News Reporter: Fact Checker: The House speaker says there are 3 to 4 million ‘dangerous’ migrants. Really?

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The truth behind the rhetoric.

By Glenn Kessler

Note: The Fact Checker newsletter will not appear next week. We wish all of our readers a Happy Thanksgiving!

A signature promise of President-elect Donald Trump is that he will deport every undocumented immigrant in the United States. On a Sunday appearance on CNN, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) emphasized that the deportations would begin with "dangerous persons" already identified by immigration authorities — "known criminals," "known terrorists," and people "apprehended for committing violent crimes after they have come across the border illegally."

Then he offered a staggering estimate for the number of people he was talking about: "You have got, by some counts, as many as 3 or 4 million people that fit that category."

We investigated whether this estimate had any merit. Under Johnson's phrasing, as much as one quarter of undocumented immigrants could be "dangerous" — criminals, including violent criminals, or terrorists. As we have documented before, there is little evidence that immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — cause more crime.

Spoiler alert: Johnson's estimate is at least three times too high. To read the full fact check and find out the Pinocchio rating, please click the link.

Read the full fact check

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A flip-flop on whether judges should be confirmed in a lame-duck Congress

Exactly four years ago, Sen. John Thune was on the Senate floor, celebrating the fact that Senate Republicans, who held the majority, planned to confirm five district court judges, "bringing the total number of judges we've confirmed over the last four years to nearly 230."

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, then president, regularly boasted that because Republicans kept confirming judges, he had appointed "almost 300 federal judges," what he called "a record-setting number." (It was 234 judges, and not a record, but that's another matter.)

Now the Democrats, not Republicans, have control of the chamber in a lame-duck session — and Thune, now the Republican Senate leader, and Trump have changed their tune. Trump tweeted: "No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!"

We looked into whether circumstances have changed. To read the fact check and find out the Pinocchio rating (a rare one!), please click the link.

Read the full fact check

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About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy or depressing subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face.

Scroll down to read other fact checks on Senate confirmations.