No, Hotels Aren’t Evicting Homeless American Vets Because of Migrants

“Homeless vets are being booted from NY hotels to make room for migrants: advocates,” a New York Post headline from last week read. “New York Hotels Evicting Homeless Veterans to House Migrants,” Newsweek said days later, joining in the outrage. “As many as 20 homeless veterans were booted from hotels in upstate New York to presumably make room for the influx of migrants,” Fox told its audience shortly thereafter.

And it turns out, the whole story was made up.

Mid Hudson News reports that seven homeless men have come forward and revealed they were recruited to pretend to be veterans who were displaced from a hotel—with the subtext being that migrants were taking their spots—all so a nonprofit organization could pull off a mass fraudulent scheme on the entire country.

The men told the outlet they were part of a group of 15 who were directed by the Yerik Israel Toney, or YIT, Foundation to pretend to be veterans kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, New York. The men were recruited at a homeless shelter, where they were promised $200 along with food and alcohol. All they had to do was take a trip to participate in a discussion on homelessness with an elected official. After agreeing, the men were all loaded up into vehicles and moved to a diner, where they met the lead fraudster: Sharon Toney-Finch, the founder of YIT. She told them to order whatever they wanted from the menu.

“We ate like kings,” one of the men said. “Sharon introduced herself and told us we could have whatever we wanted and she would pick up the tab.” After the royal meal, Toney-Finch took them to the parking lot and laid out the real plan: Go to a meeting and act like they were veterans displaced from their hotels to make room for migrants.

The storyline was a hook, line, and sinker for the right: A hotel kicked out American veterans to make room for an influx of migrants being shipped to the town. A media firestorm quickly slammed officials for a completely made-up occurrence.

Republican Assemblyman Brian Maher even denounced the hotel by name, going on to attack the federal government’s dealings with migrants and asylum-seekers. “So the Biden administration, Governor Hochul, and the city of New York, they all have a part in this, and it’s a total embarrassment,” Maher said on Fox & Friends First. “It’s a slap in the face to veterans, to citizens of New York in this country, who are really being cast aside to allow for asylum-seekers to come here.”

Maher spoke highly of Toney-Finch, perpetrator of the fraudulent story. “Sharon spoke out, and now she’s getting hate messages. She asked me to handle this interview today because she wants to focus on the veterans,” Maher said on Fox’s airwaves. “And by the way, one of these veterans, 30 years old, he was there for the Afghanistan pullout. For me, one of the most embarrassing moments for our country in our history. And after getting home, he was kicked out of this hotel trying to reintegrate back into our society.” Maher even appealed to the public to donate to the YIT Foundation.

But pulling on one lie opened up another and another. Toney-Finch used a $37,800 hotel receipt as proof she paid for the veterans’ housing herself. But a hotel manager found “no veteran organizations” in the system. “There were no, absolutely no, veterans that were staying here that were asked to leave because of, you know, the migrants that were coming to stay here. Nobody was evicted. That’s for sure.”

Maher pressed Toney-Finch to provide bank records proving that her nonprofit was paying for hotel housing for the veterans. Soon thereafter, Toney-Finch admitted to him that perhaps things were not as they seemed. Maher, for his part, has said he simply took Toney-Finch and the “veterans” at their word.

Thousands of people across the country were duped, misled, and had any potential biases and prejudices further inflamed by this story. And again, it was all made up. But Fox, the New York Post, Newsweek, and a horde of other outlets ran with it anyway.

“We are disgusted, but not surprised, to learn that the New York Post’s front-page story pitting homeless veterans against asylum-seekers was a complete lie,” said Aaron Narraph Fernando, of populist grassroots organization For the Many. “This fake story of George Santos proportions has already made its way into the national media and kicked up a storm of anti-immigrant hatred. It has turned local residents against migrants, sending xenophobic, racist outrage toward asylum-seekers who are simply trying to make a new home for themselves in Newburgh.”

Bipartisan negotiations on the debt ceiling abruptly stopped on Friday after Donald Trump Kevin McCarthy said Republicans weren’t getting enough concessions.

Democrats and Republicans have been locked in a protracted battle over the debt limit, which the GOP has indicated it’s willing to hold hostage in order to reduce government spending. But with the United States just weeks away from defaulting on its debt, President Joe Biden has been meeting with party leaders to try and find a solution. There appeared to have been some progress this week.

But on Friday, Republicans pulled the plug on a meeting shortly after it began. “It’s time to press pause because it’s just not productive,” Representative Garret Graves told reporters.

He said the talks have become “just unreasonable,” and it was not clear when they would start again.

McCarthy backed up what Graves said, telling reporters, “We’ve got to get movement by the White House, and we don’t have any movement yet. So, yeah, we’ve gotta pause.”

AP White House reporter Chris Megerian first tweeted the news that negotiations had ended at 11:28 a.m.

Just 18 minutes before, guess who was posting on Truth Social that Republicans should stop negotiating until all of their ridiculous demands were met?

The farthest-right members of the Republican Party are fully in control. The House Freedom Caucus had already called Thursday for “no further discussion” on raising the debt ceiling until the Senate passes the GOP’s budget bill. And by Friday morning, their wish became reality.

Remember that just three days ago, McCarthy said he’d be willing to continue meeting with the Biden administration “until this gets done.”

The Freedom Caucus members are some of Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, and they were also McCarthy’s biggest obstacle to the speakership. He made multiple concessions to the group in order to win the gavel, and now he is entirely beholden to them. And the country will pay the price.

As the Nebraska state legislature prepares for a final debate on a bill that would ban both gender-affirming care and abortion, one Democratic senator called out her Republicans for their blatant bigotry.

Senator Megan Hunt has helped lead the charge on a marathon filibuster to block anti-trans legislation during the entire legislative session. Her son is trans, making the issue particularly personal. Republicans have rallied to push this latest bill through, including Senator Ray Aguilar, who is recovering from two knee surgeries, and Senator Lou Ann Linehan, who said she had to miss her grandchild’s preschool graduation for the initial vote.

“I’m asking you to love your family more than you hate mine,” Hunt said. “If your family wants you home to recover from surgery, maybe you should do that. If you want to go see your grandson graduate from preschool, you should do that.”

“We don’t need you here.”

On Thursday, Elon Musk announced that Twitter Blue subscribers now have the ability to upload two-hour videos—eight gigabytes worth of content—into their tweets. And one of the top replies showed yet another of many potential legal entanglements Musk faces because of his mismanagement of Twitter.

While this user’s viral post has since been disabled “in response to a report by the copyright owner,” scores of other accounts are continuing to post full-length films on their Twitter accounts. A scroll through the replies to Musk’s announcement of yet another ill-thought-out benefit of his money-losing Twitter Blue regime shows numerous users posting high-quality videos of copyrighted movies.

The episode follows Musk’s announcement of a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, whose appointment was ostensibly meant to symbolize a serious pursuit to appease and attract advertisers. That pursuit was somewhat deflated after a scratch beneath the surface showed how much Yaccarino seems to appreciate conspiratorial and far-right content.

And a bunch of accounts committing copyright violations left and right—amid a decimated content and standards team—probably doesn’t help Twitter one bit.

Donald Trump has been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in efforts to pay hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who he was alleged to have an affair with. He has been found civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. And now, the twice-impeached former president is looking down the barrel of another set of criminal charges to come as soon as early August.

The New York Times reports that the Georgia prosecutor leading an investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election has announced that most of her staff will be working remotely during the first three weeks of August. She has also asked judges in an Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for a portion of that time, as she looks to finally bring charges in the investigation.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis sent out the requests and plans in a letter addressed to 21 county officials, including the chief county judge and county sheriff, the Times reports.

“Thank you for your consideration and assistance in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex safe during this time,” Willis wrote, making explicit what the remote work policy and requests were related to. She has already asked local law enforcement and the FBI to help with security in and around the courthouse as well.

Though the Times doesn’t say this, it’s possible the Georgia indictment won’t come until August, in order to give special counsel Jack Smith the space to bring his own charges against Trump first. As a reminder, Smith is also investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as his mishandling of classified documents.

The investigation into whether Trump and company interfered with the 2020 election in Georgia has been ongoing for over two years. A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for some seven months has recommended indictments of more than a dozen individuals—and Trump is highly suspected to be among the recommended culprits.

Willis’s security concerns are in direct response to Trump’s own attacks on the slate of investigations being led all over the country into his and his allies’ conduct. He and the right have viciously attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, and those in the Georgia investigation as well. In Willis’s letter to the FBI last year, she noted that Trump had called the investigators “vicious, horrible people” at a rally and encouraged protests in cities where he was being investigated.

Trump is 0–2 in just the most recent investigations he has faced. And given how much paper trail has already been exposed showing Trump and his allies’ widespread efforts to overturn the election, it is not unlikely that the Georgia investigation will present insurmountable charges once again.