Episode 10: facts, sources and further reading

Checkpoint California — Sean Forbes, Charles McGuinness, Maya Ram and Hal Lohr in a McLaughlin Group-style election panel: the midterms and what follows, why California should end the “bad marriage” with Washington, how CalExit happens, what an independent California looks like, and the glide path to January 3 — scored 0 to 10.

This page goes through the checkable claims made in the episode — the ones that were right as well as the ones that weren’t — with what the sources say and links to them. Times are where each point comes up in the published episode. The episode was recorded on October 27, 2026, a week before the November 3 election and on the evening of Israel’s election, so several of the news items were hours old when the panel discussed them; we checked them against what was known by October 28. At the end is the briefing the panel prepared from, with its links.

Our policy: if something said on the show is plainly false, we cut it before the episode goes out. If it’s off — a wrong number on a true point, a detail misremembered — we leave it in and correct it here and in the show notes. Corrections to this page: [email protected].

Corrections at a glance

8:48 — Steve Kornacki is at his big board for NBC News, not MS NOW; he left MSNBC in April 2025, before it was renamed.
8:48 — One Senate seat flipping does not make a tie. The Senate is 53–47; Democrats need a net gain of three for 50–50 (which Vance breaks for the Republicans) and four to take control.
13:41 — Israel’s turnout (77.7%) was the highest since 1999, not the highest ever.
26:07 — An Article V convention needs 34 states (two-thirds), not “thirty or so”; ratifying anything it proposes needs 38.
30:52 — Registered Republicans are about 25% of California voters and Democrats about 45% — a bit more than “two in ten” and “four in ten.” The “one-third of colonists” figure comes from a John Adams letter that historians say was about the French Revolution; estimates of loyalists run from a fifth to a third.
33:06 — Britain did recognize American independence: the Treaty of Paris in 1783, signed in the king’s name, and George III received John Adams as the first American minister in June 1785.
42:55 — Quebec has had two independence referendums, 1980 and 1995, not one.
50:23 — Apartheid South Africa’s conscription was white-only, but the Defence Force was not all white: it had Black volunteer units such as 21 and 32 Battalion.

Removed in the edit

About 14:58 — A sentence about Jared Kushner’s possible connection to a hitman was taken out before publication. The claim is unproven, and the show stated it more strongly than its source does. What we do know: on October 22 Vanity Fair ran an excerpt from Matthew Cole’s book Princes and Thieves, which says Dutch intelligence found screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone on a Russian server, used the same flaw to read his phone from 2018, and watched him log into a UAE bank account fed through Azerbaijan. One unnamed source told Cole that money moved from that account to several people, among them a warlord, a mercenary contractor and a former hitman. CBS News said it could not confirm the excerpt, and Kushner’s lawyers call it “completely insane, categorically false” and have put Condé Nast on notice.

Sources: CBS: Kushner pushes back on hacked-phone report · Raw Story on the excerpt · Newsweek: Kushner’s lawyer puts Vanity Fair on notice

Unverified — ask the hosts

23:11 — “Our own Bill” and his National Divorce channel on TikTok. Party matter; we couldn’t identify it.
26:58 — Hal says “the national divorce plan,” if you read it, turns the states into territories with Washington keeping the tax base. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2023 proposal was a series of posts, not a published plan, and we found no document to check this against. Which plan?
45:10 — “AI models have the U.S. collapse sometime around 2037.” We found no report or model to attribute this to.
1:02:47 — Theo Slater as the party’s previous chair and the source of “the Switzerland of the Pacific.” Party history.

The claims, in order

0:13 — The midterms are next Tuesday

Right. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Mail ballots must be postmarked by that day and can arrive up to seven days later.

Sources: Secretary of State ballot statistics · San Bernardino County: when results are certified

0:59 — KPFK 90.7 FM

Right on the station. KPFK is the Pacifica station at 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, and Working Voices is a KPFK labor program. Hal describes himself as its producer and as head of Red Star Report, which publishes his writing.

Sources: Wikipedia: KPFK · KPFK: Working Voices · Red Star Report: Hal Lohr on California independence

1:51 — Mike Johnson can sack the Clerk and the Sergeant at Arms

Right. House Rule II, clause 1, says the Clerk, the Sergeant-at-Arms and the Chief Administrative Officer “may be removed by the House or by the Speaker.” Charles’s mechanics are also right: under 2 U.S.C. 26 the Clerk of the old House compiles the roll of members-elect from the states’ certificates and presides at noon on January 3 until a Speaker is elected. The current Clerk is Kevin McCumber. Whether a Clerk could get away with leaving names off the roll is the question the Lawfare and Protect Democracy analyses in the briefing take up: the duty is ministerial, courts can order it done, and empty seats don’t flip a majority the way substitutions would.

Sources: House Rules and Manual, Rule II · House Practice: removal of officers · Protect Democracy: how Congress seats election winners

4:51 — Twenty thousand ballots

Right. On October 13 the Justice Department sent Los Angeles County a list of about 20,000 registered voters it called “likely noncitizens,” built from the DHS SAVE database, and asked that their ballots be set aside; it then sued to compel it. The county found that in a sample of the list about one in four said they were born in the United States, and all 28 people charged in Los Angeles on October 19 came from it. On October 26 the Ninth Circuit threw out the department’s attempt to leapfrog the district court. No court had ordered any ballot set aside as of the recording.

Sources: CBS: DOJ sues California over mail ballots · CalMatters · KCRA: California moves to dismiss · CNN: appeals court rejects DOJ bid

4:51 — George Floyd, Minneapolis

Right. George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020; Chauvin was convicted of murder in April 2021.

Sources: New Arab (AFP): Chauvin convicted of Floyd’s murder

8:48 — Steve Kornacki on MS NOW

Correction on the network. Kornacki was indeed at the big board the morning of the recording, telling viewers which states to watch a week out — but on NBC’s Today. He left MSNBC in April 2025 for NBC News and NBC Sports, as the cable channel was spun off; MSNBC became MS NOW in November 2025 without him.

Sources: Today, October 27: Kornacki on the states to watch · Mediaite: Kornacki leaves MSNBC for NBC News and Sports · Adweek: MSNBC rebrands as MS NOW

8:48 — “One seat flips and it’s a tie, and Vance breaks it”

Correction on the arithmetic — right on the odds being lower. The Senate is 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats (counting two independents). One flipped seat makes it 52–48. Democrats need a net gain of three for 50–50, where Vance breaks ties for the Republicans, and four to take control. The forecasts the morning of the recording gave Democrats 57% (Decision Desk, projecting 51 seats) to 71% (Vote-Scope) for the Senate, against about 80% for the House — so Hal’s point that the Senate is the harder lift stands.

Sources: Decision Desk HQ: 2026 Senate forecast · Decision Desk HQ: 2026 forecast · Al Jazeera: the midterms in maps and charts

13:41 — The “bunker ballroom”

Right. Trump has said the White House ballroom sits above a six-story military complex being built by the Pentagon; the project is in litigation, and the Supreme Court has let construction continue while it considers whether Congress had to approve it.

Sources: Axios: ballroom above, bunker below · Washington Examiner: ballroom will include military bunker

13:41 — Bolsonaro’s child fled the country today

Right. Flávio Bolsonaro, the senator who lost the October 25 presidential runoff to Lula (51.8% to 48.2%), left Brazil on October 27 rather than hand in his passport as ordered by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is investigating his links to a lawyer accused of laundering more than $1 billion. He flew via Argentina and Ecuador to Miami, and the State Department said it would grant him a visa.

Sources: Time: Flávio Bolsonaro flees Brazil · Al Jazeera · NPR: Lula wins a fourth term

13:41 — Israel: Netanyahu going down, blocs of 53 and 50, 17–19 Arab seats, record turnout, fraud claims

Right on the night’s exit polls — corrections on turnout and on what the count did next. Israel voted on October 27. Channel 12’s first exit poll had the anti-Netanyahu bloc at 52 and Netanyahu’s at 50, with the Arab parties at a record 17–18 seats — Sean’s numbers. Netanyahu did not concede: that night he claimed a “decisive majority” among the Zionist public, and by the next afternoon Likud was saying the election had been “stolen by Arab parties” by bribery, forgery and “prohibited software,” sending its evidence to the police and Shin Bet but not making it public. The real count then moved his way: with 85% counted, his bloc had 53 seats, the Eisenkot bloc 48 and the Arab parties 19, with neither side at the 61 needed, and some 450,000 double-envelope ballots still to count. Turnout was 77.7% — the highest since 1999, not the highest since 1948.

Sources: NBC: exit polls show no clear winner · Times of Israel, October 27: Netanyahu claims “decisive majority” · Ynet: 53–48 as nearly all votes counted · This Is Beirut: Likud accuses Arab parties of fraud · Al Jazeera: five takeaways

13:41 — Trump’s kids and Pentagon contracts

Right in substance. An ABC News review in October found that companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, mostly through the venture firm 1789 Capital, have won more than $6 billion in government contracts since their investments, including about $1.8 billion for Anduril; the Washington Post counted 1789 stakes in 11 of 15 defense, robotics and AI firms with Pentagon business. Democratic senators have raised it; nobody has alleged illegality.

Sources: Asia Times on the ABC analysis · Washington Post: Trump’s sons invest in defense tech · CNN: senators sound the alarm on 1789 Capital

13:41 — “Vast right-wing conspiracy”

Right. Hillary Clinton used the phrase on NBC’s Today on January 27, 1998, as the Lewinsky story broke.

Sources: Wikipedia: Vast right-wing conspiracy

13:41 — Serbia’s strongman brought down by students

Right, with the name garbled. Aleksandar Vučić conceded on October 25 after the student-led Student List won Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, projected at 135–140 of 250 seats, on the highest turnout in more than 30 years. The movement grew out of the November 2024 Novi Sad station canopy collapse that killed 16. (The transcript’s “Alicante” is Vučić.)

Sources: Al Jazeera: Vučić concedes to student-led movement · CNN

13:41 — Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution”

Right. A leaderless youth movement against Edi Rama’s government, named for the flamingos of the Vjosa-Narta wetland where a luxury resort with Trump and Kushner connections was planned; it began in Vlorë in May 2026, moved to daily protests in Tirana, and was still going the week of the recording, with a parliamentary brawl over it on October 22.

Sources: Al Jazeera: why Albania’s young protesters want Rama to go · Democracy Now on the Flamingo Revolution · Wikipedia: Flamingo Revolution

18:38 — Flown off to obscure countries in Africa

Right. Under “third-country” deals the administration has sent deportees to Eswatini, South Sudan, Ghana, Rwanda and other African states — more than 40 people to Eswatini alone in three batches by March 2026, held in its prisons.

Sources: Al Jazeera: another third-country flight to Eswatini · AP via Washington Times: Eswatini receives third batch

21:39 — The House frozen at 435; the population then and now; FDR and the courts

Right. The House has had 435 seats since 1913, and the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 fixed it there. The 1900 census counted 76.2 million Americans; the Census Bureau’s latest estimate is 341.8 million (July 2025), a little above Maya’s 338 million. Roosevelt’s 1937 plan to add up to six justices was rejected by his own party’s Senate, 70–20, that July.

Sources: Wikipedia: Reapportionment Act of 1929 · Wikipedia: 1900 census · Wikipedia: Demographics of the United States · National Constitution Center: how FDR lost his war on the Supreme Court

23:11 — Marjorie Taylor Greene and “national divorce”

Right. Greene posted “We need a national divorce” on Presidents Day, February 20, 2023, proposing separation into red and blue states and a smaller federal government; the White House called it “sick, divisive, and alarming.”

Sources: NBC: Greene calls for a “national divorce”

23:36 — Texas v. White, 1869

Right. The Supreme Court held that Texas had never left the Union and that a state cannot secede on its own: the Constitution made “an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States,” with no way out “except through revolution, or through consent of the States.”

Sources: Encyclopedia.com: Texas v. White · Wikipedia: Secession in the United States

24:56 and 25:08 — Alberta just voted to stay

Right. Alberta’s October 19 referendum asked whether to remain in Canada or begin a process toward a binding separation vote; 75% chose to remain, on about 1.8 million votes. The result was non-binding, as Sean says. Whether the Yes campaign was “astroturfed” by American groups is Maya’s reading; we didn’t check it.

Sources: CNN: Alberta rejects secession referendum · Al Jazeera: what’s next

25:41 — Pete Hegseth and the Article V convention

Right. Hegseth has been a long-time endorser of the Convention of States Project, spoke at its 2019 summit and called it “the second American revolution.” Article V lets two-thirds of the states — 34 — require Congress to call a convention to propose amendments; three-quarters, 38, must ratify anything it produces. So “thirty or so” is a little low.

Sources: Convention of States: Hegseth, “a Convention of States is the second American revolution” · MeidasTouch on Hegseth’s push

26:07 — The Soviets putting down the Prague Spring

Right. Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and ended the Dubček reforms. (Noted for completeness; the comparison is Maya’s.)

27:44 — 52 representatives and two senators; 14% of the economy; fourth-largest economy

Right. California has 52 House seats and two senators in a Congress of 535. Its 2024 GDP of $4.1 trillion passed Japan’s to make it the world’s fourth-largest economy, behind the US, China and Germany; $4.1 trillion of a $29.2 trillion national economy is 14%.

Sources: NBC Bay Area: California now the world’s fourth-largest economy · New York Sun on the $4.10 trillion figure

27:44 — “An oil company with an army,” per George Carlin

Attribution unconfirmed. The line is everywhere online with Carlin’s name on it, but we found no routine, album or interview it comes from; Tom Morello used it without attribution at Standing Rock in 2016. Treat it as a popular saying rather than a Carlin quote.

Sources: Tom Morello, 2016 · A typical attribution

30:52 — Four in ten Californians for independence; two in ten Republicans, four in ten Democrats; a third of the colonists

Right on the poll — small corrections on the rest. The poll Hal and Sean cite is the Independent California Institute’s June 2025 YouGov survey: 44% of Californians would vote for peaceful, legal secession, 54% against — a record, up from 42% in 2021. (The institute is an advocacy group, and a differently worded national YouGov question in February 2026 got 27%.) On registration, the Secretary of State’s December 2025 report has Democrats at 45.0%, Republicans at 25.1% and no party preference at 22.7% — so a bit more than two in ten Republicans. The “one-third for, one-third against, one-third indifferent” rule for 1776 traces to a John Adams letter that historians say was about American opinion of the French Revolution; estimates of loyalists run from a fifth to a third, with the uncommitted the largest group.

Sources: Independent California Institute: June 2025 poll · Newsweek on the poll · Secretary of State: December 30, 2025 report of registration · Independent Institute: the one-third myth · ushistory.org: loyalists

32:37 — The 3.5% rule

Right. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s study of 323 campaigns from 1900 to 2006 found none that failed after active participation reached 3.5% of the population at its peak — a description of the data, Chenoweth cautions, not a guarantee.

Sources: Transcend: the 3.5% rule · On the misuse of the 3.5% rule

33:06 — “King George the Third never recognized that the United States had left”

Correction. He did, formally. The Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783 by David Hartley for the king and by Adams, Franklin and Jay, opens with Britain acknowledging the United States “to be free sovereign and independent states,” and was ratified in 1784. On June 1, 1785 George III received John Adams at St James’s as the first American minister. Hal’s larger point — that Britain treated the rebels as traitors until it lost — is fine; it’s the “never” that slips.

Sources: Wikipedia: Treaty of Paris (1783) · National Archives: Adams meets George III

34:48 — A one-trillion-dollar defense establishment

Right. The FY2026 request was $1.01 trillion for national defense, counting $113 billion from the reconciliation bill, and the enacted appropriations put the total around $1 trillion.

Sources: Air & Space Forces: Trump proposes $1 trillion defense budget · Akin Gump: FY2026 vs FY2027 toplines

34:48 — JD Vance and the Titanic

Right. “You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight,” Vance said of the economy in Toledo on January 22, 2026; the clip went viral again in October, and the obvious reply — that the Titanic didn’t turn around at all — came from JB Pritzker and Jared Moskowitz among others.

Sources: Snopes: did Vance compare the economy to the Titanic? · The New Republic

34:48 — Bernie Sanders since the civil rights movement

Right. Sanders was a CORE activist at the University of Chicago from 1961, attended the 1963 March on Washington, and was arrested that August protesting school segregation on Chicago’s South Side.

Sources: Mother Jones: what Sanders did in the civil rights movement

34:48 — TACO, “Trump always chickens out”

Right. Coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong on May 2, 2025, as the “TACO theory” of markets rallying when tariff threats are withdrawn; it went mainstream when a reporter put it to Trump on May 28.

Sources: CBC: how a financial columnist coined TACO · Wikipedia: Trump Always Chickens Out

41:15 — Ten times as many gun owners as soldiers; one gun for every two people

Right as an order of magnitude. The standard estimate, UC Davis’s California Safety and Wellbeing Survey, puts personal gun owners at about 4.2 million adults (14%), owning some 19.9 million firearms — one for every two of the state’s 39 million people, as Charles says. The active-duty Army was 458,000 in March 2026, so about nine owners per soldier; counting the Guard and Reserve the Army is about 960,000, roughly four to one.

Sources: UC Davis: firearm ownership in California · CalMatters: who owns guns in California · CRS: FY2026 active component end-strength · AUSA: the Army’s FY2026 budget

42:55 — Quebec has had theirs once; a new separatist government Trump supports

Correction on the count — right on the rest. Quebec voted on sovereignty twice: in 1980 (40% Yes) and in 1995 (49.4% Yes, a margin of about 54,000 votes). The Parti Québécois won the October 5, 2026 election with 60 of 127 seats, promising another referendum — though its leader says not before Trump leaves office in January 2029. Trump congratulated him on October 27, the day of the recording, in the middle of US–Canada trade talks.

Sources: Wikipedia: 1980 Quebec referendum · Wikipedia: 1995 Quebec referendum · CNN: Quebec separatists win but fall short of majority · Axios: Trump praises Quebec separatists · Al Jazeera: no referendum while Trump is in office

45:10 — Forty trillion in debt; six dollars a gallon

Right. The gross federal debt passed $40 trillion on August 18, 2026 and stood at about $40.5 trillion on October 26. AAA’s California average for regular gasoline was $6.00 on October 27 and $5.97 on October 28, against a national average of $4.25.

Sources: National debt tracker, October 26 · Azernews: US debt hits record $40.52 trillion · AAA state gas price averages

50:23 — Singapore kicked out of Malaysia

Right. Malaysia’s parliament voted 126–0 on August 9, 1965 to separate Singapore, which became independent the same day; Singapore’s own history calls it an expulsion, though the separation agreement had been negotiated two days earlier.

Sources: Wikipedia: Independence of Singapore Agreement 1965

50:23 — Fifty-four electoral votes; the deal of 1876; George Wallace in 1968

Right. California has 54 electoral votes. In 1876 Tilden was one vote short with 20 disputed, a commission awarded them all to Hayes 8–7, and the accompanying bargain withdrew federal troops from the South and ended Reconstruction. Wallace’s 1968 plan was to carry enough Southern states to deny either candidate 270 and bargain in the House; Nixon’s 301 electoral votes foreclosed it.

Sources: History.com: Compromise of 1877 · Wikipedia: George Wallace 1968 campaign

50:23 — South Africa: the white right backed off after three men died

Right on the event — small correction on the army. On March 11, 1994, after the AWB’s failed armed intervention in Bophuthatswana, a Bophuthatswana policeman shot three AWB men dead at point-blank range in front of television cameras; the footage demoralized the armed white right weeks before the election. The South African Defence Force conscripted only white men, but it was not all white: Black volunteers served in units such as 21 Battalion and 32 Battalion, and Black officers were commissioned from 1986.

Sources: SA History Online: three AWB members shot · Wikipedia: 1994 Bophuthatswana crisis · Wikipedia: Conscription in South Africa

58:30 — Interstates from the 1960s; almost forty million people

Right. The Interstate system was authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and mostly built through the 1960s. California’s population is about 39 million.

Sources: History.com: the Interstate Highway System

1:02:47 — Marisa Tomei’s Oscar

Right that it’s a legend. The story that Jack Palance (the transcript’s “Jack Pound”) misread the card at the 1993 Oscars has been debunked: video shows him reading from the envelope, and the Academy said a wrong name would have been corrected on the spot.

Sources: Snopes: Marisa Tomei’s Oscar

1:06:36 — The oil companies and the Tom Cruise movie

The film is real. Digger, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s satire with Cruise as an oil tycoon whose drilling sets off an ecological crisis, opened to $8 million on a $125 million budget. That the oil companies buried it is, as Sean says, a conspiracy theory; we didn’t check it.

Sources: Wikipedia: Digger (2026 film)

1:09:27 — The book

Right. The Courage to Secede: A Discussion of California Independence is by Sean Forbes, with an introduction by Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting. It is out in paperback (358 pages) and on Kindle, where it is free with Kindle+ — the “Kindle Plus” Maya mentions.

Sources: Amazon: The Courage to Secede

What we didn’t check

The scores, the predictions — who wins, what Mike Johnson does at Thanksgiving, whether Democrats impeach, when the US collapses — and the panel’s readings of motive (Washington’s rationality, who is behind the Alberta campaign, what the “puppet masters” think) aren’t fact-checked. The lightning-round conspiracy theories were offered as such and are not checked, including Maya’s about Starlink and the 2024 count. Sean’s suggestion that the US and Israel were connected to the effort to oust Lula, and that the far right has taken over South America, are his reading of events rather than checkable claims. Maya’s and her father’s ballots are their own.

Reading list

The briefing Charles prepared for the panel on October 27, kept where the show went. The newest items are from that morning; the court rulings expected that afternoon are not in it.

The calendar

What California is voting on

The federal campaign against California’s vote

Election Day itself

The glide path to January 3

The Conversation: Democrats clear favourites for Congress · Decision Desk forecast
Judge Luttig: the final battle for America’s democracy · Election Law Blog: the pledge to accept the results · Townhall: Steube’s rule against seating socialists
CalMatters: will Republicans block Democrats from Congress? We asked them · CalMatters newsletter
Lawfare, “Can the midterms be ‘stolen’ on Jan. 3?” (Molly Roberts, August 25, 2026) · Protect Democracy, “How does Congress seat election winners?” (September 29, 2026)
Ballotpedia: the SAVE America Act in the Senate