Kamala Harris has previously said she supports a ban on hydraulic fracking, but last night she used the vice presidential debate to reiterate Joe Biden’s promise that a Biden-Harris administration would not move to halt the fossil fuel extraction technique, even as scientists warn that it is a driver of climate change.

This pledge — made while Harris’s own state is experiencing a climate-intensified “gigafire” — has been depicted by national reporters as savvy and smart politics for a Democratic ticket that supposedly must embrace fracking in order to win the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.

There’s just one problem with that storyline: It isn’t substantiated by empirical data. Indeed, the idea that a fracking ban is political poison in Pennsylvania is a fantastical tale fabricated by a national press corps that refuses to let public opinion data get in the way of fossil fuel propaganda and a manufactured narrative.