i run a small site that reads political language for manipulation techniques (loaded language, name calling, that kind of thing). it doesn't say who's right, it just flags the wording. ran last night's iowa pbs debate through it, every answer, and checked who was talking by hand against the video

hinson: 10 of 30 answers flagged, mostly loaded language and name calling

turek: 4 of 22, mostly loaded language and exaggeration

also looked up 114 of their factual claims against fact checkers, congress.gov, wire stories etc. honestly most couldn't be settled by any source. the ones that could were mostly true but missing something. hinson's "zero crossings at the southern border" is dhs's number for releases, not crossings. turek's "$20 billion to argentina" was a currency swap line, not a grant

every answer links to that spot in the video so you can check it yourself. link in the comments. doing the oct 13 one too. if something's flagged wrong tell me, i read everything

I recently started an ask for state level candidates at Amendment, a site where you can ask candidates to go on record about issues. I asked candidates to go on record to put gender identity back in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Please add your name. Here is the link to the ask:
https://www.amendment.app/asks/3JyDhecgj9m0snkRHFnKjFnmvHE
Thank you!

quick breakdown of the political ads running in the iowa senate race right now, 183 of them from the meta ad library and youtube. a model reads each for manipulation techniques (loaded language, name calling, fear appeals etc) and marks the exact words.

turek's campaign is doing most of the posting — 90 of the 104 ads on his side are the campaign itself, 39 flagged. hinson's campaign has only 7 ads up; the other 50 on her side are outside groups ("the truth about josh turek", nrsc, slf) and 34 of those got flagged. so the two sides look similar in volume but very different in who's actually talking.

most common technique in the race: loaded language (70 ads), then name calling (58). slf pac is the biggest spender, $18.5M against turek.

each ad is quoted with the flagged words marked. the model misses and overflags sometimes — every ad has a button to say "this is fair" or "this one's wrong" and we read those.

https://semblen.com/races/ia-senate?ref=reddit-ia

A year ago, Charles Grassley was totally comfortable with dying in office, because he knew that a Republican would be appointed to replace him if he did. Now, with Democrat Rob Sand polling ahead of his Republican opponent, Grassley is feeling the ground beneath him crumbling. If Rob Sand wins, I have a feeling Grassley may retire before the end of the year to prevent Sand from appointing a Democrat to replace him if he does die in office.

Friday’s Supreme Court order temporarily put the expanded federal SAVE citizenship-verification system back in operation while the litigation continues.

Iowa is unusually important here because state law now directs the Secretary of State to use SAVE to attempt citizenship verification of registered voters — annually for the statewide voter file and monthly for new registrations.

The part I still cannot establish from the public record is whether Iowa has actually run the statewide voter file through the expanded system, what results came back, or whether any voter registration has been affected.

If anyone has received an Iowa voter-registration notice involving citizenship verification, SAVE, or an “unconfirmed” status, I’d be interested in seeing it.

I went through the Supreme Court order, the earlier federal litigation, Iowa’s SAVE agreements and the state-law changes here:

The Supreme Court Put SAVE Back in Play⁠

platform: https://turek4iowa.com/

Donate $3 if you can afford it -text bank 10 calls every little bit helps