by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Georgia’s new abortion law has critics warning it could result in imprisoning women who get abortions. “The Georgia bill states that a woman can be investigated for miscarrying and that women who travel to another state to get an abortion can spend up to ten years in prison,” actress Alyssa Milano tweeted May 13. The claim that women in Georgia can be arrested for an abortion has flown around the Internet. Anti-abortion advocates say it’s fear-mongering, and that women wouldn’t be jailed. The truth? It’s murky. The Georgia law doesn’t specifically say women aren’t subject to prosecution; it’s silent on … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Attorney General William Barr is poised to release the findings from the special counsel’s nearly two-year investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated in Russia’s 2016 election meddling, and if the president obstructed the probe. But exactly how much of the nearly 400-page report will be published remains an open question. If history is any guide, Barr’s judgment about what should be obscured from public view will likely prove controversial. The mechanics of how a special counsel report reaches the public is largely governed by federal regulations. But the redaction process — whereby certain information is deemed too sensitive to … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Inaugurating yet another phase in the battle over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, the Trump White House on May 8 officially asserted executive privilege over the report’s unreleased and underlying materials. Let’s use this opportunity to take a closer look at what executive privilege is. What is executive privilege? Executive privilege has been asserted frequently by presidents, even though it’s not written into the Constitution. The National Constitution Center points to this definition by George Mason University professor Mark Rozell: Executive privilege is “the right of the president and high-level executive branch officers to withhold information from Congress, the … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
We asked readers to share their thoughts on how often President Donald Trump should be fact-checked. They had strong opinions. In our most recent weekly email to readers (sign up here), we noted that the Washington Post Fact-checker has released their latest count of Trump’s falsehoods: 10,000 false or misleading statements since Trump assumed the presidency. Sometimes people accuse PolitiFact of bias, saying that we go out of our way to find wrong statements from the president, fact-checking every slightly wrong thing he says. But that’s clearly not what we’re up to. The Post counts 10,000 wrong statements from the … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Sen. Bernie Sanders’s town hall on Fox News was not a visit to the lion’s den. Judging from the cheers, the audience included plenty of voters open to his message of taxing the uber-rich to pay for more government to help the average Joe. But hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier peppered the Democratic presidential candidate and self-declared democratic socialist with questions that would strike a chord with a conservative audience. Medicare for All might sound great, they asked in one key exchange, but who would foot the bill? Sanders pushed back with many facts at his fingertips. We checked … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Slavery is sometimes referred to as America’s original sin. As the 2020 presidential race ramps up, Democratic candidates are talking about setting the country on a course of atonement through reparations. What are reparations? If eventually enacted, they would likely include a formal apology for America’s history of slavery, as well as some form of compensation to descendants of slaves. To date, no major candidate has articulated a detailed reparations policy. As an interim step, White House hopefuls have pledged to back a bill that would set up a commission to study the history of slavery, its lingering effects and … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
On Aug. 15, 2017, President Donald Trump held a press conference to discuss an executive order he had signed on infrastructure permitting. Reporters shortly began asking questions about Trump’s initial response to violent protests in Charlottesville, Va. It was at this press conference that Trump said that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” On April 25, 2019, former Vice President Joe Biden declared his 2020 candidacy for the Democratic nomination and the presidency by recalling the events in Charlottesville and Trump’s comments. “With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated report presents a sweeping narrative of Russia’s 2016 election interference and clears the Trump campaign of criminally conspiring with the Kremlin. It also details the president’s efforts to curtail the nearly two-year probe, though Mueller declined to say whether or not Trump’s conduct amounted to illegal obstruction. The report reaffirms the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia favored Trump over Hillary Clinton, and notes that the Trump campaign believed it would benefit on Election Day from Moscow’s interference. But Mueller found the Kremlin’s acts on Trump’s behalf and numerous contacts between the campaign and Russia … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
The Mueller report might not end the debate over what President Donald Trump did, but it has scuttled one conspiracy theory involving a murdered Democratic party staffer and WikiLeaks. Well into 2017, Fox News host Sean Hannity championed the hunt for details about 27-year-old Seth Rich, who was shot and killed near his home in Washington, D.C., not long before the first WikiLeaks dump of Democratic emails in July 2016. Rich had been working on voter access projects for the Democratic National Committee. The police believed he was the victim of a botched robbery. Hannity and others thought Rich had … >>More
by dap | May 25, 2019 | Politifact
Elizabeth Warren is unmatched among the Democratic presidential candidates for the depth and breadth of her policy proposals. She has tackled building affordable housing, boosting family farms, breaking up Big Tech, and the list goes on. Many of her ideas come with hefty price tags. To help pay for them, she has her Ultra-Millionaire Tax, which would put a 2 percent levy on wealth above the $50 million mark. “If we put that 2-cent wealth tax in place on the 75,000 largest fortunes in this country, we can do universal child care for every baby zero to 5,” Warren told … >>More
