Did a "Military Court in Betheda, Maryland" dismiss a discrimination case brought by Admiral Rachel Levine, as a viral meme claimed? No, that's not true: The meme, which also referred to Levine as "Biden's DEI Admiral", originated on a Facebook page with a satire disclaimer. The owner of the page is known for tricking conservatives into liking and sharing made-up content.
The meme showed up in a post (archived here) published by a page named "America's Last Line of Defense" on May 11, 2025 with a caption that read:
"Admiral" Rachel Levine's frivolous discrimination lawsuit -- and her career -- are both over.
This is what the meme looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri May 30 07:55:46 2025 UTC)
The text in the meme read:
The Military Court in Betheda, Maryland informed Biden's DEI Admiral that her discrimination case was being dismissed as frivolous.
They also affirmed the order from Secretary Pete Hegseth for the Admiral to pack up and leave the Pentagon.
We're finally getting back to normal.
A first hint the story isn't real is that Google Maps knows of no place named "Betheda", in Maryland or elsewhere, insisting on "Showing results for bethesda. Search instead for betheda."
A second indication was the satire disclaimer in the meme itself:
A third clue could be found on the page transparency tab of the Facebook page that published the meme which said it was run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who, for years, has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
Blair's websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers, and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images, or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustrations. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories.
Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks trying to make a buck by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.
Other fact checks
Here you can find some of the many, many stories from Blair's websites Lead Stories debunked over the years.
The same page previously ran a story about a fictional lawsuit from Admiral Levine as Lead Stories reported on here.
