Fact Checker: A citizenship question on the census sparked a calamity of claims

	Democracy Dies in Darkness
	The truth behind the rhetoric

A citizenship question on the census sparked a calamity of claims The Trump administration announced it planned to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census — and the internet exploded. The move raised all sorts of questions about the rights of voters, minorities and immigrants. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross argued this data would, “permit more effective enforcement of the [Voting Rights] Act.” Civil rights groups disagreed, saying there’s already enough citizenship data collected through the American Community Survey (ACS) — a census supplement — that is sent out yearly. Officials on both sides of the aisle waded into the debate. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the question had been “included in every census since 1965, with the exception of 2010.” It hadn’t — the last time the census itself asked a citizenship question was 1950. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) seemed to say the question “violates the Constitution.” This isn’t likely since the question was included on the census before 1950, then once every decade from 1970 to 2000 in the long-form survey, then every year from 2005 onward in the ACS. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) brought politics into the mix, saying, “[congressional] districts apportioned based on # of people not here legally dilutes the political representation of citizens & legal residents.” That’s debatable. If the question ends up spooking immigrants, as some have argued, then an immigrant-rich state like California might lose federal funding or a congressional district. Of course, we’re dealing in hypotheticals here. There’s no way to know what will or won’t happen if the question is included until the census takes place in 2020. But that didn’t stop the claims from flowing. Here’s our roundup.

A year in: Re-examining Trump’s Mexico City policy On Jan. 23, 2017, President Trump reinstated a Reagan-era policy that bans U.S. aid to international health groups that promote abortions. At the time, a tweet from NARAL Pro-Choice America caught our eye. It claimed the “global gag rule kills funding for ANY health center that even *mentions* abortion.” Known as the Mexico City Policy or the “global gag rule” (depending on whom you ask), the policy is a political hot potato: Democratic presidents rescind it and Republican presidents reinstate it. We looked into NARAL’s claim in 2017, but left the verdict pending because Trump’s iteration of this policy had yet to come into focus. Since all the guidelines have now been released, we decided to take another look. Does the updated policy restrict funding to any organization that “even *mentions* abortion”? Not entirely, if one believes a reactive response still qualifies as a mention. Does it blanket more organizations than ever before with tightened rules on how grantees and sub-grantees can spend their funds (whether or not those funds are American in origin)? Absolutely. Trump’s iteration of the rule applies to all U.S. funding for global health or about $8.8 billion in foreign aid. Previous iterations applied only to family-planning funds, or about $575 million. Every reproductive rights organization, nongovernmental organization and the Department of State pointed out that this type of policy change takes time to play out, and this one has yet to be fully implemented. So, we faced a conundrum here. The tweet looks increasingly accurate as the rules are implemented. But it does not quite rise to the level of a Geppetto because of its sweeping assertion. So, we left this claim unrated.

Trump administration botches basic civics while calling for line-item veto As he called for more budget-cutting powers, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin messed up several basic facts about the government. By Salvador Rizzo  •   Read more »  Trump’s bundle of faulty claims about Amazon’s cost to taxpayers The president says Amazon is hosing local taxpayers and bleeding the U.S. Postal Service, but his tweet exaggerates and misleads. By Salvador Rizzo  •   Read more »

President Trump’s claim that China caused 60,000 U.S. factories to close Trump says the United States has lost 6 million manufacturing jobs because of China. Economists say he's onto something but shoots wide of the mark. By Salvador Rizzo  •   Read more »  A year later: Does Trump’s Mexico City policy ban funds to groups that ‘even mention’ abortion? The increased breath of the Mexico City policy under President Trump inches NARAL's claim toward accuracy, but it's not quite there. By Meg Kelly  •   Read more »

Fact-checking claims about Trump’s citizenship question in the census A citizenship question slated for the next census has itself raised big questions. We try to answer some of them and dig into the rhetoric in this debate. By Salvador Rizzo  •   Read more »