Republican presidential candidates headed to South Carolina for their sixth debate of the 2016 campaign season, hosted by Fox Business News and airing at 9 PM EST (0200 GMT). Frontrunner Donald Trump is expected to be the focus of much enemy fire at the event, which takes place 18 days before the Iowa caucuses officially kick off primary balloting. There is no subject-specific focus; immigration, terrorism and gun violence are likely to come up. Expect discussion of Gov. Nikki Haley’s rebuttal to the State of the Union speech Tuesday night, in which she urged Americans to resist “the siren call of the angriest voices”—a comment widely viewed as a shot at Trump that has met with establishment applause and conservative anger.

Grantees Center for New Community and the Southern Poverty Law Center were among the advocates drawing attention to a Tea Party convention this weekend in South Carolina that several GOP candidates (Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee and Santorum) are scheduled to attend; among the speakers are several known anti-immigrant groups, as well as some anti-Muslim voices. Another group associated with hate speech, the white supremacist group New Century Foundation, has been doing robocalls in Iowa announcing “we don’t need Muslims” and urging voters to back Trump. The GOP frontrunner today “disavowed” the group’s endorsement. 

The Center for American Progress was among grantees cranking up for rapid response to Thursday night’s debate, disseminating a number of resources to counter arguments against the president’s executive actions to quell gun violence via social and legacy media.

The American Immigration Council was among the groups quoted in a story about how research does not support the idea that there is a link between migrants and crime.

U.S. press has been paying close attention to the changing attitudes toward migrants in Europe, as the coverage of the attacks in Cologne and the tightening of restrictions in places like Denmark fuel anti-immigrant sentiment stateside. The New York Times aired an interesting debate on the impulse to roll up the welcome mat.

Grantees circulated a piece in the New Republic arguing that the Supreme Court should take up the challenge to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration—and uphold them.

Reports that six US military bases were under consideration as possible places to house unaccompanied minors from Central America and Mexico has brought the national conversation home in some places far from the front-line border states. North Dakota Republicans have been pushing back on the idea of using the Grand Forks Air Force Base as shelter for up to 300 children. Officials indicated that a decision on whether to use the facility in this fashion was not imminent.

Among other grantee activities:

--The Sikh Coalition is pressing the FBI for a hate crime investigation into an assault on a Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles by a passenger who called him a terrorist.

--The Marshall Project published a primer to the GOP debate focusing on where candidates stand on gun violence and domestic terrorism among other criminal justice issues.

--The Center for American Progress published a piece on ThinkProgress arguing that the administration’s immigration raids were “turning Latino communities into ghost towns.”