In late February 2025, social media users shared a screenshot of a purported New York Times headline for an essay by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. The alleged headline read: "How sucking my college buddies p**** made me a better father, husband, and beekeeper." Below the headline was a photograph of Shapiro.
Posts sharing this screenshot were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
(X user @akafaceUS)
The above screenshot is a fake. There is no evidence of such an article ever being published on The New York Times with Shapiro or anyone else as its author.
We found the screenshot to be suspicious when none of the posts sharing it had an accompanying link. We searched for such an article by Shapiro on The New York Times website and found it did not exist.
Google search results also returned no such article with this language. However, we did find a mid-August 2024 meme on iFunny.co, a humor website, with the same fake headline and a photograph of former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris.
(iFunny.co)
The above image is also clearly a fake.
The headline also made an August 2024 appearance with a meme of the popular cartoon "The Simpsons."
(Facebook user "Ellek Ringo")
At the time the fake headline was shared, Shapiro was in the crosshairs of U.S. President Donald Trump's federal budget cuts. In mid-February 2025, Shapiro sued the administration over withholding federal aid unconstitutionally. In late February, Shapiro announced that Trump had freed up billions in aid.