Elections are messy, beautiful, nerve-racking things. They ask a lot of people: to pay attention, to weigh competing claims, to figure out where and when to vote, to make sense of a flood of mailers, ads, texts, and social media posts. By the time a midterm election rolls around, that flood can feel more like a tidal wave. The 2026 midterm election is no exception, and in the middle of all that noise, it can be genuinely hard to know what to trust. That’s where we come in. The News & Observer is partnering with the Center for Media Engagement,…

Paragraph 1: Think about the last time you answered an unknown number and heard a recorded voice promising a free cruise, a refund, or a warning that your Social Security number had been compromised. That moment of suspicion is familiar to people everywhere, because telecom and cyber fraud have become a kind of ugly side effect of our connected world. Scam calls, phishing texts, fake online shopping sites, and fraudulent investment apps do not respect borders; they reach from cramped rooms in one country into the living rooms of another within seconds. Both China and the United States have felt…