Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Feasting on Food Stamps; NewsGuard's Reality Check, October 31, 2025

Ines Chomnalez, NewsGuard's Reality Check ; Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Feasting on Food Stamps

"False Claim of the Week: 59 Percent of U.S. Residents Without Legal Status Collect Federal SNAP Food Benefits

NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” highlights a false claim from NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints proprietary database of provably false claims and their debunks. The claim that 59 percent of U.S. residents without legal status collect federal SNAP food benefits is NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” due to its widespread appearance across social media platforms and websites, its high engagement levels, and the high-profile nature of the sources promoting it. Those three factors, as well as both its significant subject matter and potential for harm, makes it our False Claim of the Week.

Debunk: Millions of Immigrants Without Legal Status Are Not Receiving SNAP Benefits, Contrary to Conservative Claims

What happened: Citing a report on the Newsmax network, conservative social media accounts are claiming that 59 percent of U.S. immigrants without legal status collect Supplement Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps. Some users advancing this claim said it shows that the federal nutrition program should be gutted.

Context: On Oct. 1, the federal government entered a shutdown, pausing funding to the federal Agriculture Department (USDA), which is responsible for issuing SNAP benefits. SNAP provides low-income Americans with electronic cards they can use to purchase food.

• Because of the government shutdown, the USDA said in an Oct. 27 statement that no new benefits would be issued to the 42 million Americans who receive SNAP assistance, starting on Nov. 1. On Oct. 31, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the administration must continue to make the payments for now.

A closer look: On the Oct. 27 episode of the Newsmax primetime show “Finnerty,” host Rob Finnerty said, “Fifty-nine percent of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps, meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.” Other conservatives soon began spreading the claim.

• Conservative X user @overton_news posted the Newsmax clip on Oct. 27, quoting Finnerty’s statement that “59% of ALL illegal aliens are collecting food stamps” in the caption. The post received 1 million views and 45,000 likes in less than one day.

• The same day, conservative news site TheGatewayPundit.com published an article headlined, “DEMOCRAT BACKFIRE: The Government Shutdown Has Awakened the Public About How Many People Are on Food Stamps.” The article included the above quote from Finnerty advancing the false claim, and added, “It really is shocking and now that Democrats have prolonged the shutdown, more people are going to be talking about this.”

Actually: Residents without legal status are not eligible to collect SNAP benefits, according to the USDA’s website.

• The site states, “SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented non-citizens.”

Although Finnerty did not provide any evidence for his claim, it appears to be based on a misinterpretation of a statistic, previously cited accurately by conservative social media users, from the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a think tank that supports tight immigration limits.

• CIS stated in a 2023 report: “Our best estimate is that 59 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants, also called the undocumented use at least one major [welfare] program.”

• As the quote indicates, CIS was describing households receiving assistance from any “major” welfare program — not just SNAP. CIS defined “major” programs as assistance in the form of cash, Medicaid, housing, and food (including the nutrition program for women, infants, and children known as WIC, as well as school meals).

Broken down by specific welfare program, the CIS report estimated that 0.9 percent of U.S. households led by non-legal residents receive SNAP benefits. The report did not clarify whether that percentage was composed of non-legal residents obtaining SNAP benefits illegally, or of legal residents lawfully collecting the benefits but who live in a household headed by a non-legal resident.

Newsmax did not respond to an email from NewsGuard requesting comment on the matter."

Suspected Minnesota Shooter Is Not a Left-Wing Democrat; NewsGuard's Reality Check, June 17, 2025

Chiara Vercellone , NewsGuard's Reality Check; Suspected Minnesota Shooter Is Not a Left-Wing Democrat

"What happened: Conservatives are baselessly claiming that Vance Boelter, the man who allegedly shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota, is a registered Democrat. Others have inaccurately described him as a “leftist.”

Context: In the early hours of June 14, Boelter, posing as a law enforcement officer, allegedly fatally shot Democratic Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously wounded Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their respective homes, authorities said.

A closer look: Within hours, conservative social media accounts began claiming that Boelter, who was taken into custody on June 15, was a member of the Democratic Party and a leftist, in an apparent attempt to cast Democrats and liberals as violent and to deflect any claims that he was a conservative.

• Conservative commentator Ann Vandersteel, a self-described “citizen journalist” who has more than 360,000 followers on X, posted: “The man who just assassinated Democrat Rep. Melissa Hortman is also HIMSELF A DEMOCRAT.” The post garnered 45,500 views and 1,100 likes in two days.

• Anonymous conservative X account @amuse posted on June 16: “His Democrat roommate insists (without evidence) that Boelter, a registered Democrat, is a huge Trump supporter.” The post received 44,800 views and 1,000 likes in less than one day.

Others, including X owner Elon Musk and Republican Sen. Mike Lee, claimed that Boelter is “far left” and a “Marxis[t].”

Actually: Friends of Boelter, voting records, government officials, and an alleged manifesto that authorities said was found in Boelter’s vehicle show that he was not a Democrat or liberal and may have voted for Donald Trump."

One Third of Americans Believe Russian Disinformation, NewsGuard-YouGov Survey Finds; NewsGuard's Reality Check, April 16, 2025

Matt Skibinski , NewsGuard's Reality Check; One Third of Americans Believe Russian Disinformation, NewsGuard-YouGov Survey Finds

"In the ongoing battle between fiction and reality, fiction — much of it created by Russia’s robust disinformation machine — appears to be winning.

A national YouGov survey commissioned by NewsGuard found that one third of Americans believe at least one false claim now being spread by Russian media outlets.

The survey, conducted on a representative sample of 1,000 Americans, presented respondents with 10 false claims that have spread widely online, including three that originated from or were primarily spread by Russian media outlets. Respondents were asked to identify whether each claim was true, false, or whether they were unsure about its veracity.

The false claims were selected from NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints, a continuously updated data stream of provably false claims spreading online.

In addition, the survey found that one in three Americans believe false claims spread by the Kremlin to be true, and three quarters are unable to consistently identify Russian disinformation narratives as false.

The results also show that Americans are widely vulnerable to believing falsehoods spread online across a range of topics including health and medicine, elections, and international conflicts: Of the 10 claims presented, 78 percent of respondents believed at least one claim, and less than 1 percent of respondents correctly identified all 10 claims as false."

Opinion | Trump’s Nominees Falsely Say I’m Censoring Conservatives — So They Want to Censor Me; Politico, January 5, 2025

 STEVEN BRILL , Politico; Opinion | Trump’s Nominees Falsely Say I’m Censoring Conservatives — So They Want to Censor Me

"Last week, The Washington Post published an article detailing how NewsGuard, whose journalists rate the reliability of news sources, has become the target of incoming Trump administration regulators and far-right Republicans in Congress. They are accusing me and my NewsGuard colleagues of being part of some left-wing conspiracy — or “cartel” in the words of the incoming chairs of both the FCC and the FTC. Our cartel is supposedly aimed at censoring conservative websites and their associated social media and video platforms.

What we actually do is provide consumers and businesses with our journalists’ assessments of the professional standards of thousands of news websites, assigning them reliability scores based on apolitical, journalistic factors — like accuracy, transparent correction policies and honest headlines. Advertisers, for example, can use these reliability scores to make sure their computerized placements of online ads avoid running alongside Russian disinformation, health care hoaxes or other content that could embarrass their brands. Consumers who subscribe to our browser extension can also see those ratings when they pull up an article or scroll through a Facebook or X feed.

If you click the link to the Post article, you’ll see that the reporters compiled a chart of our 0-100 point ratings for a sample of 20 news sites. It plainly demonstrates that we give high and low ratings to liberal and conservative sites alike, because the nine criteria we use to tally the point score have nothing to do with politics. After all, is there a liberal or conservative way to have a transparent policy for admitting and correcting errors or having headlines that accurately reflect what’s delivered in the story?"

This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.; The Washington Post, December 24, 2024

Will Oremus

 and 

Naomi Nix

, The Washington Post; This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.

"At a time when social media, podcasts and partisan outlets are displacing the mainstream media as news sources, the battle over NewsGuard’s future is symptomatic of a broader societal struggle over who gets to arbitrate the truth."

'It just exploded': Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians; NBC News, September 13, 2024

Alicia Victoria Lozano , NBC News; 'It just exploded': Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians

"The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout...

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported. 

Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment."

Laura Loomer’s Greatest Hits; NewsGuard's Reality Check, September 13, 2024

NewsGuard's Reality Check; Laura Loomer’s Greatest Hits

"Loomer has initiated or promoted 17 of the provably false narratives on significant news topics in NewsGuard’s catalog of False Narratives.

Conservative commentator Laura Loomer has been in the headlines this week amid reports that she has been a regular on former President Donald Trump’s campaign plane and has steered him toward promoting conspiracy theories. These include the debunked claims of Haitian migrants abducting and eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.  

Loomer’s claims have long been a subject of interest at NewsGuard. Here’s what we know:"

Fake news, social media, and "The Death of Truth"; CBS News, September 8, 2024

Ted Koppel, CBS News; Fake news, social media, and "The Death of Truth"

"Brill said, "We're at a point where nobody believes anything. Truth as a concept is really in trouble.  It's suspect."

The cumulative impact of the lies and distortions just keeps growing, such that Brill titled his new book "The Death of Truth." "There are facts," he said, "and it used to be in this world that people could at least agree on the same set of facts and then they could debate what to do about those facts.

But we're losing our grip on any sort of shared reality. Brill's company, NewsGuard, is attempting to put the brakes on. Its 40 or so staffers around the world identify and rate the credibility of online news and information sources."

Video Clip: The Death of Truth; C-Span, June 9, 2024

 C-Span; Video Clip: The Death of Truth

"Steven Brill, a journalist and NewsGuard Co-CEO, talked about his new book on online misinformation and social media, and their impact on U.S. politics and democracy."

NewsGuard Wants to Fight Fake News With Humans, Not Algorithms; Wired, August 23, 2018

Issie Lapowsky, Wired; NewsGuard Wants to Fight Fake News With Humans, Not Algorithms

Kip Currier: I just heard veteran journalist Steve Brill talking about a new information assessment tool called NewsGuard on MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports. Brill delivered this money quote on how NewsGuard provides evaluation of often-visited Internet sites by human (translation: not AI!) experts:

"That's what librarians have been doing since the invention of the library." 

--Steve Brill, August 24, 2018,
Andrea Mitchell Reports Program, MSNBC

[Excerpt]

"The patchwork nature of promoting trustworthy sources online has had the unintended consequence of seeding fears of bias. 

That's one reason why a group of journalists and media executives are launching a tool called NewsGuard, a browser plug-in for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that transcends platforms, giving trustworthiness ratings to most of the internet's top-trafficked sites. Those ratings are based on assessments from an actual newsroom of dozens of reporters who comprise NewsGuard's staff. They hail from a range of news organizations, including New York Daily News and GQ. Together, they've spent the last several months scoring thousands of news sites."