Episode 8: facts and sources
Checkpoint California, with Theo Slater — a Sacramento attorney, one of the founders of the California National Party and its first elected chair.
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 13, 2026.
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
- 3:39 — About 20,000–25,000 British troops served in Saint-Domingue, and roughly 60% died; the “hundred thousand sent, fifty thousand dead” figures are for Britain’s whole West Indies campaign.
- 5:54 — Rome’s Gates of Janus were traditionally built by King Numa; Augustus is known for closing them, three times by his own count.
- 6:59 — The best-known third-country deportations went to South Sudan, not Sudan, and others to Eswatini, Rwanda and Ghana.
- 7:10 — California is the second most diverse state on the Census Bureau’s index, after Hawaii.
- 8:11 — The “every gun that is made” line is from Eisenhower’s 1953 “Chance for Peace” speech; the military-industrial complex warning is from his 1961 farewell address.
- 10:26 and 38:38 — Counting formal removals, Obama deported the most of any president, about 3 million; counting border “returns” as well, Clinton and Bush deported more.
- 16:03 — The “Clinton has won” call the night before the June 2016 California primary came from the Associated Press’s delegate count, not from the Democratic Party; her campaign answered that it still had primaries to win.
- 21:52 — California has about 5.75 million registered Republicans, and Trump got 6.08 million votes here in 2024 — both fewer than Arizona’s 7.6 million people.
- 22:53 — Wyoming (about 589,000 people) has more people than Long Beach (about 451,000); it is still the least populous state.
- 31:11 — “We’ll launch our own damn satellite” was Jerry Brown, in 2016; “nation-state” is Gavin Newsom’s phrase.
- 44:23 — EVs do sell for about $10,000 in China, but they are small city cars; a Tesla Model 3 there costs about three times as much.
- 46:16 — Michael Loebs’s 25,468 votes came in the 2021 recall election; Alpine County gave him none.
- 46:55 — A candidate statement in the state voter guide cost $25 a word, not $50 a letter; Loebs’s ran to about 30 words and his website.
- 47:58 — Inyo County voted for Trump in 2016, for Biden by 14 votes in 2020, and for Trump by 267 votes in 2024.
- 51:17 — California’s economy (about $4.1–4.3 trillion) is a step behind Germany’s (about $4.7–5.0 trillion).
- 58:25 — The Independent California Institute’s 44% poll was taken in June 2025 (released June 29), not July.
- 1:03:29 — The “two parties” quote is usually attributed to Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, not a Zambian leader.
- 1:04:13 — The Soviet leaders who died one after another — Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko — died between 1982 and 1985; the late 1980s were Gorbachev’s.
- 1:04:23 — The full video shows Biden left his November 2024 event in Manaus by the planned path; he didn’t wander into the rainforest.
The claims, in order
0:52, 2:15 and 57:37 — The party’s beginnings
Partly confirmed — we’ve asked for the rest. Theo says he helped start the party “about eleven years ago”, at a founding convention in West Sacramento in 2015 that elected its first officers, with another convention in 2016. The published record agrees on the year: the party formed in August 2015 and notified the Secretary of State in December 2015. The earliest officer election we found reported is the June 2016 convention in Sacramento, where Theo was elected chair, with Andria Franco as vice chair and Jed Wheeler as secretary. We found no published account of the 2015 West Sacramento convention, which isn’t to say it didn’t happen; we’ve asked for the party’s own record. The party’s 2017 convention we found was in San Francisco, on August 13, 2017; Sean remembers a meeting in Santa Monica (57:29), which we couldn’t place.
Sources: Wikipedia: California National Party · Fox & Hounds, August 2017 convention notice
3:21 and 3:39 — Toussaint Louverture and the British in Saint-Domingue
Right on the story — correction on the numbers. C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins tells the history of the Haitian Revolution, and Toussaint Louverture did fight the Spanish, the British and finally the French. The order was a little different: he fought first for Spain (1793), joined the French Republic in 1794 and fought the Spanish and then the British, who withdrew in 1798; he took over the Spanish side of the island in 1801, and was captured after the French invaded under Leclerc, on June 7, 1802. Historian David Geggus puts the British force in Saint-Domingue at about 20,000 soldiers plus a few thousand German mercenaries, of whom about 60% died, mostly of yellow fever. Figures like “a hundred thousand sent” and “fifty thousand dead” are for Britain’s whole West Indies campaign of 1793–98, and Geggus considers even those inflated.
Sources: Geggus, “The Cost of Pitt’s Caribbean Campaigns” (Historical Journal) · Saint-Domingue summary citing Geggus (FIU) · Wikipedia: Toussaint Louverture
4:42 — Members of Congress own Lockheed Martin and Boeing stock
Right. Disclosures show members of both parties buying Lockheed Martin in 2025, among them Representatives Gil Cisneros, Jared Moskowitz, Carol Miller and Scott Franklin, and three members buying Boeing in early 2026. Earlier disclosures showed Senator Susan Collins, then ranking member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, holding Boeing and RTX. Disclosures give value ranges, not exact amounts.
Sources: Benzinga, September 2026 · Quiver Quantitative: Congress trading in defense
5:35 — Jimmy Carter: “the most warlike” in history
Right. Teaching Sunday school in Plains, Georgia, in April 2019, Carter called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world”, noting it had been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years. His word was “nation”, not “empire”. The account comes from local public radio’s reporting, widely picked up; we found no recording.
Sources: Newsweek, April 15, 2019
5:54 — Rome’s gate that was shut in peacetime
Right that it existed — correction on who built it. The Gates of Janus in the Roman Forum were closed only when Rome was at peace. Roman tradition credits the shrine to King Numa, centuries before Augustus. Augustus is famous for closing the gates: by his own account they had been shut only twice before he was born, and three times under him.
Sources: Wikipedia: Temple of Janus · Res Gestae, chapter 13
6:59 — Deportations to third countries “like Sudan”
Right on the practice — correction on the country. The United States has been deporting people to countries that aren’t their own: Human Rights Watch counts more than 500 sent to African countries from January 2025 to August 2026. The best-known case is South Sudan, a separate country from Sudan: eight men, one of them South Sudanese, were flown to Juba in July 2025 after the Supreme Court allowed it. Others went to Eswatini, Rwanda and Ghana. We found no deportations to Sudan itself.
Sources: Human Rights Watch, October 8, 2026 · New Lines Magazine
7:00 — “Hundreds of billions of dollars to D.C. every year”
Right. The IRS collected $766.5 billion in federal taxes from California in fiscal year 2025, the most of any state and about 14% of the national total. The IRS counts collections by filing address, which adds some corporate and payroll taxes to California’s figure.
Sources: IRS Data Book, Table 1-5
7:10 — “The most diverse” in America
Correction. On the Census Bureau’s diversity index from the 2020 census, Hawaii ranks first at 76%; California is second at about 70%.
Sources: Census Bureau, 2020
8:11 — Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex
Right in substance — two speeches. Sean’s paraphrase joins two speeches eight years apart. In his farewell address of January 17, 1961, Eisenhower said “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military-industrial complex.” The line about guns comes from his “Chance for Peace” speech of April 16, 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Sources: National Archives: Farewell Address · Eisenhower Library: Chance for Peace
9:33 — “Hitler declared war on us”
Right. Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. Whether the United States would otherwise have joined the war is a matter of opinion; its ships were already clashing with German submarines in the Atlantic that autumn.
Sources: National WWII Museum
10:05 — A segregated army, and Japanese Americans in the camps
Right. The Army was segregated in the Second World War. The Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought in Italy and France while, under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent from the West Coast, most of them citizens, were held in camps; many of the 442nd’s first recruits came from them.
Sources: National WWII Museum: the 442nd
10:26 and 38:38 — Obama “deported the second most people”
Correction — it depends what’s counted. Counting formal removals, Obama deported the most of any president: about 3.1 million, against about 2 million under George W. Bush and about 870,000 under Bill Clinton. Counting border “returns” as well, Clinton (about 12.3 million) and Bush (about 10.3 million) are ahead of Obama (about 5.3 million). In President Trump’s second term, the Department of Homeland Security reported nearly 900,000 removals by mid-2026.
Sources: PolitiFact · Migration Policy Institute
13:40 — The wars Obama “was happy to call dumb”
Right. In October 2002, as an Illinois state senator, Obama told an anti-war rally in Chicago: “I don’t oppose all wars … What I am opposed to is a dumb war.” He meant the coming invasion of Iraq.
Sources: NPR transcript
16:03 — The night before the 2016 California primary
Right on the timing — correction on the source. On the evening of June 6, 2016, the night before California and five other states voted, the Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee, and the networks followed. The call came from the AP’s own count of delegates and superdelegates, not from the Democratic Party; Clinton’s campaign tweeted: “We’re flattered, @AP, but we’ve got primaries to win.” Sanders’s campaign criticized the call.
Sources: PBS ombudsman · Al Jazeera
18:40 — Deportations to Mexico in the 1930s
Right. In the “Mexican Repatriation” of the 1930s, raids, pressure and formal deportations sent hundreds of thousands of people to Mexico; estimates run from about 400,000 to 2 million. Historian Francisco Balderrama estimates over a million, about 60% of them US citizens.
Sources: NPR
19:00 — “Operation Wetback”
Right. The 1954 operation under Eisenhower did remove US citizens, including the American-born children of Mexican immigrants. The government claimed 1.1 to 1.3 million removals; historians put the real number nearer 250,000 to 300,000.
Sources: History.com · History News Network
21:52 — “About eight million Republican voters”
Correction. The Secretary of State’s September 2026 report counts 5,747,193 registered Republicans in California, and President Trump got 6,081,697 votes here in 2024. Both are fewer than Arizona’s 7.6 million people. California does have more Republicans than most states have voters, which was the point.
Sources: Secretary of State, Report of Registration, September 2026 · Secretary of State, 2024 presidential results · Census QuickFacts: Arizona
22:53 — Wyoming and Long Beach
Correction. The Census Bureau estimates Wyoming’s population at about 589,000 (2025) and Long Beach’s at about 451,000 (2024). Wyoming is still the least populous state, with the same two senators as California.
Sources: Census QuickFacts: Wyoming · Census QuickFacts: Long Beach
23:04 — Lyndon Johnson’s “chicken salad”
Right, roughly. The Senate-and-House version comes from George H. W. Bush, who said Johnson put it that way when Bush asked whether to give up his House seat to run for the Senate in 1970; it was recorded later, not at the time. Johnson’s best-documented use of the phrase was about Richard Nixon.
Sources: Wikipedia: Chicken shit · Barry Popik
23:24 — The Constitution, 1789
Right. The Constitution was ratified in 1788 and the new government began in 1789: the First Congress met on March 4 and Washington took office on April 30.
Sources: Wikipedia: History of the US Congress
26:42 — “An Ireland kind of situation”
Right. Ireland is militarily neutral and not a NATO member. It works with NATO through the Partnership for Peace, which it joined in 1999.
Sources: Wikipedia: Ireland–NATO relations
31:07 and 31:18 — “Nation-state” and “our own damn satellites”
Right that the governors said them — correction on who said which. Jerry Brown made the satellite pledge in December 2016, to the American Geophysical Union: “If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite.” “Nation-state” is Gavin Newsom’s phrase, used often in 2018–2020 and most famously in April 2020, buying protective equipment in the pandemic. Brown’s version, in 2015, was that California is “a separate nation” — “in our own minds”.
Sources: Eos: Brown at the AGU · Route Fifty: Newsom’s nation-state · PolitiFact
39:06 — “The amnesty under Reagan”
Right. President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act on November 6, 1986. It let most undocumented immigrants who had arrived before 1982 apply for legal status; about 2.7 million eventually became permanent residents.
Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
44:15 and 44:23 — Cheap EVs, and the US industry’s lead
Right on the price — correction on the comparison. BYD’s Seagull lists at about 69,800 yuan (roughly $9,800), and has been offered for less. But it and cars like it are small city hatchbacks with modest batteries; the China-built Tesla Model 3 starts at 235,500 yuan (about $32,000). The “lead blown twice” is opinion, but the history behind it is real: General Motors built the EV1 in the late 1990s and crushed most of them, and BYD has since overtaken Tesla in electric cars sold, delivering about 2.26 million in 2025 to Tesla’s 1.64 million.
Sources: Electrek: the Seagull · CarNewsChina: Model 3 price · AP via Anchorage Daily News
45:01 — US bases in the Gulf, and Iran
Right. Since the war began with US and Israeli strikes on February 28, 2026, Iran has hit US bases across the region with missiles and drones. NPR reported in September about 16 US sites hit and US personnel at the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain cut from about 8,000 to fewer than 100; Reuters, citing the Pentagon’s inspector general, reported “hundreds of structures” and dozens of aircraft hit. As of mid-October, talks had stalled and Iran had not been defeated.
Sources: NPR, September 14, 2026 · Reuters via BOE Report, October 15, 2026
45:46 — Sea drones against warships
Right. Ukraine’s sea drones have sunk Russian Black Sea Fleet ships, including, by Ukraine’s account backed by video, the corvette Ivanovets and the landing ship Tsezar Kunikov in February 2024 and the patrol ship Sergey Kotov that March.
Sources: Ukraine’s military intelligence · NBC/AP
46:16 and 46:30 — Michael Loebs’s run for governor
Right on the total — correction on the details. Michael Loebs ran in the September 14, 2021 recall election, listed with no party preference, and got 25,468 votes (0.35%). Alpine County gave him none. His best share anywhere was San Francisco’s 1.0%; among rural counties he did relatively well in Humboldt (0.7%) and Mono (0.5%).
Sources: Secretary of State, 2021 recall results by county
46:55 — “Fifty dollars a letter”
Correction. For the 2021 recall, a candidate’s statement in the state voter guide cost $25 a word, up to 250 words, for candidates who accepted the voluntary spending limits. Loebs’s statement ran to about 30 words plus his website, which at that rate is roughly $800.
Sources: Secretary of State memo 21079 · 2021 voter guide, candidate statements
47:58 — How Inyo County voted
Correction. Official results: Trump won Inyo County in 2016, 52.5% to Clinton’s 39.0%. Biden won it in 2020 by 14 votes, 4,634 to 4,620. Trump won it in 2024 by 267 votes, 4,468 to 4,201. Ash Seiter, the party’s vice chair, does live there, in Lone Pine.
Sources: Secretary of State, 2016 · 2020 · 2024
49:08, 54:16 and 55:05 — Ecotopia, bioregions and Planet Drum
Right. Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel Ecotopia is cited as an influence by the Cascadia movement, whose Department of Bioregion is a nonprofit; Planet Drum, founded in 1973 by Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft, is where bioregionalism began. We found no public page for the California Bioregions Regeneration Council, which Theo says is on Discord.
Sources: Cascadia Department of Bioregion · Wikipedia: Peter Berg
51:17 — Canada’s people, Germany’s economy
Right on Canada — correction on Germany. California has about 39.5 million people and Canada about 41.8 million. California’s economy, about $4.1–4.3 trillion, is the world’s fourth or fifth largest depending on the year, a step behind Germany’s, at about $4.7–5.0 trillion.
Sources: ABC7 · KFI · Statistics Canada, June 2026
51:48 and 52:38 — Lancaster, and Los Angeles’s water
Right. Long Beach to Lancaster is about 80–95 miles, an hour and a half with no traffic and longer in a normal Los Angeles day. The Owens Valley’s water goes to Los Angeles: the city’s Department of Water and Power bought most of the valley’s land and water rights in the early 1900s and owns about 90% of the private land in Inyo County. Strictly, it’s the City of Los Angeles’s utility, not the county.
Sources: LAist
58:25 — 44% would vote to leave
Right on the number — correction on the date. YouGov polled 500 California adults for the Independent California Institute from June 11 to 23, 2025, and the results were released June 29: 44% would vote to peacefully and legally withdraw from the United States, and 54% were opposed. The institute called it a record.
Sources: The Independent Californian
1:00:27 — Tina Peters
Right. Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado clerk, was convicted in 2024 over unauthorized access to election equipment. After a months-long pressure campaign by President Trump, including threats to Colorado’s federal funds, Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence on May 15, 2026, and she was paroled on June 1. Her lawyer has since described a plan for federal authorities to take custody of ballots after counting.
Sources: PBS NewsHour · Al Jazeera, June 1, 2026 · Newsweek
1:01:36 — “The president is unpopular”
Right. Polling averages in mid-October 2026 put President Trump’s approval at about 35–39% and disapproval at about 60–63%.
Sources: Wikipedia: Opinion polling on the second Trump presidency
1:03:29 — “A single-party system … with two parties”
Correction on the attribution. The usual wording is “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them”, widely attributed to Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first president. We found no original source for it, so even that attribution is unconfirmed.
Sources: Wikipedia: Julius Nyerere
1:03:59 — “Falling asleep in meetings”
Right. President Trump has appeared to doze at several televised events, including Cabinet meetings in December 2025 and May and June 2026. He denies sleeping. One viral clip was a fake; the real footage of that meeting showed him looking drowsy.
Sources: The New Republic · Snopes
1:04:13 — “Late eighties USSR”
Correction. The Soviet leaders who died in quick succession were Brezhnev (November 1982), Andropov (February 1984) and Chernenko (March 1985). From 1985 the country was led by Mikhail Gorbachev, who was 54 when he took over.
Sources: History.com
1:04:23 — Biden “walked off into the Amazon”
Correction. President Biden spoke at the Museu da Amazônia in Manaus, Brazil, on November 17, 2024. A short clip of him walking toward the trees went viral, but the full video shows he left by the planned exit path, which the trees hid, followed by staff and reporters.
Sources: Check Your Fact · Mediaite
1:04:59 — “PSL controls the Peace and Freedom Party”
Largely supported. We found no reporting that uses the word “controls”, but the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s candidate has won the Peace and Freedom Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, 2020 and 2024, taking 99 of about 130 central committee votes in 2024, and the committee turned down Jill Stein in 2016.
Sources: Wikipedia: Peace and Freedom Party · Peace and Freedom Party, 2024 nominee
What we didn’t check
Opinions and predictions — about the United States, the parties, health insurers, AI, the military and the midterms — from the hosts and the guest aren’t fact-checked, and neither are characterizations such as “Gestapo” or “concentration camps”. Theo’s and Sean’s accounts of the party’s early years — its growth after the 2016 primary, its internal disputes and the people involved — are their own recollections. The CNP’s platform, the California DEAL, is described as the party’s position, not checked.