PolitiFact Issues Bogus Fact Check Of Springfield Geese Hunting

A “misinformation” reporter for the far-left fact-checking organization PolitiFact who tried to discredit The Federalist’s report on Haitian immigrants hunting geese in Springfield, Ohio, has a history of whitewashing far-left radicalism.

On Sunday, Loreben Tuquero sought to undermine Federalist coverage of an audio recording of a police call in Springfield wherein a local resident reported a group of Haitians carrying dead geese.

“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller told the public services dispatcher. “I’m time crunching here, and I saw that, I’m like, ‘Yeah this has got to be reported.’”

The police audio came as other residents in the community of roughly 60,000, overwhelmed by more than 20,000 Haitians, complained of spotting immigrants hunting geese in the local parks. Tuquero said the call was problematic, however, because officials “found no proof.”

“The caller said he couldn’t identify the full license plate number of the car the group was traveling in,” Tuquero reported, despite the caller making clear in the recorded audio that the car drove away as he made note of the plates.

According to Tuquero, Meta flagged posts related to the story as “false news and misinformation” on its platforms despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s declaration just three weeks ago that the company would refrain from the kind of election interference Silicon Valley engaged in during the 2020 election cycle.

“Existence of the audio and report does not ‘confirm’ goose-hunting is happening,” Tuquero reported. “Clark County officials did not dispute that the nonemergency call was real. But they have said they found no evidence — such as videos, photos or dead geese — to substantiate the claim.”

But while Tuquero aims to discredit the news of Haitian migrants hunting geese in the local parks because the first instinct of residents in a dilapidated blue-collar town isn’t to take a cell phone out, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., has easily escaped substantive criticism.

In late August, Tuquero teamed up with another PolitiFact writer named Grace Abels to claim “J.D. Vance misrepresents Minnesota law on kids seeking gender-affirming care.”

“Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, criticized his vice presidential campaign opponent, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., about signing a law that seeks to protect parents who bring their children to Minnesota for gender-affirming care,” PolitiFact reported. The piece highlighted a comment from Vance at a campaign rally in Wisconsin early in the month.

“I think it’s pretty weird to try to take children away from their parents if the parents don’t want to consent to sex changes,” Vance told a crowd on Aug. 7.

PolitiFact said Vance’s “claim mischaracterizes the reach of the Walz-approved law on parental custody” because authors of the “Trans Refuge Bill” are denying the real consequences of the politically unpopular legislation.

“The amended law does not do that, the bill’s sponsor and legal experts said,” PolitiFact reported. “The law would neither ‘take away’ a parent’s custody rights, nor would it authorize the government to take custody of a child just because a parent objects to gender-affirming care.”

The article, however, concedes the legislation Walz signed in 2023 grants Minnesota courts “temporary emergency jurisdiction” in custody cases for children seeking transgender treatments.

Bobby Jindal and Heidi Overton wrote about the Minnesota law for The Federalist this week.

“If the child has fled from another state, Walz supersedes other state laws that might have more appropriate jurisdiction for custody decisions, granting jurisdiction to Minnesota courts simply because the child is in the state for ‘gender affirming care,’” they wrote. “If a parent with custody is in another state and wants to bring his or her child home, Walz prohibits state officials from complying with child removal requests if the child is in the state for ‘gender affirming care.’”

“But this wasn’t enough for Walz,” they added. The governor “added restrictions on subpoenas, arrests, or extraditions to other states, and he requires all state-regulated health insurance plans to include coverage of expensive transgender treatments for children and adults as part of any insurance plan.”

Tuquero and her colleague, however, rated Vance’s claim as “false.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.