Ad Misleads on Harris’ Fracking Position, Uses Debatable Figure for Fracking-Reliant Jobs in PA

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. Vice President Kamala Harris has said that she will not attempt to ban fracking if elected president, a reversal of a position that she took during her 2020 presidential campaign. But a TV ad from Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick claims that Harris “would make” hundreds of thousands of fracking-dependent jobs in Pennsylvania “disappear.” Even if Harris wanted to ban fracking, which she now says she doesn’t, she alone would only be able to do so on federal land, where presidents have the authority to restrict drilling for oil and natural gas, experts told us. A ban on state or private land, where the vast majority of oil and natural gas production in the country takes place, would require an act of Congress. It’s also questionable that more than 300,000 jobs in Pennsylvania “depend on fracking,” as the ad claims. That estimate of indirect and induced jobs attached to the state’s wider oil and natural gas industry comes from a 2023 report commissioned by an industry trade association. Others say the estimate is inflated. The McCormick ad, released in tandem with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, began airing across the...