1. I know it's Christmas Eve but people should understand what's happening with Facebook ads and the Georgia Senate runoffs.
These elections will determine the trajectory of American politics for the next two years.
Facebook's conduct is indefensible
Follow along if interested
2. The story starts on December 17, after Facebook begins allowing political ads in Georgia.
American Crossroads, a Super PAC run by Karl Rove and financed by Mitch McConnell, starts running a brutally dishonest ad against Raphael Warnock
3. The American Crossroads ad tells Georgia voters on Facebook that Warnock said "God Damn America."
As if he was expressing his own views. But he wasn't. He was quoting Jerimiah Wright in a speech he delivered on 7/11/13.
We tracked down the full quote
4. Here's Warnock's full quote: "Extracted from its theological and rhetorical context and looped to the point of ad nauseam was the most provocative phrase 'God Damn America'"
The ad claims this means Warnock "He repeated the same anti-American hate himself"
FALSE.
5. It's really impossible to overstate just how dishonest this ad is. It's like Kelly Loeffler going on Fox News and saying: "Jerimiah Wright said 'God Damn America.'"
And then running an ad attacking Kelly Loeffler for saying "God Damn American"
6. Based on my Twitter thread on 12/17, one of Facebook's fact-checking partners evaluated the American Crossroads ad and came to the same conclusion: It misleads voters because it lacks context
7. It took them awhile but Facebook eventually removed the American Crossroads ads. Under Facebook's rules, politicians and parties can post false political ads but Super PACs cannot.
8. But on December 20, American Crossroads just reposted the EXACT SAME AD dishonestly attacking Warnock.
AND FACEBOOK APPROVED IT.
9. American Crossroads quickly spent more than 8K on this ad that was previously removed, and reached as many as 250K Georgia voters.
10. I exposed what happened on Twitter and, after a delay of several hours, Facebook took down the duplicated ad.
11. Removing the ad was what Facebook's policy required, but it was pretty disturbing that American Crossroads can just keep posting copies of the same ad.
So I emailed Facebook this question: What's preventing American Crossroads from posting it again?
No response.
12. Then, on December 22, American Crossroads posted another ad WITH THE SAME FALSE ATTACK ON WARNOCK.
IT WAS APPROVED BY FACEBOOK AGAIN
This was a claim that was already removed TWICE by Facebook
13. I emailed Facebook yesterday at 10AM about this ad and have received NO RESPONSE.
The ad is still up, still active, and still is misleading Georgia voters.
It still violates Facebook's rules.
Facebook does not appear to care.
14. Facebook has 50,000 employees and had 21.4 billion in revenue in the 3Q 2020.
My newsletter has 2 employees and 0 billion in revenue in the 3Q 2020.
This is all due to a new law pushed by DeSantis to "emphasize abstinence"
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2. A Florida Department of Education spokesperson defended the new restrictions: “A state government should not be emphasizing or encouraging sexual activity among children or minors and is therefore right to emphasize abstinence.”
3. In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed a law, HB 1069, that requires schools to “teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students.” The law requires that “all materials used to teach reproductive health” be approved by the Florida Department of Education, or for schools to use textbooks that are pre-approved by the state.
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump campaign is still being hacked
Email communications from individuals associated with the Trump campaign have been hacked by malign actors within the last ten days, Popular Information has confirmed.
Follow this thread for details.
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2. On September 18, I was sent a message from "Robert," which contained the cover page of a dossier on JD Vance
Robert refused to identify himself except to suggest he was the same person who sent stolen Trump campaign materials to other outlets
1. Major corporations — including @doordash, @google, @walmart, @cvs, and @microsoft — have bankrolled an ongoing multi-million dollar effort to elect @markrobinsonNC the next governor of North Carolina
Follow this thread for details
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2. Even before securing the Republican nomination for Governor of North Carolina in March, @MarkRobinsonNC had a long and well-documented record of promoting conspiracy theories, maligning LGBTQ people, using anti-Semitic tropes, and demeaning women.
3. None of this prevented the Republican Governors Association (@GOPGovs) from throwing its support behind Robinson.
In a post on X on March 5, the day Robinson won the Republican nomination, RGA chairman Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) congratulated Robinson and said the organization "look[s] forward to supporting him in the general election."
1. A new IPSOS poll asked voters if they “support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.”
The results may tell us more about the failure of the media and others to educate citizens on what Trump’s plan for mass deportation would entail.
Let's talk FACTS
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2. The scale required to orchestrate Trump’s proposed policy, deporting 11 million+ people, is way beyond the capacity of ICE.
Trump’s solution is to use local law enforcement.
That means local police would be doing little else, making communities less safe and causing migrants, fearing deportation, to be less willing "to report crimes or cooperate with police.”
3. ICE deported 142,580 non-citizens from the U.S. in 2023. Its budget for removals and transportation last year was over $420 million, meaning that it cost nearly $3,000 to remove each person from the country.
If Trump deported the 11 million non-citizens currently in the U.S., it would cost $33 billion just to transport people out of the U.S. — more than triple ICE’s total budget in 2023.
But the cost of actually moving a person off U.S. soil is only one part of the equation. It also costs ICE money to track people down and keep them in custody before their deportation. NBC reported that ICE currently has about 40,000 beds in detention centers which each cost $57,378 a year to maintain. If Trump enacted his mass deportation plan of 11 million people, ICE would need to expand its detention capacity drastically.
1. A little-noticed report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released this month reveals why, for many Americans, the economy is broken.
Follow this thread for details.
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2. The report focuses on the American economy from 2019 to 2021.
That period included a massive economic disruption due to the pandemic and a recovery as the economy reopened.
The report reveals that the economic impact of the pandemic was concentrated among the bottom 20% of earners.
That group saw a significant decrease in labor income in 2020, which did not rebound as the economy reopened in 2021.
3. The middle 60% of earners largely treaded water between 2019 and 2021 with little change to labor income or realized capital gains (which is the income generated from the sale of stock or other investments).
Over the same three years, however, the top 20% of earners saw increased labor income and a dramatic increase in realized capital gains.
Kelly has repeatedly trashed Swift based on FACTUAL CLAIMS that are OBJECTIVELY FALSE
Follow this thread for the truth
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2. On September 10, Taylor Swift endorsed the Harris/Walz ticket in an Instagram post. Swift said she "was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades."
Kelly was ENRAGED
@timwalz 3. @megynkelly has repeatedly claimed that a law signed by Walz in 2023 "take custody of the children from parents who don't want them to chop off their body parts and put them in Minnesota Court's custody so the body parts can be chopped off"