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SCOTUS Must Rely on 1st Amendment Censorship Case

Real Clear Politics -

The justices of the Supreme Court never focused on the First Amendment's words when hearing arguments in Murthy v. Missouri last week. The case challenges the federal government's orchestration of social media censorship, so one might have expected the justices to pay some attention to the First Amendment itself.

Baseless Conspiracy Theories Follow Key Bridge Collapse

FactCheck -

Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.

Quick Take

The Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship in the early morning on March 26. Although all evidence points to an accident, conspiracy theorists spread the baseless claim that it was intentionally caused by a “cyber-attack.” Officials have dismissed the claim.

Full Story

A cargo ship ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore at about 1:30 a.m. on March 26, sending the center stretch of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River and leaving six road repair workers presumed dead.

From the start, authorities have described the crash as an accident.

At the first press conference, held at about 6:30 a.m., Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said, “There is absolutely no indication that there is any terrorism or that this was done on purpose.” His department had been working with “the FBI and other federal and state agencies to get all the intel that we have, but there’s absolutely no indication that it was intentional,” he said.

Later in the day, William DelBagno, who leads the FBI’s Baltimore field office, said the same thing: “There is no specific or credible information to suggest that there are ties to terrorism in this incident.”

That office also released a similar statement the same day.

And President Joe Biden, who made remarks from the White House in the afternoon, said, “Everything so far indicates that this was a terrible accident. At this time we have no other indication, no other reason to believe there was any intentional act here.”

In an aerial view, the cargo ship Dali is seen after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo by Tasos Katopodis via Getty Images.

Despite the lack of evidence and the clear statements from officials, conspiracy-laden claims have been racking up millions of views on social media.

For example, Alex Jones — the conspiracy theorist behind InfoWars who is perhaps best known for denying that the school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, actually happened — wrote on X, “Looks deliberate to me. A cyber-attack is probable. WW3 has already started…”

He cited nothing for support other than a post from social media influencer Andrew Tate, who also has a history of spreading misinformation. Tate had claimed, “This ship was cyber-attacked. Lights go off and it deliberately steers towards the bridge supports. Foreign agents of the USA attack digital infrastructures. Nothing is safe. Black Swan event imminent.”

The idea of a “black swan” event came from mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who described the theory in a 2007 book as an improbable event that has a large impact and is later explained as being less random than it actually was. However, the term has recently been adopted by conspiracy theorists and has appeared in many of the posts suggesting that the bridge collapse was intentional.

As we said, though, there’s no evidence that the crash was anything other than accidental.

Here’s what we know so far:

A cargo ship named the Dali, which was registered in Singapore, departed the Port of Baltimore shortly before 1 a.m. It was at about half of its capacity, carrying almost 5,000 shipping containers, according to the Synergy Group, which was operating the vessel.

The ship traveled about 4 nautical miles, which is approximately 4.5 miles, and reached speeds of about 8 knots, which is a little over 9 miles per hour, according to location data compiled by myshiptracking.com.

The ship hit a pylon supporting the bridge at about 1:30 a.m., Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at an afternoon press conference.

Before hitting the bridge, the ship’s crew “notified authorities of a power issue,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore had explained at a press conference earlier in the day. He confirmed that the ship had lost power.

Between the time of that mayday call and the collapse of the bridge, officials were able to stop traffic going onto the bridge, Moore said.

There was also a crew of eight workers on the bridge filling potholes — two of them were rescued and six are presumed dead. In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show on March 27, Moore said that first responders had “started to send out notifications” to the workers, and the Baltimore Banner reported on radio communications between officers in the moments before the crash that indicated there was less than a minute between when officers began their communication about the workers and the crash.

The six workers who are presumed dead were immigrants who had come from Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and Honduras.

Not much information on the crash is available at this point, Homendy said, since the NTSB had been “standing back” in order to allow the search-and-rescue operation to continue for possible survivors. That rescue operation ended at about 7:30 p.m. on March 26, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said at an evening press conference.

So, according to the early assessment of all authorities who have publicly spoken, this was an accident. There has been no evidence so far to indicate it was an intentional crash, or that it was caused by a “cyber-attack.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

WBAL-TV 11 Baltimore (@WBALTV11). “LIVE: KEY BRIDGE COLLAPSE.” YouTube. 26 Mar 2024.

The Telegraph (@telegraph). “In full: Baltimore bridge collapse is ‘mass casualty event’ – watch press conference.” YouTube. 26 Mar 2024.

Gov. Wes Moore (@GovWesMoore). “Governor Wes Moore Press Conference on the Collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.” YouTube. 26 Mar 2024.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. Press release. “FBI Baltimore Statement on Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse.” 26 Mar 2024.

The White House (@WhiteHouse). “President Biden Delivers Remarks on the Collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.” YouTube. 26 Mar 2024.

Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore. Press release. “MPA will support the US Coast Guard in its investigations.” 26 Mar 2024.

Synergy Marine Group. Press release. “‘DALI’, Francis Scott Key Bridge Incident.” 26 Mar 2024.

Maersk. Press release. “Cargo to and from Port of Baltimore: TA2, TA5, TP12, Amex, AGAS.” 26 Mar 2024.

NTSBgov (@NTSBgov). “NTSB Media Briefing – Francis Scott Key Bridge struck by Cargo Ship Dali.” YouTube. 26 Mar 2024.

Willis, Adam and Lee O. Sanderlin. “Did state’s warning make it to construction crew on Key Bridge?” Baltimore Banner. 27 Mar 2024.

The post Baseless Conspiracy Theories Follow Key Bridge Collapse appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Kennedy's Strategic Choice for Vice President

Real Clear Politics -

The selection by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of attorney Nicole Shanahan as his running mate is sure to create more attacks on his campaign by Democrats. Prior to choosing Shanahan, an ardently pro-choice former Democrat, the Kennedy campaign seemed to be drawing support equally across the political spectrum. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who were open to an alternative to Biden but skeptical of Kennedy's prior positions on reproductive rights might give the independent campaign a second look with Shanahan on the ticket. That could tip the mix of Kennedy supporters in a way that's...

Elon Musk Overstates Partisan Impact of Illegal Immigration on House Apportionment

FactCheck -

In claiming that illegal immigration benefits Democrats, entrepreneur Elon Musk vastly overstated its impact on the apportionment of House seats and Electoral College votes.

“The math, as I understand it, you can research this obviously very easily on the internet, it’s pretty straightforward to research this, but my understanding is that the Democrats would lose approximately 20 seats in the House if illegals were not counted in the census and that’s also 20 less electoral votes for president,” Musk said in an interview with journalist Don Lemon on March 19. “So illegals absolutely do affect who controls the House and who controls the presidency. It does not affect the Senate.”

That’s inaccurate.

In December 2019, the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates lower immigration, released an analysis of the impact of legal and illegal immigration on the apportionment of seats in the U.S. House in 2020.

Looking only at immigrants in the country illegally — the yardstick Musk employed — CIS estimated they were responsible for the redistribution of three seats in 2020. Looking at it in partisan terms, two states with a Republican-controlled legislature and a Republican governor (Alabama and Ohio) and one state with a divided legislature and a Democratic governor (Minnesota) each had one fewer House seat in 2020 due to the inclusion of immigrants living in the country illegally in population counts. Gaining one extra seat were two blue states (New York and California) and one red state (Texas). In other words, the estimated net impact was that one Democratic state picked up a seat from a Republican state.

And, since electoral votes are apportioned based on the number of House and Senate members from each state, in that scenario, one Republican electoral vote was swung to a Democratic vote.

CIS also analyzed the impact of all immigration, both legal and illegal, and concluded it was responsible for a shift of 26 House seats. But that includes immigrants who became U.S. citizens, the U.S.-born children of immigrants living in the U.S. legally or illegally, as well as other immigrants living legally in the country.

A July 2020 analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, based on government data, similarly found: “If unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. were removed from the 2020 census apportionment count … three states could each lose a seat they otherwise would have had and three others each could gain one.” Its analysis concurred with CIS on five of the six states affected, but instead of New York gaining a seat because of the impact of illegal immigration, Pew found that Florida gained a seat.

In other words, in 2020, if immigrants lacking permanent legal status hadn’t been included in population counts, two red states and one blue state would have gained a seat, and two red states and one blue state would have lost a seat. A wash, politically speaking, when it comes to balance in the House or electoral votes.

To add some perspective, over the last 10 elections, presidents have won by an average of about 176 electoral votes over the runner-up — though in 2000, Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore by just five Electoral College votes. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 74 electoral votes. In other words, there is no evidence that the inclusion of immigrants living in the country illegally in census counts and apportionment calculations has swung a presidential election to one party or another. And in 2020, it did not affect the partisan majority in the House.

How Seats Are Apportioned

Reapportionment for the House of Representatives is done every 10 years based on the decennial census. A state’s electoral votes are determined by the number of senators and representatives it has. So if a state gains or loses a House seat, it also gains or loses an electoral vote.

As required by the 14th Amendment, the apportionment of seats in Congress for each state is calculated “according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” There is no indication in the Constitution that immigrants without permanent legal status should not be included in reapportionment.

Numerous efforts have been made over the years to challenge the legality of including those immigrants in the apportionment process, but none has been successful. In March 2018, the Commerce Department under President Donald Trump attempted to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. (The mandatory decennial census doesn’t ask whether someone is a citizen.)

But Trump’s efforts were quickly challenged in the courts, and in July 2019, Trump abandoned his effort to include the question, though he tried to use other government sources to obtain a count of immigrants living in the country illegally.

Trump later attempted via a memorandum in July 2020 to “exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.”

“Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of Government,” the memo said. “Affording congressional representation, and therefore formal political influence, to States on account of the presence within their borders of aliens who have not followed the steps to secure a lawful immigration status under our laws undermines those principles.”

Allowing immigrants in the country to be included in the counts used for apportionment “would also create perverse incentives encouraging violations of Federal law,” the memo stated. “States adopting policies that encourage illegal aliens to enter this country and that hobble Federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws passed by the Congress should not be rewarded with greater representation in the House of Representatives.”

Late in 2020, the Supreme Court delayed a ruling on a court challenge to Trump’s memo, and on his first day in office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order revoking Trump’s memo and stating that census counts in each state are done “without regard to whether its residents are in lawful immigration status.”

“While it is true that Census includes this population and that they are counted in Congressional districts, it is important to note that this population is routinely undercounted … for multiple reasons and therefore the effect is likely minimal on district appropriations,” Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us via email. “But also, many of these immigrants are part of mixed-status households that include many US citizens who have critical needs and must be counted to receive funding and services (for example, in schools). And yes … many ‘red’ states also have notable unauthorized immigrant populations.”

The U.S. Census is used in many federal funding formulas. In fiscal year 2021, it informed the distribution of more than $2.8 trillion in federal funding.

Recent Legislative Efforts

Although the next reapportionment won’t happen until 2030, a surge in illegal immigration during the Biden presidency has brought the issue back to the legislative forefront.

On Jan. 25, 21 senators introduced the Equal Representation Act, which seeks to require a citizenship question on the decennial census, and prohibit the inclusion of noncitizens in counts used for apportionment of representatives. Four days later, a companion bill was introduced in the House. To date, the bill has 89 Republican co-sponsors.

A press release from Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said, “The current census method of counting illegal aliens for purposes of representation incentivizes open borders by boosting the relative political power of the respective states and voters that court mass illegal migration. For example, at least two million illegal aliens reside in California, currently resulting in this sanctuary state being apportioned several more congressional seats and Electoral College votes than the states’ population of citizens would justify.”

As we noted earlier, CIS and Pew Research Center both concluded that California would have had one less representative, and one less electoral vote, if immigrants living in the country illegally were excluded from the census apportionment count.

In press releases, other Republicans also portrayed illegal immigration as a boost only to Democratic states, though that is not the case.

“What we’re seeing is the Democrats abusing the system by creating sanctuary cities in blue states that are literally losing citizens every day to states like mine,” Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said in a press conference at the Capitol on Jan. 25. “What’s happening is cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, are acting as magnets to attract illegal immigrants. Those immigrants are then being counted in the populations of California, Illinois, New York, and other cities for the purposes of allocating congressional districts and electoral votes.”

“Blue states may be losing citizens over their liberal policies, but they’re making up for it by welcoming illegal immigrants,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said in a press release.

But immigrants don’t just settle in blue states, and there is some evidence that immigrants without permanent legal status have been settling more often in red states in recent years. While California (2.2 million) had more immigrants living in the U.S. illegally than any other state in 2022, the No. 2 and 3 states were the red states of Texas (1.85 million) and Florida (935,000), the Center for Migration Studies estimates.

When it comes to apportionment power, however, “it’s not whether they have any unauthorized immigrants in their state, it’s whether they have a higher than average share,” Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer for the Pew Research Center, explained in a phone interview.

“It’s not simply Democratic states,” Passel said. “There’s a mix of states with higher than average shares.”

The apportionment formula allocates sequentially, so it also matters how close a state is to the population threshold needed to get another representative, Passel said. The average number of people per congressional district is 761,169, although some states such as Delaware (990,837) and Idaho (920,689) have far more than the average, while others have far less, including Montana (542,704) and Rhode Island (549,082).

Republicans also claimed that a surge in illegal immigration since Biden took office will cause an increase in partisan disparity in apportionment.

Surge in Illegal Immigration under Biden

Hagerty misleadingly talked about the “8 to 10 million people that have entered America just since Joe Biden took office.” As we’ve written, government statistics show that in the initial processing of millions of encounters at the southern border during the Biden administration, 2.5 million people have been released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court or other classifications, as of October. There also could have been about 1.6 million “gotaways,” or people crossing the border illegally who evaded apprehension. 

Ruiz Soto, of the Migration Policy Institute, noted that most of the immigrants released into the country are still being processed at immigration courts, and many of them may ultimately be issued removal orders if courts determine they do not to qualify for asylum protection.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, each House member represents an average of 761,169 people, based on the 2020 census. But immigrants disperse around the country, and while some states wind up with a disproportionate share, that’s true of red and blue states.

In fact, there is reason to believe Republican states may be benefiting more from illegal immigration than Democratic ones in recent years, according to an analysis released in January by David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute.

According to Bier, “recent immigration trends are benefiting Republicans in states where they control the legislature and manage redistricting. About 62 percent of the three‐​million increase in the total immigrant population from March 2019 to March 2023 has occurred in GOP states, according to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.”

That includes all immigrants. Looking only at noncitizens, Bier wrote, “an overwhelming 95 percent of the increase in the noncitizen population has been in GOP states from March 2019 to March 2023.”

The noncitizen population includes noncitizens in the country both illegally and legally, though Bier told us, “I don’t believe that there would be a substantial difference in locational choice” between the two groups.

“The claim is that Democrats are right now letting more noncitizens come because these new entrants will increase their congressional representation,” Bier told us via email. “But while [that] may have been true for immigrants who entered decades ago, it hasn’t been true for recent arrivals.”

According to Bier’s analysis, seven of the top 10 states where noncitizens settled between 2019 and 2023 are states with Republican legislatures, with Texas topping the list.

“It is certainly likely that these states are attracting immigrants because of their strong job growth,” Bier wrote.

From 2021 to 2023, during the Biden administration, five of the top 10 states in which noncitizens settled were Republican-controlled, four were Democratic-controlled, and one has a divided legislature. However, California — a blue state — gained the most noncitizen arrivals, according to CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplements. The 2.7 million noncitizens estimated to have settled in the U.S. in that time period by the Census Bureau included those living in the U.S. legally and illegally.

Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, looked at the monthly Current Population Survey — a smaller survey but with up-to-date data — over the three years of the Biden presidency, from January 2021 to February 2024, and concluded that there were slightly more blue states than red where the immigrant population grew the most, suggesting that “when the next Census happens that the recent surge will benefit Democratic states more than the Republican states somewhat.”

All of these current analyses may ultimately be irrelevant. What really matters is where the noncitizens, specifically those in the country illegally, disproportionately reside at the time of the decennial census and which party controls those states’ legislatures (and can influence redistricting maps) at that time.

But overall, while illegal immigration affects apportionment at the margins, Passel said, immigrants in the country illegally disperse to many states and make up a fairly small percentage of people in the U.S. overall. “The inclusion of unauthorized immigrants in apportionment counts is not a major factor in determining who controls the House of Representatives,” he said.

“If you’re one of the states that loses a seat, it makes a big difference,” Passel allowed.

That “immigration redistributes house seats is not in dispute,” Camarota told us via email. “In a country of 330 million people however, it is generally hard to move seats around because each seat now has about 760,000 people, though if a state is on the margin of getting or losing a seat, then it can lose or gain relatively easily.”

However, Camarota said he has analyzed population surveys during the Trump presidency and found certain House districts, with a high density of noncitizens, are more likely to elect Democrats. 

“The key group that wins politically from the growth in illegal immigrants and non-citizens in general are those that live around them,” Camarota said, pointing to a CIS report that looked at districts with relatively few voters because many of the people in the district are noncitizens who can’t vote.

“It takes so many fewer votes to win an election in a district with a lot of non-citizens,” Camarota said. “This means that voters in such places have significantly more political power. That is, their votes count much more. In general the low citizen districts are almost all represented by Democrats.”

Camarota argues there are other long-term advantages to immigration — both legal and illegal — for Democrats.

“There is good evidence immigrants and their children [who ultimately become citizens] may vote Democratic 2 to 1 on average,” Camarota said. “So in the long run immigration has partisan implications, which I think is part of the complaint.”

Whether that’s true, or remains true in 2030, is a matter for speculation, but regardless, that’s not what Musk was arguing. He said there’s currently an advantage to Democrats of 20 House seats and an equal number of electoral votes due to immigrants in the country illegally being included in apportionment calculations — and that’s not accurate.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

The post Elon Musk Overstates Partisan Impact of Illegal Immigration on House Apportionment appeared first on FactCheck.org.

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