The ways media — conventional and social — shape perceptions and filter facts dominated the opening sessions of the second annual United Facts of America online festival of fact-checking. The three-day event, co-presented by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and its Pulitzer Prize-winning enterprise, PolitiFact, featured more than four hours of programming broadcast live […]
How do you get dedicated Fox News viewers to drop Tucker Carlson for a month and change the channel? Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University landed on one solution for a September 2020 experiment: cash. The study, a piece of research discussed in a first-day session of United Facts of America: […]
Conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas will speak to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol about her involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It’s a notable development for many reasons, not the least of which is that she is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence […]
Former President Donald Trump attracted wide attention for his comments about presidential declassification powers in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was searched in August by federal agents who were looking for documents the government believes he may have taken improperly when he left the presidency. At least some of these documents […]
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis used state taxpayers’ money to relocate about 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. DeSantis accuses President Joe Biden of not doing enough to secure the southern border. He said that many of the people who arrive there intend to go to Florida — and aren’t welcome. “Our message […]
The dispute over what it means to be a MAGA Republican has given the GOP an opening to accuse President Joe Biden of “smearing” half the voters in the country — the roughly 47% of those who voted in 2020 for former President Donald Trump. MAGA — Trump’s trademark Make America Great Again 2016 campaign […]
Midterm ballots in nearly every state include candidates who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent or “stolen.” That leaves American election systems at a pivotal moment: If people who deny Joe Biden won the presidency win their own elections Nov. 8, could they really execute their plans and dismantle the machinery that keeps American democracy running? […]
One of the major legislative efforts to prevent another insurrection like the one on Jan. 6, 2021, is moving a step closer to enactment. Both chambers of Congress have introduced legislation to update the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, which supporters of then-President Donald Trump exploited for its murkiness. Trump and his allies sought to convince […]
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a regular bogeyman in online misinformation. We’ve debunked claims that he’s a Nazi who funded antifa and protests in Minneapolis, and that he was behind a news website in Missouri and a lab that developed and released COVID-19. Now, an Instagram post claimed that in a 2014 CNN interview, Soros […]
Hoping to score midterm election victories, Republican candidates and the Michigan GOP are focusing their ire on Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson — specifically, how she oversaw the 2020 election. Michigan’s election system is the most decentralized in the U.S. The secretary of state plays a supervisory role in Michigan’s elections. Local clerks are […]
Whether President Joe Biden is doing enough to limit illegal immigration is a key issue raised by Republicans this midterm election cycle. To draw attention to the topic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew around 50 immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Sept. 14 — surprising local officials and making them scramble to accommodate the group. […]
A Massachusetts homeless shelter coordinator’s comments about the lack of housing available for Venezuelan migrants who were recently flown to Martha’s Vineyard triggered a flurry of criticism from the political right. On Sept. 14, about 50 Venezuelan migrants were flown to the island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the Bay State’s coast, at Florida Gov. Ron […]