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Fact Check: Are payments received under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) taxable?

Fact Check: Are payments received under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) taxable?

May 9, 2025•by TruthOrFake
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# Are Payments Received Under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Taxable? ## Introduction The claim in question is whether payments received und...

Are Payments Received Under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Taxable?

Introduction

The claim in question is whether payments received under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) are taxable. This topic has gained attention as more states implement paid family leave programs, and employees seek clarity on the tax implications of such benefits. Understanding the tax status of these payments is crucial for both employees and employers navigating the complexities of tax law.

What We Know

  1. FMLA Overview: The FMLA provides eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons. While the act itself does not mandate paid leave, many states have enacted their own paid family leave (PFL) programs that provide compensation during this time 4.

  2. Tax Implications: According to the IRS, payments received under state paid family leave programs must be included in the employee's gross income for federal tax purposes 3. This means that while the payments are not classified as wages for federal employment tax purposes, they are still taxable income 6.

  3. Reporting Requirements: If an employee receives $600 or more in paid family leave benefits during the tax year, the state must report these payments on Form 1099 9. Additionally, employers are required to report any qualified sick and family leave wages paid under the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act (EPSLA) and Expanded FMLA on Form W-2 5.

  4. State Variations: The taxability of FMLA payments may vary by state, as some states have different regulations regarding paid family leave. For example, the District of Columbia has specific guidelines on the taxability of paid family leave 1.

Analysis

The sources consulted provide a mix of governmental and professional insights into the tax implications of FMLA payments.

  • Government Sources: The IRS is a primary source of information regarding tax law and its interpretations. The IRS's guidance indicates that state-paid family leave payments are taxable, which is a critical point for employees to understand 36. However, the IRS's guidance can sometimes be complex and subject to interpretation, which may lead to confusion among taxpayers.

  • Professional Insights: Articles from accounting and tax advisory firms, such as CPA Practice Advisor and HR Works, provide additional context and detail on the implications of these payments 410. These sources often synthesize IRS guidance and provide practical advice, but they may also carry a bias toward promoting their services or expertise.

  • Potential Conflicts of Interest: Some sources, particularly those from tax advisory firms, may have a vested interest in emphasizing the complexities of tax law to attract clients seeking assistance with tax preparation. This potential bias should be considered when evaluating the reliability of their claims.

  • Methodological Concerns: While the IRS provides authoritative guidance, the interpretation of tax law can vary based on individual circumstances. Employees may benefit from consulting with a tax professional to understand how these rules apply to their specific situations.

Conclusion

Verdict: True

The evidence supports the conclusion that payments received under state paid family leave programs, which are often associated with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), are indeed taxable. The IRS explicitly states that these payments must be included in an employee's gross income for federal tax purposes, which is a significant factor in determining their taxability 36.

However, it is important to note that the tax implications can vary by state, and the complexity of tax law may lead to confusion among employees regarding their specific situations. Additionally, while the IRS provides clear guidance, individual circumstances can affect how these rules apply, and consulting a tax professional is advisable for personalized advice.

Readers should remain aware of the limitations in the available evidence, as tax laws can change and interpretations may vary. Therefore, it is crucial to critically evaluate information and seek professional guidance when necessary.

Sources

  1. DC Office of Tax and Revenue. "Paid Family Leave Taxability." Link
  2. Internal Revenue Service. "Section 45S Employer Credit for Paid Family and Medical Leave FAQs." Link
  3. Internal Revenue Service. "IRS Issues Guidance for the District of Columbia and States." Link
  4. Accounting Insights. "Is FMLA Taxable? What to Know About Paid Leave and Taxes." Link
  5. Intuit. "I was on FMLA last year do I report that on my taxes." Link
  6. HR Works. "IRS Issues Guidance on Tax Treatment of Paid Family and Medical Leave." Link
  7. Littler. "IRS Ruling Clarifies Employment Tax Implications of Paid Family and Medical Leave." Link
  8. Seyfarth. "IRS Clarifies the Federal Income and Employment Tax Treatment of Contributions to and Benefits Paid from State Paid Family and Medical Leave Programs." Link
  9. Ogletree Deakins. "IRS Issues Guidance on Federal Tax Treatment of State Paid Family and Medical Leave Contributions and Benefits." Link
  10. CPA Practice Advisor. "Is Paid Family Leave Taxable?" Link

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Fact Check: University of the People review and FAQ Welcome to the most famous, most detailed, most comprehensive review about the University of the People aka UoPeople. Our mission is to help you understand how UoPeople really works—in other words, one of the biggest scams in the history of online education. This informative website has been online for years and still receives hundreds of letters, complaints and reports regarding the University of the People. If you want to join the class action lawsuit against the University of the People, send an email to [email protected] Alert: the Israeli University of the People aka UoPeople is selling degrees in Gaza and Palestine without disclosing that UoPeople is based in Israel, leading the Palestinians themselves to unknowingly fund the state of Israel. Check the official map (in Hebrew). UoPeople, a cult-like for-profit organization, deliberately hides these critical details and, most importantly, refuses to tell the truth. On top of that, the Israeli University of the People has been making a fortune by selling degrees to individuals who lack the qualifications to attend a real university. These "students" simply copy-paste random content generated by the free version of ChatGPT and ultimately buy a degree. The moral of the story? Anyone, even an idiot, can buy a degree from the University of the People. Share on Facebook Share on X Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram Share on Reddit UoPeople University of the People diploma What is the University of the People: the ultimate review and FAQ on UoPeople, i.e. the biggest diploma mill in the world This website provides a comprehensive review and FAQ list on the University of the People (www.uopeople.edu), an online for-profit Israeli diploma mill that bills itself as a non-profit American university in California. Just like any diploma mill, if you visit their alleged current address, "595 E. Colorado Boulevard, Suite 623, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA" you won't see any "university"; instead, you will find a hidden PO box (under the desk) in a shared office, which they rent from loopnet.com/Listing/595-E-Colorado-Blvd-Pasadena-CA/4109015/ and which you can rent yourself: yes, you can get UoPeople's address too. The same goes for the two different PO boxes previously used by UoPeople. In other words, you can't visit this "university" simply because it doesn't exist, unless you consider a constantly changing $80 PO box a university. And if you try to call them, things don't get any better: it is just a dummy voicemail service running on a virtual phone number, and they have no real U.S. landlines or mobile phone lines whatsoever. Curiously, UoPeople claimed for a very long time that it was a real phone number managed by real people. However, after reading this page and after six years, they finally admitted that it is a "voice message service". But why would a self-described university have a throwaway "voice message service" number instead of a real landline? Simple: because they hide their real phone number in Israel. Therefore, when you come across a self-described ambassador (who basically is a spammer) from the University of the People promoting their "tuition-free American university", and you want to have some fun and catch them off guard, just ask them: "Where is your university located?" As soon as they reply "in California", you can point out there is no university at the address they give you. However, since they are brainwashed, they will reply that you are a "hater" and will keep promoting their fake university. The University of the People claims not to be a diploma mill because "we do not give credit for relevant life experience". This explanation is trivial because more than 95% of UoPeople.edu customers are students who don't have any "relevant life experience", so there is no need to take experience into consideration. In fact, it would even be counterproductive because it would highlight their inexperience. Actually, UoPeople, which has no professors and no video classes, uses more sophisticated tricks to "recognize experiences": for example, you can buy college credits from sophia.org and then transfer them to UoPeople. Besides, "life experience" credits are optional: a diploma mill may simply sell degrees for a fee—usually a few thousand dollars—which is exactly what the University of the People does. Considering that UoPeople.edu claims to have more than 100,000 paying students, it is plausible that the University of the People is the biggest diploma mill in the world. However, UoPeople's numbers should always be taken with a grain of salt, as they cannot be verified by anyone and may well be fabricated. The reality is that the University of the People transfers credits from other similar pseudo-diploma mills. Moreover, it attributes credits to some super-easy online courses from sophia.org or coursera.org, which don't even have real exams. You can even use "promo codes" to buy credits from Sophia.org, just like at a supermarket. These promo codes are often distributed through a multi-level marketing scheme. More importantly, you can use ChatGPT or any other free AI service to write every assignment, essay, journal entry, forum post, you name it. You can simply copy and paste any response from ChatGPT, and you are done. You don't even have to delete sentences like "As an AI model, I can't answer this question, but…" because the text will still be accepted. Everyone at the University of the People, including the self-described "teachers", uses ChatGPT. Essentially, you are buying a degree by filling out forms with the help of ChatGPT. UoPeople.edu undergraduate and graduate admission requirements and acceptance rate: 100% or more Many people from Africa and Asia submit fake high school diplomas and get admitted, as long as they start paying. The first fee is $60, which is actually a significant amount in many developing countries, followed by subsequent payments of $120 each. In reality, these fees are the true admission requirements. The University of the People claims this is not tuition but rather "administrative fees"—or occasionally "assessment fees", even though there is nothing to assess. Furthermore, you don't even need to understand English, as you can simply copy and paste random content generated by ChatGPT. It goes without saying that you can submit a fake diploma from any country, as long as it has a convincing fake stamp and a forged signature. This is why the title of this section is "100% or more": not only does UoPeople accept paying students with some form of high school diploma, but it also admits students without a legitimate diploma, effectively exceeding the 100% threshold. An education revolution by eliminating professors and other useless old stuff Just like any diploma mill, University of the People has no professors, no video courses and no original study material. The most frequently recommended sources are Wikipedia pages that might contain mistakes, or PDF files downloaded from various colleges' websites without asking permission from the authors and/or the owners. Those PDF files could also have mistakes or even be technically corrupt, but UoPeople doesn't care. Fake professors The public website lists prestigious names from around the world, but none of them actually teach at the University of the People. Some are even retired. Essentially, the webmaster has been authorized to publish their résumés, which also serves as a clever way to manipulate Google and other search engines. Whenever you look up one of these professors' names, UoPeople's website often appears on the first page of search results, creating the misleading impression that these individuals are actively teaching there. Unfortunately, if you enroll at the University of the People, you won't find any of them. In fact, you won't find any professors at all. Unauthorized logos On the other hand, the webmaster has not been authorized to publish the logos of various organizations, including the United Nations, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Deloitte, IBM, you name it. In his view, these unauthorized logos make the website look "more professional" and help the organization sell more "degrees". In reality, they only make the site appear more deceptive—and, frankly, ridiculous. When UoPeople.edu was first launched, they claimed their alumni worked at Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and other major companies. However, at that time, they couldn't have had any alumni, because the website had just been created. In truth, a degree from the University of the People carries such a poor reputation that many graduates choose to omit it from their résumés. Understandably, employers often discriminate against degrees from questionable offshore diploma mills, especially when they see the name University of the People. One of UoPeople's most repeated advertising slogans is "Education revolution". In this case, we couldn't agree more: they claim to be an educational institution, yet they have no professors, no classes, no real address and no functional phone number. This certainly is a revolution! The for-profit Israeli company that doesn't pay any taxes in the US University of the People Education Ltd is the actual company that operates UoPeople.edu—not the other way around, as falsely claimed by UoPeople's owner, Shai Reshef, who runs this for-profit scam. The company is based in Tel Aviv and employs several Israeli staff members, while many other workers, misleadingly labeled as "volunteers", are underpaid and work remotely off the books from countries with cheap labor, including Nigeria, India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Lately, most of the activity seems to be concentrated in India. To further conceal its true nature, the company established a separate dummy organization in the U.S., named University of the People (without "Ltd"), which successfully obtained non-profit status. According to their claims, the Israeli company merely "offers online technical and administrative services" and is supposedly a subsidiary of the American entity. In reality, this setup allows the so-called "non-profit American university" to funnel millions of dollars in student payments every year to the for-profit Israeli company, while avoiding U.S. taxes. You don't need to be a financial expert to recognize this simple tax-evasion scheme. Just read the mandatory IRS Form 990, which UoPeople, as a registered non-profit, is required to file annually. The document is publicly available at irs.gov. However, what they don't disclose is that University of the People Education Ltd is the real puppet master, controlling the virtual University of the People through a hidden PO box in California. A Reddit user successfully traced the University of the People diploma mill back to Israel. Predictably, UoPeople and its network of Reddit spammers, who also happen to be moderators, began threatening him. The same thing happened to us. However, their so-called attorney ultimately accomplished nothing… or at least, that's what UoPeople claims he is. Nobody knows if he is truly an attorney, as he refuses to disclose or verify his alleged credentials. Currently, the University of the People is paying this same (possibly fake) attorney to sanitize Wikipedia and other online sources. His job? Deleting authoritative government sources that mention Israel and intimidating editors and webmasters into compliance. (For more details, see our Contact section, where we reveal UoPeople's real address.) Unfortunately, this Reddit user was banned by UoPeople's "moderators" simply for exposing the real address. In other words, UoPeople forces the use of its fake California address while actively silencing those who reveal the truth. History of the University of the People UoPeople claims to be tuition-free UoPeople.org started as a tuition-free website—mind you, it was just a website, not a school—that could send you a diploma for free. You didn't have to pay anything because there were no real courses or exams. Needless to say, the diploma was completely useless unless you wanted to use it as a novelty item to hang on your wall. In our opinion, it was useless even as a novelty—because, honestly, University of the People was not the most impressive name they could have chosen, but that's another story. Since this setup was free, it wasn't technically a scam yet. However, don't mistake it for a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) website, which at least offers actual courses. UoPeople.org had nothing of the sort. In 2014, Israeli scammer Shai Reshef—former owner of a for-profit e-learning company that he sold to the education giant Kaplan after encountering legal issues with Israeli authorities—managed to get his uopeople.org website accredited by a defunct, non-regional accrediting agency called DETC (formerly DEAC). This agency had been shut down after accrediting too many diploma mills (scams), but suddenly came back to life, thanks to the money Reshef paid to get uopeople.org accredited: the same money that Reshef later paid to WASC. From that moment, Reshef claimed that his empty website was now an accredited American university and simply changed its name to uopeople.edu by purchasing a new domain. Hooray, the University of the People was born: the "university" that would supposedly help humanity, save the world, and eliminate poverty. This business strategy is particularly profitable because it allows Reshef to collect more and more money to send to Israel through a website of extremely poor technical and cultural quality, which, in fact, has negligible operating costs. At first, uopeople.edu was still free, maintaining its "non-profit" status. But that didn't last long. Soon, Reshef came up with a deliberately misleading advertising slogan: "Tuition-free university". This phrasing was deceptive: sure, there was no "tuition", but only because uopeople.edu was never an actual school in the first place. Instead, it introduced "administrative fees", which required students to pay thousands of dollars for a diploma, exactly like most international diploma mills. The difference? The original uopeople.org diploma was free, whereas the new uopeople.edu diploma came with a hefty price tag. Today, the old uopeople.org website simply redirects to uopeople.edu. But even if it's not free, UoPeople is still a bargain! No: UoPeople is still a scam As soon as you realize that UoPeople is not actually "tuition-free", as their misleading ads and articles claim, their representatives aka "ambassadors" typically respond with: "It's tuition-free, but not completely free, and it's a bargain because it's low-cost." First of all, "low-cost" and "free" are two entirely different concepts. Ironically, UoPeople claims to offer an MBA and a Bachelor/Associate of Science in Business Administration, yet they seem to misunderstand basic business terminology. If your business model is low-cost, your ads should say "low-cost tuition", not "tuition-free". That being said, this is still a scam. It is like saying: "I could steal $50,000, but I'm a nice person so I'll only steal $5,000". Either way, you are still stealing! Charging $5,000 instead of $50,000 doesn't excuse fraudulent, aggressive, and deceptive business practices, especially while pretending to be a philanthropist "helping the poor" in Africa, India, and Asia. In reality, UoPeople is a fake charitable Israeli organization and one of the biggest scams in the nonprofit sector. Adding insult to injury, because UoPeople claims that student payments are "administrative fees" rather than tuition, students do not qualify for federal grants, aid, or subsidized student loans. Testimony of a former instructor «Last year, I was hired by this online Israeli school. The salary was extremely low, and they made me sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), explicitly stating that I must not discuss the contract itself. This is highly suspicious for an organization that claims to be a nonprofit. In reality, they exploit workers by falsely labeling them as "volunteers" to avoid legal action and tax obligations. I eventually quit because I was fed up with this scam. In retaliation, they refused to pay me for my hours. They profit off poor students from underdeveloped countries while deceiving charitable organizations with false promises of fully funded Bachelor's and MBA scholarships. It's a blatant case of charity fraud. To make matters worse, they even instructed me to create fake social media profiles, including LinkedIn, to fabricate the existence of a so-called "professor". Yes, the profiles existed, but the person was completely made up.» Uncensored and unfiltered UoPeople reviews written by students Leaving UoPeople.edu: impossible, unless you pay again «I am currently in the process of transferring to another school, which requires all my transcripts whether they accept the credits or not. I submitted my request and paid the transcript fee—yet another fee!—to UoPeople nearly three months ago. A week ago, I followed up via email to check on the status of my transcript. Their response? They claimed they had never received my request form or payment. I had to dig through my records and forward them the original email, including the form and the receipt they themselves had sent me. A week later, there is still no update. It's as if they don't want me to leave because they want more money. A fellow student who tried to transfer also went through the same nightmare. Don't be fooled by fake reviews from UoPeople's sales reps and so-called "ambassadors". If you still have a chance, avoid this hassle altogether. Apply to a local community college—a real school—and seek out genuine scholarships or financial aid. University of the People is simply not worth it. No matter how much or how little you pay, it's a waste of time and money.» Complaints about extortion schemes and payments «I live in the third world. Not only did UoPeople refuse to grant me a scholarship, but when I ran out of money and couldn't afford the last fee, they completely blocked my access to the website. That's right: if you don't pay, they disable your account, and you can't log in anymore. This isn't education; this is extortion. On top of that, there's clear tax evasion going on. Now, I'm left wondering: how exactly are they laundering money overseas?» MBA «I'll go straight to the point: they sold me an MBA that is not accredited as an MBA. It's completely useless. UoPeople's MBA is not legit, period.» Comment: thank you for your email. We discussed UoPeople's unaccredited MBA in the accreditation section. Peer-assessment «UoPeople's so-called "peer assessment" is driving me crazy. I submitted my assignment and got a zero (wow…) simply because all three peers assigned to grade it forgot to do so. Or maybe they just didn't know how. I feel completely cheated. I did my part and graded others as required, but I have yet to hear anything from the "volunteer instructor" to resolve the issue. She is ignoring my emails: either she's on vacation, or she's simply abandoned the course. Honestly, I even suspect her name is completely fake. At this point, I don't want to waste any more of my time. And please, don't even suggest that I need to pay yet another fee just to leave this "school", for heaven's sake.» Comment: unfortunately, UoPeople's "peer assessment" or "peer review" is nothing but a farce, just like the laughable "student learning journal". At UoPeople, students can literally copy and paste ChatGPT-generated responses as homework, and they will be accepted. In fact, the responses can even be completely random, because nobody checks whether ChatGPT's answers are accurate or relevant. That's exactly what most "students" do, especially those who don't understand English.And here's the best part: most UoPeople "instructors" are so clueless they don't even recognize ChatGPT responses. Funnily, some instructors rely on ChatGPT themselves, especially the ones who don't understand English. Peer-assessment is just yet another marketing gimmick from UoPeople. The fake rationale they provide is "it stimulates students and offers them a powerful platform" and "it is a collaborative approach that encourages learners to reflect deeply and engage with students from diverse perspectives," but it is all false. In fact, UoPeople has no professors, and peer-assessment is simply a way to avoid hiring and paying professors. UoPeople doesn't care if the student didn't understand anything about the assignment they were supposed to grade, or even if they don't understand English at all. Our advice Be wary of any organization that asks for money yet refuses to disclose its real location. Students should thoroughly research the schools they are sending money to. University of the People is a symptom of today's "education revolution"—a landscape distorted by profit-driven motives, deceptive advertising, and a disturbing lack of skepticism. The truth is, nothing in this world is truly free (or "tuition-free"): the advertisement of a "free university" should immediately raise red flags. Last but not least, if uopeople.edu were genuinely committed to helping the poor and eliminating poverty, why does it refuse to build real schools where they are needed most? Why doesn't it support poor students in their own countries instead of charging them thousands of dollars in "non-refundable administrative fees"? Selling questionable online degrees does nothing for the world's poorest populations, many of whom lack internet access altogether. In reality, UoPeople is exploiting Africans and Asians by taking their money. For example, thousands of African children are forced to work dangerous mining jobs around the clock and have no access to education. Yet, UoPeople does nothing to help them, aside from spreading fake PR stories to maintain its image. Instead of addressing its own alarming issues, UoPeople is focused on censoring criticism. The university even paid Forbes to remove a critical article, replacing it with a redirect to forbes.com. UoPeople is not interested in transparency—only in clickbait sponsored articles that serve its marketing agenda. Fortunately, the article has been republished here: edtechchronicle.com/universityofthepeople/ Fake news from UoPeople.edu UoPeople computer centers in Haiti After the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in 2010, University of the People claimed to have built several computer centers for the earthquake victims. However, there are no UoPeople computer centers in Haiti. University of the People should be ashamed of spreading fake news like this, because many Haitians died during that terrible earthquake, and this Israeli diploma mill has no respect for them. UoPeople's PR office in Israel even paid nytimes.com to publish a fake story, with a fake (stolen) picture, about the alleged "UoPeople computer centers" in Haiti. Not only has UoPeople never built anything, but unfortunately, some charity organizations and individual citizens generously donated money, only to be scammed. UoPeople also uploaded the same stolen pictures to Wikipedia, where they were eventually deleted. Fake news and reviews on websites, media outlets, Internet forums, YouTube etc. The Israeli UoPeople.edu PR office uses international PR services such as einpresswire.com, prnewswire.com, cision.com, prweb.com, and many more. UoPeople submits any kind of story, including fake news and clickbait articles, and these platforms distribute thousands of copies all over the web. The more you pay, the more important the target websites become, which can include cnn.com, nytimes.com, forbes.com, and so on. As a result, when uninformed users see an article about UoPeople on Forbes or The New York Times, they think "Wow, wonderful news! It must be true because it's on forbes.com!" (or nytimes.com, cnn.com, etc.). Too bad the entire story was completely invented by uopeople.edu, and the journalist whose name appears on the article often has no idea what "UoPeople" even is. This absurd situation has been going on for more than ten years. For example, the BBC once published this headline: University of the People: where students get free degrees. Fake news! Instead of being free, UoPeople's degrees cost thousands of dollars. Moreover, University of the People's sales reps or ambassadors, who often disguise themselves as students, write hundreds of fake reviews on the internet (Quora, Wikipedia, Medium, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, TrustPilot, LinkedIn, forums of various kinds, etc.), claiming that UoPeople is "wonderful", "a dream come true", "free", "the best university in the world" and other nonsense. Some spammers even claim to have met "the best professors in the world". Too bad UoPeople.edu notoriously has no professors: it is no coincidence that all these people conveniently omit the names of their alleged professors. They will also encourage you to "contact me and ask me anything else", which is nothing more than pure spam. University of the People also forces people from Africa and Asia, who are not students and have never attended UoPeople, to write fake reviews, especially on Facebook and Trustpilot. These reviews include phrases like "thank you free university", "great free American university", "I like the scholarships", and "I'm honored to use UoPeople.edu", usually accompanied by five-star ratings or a thumbs-up. These reviewers have no idea what they are talking about: they still have to pay the admission fee and have only watched a few UoPeople.edu commercials without ever logging into the website. UoPeople primarily uses these fake reviews to artificially inflate its average rating on Facebook. Sarah Vanunu was the former PR manager of UoPeople.edu. She worked (and still works) in her hometown in Israel. Her main job was to spread fake news about UoPeople across the internet while ensuring that nobody mentioned "Israel". The reason is simple: UoPeople is based in Israel but does not want people to know, particularly its Arab customers who are unaware that they are sending money to an Israeli organization. To put it plainly, whenever someone mentioned Israel—such as pointing out that UoPeople's owner, Shai Reshef, is from Israel—Sarah Vanunu would send an email demanding that the word "Israel" be removed or censored. When we refused to comply, we received a threatening letter from a "UoPeople.edu attorney", who claimed that UoPeople would take legal action against us. If we remember correctly, his name was Asaf Wolff, although we have no idea who he really is. In any case, we ignored his threats and deleted his letters. A few years later, we discovered that Sarah Vanunu had grown tired of representing a scam. She left the University of the People and now works for a more legitimate company. At the time of writing, Lindsay Pullen from Pennsylvania and Maor Galmor from Israel have taken over as the primary PR manipulators, but it is understood that these roles can change frequently. Update (2023): as predicted, they have now abandoned the UoPeople scam. As of now, it remains unclear who the current PR spammers are. Fake apps UoPeople claims to have developed a mobile app for iOS and Android to help poor people who can only access the internet through slow connections. However, neither Google Play nor the Apple App Store has ever had this app; only a few unrelated fake apps exist instead. In reality, UoPeople's subscription-based website—which requires a non-refundable $60 entry fee just to access the actual platform (beyond the promotional content)—performs poorly on all low-end mobile devices, making navigation difficult. The reason is simple: UoPeople runs on a basic Moodle installation on shared hosting—they don't even have their own servers—meaning the site is not optimized for mobile devices and often runs slowly on desktop computers as well. Ironically, UoPeople offers degrees in computer science, but their own website is clunky, outdated, and they have failed to develop a functional mobile app. A beautiful graduation ceremony Actually, at UoPeople, there is no such thing as a real graduation ceremony. Being a diploma mill, you simply receive your piece of paper by mail after paying all the required fees. That's it. However, UoPeople uploaded an amateur video showing a very long list of names of people who received their diplomas by mail. Apparently, this is what UoPeople considers a "beautiful graduation ceremony". Wikipedia UoPeople.edu has been bombarding Wikipedia with ads, fake stories, and fake pictures for a long time. As a result, most Wikipedia editors now consider UoPeople accounts to be a real nuisance. For example, paid users like Weatherextremes and SimoneBilesStan (now banned) have used Wikipedia solely to spread fake news and sponsored articles about University of the People. The latter spammer even incorporated the names "Simone" and "Biles" into their username, without Simone Biles' permission, to falsely claim that she is a "UoPeople student and ambassador", which is completely untrue. Read our article to learn more about this scam. Reddit Besides being filled with all sorts of weirdos and idiots, UoPeople's subreddit is populated by sales reps who never disclose their identity and falsely claim to be "happy students". Since Reddit is free to use, these reps and spammers can flood the subreddit with fake reviews and fake news, essentially creating unlimited deceptive advertising. Additionally, the moderators, usually disguised as "happy students", ensure that no alternative views can be expressed. Everyone must repeat UoPeople's scripted Q&A, or else they get banned; you can't even write the address of this website, because "it's forbidden". There is no way out: you must buy a degree from the University of the People, and then you must say it is "the most beautiful university in the world". Not only does this cult-like closed-mindedness shows just how brainwashed, or brainless, these people are, but it also exposes the organization's lack of credibility. Last but not least, there is also an official bot named "UoPeople09" that seems mentally challenged and just copy-pastes the same messages over and over: typical spam from UoPeople. Fake scholarships Scholarships and grants are another long-standing part of UoPeople's aggressive and deceptive marketing campaigns. The ads claim that there are "lots of scholarships for everyone", but in reality, students must pay a $60 non-refundable fee just to inquire about these so-called scholarships. What UoPeople.edu never discloses is that there are no scholarships for Master's or Bachelor's degrees. In fact, only about 1% of students receive any kind of discount on their total tuition—meaning, at best, they only pay for two years instead of four. In other words, this is nothing more than a discount designed to attract new customers, all of whom must pay $60 upfront—a quick and easy way to generate revenue. Additionally, the ads promoting these so-called scholarships contradict UoPeople's claim of being tuition-free. After all, if courses were actually free, there would be no need to lure students in with clickbait articles about scholarships. This is how the "scholarship" scam works, step by step: young people, especially from developing countries, search for scholarships online; they come across sponsored clickbait articles claiming that "a great tuition-free university is giving lots of scholarships"; they click the article and are tricked into paying the non-refundable $60 "administrative fee". On the whole, UoPeople's scholarships are just a marketing stunt. The actual cost of a degree issued by UoPeople is 0 dollars, because this Israeli online university doesn't have any expenses to cover. Therefore, the thousands of dollars they ask for are thousands of dollars taken unjustly, used only to fund the state of Israel. UoPeople boasts about offering scholarships, which are essentially discount vouchers awarded based on a marketing strategy, and serve to further increase revenue through a word-of-mouth mechanism inspired by multi-level marketing techniques. Fake partnerships The so-called partnerships are a ripoff: some are completely invented, while others are simply useless. We cannot comment on the invented partnerships because they do not exist. However, we can examine the oldest one—the alleged partnership with the University of Edinburgh. Here's what UoPeople.edu claims: We are honored to announce our collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, which aims to support students uprooted by war, famine, and natural disasters. Health Science graduates from UoPeople will be eligible to apply to the University of Edinburgh to complete a bachelor's degree in Health, Science, and Society. First of all, any statement that begins with "we are honored to announce" suggests it is a recent development. Too bad this exact claim dates back to 2017, but uopeople.edu continuously removes or alters the date to make it seem new. That being said, the alleged partnership allows hypothetical UoPeople graduates to apply for undergraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh. However, it should be noted that there is no guarantee that the University of Edinburgh will accept these students: they can only apply. But anyone can apply anyway! There is no requirement to be a UoPeople student in order to apply to Edinburgh. So why on earth should anyone waste thousands of dollars on a useless UoPeople diploma when they can enroll in a real university directly without paying UoPeople anything? Bottom line: This "partnership" is nothing more than a marketing trick: just another way for the University of the People to squeeze money out of students and waste their time. Have you ever wondered how many students have actually taken advantage of this so-called partnership? Ranald Leask, International PR & Media Manager at the University of Edinburgh, provided the official answer: "Although we have yet to welcome any students through our partnership, this track remains open and we look forward to collaborating with University of the People in the future." In other words, zero UoPeople students have ever been accepted at the University of Edinburgh through this partnership. Other alleged "partners" (Berkeley, NYU, etc.) seem to operate under a similar model: if admitted, a UoPeople student may have the opportunity to become an undergraduate student. However, anyone can already apply to any real university (including Berkeley and NYU) and become an undergraduate student, without ever going through uopeople.edu. So why waste time and money on a UoPeople degree when it does nothing to improve your chances of getting into a real university? You can enroll directly in a real university without going through UoPeople. Fake partnership with Harvard University The latest claim is that "UoPeople has a new partnership with Harvard University", which is another blatant attempt by uopeople.edu to mislead people by using Harvard's name and logo, even though this Israeli diploma mill has nothing to do with Harvard. To "prove" this partnership, uopeople.edu links to hbs.edu. However, nowhere on that website does it state that Harvard University has formed a partnership with the University of the People. In reality, hbs.edu simply contains a list of institutions that requested to have their logo added. Any school can be listed by simply clicking Contact us: this is not a partnership of any kind with Harvard University. Besides, people who take Harvard Business School Online courses are not considered Harvard students! UoPeople requested to have its logo added and now falsely claims to be a "partner"; actually, Harvard University likely doesn't even know what UoPeople is. And as usual, there is no need to be a UoPeople student to take Harvard Business School Online courses—which, to be clear, are not part of Harvard University. Fake partnerships with Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Columbia University, New York University, Oxford University (UK) etc. We suggest you conduct a simple experiment. Call Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Columbia University, New York University, and Oxford University—fortunately, they all have real phone numbers, unlike UoPeople.edu—and ask if they "have a partnership", if they "work with", or if they "are affiliated with" the University of the People, as UoPeople's reps and ambassadors claim. The answer will be no: these universities have nothing to do with UoPeople, and in most cases, they have never even heard of it. Despite this, UoPeople continues to flood the Internet with outdated sponsored articles and press releases falsely claiming that it "works with" Harvard, Berkeley, NYU, and others. What's even more ridiculous is that UoPeople only name-drops Ivy League institutions, MIT, or Oxford (UK), as if every other university in the world is worthless. A laughably naive PR strategy. Fake partnerships with the United Nations and its agencies This is another fake story that used to appear on UoPeople's sponsored articles, and still appears on their website. The reality is the United Nations and its agencies do not have any partnerships with University of the People, nor is University of the People affiliated with them. As the United Nations' official website states, BEWARE OF SCAMS IMPLYING ASSOCIATION WITH THE UNITED NATIONS The United Nations has been made aware of various correspondences, being circulated via e-mail, from Internet web sites, text messages and via regular mail or facsimile, falsely stating that they are issued by, or in association with the United Nations and/or its officials. These scams, which may seek to obtain money and/or in many cases personal details from the recipients of such correspondence, are fraudulent. […] [In particular:] The United Nations does not offer prizes, awards, funds, certificates, compensation, scholarships […] Nevertheless, University of the People continues to claim that it has partnerships and affiliations with the United Nations (UN) and that it offers UN scholarships. It even uses UN logos without authorization, all in an effort to mislead people. Fastest way to buy a degree from UoPeople The fastest way to buy a degree from the University of the People is by using the ridiculous website sophia.org, where you can instantly pass "exams" and then "transfer credits" to UoPeople. Some students have managed to obtain their degree in just six months using this method. How our dog graduated from the University of the people using ChatGPT Thanks to this wonderful university, our beloved puppy, a Jack Russell terrier, graduated in Business Administration. Sounds insane? Not at all: it was shockingly easy, as long as we kept paying. First, we bought a diploma from a Nigerian high school, claiming that Jack (first name) Russell (last name) had completed his studies in Africa. It's important to note that this was not a fake diploma, but a genuine document printed by a real African school for a fake student (or in this case, a real dog, depending on your point of view). We also created a fake ID for "Jack Russell", using a human photo (one of us), because UoPeople and its proctors never verify whether a document is real or forged. After all, UoPeople never checks whether the "student" is actually a person or simply an AI-generated identity or even a pet. As long as you keep paying, you can easily claim that Jack Russell is a person and not a dog. Even when they ask for webcam verification, you can simply show them the fake ID for Jack Russell, and that's it. Anyway, we paid the entry fee and carefully selected the best program for our puppy. After considering the options, we decided on Business Administration: after all, UoPeople's homepage proudly claims that all their alumni work at top companies like Apple and Google. With such promising career prospects, we were confident that our Jack Russell would land a great job immediately. As for the tests, a (human) student provided us with the answers, which have remained the same for years, while we handled essays and daily journal entries by simply using the free version of ChatGPT. The vast majority of UoPeople students, especially those who barely speak English, copy-paste their homework directly from ChatGPT. Perfect results and an exceptionally high GPA: truly an "education revolution"! After paying $4,860, we were finally able to celebrate our Jack Russell's well-earned degree! Therefore, we feel compelled to write this positive review, just as a UoPeople ambassador instructed us to do on social media. Rating: A+ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ UoPeople is a great university to buy an online degree from an Israeli diploma mill. He is already considering further education, most likely an MBA from UoPeople. Jack Russell also received a wonderful internship offer! Before graduating, UoPeople presented him with an exciting paid internship opportunity in Nigeria and India. However, in this case, "paid" meant that the student had to pay $1,495 to accept the internship (not the other way around). That's right: a UoPeople online internship, typically located in Nigeria or India, comes with a $1,495 price tag. The internship task? Writing a simple HTML page. Finding it far too easy, Jack Russell was not interested in UoPeople’s offer and politely declined. Our Jack Russell is also eager to film a YouTube video proclaiming University of the People as the most beautiful university in the world. Given that UoPeople spends enormous amounts of money on spammy SEO instead of actually helping Africa, he is thrilled to contribute to spreading the "education revolution" message. After all, our puppy and his degree, earned with the free version of ChatGPT, represent the biggest revolution ever: "UoPeople, the first dog-friendly university." We even sent an email to UoPeople, but so far, nobody has replied; we will keep you guys posted. By the way, our Jack Russell received his degree from India. Yes, University of the People mails degrees from India, or at least this is where ours was sent from. Other people have received letters from the U.S., but not from the supposed office in California. It is all very strange and suspicious, considering that the "university" claims to be based in California. But the explanation is simple: UoPeople is using yet another PO box in India, along with a group of underpaid local workers, to obscure the true location of its for-profit operations in Israel. And when UoPeople refers to an "address", it always means a PO box or a virtual address—never a real, physical location. Update 2025: We have been informed that, a few years after this article was published, UoPeople read it and introduced some new rules to make it more difficult for dogs to earn degrees. For example, it recently introduced a proctored exam that, in theory, is supposed to exclude dogs (but there are simple tricks to bypass it). Share on Facebook Share on X Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram Share on Reddit The University of the People, which is about to face our class action lawsuit, claims that this website was created by "disgruntled ex-employees who falsified their academic credentials and were fired." Fake news! We are former students who left the University of the People after realizing UoPeople was a for-profit scam and not a legitimate American school. By the way, we would never agree to work (for free!) for an Israeli diploma mill that operates like a cult. Despite UoPeople's false accusations, we have never been involved in any of their scams, and we want our money back! Besides, stating that "the volunteer instructors were fired because their credentials were fake" clearly proves that University of the People "hires" instructors with fraudulent credentials without conducting even the most basic background checks. On the other hand, we are certain that no UoPeople professors use fraudulent credentials, just because UoPeople has no professors at all! Everyone at UoPeople simply copy-pastes content generated by the free version of ChatGPT, so there is no need to hire real professors. Last but not least, UoPeople claims to have won a court case against this site. Despite numerous attempts to censor this site, UoPeople has never managed to achieve anything, and no judge has ever ruled in their favor. This site exercises its right to provide information, and UoPeople has never won any case for the simple reason they cannot censor the truth. Every legal attempt UoPeople has made to censor this site has miserably failed, and UoPeople has also had to pay the legal fees. Instead of solving the problems we discuss on this site, UoPeople keeps losing court cases, because no judge has ever believed its nonsense. Despite numerous legal defeats, University of the People is running out of ideas and keeps trying to slander our website. For example, we came across excuses like "you must not listen to this website because the people who wrote it are crazy". So, instead of solving its own problems, UoPeople accuses the rest of the world of being "crazy": a very childish behavior. Another excuse is "you must not listen to this website because it is antisemitic". False: this site is not antisemitic, because we are not interested in religions or ethnicities. The real issue is that UoPeople provides a fake American address to send money to Israel. Had they provided their real Israeli address, there wouldn't be any issue. Share on Facebook Share on X Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram Share on Reddit Unlike University of the People, our International monitoring center on the legitimacy of degrees offers a free website: we are not a "tuition-free website" that asks you to pay "fees" at the end of the month.

Detailed fact-check analysis of: University of the People review and FAQ Welcome to the most famous, most detailed, most comprehen...

Apr 1, 2025
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Fact Check: Not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner’ A member of Pierre Poilievre’s extended family has crossed through Roxham Road illegally to seek asylum in Canada from Venezuela.  Anaida Poilievre’s uncle, José Gerardo Galindo Prato, is the third from the right in the front row at the Conservative Party convention in Quebec City, September 9, 2023. The hypocrisy is overwhelming when you consider Poilievre’s stance on illegal border crossers and his blame of the liberal government. I am glad that he is here safe and sound. But what makes him special is that he’s able to live here in Canada undocumented with a deportation order and his name until Anaida Poilievre and an undisclosed MP’s office in 2021 and his efforts to get permanent residency. Article by The Breach In late July 2018, Pierre Poilievre took aim at “illegal border crossers.” “How much will it cost to house the illegal border crossers in hotels in the coming year?” he repeatedly asked during a parliamentary committee hearing, criticizing the Liberal government for helping shelter thousands of asylum seekers who had entered the country through Roxham Road in Quebec. “Who will pay for it?” Two months later, the Conservative leader’s own uncle-in-law crossed Roxham Road on foot. After failing to get his refugee claim approved, he appears to have lived undocumented in Canada with a deportation order in his name. According to documents obtained by The Breach, Poilievre’s relative—the uncle of his wife, Anaida Poilievre—received help from her and an undisclosed MP’s office in 2021 in his efforts to get permanent residency. He has since been seen attending Conservative events, as recently as 2023, according to photos examined by The Breach. Poilievre has said a Conservative government would “have the resources” to “track down” such individuals and deport them. “These are people who are not eligible to be here and we will find them and we will deport them,” Poilievre told a Montreal radio station in December. The Conservative leader has taken an increasingly hard line on asylum seekers entering Canada, calling to shut down Roxham Road, where tens of thousands crossed in recent years fleeing hardship or persecution. At his election campaign launch on Sunday, Poilievre said he would put a hard cap on immigration and take other measures. “We will keep out and deport criminals, stop fraud and crack down on bogus refugee claims,” he said. “On immigration, like everything else, we will put Canada First.” Refugee advocacy organizations say his position appears to be “his family first.” “It is deeply hypocritical that Poilievre has vilified migrants, blamed them for the housing and affordability crisis, and said he wants to deport undocumented people who are in the same situation his own family seemed to be in,” said Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. “If Poilievre’s family deserves to make a life here, so does everybody else’s.”‘Shut off the flow of false refugee claims’: Poilievre Anaida Poilievre’s uncle, Venezuelan lawyer José Gerardo Galindo Prato, had previously entered Canada in 2004 and lived without documentation until 2007, when he was deported by Canadian border agents. Back in Venezuela, Galindo Prato was convicted in 2017 of helping a drug trafficker escape from prison and served six months in prison, which he says was a trumped-up, false charge. In the fall of 2018, he flew to Miami, then to Pittsburgh, and later crossed at Roxham Road. The Breach obtained a draft copy of Galindo Prato’s written submission to Immigration Canada from early 2021, applying to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, which Anaida Poilievre helped him prepare. At this stage of the asylum process, he would have already failed his refugee application and been served with a deportation order, according to an immigration lawyer The Breach consulted. According to email and Facebook correspondence seen by The Breach, Anaida Poilievre organized the drafting and mailing of the submission with assistance from a parliamentarian. In one message she wrote that she had a “person helping in a MP’s office.” In another, she was even more direct. “I’m trying to help my uncle,” she wrote, and “the MP can help us.” At the time, she worked as an executive assistant in the office of Conservative MP Michael Cooper, a close ally of Pierre Poilievre. Since Poilievre became leader, she has taken an active leadership role herself, narrating ads, introducing her husband at major events, and playing a key role in fundraising for the party. The revelations about an undocumented family member raise questions about whether Pierre Poilievre was in any way involved in advocating for his uncle-in-law to stay in the country, despite his outspoken rhetoric against “illegal border crossers.” In December 2024, Poilievre called for Canada to bulk up the security at the border, including by deputizing provincial police and cracking down on “false refugee claims.” “We need to shut off the flow of false refugee claims who are in no danger in their country of origin but who are sneaking in either through our porous border, through our weak visa system, and then when they’re here, making a false claim,” he said. Galindo Prato’s written submission, which the immigration lawyer verified looks like a typical example, says he was persecuted and jailed without trial in Venezuela. But online court documents from the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice indicate he was charged with helping a drug trafficker escape from prison while he served as a legal consultant in a psychiatric clinic. Because refugee and immigration proceedings are highly confidential, The Breach could not confirm whether Galindo Prato has received his permanent residency. But The Breach was able to identify Galindo Prato sitting with the rest of Anaida Poilievre’s family in the front row at the Conservative Party convention in Quebec City in August 2023. “I love real refugees,” Poilievre said in December. “Our country was built in large part by real refugees who were genuinely fleeing danger, like my wife. But I have no time for people who lie to come into our country, and that is the problem we have to cut off.”‘Not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner’ Refugees who try to enter Canada at official border crossings are turned back, because of an agreement with the United States that suggests they are safe in Canada’s southern neighbour. So thousands of people like Galindo Prato have crossed into the country at unofficial entry points like Roxham Road, after which they are able to make a claim for asylum. There is no guarantee that they will be able to stay—tens of thousands of refugees have been deported by the Liberal government in recent years. Migrant Workers Alliance for Change executive director Hussan said that humanitarian and compassionate grounds are the last resort for denied refugee claimants like Galindo Prato and are granted on the basis of strong community ties. “But not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner,” he said. “We think every asylum seeker, refugee, migrant, and undocumented person should have permanent resident status in order to ensure equal rights. What Poilievre is proposing is instead to deport and destroy the lives of vast numbers of people—except those he knows.” Hussan’s organization is part of a coalition of groups in the Migrant Rights Network that have spent years advocating for the government to grant status to undocumented people in Canada, who number anywhere between 300,000 and 600,000. The Liberals had pledged in late 2021 to “explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.” But in the wake of increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Conservative Party’s surge in the polls, the government backtracked on their promise for a “broad and comprehensive program.” By contrast, Poilievre has promised to more vigorously pursue deportations, especially of people—just like his uncle-in-law—who have had their initial refugee claims rejected. “We know that there are 30,000 people who’ve been ordered deported that have not left,” Poilievre said in December. “Trudeau has lost control of immigration. I will take back control. First of all, we will track down the 30,000 people who’ve been ordered deported, and I will have them deported from this country.” Two years ago, Poilievre described the Roxham Road crossing as one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s great failures. “Nowhere is that chaos more evident then at Roxham road where Trudeau encouraged people to cross illegally into Canada,” Poilievere said. “We need more immigrants but we need to have it done in an orderly and lawful fashion.” In 2023, the Liberal government closed Roxham Road permanently. Poilievre has increasingly blamed Canada’s crises on immigrants and migrants, saying last fall that “radical, uncontrolled immigration and policies related to it are partly to blame for joblessness, housing and healthcare crisis.” In his submission to Immigration Canada, Galindo Prato writes that he was detained without trial after making allegations about corruption within the Venezuelan government. He said he was held for almost five months in a three-by-four-meter cell, where he was beaten and deprived of clean water, medical care, and adequate nutrition. But according to the court documents filed in the Supreme Court of Venezuela by the public prosecutors office and in Venezuelan media coverage, Galindo Prato was charged with the crime of helping the escape of a convicted drug trafficker, while he was serving as the legal consultant for a psychiatric clinic. Galindo Prato did not reply to multiple attempts to reach him through direct messages to his social media accounts. Anaida Poilievre did not reply to a request for comment by time of publication. A Conservative campaign spokesperson provided a written statement to The Breach that “Mr. Galindo Prato has pursued his case through established channels, including with the use of an immigration lawyer.” “While MPs may make requests for information to [Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada], MPs do not have the ability to influence immigration cases,” the spokesperson wrote. “It is certainly ridiculous to suggest that opposition Conservative MPs would be able to influence cases under a Liberal Government.” In fact, parliamentarians frequently advocate for the Immigration Minister to expedite immigration applications, including for undocumented people. “This is a disgusting smear of Ms. Poilievre’s extended family who have been subjected to persecution and political repression in Venezuela, and we will not be commenting further,” the spokesperson added.

Detailed fact-check analysis of: Not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner’ A member of Pierre Poilievre’s ex...

Mar 28, 2025
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Fact Check: THIS IS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE MAGA PROJECT 2025 : PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE AND SHARE FAR AND WIDE ❤ THANK YOU FOLKS ❤ LIKE THE MAGA, THE PP HAS A 100 DAY AGENDA : The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. Over the past year, if you asked around Ottawa about the transition team that was planning Pierre Poilievre’s first days in government, you were likely to be met with shrugs. The members of the team were not named, and those in the know were not talking. Even The Hill Times, the Ottawa parliamentary affairs outlet that excels at digging up gossipy news, had come up empty-handed. At the outset of 2025, they approached a dozen Conservatives close to Poilievre, all of whom stayed tight-lipped. His campaign manager Jenni Byrne ran a very tight organization, and slip-ups might incur her wrath. Besides, any operative whose party is on the verge of power knows it’s best to maintain utmost organizational secrecy. Such discipline, however, sometimes falters under the influence of a few drinks. That’s what Bryan Evans, a political science professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, found out in late 2024. Around the winter holidays, he ducked into his neighbourhood bar and ran into an old acquaintance. The man wasn’t himself on the transition team, but it turned out he was deeply informed. They slid onto stools for a conversation. While they didn’t run in the same circles, and certainly didn’t share political opinions, his acquaintance knew that Evans had an understanding and appreciation for the machinery of government. For ten years he was employed by the Ontario government, including a stint in the Ministry of Labour after Progressive Conservative Mike Harris had come to power in the mid 1990s. Relying on insights from that experience, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on that government and its radical agenda. In December 2024, Poilievre was riding high in the polls, as he had been for nearly two years. So maybe it was the overconfidence talking. Over beers, Evans’s drinking companion laid out more about the transition planning than anything yet discovered by well-connected reporters in the establishment media. The group was preparing for a Poilievre government to hit the ground running. It was going to be a blitzkrieg. “You were there at the start of the Mike Harris government.” “Yeah,” Evans said. “That’s going to be the playbook.” It was an ominous sign. Mike Harris’s government had moved quickly to make dramatic reforms. They had a hundred-day agenda, and they got a lot done: laying off public sector employees, cutting funding to education, slashing social assistance rates, deregulating industries, repealing equity laws, selling off Crown corporations, and empowering the government to impose user fees on public services. “It’s going to come hard and fast from every direction again,” Evan’s acquaintance said. The groups and communities impacted, as well as the political opposition, both inside Parliament and outside, would have to fight on dozens of fronts at once. One of Harris’s key first steps was to balance the budget as a way of supercharging their plans, according to Guy Giorno, the premier’s top strategist. He described this as their “agenda within the agenda,” the “factor which meant that absolutely everybody rolled in the same direction.” It began the process of shrinking public spending, and was followed up by deregulation, rolling back labour protections, freezing the minimum wage, and encouraging the subcontracting of public services. Back in the 1990s, Harris had been convinced by Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s advisors that he would have to move speedily to implement his agenda, lest he get tripped up by protests or a stubborn public service. Those advisors had once encouraged Klein to read the work of economist Milton Friedman (Pierre Poilievre’s own ideological guru). In the 1980’s, Friedman had written that “a new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity.” It’s the lesson Friedman had drawn from his first laboratory, Chile. After the U.S. backed overthrow of democratic socialist Salvador Allende, the military dictator Augusto Pinochet had instituted a violent, rapid-fire makeover of the economy, following Friedman’s radical free market rulebook: privatization, deregulation, cutbacks to the public sector, and attacks on labour unions. Purging the public service As for the composition of Poilievre’s transition group, Bryan Evans’ acquaintance belatedly recalled his Fight Club rules. He wouldn’t divulge names, but offered some ideas. There were Poilievre’s policy advisors, as well as some former senior public servants, lawyers, and an ex-Cabinet minister. He admitted that some people who had been around for the Mike Harris days were in there too. Even before they were sworn in as the government in 1995, Harris’s team had laid groundwork within the public service to ensure they could take swift control of the levers of power. Members of his transition team had shown up to their first meeting with outgoing NDP government officials with a list of six high-ranking deputy ministers they wanted to meet quickly. Those civil servants were the A-list, empowered to advise and serve Harris’s agenda; several others, considered unfriendly, received their pink slips as part of a careful purge. As one NDP official remarked, his own party had “assumed office, but never took power. These guys are taking power even before they have assumed office.” Poilievre’s transition team also was thinking very strategically about how they would wield the machinery of the state. Who did they want to bring into the higher ranks of public service to help advance their plans? Who should be removed? And who might they want for the most important position of all, the top ranking civil servant, the Clerk of the Privy Council? These were some of the questions they were asking while plotting their first moves. When it came to policy plans, one crucial difference between the two eras was that Mike Harris’ Conservatives publicly had rolled out their agenda years in advance. Harris’s young ideologues put out detailed papers, organized policy conferences, eventually published a manifesto, the Common Sense Revolution, of which they printed 2.5 million copies. Everyone knew what was coming, even if it would still shock people when it arrived and extend far beyond what Harris had promised. Would Poilievre’s team, for instance, follow Mike Harris’s “playbook” on healthcare? Harris had lulled Ontario into complacency by assuaging voters’ fears about protecting health services. Their manifesto was crystal clear: “We will not cut healthcare spending.” But the result turned out to look very different: forty hospital closures, 25,000 staff laid off, and declining per capita real funding at a time of growing need. Poilievre’s team, by contrast, hadn’t laid out many policy details. And yet, over the years and in the run-up to the spring of 2025, Poilievre had telegraphed a lot in past election platforms, online videos, and podcast interviews with Jordan Peterson. It hinted at what his sweeping agenda would entail if he was able to secure a majority government—an assault on the country’s collective assets and already tattered social programs, a renewed attack on unions, activist and Indigenous defenders, and a bonanza of deregulation and privatization that would make his billionaire backers cheer. This is an excerpt from Martin Lukacs’s THE POILIEVRE PROJECT : A RADICAL BLUEPRINT FOR CORPORATE RULE published by Breach Books and available for order.

Detailed fact-check analysis of: THIS IS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE MAGA PROJECT 2025 : PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE AND SHARE FAR AND WIDE ❤ TH...

Apr 6, 2025
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Fact Check: THIS IS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE MAGA PROJECT 2025 : PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE AND SHARE FAR AND WIDE ❤ THANK YOU FOLKS ❤ LIKE THE MAGA, THE PP HAS A 100 DAY AGENDA : The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. Over the past year, if you asked around Ottawa about the transition team that was planning Pierre Poilievre’s first days in government, you were likely to be met with shrugs. The members of the team were not named, and those in the know were not talking. Even The Hill Times, the Ottawa parliamentary affairs outlet that excels at digging up gossipy news, had come up empty-handed. At the outset of 2025, they approached a dozen Conservatives close to Poilievre, all of whom stayed tight-lipped. His campaign manager Jenni Byrne ran a very tight organization, and slip-ups might incur her wrath. Besides, any operative whose party is on the verge of power knows it’s best to maintain utmost organizational secrecy. Such discipline, however, sometimes falters under the influence of a few drinks. That’s what Bryan Evans, a political science professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, found out in late 2024. Around the winter holidays, he ducked into his neighbourhood bar and ran into an old acquaintance. The man wasn’t himself on the transition team, but it turned out he was deeply informed. They slid onto stools for a conversation. While they didn’t run in the same circles, and certainly didn’t share political opinions, his acquaintance knew that Evans had an understanding and appreciation for the machinery of government. For ten years he was employed by the Ontario government, including a stint in the Ministry of Labour after Progressive Conservative Mike Harris had come to power in the mid 1990s. Relying on insights from that experience, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on that government and its radical agenda. In December 2024, Poilievre was riding high in the polls, as he had been for nearly two years. So maybe it was the overconfidence talking. Over beers, Evans’s drinking companion laid out more about the transition planning than anything yet discovered by well-connected reporters in the establishment media. The group was preparing for a Poilievre government to hit the ground running. It was going to be a blitzkrieg. “You were there at the start of the Mike Harris government.” “Yeah,” Evans said. “That’s going to be the playbook.” It was an ominous sign. Mike Harris’s government had moved quickly to make dramatic reforms. They had a hundred-day agenda, and they got a lot done: laying off public sector employees, cutting funding to education, slashing social assistance rates, deregulating industries, repealing equity laws, selling off Crown corporations, and empowering the government to impose user fees on public services. “It’s going to come hard and fast from every direction again,” Evan’s acquaintance said. The groups and communities impacted, as well as the political opposition, both inside Parliament and outside, would have to fight on dozens of fronts at once. One of Harris’s key first steps was to balance the budget as a way of supercharging their plans, according to Guy Giorno, the premier’s top strategist. He described this as their “agenda within the agenda,” the “factor which meant that absolutely everybody rolled in the same direction.” It began the process of shrinking public spending, and was followed up by deregulation, rolling back labour protections, freezing the minimum wage, and encouraging the subcontracting of public services. Back in the 1990s, Harris had been convinced by Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s advisors that he would have to move speedily to implement his agenda, lest he get tripped up by protests or a stubborn public service. Those advisors had once encouraged Klein to read the work of economist Milton Friedman (Pierre Poilievre’s own ideological guru). In the 1980’s, Friedman had written that “a new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity.” It’s the lesson Friedman had drawn from his first laboratory, Chile. After the U.S. backed overthrow of democratic socialist Salvador Allende, the military dictator Augusto Pinochet had instituted a violent, rapid-fire makeover of the economy, following Friedman’s radical free market rulebook: privatization, deregulation, cutbacks to the public sector, and attacks on labour unions. Purging the public service As for the composition of Poilievre’s transition group, Bryan Evans’ acquaintance belatedly recalled his Fight Club rules. He wouldn’t divulge names, but offered some ideas. There were Poilievre’s policy advisors, as well as some former senior public servants, lawyers, and an ex-Cabinet minister. He admitted that some people who had been around for the Mike Harris days were in there too. Even before they were sworn in as the government in 1995, Harris’s team had laid groundwork within the public service to ensure they could take swift control of the levers of power. Members of his transition team had shown up to their first meeting with outgoing NDP government officials with a list of six high-ranking deputy ministers they wanted to meet quickly. Those civil servants were the A-list, empowered to advise and serve Harris’s agenda; several others, considered unfriendly, received their pink slips as part of a careful purge. As one NDP official remarked, his own party had “assumed office, but never took power. These guys are taking power even before they have assumed office.” Poilievre’s transition team also was thinking very strategically about how they would wield the machinery of the state. Who did they want to bring into the higher ranks of public service to help advance their plans? Who should be removed? And who might they want for the most important position of all, the top ranking civil servant, the Clerk of the Privy Council? These were some of the questions they were asking while plotting their first moves. When it came to policy plans, one crucial difference between the two eras was that Mike Harris’ Conservatives publicly had rolled out their agenda years in advance. Harris’s young ideologues put out detailed papers, organized policy conferences, eventually published a manifesto, the Common Sense Revolution, of which they printed 2.5 million copies. Everyone knew what was coming, even if it would still shock people when it arrived and extend far beyond what Harris had promised. Would Poilievre’s team, for instance, follow Mike Harris’s “playbook” on healthcare? Harris had lulled Ontario into complacency by assuaging voters’ fears about protecting health services. Their manifesto was crystal clear: “We will not cut healthcare spending.” But the result turned out to look very different: forty hospital closures, 25,000 staff laid off, and declining per capita real funding at a time of growing need. Poilievre’s team, by contrast, hadn’t laid out many policy details. And yet, over the years and in the run-up to the spring of 2025, Poilievre had telegraphed a lot in past election platforms, online videos, and podcast interviews with Jordan Peterson. It hinted at what his sweeping agenda would entail if he was able to secure a majority government—an assault on the country’s collective assets and already tattered social programs, a renewed attack on unions, activist and Indigenous defenders, and a bonanza of deregulation and privatization that would make his billionaire backers cheer. This is an excerpt from Martin Lukacs’s THE POILIEVRE PROJECT : A RADICAL BLUEPRINT FOR CORPORATE RULE published by Breach Books and available for order.

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