Chart of the Day: 90,000 People Are Affected By Trump’s Travel Ban. About 87,000 Are Muslim.

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The Fact Checker Full Employment Act of 2016, sometimes known as Election Day, has been a resounding success. Our nation’s fact checkers have hired thousands of new employees,1 and the United States is now the world leader in fact checking.2 Donald Trump is yet again fulfilling his promise to put America back to work.3

Today, for example, Glenn Kessler and his staff of 247 university-trained fact checkers4 looked into Trump’s claim that only 109 people were detained as part of the chaos of his immigration order. Even on its own terms, this number appears to have been plucked from nowhere. Kessler figures the real number is several hundred, maybe as many as a thousand. But as he says, that doesn’t provide the full picture anyway. Here’s the real impact of the immigration order:

Collectively, these countries are 97 percent Muslim, so about 87,000 of those affected are Muslim. Please don’t call it a Muslim ban, though.

1Fact check: Too good to check.

2Fact check: Probably true.

3Fact check: False. Obama put America back to work.

4Fact check: False. Kessler actually has a staff of 246.

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We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

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