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View this email in your browser  This week:  Murders are up. Why? ... Fact-checking claims about the Founding Fathers and slavery ... PolitiFact on Instagram Live ... Fact-checks about Ashli Babbitt ... Fact-checking Biden on jobs A weekly note from the editor-in-chief of    The scene of a deadly shooting in St. Petersburg, Fla., where three people were found dead. (Tampa Bay Times/Martha Asencio Rhine) Murders spiked in 2020. Why? Completely apart from the bipartisan blame game over crime, there is the stark reality that in most American cities, murders have gone up.  One survey of America's larger cities found that between 2019 and 2020, homicide deaths rose more than 30%. An analysis of 34 cities found a "historic increase." Some Republicans say rising homicides are due to the "defund the police" movement and the failures of Democratic urban leaders. Some Democrats point the finger at the wide availability of guns and Republican resistance to police reform.  Those are the talking points. The real causes, experts say, are not so clear. No one debates that last year was unique. There was the pandemic and the havoc it wreaked. There were the racial justice protests and, in some cities, periods of vandalism and looting.  What all that has to do with rising homicide rates is what mayors, citizens and criminologists are trying to figure out. As far as Ben Frazier can tell, the problem predates 2020. Frazier, an activist in Jacksonville, Fla., heads up the Northside Coalition, a community group focused on stopping the shootings in the handful of neighborhoods where about two-thirds of the city's murders take place. One ZIP code in that area has been dubbed "the killing fields." Frazier said he is hard pressed to find an explanation that doesn't include the area's extreme poverty. "Half of the people are living below the federal poverty line," Frazier said."We have double-digit unemployment. The kids walk the streets in roving bands. It's a very disappointing, depressing picture, to see so many young Black men with nothing to do." And, Frazier said, there was ready access to weapons. "I have nothing to point to as far as statistics, but I can only tell you that there were far too many guns in the hands of people who should not have them," he said. A careful analysis of trends in 34 cities by the Council on Criminal Justice, an independent source of crime data, lends support to Frazier's broader themes, but suggests that in many places, the mix of factors was more complicated. The hunt for an explanation turns on finding the shifts that incrementally made murder more likely. Our full report looked at the following trends:  The pandemic: There's a tight association between higher health risks and the markers of economic stress, such as lower incomes and higher unemployment. Criminologist Eileen Ahlin at Penn State-Harrisburg noted that both the pandemic and the pandemic-driven economic downturn mattered. "Unemployment and declining mental health routinely affect crime rates," Ahlin said. "Last year we saw both at play."  Protests and policing: There has been a running debate over whether protests over police violence lead to less policing and more crime. Researchers disagree whether the protests themselves had any effect in causing police to pull back from everyday enforcement actions. It's too early to know about 2020, but a detailed study of the so-called Ferguson Effect found no connection between protests, policing and crime. Guns: There's not a reliable correlation between the legal purchases of guns and increases in homicides. While purchases skyrocketed during the pandemic, criminologist Aaron Chalfin at the University of Pennsylvania told us that guns used in crimes tend to be several years old. A surge in sales in 2020, or even 2019, wouldn't necessarily translate into more killings last year. If these issues intrigue you, be sure to read our full report. >>> The bottom line: There are many possible explanations, but it will be months before we have enough hard data to bring the outlines of the driving forces into sharper relief. — Jon Greenberg Share Tweet Forward The Latest from PolitiFact Biden exaggerates job growth. President Joe Biden said, "We have now created over 3 million jobs since I took office, more jobs than have ever been created in the first five months of any presidency in modern history." We rated that Half True. Biden is right on the numbers and on how they compare with his recent predecessors in the Oval Office. However, the U.S. economy remains almost 6.8 million jobs under its pre-pandemic peak. Meanwhile, comparing presidents as Biden did is highly sensitive to the economic conditions around the time of their inauguration; Biden entered office during a deep recession, but he took over on the upswing, a situation that not all presidents have benefited from. Trump wrong about Jan. 6 riot. Former President Donald Trump said that there were "no guns whatsoever" at the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. We rated that False. Court records and news reports show that many insurrectionists were armed, and several were charged with having firearms on Capitol grounds or stashed nearby while in Washington. In addition, rioters had weapons other than firearms and used them during the attack. GOP blame game on crime rates False. The Republican National Committee tweeted that "crime is escalating to a level we haven't seen in decades as a direct result of Democrats' defund the police movement and Biden-Harris open-border policies." That rates False. It's not true that crime is rising to a level we haven't seen in decades. Homicides are up, but there's no evidence that the trend is tied to a police defunding policy or Democrats' border policies, let alone that it's a "direct result." Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help   Yes, I support PolitiFact! Make a tax-deductible donation to make this message go away. Fact-checking whether the Founding Fathers were against slavery Fox News host and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused others of "getting the facts wrong" about the Founding Fathers and slavery — all while getting some facts wrong herself.   "The haters never take a day off from hating. That is clear. And they never take a day off from getting the facts wrong," McEnany said on "Outnumbered" July 6. "We know most of our forefathers, all of our main Founding Fathers were against slavery, recognized the evils of it." Five historians who spoke with PolitiFact agreed that McEnany's claim was an inaccurate oversimplification. We rated the claim Mostly False.  Some of the most prominent Founding Fathers were lifelong slaveholders, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. McEnany's claim oversimplified some of the major Founding Fathers' views, lives and writings. Jefferson, for example, criticized the institution of slavery on some occasions while also profiting from it his whole life. The majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence owned enslaved people. Many southerners who could be considered Founders were pro-slavery. For more details, read our full fact-check. >>> — Bill McCarthy Instagram Live: What happened at the Jan. 6 insurrection PolitiFact journalists Josie Hollingsworth and Bill McCarthy got together on Instagram to talk about a team project on the Jan. 6 insurrection. PolitiFact took a deep dive into court filings and public data to uncover misinformation's role at the Capitol Riot. Read the story here; watch Josie and Bill's chat on Instagram. It lasts about 20 minutes. Quick links to more fact-checks & reports  Fact-checking Donald Trump on there being 'no reason' for shooting Ashli Babbitt   Officer who shot Ashli Babbitt wasn't assigned to any Congress member's security detail, police say   No evidence of 'graphene oxide' that's 'toxic' in Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine   George Floyd's death was not the result of a fentanyl overdose   There's no evidence that politicians from Haiti, Tanzania and Madagascar were killed over their countries' refusal of COVID-19 vaccines Do you smell smoke?  Here's your Pants on Fire fact-check of the week:  Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated because he was going to "expose Clinton Foundation fraud." Yet again, satire jumps the fence. See what else we've rated Pants on Fire this week.  Have questions or ideas for our coverage? Send me an email at holan@politifact.com. Put "Fact-checking" in the subject line. Thanks for reading! Angie Drobnic Holan  PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief  Send this link to your friends so they can sign up for this email! Copyright © 2021 PolitiFact, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website, attended one of our events, or communicated with us. Our mailing address is: PolitiFact 801 3rd St S  St. Petersburg, FL 33701 Add us to your address book PolitiFact.com Want to change how you receive these emails? You can *update your preferences or *unsubscribe from this list.  Subscription Information This email was sent to Webmaster220 Bible Study Blog   Special note: Please read the page I added today about Politifact *the blog owner has deleted the hyperlink intentionally