In the Wisconsin Senate race, an ad from Republican Sen. Ron Johnson selectively pulls comments made by his opponent, Democrat Mandela Barnes, from an interview days after a deadly attack on police in Dallas. The ad claims Barnes “rationalized violence” against police, but it ignores that Barnes said the killings were “not justified in any way” and that he “denounced” the attack.

The ad starts with TV news coverage of the July 7, 2016, sniper attack on Dallas police officers in which five officers were killed. A lone gunman, who was later killed in an explosion after a standoff with police, had opened fire during what had been a peaceful protest and march. The protest was in response to deadly police shootings that week of two Black men, in Louisiana and Minnesota.

A narrator in the ad then says of the Dallas attack: “Just days after this horrific crime, Mandela Barnes appeared on Vladimir Putin’s propaganda news outlet and rationalized violence against American police officers.”

That’s followed by a clip of Barnes saying: “Police officers are over-exercising their badges,” and, “This probably was a retaliatory attack.”

Barnes, now the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, was interviewed on RT, the Russian state-owned TV network, on July 9, 2016, when he was a state representative. And he said those words, but not in succession, and the first comment didn’t pertain to the attack in Dallas. It’s the words the ad leaves out that show Barnes condemned the violence against Dallas police and violence in general.

The RT interview began with the news anchor asking Barnes about recent “fatalities as a result of police violence.” Barnes responded, talking about these “two very tragic incidents,” referring to the fatal police shootings in Louisiana, in which Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old Black man was killed during an encounter with Baton Rouge police officers on July 5, 2016, and in Minnesota, in which Philando Castile, a 32-year-old Black man was killed by a St. Anthony police officer during a traffic stop on July 6, 2016.

“And again, what the problem is these police, these police districts, these police officers across the country, they haven’t reformed their patterns and practices,” Barnes continued. “And that’s the, that’s the scary part about it. Because when they see that nothing is going to happen, when anybody can get away with something, you’re going to do it. And that’s what’s happening all the time. These police officers are over-exercising their badges. … And it’s a very unfortunate set of circumstances.”

Barnes then immediately added: “Unfortunately, Dallas is a completely separate situation than this, than these two.”

So when Barnes said “police officers are over-exercising their badges” — the quote featured in the ad — he wasn’t talking about the attack in Dallas.

The next question from the RT anchor was: “Some people are seeing this shooting in Dallas as, as a kickback to police brutality. What’s your take on that?”

Barnes began by denouncing the attack. “So what I’ll say, you know, like I’ve said before, is people are very upset, and there’s no way that the Dallas police officers, that killing is not justified in any way. I have repeatedly denounced that. I don’t condone violence in any way. I get so mad about police killings because … I don’t want anybody to die. But we want everybody to be able to live peacefully, live in a safe environment. So that’s, that’s the first thing.

“And this probably was a retaliatory attack where somebody just said, ‘You know what, I’m tired of this happening in our country. I’m tired of this happening, and I’m tired of waking up and this being the news. I’m tired of this being the new norm.’ And you had a frustrated individual, somebody who took matters into his own hands. And I don’t justify it, it should not have happened. That’s not the way that you solve the crisis, because it only makes these police officers even more tense, which creates more scary situations for people.”

That’s the context for Barnes’ remark, also featured in the ad, that “this probably was a retaliatory attack.” But left out of the TV spot is the fact that Barnes said the Dallas attack was “not justified in any way” and that “it should not have happened.”

The day after the ambush on Dallas police, the city’s police chief, David Brown, said the shooter had said his motive was retaliatory. “He said he was upset about the recent police shootings,” Brown said. “The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

In the RT interview, Barnes reiterated his thoughts on the attack: “So while it may have been a retaliatory act by one person, again, that is a lone wolf situation. Does not [in] any way represent the feelings of the majority of Americans. Like we don’t want more people killed. We want less people killed. That’s the reason we get upset. That’s the reason we protest. That’s reason we, you know, we we have all this outrage, is for less violence.”

He addressed the deadly attack a few more times in the interview, saying, “We can’t take our, you know, attention off of the two incidents that happened before Dallas. Not to say that we should forget about Dallas, because we absolutely shouldn’t. That’s not a situation that should have ever happened.”

At the end of the interview, Barnes spoke again about the killings of Sterling and Castile. “I look at myself, I look at my friends, this could have been any one of us in that situation, and it should never have been that way and to see how slow justice, you know, happens in those instances when it involves police officers. People get very upset, and that’s why you see what happened in Dallas and again, not to justify it because it shouldn’t have happened. But people have been pushed to a breaking point.”

When we asked the Barnes campaign about the ad, spokesperson Maddy McDaniel said that Barnes “has repeatedly condemned violence, including the shooting that claimed the lives of the officers in Dallas.”

The Johnson campaign defended the ad. “He provided multiple reasons why he can understand why this sort of thing would happen — by definition rationalizing means to create a reason, explanation, or excuse for something. He’s doing exactly that,” spokesperson Alec Zimmerman told us.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel unearthed Barnes’ 2016 RT interview and five others he gave to the Kremlin-backed network that year and the year prior. The newspaper reported in the Oct. 13 story that RT had been part of a Russian influence effort to, in the words of the New York Times in 2020, “push divisive racial narratives, including stories emphasizing allegations of police abuse in the United States.”

The Barnes campaign confirmed to us that he was not paid to appear on RT.

Readers can form their own opinions about Barnes’ interview. But in order to do so, they should have the context of Barnes’ quotes, including his condemnations of the killings of Dallas police officers. The Johnson campaign ad omits that information.

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Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels — who opposes abortion rights —made headlines when he said in a radio interview last month that as governor, he would sign an abortion ban that included exceptions for rape and incest.

A Facebook ad from the Republican Accountability PAC says Michels “supports no exceptions for rape [or] incest.”

The ad isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

There’s no evidence Michels has changed his personal opinion opposing exceptions for rape or incest, but he did say he’d be willing to compromise if the state legislature brought him a bill that included those exceptions.

As abortion continues to be a focal point of the 2022 midterm elections following the Supreme Court’s June ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade — which established a constitutional right to abortion in 1973 — political ads have misled or made false claims about candidates’ statements on abortion. This ad isn’t either, but Michels’ position is more nuanced than the ad suggests.

The Facebook ad focuses on the race between Michels and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. It was shared on Oct. 10 and paid for by the Republican Accountability PAC, or RAPAC, a group of self-described “Republicans, former Republicans, and conservatives” that opposes former President Donald Trump and “candidates that are too extreme to govern.” 

In the ad, a person identified as a Wisconsin Republican says that Michels is too extreme for Wisconsin, adding that “Tim Michels supports no exceptions for rape [or] incest and that is unacceptable.” The ad has received more than 116,000 views. 

RAPAC also shared the claim on its website, saying. “Michels would use his power as governor to reinstate Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.”

Michels has said he supports an 1849 Wisconsin abortion law, which made it a felony to perform an abortion at any stage unless it was to save the pregnant person’s life. 

In June, Michels said the law was an “exact mirror” of his position on abortion and that he wouldn’t support exceptions for rape or incest. Michels, a political novice who was endorsed by Trump, won the Republican primary on Aug. 9 against former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who was backed by former Vice President Mike Pence. 

Michels, who has donated money to anti-abortion groups, said on Sept. 6 that he was asked to “soften” his stance on abortion to allow for exceptions for rape and incest. At the time, he said, “I’m not gonna soften my stance on abortion.”

But a few weeks later, conservative host Dan O’Donnell asked Michels in a WISN radio interview on Sept. 23 if he would sign a bill that included exceptions for people who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest.

“I am pro-life. I make no apologies for that,” Michels said. “But I also understand that this is a representative democracy. And if the people — in this case, the legislature — brought a bill before me, as you just stated, I would sign that.”

In talking about his interview with Michels, O’Donnell said: “So I asked Michels, alright, so you had said before that you would not have rape or incest exceptions. Essentially, what sort of changed?”

Michels responded: “I understand that a governor, you know, you’re not the ultimate authority on things, that you work with the legislature. And the legislature — the state Senate, the Assembly — they’re closest to the people. So yes, if that bill was put before me, I would sign it.”

In reflecting on the interview, O’Donnell took the position that Michels did not “flip-flop” on the issue of exceptions for rape and incest. The conservative host said Michels as governor would accept “the will of the people,” even “if that is different than his own personal will.”

We reached out to Michels’ campaign for comment on the RAPAC ad and whether his abortion position had changed, but we didn’t hear back. However, a campaign spokesperson told PolitiFact that Michels’ personal opinion had not changed.

PolitiFact rated Michels’ remarks as a policy flip-flop, and the Associated Press wrote that the Republican had “changed course on a significant issue.”

David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us by email that it’s not uncommon for a candidate to shift positions after winning a primary or so close to a general election.

“Michels clearly has switched his position on abortion, saying that he would sign a bill with exceptions for rape and incest (after previously saying he did not support exceptions),” Canon said. “We are seeing this all over the country with candidates moving more to the center for the general election.”

So, the RAPAC ad isn’t wrong to say that Michels “supports no exceptions for rape or incest.” That is his personal opinion by his campaign’s own acknowledgement. But there’s more to the issue that voters may want to know.

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A TV ad from a gun control advocacy group claims Republican Sen. Ron Johnson voted “against funding for the police, preventing local departments from hiring more officers.” But the two votes cited were against trillion-dollar spending bills that included a host of measures, well beyond law enforcement funding.

The ad leaves the misleading impression that Johnson simply opposed providing money for local police departments, but these pieces of legislation were much more complicated than that, giving lawmakers many reasons they may have supported or opposed them.

Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, a super PAC, launched the TV spot on Sept. 23 as part of a $1 million media buy in Wisconsin for the midterms.

Johnson and Republican groups have repeatedly attacked his Democratic opponent, state Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, over the issue of police funding and crime. We’ve written about those misleading claims already.

Now, Everytown is turning the tables, claiming that Johnson “abandoned law enforcement, voting against funding for the police, preventing local departments from hiring more officers.”

It’s worth noting that this battle over who supports police more (or less) would be more apt in state or local government campaigns. In 2019, 87% of police funding came from local governments, according to the Urban Institute. “Nearly all state and local spending on police, corrections, and courts was funded by state and local governments because federal grants account for a very small share of these expenditures,” the think tank’s report said, noting that the figures didn’t include spending on federal policing, such as for federal prisons.

The TV ad cites two votes by Johnson: against the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in 2021 and against the $1.3 trillion consolidated appropriations bill to fund the government in 2018.

We’ll start with the ARP.

American Rescue Plan

The American Rescue Plan is a COVID-19 relief law that passed without any Republican support. It was signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021.

The ARP included $1,400 checks to most Americans; expanded unemployment benefits; and money for schools, small businesses and states. More than $350 billion was dedicated to state, county, city and tribal governments to use largely as they wished to aid in the economic recovery from the pandemic and public health measures.

Biden encouraged states and localities to use the money to support essential workers, including police. But there was no requirement in the legislation to spend money on law enforcement.

On March 6, 2021, after the Senate narrowly passed the bill, Biden said that state and local governments would now “have the resources they need available to them” to rehire “laid-off police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses.” National police organizations also said they had worked to make sure the law included that aid to states and localities.

The administration has boasted that some of the funding was indeed used to hire police and support law enforcement. A May 13 White House fact sheet touted the millions of dollars in Houston dedicated to police overtime, and mental health and domestic violence efforts, among other initiatives; millions spent in Kansas City, including on hiring 150 police officers; and several other examples of cities using ARP money to invest in police equipment, recruitment and community safety programs. It also said Wisconsin had dedicated $100 million in anti-violence efforts across the state.

So the law did provide funding for police. But the nearly $2 trillion legislation provided funding for a lot more than that, and many Republicans said they opposed it because of the total cost, questioning the need for the spending after other COVID-19 relief legislation was enacted in 2020.

We previously wrote about the misleading claim that congressional Republicans “defunded the police” in voting against the ARP. In that story, we noted that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki didn’t identify a single Republican who opposed the bill because of funding for police, when she was pressed on the matter in a June 2021 press briefing.

Johnson, on the day of the Senate vote on the legislation, released a statement saying that he opposed it because it would increase the debt and was “unneeded” for COVID-19 relief.

“This is not Covid relief — it is a massive debt burden that further mortgages our children’s future. I support helping people truly affected by the pandemic, but we should have targeted the unspent $1 trillion from previous bills first,” Johnson said. “The economy is already in a strong recovery, and this bill could spark harmful inflation. It was unneeded and unwise.”

As we’ve written, economists have credited the ARP with boosting the economy. But many also have said in retrospect, the law was too big and did contribute to, but didn’t “spark,” higher inflation, which was largely due to pandemic-related factors and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When we asked Everytown about the ad, a spokesperson highlighted a question anchor Chris Wallace posed to a Republican lawmaker on “Fox News Sunday” on June 27, 2021. Wallace was interviewing Rep. Jim Banks, who blamed an increase in crime on Democrats, saying they supported “defunding the police.” Wallace responded that he wanted to “push back on that a little bit,” citing the ARP and Biden’s comments that the bill included funding for police.

Wallace asked: “Congressman Banks, you voted against that package, against that $350 billion, just like every other Republican in the House and Senate, so can’t you make the argument that it’s you and the Republicans who are defunding the police?”

But as we wrote previously, about a presidential adviser’s comments on the same show, this wasn’t a vote to cut federal funding for police, as the “defund” phrasing might suggest.

Nor was it simply a vote on police funding.

Consolidated Appropriations Act

The second vote cited in the Everytown ad is Johnson’s vote against a $1.3 trillion consolidated, or omnibus, appropriations act that narrowly averted a government shutdown in late March 2018. Everytown notes that bill, signed into law by then-President Donald Trump, included $2.4 billion for state and local law enforcement programs. But, again, it included funding for many other government programs — in fact, it funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year, through Sept. 30.

The 65-32 vote in the Senate was also bipartisan, with eight Democrats and one Independent voting against it.

We asked Everytown if that meant Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among a few other Democrats who opposed the bill, also voted “against funding for the police,” but we didn’t get a response.

Democrats had hoped to include a measure to protect so-called Dreamers, those who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children and qualified for deferred deportation proceedings and work authorizations through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The failure to get a DACA fix in the funding bill was one of the reasons Sanders said he voted against it.

“Unfortunately, there are two fundamental failings in this deal that prevented me from voting for it. First, this bill does not address the great moral issue of our time – the fact that 800,000 young Dreamers in the DACA program are in grave danger of losing their legal status and subject to deportation,” Sanders said in a March 23, 2018, statement. “Second, the $165 billion increase in defense spending over two years is much too large. I believe in a strong military, but at a time when the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 12 countries combined, this increase is much too much.”

We couldn’t find a statement from Johnson at the time on his vote, and his campaign did not respond to our questions about this TV ad. But the point is that the motivation to vote against a large appropriations bill could include any number of reasons.

And using the same logic as the support for the ad, it could be argued that Johnson voted for police funding, when he voted for 2019 government funding legislation, which appropriated $304 million for the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, program, which provides grants to states and localities.

After the Barnes campaign also charged that Johnson had voted against police funding, mainly citing omnibus appropriations laws, Johnson told reporters that he has voted against spending overall because of the nearly $31 trillion of debt, a figure that includes $6.6 trillion in money the government owes to itself.

“I vote against mortgaging our children’s future. And when you vote against a 2,000-page omnibus spending bill that’s probably spending a trillion dollars, there’s going to be good things in there they’re going to spend money on. But somebody has to have the courage to say no, we have to stop this. We’re seeing at least the beginning of a major debt crisis,” Johnson said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The paper noted that “most” of the votes the Barnes campaign pointed to “were omnibus legislation that contained many provisions beyond being related to the police.”

Also among the votes cited by Barnes was one to block consideration of a 2011 bill to provide states and local governments with funding to hire and retain teachers and first responders. The legislation included $4 billion for grants to hire and retain law enforcement officers, and proposed a surtax on those earning more than $1 million to pay for the entire $35 billion act.

Gun Control Votes

The Everytown ad goes on to say Johnson “supported flooding our streets with guns, and making it easier for violent criminals and domestic abusers to get them.” The cited votes were against gun-control measures.

It’s true that Johnson voted against expanding background checks and against prohibiting those convicted of abusing a dating partner from getting guns.

We’ll provide an explanation of the votes.

The ad points to Johnson’s vote against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which became law on June 25. Fifteen Republicans voted with all Democrats in the Senate to pass it.

The law could keep some guns off the streets. It beefed up background checks for those under age 21, increased penalties for firearms trafficking, required more people who sell guns to register as federally licensed sellers (which means they would then have to run background checks before selling guns), and barred more people convicted of domestic abuse from getting a firearm — hence the ad’s reference to “domestic abusers.”

That provision closes what was called the “boyfriend loophole.” The legislation extends prohibiting gun ownership to those convicted of domestic violence crimes against a dating partner (as opposed to only a co-parent or former/current spouse, as was the case before). But the Safer Communities Act allows those convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to once again own firearms five years after the conviction.

The ad also cites two Johnson votes on amendments to the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013. He voted against an amendment to expand gun background checks, and for an amendment to institute reciprocity for concealed firearms, meaning that someone permitted to carry a concealed weapon in one state could do so in other states.

There was no final vote on the bill.

Everytown has a point about Johnson’s strong support for gun rights. After all, he has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and has an “A” rating from the group. But the ad misleads when it cites the senator’s opposition to trillion-dollar spending bills as evidence of “voting against funding for police.”

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Like many Democrats, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes says he wants to cut “middle-class” taxes and make sure the wealthy “pay their fair share.” But an ad from his opponent, Sen. Ron Johnson, in the race for U.S. Senate falsely tells the state’s voters that Barnes wants to “double your income taxes.”

The Johnson campaign told us the reference was to remarks Barnes made in 2019 when he said: “We need to make sure that everyone — especially the powerful and privileged — pay their fair share in taxes. As we all know, the top federal tax rate on the wealthiest was 70% just a few decades ago.” But Barnes did not explicitly advocate reinstating such a rate. And even if he had, raising the top marginal rate — which now is 37% for individual taxable income above $539,900 — wouldn’t amount to doubling “your income taxes” for the vast majority of the public.

A spokesperson for the Barnes campaign told us he cited the past high top rate “to make his point that marginal tax increases on the wealthy would not crash the economy. He was not supporting and does not support a 70% top income tax rate.”

The TV ad uses video from one of Barnes’ ads showing the Democratic nominee hitting baseballs in a park. Johnson’s voiceover calls that TV spot “cutesy” and then rattles off a laundry list of what he calls Barnes’ “too extreme” positions, misleadingly describing most of them. The ad began airing Sept. 6.

Johnson, a Republican, has held the Wisconsin Senate seat since 2011. The Cook Political Report says the race is a toss-up.

Barnes on Taxes

Barnes’ website is short on specifics, but clearly says he wants to lower taxes for what he calls the “middle class” and raise taxes on the “wealthiest.”

In a video stating his priorities for taxes, Barnes says: “I’ll cut middle-class taxes, and I’ll pay for it by ensuring the wealthiest among us pay their fair share. I’ll cut taxes on families and expand the child tax credit to give parents some breathing room.”

That sounds like the opposite of wanting to “double your income taxes.” When we asked the Johnson campaign about the claim, it pointed to Barnes’ response for the Working Families Party to the president’s State of the Union address in 2019. But the claim is relying on a distortion of Barnes’ remarks.

The Working Families Party, which supports Barnes’ candidacy, is a self-described “multiracial party that fights for workers over bosses and people over the powerful.”

In his 2019 speech, Barnes listed several policy goals on various topics, ending with this one: “We need to make sure that everyone — especially the powerful and privileged — pay their fair share in taxes. As we all know, the top federal tax rate on the wealthiest was 70% just a few decades ago.”

The Johnson campaign points out that he followed that statement with this: “And if the success of 2018 gave us reason to hope that this path is possible, the next two years will give us an opportunity to realize that hope.” But it’s not clear that Barnes was saying a 70% top tax rate is possible — as opposed to saying that making the wealthy pay a “fair share,” whatever that might mean, is doable, along with meeting all the other Democratic goals he had outlined in that speech.

As we said, the Barnes campaign said he was not — and is not — advocating a 70% top marginal rate.

Barnes’ reference in 2019 came at a time when other Democrats were drawing attention to the fact that the top marginal rate used to be that high, or higher. From 1936 to 1980, it was 70% or more — as high as 94% in the mid-1940s, as this chart from the Tax Policy Center shows.

There were a lot more tax brackets back in those days. In 1980, the top 70% rate applied to individual taxable income above $108,300, which would be about $400,000 in today’s dollars. The Tax Foundation has said those high rates led to more business income being taxed in the corporate tax system, and after 1980, much of that business income came back into the individual tax system.

As for Barnes’ tax plan, his spokesperson said he opposes the Republican 2017 tax law, enacted under then-President Donald Trump, and in particular wants to change a tax cut Johnson pushed for in that law giving a break to most business owners, who pay individual income tax on their business earnings. (Several reports have found that while the tax cut broadly benefited these so-called pass-through businesses, the bulk of the tax savings, predictably, flowed to those earning the most money, as our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact.com have explained.)

Barnes supports a minimum income tax on people whose wealth is worth more than $100 million. Under such a plan — proposed by President Joe Biden earlier this year — about 700 billionaires, according to the White House’s estimate, would pay at least 20% in taxes on income and capital gains, even on unsold assets. Barnes also has said he wants to expand the child tax credit and earned income tax credit.

Other Claims

Johnson’s TV ad includes several other claims about Barnes’ supposed positions, but frames most of them in misleading ways or leaves out context.

Police funding. The ad says Barnes “supports the defund police movement.” Barnes calls that a “lie” in a TV ad of his own.

Interestingly, both campaigns cited the same Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article as one piece of evidence to support their arguments. The Johnson camp highlights a line about five groups who support defunding the police endorsing Barnes, while the Barnes camp points to Barnes’ “definitive” statement that he doesn’t support defunding the police.

The Journal Sentinel article said that “Barnes is now distancing himself from two unpopular, far-left political movements — defunding police and abolishing ICE — despite support from groups backing these efforts and past social media activity referencing these causes.”

The ad doesn’t explain what it means by “defund police.” As we’ve said before, there’s no one definition. Some critics advocate completely defunding police and replacing police departments with new community safety organizations, while others talk about reallocating some funding to social service agencies, such as those equipped to deal with mental health problems.

Barnes has talked about reallocation. In a June 2020 interview with PBS Wisconsin — less than two months after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, sparking protests against police brutality across the country — Barnes spoke repeatedly about shifting some resources from police departments to other city services and programs to prevent crime.

He was asked directly: “Do you agree that police budgets should be maybe completely done away with, or, or defunded?” Barnes responded: “Not completely done away with.”

He went on to say:

Barnes, June 2020 interview, PBS Wisconsin: We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end. Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments, you know? …

The more money we invest on the front end, because we spend over a billion dollars to put people in prison. The more money we invest in opportunity for people, the less money we have to spend on prisons. The same way the more money we invest in communities, the more opportunity we offer to residents in all parts of our state, the less money we’ll have to spend on police work.

And this isn’t about, look, this isn’t about, you know, beating up on police officers. This is about recognizing the moment that we’re in and recognizing the needs that exist. And it’s also about expecting a high quality of performance from the people who are sworn to protect and serve. And if we offer more opportunities for people in communities, that in turn makes their job that much easier.

And it’s also unrealistic to expect police officers to play the role of social worker, to play the role of mental health professional. In so many instances, they are called into those situations where their expertise does not offer them the opportunity to reasonably resolve that situation. And we see, we see things end up becoming much worse. So if we put more money into mental health services for people, for social services for people, to be able to respond to those instances, we will all be much better off and more safe.

In the interview Barnes also referred to “defunding” as a reallocation of some funding.

“And you know, defunding isn’t necessarily as aggressive as a lot of folks paint it. You know, school budgets get cut almost every year. The arts budgets get cut almost every year, you know, music programs, all these programs see budget cuts unfortunately. And it’s the result, that’s a part of the reason we are where we are because our youth don’t have the outlets that they once had to express themselves,” he said. “And you know, every other budget that gets cut, it seems like, ‘Oh, well, we just had to cut this budget. We had to do what we had to do. We had to tighten up our purse strings. We had to tighten up our belt.’ But the minute you talk about reducing a police department’s budget, then it’s like all hell breaks loose and everybody, everybody acts like you are, you’re signaling Armageddon. But that’s not the case. It’s about reallocating funds in a way that actually promotes safety.”

In his TV ad, Barnes says: “I’ll make sure our police have the resources and training they need to keep our communities safe. And that our communities have the resources to stop crime before it happens,” which echoes other statements he has made in the campaign.

His campaign also pointed out that under Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Barnes, as lieutenant governor, law enforcement agencies and violence prevention efforts received tens of millions in federal COVID-19 relief funding made available to states to cover pandemic-related costs and recovery however they wished.

Viewers of the ad likely have different ideas about what “defund police” means, but Barnes’ current and past statements show he supports reallocating some funding for community or social service programs, not abolishing police departments.

Cash bail. Barnes supports eliminating cash bail, but doesn’t support releasing defendants in cases where there’s a threat of violence. But Johnson’s ad says without further explanation that Barnes “wrote a bill to release criminals without bail.”

In March 2016, Barnes, then a state representative, and other lawmakers introduced a bill to eliminate monetary bail as a condition for releasing someone charged with a crime before the trial or releasing someone convicted of a crime before sentencing. According to a summary of the bill by the state Legislative Reference Bureau, a court would be “required to release a defendant before trial unless it finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that there is a substantial risk that the defendant will not appear for trial or will cause serious bodily harm to a member of the community or intimidate a witness if he or she is released. Under the bill, the court may not use the nature, number, and gravity of the offenses as the sole sufficient reason for refusing to release the defendant.”

The bill didn’t pass. Barnes’ spokesperson told us the candidate still supports such a law, describing the issue as a matter of not allowing “violent criminals” to “be able to buy their way out of jail,” and adding that the bill he backed “mandated that if a judge deemed a defendant a violent threat to the community, the judge could not offer bail at all.”

Courts do not have to offer bail under the current state law. They can deny release to defendants accused of serious offenses, including first-degree homicide and sexual assault, and sexual assault of a child (see section 969.035). And the 2016 bill Barnes co-sponsored didn’t change that provision of the law. But a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article on the state’s bail policies said prosecutors often don’t pursue detention without bail because of the burden of proof required by the law. Instead, they favor setting bail at a high amount.

Other ads from outside groups, such as the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, also have focused on crime, misleadingly claiming that Barnes supports “defunding the police” and “eliminating cash bail” including for violent criminals. One TV ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, which is being distributed through Facebook, says no-cash-bail would apply “even with shootings” and “violent attacks on our police.” But that ignores the fact that Barnes’ position is to keep in custody those at “substantial risk” of causing “serious bodily harm” to others.

Health insurance. Barnes supports Medicare for All. The Johnson ad misleadingly frames this as Barnes wanting to “eliminate your employer-provided health insurance,” not mentioning that Barnes supports universal health coverage.

Under Medicare for All, such as the plan introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2019, private insurance, including work-based plans, would be eliminated, but everyone would still have insurance.

Barnes’ campaign told us he “supports building a path to Medicare for All,” but in the meantime supports the Affordable Care Act; expanding Medicaid in the 12 states, including Wisconsin, that haven’t adopted the expansion under the ACA; and allowing people to enroll in Medicare starting at age 50.

Another Johnson campaign ad claims that Medicare for All “would double your income taxes,” but that’s not exactly what the NBC News article cited on screen said.

The article is about a 2019 report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that said doubling income and corporate taxes would be one way to pay for Medicare for All, among others, and that the plan could lower costs for families. NBC News said the authors “suggested that Medicare for All could reduce average total costs for lower- and middle-income families by eliminating more medical expenses than they would pay in taxes and requiring higher earners to pay a larger share of their tab.”

In 2020, CRFB analyzed a plan by Sanders on the various ways he would pay for Medicare for All, which included a 4% income-tax “premium” that exempted the first $29,000 for families of four and a 7.5% employer payroll tax that would “ultimately” be paid by employees, CRFB said. Of course, under such a health system, people would no longer pay for health insurance premiums or deductibles, as the federal government pays for “virtually the full cost of health care,” the analysis said.

Immigration. In a 2017 tweet, Barnes equated Trump’s proposed border wall to “xenophobia” and expressed support for a state bill to bar the Wisconsin Investment Board from investing in federal contractors building the barriers. And in his 2019 response to the State of the Union, he said: “We need an immigration system that treats all people with dignity and with respect, a system that says that no human being is illegal.”

The Johnson campaign points to those two comments as support for its claim that Barnes wants “open borders.” But neither comment supports that claim. Barnes didn’t say anyone should be able to come into the U.S. without restrictions.

His campaign told us he “does not favor open borders” and that he supports “comprehensive immigration reform.” On his website, Barnes says the U.S. “immigration system is broken.” He continues: “We can protect our borders and help those who are coming to the U.S. in search of better lives,” calling for a “path to citizenship” for people who live in the country now.

Finally, the Johnson ad says Barnes “supports taxpayer-funded benefits for illegals.” The campaign says that’s a reference to his support for driver’s licenses and in-state college tuition for immigrants, which Barnes mentioned in that 2019 SOTU response.

Barnes and Gov. Evers have continued to support such a proposal.

Those living in the U.S. illegally are ineligible for most federal benefits, with a few exceptions, such as emergency medical care, non-cash emergency disaster relief and public health measures for communicable diseases.

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Quick Take

Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Wisconsin on Aug. 5. Posts on social media circulated a photo to claim that the recent Trump rally in Wisconsin attracted a “massive” crowd. But the photo was from a previous Trump rally and was shared by Eric Trump in 2020.  

Full Story 

On Aug. 5, former President Donald Trump held a “Save America” rally at the Waukesha County Fair grounds in Wisconsin to campaign for Tim Michels, a Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor, and others.

Posts on social media are sharing a photo online to claim that the recent rally held in Wisconsin drew a “massive” crowd. But the image shared in the posts is not from the recent Trump rally.

The photo shows a large group of people standing outside, many wearing red hats. Some people were sitting in stands with American flags on top. In the corner of the image, there are screens that read, “THE BEST IS YET TO COME” — a Trump campaign theme in 2020. 

A Facebook post shared the photo with the caption, “This is from last night in Wisconsin. MASSIVE!” The post received more than 1.7 thousand likes and 1.6 thousand shares. 

Waynedupree.com, a website run by conservative political commentator Wayne Dupree, shared an article with the headline, “No, This Isn’t a Photo From a 2016 Trump Rally … It’s From LAST NIGHT in Wisconsin.”

But the photo is not from 2016 or 2022.

By doing a reverse image search, we found that Donald Trump’s middle son, Eric Trump, tweeted the photo on Nov. 16, 2020. He used the image to falsely claim that the turnout at his father’s campaign rallies was proof that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” 

Eric Trump’s tweet and the photo were featured in several news articles in 2020.

Dan Scavino, a former White House communications aide, first tweeted the photo on Nov. 2, 2020 — the day before the election — with the caption, “WHAT A NIGHT IN WISCONSIN! Get out and VOTE #MAGA tomorrow!” 

The photo was taken at the Kenosha Regional Airport in Kenosha, Wisconsin. 

As we said above, the photo shared in the social media posts shows individuals standing and some sitting in stands in a fairly large outdoor area.

The location of the Trump rally held in Wisconsin on Aug. 5 had several key distinctions — including stands with “Save America” signs, “Save America” signs in several other places and the fair’s white tent in the background. None of those elements is pictured in the image shared with the recent social media claims and photos taken by media outlets during the 2020 rally.

Save America is the name of a political action committee created by Trump after the 2020 election.

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 

C-Span. “Former President Trump Holds Rally in Wisconsin.” 5 Aug 2022.

Garrett, Alexandra. “Donald Trump Performed Worse With Voters In Counties Where He Held Large Rallies.” Newsweek. 2 Dec 2022.     

Jolles, Ward. “At Waukesha Trump rally, supporters split over upcoming GOP primary.” WKOW 27. 5 Aug 2022.

Moye, David. “Eric Trump Can’t Accept That Rally Attendance And Votes Are Different.” HuffPost.16 Nov 2020. 

Opoien, Jessie (@jessieopie). “Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is delivering the invocation at the Trump rally. Gableman is leading a taxpayer-funded review of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election.” Twitter. 5 Aug 2022.

The post Trump Rally Photo Is From 2020, Not Recent Wisconsin Rally, as Social Media Posts Claim appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Former President Donald Trump is making yet another unsubstantiated claim of voter fraud, this time relying on a disputed, partisan report to assert that “thousands and thousands and thousands of crooked votes” came out of nursing homes in Wisconsin. 

In a speech in Arizona on July 22, Trump suggested something suspicious was afoot because “almost everybody” in Wisconsin’s nursing homes voted, when “historically only a very small portion” vote. That’s false. There is no evidence of fraud and voting rates in the state’s nursing homes were not out of the ordinary.

The origin of Trump’s claim is an investigative report spearheaded by former Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired by the Republicans in the state Assembly as a special counsel to look into the state’s 2020 election process. Among other things, the report, released on March 1, claimed that the “Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) unlawfully directed clerks to violate rules protecting nursing home residents, resulting in a 100% voting rate in many nursing homes in 2020, including many ineligible voters.” The bipartisan WEC implemented the rule change, and state officials and a news investigation have disputed the 100% voting rate.

According to state law, two special voting deputies, one Republican and one Democrat, are supposed to be dispatched by municipal clerks for two visits prior to the election to supervise and assist in-person absentee voting by residents of nursing homes.

But in 2020, COVID-19 was ravaging nursing homes, and many were not allowing any visitors, including immediate family members. The Wisconsin Elections Commission says it “received reports from municipal clerks in early March that facilities normally served by SVDs [special voting deputies] were closed to visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that SVDs would not be granted access. Care facilities stated an obligation to protect their residents from exposure to the virus in light of reports that COVID-19 had disproportionately impacted nursing home and care facility residents.”

As a result, WEC decided not to send special voting deputies to nursing homes, and instead to mail absentee ballots to residents of the nursing homes who requested them. In a letter sent to care facility administrators, the WEC said residents “who receive ballots will have to vote their ballot, have a witness provide required information on the return envelope, and return their ballot by mail in order to participate.” They further noted that while in the past, facility staff was prohibited from assisting residents with casting their ballot, “[t]hese same restrictions are not in place now” and that “[c]are facility staff are able to assist residents with completing voter registration applications, absentee requests and marking their ballot.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission — made up of three Democrats and three Republicans — voted 6-0 to change the rules for the 2020 primary election, and 5-1 to extend the change for the general election. (Republican commissioner Bob Spindell cast the lone dissenting vote.)

Voting Participation Rates

The interim report issued by Gableman argued that that decision “mandated … widespread ‘election fraud'” in the 2020 presidential election. Further, the report alleged the decision led to “absurd” voting participation rates. Gableman’s team vetted voting patterns at nursing facilities in five Wisconsin counties and reported registered voting rates of 100% in Milwaukee, Racine and Dane counties, and 97% and 95% in Kenosha and Brown counties, respectively.

Ron Heuer, president of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, told the Wisconsin State Journal that he compiled the turnout figures for Gableman and that he used the state’s voter database as of August 2021 and checked to see which registered voters in nursing homes in the five counties voted in the November election.

But the report’s findings don’t hold up to scrutiny.

“I would just say that the real evidence and numbers do not support that,” Milwaukee Election Commission Director Claire Woodall-Vogg told us in a phone interview. “We wish all rhetoric about that were based on fact.”

Woodall-Vogg provided us with data that showed 76% of registered voters in nursing homes in Milwaukee County voted in the general election last November. That level of voter participation in nursing facilities is “very normal, nothing alarming,” Woodall-Vogg said.

Woodall-Vogg said that while it is unclear what public data Gableman’s team used, she suspects it failed to account for voters who became inactive after the Nov. 3 election. According to data she provided to FactCheck.org, nearly a third of the registered voters living in nursing homes on Nov. 3 are now inactive. It is likely that many of them have died, she said.

A review of 2020 poll books in Dane County by the Wisconsin State Journal found just one nursing home with 100% turnout (it had just 12 registered voters), while turnout in other facilities ranged from 42% to 91%.

The Wisconsin State Journal also analyzed data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Badger Voters service and found that while a nursing home in Brown County with eight registered voters had 100% turnout, the other 51 facilities in Brown, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine counties had rates ranging from 20% to 94%. Overall, the turnouts were in line with the 72% participation rate for all voters statewide, and they were not much different from nursing home participation rates in 2016.

Regardless of voting participation rates, Gableman argues that the decision by the WEC to forgo special election deputies at nursing homes was illegal and ripe for voter fraud abuse.

‘Incompetent’ Voters?

In a presentation to the state Assembly’s election committee in early March, Gableman showed videos of interviews conducted with some of the nursing home residents who voted in the 2020 presidential election despite suffering from dementia or who otherwise appeared to be “incompetent.”

But regardless of how impaired residents may appear, state law holds that only a judge can find that someone is incompetent to vote. According to state law, “No person may be denied the right to register to vote or the right to vote by reason that the person is alleged to be incapable of understanding the objective of the elective process unless the person has been adjudicated incompetent in this state.”

In November, Republican Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling called on the five election commissioners who approved the changes for the 2020 general election to be charged with felonies relating to election fraud. His office claimed that as a result of the policy change, at least one resident of a nursing facility likely voted illegally despite a court order declaring the resident incompetent to vote.

In February, Racine County’s district attorney declined to prosecute any of the Wisconsin Elections Commission members, saying that she did not have jurisdiction because they did not live in Racine County. In March, Milwaukee County prosecutors also announced that they would not be pursuing charges against any of the state election commissioners.

“Several claims have been raised surrounding potential fraud in the balloting process. There does not appear to be any support for such propositions,” Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal said. “Claims have been made that residents who did not request a ballot voted because someone requested a ballot on their behalf and voted on their behalf. There has been no evidence submitted that any of the individuals who received ballots did not request them.”

A week later, Green Lake County’s district attorney announced she would not be pursuing criminal charges either.

The WEC also has defended itself against claims that its actions were unlawful.

“To put it simply, we did not break the law,” said Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chairwoman of the Elections Commission, said in October 2021. “In fact, without action from the Commission, many residents in Wisconsin care facilities could have and would have been disenfranchised and not able to vote in the 2020 elections.”

The Gableman report responded to Jacobs in its report, stating, “The OSC [Office of Special Counsel] finds this statement to be no excuse. WEC’s solution to the potential ‘disenfranchisement’ of nursing home residents who wished to vote absentee (a privilege under the law) was to completely strip away the protections afforded to those persons by Wisconsin law and allow nursing home residents to be subjected to undue influence, overzealous solicitation, and outright fraud.”

Although the Gableman report stopped short of calling for decertification of Wisconsin’s election results, in his testimony before the Assembly’s election committee, Gableman said, “There appears to me to be very significant grounds for such an action.” Gableman’s report claims that the “tens of thousands” of ballots cast from nursing homes were “illegal” simply because of the rule change by the elections commission that allowed the absentee voting without special voting deputies being present in the nursing homes.

Regardless of whether one believes nursing home votes were illegal or improper because of the rules changes implemented by the WEC, there’s no way to know for whom those voters cast their ballots.

The report and Gableman’s testimony prompted calls among some Republicans to decertify the state’s election results. But that has not happened. Biden’s slim victory over Trump in Wisconsin — by 20,600 votes — was confirmed by recount and was certified by the governor.

The Wisconsin State Journal said that in five of the seven counties where Gableman claimed there were specific instances of voting irregularities in nursing homes, the county district attorneys said they had not received any voter fraud referrals related to nursing homes in November 2020. The newspaper did not get responses from the other two counties.

Ruling in an open records lawsuit related to the special counsel investigation, Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn on July 28 blasted the investigation — which has cost taxpayers over $1 million — saying it found “absolutely no evidence of election fraud.”

Given all of this, there isn’t any basis for Trump’s claim of “thousands and thousands and thousands of crooked votes” from Wisconsin’s nursing homes.

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.

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The overall increase in fentanyl seized at the southwest border under President Joe Biden is nowhere near as high as a Republican ad misleadingly claims. U.S. border officials seized 13,021 pounds of the drug in Biden’s first full 15 months in office, which is 70% more than the 7,677 pounds seized in Donald Trump’s last full 15 months as president.

But an ad from Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and the National Republican Senatorial Committee suggests that the increase under Biden was nearly 58 times higher.

“Joe Biden opened America’s borders, increasing the flow of deadly drugs into our communities,” the ad’s narrator says of the president, who does not have an “open borders” immigration policy, as the ad falsely suggests. For example, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have continued to apprehend and expel tens of thousands of people each month. 

At the same time the narrator makes that claim, a graphic shown on screen says: “4,000 percent increase in fentanyl.” That was the multiyear increase for a tiny subset of fentanyl seizures at a point in 2021.

In a June 2 press release, Johnson’s campaign said its ad is “part of a seven-figure statewide television and digital ad buy with the NRSC.” The ad’s narrator goes on to say that “Biden’s putting our children and families at risk,” while Johnson “is warning everyone that drug traffickers are adding fentanyl to counterfeit pills.”

Johnson is up for reelection in 2022 in a Senate race that the Cook Political Report and other election prognosticators expect to be competitive.

The ad attributes the 4,000% figure to a June 29, 2021, NBC News article that focused on a three-year increase in fentanyl seized between legal ports of entry in only the El Paso, Texas, sector of the U.S. border with Mexico.

“Federal agents in this section of the southern border say they’ve seen a staggering 4,000 percent increase in fentanyl seizures over the last three years,” the article said. “Those busts are not at ports of entry, where most smuggled drugs are typically found. The Border Patrol says the rising amount of fentanyl is being found in the desert – transported by increasingly brazen smugglers who are exploiting stretched federal resources.”

NBC News reported that the amount of fentanyl seized in that area increased from 1 pound in fiscal year 2018 to 41 pounds through part of fiscal year 2021. Two pounds were seized in fiscal year 2019, and 9 pounds in fiscal year 2020.

The federal fiscal year, designated by the year in which it ends, runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

“So the big rise came during President Biden’s time in office even if the statistic cited spanned multiple years,” Alexa Henning, a Johnson campaign spokesperson, told FactCheck.org in an email explaining the ad’s use of the 4,000% figure.

But the ad still leaves the misleading impression that the increase was 4,000% under Biden, when it was 489% and only in that one area. The percentage increase under Biden is much smaller when factoring in fentanyl seizures in all regions of the border.

Total Seizures at the Southern Border

There are no comprehensive data on the total amount of illicit fentanyl smuggled into the U.S., so Republicans and others often point to the amount that is stopped from entering the country as a proxy for how much may get past officials undetected. 

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid many times stronger than morphine and heroin, and can be fatal in very small doses. The drug has contributed to an increasing number of overdose deaths in the U.S. — sometimes when people unknowingly consume counterfeit pills and other illegally manufactured drugs that have been laced with fentanyl.

But the fentanyl captured between legal ports of entry in the El Paso region is a small fraction of the total amount seized across the entire southern border each year. For instance, Border Patrol agents in the southwest seized a total of 1,002 pounds of the drug in between legal ports of entry in FY 2021. That was about 27% more than the 786 pounds those officials seized in that region in FY 2020.

In addition, as mentioned in the NBC News article — and as we’ve previously reported — the vast majority of the fentanyl seized comes through legal ports of entry, not from illegal migration in the desert between those ports.

In total, there were 10,586 pounds seized in the southwest border region in FY 2021, including fentanyl captured during inspections by CBP’s Office of Field Operations, which manages the over 300 legal U.S. ports of entry. That was about 132% more than the 4,558 pounds seized by both the OFO and Border Patrol in FY 2020.

As for FY 2022, there had been 6,237 pounds of fentanyl seized through April, according to the most recent CBP data. That’s slightly more than the 6,096 pounds seized in the same seven-month period in FY 2021.

But the fiscal year comparisons obscure the fact that the steep rise in seized fentanyl started in mid-2020 under Trump, as the chart above illustrates. In fact, 36% of the fentanyl seized in FY 2021 was during the first four months of that fiscal year, when Trump was president for a full 111 of those 123 days.

Overall, about 13,021 pounds of fentanyl were seized in Biden’s first full 15 months in office, which is 70% more than the 7,677 pounds of fentanyl that were seized in Trump’s last full 15 months as president. That’s significantly less than 4,000%.

By citing a figure from the NBC News article about the multiyear increase in the relatively small amounts of fentanyl seized between legal entry ports in one section of the southern border, the anti-Biden/pro-Johnson ad gives viewers the misleading impression that the percentage increase under Biden has been much larger than it actually is.

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.

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Quick Take

A resolution introduced in the Wisconsin Assembly to reverse the state’s 2020 presidential electoral votes for President Joe Biden was referred to the Rules Committee on Jan. 25. The committee chair tweeted that the resolution was “illegal” and would not advance. But conservative websites falsely reported the assembly passed the resolution.

Full Story

Recounts and court rulings have found that Joe Biden beat then-President Donald Trump by more than 20,000 votes in the state of Wisconsin in 2020. Independent reviews also have found no signs of widespread voter fraud, despite Trump’s baseless claim that he won the state.

But Republican Rep. Timothy Ramthun introduced a resolution in the Wisconsin Assembly on Jan. 25 to reverse state electors who voted for Biden in the November election. In a required procedural move, the resolution was referred to the assembly’s Rules Committee, which schedules floor votes.

Social media posts, however, falsely claimed the assembly passed the resolution.

The conservative website Gateway Pundit, in a tweet that was later taken down, claimed: “Wisconsin Assembly Votes to Withdraw Its 10 Electors for Joe Biden in 2020 Election.”

Kari Lake, a Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, also tweeted that headline to her followers.

But Jim Steineke, the assembly majority leader and Rules Committee chair, took to Twitter on Jan. 25 to explain what actually happened.

“Disinformation spreads quickly,” Steineke, a Republican, wrote. “Ramthun introduced a resolution with zero support (no cosponsors) B/c it was a privileged resolution, it has to be referred to committee … There was no vote on it,” Steineke also said.

Earlier that night, Steineke tweeted: “Rep Ramthun just attempted to pass an Assembly resolution to recall WI’s presidential electors. Not only is it illegal, it’s just plain unconstitutional. As chair of the Rules Committee, there is ZERO chance I will advance this illegal resolution. #EndofStory”

The Gateway Pundit article and headline were later rewritten to claim that the resolution was “advanced” to the Rules Committee, rather than passed by the assembly. But the site continued to misrepresent the legislative action. The article does not report that the resolution was referred to committee. Nor does it report that the Rules Committee chair called the resolution “illegal” and “unconstitutional” and said it would not get to the floor for a vote.

That misleading version of the article remains online, where it was picked up by others. The false headline also is still circulating online.

Political science experts interviewed by FactCheck.org said Steineke was correct in saying that there’s no legal authority for state legislatures to overturn electoral votes.

Ramthun “might as well try to pass legislation declaring that beer is the state bird of Wisconsin,” Kenneth R. Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us in an email.

Efforts in battleground states to overturn the election are “fringe” attempts that will not be successful, said Barry C. Burden, also a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The federal Electoral Count Act relies on procedures established before the election, which in most cases means a state’s certified popular vote is used to determine the winner of all the electoral votes, Burden said in an email to FactCheck.org.

Every lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results has been dismissed or resolved, Burden noted. “There is no legal path for electoral votes from the 2020 election to be reclaimed or replaced,” he said.

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

Beck, Molly. “’It’s just plain unconstitutional’: Wisconsin GOP leaders again reject resolution to ‘pull back’ 2020 electoral votes.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 26 Jan 2022.

Burden, Barry C. Professor of political science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Email to FactCheck.org. 26 Jan 2022.

Mayer, Kenneth R. Professor of political science, La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Email to FactCheck.org. 26 Jan 2022.

Mimms, Sarah. “Trump Supporters Believe Wisconsin Withdrew Its Electoral College Voters For Joe Biden. It Never Happened.” BuzzFeed News. 26 Jan 2022.

White, Laurel. “Nonpartisan review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election finds no widespread fraud.” 22 Oct 2021.

Wisconsin Elections Commission. 2020 Fall General Election Results. 3 Nov 2020.

Wisconsin State Legislature. Assembly Rule 43. Privileged Resolutions. Accessed 27 Jan 2022.

The post False Reports of Wisconsin Assembly’s Action on 2020 Electors appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who is on trial for murder, testified in court that he drove himself from his residence in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 24, 2020, the day before he shot and killed two men at a protest that became violent.

According to court testimony and police records, the AR-15 style rifle that he says he used in self-defense during confrontations with the men had been stored at a friend’s house in Kenosha and was not with him in the car when he made the roughly 20-mile drive to Wisconsin from his home state.

In a Nov. 14 CNN interview, however, Democratic Rep. Karen Bass of California falsely claimed that Wendy Rittenhouse, Kyle’s mother, drove her armed son across the Illinois-Wisconsin border to aid law enforcement during the rowdy demonstration against police brutality.

“Here, you have a 17-year-old boy who was driven by his mother across state lines with an automatic weapon — frankly, she should have been detained for child endangerment — to go to a protest where he says he’s going to help the police,” the congresswoman said. “I mean, it was ridiculous.”

A spokesperson for Bass did not respond to an email inquiring about the supporting evidence for her remarks. Her claim is very similar to one made in a viral Instagram post by actor and comedian D.L. Hughley on Nov. 13.

“Why are we just glazing over the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse’s mother put her minor child in a vehicle, drove him across state lines and dropped him off in the middle of a riot armed with an assault rifle. Why is she not behind bars?” reads the image Hughley posted, which got more than 149,000 likes on the social media platform.

But that’s not what happened, based on the available evidence.

Weapon Didn’t Cross State Lines

The Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle that Rittenhouse used in the shootings was already in Wisconsin, according to court testimony and police interviews.

Using money that Rittenhouse gave him, Dominick Black, a friend who also dated one of Rittenhouse’s sisters, bought the gun at a hardware store in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, in May 2020. Black, who was 18 at the time, purchased the gun for Rittenhouse, who at age 17, was too young to legally buy it for himself.

In court this month, Black and Rittenhouse said they agreed that Black would hold onto the rifle until Rittenhouse turned 18 in January 2021, and that it would be kept at Black’s home in Kenosha, where he lived with his stepfather, Scott Dickhart.

According to police records reviewed by the Kenosha News in November last year, Dickhart told authorities that he kept the gun in a locked safe until the evening of Aug. 24, 2020. Concerned about the civil unrest in the city that was sparked by a white Kenosha police officer shooting a Black man (Jacob Blake) in the back multiple times during an Aug. 23 arrest, Dickhart said he took the rifle out of the safe, which was in his garage, and put the gun in his basement.

On the witness stand, Black and Rittenhouse testified that Rittenhouse retrieved the gun from the basement on Aug. 25, 2020, before they both headed to downtown Kenosha with their rifles to help guard a used car dealership that had been damaged by a fire in a prior protest that turned destructive. Later on Aug. 25, Rittenhouse, who is charged with committing five felonies, including intentional and reckless homicide, ended up using the rifle to shoot three men, killing two of them (Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber) and injuring the other (Gaige Grosskreutz).

A sixth charge, possession of a deadly weapon by a person under 18, was dismissed on Nov. 15 by Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is overseeing the trial. The jury began deliberations on Nov. 16.

Black himself has been charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor, causing death. His own trial has been delayed until after the Rittenhouse trial has finished.

Rittenhouse Drove Himself to Kenosha

Kyle Rittenhouse also testified that he — not his mother — drove himself to Kenosha the day before the shootings occurred.

In mid-August last year, he had begun working as a lifeguard at the Pleasant Prairie RecPlex in Kenosha County and — although he did not possess a driver’s license — would drive to work from Antioch each day, he said. Rittenhouse told the court that he drove to work on Aug. 24 and stayed in Kenosha overnight at Black’s stepfather’s house. He remained in the city on Aug. 25, cleaning graffiti off a high school early in the day and then later going to a local store to buy a sling for his rifle.

Rittenhouse returned to his residence in Illinois shortly after the shootings, when Black drove him home. It’s not clear why Rittenhouse did not drive himself, but he had testified that his car was parked at the stepfather’s house and that Black drove them to downtown Kenosha in Black’s car.

When the teens arrived in Antioch, Rittenhouse said he told his mother and two sisters what had occurred that night in Kenosha and then his mother took him to the local police station to turn himself in at about 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 26.

Wendy Rittenhouse said in a November 2020 interview that she initially did not know of her son’s whereabouts or what he was doing on Aug. 25.

Rittenhouse, then a nursing assistant at a nursing home, told the Chicago Tribune that she worked a 16-hour shift on Aug. 24 and slept late on Aug. 25 before going to get a COVID-19 test for her job and then running other errands in Illinois with her oldest daughter.

It’s unclear why Bass claimed Wendy Rittenhouse drove her armed son to Kenosha. The available evidence shows that did not happen.

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]]> https://www.factcheck.org/2021/01/paul-cites-distortion-to-argue-two-sides-in-election-fraud-debate/ Wed, 27 Jan 2021 00:40:33 +0000 https://www.factcheck.org/?p=196571 In calling for a “thorough investigation” into “election fraud,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul distorted the facts about a Wisconsin policy that was introduced by Republicans and put in place before the 2016 general election.

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In calling for a “thorough investigation” into “election fraud,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul distorted the facts about a Wisconsin policy that was introduced by Republicans and put in place before the 2016 general election.

In Paul’s telling, “In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of absentee votes had only the name on them and no address. Historically those were thrown out, this time they weren’t.” Paul claimed elections officials “made special accommodations because they said, ‘Oh, it’s a pandemic and people forgot what their address was.’ … So they changed the law after the fact.”

That’s not accurate.

Although Paul wasn’t clear, the issue is not about missing voter address information — but rather with missing address information from witnesses. In Wisconsin, those who vote via mail-in absentee ballot are required to have a witness — a family member, friend or neighbor — sign the outside of an absentee certificate envelope. In addition to signing the envelope, witnesses are required to provide their addresses.

What happens is that some witnesses provide incomplete address information — most often leaving off their municipality.

According to guidance provided by the Wisconsin Elections Commission — put in place prior to the 2016 presidential election — election clerks “must take corrective actions in an attempt to remedy a witness address error.” If the clerks are “reasonably able to discern any missing information from outside sources,” they should fill in the missing address information themselves, the guidance states.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit that attempted to throw out all absentee ballots in two heavily Democratic counties based, in part, on the witness address policy. The Trump campaign argued the policy is clearly contradicted by a statute passed by the Wisconsin Legislature in March 2016.

The court concluded on Dec. 14 that the issue “could have been raised long before the election” given that the WEC’s guidance has been in place since October 2016, and that it was inappropriate then to throw out votes after the 2020 election. “The Campaign offers no reason for waiting years to challenge this approach, much less after this election,” according to the majority opinion from the court. “None exists.”

‘Two Sides to Everything’

Paul’s distorted account of the Wisconsin witness address issue came during a contentious Jan. 24 interview on ABC’s “This Week” with host George Stephanopoulos. The two men sparred over election fraud issues and whether fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Stephanopoulos tried to get the Kentucky senator to concede that “this election was not stolen,” contrary to a “big lie” promoted by Trump.

“George, where you make a mistake is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say everything’s a lie instead of saying there are two sides to everything,” Paul said.

Paul, Jan. 24: Let’s talk about the specifics of it. In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of absentee votes had only the name on them and no address. Historically those were thrown out, this time they weren’t. They made special accommodations because they said, ‘Oh, it’s a pandemic and people forgot what their address was.’ So they changed the law after the fact. That is wrong, that’s unconstitutional. And I plan on spending the next two years going around state to state and fixing these problems and I won’t be cowed by liberals in the media who say, “There’s no evidence here and you’re a liar if you talk about election fraud.” No, let’s have an open debate. It’s a free country.

Later in the interview, Paul repeated the assertion about address changes on absentee ballots in Wisconsin, saying, “Should we investigate the fact that tens of thousands of absentee ballots did not have addresses on them and normally were disqualified, but this time, they were counted? Should we examine that? I don’t know whether it affected the election or not, but I have an open mind. And if we actually examine this and we find out it didn’t, that’s fine. But it still should be fixed.”

As Paul said, let’s talk about the specifics of this.

As we said, the issue is not about missing addresses for voters who cast mail-in absentee ballots in Wisconsin, and there is no evidence that any of those without witness address information on their ballot certificates voted fraudulently.

In order to vote via absentee ballot in Wisconsin, residents must be registered voters and request an absentee ballot. In addition, most need to provide a copy of acceptable photo identification in order to vote via mail-in absentee ballot. (Exceptions to the photo ID requirement are permitted for a person who is “indefinitely confined because of age, physical illness or infirmity or is disabled for an indefinite period.”)

Finally, those who cast absentee ballots by mail need to have a witness sign the back of their absentee certificate envelope. It can be a spouse, neighbor or friend — anyone — provided the witness is a U.S. citizen who is 18 years or older.

The reason for the witness, Reid Magney, public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission explained to us in a phone interview, is so that if a ballot is challenged, officials can find the witness to help verify it.

Paul framed the witness address issue as one that was introduced in the 2020 presidential election due to the pandemic, and said, “Historically those were thrown out, this time they weren’t.”

As we said, that’s not accurate.

In February 2016, the Wisconsin Legislature passed a statute stating, “If a certificate is missing the address of a witness, the ballot may not be counted.”

But the question arose: What exactly constituted an admissible address? Did it need to include the state and zip code? What if the street address was provided but not a municipality?

Not wanting to disenfranchise voters due to a technical defect in the witness address, Republican Steve King, then a member of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, proposed a motion in October 2016 to provide guidance for local officials.

“[M]unicipal clerks shall do all that they can reasonably do to obtain any missing part of the witness address,” the guidance reads. But the clerks should fill in missing witness address information if they “are reasonably able to discern any missing information from outside sources.”

The motion by King — who was later tapped by Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic — was seconded at the time by another Republican on the commission, Don Millis, and was passed unanimously by the bipartisan board, which is made up of three Republicans and three Democrats.

And so that was the way things were done in Wisconsin in the 2016 election, in which Trump won the state by 22,748 votes (less than 1 percentage point) over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. It also has been the policy in all subsequent elections in Wisconsin, including the 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden narrowly won the state by 20,608 votes.

“The rules we used in 2020 were the same rules in 2016,” said Mark L. Thomsen, a Democrat who was chair of the WEC in 2016 and continues to serve on the commission.

For Paul to say that the rules changed for this election is “a lie, straight and simple,” Thomsen told us in a phone interview.

Thomsen said the policy was put into place in 2016 with the input of the state’s then attorney general, a Republican.

No one challenged that policy in any of the previous elections going back to 2016, including the primary in 2020 when there was also a large number of absentee ballots cast. The first legal challenge to that policy came after the 2020 general election.

On Election Day, a couple of the large cities in the state counted the votes in a central location, Magney said, and election observers there raised questions when they noticed that addresses for some witnesses were filled in using two different color pens.

The number of absentee ballots prior to 2020 was relatively small. In the 2020 general election, nearly 2 million of the 3.2 million votes cast in the state were via absentee ballot. In 2016, just 4.8% of the votes were cast by absentee ballot, Magney said.

In 2020, 40% of ballots were cast in person at the polls on Election Day; another 41% were cast by mailed-in absentee ballot; and about 19% were votes via absentee ballot in person the day of the election (in which case, the clerk acts as the witness). The number of mail-in absentee ballots that had witness addresses corrected is unknown, Magney said.

Ann S. Jacobs, current chair of the WEC and a Democrat, defended the policy of correcting missing witness address information, telling Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times, “Why should a voter’s ballot we be thrown out for a clerk adding a zip code?” According to Rutenberg’s Twitter thread, Jacobs “says arguments like Sen Paul’s is part of a ‘game of gotcha’ to ‘disenfranchise voters for following the instructions of their clerks.’”

Republicans on the WEC, however, argued that although the guidance from the WEC on fixing witness addresses was longstanding, it had never been challenged in court, and so the issue of its constitutionality was never settled.

State Supreme Court Weighs In

Based on the witness address issue, as well as others, a federal lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign sought to throw out all of the absentee ballots cast in Milwaukee and Dane counties, and only those two counties, which are Democratic strongholds.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative, sided with three liberal justices in a 4-3 decision opposing the Trump campaign’s efforts to strike those votes.

“The process of handling missing witness information is not new; election officials followed guidance that WEC [Wisconsin Elections Commission] created, approved, and disseminated to counties in October 2016,” Hagedorn wrote for the majority. “It has been relied on in 11 statewide elections since, including in the 2016 presidential election when President Trump was victorious in Wisconsin. The Campaign nonetheless now seeks to strike ballots counted in accordance with that guidance in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, but not those counted in other counties that followed the same guidance. The Campaign offers no reason for waiting years to challenge this approach, much less after this election. None exists.”

Hagedorn went on to say that the Trump campaign claims “are not of improper electoral activity” but rather “technical issues that arise in the administration of every election.”

Wrote Hagedorn: “Striking these votes now — after the election, and in only two of Wisconsin’s 72 counties when the disputed practices were followed by hundreds of thousands of absentee voters statewide — would be an extraordinary step for this court to take. We will not do so.”

Notably, however, the court did not weigh in on whether the WEC’s policy ran counter to the language of the state election statutes. Hagedorn wrote that the witness address issue “appears to be a valid election administration concern” and that “WEC, other election officials, the legislature, and others may wish to examine the requirements of the statute and measure them against the guidance and practice currently in place to avoid future problems.”

In a dissenting opinion, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Drake Roggensack argued that the Milwaukee and Dane county board of canvassers “based their decisions on erroneous advice when they concluded that changes clerks made to defective witness addresses were permissible.”

She said WEC members went against the “plain, clear requirements” of the legislative statutes when they directed municipal clerks to do “all that they can reasonably do to obtain any missing part of the witness address.” She argued the problems “will be repeated again and again, until this court has the courage to correct them.”

As the dissenting opinion shows, there is certainly room for legal disagreement about the legality of the WEC’s interpretation of state law regarding the application of witness address requirements. And, of course, Paul is entitled to his opinion that the WEC’s guidance is “unconstitutional” and “should be fixed.”

But it’s simply not true that the policy was changed due to the pandemic and that “historically those ballots [with missing witness address information] were thrown out, this time they weren’t,” as Paul claimed. There are no two sides to that.

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