With just six weeks to go, misinformation continues to pose one of the most significant threats to the integrity of the election. But two online tools introduced Tuesday offer the public ways to get active in combating the spread of false or misleading internet content.
A browser plug-in and a text-to-report service to mitigate the impacts of misinformation are the work of MapLight, a nonpartisan group that's been mainly focused on tracking the influence of money over politics. The tools are aimed mainly at removing problematic content on Facebook, but the texting service can also be used for reporting misinformation elsewhere.
The Election Deception Tracker is available as a free browser extension on Chrome and Firefox. After installation, users can report misinformation on Facebook by right-clicking on the post title and selecting "send to Election Deception Tracker." A prompt will appear in which users can provide more details about the post and select one or more of the following categories: voting, candidates, violent threat/hate speech, election results, and fake or misleading account.
Anyone can report misinformation with MapLight's new tools. MapLight
For misinformation found on flyers, mailers or elsewhere online, users can text a photo or description. The service will then send automated messages to the user to gather more information about the content in question.
Submitted reports will be sent to MapLight's database where a team of researchers and election protection advocates will analyze the content. If removal is deemed necessary, the organization says it will press that effort with company executives.
And after the election, MapLight says, the misinformation database will be used to buttress lobbying for tougher regulation of social media companies.
"These tools are designed to help anyone concerned about the rampant spread of misinformation to take an active role in protecting our democracy," said MapLight President Daniel G. Newman. "Irresponsible practices from large technology companies like Facebook and a lack of leadership from Congress and the White House have polluted our online environment and jeopardized the integrity of the election."
Misinformation can be hard to identify sometimes, which is why it is so harmful. MapLight encourages the public to report content even if they are unsure of its validity since its team of researchers will be able to verify the information before taking further action.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.