PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) Nearly two months of nightly protests that have devolved into violent clashes with police have prompted soul-searching in Portland, Oregon, a city that prides itself on its progressive reputation but is increasingly polarized over how to handle the unrest.

President Donald Trump recently deployed federal agents to quell the demonstrations in Portland that began after George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police, shining an unwelcome spotlight as the city struggles to find a way forward. The national attention comes as divisions deepen among elected officials about the legitimacy of the more violent protests striking at the heart of Portlands identity as an ultraliberal haven where protest is seen as a badge of honor.

I was born and raised here, and Im a graduate of the local public school system. I chose to make my livelihood here, I chose to raise my daughter here, said Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has faced criticism from all sides. And in all the years that I have lived here, I have never seen the community more divided. Nor have I seen it look worse.

Small groups of protesters have set fires, launched fireworks and sprayed graffiti on public buildings, including police precincts and the federal courthouse, leading to nearly nightly clashes with police who have used force thats caused injuries. Similar unrest engulfed many U.S. cities when Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck on May 25. But in Portland, which is familiar ground for the loosely organized, far-left activists known as antifa, or anti-fascists, the protests never stopped.

Lost in the debate are the downtown businesses racking up millions in property damage and lost sales and the voices of the hundreds of thousands of Portland residents who have stayed off the streets.

The impact is terrible because what people have seen on the TV ... has scared people who live outside the downtown. They feel its that way 24 hours a day, said David Margulis, who said the protests have caused sales at his jewelry store to drop more than 50%. I talk to people, on the phone, who tell me: I dont know if Ill ever come downtown again.

Soon after Floyds death, diverse crowds of thousands took to the streets every night for peaceful marches and rallies, filling a bridge that spans the Willamette River on several nights. Smaller groups, however, quickly turned to vandalism.

Police have arrested dozens of people, dispersing protesters with tear gas on multiple occasions. Federal law enforcement officers sent in two weeks ago by Trump to stop the unrest have further inflamed tensions, particularly after one protester was critically injured when a federal agent fired a non-lethal round at his head.

Federal officers used tear gas again Tuesday night, the same day four of Oregons federal lawmakers all Democrats sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding answers.

The mayor and police have repeatedly decried the clashes as a destructive distraction from the Black Lives Matter movement and make a sharp distinction between peaceful demonstrators and those bent on engaging with authorities, whom the police call agitators. Other officials, including several city commissioners, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and Oregons House speaker, have criticized the police for being too aggressive.

Its become a cycle of unrest, police response and further outrage.

Each nights protest is now turning into a protest of the night befores police activity. And so when people say we want this to stop, it cant stop because todays protest will be about what the feds or the Portland Police Bureau did yesterday, said Gregory McKelvey, an activist and critic of the police response.

Theres really this battle that were having right now a communications war over whos a good protester and whos a bad protester. And what the police and the mayor are trying to do is turn the city against the people that are out protesting, he said.

Some members of the Black community, which makes up less than 6% of Portlands population, say the continual clashes with police including in a historically Black part of the city are distracting from the message of racial justice.

Its very clear to me that this is not about accomplishing goals. This is about anarchy, and people are taking advantage of the demonstrations for their own reasons that have nothing to do with social justice, said Ron Herndon, a prominent civil rights activist. Any support you think you could get, you probably have lost from a lot of people because you have negatively impacted their lives.

Jo Ann Hardesty, the first Black woman on Portlands City Council, said protesters dont need to destroy property to effect change but believes the violence is a reaction to a newfound understanding, particularly among white people, about how abusive the police can be.

Nevertheless, Hardesty, who has dedicated her career to police reform, is confident Portland will come out of this stronger. Shes working to get a measure before voters circumventing the powerful police union to create an independent police review board. She also led a push last month to cut $27 million from the police budget.

We have to all figure out, how do we move the city forward? What we know is that we cant protest forever and ever. And what we know is that people want real change, Hardesty said. I think the more we invite people in, the less disruption well see on our streets.

___

Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus.

See the original post:

Chaotic protests prompt soul-searching in Portland, Oregon - The Associated Press

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Letter to the editor: 'Left-wing' labels misused - TribLIVE

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

___

CLAIM: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

THE FACTS: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some people's eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. "The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed," the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. "Coincidence??? I don't think so." However, Dr. Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand what's happening when the test is conducted. The swab "would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible," Katz told The Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. "That's just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses," she said.

___

CLAIM: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

THE FACTS: Multiple experts told The Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. "Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend," read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. "They basically tell her.. It's because she's been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection." Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. "Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day," the caption read. "Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR." But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesn't pose this risk. "There is absolutely no truth in that claim," said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. "There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that." "I don't see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy," said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

___

CLAIM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests "seeded" with the virus.

THE FACTS: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a six inch long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: "COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed." The Instagram caption further states: "... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted 'Planted' COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus" In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: "After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result." According to the review, "One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated," the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP that this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. "We only use sterile swabs," Maldonado explained. "That's actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that they've been sterilized. We can't just take Q-tips from a box."

___

CLAIM: "Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI."

THE FACTS: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for "anti-fascists." The FBI told The Associated Press it "has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies." This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts don't reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various "violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement," the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individual's identity. "Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security," the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

___

CLAIM: Dr. Anthony Fauci is married to Ghislaine Maxwell's sister.

THE FACTS: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Dr. Fauci's role as the nation's top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Fauci's wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwell's children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. "But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that," Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwell's sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. "Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci' wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, I'm sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun," she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. "No coincidences," one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

___

CLAIM: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

THE FACTS: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. "The media mocked First Lady Melania's dress," read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. "They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures." But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of "dancing girls" made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. "Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress," the story reads.

___ Reporter Abril Mulato contributed to this item from Mexico City.

___

CLAIM: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all "simply paid performers on a stage" and he will "immediately fire" anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

THE FACTS: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players' decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. "I have heard about it," Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. "It was an Internet hoax." Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to The Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after President Donald Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didn't stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in "honoring the American flag" but encouraged everyone to "work together to solve these difficult issues."

___

This is part of The Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

See more here:

NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier.

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legitimate, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

Claim: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

The facts: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some people's eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. "The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed," the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. "Coincidence??? I don't think so." However, Morgan Katz, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand what's happening when the test is conducted. The swab "would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible," Katz told the Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. "That's just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses," she said.

Claim: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

The facts: Multiple experts told the Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. "Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend," read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. "They basically tell her.. It's because she's been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection." Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. "Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day," the caption read. "Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR." But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesn't pose this risk. "There is absolutely no truth in that claim," said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. "There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that." "I don't see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy," said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

Claim: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests "seeded" with the virus.

The facts: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a 6-inch-long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: "COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed." The Instagram caption further states: "... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted 'Planted' COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus" In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: "After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result." According to the review, "One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated," the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Yvonne Maldonado, M.D., professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. "We only use sterile swabs," Maldonado explained. "That's actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that they've been sterilized. We can't just take Q-tips from a box."

Claim: "Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI."

The facts: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for "anti-fascists." The FBI told the Associated Press it "has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies." This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts don't reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various "violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement," the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individual's identity. "Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security," the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

Claim: Anthony Fauci, M.D., is married to Ghislaine Maxwell's sister.

The facts: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Fauci's role as the nation's top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Fauci's wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwell's children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. "But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that," Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwell's sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. "Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci' wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, I'm sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun," she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. "No coincidences," one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

Claim: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

The facts: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. "The media mocked First Lady Melania's dress," read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. "They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures." But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of "dancing girls" made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. "Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress," the story reads.

Claim: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all "simply paid performers on a stage" and he will "immediately fire" anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

The facts: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players' decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. "I have heard about it," Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. "It was an Internet hoax." Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to the Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didn't stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in "honoring the American flag" but encouraged everyone to "work together to solve these difficult issues."

This is part of the Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

See original here:

Fact-checking the weeks lies, misinformation - Echo Pilot

Who is the villain?

When I listened to President Trump speak at Mt. Rushmore over the July 4th weekend, he once again made comments that I found not only highly offensive, but also not true.

His comment that "children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe the men and women who built it were not heroes but villains" is the one that most struck at my heartstrings.

As a retired teacher and administrator who spent 45 years working with students, I can guarantee that while I was teaching in the classroom and while I was principal, students were taught to love and appreciate not only our country and its history, but also the peoples of all races, colors, and creeds who are part of that history. I have no doubt that that is the case in most all classrooms in Kansas and throughout the country. When looking at the Kansas Department of Education standards for History, Government, and Social Studies there is no mention of hating ones country nor is there a list of individuals considered to be villains.

Makes one wonder what the basis for such a comment is! I am proud to have been a lifelong educator working to instill a foundation of knowledge and values into students that undoubtedly has given them the opportunity to be informed, knowledgeable, and contributing citizens in our communities, states, and country which, by the way, fits in with the standards they are being taught.

Delon Martens

Haven

Religious privilege

Under the Constitution's Establishment Clause, government cannot favor the religious beliefs of some at the expense of the rights, beliefs and health of others. Yet, 50 years after access to contraception was recognized as a constitutional right, the Catholic Church continues exploiting authority over sexuality.

The Supreme Court recently affirmed the Trump administration's rules which create a religious or moral exemption from the Affordable Care Act's contraception coverage guarantee for any employer or university that wants it. And the new rules don't require any third-party accommodation to provide workers or students with coverage for this critical care, as does the ACA.

Houses of worship are exempted from complying with the ACA's contraception benefit. And the government offers other religiously affiliated employers with religious objections to contraception an accommodation: simply sign a written notice of the objection and government would work with a third-party provider to ensure access to reproductive coverage without involving the employer. But the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious organizations said even signing the opt-out form was a burden and sued the government.

The hypocrisy of the Little Sisters and others claiming to be the injured parties in this legal battle over access to reproductive health care is that they already have the type of "church plan" insurance that allows them to exclude contraceptive care for their workers, hundreds of people who are not nuns or Catholics, and for many, who don't share their religious views on contraception.

What's at issue in this case is the difference between religious freedom and religious privilege.

Janean Lanier

Hutchinson

Voters Beware!

By now we have all had postcards in the mail or door hangers left on our doors, some filled with lies paid for by Topeka special interest groups. These big-money, special interests want politicians beholden to them, not to us the constituents.

There is more to the story being told on those postcards. Call the candidates here at their homes. Ask them for the truth. Like every election, these big-money special interest groups want us to believe half-baked truths and outright lies: whatever it takes to make us believe their lies so they can buy the election and buy our politicians.

I recently ran into a young man dropping literature for them-he was being paid by a Topeka special interest group and was from Johnson County. He had no vested interest in our communities. If these far-away Topeka special interest groups are supporting one candidate or lying about another, they are doing it so that we might elect a pawn for them.

We need to elect candidates that stand up for us. As my husband, Greg Lewis, said when he resigned from the Kansas House of Representatives due to illness, "This is not the house of special interest. This is the Peoples House; long may it serve the People and the Great State of Kansas."

In August make your vote count. Dont buy the lies. Elect candidates who will work for us and are NOT beholden to Topeka special interest groups.

Susan Lewis

St. John

Antifa Is NOT Imaginary

What do Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all have in common? They are not real; they are imaginary.

On June 25, Democrat Senator Jerry Nadler from New York made one of the most asinine statements I have ever heard. Mr. Nadler intimated that antifa was "imaginary". In other words, Mr. Nadler would have you believe that antifa (that "peaceful", anti-Fascist mob which vandalized, looted, pillaged, and set fires to many businesses in cities throughout the United States) did NOT actually do any of these dastardly deeds.

Nadler would like to think that what American citizens saw with their own eyes on TV was a "figment of their imagination""--that they are actually dumb enough to "buy into" this outrageous statement. Really, Senator Nadler, do you honestly think that the Antifa mob threw "imaginary" bricks through storeowners' windows? Tell the store owners these bricks were "imaginary".

Do you really think that the lootings and fires that were set by antifa rioters were "imaginary". Tell the store owners (many who had invested years of sweat and labor into making their businesses successful, only to have their livelihoods destroyed in one night) that the lootings and fires were "imaginary". Senator Nadler, you are insulting the intelligence of the American people if you think they are "buying" any of this nonsense.

If there is one thing that I wish was "imaginary", Senator Nadler, it is you! Unfortunately, Senator Nadler is "real", as is the radical left-wing drivel spewing out of his mouth.

Ron Etchison

Ellsworth

Vote Berger

In his role as President of Hutchinson Community College, I was always impressed with how Dr. Ed Berger leveraged limited resources to achieve great results. When he decided to run for the Kansas Senate four years ago, I was pleased because the Brownback administration had clearly gone off the rails and we needed elected officials like Ed Berger to step up and clean up the mess. Ed and his colleagues have had to make some tough votes to bring Kansas back to financial soundness. They have done that.

Now Eds opponent, who has not bothered to vote in many previous elections, seems to want to take us back to the "Brownback Years." Apparently, he doesnt know that experiment failed and Kansas is still digging its way out of the economic hole it created.

I hope you will join me in voting for a man of real integrity, Ed Berger.

Patty Kerr

Hutchinson

Presidential Election Could Be a Game Changer

The upcoming presidential election on November 3rd is the most important election in American history since 1860 and 1864. This is because our very existence as a constitutional republic created by our U.S. Constitution in 1789 is at stake.

The progressive (actually regressive) left-wing Democrat Party wants the United States government to change to a socialist/Marxist government. They attack our very U. S. Constitution as out-dated and old-fashioned created by 56 white men, some who owned slaves. Thus, they say it is a racist document. This is nonsense!

The history of the Democrat Party reveals that it has always been racist. They were supporters of slavery before and during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). After the Civil War they established the Ku Klux Klan and segregation to keep newly freed former slaves from voting. This is in our history books that the Democrat Party wishes to hide. They want to destroy our history by rewriting it. Part of this destruction of our nations history is seen by the rioters who have destroyed statues of past Americans.

The Democrats resort to intimidation of people through violent groups such as antifa (which get lots of financial support from anti-American government multi-billionaire George Soros) as well as Black Lives Matter, an organization whose background is heavily pro-Marxist in its ideology. As a matter of fact, its three co-founders are extremely pro-Marxist in their comments. Thus, weve got to save our country and its freedoms by defeating the Democrats in November.

Don Etchison

Haven

Vote Dower

Please join us in voting for Tad Dower for District Court Judge. Tads time spent as Municipal Court Judge in Hutchinson has given him the experience to be a fair and thoughtful judge. And Tads many years as a local attorney in private practice has given him a keen understanding of all facets of legal issues involved in the type of cases he would contemplate in District Court. Integrity, honest, fair, and thoughtful are all words that describe Tad.

Anne and Tom Sellers

Hutchinson

Berger is for education

When Ed Berger ran for our State Senate 4 years ago I didnt know him personally. I knew of him from his days as Hutchinson Community College President. After spending 10 plus years in Kansas classrooms I saw Ed as the best choice to help get Education back on track in Kansas. Ive been more than pleased with the job Ed has done for Kansas. Ive got to know Ed personally as he visits our town cafe regularly and we had him address our Lions Club. I want to encourage all voters to vote to re-elect Ed Berger to the Kansas Senate.

Alan Albers

Cunningham

Critical to re-elect

The most important resource in Kansas is our children; they are our future. As a public school teacher, I have spent years advocating for students. It is critical that we re-elect Dr. Ed Berger to the state legislature.

Following my year of service as the Kansas Teacher of the Year, I have learned just how important it is to have representatives in Topeka that understand the unique needs of our schools and the communities they serve. Ed Berger does that. He listens to my experiences and concerns as an educator. He always responds quickly to my questions about how new bills and policies will affect local schools.

Dr. Berger shows balance and fairness in his voting record towards public schools which is needed to sustain our local communities. Please support Dr. Berger with your vote; District 34 will continue to benefit from his leadership and experience.

Samantha Neill

Buhler

View post:

Letters to the editor - News - The Ottawa Herald

The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier.

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legitimate, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

Claim: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

The facts: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some people's eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. "The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed," the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. "Coincidence??? I don't think so." However, Morgan Katz, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand what's happening when the test is conducted. The swab "would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible," Katz told the Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. "That's just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses," she said.

Claim: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

The facts: Multiple experts told the Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. "Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend," read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. "They basically tell her.. It's because she's been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection." Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. "Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day," the caption read. "Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR." But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesn't pose this risk. "There is absolutely no truth in that claim," said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. "There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that." "I don't see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy," said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

Claim: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests "seeded" with the virus.

The facts: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a 6-inch-long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: "COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed." The Instagram caption further states: "... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted 'Planted' COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus" In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: "After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result." According to the review, "One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated," the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Yvonne Maldonado, M.D., professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. "We only use sterile swabs," Maldonado explained. "That's actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that they've been sterilized. We can't just take Q-tips from a box."

Claim: "Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI."

The facts: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for "anti-fascists." The FBI told the Associated Press it "has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies." This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts don't reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various "violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement," the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individual's identity. "Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security," the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

Claim: Anthony Fauci, M.D., is married to Ghislaine Maxwell's sister.

The facts: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Fauci's role as the nation's top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Fauci's wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwell's children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. "But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that," Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwell's sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. "Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci' wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, I'm sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun," she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. "No coincidences," one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

Claim: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

The facts: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. "The media mocked First Lady Melania's dress," read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. "They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures." But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of "dancing girls" made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. "Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress," the story reads.

Claim: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all "simply paid performers on a stage" and he will "immediately fire" anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

The facts: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players' decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. "I have heard about it," Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. "It was an Internet hoax." Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to the Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didn't stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in "honoring the American flag" but encouraged everyone to "work together to solve these difficult issues."

This is part of the Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Visit link:

Fact-checking the weeks lies, misinformation - Waynesboro Record Herald

The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier.

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legitimate, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

Claim: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

The facts: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some people's eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. "The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed," the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. "Coincidence??? I don't think so." However, Morgan Katz, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand what's happening when the test is conducted. The swab "would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible," Katz told the Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. "That's just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses," she said.

Claim: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

The facts: Multiple experts told the Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. "Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend," read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. "They basically tell her.. It's because she's been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection." Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. "Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day," the caption read. "Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR." But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesn't pose this risk. "There is absolutely no truth in that claim," said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. "There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that." "I don't see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy," said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

Claim: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests "seeded" with the virus.

The facts: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a 6-inch-long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: "COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed." The Instagram caption further states: "... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted 'Planted' COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus" In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: "After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result." According to the review, "One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated," the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Yvonne Maldonado, M.D., professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. "We only use sterile swabs," Maldonado explained. "That's actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that they've been sterilized. We can't just take Q-tips from a box."

Claim: "Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI."

The facts: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for "anti-fascists." The FBI told the Associated Press it "has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies." This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts don't reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various "violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement," the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individual's identity. "Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security," the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

Claim: Anthony Fauci, M.D., is married to Ghislaine Maxwell's sister.

The facts: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Fauci's role as the nation's top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Fauci's wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwell's children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. "But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that," Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwell's sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. "Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci' wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, I'm sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun," she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. "No coincidences," one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

Claim: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

The facts: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. "The media mocked First Lady Melania's dress," read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. "They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures." But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of "dancing girls" made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. "Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress," the story reads.

Claim: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all "simply paid performers on a stage" and he will "immediately fire" anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

The facts: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players' decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. "I have heard about it," Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. "It was an Internet hoax." Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to the Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didn't stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in "honoring the American flag" but encouraged everyone to "work together to solve these difficult issues."

This is part of the Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Original post:

Fact-checking the weeks lies, misinformation - Pocono Record

Dear Attorney General Barr,

June 16, 2020

I write to thank you for the Department of Justices (DOJ) dedication to investigating ANTIFA, your work to declare ANTIFA a terrorist group, and for your efforts to ensure that proper actions will be taken against the violent agitators who have abused federal law. Additionally, I want to commend you for using the Joint Terrorism Task Force network to identify the organizers of the recent destructive protests. However, I also write to urge you to investigate the funding mechanisms behind ANTIFA and other associated groups, which have threatened the wellbeing of our society.

As you may know, ANTIFA groups have had a long history of violent protests, under which they have caused direct harm to anyone critical of their beliefs. For example, last summer, a photojournalist, who was a harsh critic of ANTIFA groups, was beaten by an ANTIFA mob on a public street. The photojournalist posed no physical threat to the group and was simply capturing footage during a Portland ANTIFA demonstration against right-wing groups.

Furthermore, ANTIFA groups executed in violent attacks at the University of California, Berkeley, in response to a planned speech on campus by a right-wing commentator. During these riots, masked ANTIFA protestors hurled fireworks, rocks, and alcoholic beverages at law enforcement officials and caused nearly $100,000 worth of damage to the campus.

More recently, in 2019, during an ANTIFA protest outside the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, an armed 68-year-old man attacked a police officer. The armed man placed his arms around the officer in an attempt to choke him, so that another protester would be freed. Later, police found explosives and weapons in his bag.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to speak freely and to petition the government through peaceful gatherings and protests. However, the ANTIFA protests directly undermine these freedoms, as they use terror and violence to silence the voices of opposition groups and to suppress their ability to assemble. This group continued to utilize these methods over the past week, which led to inflictions of brutal injuries on law enforcement officials and civilians and severe damages to infrastructure, small businesses, and historical sites. These attacks by radical, left-wing protesters are the antithesis to the safe and effective manner in

which our founding fathers intended First Amendment rights to be utilized, as they only create a further divide and exacerbate inequality in vulnerable populations.

ANTIFA groups who use violence as a tool to advocate for their beliefs and their radical-leftist agenda can carry out these vicious and well-organized attacks due to their ability to

obtain adequate funding. In an effort to subdue these attacks, I urge you to investigate the funding mechanisms behind these volatile groups bringing such reprehensible and destructive behavior amongst our society. Going forward, we must hold ANTIFAs financial supporters accountable, guarantee that taxpayer dollars are not wasted on the prevention of these violent attacks and ensure that future demonstrations work to honor our First Amendment freedom to peacefully protest.

Read this article:

Investigating the funding mechanisms behind ANTIFA - Port Lavaca Wave

Kudos go out to Francis A. Bethel III for his intelligent rendering of the facts (America is wide-awake, July 8) giving a wake-up call to Hylton Phillips-Pages misperceptions (Wake up, America, July 6) of antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters.

Antifa, as Mr. Bethel pointed out, are political protest groups organized to fight, most often peacefully, against fascist authoritarian rulers and extreme right-wing ideology groups. They believe in the ideal goal of what the United States and its leaders elected to political office were supposed to legislate: freedom, equality and justice for all. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter movement has been seeking respect and equal opportunity to level the playing field.

My experience with injustice toward African Americans was observed after working in the field as a social worker/juvenile probation officer. Most of my one-parent clients in South Philly lived bunched together in the ghetto in single homes or in the high-rises and received welfare if the father was not an income-earner present in the home. This policy was as bad as separating children from their parents seeking asylum at the border. Big grocery stores in the ghetto and access to doctors and medical care were all too often nonexistent. These deficiencies often led to poor nutrition, obesity and high rates of diabetes. My clients, predictably, due to these poor environmental and family deficiencies, were extremely lacking in motivation in school. Looking back, it is evident to me that many were clinically depressed and lacking in hope for a better future.

Why? Children ideally need both of their parents and/or positive role models for their social and emotional well-being during developmental stages. In their absence, the alternative was joining a gang and looking up to the gang leader or leaders to gain a sense of belonging and an income selling drugs. Why not join a gang and sell drugs to earn an income, since the fact was that African Americans were barred from obtaining a job in the construction trades or other profitable jobs they found themselves being on the low end of the totem pole for? Enacting the three strikes and you are out law to combat crime was heavily weighted against African Americans, who found themselves sentenced behind bars for an exceedingly long time. It was what it was then, and it is what it often is now: Unjust!

In closing, the pendulum of justice and equality has not swung in the direction the Constitution and Declaration of Independence was designed for it to do. Wake up, America is what we truly need to do to gain a mature perspective of what has gone on before and what we need to do now. Ridding ourselves of prejudice and unjust discrimination toward our fellow human beings on planet Earth, who were, unfortunately, born on the wrong side of the street, can begin to pave the way to create a more just world for ourselves and future generations.

Bill ClemensMagnolia

The Opinion page is populated with letters from you, our readers. The Delaware State News was founded on and still is dedicated to the basic principle of civilly and respectfully sharing ideas to create a better community for us all. To submit a letter to the editor, visit the Submit a Letter page.

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Letter to the Editor: There are aspects of life weighted against Blacks - Delaware State News - Delaware State News

In defense of Joan Swirsky and response to your 7/7/20 editorial I submit the following information:

A Brief History of Antifa: Part I

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16149/antifa-history-part-2https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16181/black-lives-matterhttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/about/https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/walter-williams-worst-enemy-black-peopleMalcolm X said: The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have.

If the Negro wasnt taken, tricked or deceived by the white liberal, then Negros would get together and solve our own problems. I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems. Our problems will never be solved by the white man.In conclusion, I offer the following quote to all self-hating, guilt-ridden Marxists, Leftists and Progressives and their supporters in the media and academia, The Truth! You cant handle the Truth! Colonel Nathan R. Jessep from A Few Good Men.Walter J. JaworskiNew Hyde Park

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Readers Write: Fact checking the fact checker - Blog - The Island Now

NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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CLAIM: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

THE FACTS: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some peoples eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed, the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. Coincidence??? I dont think so. However, Dr. Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand whats happening when the test is conducted. The swab would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible, Katz told The Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. Thats just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses, she said.

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CLAIM: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

THE FACTS: Multiple experts told The Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend, read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. They basically tell her.. Its because shes been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection. Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day, the caption read. Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR. But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesnt pose this risk. There is absolutely no truth in that claim, said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that. I dont see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy, said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

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CLAIM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests seeded with the virus.

THE FACTS: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a six inch long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed. The Instagram caption further states: ... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted Planted COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result. According to the review, One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated, the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP that this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. We only use sterile swabs, Maldonado explained. Thats actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that theyve been sterilized. We cant just take Q-tips from a box.

___

CLAIM: Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI.

THE FACTS: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for anti-fascists. The FBI told The Associated Press it has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies. This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts dont reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement, the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individuals identity. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security, the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

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CLAIM: Dr. Anthony Fauci is married to Ghislaine Maxwells sister.

THE FACTS: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Dr. Faucis role as the nations top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Faucis wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwells children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that, Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwells sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, Im sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun, she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. No coincidences, one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

___

CLAIM: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

THE FACTS: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. The media mocked First Lady Melanias dress, read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures. But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of dancing girls made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress, the story reads.

___ Reporter Abril Mulato contributed to this item from Mexico City.

___

CLAIM: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all simply paid performers on a stage and he will immediately fire anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

THE FACTS: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. I have heard about it, Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. It was an Internet hoax. Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to The Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after President Donald Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didnt stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in honoring the American flag but encouraged everyone to work together to solve these difficult issues.

___

This is part of The Associated Press ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

___

Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

___

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week - Alton Telegraph

Dear Attorney General Barr,

June 16, 2020

I write to thank you for the Department of Justices (DOJ) dedication to investigating ANTIFA, your work to declare ANTIFA a terrorist group, and for your efforts to ensure that proper actions will be taken against the violent agitators who have abused federal law. Additionally, I want to commend you for using the Joint Terrorism Task Force network to identify the organizers of the recent destructive protests. However, I also write to urge you to investigate the funding mechanisms behind ANTIFA and other associated groups, which have threatened the wellbeing of our society.

As you may know, ANTIFA groups have had a long history of violent protests, under which they have caused direct harm to anyone critical of their beliefs. For example, last summer, a photojournalist, who was a harsh critic of ANTIFA groups, was beaten by an ANTIFA mob on a public street. The photojournalist posed no physical threat to the group and was simply capturing footage during a Portland ANTIFA demonstration against right-wing groups.

Furthermore, ANTIFA groups executed in violent attacks at the University of California, Berkeley, in response to a planned speech on campus by a right-wing commentator. During these riots, masked ANTIFA protestors hurled fireworks, rocks, and alcoholic beverages at law enforcement officials and caused nearly $100,000 worth of damage to the campus.

More recently, in 2019, during an ANTIFA protest outside the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, an armed 68-year-old man attacked a police officer. The armed man placed his arms around the officer in an attempt to choke him, so that another protester would be freed. Later, police found explosives and weapons in his bag.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to speak freely and to petition the government through peaceful gatherings and protests. However, the ANTIFA protests directly undermine these freedoms, as they use terror and violence to silence the voices of opposition groups and to suppress their ability to assemble. This group continued to utilize these methods over the past week, which led to inflictions of brutal injuries on law enforcement officials and civilians and severe damages to infrastructure, small businesses, and historical sites. These attacks by radical, left-wing protesters are the antithesis to the safe and effective manner in

which our founding fathers intended First Amendment rights to be utilized, as they only create a further divide and exacerbate inequality in vulnerable populations.

ANTIFA groups who use violence as a tool to advocate for their beliefs and their radical-leftist agenda can carry out these vicious and well-organized attacks due to their ability to

obtain adequate funding. In an effort to subdue these attacks, I urge you to investigate the funding mechanisms behind these volatile groups bringing such reprehensible and destructive behavior amongst our society. Going forward, we must hold ANTIFAs financial supporters accountable, guarantee that taxpayer dollars are not wasted on the prevention of these violent attacks and ensure that future demonstrations work to honor our First Amendment freedom to peacefully protest.

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Investigating the funding mechanisms behind ANTIFA | Columns - Port Lavaca Wave

Since the nationwide protests against police violence began six weeks ago, there have been numerous acts of violence against peaceful protesters.

In Seattle, one person was killed, and another person seriously injured when a man drove into a crowd of peaceful protesters on I-5. In June, a protester was shot on Capitol Hill by a man who drove into the protest zone.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Raymond Duda is the Special Agent in charge of Seattle's FBI field office. He says the FBI has not been involved in investigating those incidents. But in other parts of the country, the FBI has arrested members of right-wing hate groups who were planning to use violence against protesters.

Paige Browning: Special Agent Duda, is the FBI is tracking similar types of threats here in Seattle?

Duda: We are. There's constantly intelligence out there regarding individuals across the spectrum, whether it's on the far right or the far left. We track that intelligence. You have to understand the intelligence itself is a spectrum. Rarely do you have intelligence that you have 100% confidence in. It falls somewhere on that spectrum.

We look at it closely. We've got some of the best intelligence professionals in the country that work for us. We constantly assess that, and determine whether or not it warrants further investigative activity.

How would you assess the threat level in Seattle from these sort of groups?

Leading up to the Fourth of July holiday, there was a fair amount of concern that there could be additional violence associated with the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, as it's called. The actions taken by the city in the week leading up to the holiday weekend changed that dynamic significantly.

We continued to monitor the threat over the weekend, but it subsided substantially. I don't believe there were any acts of violence associated with either side of the spectrum of domestic extremist groups.

President Trump and Attorney General William Barr have blamed violence that's taken place during demonstrations on so called Antifa members. Last month, Attorney General Barr said: We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.

Have you seen any evidence of some sort of organized Antifa activity here in Seattle?

Here in Seattle, no, we haven't seen evidence of organized activity. We have seen individuals -- and again, we view Antifa as an ideology, as opposed to an organization -- we have seen individuals here that align with that ideology, but "organized," I would say no.

I know that the FBI assisted with the clearing of Seattle's protest site, the CHOP. Why was the FBI brought in?

We had a limited role. We had specialty capabilities. There were reports of potential explosives, and weapons, and things like that. We have the capability to work with the Seattle Police Department and provide some expertise in the event that those sorts of objects are uncovered.

Has that operation led to any investigations?

No, that did not lead to any specific investigations. We do have investigations that have been initiated based on the totality of circumstances that have occurred in Seattle over the last few weeks, but that particular operation did not lead to the opening of anything.

As you told us, your agency did have some involvement in the clearing out of the CHOP protest area. What would you say to someone who is concerned about the federal government being involved?

At the FBI, we absolutely support the exercise of individuals First Amendment rights. We think that is a sign of a healthy democracy, and we want to encourage that activity. Where we get involved is with those individuals who are bent on hijacking that activity to commit acts of violence in furtherance of whatever ideology they may have.

Those violent acts make the lawful protesters less safe, and they make the public less safe. So that's our focus, on those individuals that would hijack that lawful, constitutionally protected activity to further their own extremist agendas, and typically involving violence.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.

This post has been updated.

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FBI monitors threats against Seattle-area protests - KUOW News and Information

Pity the poor white man; he just cant catch a break in this country.

If that strikes you as an unpromising theme for a presidential campaign in the year 2020, you must not be an adept of the Trump cult. Seemingly running as the reincarnation of Jefferson Davis the Mississippian who served as the one-and-only president of the Confederate States of America Boss Trump travels from sea to shining sea appealing to the resentment and self-pity of those whose ancestors lost the Civil War.

Even if they had no such ancestors. Not every paleface who gets all tingly and aroused by Trumps dark intimations of cultural warfare is descended from slave owners or rebel soldiers. Unrepentant racists are actually a dying breed across the South. Indeed, youd think that the State of Mississippis decision to remove Confederate imagery from its state flag would give even Trump pause. Not to mention NASCARs banning of the Stars and Bars. Bad for business, you see. After all, who defends slavery anymore?

Actually, its more the George Wallace of 1968 that Trump appears to be imitating. The Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin digs up an apposite quote from that year: The pseudo-intellectuals and the theoreticians and some professors and some newspaper editors and some judges and some preachers, the Alabama governor said, have looked down their nose long enough at the average man on the street.

Everybody looks down on them, see. They are the real victims.

And you know what? Its not totally imaginary. As the husband of an Arkansas girl in academic New England back then, we met with a degree of prejudice. A mild degree, to be sure, and only in academia, where she got used to being patronized to her face as a dumb bigot. Ordinary New Englanders would ask her questions at the general store just to hear her talk.

Then there was the colleague who sympathized with my own imagined discomfort as an aristocratic Southerner with minority students. Im a person of Irish peasant descent from industrial Elizabeth, New Jersey then, as now, an immigrant melting pot. Aristocratic? Hardly. I thought a professor who couldnt spot an Irishman in Massachusetts, of all places, didnt need to be lecturing anybody about diversity.

But these were minor episodes, essentially comic. Caricature is inevitable when cultures collide.

Nevertheless, we did take the precaution of leaving.

Less amusing are the growing number of farcical but dangerous confrontations provoked by Boss Trumps inflammatory rhetoric as amplified on social media. Even as the president tweets out messages about white power and delivers ominous speeches about left-wing mobs supposedly seeking to defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children, online provocateurs are doing their best to inflame the gullible.

During recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Little Rock, cops seemingly tricked by Facebook postings went around telling people that mobs of antifa activists were holed up in a downtown hotel conspiring to loot and burn wealthy suburbs.

And then what? Return to their hotel rooms and watch porn, I suppose.

Needless to say, nothing happened.

Similar hoaxes have provoked armed vigilantes in Idaho, New Jersey, South Dakota and Michigan in recent weeks into taking to the streets to defend their communities against the largely mythical antifa. (Which is not to say there arent self-dramatizing fools on the left, doing their utmost to accomplish for Trump what their political ancestors such as the late Abbie Hoffman did for Richard Nixon in 1968, i.e., provoke a voter backlash against their ostensible cause. Joe Biden cant proclaim his hostility toward arsonists and looters strongly enough.)

The Washington Post detailed a scary episode at Gettysburg National Cemetery this July 4th. Spurred by Facebook postings on a phony antifa page that promised an Independence Day flag-burning festival at the park (Lets get together and burn flags in protest of thugs and animals in blue), a veritable army of militiamen, skinheads, bikers and right-wing zealots showed up locked and loaded to protect Civil War monuments there.

Almost needless to say, nobody showed up to incinerate any flags. The mob did find a Methodist preacher wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt to harass, but park rangers got him away safely. All unaware, the fellow had been visiting an ancestors grave.

Post reporters Shawn Boburge and Dalton Bennett searched high and low for the phony antifa sites author but came up empty. None of the persons identifying themselves on Facebook turned out to exist; all the photos were stock commercial images traceable to nobody. The whole thing was a malicious hoax cleverly designed to trick foolhardy armed men into pointing guns at their imagined enemies.

Armed men were goaded into a frenzy by Boss Trump, whose only hope of being returned to office lies in setting Americans at one anothers throats.

One day before too long, I fear, those guns are going to go off.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of The Hunting of the President

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President Trump in 2020 spews echoes of George Wallace in 1968 - Chicago Sun-Times

Lois Thielen, Times Writers Group Published 2:35 p.m. CT July 6, 2020

In the wake of the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, angry protesters looted, vandalized and burned buildings in cities across the country.

While most of the protests were peaceful, those that were not were condemned as violence begetting more violence. Among those accused of perpetrating this violence were members of a movement known as antifa.In fact, President Donald Trump even wanted antifa listed as a terrorist organization.

Lois Thielen(Photo: Times photo)

But antifa isn't even an organization and its name is short for antifascist.Its followers fight authoritarian right-wing movements of the kind found in Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy.

Rather than an organized group, it's a loose collection of groups and individuals who believe in active, aggressive opposition to far-right movements, according to the Anti-Defamation League.Their ideology is rooted in the belief that the Nazi Party would not have been able to assume the power it had in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s had citizens fought more aggressively in the streets at the time.

According to a June 24 article of the Smithsonian Magazine by James Stout entitled"A Brief History of Anti-Fascism,""Anti-fascism began where fascism began, in Italy." Known as "The People's Daring Ones," the anti-fascist movement began in 1921 to fight the increasingly violent forces supported by Benito Mussolini, Italy's fascist dictator from 1925-1945.The resistance brought together trade unionists, anarchists, socialists, communists, republicans and former army officers.

About the same time in Germany, anti-fascists fought in the streets against the repression of Jews and gays as perpetrated by the Nazis, until forcibly disbanded in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became dictator.

Antifa gained visibility in the United States after the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists and anitifa clashed.

Because antifa is not a group but members of groups as well as individuals not part of a group, it's been hard to identify who antifa is and what their goals are.This leads to false accusations, such as after the Black Lives Matter protests, when Trump labeled them a left-wing terrorist group, although they are not a group and many involved with antifa are not leftists.

Furthermore, according to a June 6article in The Guardian by Jason Wilson, the FBI has said it found no evidence of antifa involvement in the George Floyd protests or related destruction.

But rumors flooded social media sites of bands of terrorists traveling en masse into rural areas of America.InCoeur d'Alene, Idaho, groups of 30-50 men armed with semi-automatic weapons occupied downtown streets, guarding against the "busloads of radical leftists" they had been assured were heading their way.

"But the 'antifa' discussed in the presidents tweets and on Fox News bears little resemblance to this morally gray reality," saidZack Beauchamp in a June 8 Vox blog entitled "Antifa, explained.""They are a trumped-up boogeyman for the conservative movement, a totem used to justify their violent law and order approach to legitimate demonstrations demanding racial justice."

Nor is antifa responsible for the current unrest.Systemic racism has beenthe focus of the recent protests and antifais about opposing this systemic racism, according to Mark Bray, a historian of antifa at Rutgers University.

They believe, and I think rightly so, that fascism and proximate far-right politics are inherently aggressive and that, if youre not ready to defend yourself in advance, it may be too late when the time comes.

This is the opinion of Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published the first Tuesday of the month.

Read or Share this story: https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2020/07/06/antifa-leftist-radical-group-we-think-is/5385532002/

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Is antifa the leftist radical group we think it is? - SC Times

ANKARA

Many Western countries support the idea of backing the YPG/PKK in Syria but Turkish officials reject aiding a terror group to beat another, ISIS/Daesh.

A recent report released by the Turkish National Police Academy warned that countries of origin might face serious security challenges once foreign fighters in Syria return home.

The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terror group that has the blood of tens of thousands of Turkish citizens on its hands.

But warnings by Ankara have fallen on deaf ears and the YPG continues to recruit more and more foreign fighters.

The report written by academics Murat Tinas and Ahmet Demirden cautioned the international community against the possible tragic outcomes of the return of these foreign fighters.

Anti-racist demonstrations in the US following the death of an unarmed Black man George Floyd under police custody in the US in May, and related violent incidents could serve as a wake-up call for Western countries as citizens of some of them went to Syria to fight for the YPG, including affiliates of Antifa, a far-left group with sympathizers across the globe.

US President Donald Trump said on May 31 that Antifa would be designated a terror group after he accused it of inciting protesters who fueled violent confrontations between police and demonstrators.

Whether the presidents argument is true or not, there is an overt fact: Affiliates of far-left and right organizations have a presence in the Syrian conflict and they might pose a serious threat to national security systems once they return home with combat experience and traumatic disorders.

The 54-page report -- titled Foreign Terrorist Fighters in PKK/YPG in Syria: Violent Extremism Backfires -- shed light on how foreign fighters recruited by the terror group could cause significant backlash when they return home.

It said Trump's statement might sound like something new to Western audience but Middle East observers are not alien to the possible threat growing out of the return of foreign fighters.

According to the report, the PKK and its affiliates in Syria have recruited many individuals of far-left organizations, including Antifa groups operating in European countries along with the US, Canada and Australia.

"Some Antifa adherents have ideological similarities to the PKK and its offshoots in Syria -- PYD, YPG and YPJ. Since the rise of terrorist organization Daesh [ISIS] in Syria, there have been reports that many far-leftists including Antifa elements joined the YPG as foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs). Especially under the protection of the international coalition assisting the YPG on the pretext of fighting Daesh, these FTFs received significant training and combat experience in the conflict zone," it stated.

When the flow of FTFs was reversed and they became returnees in their home countries, the risk they pose also became more visible.

Regardless of their ideology or the groups they join, they can plan, direct or conduct terrorist attacks, create new terrorist organizations, radicalize and recruit new terrorists, according the report.

Potential to cause mass casualties due to actual combat experience

FTFs gain first-person combat experience and might witness a killing or themselves kill others amid clashes, according to the report.

And they may suffer severe traumatic conditions that pave the way for further radicalization in their cause, constituting a great risk for native countries.

Their numbers, combat experience and the offences that they commit in the war zone all remain mostly unknown; and therefore unmonitored.

In this regard, the potential risk that they pose to their countries of origin upon their return requires considerable attention, the report stated.

"The threat perception related to returnees is very high. Indeed, the involvement of returnees in terrorist attacks in their home countries is interestingly limited in numbers, yet even a small number of returnees have the potential to cause mass casualties because they have actual combat experience," it added.

One might assume the YPG/PKK terror group appeals only to far-leftist militants given the fact its ideology revolves around radical left perspective.

But the report argues that it is far from the truth as the YPG/PKK also recruits militants with far-right ideology by using persecution of Christians and other minorities by the Daesh/ISIS terror group as a pretext.

They utilize different narratives based on their ideologies, for instance, far-left terror groups create anti-fascist narratives whereas far-right groups craft anti-communist narratives, the report noted, adding the two groups could build unexpected allegiances and exploit the same tragic public event to promote their narratives, referring to the death of Floyd as a possible example.

The authors argued the foreign fighters presence in Syria did not just come out of the blue as international media outlets and states glorified the YPG/PKK fight against Daesh/ISIS, while ignoring the fact that its branch in Turkey is an internationally recognized terror organization.

Also, the PKK terror group can freely have a presence on social media and appeal to foreigners for further recruitment while depicting itself as freedom fighters in an attempt to justify their acts of terrorism.

"Another important factor for foreigners in the YPG is the glorification of YPG militancy in international media.

The act of volunteering with the YPG was not only perceived as harmless in international media but also framed as an act of bravery for various political reasons," it added.

The PKK has been prosecuting a terror campaign in Turkey for more than three decades and is responsible for the killing of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.

It is designated a terror group by Turkey, the US and EU, however, the global community apparently does not adopt the same attitude toward the YPG which enjoyed support from the international coalition during the Syrian civil war.

The YPG/PKK today controls vast swathes of territories in northern Syria and controls a significant amount of oil fields.

Read more here:

Antifa, YPG/PKK ties threaten national peace in West - Anadolu Agency

NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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CLAIM: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

THE FACTS: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some peoples eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed, the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. Coincidence??? I dont think so. However, Dr. Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand whats happening when the test is conducted. The swab would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible, Katz told The Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. Thats just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses, she said.

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CLAIM: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

THE FACTS: Multiple experts told The Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend, read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. They basically tell her.. Its because shes been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection. Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day, the caption read. Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR. But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesnt pose this risk. There is absolutely no truth in that claim, said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that. I dont see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy, said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

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CLAIM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests seeded with the virus.

THE FACTS: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a six inch long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed. The Instagram caption further states: ... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted Planted COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result. According to the review, One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated, the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP that this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. We only use sterile swabs, Maldonado explained. Thats actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that theyve been sterilized. We cant just take Q-tips from a box.

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CLAIM: Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI.

THE FACTS: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for anti-fascists. The FBI told The Associated Press it has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies. This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts dont reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement, the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individuals identity. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security, the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

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CLAIM: Dr. Anthony Fauci is married to Ghislaine Maxwells sister.

THE FACTS: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Dr. Faucis role as the nations top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Faucis wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwells children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that, Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwells sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, Im sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun, she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. No coincidences, one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

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CLAIM: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

THE FACTS: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. The media mocked First Lady Melanias dress, read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures. But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of dancing girls made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress, the story reads.

___ Reporter Abril Mulato contributed to this item from Mexico City.

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CLAIM: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all simply paid performers on a stage and he will immediately fire anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

THE FACTS: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. I have heard about it, Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. It was an Internet hoax. Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to The Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after President Donald Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didnt stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in honoring the American flag but encouraged everyone to work together to solve these difficult issues.

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This is part of The Associated Press ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

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Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week - The Advocate