Online posts in early June claimed that Ivanka Trump, the daughter of former President Donald Trump, has taken her husband Jared Kushner's last name.
The alleged legal move, social media users claimed, was part of an attempt to "rebrand" her image and distance herself from her father who is embroiled in legal battles on several fronts and could even be headed to prison.
But what is the basis for these reports, which could deal another serious personal and political blow to the potential Republican nominee in the 2024 election? Newsweek Misinformation Watch investigated the viral claim.
Over the past week, a number of high-engagement posts repeated the claim that Ivanka Trump had changed her last name to that of her husband, Jared Kushner.
Some appeared to frame the claim within a wider narrative of Trump's allies fleeing the "sinking ship," amid a string of bad news the former president has received in recent weeks.
Trump has been indicted on 37 charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the case related to the alleged illegal retention of classified documents after he left office. The charges include obstruction of justice and espionage. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, insisting he is innocent on his Truth Social website.
The former president, and the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for 2024, has also been indicted in a civil case related to the alleged payment of hush money to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, which he denies.
He is facing separate investigations into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia and the events surrounding the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021.
Amid this legal peril, and the news of the resignation of Trump's legal team in the case, reports emerged suggesting that Trump's eldest daughter is also looking to distance herself from the Trump family and name.
Some of those reports appear to be justified. Ivanka, who remained silent on her father's latest indictment, previously gave testimony to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. She was absent from her father's announcement of his 2024 reelection bid in November.
She moved to dismiss the services of lawyers representing her brothers and brought in her own legal team in the $250 million fraud case brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James against the Trump Organization.
As Newsweek reported, the new team of lawyers wrote to the judge overseeing the case on March 6, asking for a delay of the trial and arguing that their client was not directly involved in the wrongdoing alleged by James.
Finally, this week, it emerged that Donald Trump did not appear in the photos from his granddaughter's weekend bat mitzvah celebration in Miami that daughter Ivanka Trump shared on Instagram, fueling further speculation about possible cracks in the relationship. She later posted pictures of a birthday dinner that Donald Trump hosted for her daughter at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida a few weeks ago.
These reports of a purported rift in the Trump family created fertile ground for more theories, including suggestions that Ivanka Trump decided to take her husband's surname.
"Has Ivanka Trump changed her name to Ivanka Kushner? Not yet?" one Twitter user asked.
"Ivanka Is Done Being a Deplorable, Corrupt Trump, Thank You Very Much: She Is Now Ivanka Kushner," said a tweet with more than 72,000 views, linking to a PoliticalFlare article.
Ivanka Is Done Being a Deplorable, Corrupt Trump, Thank You Very Much: She Is Now Ivanka Kushner https://t.co/I2lg6Em7CY
— #TuckFrump (@realTuckFrumper) June 11, 2023
"Even his own daughter has dumped the name. Ivanka Trump wants to be known as Ivanka Kushner from now on," wrote another user.
One of the earliest examples, (also linking to the PoliticalFlare article) of the claim, archived here, was posted on June 1, 2023, and gathered more than 1.2 million views.
The claim continued to circulate even as it was debunked by other users, including the left-leaning account belonging to journalist Brian Krassenstein.
As Krassenstein pointed out, it appeared to originate from a paywalled May 27 article by Business Insider, titled "Call Her Ivanka Kushner."
While the article appeared to recite some of the reporting about Ivanka Trump and her father's relationship to support the sensational headline, it clearly stated that she had not changed her name.
"She hasn't changed her name, but Ivanka Trump's image has undergone a major makeover in recent years, as she has slowly separated herself from her father's brand," the article stated.
Newsweek was not able to find any further evidence or reporting that would corroborate the speculative claims about the name change. Trump's daughter has not changed her social media profile handles or made any statements to the media to suggest that she has taken or even intended to take her husband's name.
Newsweek reached out to Ivanka Trump and her lawyer for comment via email.
Instead, it appears to be another case of viral misinformation, whereby a careless or sensational headline is taken out of context (sometimes via a screenshot, but also when grabbed from an article under a paywall) and weaponized for the purpose of propagating a particular narrative.
Newsweek has previously reported on other examples of this misinformation technique, including a since-edited Financial Times headline in an article on NATO and misleading claims about military presence during the WEF summit in Switzerland.
Another example was an article shared by Greta Thunberg with an awkwardly worded headline, "Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don't Fix Climate Change by 2023," for which she was criticized despite the meaning of the underlying study being deliberately twisted.
