How a New York driver’s license went viral with false claims this week

And what if a late state budget meant a pay cut for state lawmakers?

Good afternoon — it’s Friday and Manufacturing Day.

In today’s CapCon:

• Did New York issue a commercial driver’s license to an undocumented immigrant, as Rep. Elise Stefanik repeated this week? We fact-check that claim.

• President Donald J. Trump has reversed a $187 million cut in counterterrorism funding for New York.

• What if lawmakers and the governor had to permanently forfeit their salaries when the state budget is late?

Names in today’s CapCon: J. Kevin Stitt, Kathy Hochul, Elise Stefanik, Sean Duffy, Donald J. Trump, Mike Lawler, Andrew Garbarino, Dan Goldman, Bill Weber

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Rep. Elise Stefanik (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

🪪 How a false claim about New York issuing a CDL to an immigrant exploded

The island of Java is one of several that make up the archipelago nation of Indonesia, located in Southeast Asia. Stay with me.

Java is where most of the Javanese people live. They’re the largest ethnic group in Indonesia, with different sources hovering around an estimate of about 100 million people. That’s nearly half of Indonesia’s population.

This is no small group. They’re predominantly Muslim but incorporate Hindu practices into their culture as well.

Another part of the Javanese culture is their practice of using only one name without a surname. Instead of my name being Dan Clark, it might be Danclark if I was Javanese. Many in that culture simply do not have a last name.

Indonesia, as a whole, recognizes all parts of someone’s name as one thing, called a mononym. They don’t have separate first, middle and last names. It’s kind of like how Mary Beth can be someone’s first name, even though it’s two words.

People from Indonesia also immigrate to the U.S. There are about 80,000 people in the U.S. who identify as Indonesian and about three-quarters of them are immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center.

So what happens when someone from somewhere like the island of Java immigrates to the U.S. and has only one name? It’s not like we can assign them a last name.

Instead, that person’s full name from Indonesia, Danclark for example, is used as their last name on U.S. government documents and “NO NAME GIVEN” is used for their first name. That’s federal policy.

That practice was at the center of a controversy this week that blew up on social media and resulted in misinformation being spread to millions of users by prominent politicians, including the likely Republican nominee for New York governor next year.

(Will Waldron/Times Union)

🗣️ Stefanik repeats false claim about immigrant issued New York CDL

It started when Oklahoma Gov. J. Kevin Stitt posted on social media that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol had seized a New York commercial driver’s license from an undocumented immigrant.

“If New York wants to hand out CDLs to illegal immigrants with ‘No Name Given,’ that’s on them. The moment they cross into Oklahoma, they answer to our laws,” Stitt said. The post has 5.7 million views.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the Republican who’s widely expected to challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul in next year’s race for governor, quickly reacted to Sitt’s post with one of her own and a statement sent out by her office.

“The latest bombshell discovery is that Kathy Hochul’s dangerous and irresponsible ‘Green Light Law,’ allows criminal illegal immigrants to be issued commercial drivers licenses in some cases shockingly labeled ‘No Name Given,’ allowing them to operate 80,000-pound commercial vehicles across the country,” Stefanik said.

The license shared by Oklahoma Gov. J. Kevin Stitt

There are two main claims here: that New York issued the license to an undocumented immigrant and that it was made possible by the state’s Green Light Law.

That law, approved in 2019, allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses in New York if they can prove their identity, date of birth and that they live in the state. They have to get a permit and take a driver’s test like everyone else as well.

Let’s look at the two claims separately, starting with the immigration status of the license holder.

1. Was the license holder undocumented?