I'm at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, for the Republican debate tonight and so far it's been a Democrat who's caused the biggest stir in the spin room. California Gov. Gavin Newsom came through for an interview with Univision and a rather lengthy gaggle with the national press corps. He defended his decision to debate DeSantis later this year, defended his presence at a Republican debate in the first place and he answered a question from yours truly.

I asked him about one of the issues that Biden is currently faring worst with the American public on: immigration, and specifically border security. Newsom told me he supports Biden's plan on this issue, but that: “The one thing I would add to it, not what’s wrong with it, is we need to do more on the asylum space as it relates to how the asylum system is being gamed and that is legitimate.”

The first question of the night goes to Scott, who is the subject of a UAW labor complaint for suggesting that striking auto workers should be fired. This time around, he says that the president doesn’t have the authority to fire private-sector workers and then pivots.

Instead of participating in tonight’s debate, Trump opted to give a speech in Detroit, where autoworkers are on strike against the Big Three automakers. In a recent Morning Consult poll, 54 percent of Americans said they support the strike by the United Auto Workers against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, while just 18 percent were opposed and 28 percent didn’t have an opinion.
—Analysis by 538

Tonight, I’m watching the debate from Michigan, where I’m covering a split within the GOP. I’m looking for signs of where the party is breaking with Trump and where they’re still loyal to him. I’m also listening for the candidates’ positions on issues Republican voters in this state say they care about. They’re still angry over the COVID-19 shutdowns, they’re mad about electric cars, which they say will cost auto worker jobs, and they’re worried about the economy. That’s especially true with United Auto Workers workers striking in this state. This week, Biden joined the picket line and Trump will visit a nonunion plant.

– Analysis by Monica Potts of 538

At PolitiFact, this is our fifth presidential cycle. We’ve published more than 23,000 fact-checks since launching in 2007, all using our Truth-O-Meter, which rates claims on a scale from “True” to “Pants on Fire” false.

If PolitiFact is new to you, there are a couple of rules of the road. First, we don’t fact-check every claim every candidate says. We couldn’t … we’d be dead. We focus on claims that are particularly interesting, in the news or obviously potentially wrong. Our grading scale tries to measure both the literal truth and how voters might interpret a politicians’ words. So if Pence tonight claims that he and Trump “achieved energy independence” in their first three years of office, it can be more complicated to fact-check than you think.

In Pence’s case, yes, the United States did produce more energy than its citizens consumed during the Trump-Pence administration, but that was built on more than a decade of improvements in shale oil and gas production, as well as renewables. And the U.S. did not produce more gasoline than it consumes (which is maybe what you were thinking about). And if that’s not enough, even though the U.S. didn’t use all the energy it produced, it still imported a substantial amount of energy to serve domestic markets.

So far in this cycle, we’ve published more than 50 fact-checks of the GOP candidates. Our checks tend to follow the polling of the race. We'll be drawing on those previous fact-checks, as well as the thousands of other claims we've vetted, throughout the night.
—Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact