.@PolitiFact has a roundup of fact checks from the 16 state races it's tracking https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/nov/05/2018-midterms-16-senate-races-weve-been-tracking/
.@kevinroose published a helpful guide to the types of misinformation voters might see today. Spoiler: Be wary of any claims about polling places https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/us/politics/misinformation-election-day.html
.@JaneLytv + @CraigSilverman are debunking hoaxes about the election in real time https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/midterms-fake-news-hoaxes
.@rizzoTK has a last-minute crash course for the midterms, complete with 47 fact checks https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/05/fact-checkers-crash-course-elections/
.@factcheckdotorg fact-checked closing ads from both parties https://www.factcheck.org/2018/11/democratic-closing-ads-health-care-and-taxes/ https://www.factcheck.org/2018/11/republican-closing-ads-immigration/
.@PolitiFact also has a roundup of fact checks about the top 10 storylines of the election https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/oct/31/top-10-storylines-2018-midterms/
Want to debunk social media posts by yourself? Check out @Poynter’s landing page for fact-checking tips, and send me anything you think is sketchy → dfunke@poynter.org https://www.poynter.org/tags/fact-checking-tips
"Donald Trump’s Tough Talk About The Border Deployment Doesn’t Match What’s Really Taking Place"
Vera Bergengruen in BuzzFeed News:
The image President Donald Trump has presented of what US troops will be doing along the southern border bears almost no resemblance to what military leaders say the troops will be doing.
Trump has promised the US military would be blocking “very bad thugs and gang members” from crossing into the country, and he’s painted a picture of armed US troops repelling “very tough fighters” from entering the country. “We hope nothing happens,” he said Thursday during a White House address. “But if it does, we are totally prepared.”
That bellicose language, however, is a clear exaggeration of what Pentagon planners anticipate the up to 7,000 active-duty troops will actually be doing.
The deployment includes no ground combat units. The troops are not allowed to detain or arrest anybody at the border. They are barred from enforcing immigration or criminal law. There is no indication that troops will be manning border checkpoints. Of the 39 units dispatched, only seven are military police units. The rest are trained to do engineering work and provide logistical support or medical assistance.
…
“You’re talking about taking people who have been deployed over and over again, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa…and asking them to spend the holidays away from their families unnecessarily,” he said. “It’s miserable on a human standpoint, knowing your orders are silly to begin with.”
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“Trump is not being honest with the American people about what these troops are going to be doing. When he talks about them, he creates this word picture for people that these troops are going to be hurling back invaders at the border, side by side with the border patrol,” retired Rear Adm. John Kirby, a former Defense Department spokesperson, said on CNN. “That’s just not the case. In fact, many of them will never even get close to the border.”
A look at what units are being deployed to the border provides more evidence that Trump’s bellicose rhetoric is a stretch…
Every vote counts
This is one of the most important elections we’ve had in a long time. Please vote. Now more than ever, it matters. Most immediately, we need to thoroughly reject the radicalism that’s taken over the Republican Party: the cronyism, the authoritarianism, and the violent white nationalism. Vote for anyone who rejects Trump-style fascism.
But perhaps more important for the longterm, this may be the last best chance we have to begin pushing back against the corruption at the top simply by voting (and make not mistake this is only a beginning). Power has been allowed to concentrate for decades; at this point, there’s a two-tiered economy as well as justice system, and the voting system is under attack as well (thanks in no small part to the Supreme Court’s undermining of the Voting Rights Act). Vote for every candidate you can who’s going to fight to break up concentrated wealth and capital, and restore and ensure a (small-d) democratic vote.
"Vote..." →
"Trump's trade war took a stunning bite out of the US economy, and it's the strongest evidence yet that he's shooting himself in the foot"
Bob Bryan in Business Insider:
There's mounting anecdotal evidence that President Donald Trump's trade war is causing trouble for the US economy and businesses. But Friday's report on third-quarter gross domestic product may be the best hard evidence yet that the tariffs are causing major disruptions in the economy.
GDP rose at an annualized rate of 3.5% in the third quarter. But the contribution of net exports of goods and services — the measure of how much trade added or subtracted to GDP growth — was a dismal -1.78 percentage points.
- It was the largest negative contribution to GDP growth for trade in 33 years; in the second quarter of 1985, trade subtracted 1.91 points.
…
Uncertainty over trade policy may have also contributed to muted growth in capital expenditures by businesses. Nonresidential fixed investment — spending on large-ticket items like equipment — added only 0.12 points to GDP growth, the lowest in seven quarters, while overall fixed investment was a 0.04-point drag, the worst in 10 quarters.
Companies have said that this uncertainty and the possibility that tariffs will push up costs elsewhere could result in decreased capex spending.
"In New York, California, Texas, and 27 other states you can take time off from work to vote — here's the full list"
Rachel Gillett and Grace Panetta in Business Insider list every state’s laws around taking time off work to go vote. If you haven’t been able to early vote, this may be a good opportunity to ensure you have the chance to contribute to the democratic functioning of our country.
Currently, there is no federal law that mandates employers provide their employees time off to cast their ballots. But the majority of US states have time-off-to-vote laws, also referred to as voter-leave laws, and have different requirements and exceptions for employers and employees.
While some states guarantee paid time off, for example, others do not. And the time guaranteed for employees to vote varies state-by-state as well.
"Trump’s Embrace of Racial Bigotry Has Shifted What Is Acceptable in America"
“Trumpism” is a politics of racial demagoguery. America in the age of Donald Trump is more permissive of explicit racism than it’s been at any point since the civil rights era. And because bigotries rarely dance alone, the president’s nativism is accompanied by anti-black racism—first seen in his “birther” crusade against Barack Obama—anti-Muslim prejudice, and anti-Semitism.
These ideologies exist on a continuum, with casual prejudice on one end and virulent hatred on the other. But common to every expression is a desire to ostracize, remove, and even eliminate the racialized group. The difference between segregation to isolate black Americans and race riots to remove them is one of degree, not kind. Individual efforts to keep black people out of public space are a soft expression of the same impulse that drives radical calls for a white “ethno-state.”
Seen as part of a continuum, the relationship between bigoted rhetoric and bigoted action becomes clearer. The former can facilitate the latter. A society permissive of rhetorical dehumanization is necessarily more vulnerable to actual dehumanization. Allow racial contempt to spread unchallenged, and racist violence will eventually follow.
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Over the past month, in order to generate support for his political party, the president has tried to generate racial hysteria out of a small “caravan” of migrants headed for the American border, where they will attempt to claim amnesty…
Right-wing media followed suit, taking the president’s claim, amplifying it, and connecting it to a conspiracy theory accusing liberal philanthropist George Soros of orchestrating the “caravan.”…
This message of dangerous hordes and anti-American conspiracies was meant to inspire fear and hatred. And those inclined to fear and hate picked up the message. One of them, who blamed a Jewish refugee organization for bringing “invaders that kill our people,” decided to act, killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the worst anti-Semitic terror attack in American history, part of a surge of anti-Semitic hate crimes since 2016…
"A President Who Condones Political Violence" →
It’s striking that the president has not offered a word of sympathy for any of the targets of the bombs. After all, even if the “false flag” theory were true to any degree, the people targeted were indeed targeted. The motives or identity of the would-be bomber do not mitigate the shock and threat to the person receiving the bomb—including the line-of-duty security personnel who encountered the bombs sent to Obama and others whose mail is screened for them.
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When people talk about Trump condoning and inviting political violence, his behavior over the past 48 hours—and that of his followers—is exactly what they have in mind: the utter lack of sympathy for those attacked or threatened; the readiness to blame victims of terrorism for being terrorized; the determination to exonerate the president of any consequences for his own wild behavior; the indulgence of wild conspiracy theories as a means to achieve that exoneration, piped directly into the Oval Office from the furthest extremes of American life.
Only eight days ago, Trump praised a Republican member of Congress who physically attacked a reporter without provocation and then lied to the police about the attack. Today, Trump claims that there’s a conspiracy to blame him for bombs mailed to CNN and other people he has abused. And this claim is not Trump’s alone; it is echoed by many of the apologists and defenders of his government. Democracy has a rule, an absolute prohibition on the use or threat of violence to coerce political ends. Trump is walking the road away from democracy, and he is not walking alone.