How Elon Musk fuels distrust about migrants, voting

This week:?Investigating the origins of accounts linking Israel, Ukraine to bridge collapse … How often do boats crash into bridges? … A closer look at President Joe Biden’s insulin cost talking point … National crime statistics under Biden are down, not ‘skyrocketing’ … Is this the ‘least productive’ Congress ever? All signs point to yes … Getting ready for Trump’s first trial in New York

How Musk’s X posts about migrants create ‘environment of distrust’ on voting

A video viewed by millions of users on X details an elaborate scheme to grab power by President Joe Biden and prominent Democrats. The video shows people racing to the U.S. by land, air and sea and flashes headshots of men of color. The narrator warns that the federal government wants to keep them "in the country at all costs," even if they committed rape or murder. Mail ballots sit in overstuffed bins as the narrator warns noncitizens can vote without verification.

"This is actually happening!" wrote Elon Musk, the owner of X.

It’s not. There is no evidence of the Biden administration importing immigrants so that Democrats win elections.

In the last three months, Musk has flooded X with about two dozen posts that speak to that central conspiracy theory.

Here’s a sampling of his false or misleading posts about immigrants and voting, fact-checked:

• Musk said "illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections." (Federal law says only U.S. citizens can vote in presidential and congressional elections.)
• Musk said automatic voter registration includes "no citizenship verification" and ballots are mailed out, "making fraud traceability impossible." (States take steps to ensure registrants are U.S. citizens and election officials take steps to prevent voter fraud. Ballots cast by noncitizens are extremely rare; violators could face jail time or be deported if they are in the country illegally.)
• Musk said migrants will give Democrats more seats in Congress, a step toward one-party rule. (Two reports published before the 2020 census projected that not counting immigrants in the country illegally would basically have been a wash, favoring neither party.)??
• Musk said a bipartisan border security bill’s long-term goal was "enabling illegals to vote" and would do the "opposite of securing the border." (The bill included funding for border agents and security. It gave people in the U.S. illegally neither voting power nor a path to citizenship.)

Musk accused the Biden administration of "importing voters" who are "unvetted" and pose a national security threat, saying "it is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11." Factually speaking, there are high-profile cases of immigrants in the U.S. illegally being charged with crimes, including murder. But research shows that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S. A 2023 Stanford University study found immigrants are 30% less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the U.S.?

Musk told former CNN host Don Lemon that immigrants in the country illegally have a "very strong bias to vote Democrat," though he neither explained what he had read to reach this conclusion nor cited any examples.

Election officials who have seen these claims for years say fears of noncitizen voting are overblown and ignore states’ safeguards to prevent and detect fraud.

"Tying immigration policy to election security is like the sleight of hand a magician uses to trick voters into seeing something that's not there," said Amanda Gonzalez, Jefferson County, Colorado, clerk and recorder.?

With reshared posts and riffs, Musk joins former President Donald Trump as a top voice sowing doubt about the 2024 election’s integrity amid historic levels of border encounters. (Musk has not endorsed Trump but said in March, "We need a red wave or America is toast."?

"It seeds the ground and continues to build a foundation for more and more people to deny election results that they don’t like and therefore engage in a violent assault on our democracy because of it," said Zachary Mueller, senior research director for America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant group. "I don’t think that’s hyperbolic. We have seen that on January 6."

Keep reading our investigation by Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman to learn more about how Musk amplifies misleading videos from smaller creators with agendas.?

How paid X accounts blamed Israel, Ukraine for the Baltimore bridge collapse

Within hours of a large container ship striking the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, misinformers coalesced around the idea that the bridge collapsed because of a coordinated attack. PolitiFact repeatedly saw social media users falsely assign blame to two nations: Israel and Ukraine.?

As of April 1, there had been neither credible reports nor evidence that the ship’s collision with the bridge was linked to terrorism or an attack.

Nevertheless, the invented narratives proliferated — often customized to suit individual posters’ preexisting beliefs and brands, researchers said.

Sara Aniano, a disinformation analyst at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said these claims often came from people who make it their literal business to spread conspiracy theories.?

"A content creator who does makeup tutorials is not much different than the content creator who is selling conspiracy theories," Aniano said. "These theories and these events are the equivalent of their products."

We found that X subscribers paying for blue check marks that guarantee greater reach from the platform’s algorithm were responsible for nearly all of the most popular posts linking Israel or Ukraine to the bridge collapse.?

X promotes subscribers’ posts even if they contain unverified or false information. The platform also shares ad revenue with "blue check" subscribers, letting them earn profit when people interact with their posts.

Some posts sharing anti-Ukraine or anti-Israel sentiment came from accounts that declared support for the conservative "MAGA" movement or used language linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Pro-Russia accounts also promoted these narratives.?

The 3:22 a.m. X post that questioned whether Israel "hit" the U.S. came from a user NewsGuard analyst Coalter Palmer described as a "notorious purveyor of misinformation related to the Russia Ukraine war." Palmer pointed to two other X posts in which that user falsely claimed the Bucha massacre was a false flag operation and that Ukraine is a "Nazi state."?

Memetica, a digital investigations company that studies disinformation and violent extremism, found that the false Ukrainian ship captain claim was pushed by pro-Russia accounts and QAnon conspiracy theory promoters, said Adi Cohen the company’s chief operating officer.?

Looking at a sample of X posts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 26, Cohen said Memetica found that 7% of the accounts sharing that narrative had zero followers, suggesting what researchers call "inauthentic amplification" — accounts created solely to boost the narrative.

Keep reading.

— Madison Czopek

Fact-checks of the week

• ‘Madness’ mismatch. State Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Mich., in a March 27 X post that misspelled buses, said photos showed, "Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro." The buses ferried the four men’s basketball teams playing in the NCAA March Madness tournament’s Sweet 16 games hosted in Detroit. The Allegiant airplane in the photo Maddock shared was flying the Gonzaga University team. Maddock’s claim is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. We rate it Pants on Fire!
• ‘No barriers.’ Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., was asked about Republican elected officials who are concerned that New York’s sanctuary policies prevent local law enforcement from coordinating with federal immigration authorities. “That narrative is false," Hochul said. "There's no barriers to law enforcement, state or local, to work with the federal government when it comes to immigration laws. There are 100 crimes that if migrants or anyone here commits that there's a close connection and a desire from local government to hand them over." There are barriers in New York City and across the state, with exceptions, so PolitiFact New York rated the claim Mostly False.?
• Criminal lines. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., posted an X video in which she said, "Since Joe Biden took office, crime has skyrocketed across our country." Her claim is Mostly False. Federal data shows that the overall number of violent crimes, including homicide, have declined on Biden’s watch. Nationally, property crimes are up — mostly driven by motor vehicle thefts — but have not "skyrocketed" under Biden. It’s possible to single out some types of crimes and certain cities for which the numbers have risen since Biden took office, but that isn’t what Mace said.

What questions do you have about Trump’s hush money trial?

Former President Donald Trump is returning to New York court April 15 for the start of his criminal trial on charges related to hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.

Trump was indicted in March 2023 by a Manhattan grand jury and charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought the case, which involves a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.?

PolitiFact has written many fact-checks and explainers about this case, and we’ll be following along as the trial progresses. But we also want to hear from you: What questions do you have about Trump’s hush money trial? What kinds of stories or fact-checks from the trial do you think would be useful or interesting??

Send your questions or ideas to [email protected], and we’ll do our best to get you answers.

— Ellen Hine

Fast facts about the global fact-checking movement?

The global network of fact-checkers is large and diverse, International Fact-Checking Network director Angie Drobnic Holan said on International Fact-Checking Day, April 2. And an accompanying State of the Fact-Checkers Report showed that raising money and addressing harassment remained that network’s top concerns.

One hundred thirty-seven organizations across at least 69 countries completed the survey, which ran January to March 2024. In 2023, 46 groups responded.

Some key findings:

• Nonprofit organizations (including PolitiFact) continue to outnumber for-profit signatories in the network, 53% to 40.9%.
• Sixty-eight percent of fact-checking organizations have 10 or fewer employees; 6.6% employ 31 or more people.
• About 72% of surveyed signatories reported facing harassment in 2023 because of their fact-checking. Most attacks, directed at groups and fact-checkers, came online, but 7% involved physical threats.
• Fact-checkers said their biggest challenge is raising money to sustain their work and to become financially sustainable.
• About 47.4% of surveyed signatories said they had established or were working to establish editorial guidelines for using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard in their work.

Read the complete story at Poynter.org.?

— Matthew Crowley for Poynter

Quick links to more fact-checks & reports

• Claims that President Joe Biden banned religious Easter egg designs weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Those rules have been in place for almost 50 years.?
• President Joe Biden is right about the $35 insulin cap for Medicare enrollees, but he exaggerated their prior costs for the drug at a campaign event.?
• No, NASA doesn’t have a mission to cause “mass psychosis” during the April 8 solar eclipse. NASA plans to launch three sounding rockets during the eclipse for research — something it did for the 2023 solar eclipse, without causing mass psychosis.
• Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott did not “threaten” white people in an MSNBC interview. He was reacting to comments from "those who are racist."
• Is this the “least productive Congress in our lifetime,” as ABC News pundit Donna Brazile said? Yes, the current 118th session of Congress is on track to be historically unproductive, passing fewer bills than the same point in the 113th Congress’ previous low.

Do you smell smoke??

Here's your Pants on Fire fact-check of the week:?Former President Donald Trump said he won Wisconsin in 2020 and "after the wrongdoing was found, people said, ‘Well, he actually did win.’" Pants on Fire!

See what else we've rated Pants on Fire this week.

It's been an exciting week here — we welcomed our new managing editor, Halimah Abdullah! You'll hear more from her in a future newsletter.

Send me an email?if you have questions or ideas at [email protected].

Thanks for reading!

Katie Sanders

PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief