Facts vs. spin on family separations at the border It's hard to keep up with the Trump administration's breathtaking spin on family separations and its hour-by-hour reversals and...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | Facts vs. spin on family separations at the border It's hard to keep up with the Trump administration's breathtaking spin on family separations and its hour-by-hour reversals and contradictions. But one thing is clear: The Trump administration owns this policy. No law or court ruling mandates that families be separated after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, contrary to the administration's claims. President Trump also blames Democrats, but the reality is more than 2,300 children have been separated from their families because Trump's Justice Department has chosen to prosecute all adults, including parents, for the misdemeanor offense of entering the country illegally. This is an exercise of prosecutorial discretion — in other words, a choice. Family separations are the natural result, since children can't be jailed or prosecuted with their parents. Presented with the same choice as Trump, the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations declined to prosecute all illegal-entry misdemeanors. The Trump administration itself, during its first 15 months, released nearly 100,000 immigrants who were apprehended at the border, a total that includes both family units and unaccompanied minors. Then it changed course and began to separate families. We lay out the legal landscape and more in our Four Pinocchio fact-check of the administration's rhetoric. |  | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. | | Facts vs. spin on Trump's order to stop family separations The Fact Checker had its hands full with family-separation claims this week. Trump signed an executive order that lays out steps to end the practice, which is curious because his administration was insisting that it had no family-separation policy and that (if it did?) only Congress could fix it. It's all very confusing. Anyway, the president's new plan is to keep families together in immigration detention for longer periods of time, but there's no guarantee the courts will approve it. There's not enough physical space to house families, not enough judges to move their cases quickly — ultimately, it's not clear when or how family separations will end. We fact-checked several claims from Trump and Republican lawmakers about family separations and the new executive order. Trump claims it will keep families together, but the reality is more complex. | | | Does this fact look like an opinion to you? A fascinating new study shows how much trouble Americans have sorting facts from opinions in the news. The Pew Research Center presented 5,035 U.S. adults with five factual statements and five opinion statements. Only 26 percent managed to classify all five factual statements correctly, while 35 percent identified all five opinion statements. Pew found that the task was easier for digitally-savvy news consumers or those with high levels of political awareness. A reader's trust in a particular news outlet also factors into the equation. Party affiliation also influences how Americans sort facts from opinions. "Both Republicans and Democrats show a propensity to be influenced by which side of the aisle a statement appeals to most," according to Pew. "For example, members of each political party were more likely to label both factual and opinion statements as factual when they appealed more to their political side." | | Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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