Quick Take

Dozens of people stayed at a Florida hotel in January while employed as temporary farmworkers for a wholesale plant nursery. But a Facebook video and a tweet by State Rep. Anthony Sabatini falsely claimed they were “illegals” — sparking a protest outside the hotel. Attorneys for the nursery said all of them had visas to work in the U.S.

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The number of apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S. border with Mexico increased by 317% during President Joe Biden’s first 10 full months in office, compared with the same period in 2020. With midterm elections fast approaching, immigration has been a hot topic for Republicans seeking congressional office. 

But a video posted on Facebook on Jan. 30 — and shared on Twitter by Republican State Rep. Anthony Sabatini of Florida — isn’t an example of illegal immigration.

The video made on Jan. 28 in a hotel parking lot in Maitland, Florida, falsely claimed to show “4 busloads of illegals being dropped off from the Southern Border… All 18-25 year old able-bodied men… given credit cards of American tax dollars and a place to stay.”

The video was posted by The Red, White and Blue, a page that self-identifies as advocating for “GOD, COUNTRY, GUTS AND TRUTH – no matter how ugly the Truth maybe.”

The post amassed about 1,000 views. On Twitter, the video received more than a 170,000 views and was shared by Sabatini on Jan. 30.

Sabatini, who is a candidate in Florida’s 7th Congressional District, added text that read, “Hundreds of illegals were just SHIPPED into my congressional district yesterday—dropped off in Maitland. We MUST stop & DEPORT them immediately…”

The social media claims were followed on Jan. 31 by a protest by dozens of people outside the Maitland hotel. 

But the workers seen in the video were not “illegals.” They were in the U.S. legally as contract laborers for Dewar Nurseries, a wholesale plant nursery in Apopka, Florida.

Attorneys for Dewar Nurseries released a statement to Click Orlando News, saying: “The workers employed by Dewar Nurseries who reside at the Extended Stay Hotel in Maitland are here in the United States under the H2A Visa program. This is a long-standing, 100-percent legitimate program that allows our companies to hire the workers we need to deliver the best-quality products to our customers. Any suggestion to the contrary is mistaken.”

The H-2A program “allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs,” according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson also told a Click Orlando News reporter that 90 to 100 people who were staying at the Extended Stay Hotel in Maitland all have H-2A visas.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Alvarez, Priscilla. “GOP zeroes in on Biden’s immigration record ahead of midterm elections.” CNN. 14 Jan 2022.

Gore, D’Angelo, et al. “Biden’s Numbers.” FactCheck.org. 20 Jan 2022.

Heath, Christopher. “Viral social media post falsely states illegal immigrants dropped off at Central Florida motel.” WFTV.com. 31 Jan 2022.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers. Accessed 10 Feb 2022.

Zizo, Christie. “Migrants staying at Maitland hotel are legal farm workers, Apopka mayor says.” Click Orlando News. 31 Jan 2022. 

The post Florida Video Shows Legal Migrant Workers, Not ‘Busloads of Illegals’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

President Donald Trump made several false, misleading and exaggerated claims in press briefings he held Aug. 7 and 8 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, spinning the facts on COVID-19 and the economy, among other topics:

• Trump falsely claimed that “the Democrats don’t want to do anything having to do with protecting people from eviction,” even though the House Democrats had already passed a coronavirus relief bill to do exactly that.
• The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions or charging them higher premiums. Yet Trump made the curious claim that he would pursue an executive order to require “health insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all customers,” falsely adding this had “never been done before.”
• Trump misleadingly said that more than half of U.S. counties reported fewer than 20 COVID-19 cases in the past week. That’s correct for cases reported between Aug. 1 and Aug. 7, but those counties make up less than 10% of the U.S. population.
• The president exaggerated when he said the percentage of national emergency room visits for COVID-19 symptoms “is down to almost half what it was in July.” It is down only 29% from the July peak.
• Trump once again misleadingly claimed that testing was behind the United States’ large number of cases, boasting that the U.S. “is only 5% of the world’s population, but we have conducted over 25% of the world’s testing.” While American testing is better than some countries, it does not explain the huge caseload, nor does it change the fact that the U.S. also has 22% of the world’s COVID-19 deaths.
• Trump falsely said if the Democrats controlled Washington, they would pass “legislation gutting every single police department in America.” Nearly 90% of funding for police comes from local governments, and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said he opposes “defunding the police.”
• The president falsely said that “everybody” — Republicans and Democrats alike — was in favor of the payroll tax cut he has long sought. There is bipartisan opposition to the proposal.
• He claimed “the Democrat bill includes stimulus checks for illegal aliens.” The HEROES Act expands eligibility for payments only to certain immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who filed federal income tax returns using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.
• Trump boasted of the nearly 9.3 million jobs added in the U.S. since May but neglected to mention the 22.2 million in job losses in March and April.
• He similarly cited nearly 1 million in job creation for African Americans but left out the March and April job losses of 3.5 million. 
• He exaggerated in saying the Democratic relief bill would require the “mass release” of “illegal aliens” from detention centers and “serious felons” from prisons. The bill would not release detainees subject to “mandatory detention,” and would apply only to certain prisoners within one year of release.
• Trump again wrongly claimed that Biden “wants to rip down the wall” the Trump administration has constructed along the Mexican border. Biden has said only that he would not build any more wall, not that he would dismantle existing fencing.
• The president repeated his bogus claim about the genesis of the Veterans Choice program, which was launched in 2014 under the Obama administration. Trump took credit for the law, claiming “no president’s ever been able to do it, and we got it done.”

The HEROES Act, or the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, passed the Democratic-controlled House in May by a vote of 208-199. (One Republican voted in favor; 14 Democrats voted against.) But negotiations broke down on Aug. 7 between the White House and congressional Democratic leaders to find a coronavirus relief bill both sides could support.

Trump spoke about the Democratic bill, his executive orders on relief efforts, the coronavirus pandemic and more in the Aug. 7 and 8 press briefings.

False Evictions Claim

On Aug. 8, Trump signed an executive order that directs his administration to identify federal funds “to provide temporary financial assistance to renters and homeowners” and “to promote the ability of renters and homeowners to avoid eviction or foreclosure” due to the coronavirus.

In signing the order, Trump falsely claimed that “the Democrats don’t want to do anything having to do with protecting people from eviction,” even though the House Democrats had already passed a bill to do exactly that.

Trump, Aug. 8: So I’m protecting people from eviction. Yet you’ve been hearing a lot about eviction, and the Democrats don’t want to do anything having to do with protecting people from eviction. I said, “Let’s do that separately. That can be a totally separate thing from passing along money so people can live.” And they didn’t even want to protect people from eviction.

In fact, the House — without a single Republican vote — passed the Emergency Housing Protections and Relief Act, which would provide $100 billion for emergency rental assistance and create a $75 billion homeowners assistance fund. It also would extend the eviction and foreclosure moratorium for certain renters and homeowners that was put in place by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act.

The CARES Act protected “most residents of federally subsidized apartments, including those supported by HUD, USDA or Treasury (Low Income Housing Tax Credit developments) as well a moratorium on filings for evictions for renters in homes covered by federally-backed (FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac) mortgages” for 120 days, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The moratorium expired July 24, but the House Democratic bill would extend the protections until March 2021.

The Senate Republicans did not include an extension of the eviction protections in their package of coronavirus relief bills.

Preexisting Conditions

Trump made the curious claim that he would pursue an executive order to require “health insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all customers,” claiming this had “never been done before.” The Affordable Care Act already enacted such preexisting conditions protections.

The ACA, signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2010, prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions, charging them higher premiums or excluding coverage of certain conditions based on health status.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ website says these protections went into effect in 2014: “These rules went into effect for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2014.”

Trump, Aug. 7: Over the next two weeks, I’ll be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all customers. That’s a big thing. I’ve always been very strongly in favor — we have to cover pre-existing conditions. So we will be pursuing a major executive order, requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all of its customers.

This has never been done before, but it’s time the people of our country are properly represented and properly taken care of.

Trump acknowledged to reporters on Aug. 10 that this executive order would simply reinforce what the ACA had already done. “Just a double safety net and just to let people know that the Republicans are totally and strongly in favor of preexisting conditions, taking care of people with preexisting conditions,” he said. Trump justified his “never been done before” comment by saying “as an executive order, it hasn’t been done before.”

Of course, an executive order restating existing law wouldn’t change anything.

The Trump administration has actually worked to reduce the preexisting condition protections under the ACA in several ways. It has backed a lawsuit to nullify the law, even arguing at one point that preexisting condition provisions would have to go if the suit were succesful. The administration later backed the full invalidation of the health care law. (The Supreme Court should hear arguments for that case — California v. Texas — in the fall, with a decision not expected until next year.)

Trump also supported Republican health care legislation in 2017 that would have included some, but not all, of the ACA’s protections. And the president 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.

Trump’s COVID-19 Spin

In claiming that the U.S. is “doing very well” with the coronavirus, Trump boasted in the Aug. 7 briefing of the large number of U.S. counties with fewer than 20 cases of COVID-19.

“More than half of America’s counties report fewer than 20 cases last week,” he said. 

Data from USAFacts, a not-for-profit that supplies data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that the president is correct, if using cases reported between Aug. 1 and Aug. 7. In that time span, 1,635 counties or county equivalents had fewer than 20 COVID-19 cases, versus 1,507 with 20 or more.

But what Trump does not share is the number of people who live in those areas — less than 31 million, or 9.4% of the U.S. population. That means more than 90% of the American population lives in a county with 20 or more COVID-19 cases.

The numbers flip if looking for new cases reported between July 31 and Aug. 7, which covers the full past week. In that timeframe, 1,608 counties or county equivalents — accounting for 91.5% of the population — had 20 or more cases, versus 1,534 below that threshold.

Trump then proceeded to overstate the progress seen in the nation’s surveillance system.

“Nationally, the percentage of emergency room visits with the coronavirus symptoms is down to almost half what it was in July,” Trump said.

But data from the CDC does not show that much of a drop. On Aug. 7, the CDC released its figures for the week ending Aug. 1, which found 2.9% of emergency room visits were for a COVID-19-like illness. That’s an improvement from three weeks prior, when the July peak was at 4.1%. But it’s only a 29% decline, not one of almost 50%.

Later, Trump returned to one of his favorite topics: COVID-19 testing.

Trump, Aug. 7: The United States is only 5% of the world’s population, but we have conducted over 25% of the world’s testing. Think of that: 5% and we’ve given 25% of the world’s testing. Any proper global analysis of confirmed cases must really take this into account, because we’re constantly showing cases — cases, cases, cases are up. Well, the reason cases are up, because we’re doing — one of the reasons — we’re doing a lot of testing. We’re doing much more testing than anyone else. Close to 65 million tests where other countries have done very little testing.

Trump is right that the number of confirmed cases needs to take testing into account. But as we have explained before, the large number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. isn’t just due to testing; it also stems from increased transmission of the virus. And many other countries are still doing more testing per coronavirus case — meaning they are doing more testing for the size of their outbreaks.

Figures from Our World in Data show that as of Aug. 10, or around that date, the U.S. has done only 12.4 tests per COVID-19 case, which is below the majority of the rest of the world. New Zealand has done a whopping 407; Australia, 235; and South Korea, 110.

It’s difficult to know what percentage of the world’s tests the U.S. has done because data is missing for numerous countries and countries report test data differently. The White House did not explain how the president arrived at his 25% claim. But according to the information available on Worldometer, the U.S. accounts for about 17.8% of all tests to date. That includes 90 million tests in China, which if correct, would be more than the U.S.’s 66 million tests. If leaving out all tests from China — an extreme underestimation — the U.S.’s percentage swells to 23.6%.

The U.S. is actually 4.3% of the world population, per the Census Bureau, not quite 5%. More critically, Trump highlighted testing percentage, which is uncertain, but did not also share that the U.S. has 25% of the world’s coronavirus cases and 22% of the world’s coronavirus deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker. Caveats about reporting aside, it’s clear that the U.S. has a disproportionate number of both cases and deaths, given its population.

False Claim on Democrats and Police

Trump also falsely said that if the Democrats controlled Washington, they would pass “legislation gutting every single police department in America.”

Trump, Aug. 7: If the Democrats controlled in Washington — the Democrats’ control of Washington — they’d pass — with all of the things they do — legislation gutting every single police department in America. They truly do; many of these people want to defund the police department. At a minimum, they’re to stop money from going to the police department, but in many cases they actually wanted to defund, completely, the police department. No city, no town, and no suburb would be safe. Your suburbs would be a disaster. Your cities, your towns would be a disaster.

First of all, even if the Democrats in Washington wanted to, they would not be able to do much “gutting” of police spending. According to a backgrounder by the Urban Institute, 86% of police funding in 2017 was from local governments, with additional money ponied up by state governments. “Nearly all spending on both police and corrections was funded by state and local governments because federal grants account for a very small share of both expenditures,” the report said.

But there is no reason to think they want to. As we have written, presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said several times that he is opposed to defunding the police. “While I do not believe federal dollars should go to police departments violating people’s rights or turning to violence as the first resort, I do not support defunding police,” the former vice president said in a June 10 op-ed.

A campaign spokesman also told us Biden supports more funding for police for initiatives to strengthen community relationships and for body-worn cameras.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from making the false claim about Biden, as he did in a highly publicized interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” which aired on July 19. Wallace quickly pointed out that Biden didn’t support defunding the police. And it hasn’t stopped the Trump campaign from running a series of ads suggesting criminals would run amok in a Biden administration. The ads, which feature images of rioting and mayhem and ringing but unanswered police telephones, convey the message that people “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”

Trump also falsely claimed in the Wallace interview that “defunding the police” was called for in a collection of recommendations put together by supporters of Biden and his vanquished rival in the Democratic primaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders. That also is false. There is no mention of it in the recommendations of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force.

There is no agreed upon definition for the term “defund the police.” Some critics of the police, who believe there is systemic racism in law enforcement, really do want to abolish police forces and replace them with other forms of community safety entities. Others advocate shifting some money and functions away from police departments to social service agencies.

But Trump’s comments and campaign ads depict defunding the police as meaning taking away significant amounts of money, crippling law enforcement.

In one interview, Biden did say he was open to the idea in some cases of shifting some funds from the police to social service agencies. But Biden said in the same interview, “that’s not the same as getting rid of or defunding all the police.”

Nothing Biden has said backs up the idea that he would seek legislation “gutting” law enforcement and making Americans unsafe.

 Not ‘Everybody’ Supports Payroll Tax Cut

Trump falsely said that “everybody” — Republicans and Democrats alike — was in favor of the payroll tax cut he has long sought.

Reporter, Aug. 8: Sir, the payroll tax cut was opposed by both parties on Capitol Hill. Can you give your rationale as to why you think that’s important, particularly since it doesn’t help Americans who (inaudible)?

Trump: Yeah. Okay. It helps people greatly. It helps our country get back. And anybody that would say anything different, I think, is very foolish. Everybody wanted it. By the way, the Democrats want it. The Republicans want it. They just couldn’t get it — they just couldn’t come to an agreement, but everybody wants it. And the very important thing is the people want it, and the people need it, actually.

But that is not the case. Democrats have resisted cutting or suspending the payroll tax. And Republicans, who have loyally supported the president on many issues, have expressed little enthusiasm for the idea. Even before the talks on the latest coronavirus assistance legislation broke down, the White House gave up on the payroll tax cut in the face of GOP opposition.

For example, Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, told reporters on July 21, “I’m not a fan of that. I’ve been very clear about that. We’ll see what it looks like, but if it’s a choice between doing [stimulus] checks and a payroll-tax cut, I think it’s pretty clear that the checks have a more direct benefit to the economy.”

Sen. Charles Grassley, a Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, also expressed reservations. “Go to the fact that Social Security people think we’re raiding the Social Security fund,” Grassley said on July 20. “And we are raiding it, but we have always put in general fund revenue in it so it is made whole. But that creates — it might create political problems — but it creates a public relations problem.”

In a television interview on July 24, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, generally a staunch ally of the president, explained why the payroll tax provision would be left out of the legislation. He said there was “bipartisan opposition” to the idea, adding, “I think we’re a lot better off just to send another direct cash payment to those who’ve been left out of all of this. It’s the quickest and easiest way to get relief. A payroll tax [cut], of course, would only help those who have a job.”

From the outset, Democrats on Capitol Hill were against the idea. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said on July 21 that a payroll tax cut “not only will harm those who rely on Social Security, but will do nothing for the tens of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs during this crisis.”

Stimulus Payments

Trump claimed in the Aug. 8 briefing that “the Democrat bill includes stimulus checks for illegal aliens.” That’s true only for some individuals living in the U.S. illegally who also file federal income taxes.

The HEROES Act includes another $1,200 refundable tax credit — paid in advance — for eligible individuals and households based on their 2018 or 2019 federal income tax returns. The credit is $1,200 for single taxpayers and $2,400 for joint filers. An additional $1,200 would be available for each dependent up to a maximum of three dependents. For individuals, the tax credit phases out starting at $75,000 of modified adjusted gross income. For heads of households and joint filers, the income cutoffs are $112,500 and $150,000, respectively.

Unlike the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which was signed into law in late March, the HEROES Act would make the “economic impact payments” available to those who filed federal income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN.

ITINs are used by individuals — including people living in the U.S. illegally — who file their taxes and do not have, or are not eligible to receive, a Social Security number. “In 2015, 4.4 million ITIN filers paid over $5.5 billion in payroll and Medicare taxes and $23.6 billion in total taxes,” according to a 2015 report from the Taxpayer Advocate Service.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has argued that those people should’ve never been left out of the CARES Act, which denied stimulus payments of similar amounts to individuals without — or joint filers married to someone without — a Social Security number.

The HEROES Act would make some taxpayers who filed with ITINs — and meet other requirements — retroactively eligible for payments under the CARES Act as well.

Jobs

Trump boasted of job growth since May, but neglected to mention the historic job losses that preceeded it.

In his Aug. 7 remarks, Trump correctly said the U.S. had “added 1.8 million new jobs in July” and exaggerated slightly in saying the job growth totaled “over 9.3 million jobs since May.” It was just under that: 9,279,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“And I will say that the job growth that we’ve seen over the last three months — 9.3 million — is the single greatest three-month period of job creation in American history,” he continued.

BLS data on employment, dating back to 1939, shows no other three-month period coming close to the magnitude of that job growth; however, no other two-month period comes close to the job loss in March and April. Those losses totaled 22.2 million.

The unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April and was 10.2% in July. In February, the U.S. rate was 3.5%.

Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for Latinos, saying, “Hispanic American unemployment has decreased by nearly 32%.” That’s the drop in the unemployment rate, from 18.9% in April to 12.9% in July, a decline of 6 percentage points. The rate was 4.4% in February.

He also cited a record for African Americans: “Jobs held by African Americans, which were hit especially hard by the shutdowns — incredibly hard — increased by nearly 1 million over the past three months, and that’s also a record. That’s a job record: African American, 1 million. It’s job record.”

Similar to the job losses and gains for the U.S. as a whole, African American employment has rebounded somewhat, with the gain of 921,000 jobs from May through July. But that comes after 3.5 million jobs lost in March and April.

‘Mass Release’ of ‘Illegal Aliens,’ ‘Serious Felons’

Trump exaggerated in claiming the Democratic relief bill would “require the mass release of illegal aliens from detention” and “compel the mass release of inmates, including serious felons.”

Trump, Aug. 8: They require the mass release of illegal aliens from detention. They also compel the mass release of inmates, including serious felons. How do you like that one? And this is in the bill that we’re talking about? What does this have to do with stimulus, the economy? What does this have to do with the coronavirus?

The $3 trillion House bill, known as the HEROES Act, includes provisions that are designed to reduce populations in crowded federal facilities, such as immigration detention centers and prisons, to prevent coronavirus outbreaks.

In a section known as the “Pandemic Justice Response Act,” the bill would require the release of inmates who are within 12 months of being released from prison, or those who are juveniles or over 50 years old, or have a “covered health condition,” such as diabetes, heart disease and chronic lung disease. Such inmates would be subject to community supervision for the remainder of their prison sentences.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons “may not place in community supervision any individual determined, by clear and convincing evidence, to be likely to pose a specific and substantial risk of causing bodily injury to or using violent force against the person of another,” the bill states.

It is worth noting the bill would apply only to federal prisons — which hold a small percentage of those incarcerated in the U.S. Of the nearly 2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. in 2016, only 188,000 — or 8.7% — were held in federal prisons, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (table 3). There are currently only about 157,000 federal inmates, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

In the case of immigrant detainees, the Democratic bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to review immigration files of all detainees and release those “who are not subject to mandatory detention laws” and not a “threat to public safety or national security.”

Those subject to mandatory detention (and therefore not eligible for release under the Democratic bill) have been convicted of crimes “involving moral turpitude,” such as drug offenses, human trafficking and money laundering, or specific offenses, such as aggravated felony and firearm offenses, according to a 2019 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The Democratic bill is consistent with existing law. The Immigration and Nationality Act “permits aliens who are not subject to mandatory detention to be released on bond or on their own recognizance,” according to the CRS report.

The bill is also consistent with current ICE enforcement policy. In mid-March, ICE announced that because of the pandemic it would temporarily adjust its enforcement priorities to “focus enforcement on public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds” — the two groups that would still be detained under the Democratic bill.

Since announcing its new enforcement policy, the detainee population has declined from 37,888 on March 7 to 21,546 on Aug. 1, and the percentage of detainees with criminal convictions has increased from 38% to 53%.

So, the Democratic bill is consistent with existing immigration law and current ICE enforcement policy.

Biden Would Not Tear Down Wall

Trump again wrongly claimed that Biden “wants to rip down the wall” the Trump administration has constructed along the Mexican border. But as we have written, Biden has said only that he would not build any more wall, not that he would dismantle existing fencing.

“I think from what I’ve heard, Joe Biden, sleepy Joe wants to rip the wall down,” Trump said. “He wants people to pour into our country. They want to have open borders.”

The Trump administration has constructed about 200 miles of border fencing, though most of it is replacement for dilapidated fencing or fencing with outdated designs. Less than four miles of fencing has been built where there was no fencing before.

Biden has not said he would tear down the fencing that has been constructed by the Trump administration, nor has he advocated for open borders. To the contrary, in an Aug. 5 interview, NPR reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Biden directly, “Trump campaigned on ‘Build that wall.’ Are you willing to tear that wall down?”

“No,” Biden responded, “there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration. … I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it. And at the ports of entry — that’s where all the bad stuff is happening.”

A Repeated Falsehood on Veterans Choice

For nearly two years, Trump has been spreading a bogus tale that he was responsible for enacting legislation to create the Veterans Choice program, when, in fact, that legislation was signed by Obama in 2014.

The president again made the claim in his Aug. 8 press briefing, saying, “And they’ve been trying to get that passed for decades and decades and decades, and no president’s ever been able to do it, and we got it done so veterans have choice.”

That echoes Trump’s prior claims that it’s something people had been “trying to get” for “almost 50 years,” or “44 years.” He has even claimed the program — which allows veterans to receive care from non-VA health care providers if they were unable to get timely appointments or face long travel to VA facilities — was his idea, calling it “the greatest idea I think I’ve ever had.”

The Veterans Choice legislation passed easily in August 2014, with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Only eight lawmakers in Congress opposed the final bill. Trump has continued the program.

This time when Trump made the claim, a reporter called him out on the falsehood, and the president ended the press conference.

Reporter, Aug. 8: Why do you keep saying that you passed Veterans … Veterans Choice? It was passed in 2014. … But it’s a false statement, sir.

Trump: Okay, thank you very much everybody. Thank you very much.

The post FactChecking Trump’s Weekend Press Briefings appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did the comedian Steve Harvey author a post in support of President Donald Trump circulating on social media?

A: No. It was written by an anonymous, 80-year-old American, according to the conservative website that first published it in 2016.

FULL QUESTION

Did Steve Harvey make the following statement?

HOW I FEEL ABOUT TRUMP ~ by Steve Harvey…

FULL ANSWER

A viral rant that gives props to President Donald Trump and likens immigrants in the country illegally to raccoons repeatedly has appeared in various corners of the internet since early 2016.

But in its most recent iteration, the writing has found popularity by wrongly attributing it to the comedian and radio and TV host Steve Harvey.

Social media posts sharing the pro-Trump message and invoking Harvey’s name and image have earned tens of thousands of shares on Facebook.

Titled “HOW I FEEL ABOUT TRUMP,” the piece describes a scenario in which a basement is full of “hundreds” of raccoons — a problem that that no exterminator “can handle.” But, it says, “one guy … guarantees to get rid of them.” It suggests that other potential shortcomings don’t matter — whether he “smells” or “swears,” or “if he’s an alcoholic,” or “how many times he’s been married.”

“Yes, he’s a bit of a jerk; Yes, he’s an egomaniac; but we don’t care!” it says of Trump. “The country is a mess because politicians suck, the Republicans and Democrats can be two-faced and gutless, and illegals are everywhere.. We want it all fixed!”

Some users who commented on the posts that were attributed to Harvey praised the entertainer’s supposed prose. “Mr. Harvey speaks and thinks with common since [sic],” one user wrote. But Harvey didn’t write it.

Harvey officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on his radio show in March 2016. He did meet with Trump in January 2017 to discuss housing issues, but last year Harvey called Trump “one of the most immoral presidents we’ve ever had in my lifetime.”

The writing about raccoons actually appears to have originated as part of a submission to the conservative website 100percentfedup.com, which published it in March 2016 — before Trump officially clinched the Republican nomination for president. The website wrote that “this letter was sent to 100% FED Up! by an anonymous author,” who was only identified as an “80 year old American.”

The letter also was republished on the well-known conspiracy theory website InfoWars two days later.

After that, it took on a life of its own.

In April 2016, an honorary co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign in New York invoked the same analogy in a radio interview, saying, “It doesn’t matter what kind of person is the exterminator, OK? They want the raccoons out of the basement.”

In February 2018, the deputy mayor of a New Jersey town posted the piece on Facebook, prompting an outcry that led to his resignation.

Then, in September 2018, the post again drew attention — when the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, Scott Wagner, recited parts of it while addressing his supporters, referring to it as “the raccoon story.” Democrats condemned the tale as racist, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and a Wagner spokesman told the newspaper that Wagner had read the account “in an email that had been sent to him.”

Online deceptions have long leveraged celebrities in an attempt to make political points: We’ve debunked false claims about Miley Cyrus, Kurt Russell and Jennifer Aniston, among others.

In this case, there may be an explanation for the erroneous attribution. A search of public posts on Facebook for “Steve Harvey” and “HOW I FEEL ABOUT TRUMP” shows that one user who posted the text on Facebook in January — earning some 160,000 shares — had something in common with the TV host: His name on the platform is also Steve Harvey. But it is not the account for the comedian.

Some who posted the same text after it went viral did so with a credit that reads, “COPIED FROM STEVE HARVEY.”

Sources

Dai, Dawn. “Steve Harvey Talks Donald Trump & The Importance Of Voting.” SteveHarveyFM.com. 19 Oct 2018.

“DEAR RNC: An Everyday American Writes A Letter To Explain The Trump Phenomenon.” 100percentfedup.com.

“Donald Trump Addresses Republican National Convention.” Video. C-SPAN. 21 Jul 2016.

Jensen, Elizabeth. “NPR Interview Takes An Inflammatory Turn.” NPR. 21 Apr 2016.

Seidman, Andrew. “Scott Wagner, Republican nominee for governor, shares story about ‘raccoon’ infestation, invasion.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 20 Sep 2018.

The post The ‘Raccoon’ Rant Not Written by Steve Harvey appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Quick Take

A popular Facebook post gives readers a false impression about the recent college admissions scandal and the cost of college for immigrants in the United States illegally.

Full Story

Where can you find an inaccurate comparison between the college admissions bribery scandal and the cost of college for immigrants in the U.S. illegally?

Facebook.

A meme that has been shared over 18,000 times makes this claim: “Break the law to enter college, you’re expelled and your parents go to jail. Break the law to enter the country, free college!”

The first part of the claim is a reference to the criminal charges recently brought against 33 parents, who are accused of participating in a bribery scheme to get their children admitted to selective colleges and universities.

It’s true that the parents are facing potential jail time, although none of them have been sentenced yet. So, it’s unclear whether or not they will actually serve time in jail.

Also, not all of the students involved have been “expelled.” For example, the University of Southern California is handling the continued enrollment of each student who was involved on a case-by-case basis. Wake Forest University, however, is allowing a student to remain enrolled since the school determined the student wasn’t aware of the bribery, and Yale University has rescinded the offer of admission to the one student involved in the scandal. (It’s not clear what actions other colleges and universities named in the federal indictments have taken.)

As for the part of the claim that says those who “break the law to enter the country” get “free college,” that’s even more misleading.

In six states, immigrants in the country illegally are barred from having access to in-state tuition, according to data compiled in a recent report from the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 22 states and the District of Columbia, immigrants in the country illegally are allowed to pay in-state tuition rates, but in only 11 of those do they have access to financial aid.

Of those 11 states, only six offer programs that cover the full cost of tuition, or fill in the gap between what students can pay and the remainder of their tuition costs, regardless of legal status. Also, the eligibility requirements for those programs differ, but are generally based on merit, age, length of residency, income, or a combination of those things.

Here’s how the programs in those six states compare:

• New York has the Excelsior Scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition at state community colleges and state colleges and universities for students who meet the financial-need requirements and plan to stay in the state for the same length of time that they participated in the program. In April, the Excelsior Scholarship was made available to immigrants in the country illegally.
• California has the California College Promise Grant, which covers tuition at community colleges for students who maintain a 2.0 grade point average and meet the financial-need requirements.
• Maryland has the Maryland Community College Promise Scholarship, which covers tuition at community colleges for students who maintain a 2.5 GPA, have not already earned a degree, and meet the financial-need requirements. Immigrants who are in the country illegally, however, are not eligible for the state’s program that covers the cost of attending a four-year college.
• Oregon has the Oregon Promise Grant, which covers tuition at community colleges for students who graduated from an Oregon high school with at least a 2.5 GPA and have lived in the state for at least a year.
• Washington has the College Bound Scholarship, which is a need-based program that contributes to the cost of college tuition for students who apply no later than the eighth grade and graduate from high school with at least a 2.0 GPA.
• Delaware has the SEED program, which covers tuition at the state’s community college (it has only one) for students who maintain a 2.5 GPA.

In addition, there are across the country some local “promise programs,” which are either privately or publicly funded tuition-assistance programs that cover the cost of college or career programs for some students. But most of them are not available to immigrants in the country illegally.

So, the amount that immigrants in the country illegally have to pay for college depends on the state or locality in which they live, and whether they meet the requirements of the specific scholarship or grant programs that are offered.

Even in the areas where unauthorized immigrants can access tuition assistance programs, those programs usually don’t allow students to go to any school they choose (most apply to community colleges) and they don’t ensure a complete free ride. According to the College Board, tuition and fees account for only 20 percent of the average budget for community college students and 40 percent of the average budget for in-state students living on campus at public four-year schools.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network.

Sources

Investigations of College Admissions and Testing Bribery Scheme. United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. Accessed 19 Apr 2019.

Kircher, Madison Malone. “College Admissions Scam Fallout: What Happened to Everyone in the Scandal.” New York Magazine. 15 Apr 2019.

Tuition Benefits for Immigrants. National Conference of State Legislatures. 16 Jan 2019.

Boggs, Bennett. “A Promise is a Promise: Free Tuition Programs and How They Work.” National Conference of State Legislatures. Mar 2019.

College Promise Programs in the United States. Penn Ahead — Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy. University of Pennsylvania. Accessed 22 Apr 2019.

Average Estimated Undergraduate Budgets, 2018-19. College Board. Accessed 23 Apr 2019.

The post Meme Gets an ‘F’ on College Claims appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Quick Take

There is no evidence that “18 million illegal immigrants” received “government checks” during the government shutdown this month, contrary to Facebook posts.

Full Story

Immigrants in the country illegally are not eligible for most federal benefits.

But viral posts on social media distort that fact by claiming millions of unauthorized immigrants have been receiving money from the government, even amid the partial government shutdown that caused hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay.

“18 Million Illegal Immigrants got their government checks this month…” the Facebook posts read, “Federal workers … let that sink in.”

That vague claim offers no support for its assertion, and we could find no evidence to back it up.

Michael Fix, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, told FactCheck.org that the notion of that many unauthorized immigrants receiving benefits was “implausible to say the least.”

First of all, Fix said in an email, many estimates figure there to be somewhere around 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country.

The numbers fluctuate: In a 2018 report, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that there were about 12 million immigrants in the country illegally as of January 2015. The Pew Research Center, meanwhile, found the number had dropped to about 10.7 million in 2016. One recent study suggested much higher numbers — with a mean estimate of 22.1 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. — but some, including Fix and his colleagues, have contested its methodology and findings.

What’s more, Fix said, “unauthorized (immigrants) have for decades been barred from all cash and in-kind public benefit programs — and applications for those programs have been screened through the SAVE,” referring to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system. He also noted that they are “barred from federal employment” and that “applications for employment for federal positions are themselves screened” through the E-Verify system.

Many of the public-benefit restrictions on unauthorized immigrants were codified in a 1996 welfare reform law known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a 2016 report that such immigrants are not eligible for programs including SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); Supplemental Security Income; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; and Medicaid.

Some exceptions: treatment under Medicaid for emergency medical conditions, temporary in-kind emergency disaster relief and immunizations. Immigrant children are also not barred from accessing public education.

But none of this lends credence to the unsupported claim that “18 million illegal immigrants” are receiving “government checks.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network.

Sources

Fix, Michael. Senior fellow, Migration Policy Institute. Emails sent to FactCheck.org. 25 Jan 2019.

Passel, Jeffrey S., and D’Vera Cohn. “U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Total Dips to Lowest Level in a Decade.” Pew Research Center. 27 Nov 2018.

Siskin, Alison. “Noncitizen Eligibility for Federal Public Assistance: Policy Overview.” Congressional Research Service. 12 Dec 2016.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Population Estimates – Illegal Alien Population Residing in the United States: January 2015.” December 2018.

Wasem, Ruth Ellen. “Unauthorized Aliens’ Access to Federal Benefits: Policy and Issues.” Congressional Research Service. 17 Sep 2012.

The post Immigrants, ‘Government Checks’ and a Viral Myth appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Is California registering noncitizens to vote?

A: No. A state motor-voter program and a San Francisco school board measure have fueled that false claim.

FULL ANSWER

A text-based photo on Facebook asks whether “all votes from California should be nullified and Federal Representatives from the State be removed from Congress for the benefit of all the States?”

The state’s purported offense? “California is registering non-citizens to vote and has refused to Cooperate with the Federal Election Integrity Program.”

But that text — the same that appeared in a July tweet by the chairman of a national group called Students for Trump — is rooted in false and misleading information. California is not registering noncitizens to vote, save for one city allowing certain illegal immigrants to vote only in school board elections.

The Sept. 10 photo was shared more than 22,000 times on Facebook, and the original tweet was retweeted nearly 17,000 times.

Some websites posted a story this summer with the misleading headline that San Francisco was giving “illegal aliens the right to vote in elections” — when in fact the measure only affords certain noncitizens the right to vote in school board elections, as we wrote in July.

The measure, which voters approved in 2016, gives all immigrants living in the city who are of legal voting age and who are parents, guardians or caregivers of a child under the age of 19 permission to vote in school board elections. The local policy doesn’t permit noncitizens to vote in any other elections, including federal contests — which is the subject of the Facebook photo.

Earlier this year, we debunked a similar false assertion about California’s New Motor Voter Program. That program is an effort to increase voter turnout by automatically registering people to vote when they renew or obtain a new license, unless they opt out.

Critics claimed California would therefore register illegal immigrants to vote because the state also has a measure in place that allows noncitizens to obtain special driver’s licenses.

But California officials maintain that only eligible voters would be automatically registered. A spokeswoman for the state’s DMV told us in March that “undocumented Californians are not eligible to register to vote and [the] DMV has programming measures to prevent that from occurring.”

“One example is the technician is unable to enter information that would allow the undocumented customer to register. It is automatically greyed out and cannot be bypassed,” Jessica Gonzalez told us in an email.

We could also find no record of the “Federal Election Integrity Program” mentioned in the text of the image. That is likely a reference to the short-lived Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

The federal commission, created in 2017 to examine “fraudulent voting” and other issues, faced opposition in obtaining voter data from California and other states, some citing concerns over voters’ privacy. The panel was dissolved in January, about eight months after it was created.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network.

Update, Aug. 28, 2019: In late 2018, the California Secretary of State’s office said roughly 1,500 people — including noncitizens — were erroneously registered to vote through the state’s motor-voter program. The office has said those registrations have since been cancelled, but this month it announced that six people who were erroneously registered “due to DMV errors” actually voted in the 2018 elections. Paula Valle, a spokeswoman for the office, told us none of the individuals wrongly registered were licensees under the AB-60 program, which allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain a license. 

Sources

“Executive Order on the Termination of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.” WhiteHouse.gov. 3 Jan 2018.

Hale Spencer, Saranac. “Noncitizens Get Narrow Access to Polls in San Francisco.” FactCheck.org. 26 Jul 2018.

“Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.” WhiteHouse.gov. Accessed 13 Sep 2018.

“Responses to the ‘Voter Fraud’ Commission’s Voter File Data Request.” Brennan Center for Justice. 5 Oct 2017.

“Secretary of State Alex Padilla Responds to Presidential Election Commission Request for Personal Data of California Voters.” Press release, California Secretary of State’s Office. 29 Jun 2017.

The post False Claim of California Registering Noncitizens to Vote appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did the Obama administration separate “72,410 Children From Their Families in 2013”?

A: That’s the number of immigrants removed that year who had U.S.-born children. But viral stories wrongly conflate removals with President Trump’s zero tolerance policy.

FULL ANSWER

Viral stories that defend the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from adults caught illegally crossing the country’s southwest border are claiming that the Obama administration did worse — by separating “72,410 Children From Their Families in 2013.”

But the websites parroting that line overstate the number of children separated “from their families” under President Obama and conflate two separate immigration actions. We explain both issues here.

Zero Tolerance Policy

As we’ve reported before, the wide-scale practice of separating families apprehended at the border was not one employed by previous administrations.

Experts told us that, under previous presidents, such family separations occurred in “really limited circumstances,” such as suspicion of trafficking or other fraud.

None had a blanket rule like the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy,” which referred all illegal border crossings for criminal prosecution. When that happened, adults were sent to jails that cannot legally house children.

Relying on civil immigration proceedings to remove those who crossed illegally, “previous administrations used family detention facilities, allowing the whole family to stay together while awaiting their deportation case in immigration court” — or released and tracked families as they awaited their court dates, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Before suspending its practice of separating families amid widespread criticism, the Trump administration separated more than 2,000 children from adults — and has been working to meet a federal court’s order to reunify those eligible.

Existing Deportation Policy

The website davidharrisjr.com claimed in an Aug. 10 story that “BARACK OBAMA SEPARATED 72,410 CHILDREN FROM THEIR FAMILIES IN 2013 ALONE.”

“The truth of the matter is that it was not Donald Trump’s policies that begin separating children from their parents,” the story says, later adding: “With all the liberal tears, wailings and gnashings of teeth over 2,000 illegal children being separated by the Trump administration you would think the 72,410 Obama separated in one year would spark a nation wide protest, wouldn’t you?”

That story was posted on other websites and accrued thousands of shares and engagements on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle data, including on pro-Trump pages.

In reality, the number cited — 72,410 — refers to the number of unauthorized immigrants who were removed in 2013 that claimed “at least one U.S.-born child.” A 2014 HuffPost story reported as much, citing U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports given to Congress for the first and second halves of 2013.

The action of deporting unauthorized immigrants, including those with U.S.-born children, has existed across administrations, and continues to occur today. In other words, Trump’s new zero tolerance policy is in addition to existing deportation actions.

Most of the removals in 2013 were the result of “immigration enforcement priorities” — meaning the immigrants were convicted of a crime, caught illegally entering the U.S., or were considered a fugitive because they failed to report to ICE or were already issued a final order of removal.

When parents of U.S.-born children are removed, the children may leave with them — or stay with another parent, family member, or in foster care.

We don’t know how many children were separated from their families in 2013, and the HuffPost story did not say, so the headline on davidharrisjr.com is wrong. It says Obama “separated 72,410 children from their families in 2013 alone.” But an unknown number wound up staying with their families, either with their other parent or another family member.

The website misleads when it conflates the issues by declaring that “it was not Donald Trump’s policies that begin separating children from their parents. Those policies were in place long before Donald Trump took office.”

Changing Policies

In the years following 2013, the number of immigrants removed who claimed at least one U.S. child did decline. While we couldn’t locate data for 2014, DHS reported that there were 31,411 such removals in 2015. In 2016, the number totaled 28,860.

Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said in an interview that the drop was likely the result of enforcement changes by the Obama administration. DHS guidance issued in late 2014, building off the president’s executive actions on immigration, more thoroughly outlined immigration enforcement priorities and the use of prosecutorial discretion.

Under the changes, the highest priority group for deportation included serious criminal offenders, especially those deemed national security threats, and immigrants apprehended at the border. DHS officials were also given ample discretion on such cases — even if they did fall under one of several levels of priority. And having a child who was a U.S. citizen, Pierce said, could have helped their case.

We don’t have enough data to know how exactly the number of immigrants removed who have a U.S.-born child will change over the course of the Trump administration. The first half of 2017 saw 12,464 such removals — a drop from 14,699 in the first half of 2016.

But within days of taking office, Trump overrode the 2014 guidance with an executive order that significantly broadened the groups of immigrants in the country illegally that should be prioritized for removal, Pierce noted.

The effects of that may result in Immigration and Customs Enforcement increasing the removals of parents of U.S. citizens, she said. “It takes a lot of time to ramp up interior enforcement — we’ve seen ICE trying to work with local jurisdictions … [and] criminal justice systems, trying to get referrals.”

We asked DHS for the number of immigrants removed who claimed U.S.-born children in the second half of 2017, and to date in 2018 — as well as for other years’ data — but did not get a response. We will update this story if we do.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk false stories shared on the social media network.

Sources

O’Shea, Tim and Theresa Cardinal Brown. “Why Are Families Being Separated at the Border? An Explainer.” Bipartisan Policy Center. 13 Jun 2018.

Pierce, Sarah. Policy analyst, Migration Policy Institute. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 14 Aug 2018.

Robertson, Lori. “Did the Obama Administration Separate Families?” FactCheck.org. 20 Jun 2018.

Rosenblum, Marc R. “Understanding the Potential Impact of Executive Action on Immigration Enforcement.” Migration Policy Institute. Jul 2015.

Trump, Donald J. Executive Order 13768: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States. White House. 25 Jan 2017.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: First Semi-Annual, Calendar Year 2013.” 28 Apr 2014.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: Second Half, Calendar Year 2013.” 28 Apr 2014.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: First Half, Calendar Year 2015.” 1 Aug 2016.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: Second Half, Calendar Year 2015.” 1 Aug 2016.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: First Half, Calendar Year 2016.” 14 Sep 2016.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: Second Half, Calendar Year 2016.” 1 Jun 2017.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Deportation of Aliens Claiming U.S.-Born Children: First Half, Calendar Year 2017.” 12 Oct 2017.

The post Stories Conflate Immigration Issues appeared first on FactCheck.org.

CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org offer two fact-checking videos this week covering claims made by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

This first video examines Trump’s false claim that John Podesta, Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, “was quoted in WikiLeaks as saying, illegal immigrants could vote as long as they have their driver’s license.” The Podesta email in question says not one word about illegal immigrants. Nor does it say anything about encouraging voting fraud.

The second video explores Clinton’s claim that she opposed a 2008 Supreme Court decision striking the Washington, D.C., handgun ban, because the city was trying “to protect toddlers from guns.” Clinton, who made that statement during the third presidential debate, didn’t initially make that distinction when she said in 2015 that “the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment.” The core holding in the court’s landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller was that the city’s ban on possession of handguns violated the Second Amendment, which conferred on individuals a right to bear arms for self-defense.

For more on the claims in each video, read our articles “More Bogus Voter Fraud from Trump” and “FactChecking the Final Presidential Debate.” And check out our website for all of the previous videos from our collaboration with CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The post Videos: Clinton and Trump Fact-checks appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

LAS VEGAS — The third — and final — presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump was held Oct. 19 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace. We found plenty of factual inaccuracies:

• Trump defended his recent claims about rampant voter fraud by citing a Pew Charitable Trust report that found millions of errors in voter registration rolls but didn’t allege any actual voting violations.
• Trump falsely claimed that allegations of sexual harassment against him “have been largely debunked.” Trump has eight female accusers. In one case, a man claiming to be an eyewitness offered a conflicting account without providing evidence.
• Trump also denied calling any of his accusers unattractive. But he implied it when he told his supporters, “Yeah, I’m gonna go after her. Believe me, she would not be my first choice.”
• Clinton accused Trump of threatening to deport “undocumented workers” during the Trump Tower project in 1980. There is no evidence that Trump made such threats.
• Clinton claimed she opposed a 2008 Supreme Court decision striking the Washington, D.C., handgun ban, because the city was trying “to protect toddlers from guns.” But she didn’t make that distinction last year in speaking at a private fundraiser.
• Trump wrongly said that $6 billion was “missing” from the State Department when Clinton was secretary of state. The State Department Office of the Inspector General said that department records of $6 billion in contracts — not the money — were missing or incomplete.
• Trump said the federal debt had doubled to $20 trillion under Obama. Clinton said annual deficits had been cut by two-thirds. Both were straining the facts.
• Clinton and Trump disagreed about what Trump had said about more countries getting nuclear weapons. Clinton was closer to the truth. Trump did say perhaps Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons to protect themselves.
• Trump falsely claimed that billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a Clinton supporter, did “the same thing” Trump did to avoid paying federal income taxes. Buffett said that’s not true and that he has “paid federal income tax every year since 1944.”
• Trump and Wallace disagreed over whether Trump used money from his own foundation to settle his lawsuits. Trump did.
• Each candidate misrepresented the other’s position on abortion. Trump suggested Clinton supported abortions on the “final day” of pregnancy, when she’s open to some late-term restrictions. Clinton said Trump favored “some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.” He quickly walked back that comment months ago.
• Trump implied a link between Chicago’s tough gun laws and gun violence in the city. But the opposite correlation — fewer gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths — has been shown, and a causation between the two factors is impossible to prove.

And there were more claims that we have fact-checked before: on NAFTA, NATO, hacking, Iraq and more. An annotated transcript of the debate with our fact-checks can be found here.

Note to Readers: Staff writer D’Angelo Gore was at the debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This story was written by Gore with the help of the entire staff, based in the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., areas.

Analysis

Voter Fraud

Trump defended his recent claims about rampant voter fraud by citing a Pew Charitable Trust report that found millions of people whose voter registrations contained errors. But that’s not evidence of voter fraud, nor does the report allege wrongdoing. Rather, the Pew report said that it is evidence of the need to upgrade voter registration systems.

In fact, numerous voting experts told us that in-person voter fraud is rare.

In light of Trump’s recent comments about a “rigged” election process, Wallace asked Trump if he would accept the results of the election. Trump responded that he would ” look at it at the time.” Trump then went on to cite the Pew report as evidence of voter fraud.

Trump: If you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote, millions. This isn’t coming from me, it’s coming from Pew report and other places. Millions of people that are registered to vote, that shouldn’t be registered to vote.

In a speech in Wisconsin on Oct. 17, Trump cited the same report as evidence that “people that have died 10 years ago are still voting.” That’s not what the report says.

The report, “Inaccurate, Costly and Inefficient: Evidence That America’s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade,” found that approximately 24 million voter registrations in the United States “are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.” It also found that “more than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters” and “approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” The report found that these inaccuracies could feed the “perception” that the system “could be susceptible to fraud.” But it did not allege that such voter fraud was occurring.

Indeed, researchers say voter fraud involving ballots cast on behalf of deceased voters is rare, as are instances of people voting in numerous states. In the case of “dead people” voting — typically determined by matching voting records to Social Security death records — a bit of digging almost always reveals these cases to be due to clerical errors or as a result of people who legally voted via absentee ballots or the early voting process but later died before Election Day, said Lorraine Minnite, a professor at Rutgers University and author of “The Myth of Voter Fraud.”

“There are a handful of known cases in which documentation shows that votes have been cast in the names of voters who have died before the vote was submitted,” wrote Justin Levitt in a 2007 report, “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” for the Brennan Center for Justice. “It is far more common, however, to see unfounded allegations of epidemic voting from beyond the grave.”

Many election experts say the kind of voter fraud Trump is talking about — voter impersonation — is extremely rare, and not enough to tip even a close presidential election. And there is plenty of research to back that up.

A December 2006 report by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission interviewed more than two dozen researchers and experts on voter fraud and intimidation, including Minnite. That report concluded that “impersonation of voters is probably the least frequent type of fraud because it is the most likely type of fraud to be discovered, there are stiff penalties associated with this type of fraud, and it is an inefficient method of influencing an election.”

We took an in-depth look at this issue and others raised by Trump regarding voter fraud in our story “Trump’s Bogus Voter Fraud Claims.”

Trump’s Female Accusers

Trump has been accused by eight women of sexual harassment — all of them stepping forward after an Oct. 8 story in the Washington Post about a video that shows Trump boasting of groping women and forcing himself on them.

During the debate, Trump denied the allegations and claimed “those stories have been largely debunked.”

Trump: Well, first of all, those stories have been largely debunked. Those people — I don’t know those people.

First of all, Trump does know some of his accusers. They include Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine writer who wrote that Trump pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her on the mouth during a 2005 interview, and Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant who claimed Trump “very aggressively” kissed her and “placed his hand on my breast” at a hotel in 2007. (CNN has compiled a list of his accusers.)

We asked the Trump campaign what evidence it has that the allegations made by the eight women “have been largely debunked.” But the campaign had a response for only two of the eight cases, including the allegations made by Zervos.

In Zervos’ case, the Trump campaign put out a statement by John Barry, who said he is a first cousin of Zervos. The statement does not debunk Zervos’ allegations; it merely questions them. Barry said he was “completely shocked and bewildered” by Zervos’ allegations, because in the past “she has had nothing but glowing things to say about Mr. Trump.”

The Trump campaign also pointed us to a man who challenged the story of Jessica Leeds, who claimed that Trump kissed and groped her on a plane more than three decades ago. In that case, the New York Post reported that the Trump campaign arranged an interview with Anthony Gilberthorpe, a 54-year-old British man who claimed to be on the plane with Trump and Leeds.

Gilberthorpe told the Post that he saw nothing inappropriate between the two during the flight and that Leeds “was the one being flirtatious.”

The New York Post also wrote, “Gilberthorpe has no evidence to back up his claim — just his self-described excellent memory.” It also noted that Gilberthorpe “made headlines in 2014, when he went public with a claim that as a 17-year-old he procured boys (some who “could have been” underage”) for sex parties with high-ranking British politicians.”

We also note that six people have stepped forward to corroborate Stoynoff’s story of Trump’s unwanted sexual advances and contact. One of those people — Stoynoff’s former journalism professor Paul McLaughlin — “says that the writer called him in tears looking for advice the very night of the harrowing encounter. However, he cautioned her to remain quiet in fear of how Trump may retaliate,” People wrote in a follow-up story.

The accusations by Leeds and Stoynoff also factored into another debate exchange when Trump denied that he ever described any of his accusers as “not attractive.”

Clinton: Well, he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted.

Trump: I did not say that. I did not say that.

Trump may not have used the words “not attractive,” but in denying their accounts he told supporters that Leeds “would not be my first choice” and urged them to visit Stoynoff’s Facebook page if they did not believe his denials. “Check out her Facebook page — you’ll understand,” he said.

Trump Tower Laborers

In a discussion about people who live and work illegally in the U.S., Clinton made the unsupported claim that Trump threatened to deport “undocumented workers” who complained about low wages during the construction of Trump Tower.

Clinton: Now, what I am also arguing is that bringing undocumented immigrants out from the shadows, putting them into the formal economy will be good, because then employers can’t exploit them and undercut Americans’ wages.

And Donald knows a lot about this. He used undocumented labor to build the Trump Tower. He underpaid undocumented workers, and when they complained, he basically said what a lot of employers do: “You complain, I’ll get you deported.”

Clinton gets her facts wrong.

As we have written before, Trump was sued in 1983 by union workers who accused him of shortchanging their welfare fund by hiring undocumented workers to help demolish a building in New York City as part of the Trump Tower project.

The New York Times wrote that Trump testified in 1990 that he did not know the workers were in the country illegally and he did not hire them. He said the demolition project and the hiring for it was handled by a subcontractor, Kaszycki & Sons Contractors.

The Times article said the subcontractor hired about 200 undocumented workers and paid them $4 to $5 per hour — far less than the $11 per hour minimum wage that should have been paid to union workers.

The Clinton campaign refers on its website to a story last year by the Daily Beast that says some undocumented workers complained to Trump about not being paid. But the story also said that Trump testified that he did not recall speaking to the demolition workers, and it does not support Clinton’s claim that Trump threatened to deport the workers.

“During the 16-day non-jury trial, a number of the Polish workers testified that Trump underlings had threatened them with deportation if they caused trouble,” the Daily Beast wrote.

The website did not explain the term “Trump underlings” and whether they were Trump employees or subcontractors. Either way, there is no evidence that Trump himself told workers, “You complain, I’ll get you deported.”

Footnote: A federal judge in 1991 ruled against the Trump Organization and its partner in the project, the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. The judge ordered the plaintiffs to be paid $325,415 plus interest. Trump appealed that decision, and the case was settled in 1999 for an undisclosed sum.

Not Just Toddlers

Clinton claimed she was just sticking up for “toddlers” when she said in 2015 that “the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”

Clinton: [W]hat I was saying … was that I disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in that case, because what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them. And the court didn’t accept that reasonable regulation, but they’ve accepted many others.

The core holding in the court’s landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller was that the city’s total ban on possession of handguns violated the Second Amendment, and that the amendment conferred on individuals a right to bear arms for self-defense.

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the 5-4 majority.

As a secondary matter, the decision also struck down a D.C. requirement than any lawful firearms kept at home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times. Scalia wrote that this prohibition rendered any lawful firearm in the home inoperable for the purpose of immediate self-defense, and also violated the Second Amendment.

But Clinton made no such fine distinction when she spoke in 2015 at a small, private fundraising event in New York City, when she simply said the Supreme Court was “wrong on the Second Amendment.”

Audio of her remarks later was made public. In that private event, she said, “I’m going to speak out, I’m going to do everything I can to rally people against this pernicious, corrupting influence of the NRA [National Rifle Association] and we’re going to do whatever we can.”

That was when she was facing an unexpectedly stiff primary challenge from the left by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom she criticized for voting against gun legislation opposed by the NRA.

State Department ‘Missing’ $6 Billion?

Trump said that $6 billion was “missing” from the State Department when Clinton was secretary of state. That’s inaccurate.

Trump: The problem is you talk, but you don’t get anything done, Hillary. You don’t. Just like when you ran the State Department. $6 billion was missing. How do you miss $6 billion? You ran the State Department, $6 billion was either stolen — they don’t know, it’s gone — $6 billion! If you become president, this country is going to be in some mess. Believe me.

We reached out to the Trump campaign to get the source of his claim, but we did not hear back.

Trump may be referring to reports about a management alert issued by the State Department Office of the Inspector General in March 2014. The alert said that the OIG found that, in the previous six years, the State Department had failed to maintain the complete records of more than $6 billion in government contracts.

Office of Inspector General, March 20, 2014: The Office of Inspector General (OIG), in recent audits, investigations, and inspections, has identified significant vulnerabilities in the management of contract file documentation that could expose the Department to substantial financial losses. Specifically, over the past 6 years, OIG has identified Department of State (Department) contracts with a total value of more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located at all. The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.

But State Department Inspector General Steve Linick said that his office’s report did not say that $6 billion was “missing.”

In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in April 2014, Linick wrote:

Linick, April 13, 2014: The April 3 news article “State Department’s IG issues rare alert” reported on the management alert issued recently by my office. In the alert, we identified State Department contracts with a total value of more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located. The Post stated, “The State Department’s inspector general has warned the department that $6 billion in contracting money over the past six years cannot be properly accounted for . . . .

Some have concluded based on this that $6 billion is missing. The alert, however, did not draw that conclusion. Instead, it found that the failure to adequately maintain contract files — documents necessary to ensure the full accounting of U.S. tax dollars — “creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.”

So it was the records of the $6 billion that were either incomplete or missing, not the money.

Furthermore, the Washington Post Fact Checker found that most of the faulty paperwork concerned contracts that were issued when George W. Bush was president.

Debt and Deficit

Trump said the federal debt had doubled to $20 trillion under Obama. Clinton said annual deficits had been cut by two-thirds. Both were straining the facts.

Trump: [D]uring President Obama’s regime, we’ve doubled our national debt. We’re up to $20 trillion.

Clinton: When President Obama came into office, he inherited the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. He has cut the deficit by two-thirds.

First, the debt. Total federal debt hasn’t quite yet reached $20 trillion, and it hasn’t doubled.

It was just under $19.77 trillion as of Oct. 18. That is 86 percent higher than it was when Obama took office. That figure includes money the government essentially owes to itself.

The figure that has doubled — but only to $14.3 trillion — is the more economically important sum that the federal government owes to the public. It’s up 126 percent.

Clinton’s claim is also inflated. The deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 went onto the Treasury Department’s books officially at $587.4 billion.

And that’s a reduction of less than 59 percent — not 66 percent — from the fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.417 trillion

Furthermore, as we’ve documented elsewhere, Obama didn’t inherit all of that FY 2009 deficit from his predecessor. During his first months in office, he signed spending measures that contributed as much as $203 billion to FY 2009’s red ink. Adjusting for that, we calculate that the deficit last fiscal year was down only 51 percent from the amount Obama inherited.

Nuclear Quotes

Clinton claimed that Trump “advocated more countries getting” nuclear weapons, including “Japan, Korea, even Saudi Arabia.” Trump countered that “all I said is, we have to renegotiate these agreements, because our country cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and many other places.” But Trump did say that perhaps Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons to protect themselves.

Here’s that exchange, edited:

Clinton: I find it ironic that he’s raising nuclear weapons. This is a person who has been very cavalier, even casual about the use of nuclear weapons. He’s …

Trump: Wrong.

Clinton: … advocated more countries getting them, Japan, Korea, even Saudi Arabia. He said, well, if we have them, why don’t we use them, which I think is terrifying. …

Trump: All I said is, we have to renegotiate these agreements, because our country cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and many other places. We cannot continue to afford — she took that as saying nuclear weapons. …

Look, she’s been proven to be a liar on so many different ways. This is just another lie.

Clinton: Well, I’m just quoting you when you were asked …

Trump: There’s no quote. You’re not going to find a quote from me.

Clinton: … about a potential nuclear — nuclear competition in Asia, you said, you know, go ahead, enjoy yourselves, folks. That kind…

Trump: And defend yourselves.

Clinton: … of language — well…

Trump: And defend yourselves. I didn’t say nuclear. And defend yourself.

Let’s start with what Trump did say about Japan and South Korea and nuclear weapons. He’s wrong to claim that “there’s no quote” from him on that topic, and he has gone beyond saying only “we have to renegotiate these agreements.” Clinton “took that as saying nuclear weapons,” as Trump says, because Trump in fact mentioned nuclear weapons.

In an April 3 interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Trump said:

Trump, April 3: So, North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea.

Wallace: With nukes?

Trump: Maybe they would be better off — including with nukes, yes, including with nukes.

The New York Times had reported about a week prior that Trump had told the newspaper that “he would be open to allowing Japan and South Korea to build their own nuclear arsenals rather than depend on the American nuclear umbrella for their protection against North Korea and China.”

On March 29, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I don’t want more nuclear weapons,” but also said, “wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?” Here’s more of that exchange:

Trump, March 29: At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself, we have…

Cooper: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?

Trump: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.

Cooper: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?

Trump: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.

Here’s the thing, with Japan, they have to pay us or we have to let them protect themselves.

Cooper: So if you said, Japan, yes, it’s fine, you get nuclear weapons, South Korea, you as well, and Saudi Arabia says we want them, too?

Trump: Can I be honest with you?  It’s going to happen, anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.

But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them.

Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them. They absolutely have them. They can’t – they have no carrier system yet but they will very soon.

Wouldn’t you rather have Japan, perhaps, they’re over there, they’re very close, they’re very fearful of North Korea, and we’re supposed to protect.

Cooper: So you’re saying you don’t want more nuclear weapons in the world but you’re OK with Japan and South Korea having nuclear weapons?

Trump: I don’t want more nuclear weapons.

So, yes, there are plenty of quotes from Trump suggesting that he would be OK with other countries, specifically Japan and South Korea, having nuclear weapons.

But the one quote that Clinton mentions in this exchange isn’t as clear. She said that Trump said of “nuclear competition in Asia”: “Go ahead, enjoy yourselves, folks.”

Trump said that in an April 2 campaign appearance in Wausau, Wisconsin, in talking about Japan and North Korea potentially fighting.

Trump, April 2: We’re protecting Japan from North Korea. … I would say to Japan you gotta help us out. … And I would rather have them not arm. But I’m not going to continue to lose this tremendous amount of money. And frankly, the case could be made, that let them protect themselves against North Korea. They’d probably wipe them out pretty quick. And if they fight, you know what, that would be a terrible thing, terrible. “Good luck folks, enjoy yourself.” If they fight, that would be terrible, right? But if they do, they do.

Clinton also said that Trump said of nuclear weapons, “Well, if we have them, why don’t we use them.” That’s according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and based on an anonymous source, not a verified quote from Trump. Scarborough said in early August that an anonymous source, “a foreign policy expert” who “went to advise Donald Trump” several months earlier, had said that Trump three times asked “if we had them why can’t we use them.” The Trump campaign denied that account.

Trump’s and Buffett’s Taxes

Trump falsely claimed that billionaire investor Warren Buffett — who supports Clinton — did the same thing Trump did to avoid paying federal income taxes.

Clinton first said Trump “has not paid a penny in federal income tax,” a statement Trump did not deny during the debate. Instead he tried shifting the blame to Clinton:

Trump: So let me just tell you very simply, we’re entitled because of the laws that people like her passed to take massive amounts of depreciation on other charges, and we do it. And all of her donors — just about all of them — I know Buffett took hundreds of millions of dollars. … Most of her donors have done the same thing as I do.

What Trump did of course, as recently reported, was to claim a $916 million loss on his 1995 tax returns, which could erase any federal income-tax liability for as many as 18 years through what are called loss carryforwards. Trump refuses to release his own federal income-tax returns, but he hasn’t denied that he was able to pay zero federal income taxes for many years while amassing a net worth he claims to be over $10 billion.

But he’s wrong to accuse Buffett of doing “the same thing.” Buffett has said publicly that’s not true, and that he has never claimed a loss carryforward like Trump’s in any of his tax returns since the first one he filed as a teenager in 1944. He also said he’s never reduced his tax bill to zero.

Buffett, Oct. 10: I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944, when I was 13. (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year.) I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none uses a carryforward.

Trump Foundation

Trump and Wallace disagreed over whether Trump used money from his own foundation to settle his lawsuits. Trump did.

Trump claimed that the money from his foundation “goes 100 percent — 100 percent goes to different charities.” Wallace responded, “Wasn’t some of the money used to settle your lawsuits, sir?”

Wallace went on to explain that Trump settled a lawsuit with Palm Beach with money from his foundation. Trump replied that “the money that you’re talking about went to Fisher House, where they build houses for veterans and disabled vets.”

In fact, the lawsuit Trump faced from Palm Beach is one example of him using foundation money to settle his business legal issues. In 2007, he paid $258,000 from his foundation to settle various lawsuits, one of which was a settlement with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, over the height of a flagpole at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, the Washington Post reported.

Here are other ways that Trump spent his foundation’s money on noncharitable causes and groups, according to the Post‘s reporting:

• In 2013, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group connected to Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi. This year Trump paid a $2,500 penalty to the IRS because of the improper gift, according to Jeffrey McConney, a senior vice president and controller at the Trump Organization.
• The foundation also famously paid $10,000 for a portrait of Trump, which ended up on the wall of a Florida golf course he owns outside Miami. (A spokesman said Trump was doing the foundation a favor by “storing” it there.)
• The foundation also paid $20,000 for another, six-foot-tall portrait of Trump reportedly shipped to another of Trump’s golf courses in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

Positions on Abortion

Each candidate misrepresented the other’s position on abortion.

Trump claimed that “based on what [Clinton’s] saying … you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day.” But Clinton has said she’s open to restrictions on late-term abortions, with exceptions for cases involving the mother’s health issues. Clinton claimed Trump said “there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.” He said that, but quickly walked back the comment.

We’ll start with the issue of late-term abortions. First off, they are rare. As we wrote in September 2015, 1.2 percent of all the abortions in the United States occur after 20 weeks gestation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.

Second, Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco told our fact-checking colleagues at Politifact: “Nobody would talk about abortion on the woman’s due date. If the mother’s life was at risk, the treatment for that is delivery, and the baby survives.” He added, “Medically, it does not compute.”

Trump repeated his claim during the debate three times, first claiming, “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

But as we wrote during the eighth GOP debate in February, “It is certainly true that Clinton has been a staunch defender of abortion rights. But Clinton has said she’s open to restrictions on late-term abortions, provided exceptions would be given when the health and life of the mother are an issue.”

So Trump skewed Clinton’s position on late-term abortions.

But Clinton also misrepresented Trump’s current position. She claimed that Trump said “there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.”

He did say that, but he also walked back that statement only hours later.

On March 30, Trump told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that women who get abortions should receive “some form of punishment” if the procedure is banned in the United States. He also added that the man who impregnates the woman should not be responsible under the law for the abortion.

But on the same day, he put out a statement recanting the punishment claim.

Trump, March 30: If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.

Gun Laws and Gun Violence

When asked about his opposition to gun control measures, Trump said that Chicago “has the toughest gun laws in the United States” and yet “more gun violence than any other city.” That implies a causation between gun laws and gun violence that’s impossible to prove. And even such a correlation is disputed by statistics showing the opposite: that states with fewer gun laws have more gun deaths.

The relationship between gun laws and gun crimes isn’t clear-cut, as Trump suggests.

Moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump about his opposition to measures such as limits on assault weapons and limits on high capacity magazines. Trump responded:

Trump: Well let me just tell you before we go any further, in Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States — probably you could say by far — they have more gun violence than any other city. So we have the toughest laws and you have tremendous gun violence.

We looked at this issue of gun laws and gun violence last year, when GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina also singled out Chicago, saying: “That is why you see in state after state after state with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the nation also having the highest gun crime rates in the nation. Chicago would be an example.” And we looked at the research again when Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that most “jurisdictions with the worst murder rates” have “the very strictest gun control laws.”

We found both were wrong in stating there was such a clear correlation.

Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on firearm death rates for 2013, we found nine of the 10 states with the highest firearm death rates got an “F” for their gun laws, and one got a “D-” from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. And seven of the 10 states with the lowest gun death rates got a “B” or higher.

But homicide rate statistics — with 70 percent of homicides by firearm — didn’t show the same pattern. Eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates and eight of the 10 states with the lowest homicide rates all got “D” or “F” grades from the Brady Campaign analysis.

Some research has found a correlation between more gun laws and lower gun fatalities — but not a causation. For instance, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health looked at all 50 states from 2007 to 2010, concluding: “A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually.” But the study said that it couldn’t determine cause-and-effect.

In fact, it’s likely impossible to determine causation, as we’ve also written before. A scientific random study, in which one group of people had guns or permissive gun laws, and another group didn’t, can’t be done.

As for a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths in cities, an August 2013 CDC report found that for 2009-2010, the top gun murder rate areas, among the 50 most populous metropolitan areas, were: New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Birmingham, St. Louis, Baltimore, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Chicago. Six of those cities are in states with poor scores for their gun laws, while the other four get a “C” or better. Chicago — the last among the top 10 at the time — had a ban on handguns then, so its gun laws were even tougher then than they are now.

In other words, there’s no discernible pattern among those cities.

Also, while Chicago is often noted for a high number of murders, other cities have a higher murder rate — adjusted for population. The city ranked 35th in 2014 in terms of its murder rate among cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

And There Were Repeats — Again

As in all the other general election debates, the candidates repeated claims we’ve checked before:

NAFTA: Trump repeated again, like in the last debate, that the North American Free Trade Agreement was “signed by her husband,” referring to President Bill Clinton. NAFTA was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush. Clinton signed the implementing legislation. Trump also said “jobs are being sucked out of our economy” because of the trade agreement, but a 2015 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service called the net impact “relatively modest,” saying “NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters.”

Father’s loans to Trump: Trump and Clinton disagreed on the size of the loan Trump took from his father to start his business. Trump said, “I started with a $1 million loan,” while Clinton claimed he borrowed “$14 million from his father to start his business.” As we noted when this was brought up during the first debate, Clinton is right and Trump is wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, “a casino-license disclosure in 1985 … shows Mr. Trump taking out numerous loans from his father and his father’s properties near the start of his career in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” which totaled around $14 million. As Politico points out, that’s $31 million in today’s dollars. And as we wrote during the 11th GOP debate, these loans included more than $3 million illegally transferred to the Trump Castle Casino in Atlantic City in poker chips in 1990. To top it off, Trump’s father also co-guaranteed the construction loan on his first Manhattan project, the Grand Hyatt. So Trump sells his father’s contributions short by a long shot.

Iraq War: As he did in the first and second debates, Trump denied that he supported the invasion of Iraq before it began — interjecting “Wrong!” — when confronted by Clinton. Trump indicated his support for war in a radio interview with Howard Stern on Sept. 11, 2002 — a little more than six months before the war started. Stern asked Trump directly if he supported going to war with Iraq, and Trump hesitantly responded, “Yeah, I guess so.” Trump has in the past cited a January 2003 TV interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. In the TV interview, Trump told Cavuto that President Bush needed to make a decision on Iraq. “Either you attack or you don’t attack,” he says. But he offered no opinion on what Bush should do. We have found no evidence that Trump was publicly against the Iraq War before it began.

Hacked emails: As she did in the second presidential debate, Clinton claimed that “cyberattacks” on email systems, including that of the Democratic National Committee “come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election.” And Trump again contested her assessment, saying, “She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China, or anybody else” and that “our country has no idea.” As we wrote after the second debate, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issued a joint statement on Oct. 7 saying they were “confident” that recent hacks into the email systems of the Democratic Party were directed by the Russian government. And, they wrote, “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.” A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News that both Clinton and Trump have been briefed extensively about the U.S. intelligence community’s evidence pointing to culpability by the Russian government. “To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation,” the official said.

Clinton’s tax plan: Trump said there would be a “massive, massive tax increase” under Clinton’s tax plan that would “raise taxes and even double your taxes.” But the tax increases Clinton has proposed would fall almost entirely on the top 10 percent of taxpayers, according to analyses by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and the pro-business Tax Foundation. Hardest hit would be the less than 0.1 percent of taxpayers who earn more than $5 million per year. “Nearly all of the tax increases would fall on the highest-income 1 percent; on average, low- and middle-income households would see small increases in after-tax income,” the Tax Policy Center concluded.

Trump on health care premiums: Trump said that Obamacare “premiums are going up 60, 70, 80 percent,” predicting that they would “go up over 100 percent” next year. These are cherry-picked facts. Some insurers have requested high 2017 premium rates, but the rates vary across states. The Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed preliminary rates in cities in 16 states and Washington, D.C., and found the second-lowest cost silver plan would increase by a weighted average of 9 percent from this year if the rates hold. Additionally, 80 percent of people buying exchange plans receive government subsidies that lower their premium costs.

Open borders: Trump repeatedly claimed Clinton “wants to have open borders,” which Clinton called “a rank mischaracterization.” Wallace asked Clinton to explain comments she made to a Brazilian bank — revealed via WikiLeaks — that “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.” But as Clinton noted, that wasn’t the whole quote. It continues: “… some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” Clinton said she was “talking about energy. … And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders.” In fact, Clinton said at the debate, “I have been for border security for years. I voted for border security in the United States Senate. And my comprehensive immigration reform plan of course includes border security.” We have found all of that to be true. Her campaign website says she supports “humane, targeted immigration enforcement,” and that she would “focus enforcement resources on detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety.”

NATO: Clinton claimed that Trump is “willing to … break up NATO.” Trump did say NATO is obsolete or may be, because it does not focus enough on terrorism. He also previously suggested in an interview with the New York Times in July that he would not automatically defend NATO allies that do not pay their share of defense costs. But he hasn’t said that the international security alliance should be eliminated, even though he once said that he would “certainly look at” leaving NATO. More recently, during the first presidential debate, Trump said that he is “all for NATO.” And Trump has since said, “When I am president, we will strengthen NATO.”

ISIS: Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton “gave us ISIS” — referring to the terrorist Islamic State. He claimed Clinton and President Obama “created this huge vacuum” when the U.S. left Iraq in 2011. That may be a contributing factor, but as we have written the origin of ISIS dates to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the decision to immediately disband the Iraqi army and ban the Baath Party. Experts also cite the rule of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who alienated and radicalized the Sunnis, and the Syrian civil war that provided the space for ISIS to grow in 2011.

Clinton emails: Trump repeated his claim from the second debate that Clinton “destroyed 33,000 emails criminally, criminally, after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress.” Trump is referring to 31,830 emails that Clinton’s lawyers had deemed personal and, as a result, did not have to be turned over to the government. As we have written, the department’s policy allows its employees to determine which emails are work-related and must be preserved. It is true that the emails were deleted after Clinton received a subpoena on March 4, 2015, from a Republican-controlled House committee investigation into the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. But there is no evidence that Clinton knew that the emails were deleted after the subpoena was issued. According to FBI notes of its investigation, an employee of Platte River Networks – which at the time was managing Clinton’s private server – deleted the emails in March. Clinton told the FBI that she was not aware that they were deleted in late March 2015. The FBI did not say when Clinton learned when the emails had been deleted.

Correction, Oct. 20: This article has been updated to correct the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s title. He never served as chief justice.

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Donald Trump’s new TV ad on immigration creates a misleading comparison, saying that under Hillary Clinton, “illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay” but under Trump, “terrorists and dangerous criminals” are “kept out.” In fact, Clinton has said she would deport “violent criminals, terrorists, and anyone who threatens our safety.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to our questions about the ad. However, Clinton has supported measures, including the 2013 bipartisan Senate immigration bill, that would have allowed those living in the U.S. illegally who committed fewer than three misdemeanors, not including minor traffic violations, to stay — provided they met other requirements. This could be what the ad means by criminals “get to stay.”

If so, the ad, titled “Two Americas: Immigration,” misleads the viewer by contrasting Clinton’s plan with Trump’s proposal to keep “terrorists and dangerous criminals” out. That’s no different from what Clinton has proposed on illegal immigration. There are certainly different definitions of the word “dangerous,” but Clinton has used the same language in talking about whom she would deport. And the bill she supported barred convicted felons from becoming legal residents or citizens.

The Republican presidential nominee’s ad began airing Aug. 19 on a $4.8 million ad buy over 10 days in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, the campaign has said.

The ad begins with the narrator describing immigration “in Hillary Clinton’s America: The system stays rigged against Americans. Syrian refugees flood in. Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay. Collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line. Our border open.”

In contrast, the narrator gives this description of “Donald Trump’s America”: “Terrorists and dangerous criminals: kept out. The border: secured. Our families: safe.”

We’ve written about a few of these claims before. Clinton hasn’t supported “open” borders, as the ad falsely implies. The 2013 Senate immigration bill — the most recent comprehensive immigration legislation, which Clinton has said she backed — would have made large investments in border security, including additional border fencing, and Clinton said during a Democratic debate in November, “Border security has always been a part of that [immigration] debate.” As we’ll explain later, the immigration plan on her website talks about deporting some individuals. That’s not an “open” border.

The ad also uses a deceptive image of people crowded on top of train cars when it says “our border open,” as if anyone and everyone could stream in legally. That’s not what Clinton has proposed or supported. The 2013 Senate bill would have set up a path to citizenship for those who had entered the country prior to Dec. 31, 2011.

The ad also leaves the impression that “illegal immigrants” would be “collecting Social Security benefits” under Clinton’s presidency, but that would only happen if those immigrants became citizens or had legal status. And that’s the case under current law. As we’ve explained before back in 2009 and 2006, those in the country illegally are barred from collecting Social Security. Once an immigrant gains legal status, then that person can get credit for the Social Security taxes he or she paid when working illegally.

As for whether Clinton would allow a “flood” of Syrian refugees, that’s a matter of opinion. Obama has authorized the acceptance of 10,000 Syrian refugees for fiscal year 2016, while Clinton has said the number should be as many as 65,000. For context, there are nearly 5 million Syrian refugees displaced by the country’s civil war, which began in 2011. And the U.S. is set to accept a total of 85,000 refugees from around the world in fiscal 2016.

Trump has said that no Syrian refugees should be admitted to the U.S., because terrorists may be among them, and Clinton has said the refugees should be admitted “only if we have as careful a screening and vetting process as we can imagine.”

The claim that piqued our fact-checking interest, though, was the assertion that under Clinton “illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay.”

‘Criminals Stay’?

The ad includes a graphic that says “criminals stay” and a citation of “NBC News 7/9/16.” We tried internet and Lexis Nexis searches to find a relevant NBC News article on that day, but we came up empty. We asked the Trump campaign to point us to the article in question, and spokeswoman Hope Hicks told us over the phone that she would take a look at our emailed request. We have not received a response, but we will update this article if we do.

However, Clinton has talked about deporting criminals as part of her illegal immigration plan.

Clinton’s proposal says that she will send a plan to Congress that will include “a path to full and equal citizenship” within her first 100 days in office. That plan “will treat every person with dignity, fix the family visa backlog, uphold the rule of law, protect our borders and national security, and bring millions of hardworking people into the formal economy.”

The plan goes on to say that she would defend Obama’s executive orders to delay deportation for so-called DREAMers and the parents of citizens and lawful residents. But she specifically talks about deporting other immigrants, saying, she would “focus resources on detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety.”

During a March Democratic debate, Clinton was asked about allowing immigrants to stay if they lacked a criminal record. She said: “But if you are asking about everyone who is already here, undocumented immigrants, the 11-12 million who are living here, my priorities are to deport violent criminals, terrorists, and anyone who threatens our safety.”

In a speech to the National Immigrant Integration Conference in December 2015, Clinton also talked about “prioritiz[ing] whom to deport.” She said: “Dangerous criminals? Yes. DREAMers and their families? No.”

As for Trump, he initially talked about deporting all immigrants living in the country illegally, but his stance has recently softened. At a February debate, he said that all immigrants with illegal status “will go out,” adding that some will “come back legally.” Last November, he talked about using a “deportation force” to deport all of the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.

But in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on Aug. 22, Trump said that “we’re going to get rid of all of the bad ones,” mentioning “gang members” and “killers,” and talked about using the existing deportation process for others. “As far as the rest, we’re going to go through the process, like they are now, perhaps with a lot more energy, and we’re going to do it only through the system of laws,” Trump said.

Trump described his deportation approach as similar to past administrations, including the current one. “What people don’t know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country. Bush the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, I’m going to do the same thing and I just said that,” he told O’Reilly.

The candidates obviously differ on what to do about noncriminals who are illegally living in the United States: Clinton would create a path to citizenship, while Trump says he would keep existing laws and deportation processes. But as far as prioritizing whom to deport, both have said they’d focus on criminals and dangerous individuals.

What about the measures Clinton has supported in the past? The 2013 Senate immigration bill included a years-long path to citizenship, but that path would not have been available to those convicted of a felony, three misdemeanor crimes (not counting “minor traffic offenses”), a foreign crime or unlawful voting. Also, an individual would have been ineligible if there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the person “is engaged in or is likely to engage after entry in any terrorist activity.”

That would mean that an immigrant in the country illegally who was convicted of two misdemeanors could have stayed under the bill — provided that person met other requirements including paying a $500 fine and back taxes. Becoming a citizen then required other measures, such as having a steady work history, knowing English, passing background checks and more.

The bipartisan legislation, also known as the “Gang of Eight” bill, said that it would be possible for the secretary of homeland security to waive the barring of those convicted of three misdemeanors for “humanitarian” or “public interest” reasons. Under federal immigration laws, a misdemeanor is an offense punishable by up to a year in prison.

There are similar exclusions for felons and other criminals in Obama’s executive order on deferring deportation for so-called DREAMers, those who came to the United States at a young age and are attending or have graduated from high school or have served in the U.S. military. Among the requirements to apply for a two-year deferral of deportation proceedings: “Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety,” according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Such language leaves open the possibility that some convicted criminals — if their offenses were misdemeanors and fewer than three — would be allowed to stay under the types of proposals Clinton has supported. But contrasting that with a Trump plan to keep out “terrorists and dangerous criminals” is a misleading comparison. Clinton, too, has said she would deport “dangerous” and “violent” criminals, “terrorists” and “anyone who threatens our safety.”

https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/321a94e0-89fd-438a-806b-77e12a0700a9

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