President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act on March 29. The bipartisan bill makes lynching a federal hate crime.
Yet a March 30 Facebook post suggests the bill was never signed. The post's proof: a weather forecast.
“This DID NOT happen yesterday,” the post reads. “It was FREEZING cold yesterday. 30 and extremely windy.”
It continues, “More lies. FAKE NEWS."
The post, which shows images of the bill's signing in the White House Rose Garden, accumulated more than 300 shares and 900 reactions within a week. But it's nonsense.
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There is ample evidence Biden signed the bill into law March 29. As reported by other fact-checking organizations, footage from news outlets and White House documents verify the event’s occurrence. Weather records show the signing occurred near the warmest part of the day, when temperatures were not freezing.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who posted the claim for comment.
Contrary to the claim in the Facebook post, the bill signing was a real event.
USA TODAY reported on the bill’s unanimous passage in the Senate on March 7, as well as Biden signing it into law on March 29. The measure is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was brutally kidnapped and murdered by two white men in Mississippi...
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