document outlining the policy change, we have opted to leave this claim unrated. 

Sources

On Nov. 25, 2025, NPR published a story claiming that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had authored a memo cancelling the military’s support of Scouting America, the organization formerly called the Boy Scouts. In the memo, Hegseth reportedly justified the decision by saying the Scouts no longer promoted “masculine values,” instead focusing on “gender confusion” and diversity, equity and inclusion. 

The story went viral on social media, and Snopes readers wrote in asking for more information. As part of our research, we reached out to the defense department, Scouting America and the journalist who initially wrote the NPR article. 

A duty officer at the defense department said it “will not comment on leaked documents that we cannot authenticate and that may be pre-decisional.” Scott Armstrong, the National Media Relations director for Scouting America, told Snopes via email that the organization received no advance notice about the memo. In a letter on a Scouts website responding to the NPR report, Scouting America President and CEO Roger Krone said he was “surprised and deeply saddened by this news,” and that the memo’s claims were “clearly uninformed.” The NPR reporter had not responded to our inquiry at time of publication. 

Because the defense department declined to confirm the authenticity of the memo, and Snopes was not able to independently verify its existence, this story is unrated. Here’s what we do know about the claim: 

Many Scouts have become leaders in US

Scouts have become U.S. president, walked on the moon, played professional sports, and made award-winning movies. According to a 2017 post from the Scouting Magazine blog Aaron on Scouting, 28% of representatives in the U.S. Congress either were a Boy Scout or serve(d) as an adult volunteer. The House of Representatives even maintains a Congressional Scouting Caucus.

The movement’s military connections are even stronger. Krone’s letter claimed an “enormous percentage of those in our military academies are Scouts and Eagle Scouts.” A different 2017 post from Aaron on Scouting found that about 20% of West Point cadets, 12% of the Naval Academy Class of 2016 and 10% of Air Force Academy cadets were Eagle Scouts, the highest award in Scouting. In fact, the military considers Eagle Scouts so valuable that enlisted Eagle Scouts enter the military at a higher rank than non-Eagle Scouts.

The NPR story claimed that if put into effect the memo would remove that benefit. Even more, it would also stop allowing “Scout troops to meet at military installations in the U.S. and abroad, where many bases have active Scout programs.” Krone’s letter noted that those troops “provide stability for the children of military families deployed around the globe,” and vowed that Scouting would “never turn its back on the children of our military families.”

In a statement to The Hill, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania who co-chairs the Congressional Scouting Caucus, said it “would be nearsighted” for the defense department to cut ties with scouting. 

Memo also would pull military funding from the jamboree

Large gatherings called jamborees have been a part of Scouting since 1920, according to World Scouting. In the United States, Scouting America hosts a national jamboree every few years, with attendance numbers for recent jamborees, reaching over 15,000 Scouts. Since 2013, the jamboree has been held at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia, a property owned by Scouting America. 

In a 1966 law, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to lend the Boy Scouts “tents, cots, blankets, commissary equipment, flags, refrigerators, and other equipment and services as may be necessary or useful” for the upcoming National Jamboree. In 1972, the law was amended to allow the defense department to lend the Boy Scouts the equipment for “any national or world Boy Scout Jamboree.” Scouting America does not receive any funding from the federal government, according to an April 2025 report from NBC News. The law is simply a lease of equipment. 

According to Armstrong, the West Virginia National Guard currently provides “medical, logistical and communications support” for the jamboree. Hegseth’s memo would cut that support on the grounds that sending resources to the jamboree would be “detrimental to national security,” according to NPR’s report. 

Scouting has always had military connections

Scouting has held close ties with the military since its founding in the early 1900s. Its founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a British army officer regarded as national hero for his service in the South African War (also called the Second Boer War), a brutal conflict fought between the British Empire and the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers who colonized the region in the 1700s.

According to Britannica, when he returned to Britain, Baden-Powell discovered that teachers and youth organizations were using a military manual he wrote called “Aids for Scouting” to teach adolescents woodcraft. In 1907, Baden-Powell organized an experimental camp for boys aged between 11 and 17 on an island in the south of England. The camp was a huge success, and he published a book, titled, “Scouting for Boys” the following year. The Scouting movement was born.

The Boy Scouts of America were founded in 1910, the same year Baden-Powell persuaded his sister to start a similar movement for girls, called the Girl Guides. A woman named Juliette Gordon Low met Baden-Powell in 1911 and brought that movement to the United States, where it eventually changed its name to the Girl Scouts.

In the decades since, the organizations grew into cultural touchstones, and as a pipeline for leadership roles and for the military. They also kept expanding. According to Scouting America, the organization established a set of programs targeting older teenagers as early as 1935. Program reshuffling in the 1940s created a branch called Explorer Scouts, now called the Venture Scouts. The Venturing program has admitted young women since 1971. 

Controversies led to change in recent years

As the organization entered the 21st century, the Boy Scouts faced a number of serious and significant controversies, which left it worse off financially and scrambling to adapt. 

Allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct have plagued the organization since its beginning. In 2020, the organization filed for bankruptcy after several states passed laws allowing decades-old abuse victims to file suit. In 2023, it settled the cases of over 80,000 men who said they were abused by leaders for a record-breaking $2.46 billion, according to Reuters.

For a long time, the organization banned openly gay members and leaders from participating, a fact that reportedly made Steven Spielberg leave his post in the organization in protest. That policy officially changed in 2014 to allow gay scouts to participate, and the policy on LGBTQ+ individuals in leadership roles followed suit in 2015.

In October 2017, seeking to bolster their membership, the Boy Scouts announced that it would allow girls to join the organization by creating new, single-gender troops (the Girl Scouts were not directly impacted by the change). At this point in time, the organization changed its operational name to “Scouts BSA.” It announced a pilot program for combined, co-ed troops in 2024, and renamed itself to Scouting America in 2024.

The recent changes to the organization’s inclusivity would explain why Hegseth (who was never a Boy Scout) might have issued the supposed memo. In May 2024, he claimed on Fox News that the Scouts had been “cratering itself for quite some time.” The memo aligns with other policies around diversity, equity and inclusion that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have attempted to revert or eliminate completely. The department has been investigating pulling its funding for Scouting America for months, according to the April 2025 NBC News report.

Sources

In late November 2025, a rumor spread that Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, had made a video proposing that children in the state go to school year-round and until 4 p.m. as a remedy to expensive child care. Some people said the video couldn’t be real but must have been generated with artificial intelligence. 

For example, conservative commentator Tim Pool claimed on X that a Democrat had circulated this video as a way to attack Ramaswamy (archived):

Gabe Guidarini, an Ohio field representative for Turning Point USA, said on X (archived) that politicians who circulate AI video to attack their opponents should be fined. 

A Democrat running for governor, Amy Acton, did share a seven-second video of Ramaswamy purportedly making this policy proposal (archived):

Ramaswamy said in the clip:

Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going until four o’clock instead of three o’clock so you don’t have to pay for child care.

Snopes could not see the original video directly, therefore we have left the claim unrated. We reached out to Ramaswamy’s campaign asking whether this was a proposal he was considering for Ohio and will update this report should we receive a response. 

A search revealed a 41-second video, apparently taken from TikTok, on the Daily Beast website. Addressing Republicans, Ramaswamy lists various proposals to make life more affordable. He is heard saying those words at the 25 seconds mark, preceded by the sentence “I’m a dad.” 

At the end of the video, Ramaswamy says, “Bring down electric bills, bring down housing costs, make health care more affordable and make parenting a reality. That’s how we win this thing, let’s go get it done.” A number of social media users shared that same video. 

The Columbus Dispatch, an Ohio newspaper, reported on Nov. 25 that Ramaswamy had “floated” the idea of year-round schooling to deal with childcare costs.

Snopes found nothing in this video to indicate it was a so-called deepfake or made using AI technology. A search for this 41-second video on Ramaswamy’s official social media accounts (X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook and TikTok) showed he had posted — on all of those feeds — a video of himself (archived) wearing the same suit and tie and saying the same things before and after the year-round school proposal. The video, captioned “How to ACTUALLY make life affordable,” was 24 seconds long. 

Here are the two quotes Ramaswamy said in the longer video that were missing from the 24-second one:

I’m a dad. Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going until four o’clock instead of three o’clock so you don’t have to pay for childcare.

[…]

Bring down electric bills, bring down housing costs, make healthcare more affordable and make parenting a reality.

This shorter video led some users to claim (archived) he had deleted the longer video, edited it to remove the quote about year-round schooling, and reposted it. Some said on Nov. 25 that he had changed the video on most of his accounts, but that it remained visible on Threads (archived).

Further searching for a longer video on Google brought up one result that was still indexed, but directed to a TikTok page that said “this video is unavailable.” The date on the Google search showed it was posted “two days ago” as of this writing, or Nov. 24, 2025. An archived link for this video showed it had once existed, suggesting it had been removed from TikTok. The Google result said the missing video was also captioned “How to ACTUALLY make life affordable” and appeared on Ramaswamy’s feed: 

(Google Search / TikTok user Vivek Ramaswamy)

This Google search result gave credence to claims that the video in which Ramaswamy said children in Ohio should go to school year-round was authentic and had been deleted. We contacted Ramaswamy’s team and await a response.

Claim:

The U.S. Senate passed a “Born in America Act” authored by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that required every federal officeholder to be a natural-born U.S. citizen, stripping naturalized citizens and anyone with dual citizenship of their positions, as claimed in November 2025 post.

Rating:

In November 2025, days after The Associated Press reported that the U.S. Supreme Court met to discuss hearing a case on President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, a Facebook page claimed a change of citizenship rules for federal officeholders had the “immediate fallout” of stripping naturalized citizens and anyone with dual citizenship of their positions.

The post (archived) claimed the Senate passed Republican Sen. John Kennedy’s “Born in America Act,” which purportedly required “every federal officeholder to be a natural-born U.S. citizen who has never held dual citizenship.” 

According to the post, 14 House members, three senators and two Cabinet secretaries were “escorted out by Capitol Police live on C-SPAN” because they were naturalized citizens — meaning they were not born U.S. citizens but instead became citizens later by going through the naturalization process. (The post did not specify from where those people were allegedly escorted.) Its full text was as follows:

A constitutional crisis erupted in Washington as Senator John Neely Kennedy’s “Born In America Act” passed the Senate in a razor-thin 51–49 vote, sealed by the Vice President’s tiebreaker. The legislation requires every federal officeholder to be a natural-born U.S. citizen who has never held dual citizenship. Effective at midnight, the law strips naturalized citizens of their positions and permanently bars anyone with dual citizenship—past or present—from serving in Congress, the Cabinet, the judiciary, or even as a postal inspector.

Kennedy delivered the measure with chilling resolve. “The Constitution says natural-born for President. I just made it the law for everybody. If you weren’t born on this soil, you don’t run this soil. Period,” he declared from the Senate floor.

The fallout was immediate. Fourteen House members, three senators, and two Cabinet secretaries—all naturalized citizens—were escorted out by Capitol Police live on C-SPAN. Federal marshals were reportedly dispatched to enforce resignations among justices and governors. Current officeholders have been given 72 hours to step down or face arrest.

The political shockwave reverberated across the nation. At 11:59 p.m., President Trump posted: “Biggest win ever. America First just became America ONLY.” Within minutes, a 41-second clip of Kennedy’s gavel strike and declaration went viral, amassing 61.4 billion views in just one hour. The hashtag #BornInAmericaAct overwhelmed servers worldwide, generating an unprecedented 912 billion impressions.

Tonight, the republic did more than pass a law—it redefined belonging itself. Midnight has struck, and millions of Americans suddenly find themselves strangers in their own country.

Multiple versions of the claim (archived) spread around social media sites, largely Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived). Searches for Kennedy and the “Born in America Act” on Google surged after the claim spread across social media.

The story was made-up and included multiple inconsistencies. As such, we’ve rated the claim false.

Snopes count not find a bill called the “Born in America Act” through a search on Congress.gov (archived), which keeps a record of all bills introduced to the House of Representatives and the Senate. Similarly, a Congress.gov search for legislation sponsored by Kennedy (archived) revealed no bill with that name or any similar bill. If such a bill or law was introduced and passed by the Senate, the Congress.gov website would have a record of it.

Just to be safe, Snopes also searched for the act on Google. The search did not reveal any news reports on the legislation. If C-SPAN had recorded footage of something as visibly dramatic as the Capitol Police escorting more than a dozen members of Congress out of their offices, mainstream political news sources would have covered the event and the law that caused it.

The closest Snopes could find to the “Born in America Act” was the so-called “Born in the USA Act,” a bill meant to shut down Trump’s executive order doing away with birthright citizenship, which Democratic members of the House introduced earlier this year. That bill was never voted on. 

The U.S. Report, the Facebook page that posted the widely shared version of the claim, posted a strikingly similar claim (archived) the very next day. In that story, “Senator Marco Rubio” apparently introduced the Born in America Act. At the time of the post, Rubio was the secretary of state and hadn’t been a senator in almost a year.

The details of the story also hinted at the rumor being made-up.

In the very first sentence, the story claimed that the vice president’s tiebreaker “sealed” a razor-thin 51-49 vote. However, the vice president can only vote to break a tied vote, and thus all votes with vice-presidential tiebreaks have a one-vote margin. That means the final tally would have been 51-50 or 50-49 had the vice president actually stepped in to break a tie.

The rumor also suggested that Kennedy, a senator from Louisiana, introduced the bill and it passed the Senate. It makes no mention of the bill passing the House and being signed by the president, both of which would be requirements before the law could have “immediate fallout.”

The post included a made-up quote from Kennedy referencing the U.S. Constitution. It’s true the Constitution requires the president to be a natural-born citizen. However, the Constitution clearly allows for naturalized citizens to members of Congress: It says each member of the House of Representatives must be at least 25 years old and a citizen for at least seven years and that each senator must be at least 30 years old and a citizen for at least nine years. It’s therefore likely that a constitutional amendment would be necessary to bar naturalized citizens from Congress, and a constitutional amendment requires ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

The story went on to claim federal marshals enforced the resignations of governors, even though governors hold state, not federal, office. It also claimed the law would bar anyone with dual citizenship from federal office even though none of the quotes or purported resignations targeted dual citizens. However, a person can be a natural-born U.S. citizen with dual citizenship; the State Department says a citizen “may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to their U.S. citizenship.”

And finally, while technically not impossible, the numbers concerning viewership and impressions mentioned in the post made little sense. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were 8.156 billion people in the world and 342 million people in the U.S. on Nov. 26, 2025. In order for the clip described in the post to reach 61.4 billion views, every person on Earth, including infants and people without internet access, would have had to watch the 41-second clip more than seven times, all within a single hour. Every person on Earth would have to view the hashtag #BornInAmericaAct more than 111 times apiece for it to rack up 912 billion impressions in total.

But more realistically, the majority of the clip’s views and the hashtag’s impressions would likely come from Americans. So if we assume the clip’s viewers were every single person in the U.S. instead of the world, each American would have had to watch the clip over 179 times in one hour. And if we assume the same for the 912 billion impressions on the hashtag, every American would have had to see the hashtag more than 2,666 times.

The post was right that those numbers would be “unprecedented” if they reflected reality.

This wasn’t the first false story involving Kennedy we’ve fact-checked. For example, we also looked into a rumor that the senator’s son was battling pancreatic cancer.