Progress 2028 fact-checking, pro-Trump super PAC impersonating Democrats

A conservative group supporting former President Donald Trump spent $350,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads in the final days before the election to lure voters in battleground states away from Vice President Kamala Harris.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at them; the ads from “Progress 2028” look like they support it.

Meta’s ad library, Facebook’s parent company, is now available can be seen five active ads running as of October 25 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The ads next to her photo are misleading about Harris’s political views:

• “Was I’m so glad Kamala is on our side on the fracking ban! … Imagine a world without gas-powered vehicles. Kamala has! See her vision for our future.”

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• “Under Thanks to Kamala’s compassionate leadership, no undocumented immigrant will be left behind in receiving critical Medicare benefits. Leave a comment to thank Kamala.”

• “Camila Harris will defend the right of minors to access the care they need without fear of parental intervention or discrimination. Let’s work together to transform our schools into the most transgender-friendly environments possible!”

One ad asks people to “imagine” a world where “the American dream has no limits,” claiming Harris shares that view. Another ad claims supports the “mandatory” gun buyback program we have evaluated FALSEHOOD.

Documents obtained by the company show that the conservative nonprofit organization Building America’s Future is behind the ads Open the secretsa nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. Virginia State Corporation Commission can be seen registered by PAC Progress 2028 at the end of September as “fictitious name”, which is an alternative name that a corporation may use in a different way than its legal name.

Some of the ads’ claims stem from previous positions that Harris no longer holds; others promote policies she never supported.

For example, Harris in 2024 said she did not support: ban on hydraulic fracturing, i.e. frackingleaving the previous position she held in 2019 as a The main Democratic candidate for president. She has supported fracking since 2020, when she joined Joe Biden’s presidential ticket.

Harris also supported mandatory buybacks for assault weapons during her 2019 campaign. In 2024 she supports banning assault weapons but not mandatory buyback programs.

While Harris supports access to gender-affirming care, we found no evidence she said she believes parents should not get involved because Progress 2028 ad claims. In context adults receiving this care, Harris has repeatedly said that such decisions should be left to doctors and their patients.

One announcement says to “imagine a world where being undocumented doesn’t mean being uninsured. Kamala yes,” referring to Medicare benefits.

But immigrants in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for Social Security or Medicare, and Harris has not proposed changing that. In Harris’s 2019 campaign expressed AND readiness illegally bring immigrants into the United States to qualify for universal health care, but Harris has not expressed similar views since the 2020 presidential race.

Instead, it has he talked about the path to citizenship this would, over time, allow some people in the U.S. to illegally qualify for Medicare and Social Security. People who can work legally in the U.S. can receive Social Security retirement benefits after working and paying Social Security taxes for 10 years.

A Harris campaign adviser called the action “desperate.” On October 31, PolitiFact attempted to contact the political action committee running the ads by email but did not receive a response.

The Republican PAC is behind Progress 2028

Building America’s Future lifted up over $100 million in the last four years from over a dozen individual and corporate sponsors, New York Times reported. Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk according to The Wall Street Journal, he is one of them.

The group’s late-election advertising campaign leads to a two-page campaign website styled as a progressive version of Project 2025, a multi-group conservative policy plan for a Republican administration. Camouflaged as a pro-Harris-Walz campaign website, Progress 2028 website outlines Harris’ “sweeping reforms that will ensure equality in every corner of America.”

Website headlines reflect Democratic-sounding slogans such as “Empowering Illegal Immigrants, Building Our Future” and “Reducing Gun Violence: Bold Steps for a Safer Future.” However, the policies listed are not consistent with Harris’ agenda.

Previously, Building America’s Future ran conflicting ads targeting Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with conflicting messages about Harris’ position on Israel’s war in Gaza, according to 404 Media.

The group also sends text message ads to voters. Unlike Meta, telecommunications companies do not do this share databases in political text messages, making them difficult to track. Any information about these text messages usually comes directly from the people receiving them. One Republican Party voter in Pennsylvania shared some with 404 Mediasaying that he had received messages from Progress 2028 regarding the “fake Harris campaign” that said “let’s imagine a world where we take dangerous weapons off our streets – for good,” promoting, among other things, a gun buyback program. Online advertisements state that they are paid for by “Progress 2028”, but there is no disclaimer in the text.

Technology platforms and advertising

This is required by Meta’s advertising policies disclosure of entities paying for advertising. Robert Weissman, co-chair of the nonprofit organization Public Citizen, he told NPR the information “paid for by Progress 2028” at the bottom of the ads deepens the fraud.

“This truthfully reveals who is paying for the ad, but it makes it sound like a Harris-supporting organization when it is not,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen he told NPR for the October 30 article. NPR noted that Weissman called on Meta to remove the ads.

Meta has concluded that Progress 2028 does not meet its removal standards in accordance with the company’s policy on inauthentic behaviorwhich refers to various forms of fraud, including people pretending to be fake and using fake accounts.

Meta third party fact checking program Allows independent fact-checkers, including PolitiFact, to evaluate false claims and hoaxes appearing in posts or advertisements on its platforms, so long as the claims do not come from politicians or express an opinion. among other criteria. Meta program allows for the assessment of the claim “missing context,” for example, if it “implies a false claim without directly stating it.”

Meta spokesman Ryan Daniels said some Progress 2028 content “does not fall within the guidelines of Meta’s fact-checking program,” without elaboration, so it is not covered by the program.

“This type of political advertising is not new and has been appearing in the media for decades,” Daniels said in a statement.

In line with tactics echoing the Progress 2028 approach, some Democratic-aligned groups will run in the 2022 Senate, House and gubernatorial primary elections. aired ads that promoted more conservative Trump-aligned Republican candidates over GOP competitors because the groups found those candidates easier for Democrats to defeat in the general election. However, the ads generally accurately portrayed the candidates’ views.

“There’s a general problem with political advertising that it’s hard to determine what exactly is accurate and what isn’t, and there’s a desire to protect political speech, which I assume is behind Meta’s politics,” said David Rand, Massachusetts Professor Institute of Technology, which writes about disinformation on the Internet. “But this feels really different. This is not about political speeches, but very clearly cheating, and I think any reasonable person would conclude that.”

It’s hard to tell if the ads appeared on other platforms. X ad repository does not allow searches for ads targeted at users in the United States. TikTok has banned political ads on the platform in 2019although some people probably managed to do it circumvent the rules. IN YouTube ad databaseProgress 2028 does not appear as an advertiser.

Meta he said would block new ads about politics, elections and social issues in the week before Election Day. The restriction period applies to new ads that he started on October 29, so Progress 2028 ads will be displayed until the purchase period ends. The Meta ad library doesn’t specify when this will happen.

The company began implementing the policy in 2020, assuming that there might not be enough time in the final days of the election to respond to new claims. Some said critics from Democratic or pro-voter groups the period of restrictions will make it difficult to mobilize voters and encourage turnout in the last phase of the elections.

Meta rules regarding election advertising prohibits ads that make premature claims of victory, ads that discourage voting, and ads that question the legality of ongoing or upcoming elections. Meta believes that the US presidential election “continues” until a candidate takes the oath of office.

RELATED: Progress 2028 is not affiliated with Kamala Harris. The ads saying he wants a mandatory buyback program are false.

PolitiFact writer Grace Abels contributed to this report.