Category: Fact Check

  • Fact Check: Gavin Newsom’s Mostly False claim about Ron DeSantis’ support of amnesty for immigrants

    Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, “lacks any credibility” on immigration,” California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said during a Fox News debate in Alpharetta, Georgia.  

    Although DeSantis is campaigning for president on a strict immigration agenda, in Congress he “supported amnesty,” said Newsom. 

    “That’s false,” DeSantis responded, starting a back and forth exchange in which they talked over each other. 

    “You supported John Boehner’s bill. It’s a fact,” said Newsom. “When you were in Congress, you supported Obama’s efforts to advance comprehensive reform.”

    “That’s false,” said DeSantis. “I killed Boehner’s bill.”

    To discern facts from falsities, we looked at DeSantis’ record on immigration while in Congress, and the facts behind Newsom’s claim that DeSantis supported amnesty. 

    Amnesty has no agreed-upon definition

    Newsom’s claim hinges partly on the definition of amnesty. For some people, amnesty is giving people who are in the U.S. illegally a legal status. For others, it’s a catch-all term for any policy favorable to people in the U.S. illegally, even if that policy doesn’t lead to citizenship.

    A common reference for amnesty is the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which President Ronald Reagan signed and which paved the way for immigrants who were in the country illegally to become lawful permanent residents if they met certain requirements.

    A Newsom spokesperson didn’t give us Newsom’s definition for amnesty, but pointed us to news articles to back Newsom’s claim. A spokesperson for DeSantis political action committee Never Back Down pointed us to other news articles to discredit Newsom’s claim. 

    Newsom’s evidence dealt with votes DeSantis cast while in Congress. Only one of them would have provided a legal status to certain people illegally in the U.S. More often, DeSantis has opposed such measures.

    Examples of DeSantis supporting amnesty, according to Newsom

    2013: DeSantis voted in favor of a bill to increase employment visa and green card quotas

    While on the House Judiciary Committee in June 2013, DeSantis voted to move the SKILLS Act, a bill introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., out of committee. The measure increased the overall caps on visas for highly educated workers but included no benefits for people in the country illegally. 

    2014: DeSantis supported plan giving legal status to immigrants in the U.S. illegally, but backtracked 

    In January 2014, when Congress and President Barack Obama were working toward comprehensive immigration reform, then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced a set of immigration principles that included a path to citizenship for people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

    Although Boehner opposed a path to citizenship for adults who came to the U.S. illegally, the principles discussed creating a legal status for this group if they met certain requirements including passing background checks, paying fines and learning English. 

    A February 2014 Roll Call article listing representatives’ stances on Boehner’s immigration principles said DeSantis originally said “yes” to whether he supported them, but asked to be moved to the “no” category Feb. 25, 2014.

    Earlier in February 2014, Boehner backtracked on the principles, saying Obama’s administration could not be trusted, The Washington Post reported.

    2015: DeSantis voted for a trade provision that some conservative groups said could lead to more easily passing pro-immigration laws 

    In June 2015, DeSantis voted for a Republican-backed bill that would temporarily authorize the president to fast-track congressional approval on trade agreements. The measure, the Trade Promotion Authority, lets the president negotiate international trade agreements and pass them in Congress with a simple majority without an amendment process. 

    Conservative immigration groups said then that this would let Obama insert pro-immigration provisions that  Congress would be unable to amend, such as changes to guest worker visa programs, into the trade agreements. 

    However, Republicans repeatedly said they would not support trade agreements that included immigration provisions. 

    2018: Voted for legal status for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children

    In September 2017, the Trump administration said it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that prevents the deportation of eligible immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children. 

    As the program’s end loomed, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., introduced two immigration bills that would let beneficiaries stay in the United States while increasing border security and reducing legal immigration. 

    Under the “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018,” aka Goodlatte I, program recipients could apply for a three-year, renewable nonimmigrant legal status. However, that status would not grant a path to citizenship.

    DeSantis voted for Goodlatte I, which would qualify as amnesty under the broadest definition because it provided relief to people who entered the U.S. illegally.

    DeSantis voted against Goodlatte II, a compromise among conservative and moderate Republicans. Under this bill, a broader group of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children could apply for the same nonimmigrant legal status. This bill created a path for citizenship.

    Neither bill passed the House.

    Examples of DeSantis opposing amnesty, according to DeSantis Super PAC

    2013: DeSantis voted to resume deportations of people brought to U.S. illegally as children

    In June 2013, DeSantis voted for an amendment that prevented using Department of Homeland Security funds to carry out immigration policies, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The amendment sought to restart the deportation of people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

    The vote passed the House, but the then- Democratic-controlled Senate and White House opposed it. 

    2013: DeSantis opposed comprehensive immigration reform passed in Senate 

    The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that DeSantis at a town hall said he opposed an immigration reform bill that passed in the Senate and would have established a 13-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

    2014: DeSantis spoke publicly against a path to citizenship for immigrants illegally in the U.S.

    In October 2014, while DeSantis was running for reelection in the House, The Daytona Beach News-Journal, published a Q&A detailing DeSantis’ and his opponent’s stances on issues, including immigration. 

    DeSantis said he would “do everything in my power to stop Barack Obama from unilaterally and unconstitutionally instituting a massive amnesty by executive fiat.”

    Our ruling

    Newsom said “when (Ron DeSantis) was in Congress, he supported amnesty.”

    During most of his congressional tenure, DeSantis opposed bills providing a pathway to citizenship to immigrants in the U.S. illegally. 

    However, in 2018 DeSantis voted for a bill providing a renewable three-year legal status to immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children. That bill did not create a path to citizenship. The bill would qualify as amnesty under the broadest definition because it provided relief to people who entered the U.S. illegally.

    The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.



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  • Fact Check: How generative AI could help foreign adversaries influence U.S. elections

    We’ve seen it before: Foreign adversaries, seeking to influence U.S. elections, deploy bots and trolls to infiltrate social media platforms.

    In 2016 and 2019, the Russian group Internet Research Agency created fake social media accounts to sow discord among U.S. voters in swing states, posting content about divisive topics such as immigration and gun rights. 

    Similar fake social media campaigns are already in progress: Last week, Meta said it removed 4,789 China-based Facebook accounts that were impersonating Americans. Meta said the accounts posted about U.S. politics and U.S.-China relations and criticized both sides of the U.S. political spectrum.

    And with another election approaching, bad actors have a newly powerful tool to wield: generative artificial intelligence.

    Generative AI — technology that lets computers identify patterns in datasets and create text, photos and videos — powers the increasingly popular text generator ChatGPT and text-to-image tools such as DALL-E and Midjourney. 

    Researchers at Rand Corp., a nonprofit public policy research organization, warned that these tools could jump-start the next generation of social media manipulation to influence elections. With these tools, content for influence campaigns — political messages, profile photos for fake accounts, video footage and even audio — is easier and cheaper to create. 

    We talked to experts who described ways generative AI could help foreign governments and adversaries influence U.S. political discussion and events. 

    Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy program and the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, said generative AI will likely fuel mistrust. 

    “With the frenzied roll out of generative AI tools, we now live in a world where seeing may not actually be believing,” she said.

    Although Russia’s 2016 election interference targeted key voter demographics and swing states, Rand researchers predict that more sophisticated generative AI could make it possible for adversaries to target the entire U.S. with tailored content in 2024.

    This November 2017 file photo shows some of the Facebook and Instagram ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process and stir up tensions around divisive social issues. (AP)

    What are influence operations?

    Information operations are also called influence operations and information warfare. For Rand researchers, these operations involve adversaries collecting useful information and disseminating propaganda to gain a competitive advantage. Foreign governments use these operations to change political sentiment or public discourse. 

    The FBI, which investigates foreign influence operations, said the most frequent campaigns involve fake identities and fabricated stories on social media to discredit people and institutions.

    Traditional media outlets sometimes cover these narratives unwittingly. In 2017, for example, the Los Angeles Times featured tweets from accounts operated by the Russian Internet Research Agency in an article about reaction to Starbucks Corp. pledging to hire refugees. One of these accounts misrepresented itself as the “unofficial Twitter of Tennessee Republicans.”

    One way to measure influence operations’ impact is examining how they seep from legacy and social media into real life. Ben Nimmo, former head of investigations at social media analytics company Graphika and now global threat intelligence lead at Meta, wrote that the most dangerous influence operations can spread to many different groups, across social media and other communications, including radio, TV, direct messages and emails. 

    What was previously possible

    AI has been able to create fake faces since 2014, and experts said AI tools started being regularly used in 2019 to create deepfakes, or machine-generated image or video that makes people appear to do or say things they didn’t. 

    Experts said that year had the first publicly identified case of a fake face used in a social media campaign. In 2019, a network of Facebook accounts using AI-generated profile photos posted about political issues including former President Donald Trump’s impeachment, conservative ideology and religion.

    This image made from video of a fake video featuring former President Barack Obama shows elements of facial mapping used in new technology that lets anyone make videos of real people appearing to say things they’ve never said. (AP)

    Kenton Thibaut, resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said China used generative AI on a smaller scale in 2019 and 2020 to generate profile photos for bot pages or “sock puppet accounts” — which are operated by people but misrepresent who’s behind them.

    Images on these accounts were easy to detect as fake, Thibaut said, because they featured telltale signs such as distorted ears or hands, which was a common problem with that generation of software. 

    Reliance on human labor also made AI-generated content in previous large-scale influence campaigns easier to detect as artificial, Rand researchers said. Messages tended to be repetitive, and this repetition led to the identification and removal of these networks. Newer AI tools make it easier to create more content, so it isn’t necessary to rely on one set of messages crafted by humans. 

    Cheaper and less labor-intensive influence operations

    Disinformation campaigns from the 2010s needed humans at every stage — from developing a concept to designing material and spreading it across social media. 

    Generative AI automates these processes, making them cheaper and requiring fewer people. 

    “The types of people who conduct such campaigns will be similar to those who led these operations in the past, but the cost of producing content will be significantly lower,” said Wirtschafter. “What would maybe take a team of 40 people to produce might now just take a few.”

    AI also can be used to more efficiently translate information, Thibaut said. This can aid people outside the U.S. who are conducting influence campaigns within the U.S. 

    New technology helps fine-tune more personalized messages 

    With the launch of tools such as ChatGPT in 2022, Thibaut said China has been pursuing more precise communication techniques. That means forgoing generic pro-China, anti-U.S. narratives and tailoring narratives based on audiences’ local interests and needs. This way, the messages resonate. 

    Thibaut pointed to Wolf News, a media company Graphika described as “likely fictitious.” Graphika discovered that Wolf News was featured in a pro-Chinese political spam operation that was using AI-generated news anchors. In one video, a news anchor discussed the frequency of mass shootings in the U.S.; in another, an anchor promoted China’s talks with other nations. 

    Pro-China bots’ distribution of these videos was the first reported instance of using deepfake video technology to create fictitious people for a state-aligned influence operation, according to Graphika and The New York Times. 

    Rand Senior Engineer Christopher Mouton wrote that U.S. adversaries could manipulate AI models to sound “truthy,” crafting humanlike, coherent, well-structured and persuasive messages.

    Sophisticated generative AI and elections

    Wirtschafter said adversaries could use AI in last-minute attempts to disenfranchise voters. In the past, alarming false claims that spread on social media misled people about what would happen when they go to in-person polling places, or if they vote by mail.

    Wirtschafter said deepfakes, generated images and voice cloning could be used to imitate candidates running for office and could target political candidates, voters and poll workers. These fakes would be harder to detect in state and local races compared with higher-profile national races, she added.

    This photo shows the desktop and mobile websites for Stable Diffusion. (AP)

    Wirtschafter also said AI could be used to manufacture a last-minute news event. She mentioned a case two days before a Slovakia election in which a fake audio recording was released and fact-checkers scrambled to debunk the claims. The fake audio discussed how to rig the election and mimicked the voices of the liberal Progressive Slovakia party’s leader and a journalist. 

    “This type of last-minute effort could be a looming threat in the 40 different elections (in 2024) taking place around the world, where some media have less capacity to fact check and disseminate clarifying information rapidly,” she said.

    However, Munira Mustaffa, founder and executive director of Chasseur Group, a consulting company specializing in security challenges, said although it is almost certain AI will be used to influence voter opinions, it may have less effect than confirmation bias — people favoring information that aligns with their beliefs.

    “Strategies to combat election-related disinformation should focus more on addressing this underlying cognitive bias, fostering critical thinking and information literacy among the electorate, rather than solely depending on tech solutions to counter falsehoods,” she said.



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  • Biden Spins the Facts in Campaign Speech

    At a campaign reception in Denver, President Joe Biden distorted some of the facts and the position of his predecessor:

    • Biden claimed that the U.S. has the “lowest inflation rate of any major country in the world right now.” As of October, at least Italy and Canada reported lower inflation rates than the U.S.
    • The president claimed to have “cut the federal deficit” by making some corporations pay higher taxes. But the deficit in fiscal year 2023, when the tax went into effect, still increased.
    • He said that former President Donald Trump “is proposing …. cutting Social Security and Medicare.” But in January, Trump advised Republicans against cutting funding for the Social Security and Medicare programs.
    • Biden said Trump’s “plan” was to end the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing health insurance for 40 million people. But that worst-case-scenario figure is based on Trump not replacing the ACA with anything. He says he would replace it with something — though he has given no details on what that would be.
    • The president claimed that 100 million people with preexisting conditions have protections “only” because of the ACA. That’s the case only for those buying insurance on their own; before the ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny a policy based on health conditions.

    Biden made his remarks at a private residence on Nov. 28. He repeated some of the same claims in a speech the next day in Pueblo, Colorado. The president has stepped up his campaign appearances recently and has three fundraisers in Massachusetts on Dec. 5.

    Inflation

    At the Nov. 28 campaign event, Biden said that the U.S. has the “lowest inflation rate of any major country in the world right now.” But that’s not accurate, at least not according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — or the White House’s own calculations.

    OECD data as of October 2023 show that Italy and Canada — which are also members of the G7, a group of seven of the world’s most advanced economies — had lower year-over-year inflation rates than the U.S. While the U.S. inflation rate was 3.2% that month, Italy’s was 1.7% and Canada’s was 3.1%.

    If the list were expanded to include other “advanced economies,” Denmark (0.1%), Belgium (0.4%), Latvia (2.1%) and Lithuania (2.8%) also had lower rates than the U.S., according to OECD figures as of October.

    Even by the White House’s latest figures, Biden’s claim was not exactly right.

    Because of differences in how countries calculate inflation rates, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said it “assembles and constructs harmonized inflation data for G7 countries, allowing for more apples-to-apples inflation comparisons.”

    But last month the CEA reported that inflation in the U.S. was “among the lowest” of major economies – not the lowest.

    “Measured on an apples-to-apples HICP basis to allow global comparisons, both core & headline U.S. inflation were among the lowest in the G7 in September, the latest month with complete G7 data,” the CEA wrote in a Nov. 14 thread on X, the platform once known as Twitter. HICP stands for Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices.

    The language is notable because in June, the CEA had said “the U.S. now has the lowest 12-month harmonized inflation in the G7, both for overall and core inflation.”

    In his Nov. 29 remarks, Biden also labeled some companies greedy for not lowering prices since inflation has been declining in the U.S.

    “Let me be clear: Any corporation that is not passing these savings on to the consumers needs to stop the … price gouging,” Biden said, noting that Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania calls it “Greedflation.”

    But a decline in the year-over-year inflation rate doesn’t automatically mean lower prices, as Biden suggested.

    As the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis wrote in August, inflation is the increase in the prices of goods and services over time, and deflation occurs when those prices start to go down.

    What the U.S. has been experiencing for the last year is known as disinflation, which is when the rate of inflation decreases but prices still go up – just at a slower pace. Prices wouldn’t be expected to go down until the year-over-year inflation rate is below zero, or negative, which has not happened.

    Deficits

    In his Nov. 28 campaign speech, Biden continued to misleadingly claim that he reduced the deficit, which he attributed to raising taxes on corporations.

    “But by making sure they pay that 15% minimum tax, we paid for everything that we’ve proposed,” the president said. “We didn’t increase the debt. We cut the federal deficit. And we have more work to do.”

    Biden was referring to the 15% corporate alternative minimum tax that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act that he signed into law in August 2022. As the Congressional Research Service explains, the CAMT “applies to firms with an average of $1 billion or more in profits in any three-year period and to foreign-parented U.S. firms with profits of over $100 million if the aggregated foreign group has over $1 billion in profits.”

    The Joint Committee on Taxation did estimate that the tax, which went into effect in January of this year, would reduce federal deficits by more than $222 billion over 10 fiscal years, including by roughly $35 billion in 2023.

    But the national debt has continued to increase under Biden, and the final deficit for fiscal 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, increased to roughly $1.7 trillion, or about $320 billion more than the almost $1.4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2022.

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    In his Nov. 29 remarks, Biden claimed to have reduced the deficit by “over $7 billion,” when he meant to say “over $1 trillion,” according to a White House transcript that corrected the president’s statement.

    Deficits have declined from the record of $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2020, before Biden took office. But as we’ve explained, the primary reason that deficits went down by about $350 billion in Biden’s first year, and by another $1.3 trillion in his second, is because of emergency COVID-19 funding that expired in those years.

    Budget experts said that if not for more pandemic and infrastructure spending championed by Biden, deficits would have been even lower than they were in fiscal 2021 and 2022.

    Social Security and Medicare

    Biden also claimed that Trump is pushing to cut Social Security and Medicare, which is the opposite of what Trump has said publicly.

    On Nov. 28, Biden said, “Trump is proposing — and the MAGA Republicans — of cutting Social Security and Medicare.” In remarks the next day, the president said making sure that billionaires “pay their taxes” would allow the U.S. “to strengthen the Social Security and Medicare system instead of cutting them” like “Trump and Boebert want to do,” a reference to Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

    However, in January, when lawmakers were negotiating an increase in the federal debt limit, Trump, in a video message, warned Republicans not to make cuts to those two entitlement programs.

    “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree,” he said. “While we absolutely need to stop Biden’s out of control spending, the pain should be borne by Washington bureaucrats, not by hard-working American families and American seniors.”

    Some critics argue that Trump’s words cannot be trusted because of his past budget proposals. But on Medicare, those budgets included bipartisan ideas to reduce the growth of spending.

    For example, in 2020 we wrote about Democratic claims that Trump’s budget for fiscal 2021 included cuts to Medicare and Social Security. While the proposal called for reductions in future Medicare spending, budget experts said that would not mean cuts in benefits. As for Social Security, we wrote that the budget proposed reductions to the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs, but not to the Social Security retirement program.

    We also wrote in 2019 about Democratic claims that Trump was “once again trying to ransack Medicare” with his budget for fiscal 2020.

    In that case, Trump’s budget again called for reducing Medicare spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, largely by lowering payments to providers. In fact, some of Trump’s Medicare proposals were similar to cost-cutting measures that had been proposed by former President Barack Obama.

    But Trump’s 2020 budget did propose changing out-of-pocket costs for Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage, which we said would increase costs for some beneficiaries and decrease costs for others.

    Scrapping/Replacing Obamacare?

    The Affordable Care Act — once again — has become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

    After former President Donald Trump posted on social media that Republicans “should never give up” on terminating the ACA, or Obamacare, Biden resurrected talking points about what would happen to insurance coverage and preexisting condition protections if the ACA were repealed. The problem is, Trump claims he would replace the ACA with something else. The problem for Trump is that he hasn’t provided a plan, and he never released one while in office, either.

    There’s support for the idea that whatever Trump might advocate wouldn’t be as comprehensive as the ACA and would lead to an increase in the uninsured and fewer protections for those with health conditions. But at the same time, Biden takes advantage of Trump’s vagueness to claim the former president wouldn’t replace the ACA with anything at all.

    We’ll go through Biden’s statements and explain what Trump has supported in the past.

    In Truth Social posts on Nov. 25 and 29, Trump said he was “seriously looking at alternatives” and would replace the ACA with something “MUCH BETTER.” (He made similar claims as president.) We asked his campaign for more details on what Trump’s health care plan might be, but we haven’t received a response.

    Biden broached the subject at his Nov. 28 campaign reception. “Let’s be clear about what the Affordable Care Act means. There are 40 million people in America today who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “His plan is to throw every one of them off that — that legislation. It would mean the number of uninsured African Americans would go up by 20 percent. Latinos would go up by 15 percent.”

    He made the same claims in his speech the next day in Pueblo, Colorado.

    The 40 million figure is the number of people who were enrolled, as of early 2023, in insurance plans on the ACA marketplace, or exchanges — where people buy their own coverage, mostly with the help of premium tax credits — and those with Medicaid coverage thanks to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion policies, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. For marketplace plans, the law, which Obama signed in 2010, provides tax credits to those earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. As of February, 91% of the 15.7 million people with marketplace plans qualified for tax credits.

    The Medicaid expansion allows adults earning up to 138% of the poverty level to obtain coverage in states that have chosen to participate. Forty states, plus the District of Columbia, have implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, the most recent being North Carolina.

    If the ACA were eliminated, the number and rate of the uninsured would increase significantly. Some who would lose coverage could get insurance through another means, but the jump in the uninsured would likely be tens of millions of people. Most of those who got coverage under the Medicaid expansion would likely become uninsured without the law, according to the nonpartisan health policy research group KFF. A 2020 report by the Urban Institute estimated that a net 21.1 million people would become uninsured in 2022 if the ACA were scrapped. At the time, there were fewer Americans with coverage either on the ACA marketplace or through Medicaid expansion, so such an estimate would likely be higher today.

    As for Biden’s figures for the increase in the number of the uninsured by race, his campaign pointed to that same Urban Institute report. It found much larger percentage increases for the uninsured rates. If the ACA were eliminated, the report said, the uninsured rate for Black Americans would increase from 11% to 20%, and for Hispanic people from 21% to 30%.

    As we said, Trump claims he would replace the ACA, but he hasn’t said with what. He hasn’t released his own health care plan, but Republican bills he supported in 2017 would have increased the number of people without health insurance by millions, as we’ve explained before. One GOP House bill would have led to 24 million more uninsured by 2026, according to an analysis at the time by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation. The House passed that bill, but it failed in the Senate, despite both chambers being controlled by Republicans then.

    In 2017, Trump also supported a so-called “skinny” repeal bill in the Senate, which would have sent a placeholder bill, with only some changes to the ACA, to a conference committee with the House. The House and Senate would have had to agree upon final legislation. But that bill, which also would have increased the number of people without insurance, failed, too.

    In a court case challenging the constitutionality of the ACA, the Trump administration argued the entire law should be nullified. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 2021 that the plaintiffs lacked standing.

    In a June 2019 interview with ABC News, while that lawsuit was working its way through the courts, Trump said he would be releasing a health care plan to replace Obamacare “in about two months.” But that didn’t happen.

    Trump’s record indicates he would likely support a replacement that would lead to fewer Americans having health insurance, and it raises questions about whether Trump will release a health care plan. But the Biden campaign fills in the blanks to claim Trump has a “plan” to get rid of the ACA without anything in its place.

    Protections for Those with Preexisting Conditions

    Biden repeated a misleading talking point about the ACA’s preexisting condition protections.

    “There are over 100 million people today who have — who have protections against preexisting conditions only for one reason: because of the Affordable Care Act. Trump wants to get rid of it,” Biden said at the campaign reception.

    As we explained a few times during the 2020 campaign, the 100 million figure is an estimate of how many Americans not on Medicare or Medicaid have preexisting conditions. The ACA instituted sweeping protections for those with preexisting conditions, prohibiting insurers in all markets from denying coverage or charging more based on health status. But only those buying their own plans on the individual or nongroup market would immediately be at risk of being denied insurance.

    Even without the ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny issuing a policy — and could only decline coverage for some preexisting conditions for a limited period if a new employee had a lapse in coverage.

    As of 2022, 20 million people, or about 6.3% of the U.S. population, got coverage on the individual market. It is the case that the ACA’s broad protections would benefit people who lost their jobs or retired early and found themselves seeking insurance on their own.

    As for Trump, he has said he supports preexisting condition protections, but while in office, he worked to reduce the protections under the ACA in several ways, as we’ve written before. In the lawsuit mentioned above, the Trump administration initially argued that the ACA’s preexisting condition provisions would have to go if the suit were successful. The administration later backed the full invalidation of the law.

    The 2017 GOP bill Trump supported would have included some, but not all, of the ACA’s protections. Trump also pushed the expansion of cheaper short-term health plans that wouldn’t have to abide by the ACA’s protections, including prohibitions against denying or pricing coverage based on health status.

    In late September 2020, less than two months before Election Day, Trump signed an executive order that said “[i]t has been and will continue to be the policy of the United States … to ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions can obtain the insurance of their choice at affordable rates.” He said the order put the issue of preexisting conditions “to rest.”

    But it didn’t. At the time, Karen Pollitz, who was then a senior fellow at KFF, told us the order was “aspirational” and had “no force of law.”

    With this issue, too, Trump doesn’t have a plan that can be evaluated — and his record indicates he could support a plan that weakens the preexisting condition protections in the ACA. But Biden’s talking point suggests no plan means no protections, and it glosses over the fact that even without the ACA, employer policies still wouldn’t be able to deny insurance.


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  • Fact Check: Wisconsin lawmaker’s claim on immigrants voting in local DC elections is “Mostly True”

    One of the perks of being a citizen is voting in local elections, but recent election cycles have put regulations under scrutiny.

    One such regulation has caught the ire of Republican Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents Wisconsin’s first district. 

    On Sept. 28 Steil was speaking at an event for The Ripon Society on elections and his proposal, the  American Confidence in Elections Act, which could change the guidance the federal government gives states on elections. 

    It would also change who can vote in Washington, D.C., in local elections. 

    At The Ripon Society event Steil said:

    “Washington D.C., allows noncitizens to vote in the upcoming 2024 election under current law. That’s municipal elections. Think of the mayor of Washington D.C. That means, just to give you an example of how crazy I believe this law is, an individual who’s a Russian national, a Russian citizen, working at the Russian Embassy, after residing in Washington D.C., for 30 days, can walk out of the Russian Embassy, have their Russian passport in their pocket, walk down to a voting location next year and vote for mayor in Washington D.C. And they don’t even need to show their ID to do it.” 

    We decided to take a closer look, with a focus on the core of the claim – can noncitizens vote in the municipal election, and do so without showing an ID? 

    Is he right?

    What the law says

    In 1955, Washington, D.C., passed regulations on who can vote in local elections and for what races. The law has been amended a few times over the years, but has maintained central requirements for local elections: a person must be a resident of the city for at least 30 days, be 18 years old by the time of the election, and be a U.S. citizen.

    Pretty standard stuff. 

    In 2022, the regulation was amended to remove the citizen requirement starting in 2024 for municipal elections. For federal elections a person voting in the district will still need to be a citizen. 

    The amendment caused an uproar in the U.S. House of Representatives which passed a disapproval resolution 260-162, including 42 Democratic votes, which is required to change Washington, D.C., ordinances according to the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. The resolution is in the Senate to be voted on and if passed, needs to be signed by the president to undo the law. 

    Could someone working in the Russian embassy vote for mayor in Washington, D.C.? We queried the District of Columbia Board of Elections with Steil’s hypothetical.

    Sarah Graham, communications director for the District of Columbia Board of Elections, confirmed that the city does allow noncitizen voting starting in 2024 and there is no photo ID requirement. 

    So Steil is basically on point, but his statement misses some information.

    Graham said via email that to vote in Washington, D.C., a person must be registered to vote; be 18 years old on or before the next general election; have maintained a residence in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days preceding the next election and not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; and not have been found to be by a court of law to be legally incompetent to vote.

    That part, not being able to vote in another country, was ignored by Steil in his claim.

    Under these rules, the Russian embassy worker can’t vote in Russia and fly back to the United States and vote for mayor of D.C.

    Also, the rule applies to people working at the Canadian embassy, the English and Irish embassies, the other embassies and other immigrants in the city. Steil singles out Russia, apparently for maximum rhetorical effect.

    Can noncitizens vote in American elections?

    Allowing noncitizens to vote is not as unusual as Steil makes it out to be: Multiple municipalities including New York City and San Francisco allow immigrants to vote in local races. 

    In Takoma Park, Maryland, not too far from Washington, D.C., immigrants have been allowed to vote in local races for 30 years. 

    In October, Takoma Park celebrated 30 years of noncitizen voting and released the most recent data on the city’s website. In 2017, of the 347 registered noncitizen voters in Takoma Park, 72 cast ballots, making up roughly 20% of those registered. Overall turnout in 2017 was 22%. 

    Ron Hayduk, a San Francisco State University political science professor who specializes in immigration and political participation, acknowledges it might seem strange for a municipality to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, but it’s not unusual or unprecedented in the United States.

    Even when Wisconsin was founded in 1848, citizenship wasn’t required to vote.

    “Wisconsin was one of the states that actually made immigrant voting a really popular practice in American history,” Hayduk said. “Wisconsin allowed immigrants to vote before citizenship, not just in local elections, but also state and federal elections from 1848 until 1908. A big chunk of Wisconsin history where Germans, Irish, Swedish, Finnish, European immigrants, like many of the people in Wisconsin … maybe their grandparents or great-grandparents actually voted before citizenship in Wisconsin.”  

    According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, the original Wisconsin constitution determined noncitizens could vote. It stated:

    “Persons not citizens of the United States who at the time of the adoption of this constitution were actually residents of the state and had declared their intention to become citizens of the United States and who shall have resided in the state (for) six months.”

    Part of the idea behind allowing immigrants the right to vote in local elections is allowing them to have their say in how local taxes, which they pay,  are used. 

    According to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, in 2021 immigrant-led households in Washington, D.C., paid $603.1 million in state and local taxes. 

    That year there were more than 90,000 immigrants in the city, the group says. The largest countries represented of that group include El Salvador with 9.7% of the immigrant population and Ethiopia with 6.5%.

    Our ruling

    Steil claimed “Washington, D.C., allows noncitizens to vote in (municipal elections)” so a Russian citizen, after living in Washington for 30 days can “vote for mayor in Washington, D.C. And they don’t even need to show their ID to do it.” 

    It is true that noncitizens can vote in local Washington, D.C., elections starting in 2024 and they don’t need a photo ID. But Steil fails to mention that they cannot do so if they are registered to vote in their home country and frames it as an unusual occurrence, when there are many other examples across the country. 

    Our definition for Mostly True is “the statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.” That fits here.

     



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  • Fact Check: Readers’ choice: Vote for PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year

    It’s time for one of PolitiFact’s favorite traditions: learning what our readers think we should pick as the annual Lie of the Year.

    PolitiFact awards the Lie of the Year to the most significant falsehood or exaggeration that worked to undermine an accurate narrative. (PolitiFact editors make the official choice, but that shouldn’t stop you from weighing in.) The 2022 Lie of the Year went to Russia President Vladimir Putin for his campaign of lies to justify the Ukraine invasion. The 2021 Lie of the Year went to lies about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and its significance, and our 2020 pick went to COVID-19 downplay and denial.

    Cast your vote for the 2023 Lie of the Year in the form below. You can select from among our finalists or write in your choice. (Scroll below to see links to each of the fact-checks listed on the ballot.)

     

    1. Former President Donald Trump: “They are trying to make it illegal to question the results of a bad election.” False

    2. President Joe Biden: “Ground zero in New York — I remember standing there the next day.” False

    3. Former President Donald Trump: “Sadly, American taxpayer dollars helped fund (the attacks on Israel by Hamas), which many reports are saying came from the Biden administration.” False

    4. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Pants on Fire!

    5. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “In some liberal states, you actually have post-birth abortions.” False

    6. Instagram posts: Maui, Hawaii, fires are part of an intentional effort to rebuild the island into a “smart island.” False

    7. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “There’s not been a single book banned in the state of Florida.” False 

    8. Former U.S. Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y.: “I never claimed to be Jewish.” Pants on Fire!

    9. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley: Having “biological boys … in their locker rooms” is a reason why “a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year.” False

    10. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Atrazine in the water supply is contributing to “sexual dysphoria” in kids. False

    11. Write your own:

    We’ll announce the Lie of the Year and the Readers’ Choice award in a few weeks. Thank you for voting!

     



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  • Fact Check: El papa Francisco no usó, ni inventó una cruz LGBT

    Una imagen en X declara que el papa Francisco acaba de inventar una cruz LGBT. Pero la imagen del papa con una cruz multicolor fue sacada de contexto.

    La publicación muestra al papa con una cruz de plata y otra multicolor colgando en su cuello. La dicha cruz tiene los colores verde, amarillo, naranja, rojo, turquesa y azul. 

    “Y ante nuestros ojos atónitos, el Papa acaba de inventar La Cruz LGBT. Acabo de darme cuenta que necesito absolutamente volver a leer los evangelios sobre las personas trans”, dice la publicación del 26 de noviembre. “Ah no, es verdad. No existen. Los ‘progresistas’ son enfermos mentales”.

    Screenshot de publicación en X.

    PolitiFact hizo una búsqueda de imagen inversa y encontró que esta cruz colorida no es parte de la comunidad LGBT, sino que representa a la Pastoral Juvenil Latinoamericana, una organización que promueve el catolicismo a los jóvenes. 

    La pastoral juvenil publicó en X el 2018 la imagen del papa con la cruz multicolor y explicó que los jóvenes auditores de latinoamérica le entregaron al papa un “pectoral con el símbolo de la Cruz de la PJ Latinoamericana, la cual representa el amor, oración y entrega de nuestros jóvenes lat (latinos) y de los agentes de PJ, asesores y animadores”. 

    También notamos que los colores en la cruz no son los mismos de la bandera LGBT, ya que no incluye el color violeta. Además que según la página web de la Pastoral Juvenil Latinoamericana, los colores en la cruz tienen un significado específico. 

    La página explica que la cruz lleva consigo los colores que representan cada región dentro de la pastoral. Por ejemplo, el verde representa a la región de México y Centroamérica; el amarillo-naranja representa a la region del Caribe; el rojo representa la región Andina y el azul representa la región Cono Sur. 

    PolitiFact contactó al Vaticano y a la Pastoral Juvenil Latinoamericana, pero no recibió respuesta. 

    No encontramos evidencia de que el papa Francisco haya creado una cruz LGBT, así que calificamos la declaración en X como Falsa. 

    Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

    __________________________________________________________________________

    Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.

     



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  • Fact Check: ¿Quiere Ron DeSantis recortar el Seguro Social y Medicare? Acá su récord y declaraciones

    Un anuncio en español reproducido en las estaciones de radio del sur de la Florida retrata la conversación de una madre e hija que lamentan el alto costo de vida en la Florida. 

    La madre dice, “y ahora que tu padre quiere retirarse, no sabemos si tendrá Seguro Social”. La hija pregunta por qué.

    “Ron DeSantis, el gobernador, él es la razón de que nuestros costos suban y no hace nada. Incluso quiere recortar el Seguro Social y el Medicare. ¡Y ahora quiere ser presidente! ¡Es una barbaridad!”.

    El anuncio salió el 8 de noviembre y viene de DeSantis Watch, un proyecto crítico de DeSantis de las organizaciones de investigación Progress Florida y Florida Watch.

    El Seguro Social es una fuente de ingreso mensual para estadounidenses mayores que están retirados o que han reducido sus horarios de trabajo. La mayoría de trabajos sacan impuestos de Seguro Social de los cheques de los trabajadores para que ellos puedan tener sus beneficios mensuales más tarde en la vida. 

    Medicare es un seguro médico federal para personas mayores de 65 años y para ciertas personas jóvenes con discapacidades. Hay diferentes partes de Medicare; el Medicare original paga las visitas al doctor y las estadías en el hospital (los beneficiarios generalmente tienen copagos). Y Medicare Advantage es un plan aprobado por Medicare ofrecido por compañías privadas como una alternativa al Medicare original para la cobertura de salud y medicamentos.

    PolitiFact verificó el récord congresional de DeSantis, sus comentarios actuales como gobernador y al buscar la nominación presidencial republicana del 2024. El anuncio contiene un elemento de verdad, pero ignora hechos importantes.

    Como representante de los Estados Unidos antes de convertirse en gobernador, DeSantis apoyó propuestas congresionales para reducir los gastos del Seguro Social y el Medicare, incluyendo elevar la edad para obtener elegibilidad completa. Pero esas propuestas fueron declaraciones simbólicas de una preferencia política; aunque hubieran sido aprobadas, las propuestas no se hubieran convertido en ley. 

    Como gobernador y candidato presidencial, DeSantis ha dicho que él está dispuesto a cambiar las reglas del Seguro Social para las generaciones jóvenes, pero no las cambiaría para los beneficiarios actuales. Su postura sobre Medicare no es clara. 

    El historial congresional de DeSantis

    Anders Croy, el director de comunicaciones de Florida Watch y DeSantis Watch, dirigió a PolitiFact a los votos congresionales de DeSantis en el 2013, 2014 y 2015 por tres propuestas de presupuesto no vinculantes. Estas resoluciones pedían aumentar la edad de jubilación y frenar el gasto futuro del Seguro Social. La Cámara de Representantes no aprobó estas propuestas, pero aun si hubieran sido aprobadas, no se hubieran convertido en ley. 

    Croy también dijo que en 2017, DeSantis votó por otra propuesta de presupuesto no vinculante que propuso recortar $473,000 millones a la base de gasto de Medicare por más de una década. Esta provisión — la cual no promulga una ley — también necesitaba la aprobación de leyes adicionales para tomar efecto. 

    Pero es debatible si esas medidas equivalen a recortes en los programas.

    Marc Goldwein, vicepresidente senior del Comité para un Presupuesto Federal Responsable, le dijo a PolitiFact en 2018 que para que estas resoluciones hubieran conducido a recortes, los detalles de otras propuestas tendrían que haberse convertido en ley.

    ¿Cuál es la postura actual de DeSantis sobre el Seguro Social y Medicare?

    El anuncio dice que DeSantis “quiere” recortar el Seguro Social y Medicare, dando la impresión de que esta es su postura como candidato presidencial. 

    Aunque DeSantis ha dicho en entrevistas y apariciones públicas que el programa de Seguro Social necesita un cambio, él también ha dicho que apoya dejarlo como está para beneficiarios actuales. Él ha dicho que está dispuesto a cambiar los requerimientos de elegibilidad para los estadounidenses jóvenes que actualmente están entre los 30 y 40 años de edad.

    “Cuando la gente dice que vamos de alguna forma a recortar a los adultos mayores, eso es totalmente no verdadero”, DeSantis dijo en julio en Fox News. “Hablando de hacer cambios para las personas en sus 30 y 40 para que el programa sea viable, eso es algo muy diferente”.

    Cambios al Seguro Social, como aumentar la edad de jubilación, posiblemente significa recortes de beneficios, dijo Andrew D. Eschtruth, un director asociado del Centro de Investigación de Jubilación del Boston College. 

    Si se les prometen beneficios a una persona de una edad específica y luego, cuando ellos se vuelven elegibles para recibirlos, la edad requerida incrementa, esas personas pierden los beneficios esperados para ese periodo, dijo el. 

    DeSantis no ha especificado si o cómo cambiaría el Medicare. 

    La afirmación del anuncio viene durante la campaña presidencial de DeSantis para presidente y puede dar la impresión engañosa de que está haciendo campaña en una plataforma para realizar amplios recortes al Medicare y el Seguro Social.

    Calificamos esta afirmación como Mayormente Falsa.

    Read this fact-check in English.



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  • Post Misrepresents Condition of Israeli Hostages Released by Hamas

    Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.

    Quick Take

    More than 100 hostages taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel have been released through a negotiated swap for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. A post on social media misleadingly claims the freed Israelis “look like people finishing a vacation.” But news reports say many of the Israelis returned malnourished, injured and traumatized.


    Full Story

    About 1,200 people were killed and 240 others were taken hostage during the Oct. 7 surprise attacks on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. More than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, as of Dec. 2, the Associated Press reported based on information from the health ministry in Gaza.

    During a week-long pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas — a ceasefire that began Nov. 24 and was mediated by Qatar — the two sides began exchanging some of the hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

    As of Dec. 3, 105 hostages had been released by Hamas. According to the American Jewish Committee, the released hostages included 81 Israelis, some with dual citizenship, as well as 23 Thai nationals and one Filipino. In exchange, Israel released 240 Palestinians, most of them teenagers, the New York Times reported.

    Many of the Israeli hostages, according to interviews with family members, returned “malnourished, infested with lice, ill, injured and deeply traumatized,” the Times also reported.

    An 84-year-old woman who had been held hostage was in “life-threatening condition after not receiving proper care in captivity,” and another freed hostage required surgery, according to the Associated Press.

    But a Nov. 29 post on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, and Instagram presents a distorted view of the hostages’ condition when they were freed.

    The post claims, “Videos of Israeli hostages being released look like people finishing a vacation and saying goodbye to the resort staff. They’re smiling, laughing, hugging, blowing kisses, and waving goodbye to their captors. Multiple Israeli hostages have been interviewed and said they were treated with kindness and respect while being well-fed.”

    In a deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar before the ceasefire, one Israeli hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, was released on Oct. 23, and she was seen on video shaking the hand of one of her captors. At a press conference the next day, Lifshitz said that members of Hamas had treated her with “care” and “gentleness” during her captivity.

    But she also described the violence of the Oct. 7 attack and her abduction from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. “As we rode, the motorcycle rider hit me with a wooden pole. They didn’t break my ribs, but it hurt me a lot in that area, making it difficult to breathe,” Lifshitz said. 

    The accounts of other Israeli hostages did not describe Hamas as treating them with “kindness and respect while being well-fed,” as the X post claims. In interviews with the New York Times, relatives speaking for the hostages said some were given a single piece of bread per day and were held in deep, sweltering tunnels.

    A screen grab captured from a video shows the release of an Israeli hostage as part of the exchange agreement during the humanitarian pause in Gaza on Nov. 26, 2023. Photo by Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images.

    Devorah Cohen, whose 12-year-old nephew Eitan Yahalomi was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, said he “lived through horrors” during his captivity. “When he arrived in Gaza, civilians hit him,” Cohen said. He and other children were forced to watch videos of the violence committed on Oct. 7; if they cried, their guards threatened to shoot them, she said.

    “What we hear from the stories from children –- the captivity’s harsh reality is unbelievable,” Omer Lubaton Granot, who founded the Israeli support group Hostages and Missing Family Forums, told CNN. “Sisters of other children told them that Hamas have told the children that their whole family has died, that nobody wants them back, that they don’t have a home to go to. They tried to scare the children.”

    The Red Cross has been denied access to the Israeli hostages, the Times has reported.

    “You can predict that the psychological or emotional consequences will be severe — and you could also predict, from what is known in the field, that they’re going to be very different across the hostages because of differences in what they experienced when they were taken captive and their ages,” Dr. Spencer Eth, chief of mental health at the Miami VA Healthcare System, told CNN.

    Condition of Palestinians Released by Israel

    The social media post also compares the condition of the Israeli hostages with the treatment of the Palestinians released from Israeli prisons in the recent exchanges. “Meanwhile Palestinian hostages, mostly kids and women, come back with burn marks, broken bones, and permanent mental anguish,” the post claims.

    An analysis by the New York Times found that most Palestinians released by Israel were 18 and younger: 107 teenagers younger than 18, including three girls, and 66 who were 18 years old. Three-quarters of them had not been convicted of any crime. They had been detained for what Israel said were offenses related to Israel’s security, the Times reported.

    Ian Lustick, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor specializing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told us in a Dec. 1 phone interview that he had seen “no reports or evidence that the batch of prisoners was released [in exchange for hostages] with signs of mistreatment. I have not seen that.”

    He also said “some of the released [Israeli hostages] have been in much better shape than most Israelis expected. That is fair to say. But to say they look like they were on vacation, that’s ridiculous.”

    Lustick said the content of the social media post comparing the conditions of the Israeli hostages with the Palestinian prisoners uses “two extreme examples.”

    On one hand, the 85-year-old Israeli hostage Yocheved Lifshitz was seen “shaking hands and thanking her captors and she remarked how well she was treated by them,” Lustick said. “She received tremendous criticism in Israel” for those actions and comments, and “that became a well-known incident.”

    On the other hand, Lustick said, an Oct. 19 article on the news website Middle East Eye cited a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about three West Bank Palestinians who were detained on Oct. 12 for hours and beaten, burned and abused by Israeli soldiers and settlers before they were released later that night. They were not among the 240 Palestinians released as part of the Israel-Hamas exchange.

    Lustick said it appeared the social media post was referring to the incident in the West Bank. The post, while “trying to make a drastic argument, conflated a report about mistreatment of Arabs by the military in the West Bank since the [Oct. 7] attack with the condition of the released [Palestinian] detainees,” he said.

    But Lustick also said that “prisoners are not treated well” in Israeli prisons. “They’re kept alive, but they’re mistreated systematically right now.” Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, “has been trying to reduce their living standards, taking away privileges, and making life much more miserable for Palestinian prisoners of all types,” Lustick said.


    Sources

    American Jewish Committee. “What is Known About Israeli Hostages Taken by Hamas.” 30 Nov 2023.

    Associated Press. “Live updates | Hamas and Israel free more hostages and prisoners as deadline to extend truce nears.” 29 Nov 2023.

    BBC. “Hamas hostages: Stories of the people taken from Israel.” 1 Dec 2023.

    Carroll, Rory and Jason Burke. “Israeli hostage, 85, shown shaking hands with Hamas captor after release.” The Guardian. 24 Oct 2023.

    Clarke, Rachel. “Little food, a beating and lice: What freed Israeli hostages are saying about being held by Hamas.” CNN. 1 Dec 2023.

    Goldenberg, Tia. “Freed Israeli hostage describes deteriorating conditions while being held by Hamas.” Associated Press. 28 Nov 2023.

    Howard, Jacqueline. “Released hostages, detainees may face severe psychological effects, experts say.” CNN. 28 Nov 2023.

    Jobain, Najib, et al. “Israel-Hamas war: Israeli offensive shifts to southern Gaza, driving up death toll despite evacuation orders.” Associated Press. 2 Dec 2023.

    Lustick, Ian. Professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 1 Dec 2023.

    Middle East Eye. “Israel-Palestine war: Settlers and soldiers ‘severely abuse’ Palestinians and activists.” 19 Oct 2023.

    Rosman, Katherine, et al. “Hostages Freed From Gaza Recount Violence, Hunger and Fear.” New York Times. 30 Nov 2023.

    Shurafa, Wafaa, et al. “Mediators scrambling for Israel-Hamas truce extension, as hostages-for-prisoners swaps get harder.” CNN. 1 Dec 2023.

    Vinograd, Casandra and Isabel Kershner. “Israel’s Attackers Took About 240 Hostages. Here’s What to Know About Them.” New York Times. 20 Nov 2023.

    Westfall, Sammy and Helier Cheung. “Here are the hostages released by Hamas and those remaining in Gaza.” Washington Post. 30 Nov 2023.

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  • Fact Check: Johnson’s line on how to register to be a poll worker is Mostly True

    With the 2024 presidential contest less than one year away, parties are beginning to mobilize voters and clerks are starting their election preparations. 

    That includes determining who will staff the polls on election days to help register voters, check photo IDs and explain how to mark ballots. 

    In a Nov. 10 video posted to X (formerly Twitter) by the Wisconsin Republican Party, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said people concerned about election integrity can “go home and mope” or get involved to help elect Republicans.  

    (Other PolitiFact Wisconsin items have debunked false claims of massive voter fraud and disproved persistent misconceptions about how the 2020 presidential election was administered in the state.)

    Johnson suggested that Republicans who want to “restore confidence in our elections systems” can get trained and paid as poll workers and said: “In order to be a poll worker on the conservative side, you have to register through the Republican Party of Wisconsin.” 

    His claim caught our attention, especially after local clerks were the ones trying to enlist poll workers amid severe shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

    If you want to become a poll worker, do you have to register through a political party? Let’s take a look. 

    Poll worker positions are first filled through political party lists

    When asked for backup for the claim, Republican Party of Wisconsin Communications Director Matt Fisher shared a section of state law and memos prepared by the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

    Fisher cited Wis. Stat. 7.30, which says that the two dominant political parties (Democrats and Republicans) are responsible for submitting lists of nominees to become election inspectors, another term for poll workers. 

    Under state law, “all inspectors shall be affiliated” with one of the two parties, unless they are appointed as a greeter or if the party list runs out of names. 

    In that case, the mayor, village president or town board chair can appoint a poll worker “without regard to party affiliation.”

    Translation: the names prepared by political parties get first priority for the positions, but it’s still possible to become a poll worker without going through a party.

    According to the commission’s page on becoming a poll worker, voters who are active in a political party can reach out to their county party to be nominated for a two-year term. This year, the parties had to submit their lists by Nov. 30.

    Or, voters can contact their local clerk to learn about applying and become nominated on a nonpartisan basis.

    But it’s becoming less common for poll workers to be assigned through that unaffiliated option, as parties have been preparing longer lists of potential names, a Nov. 2, 2022, Wisconsin Watch article found. 

    Fisher also referenced Wisconsin Election Commission memos that explain the state law and lay out scenarios to ensure that each polling location has the correct balance of partisan appointees. 

    Our ruling

    Johnson said in the Republican Party video that “in order to be a poll worker on the conservative side, you have to register through the Republican Party of Wisconsin.”

    Although it’s possible for people — even if they have conservative or liberal beliefs — to become nonpartisan poll workers by going through their clerk, it’s less likely they’ll get a spot.. 

    Johnson was referring to people who want to become a poll worker on the “conservative side,” indicating they are involved in Republican politics and want to register that way. But the same is true of the Democratic side; it’s the way the system is built.

    Our definition of Mostly True is “The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.” That fits here.

     



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  • Our Annual Fundraising Appeal

    FactCheck.org started 20 years ago this month with one journalist, and a part-time assistant, who had a mission to serve as a “consumer advocate” for voters. 

    Since then, we have greatly expanded our staff and our mission.

    Today, we have nine journalists and four undergraduate fellows. In addition to correcting political misinformation, we tackle distortions of science and social media misinformation. And our stories on health misinformation are now available in Spanish. 

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    In 2010, we started to accept individual donations from readers like you. Over the years, your contributions have helped us to extend the life of FactCheck.org. At the end of each year, we hold a fundraising drive that allows us to keep bringing you the facts at a time of increased partisanship and overwhelming social media misinformation.

    In 2024, your donations will help us cover the election by defraying the cost of our political ad-tracking service for the presidential and key congressional races. Among other things, your support will also help underwrite our undergraduate fellowship program for students at the University of Pennsylvania, where we are based. 

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