The delusion is in MAGA supporters still believing Trump is some anti-elite “drain the swamp” champion for the working class—when, in reality, his inauguration featured the world’s richest billionaires (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and others with over $1 trillion in combined wealth) seated prominently behind him on the platform, grinning like they own the place. It was a blatant display of oligarchy, not populism.
The sealed order in the Abrego Garcia case that I wrote about in Sunday night’s “The Week Ahead” column was unsealed today. This is in the government’s hastily manufactured criminal case against him, which seemed, at the time, to be some sort of face-saving gesture after they were forced to return him to the U.S. from El Salvador, where he was incarcerated in CECOT prison.
The case is before Federal District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. in the Middle District of Tennessee. It turned out that my conjecture that the sealed motion might have something to do with Abrego Garcia’s motions to dismiss the prosecution because it’s vindictive was on target. As we know from our discussion of this type of motion in the context of the Virginia prosecution of Jim Comey, it’s difficult for a defendant to prove, and cases are only rarely dismissed on this basis. But the timeline here has always seemed to suggest it could be a serious possibility in this one.
In the newly unsealed motion, the Judge goes straight to the heart of the government’s contention that the local U.S. Attorney made the decision to indict, so it was not influenced by any alleged vindictiveness on the part of higher-ups in Washington, writing, “The central question after Abrego established a prima facie case of vindictiveness is what information in the government’s control sheds light on its new decision to prosecute Abrego, after removing him from the United States without criminal charges. These documents show that McGuire [the local U.S. Attorney] did not act alone and to the extent McGuire had input on the decision to prosecute, he shared it with Singh [a Lawyer in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office] and others. … Specifically, the government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences.”
This, needless to say, is not good news for the government. To understand just how bad it is, let’s review a bit of the case’s history:
In October, Judge Crenshaw found that Abrego Garcia had come forward with evidence to suggest that a reasonable person might believe the indictment was motivated by vindictiveness on the part of the government. When that happens, the government has to offer evidence that the prosecution was undertaken for legitimate reasons, for instance, that newly discovered evidence made a case previously rejected as weak strong enough to be indicted.
Judge Crenshaw granted Abrego Garcia’s request to conduct discovery on the issue and have an evidentiary hearing. But he noted that it was entirely possible that “no fire will be discovered under all the smoke.”
The indictment stems from a 2022 traffic stop that did not result in Abrego Garcia’s arrest, or even a traffic ticket. The case file at Homeland Security Investigations remained open, but no action was ever taken on it, and the case was closed shortly after he was deported.
Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15, 2025 (despite the existence of an order that prohibited it).
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers sued on March 24, 2025, and in less than two weeks, a district judge ordered his return to the U.S.
Both the Fourth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Abrego Garcia, holding the government responsible for “facilitating” his return. The Supreme Court ruled on April 10.
Just days after the Supreme Court’s decision, the investigation into the traffic stop was reopened by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) under DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s direction.
Ten days after that, an HSI agent reached out to the acting U.S. Attorney in Nashville.
The case was indicted on May 21, 2025, only 58 days after Abrego Garcia filed suit in Maryland seeking his return to the U.S.
As Judge Crenshaw noted back in October, “All of this stands in stark contrast to the 832 days the HSI investigation into Abrego remained pending, without referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Tennessee for prosecution.” In other words, the case wasn’t even deemed significant enough to ask a prosecutor to take a look at it. It was only after Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit challenging the legality of his deportation—and the Supreme Court confirmation that he should be returned—that HSI seemed to take the case seriously. In the absence of any explanation from the government, the Judge correctly found these facts gave rise to a presumption of vindictiveness.
Sometimes, though, where there’s smoke, there is, in fact, fire.
The newly unsealed order relates to two motions filed by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers in the course of trying to obtain the discovery the court had ordered they were entitled to: one to compel the government to comply with some of the requests and one to obtain testimony from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and some of the key people in his office. The government had submitted “over 3,000 documents” to the Judge for him to review privately, because the government maintained it wasn’t obligated to turn them over.
Judge Crenshaw has now ordered the government to “disclose to Abrego a sub-set of the over 3,000 documents that are relevant to the narrow issue of whether the government’s new decision to prosecute Abrego, after deciding not to do so, ‘was tainted by improper motivation’ arising from Abrego’s success in the Maryland civil case.” The government doesn’t have to turn over the remainder of the 3,000+ documents. The Judge asked for additional briefing on the government’s motion to prevent Blanche and his subordinates from testifying.
At the time the motion was filed, the government argued that the decision to prosecute was made by Acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire in Nashville, so it could not have been vindictiveness of the part of higher-ups in Washington. But as the Judge points out at length in this order, “at the time of Abrego’s arrest, Blanche linked Abrego’s criminal charges to his successful civil lawsuit in Maryland.” Blanche had “volunteered” in a television appearance that the government’s criminal investigation had started up after the judge in the civil case in Maryland accused the government of misconduct when it deported Abrego Garcia. So, Judge Crenshaw orders the government to provide the defendant with documents that “support Abrego’s argument. Specifically, some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision, with others who may or may not have acted with an improper motivation.” If Abrego Garcia can use the discovery to successfully wipe out the government’s contention that the decision to indict wasn’t made in D.C., he may be on the road to getting his case dismissed.
Some of the documents the government must now turn over for the defense to use include:
An email from one of Blanche’s subordinates to the local U.S. Attorney that “made clear that Abrego’s criminal prosecution was a ‘top priority’ for the Deputy Attorney General’s office (Blanche).”
An email from the U.S. Attorney to his staff, advising them that “DAG (Blanche) and PDAG would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later.”
There is also an email from the Blanche subordinate to the local U.S. Attorney advising him that they should “‘close[ly] hold’ the draft indictment until the group ‘g[o]t clearance,’ to file.” The Judge comments that “The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, not just McGuire.”
These developments are all phrased in the polite language used in courts by judges and lawyers, but they are jaw dropping. The government represented to the court that the decision to prosecute Abrego Garcia was made locally, disconnected from his effort to enforce his constitutional rights and challenge his deportation. Their own emails appear to contradict that assertion. The government will still have the opportunity to come forward and explain away the presumption of vindictiveness. I’ve seen a number of cases during my 25 years at DOJ where a defendant argued vindictiveness. In every case, the government explained why the prosecution was legitimate, and in every case, it prevailed. I’ve never seen a case where the government made representations to a judge that were refuted by its own internal communications. It’s exceptionally unusual for prosecutors to have to take the witness stand to defend their own conduct. But Abrego Garcia’s case, which has been highly irregular from the start, may well be the one where that happens.
This is all about due process. Back in April, as Abrego Garcia’s situation was coming to light, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that there was “a lot of evidence” Abrego Garcia was a convicted member of the gang MS-13, saying that “I saw it this morning.” We were supposed to take her word for it and leave Abrego Garcia to his fate of torture in a Salvadoran prison. That’s why the rule of law and due process matter. If it’s up to Trump, anyone can be swept up and swept away and have no recourse. Our ability to go to court to protect ourselves when the government gets it wrong is more and more important.
During his monumental filibuster earlier this year, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said that this was our moral moment and that inaction was not enough. He asked: “Where does the Constitution live? On paper, or in our hearts?” Here at Civil Discourse, it lives in our hearts and stays on our minds.
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Hey Tumblr, I forgot to tell you… but look at that!! First Assigned Male book in COLOR! 32 pages of AWESOME! It even features comics that aren’t online!
This is a full analysis of much of the reportage we receive all the time. Dr. Hogan has plenty of time to research, compare, let drafts marinate, and especially, to verify. It’s quite a long read, and while I so wish to put it all here, it’s too long for a blog post. It is highly informational, and it can really help a person trying to suss out news without being emotional or overwhelmed. So, here is part of Dr. Hogan’s Substack column. There is one outlet named, but they are not the only outlet included; he names Meidas Touch Network. They are not the only ones, nor are they by any stretch of imagination the worst, and I was gratified to find I am not the only one who’s noticed changes with MTN’s presentations! Anyway, here’s a snippet with the link & title just below. Read or not, up to you; thanks for your attention to this vital issue! 🙂
Throughout this publication, I speak only of the American acronym MTN, known publicly as MeidasTouchNetwork. I do so deliberately: the letters MTN already belong to a continental giant — Africa’s and Middle Eastern’s great signal‑bearer — a network‑mountain whose reach spans nations and whose currents carry nearly 300 million voices across the horizon.
To avoid confusing these two mountains, I name only the American one.
This work maintains that platforms such as Substack, YouTube, X, and TikTok are not built to honour verification:
They are engines calibrated for velocity, for heat, for the clean lines of ideological contrast. Within such machinery, truth becomes a faint watermark — present, but always subordinate to the algorithm’s appetite for motion.
In this environment, journalism becomes indistinguishable from:
political branding
influencer performance
affective storytelling
partisan mobilization
I MTN as the exemplar because its signal is a typographic monolith — a glyph large enough to be seen across continents. I intend no diminishment of it. What I observe is that MTN emerges inside an epistemic script already dissolving at the edges. It is not a transgressor of journalistic form; it is written into a page where the old rules have faded from the margins.
CHAPTER I:
THE PARTISAN SENSORIUM: MEDIA, AFFECT, AND THE NEW POLITICAL SUBJECT
The Return of the Affective State
Every era produces its own political subject. The Enlightenment imagined a rational citizen; the industrial age imagined a disciplined worker; the broadcast era imagined a passive viewer. The digital age, however, has produced something different: a subject constituted through affective immediacy, algorithmic visibility, and continuous political stimulation.
This chapter introduces the concept of the partisan sensorium — the affective infrastructure through which contemporary political subjects perceive, interpret, and emotionally inhabit the world. It is within this sensorium that organizations like MeidasTouch emerge, thrive, and fail.
The partisan sensorium is not simply a media environment; it is a mode of being.
(snip-there is more on the page. He’s very kindly outlined his work, so it’s very organized. Do take a few minutes and look it over!)
More tRump stupidity / tRump putting his branding everywhere / is he the president or chief architect / Fluffing tRump’s ego / tRump’s grifting / tRump’s lies & misinformation
That’s $100,000/head. tRump doesn’t care as he spends the taxpayers money / countries treasury like a drunk spending other peoples money. He is a tryant in that he thiinks that money is his todo what he wants even though the law states that only congress controls spending. This is human traficing plain and simple. Hugs
In September 2025, Turner’s agency sponsored a far-right anti-LGBTQ extremist to lead a massive Christian nationalist rally on Washington DC’s National Mall, the first-ever such event formally sanctioned by the federal government.
In June, it was reported that Turner is moving to take over the former National Science Foundation building as his agency’s headquarters, where he has demanded a full-floor executive suite, a private dining room, and parking for his five personal cars.
It is not lost on me that the above story is a woman with a career telling other woman they need to be stay at home mothers / trad wives to please a man because of religious dogma. Hugs
Yarborough appeared here last month for his bill that would ban Pride flags at government buildings, including public schools.
He appeared here in April 2025 for his bill that would ban thousands of books, including classic novels, over sexual content.
Yarborough appeared here March 2025 for his bill that would ban civil rights ordinances enacted by cities and counties, including, presumably, LGBTQ protections.
He first appeared on JMG in 2010, when as a member of the Jacksonville City Council he declared that gays, Muslims, and atheists should not be permitted to hold public office, otherwise God will smite the country.
In April 2023, lawmakers approved Yarborough’s ban on drag shows before minors. Yarborough is also the author several anti-trans bills.
Borrero appeared here in 2023 for a ban on Pride flags that died in committee. He tried again last year, but that attempt died after passage in its first committee hearing.
Borerro first appeared on JMG in January 2022 for his successful bill mandating that Florida public schools recognize an annual “Victims Of Communism Day.”
Oltmann appeared here last year when he called for executing Joe Biden, adding, “I want to send the mainstream media to the gallows, radical leftists to the gallows, traitors to our nation to the gallows, and they all kind of fit in the same bucket.”
In 2022, he appeared here when he announced that he would lead a “well-armed action” to install Kari Lake as governor of Arizona.
In 2021, he appeared here when he called for executing the 19 Republican Senators who voted to avert a government shutdown.
This AG was not elected to any office, he was handpicked and given his job by DeathSantis. Both are Christian nationalist who feel it is great to force their religion on others even as they do not live by their own church doctrines in any way. They seem to feel forcing the public to live by their church doctrines or what ever view they think their god endorses is perfectly fine regardless if others disagree. They are the first to scream the loudest if their rituals or they think their rights to oppress others is interfered with, but they also seem unable to give others the same rights they demand for themselves. Hugs
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) is urging the Pensacola City Council to shut down a Christmas-themed drag show, which he has deemed “demonic” and “harmful” to children, despite how it is exclusively for adults over the age of 18.
The city’s Saenger Theatre plans to host “A Drag Queen Christmas” on December 23. The website says fans should “expect a fabulous remix of classic Christmas hits, dazzling themed variety performances, and interactive moments to share your Christmas cheer.”
A letter from Uthmeier claimed the show “openly mocks one of the most sacred holidays in the Christian faith” and expressed horror that some of the queens evoke “satanic imagery” in their outfits or characters. He also decried the fact that it will be playing at the same time as the city’s family-centered Winterfest.
“So, while Penscola children are taking pictures with Santa, men dressed as garish women in demonic costumes will be engaged in obscene behavior mere feet away,” he ranted, even though the drag show will take place inside a theater where the children at the festival won’t be able to see it.
The Pensacola city attorney has reportedly refused to cancel the show, saying it would violate the drag show production company’s First Amendment rights and the city’s contract with the theater’s management company.
Uthmeier, however, said the city – which owns the theater – has a legal right to supersede the management company’s decision to put on the show if it deems a performance detrimental to public health or safety. He said the drag show meets this criterion because it will be taking place near children at Winterfest, even though they won’t be able to see it.
“While the First Amendment safeguards freedom of expression, it does not require a city to platform and endorse disgusting, obscene content that denigrates its residents’ religious beliefs,” Uthmeier concluded.
He claimed it may even amount to religious discrimination and could cause legal issues for the city, especially if one of the “deranged performers” were “to expose themselves to the kids” nearby. The preposterous idea that LGBTQ+ people are inherently a danger to children has long been used by the right to fearmonger and stir anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.
The letter comes after a group of churches in the city launched a campaign to pressure the Pensacola City Council to cancel the drag show. The controversy has caused an uproar in the community, the Pensacola News Journal reported, where pro- and anti-LGBTQ+ residents continue to clash over whether the drag show should be permitted to go on.
At a packed and contentious city council meeting in early October, resident Jermaine Williams called out the hypocrisy of those claiming to oppose the show on religious grounds.
“I mean, we see how y’all vote,” Williams said. “Half of these people that spoke today wouldn’t know Jesus if they stared him in the face.”
Another resident, Stephen McCollum, gushed that drag queens are “more than entertainers.”
“They’re small business owners. They’re advocates and they’re educators who use creativity to uplift others and welcome all. They welcome all, demonstrating that this art form is more than just a performance. It’s a form of connection, and it’s a form of community, and it’s a form of hope.”
Uthmeier has long used his position to vilify and terrorize LGBTQ+ people. Earlier this year, he launched a crusade against a Life Time Fitness in Palm Beach Gardens after discovering that the private business had a trans inclusive policy. State law requires people use facilities aligned with their sex assigned at birth, but that does not apply to private businesses.
Uthmeier, however, claimed otherwise in a letter sent to the gym. He falsely claimed that trans inclusion leads to “assaults, exploitation, and fear” and that he was merely doing this to protect women and girls.
Even after Life Time said it would comply with his demands, Uthmeier posted a video in which he visited the gym in person to make sure they are “not allowing trans women into women’s bathrooms, not in Florida,” and “actually following the law.”
“It appears they are,” he reported to followers, though it’s unclear how he could have confirmed this without major privacy violations of the individuals entering and exiting the locker rooms there.
This past October, Uthmeier also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a parental rights activist who dubiously claims her child’s middle school helped her child secretly transition. She has now petitioned the Supreme Court to take her case.
Uthmeier’s brief claims government officials across the United States “are fundamentally altering the upbringing of children and keeping parents in the dark” with “secret transition” policies.
These policies do not involve schools encouraging students to be trans or transition, but rather to support any students who willingly communicate that their gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth and to allow the student to choose when to share that private information with their parents. For some students with anti-trans parents, telling them could be dangerous.
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Claims about economy, war in Ukraine, measles were among the top falsehoods of past year
President Donald Trump listens during a ceremony for the presentation of the Mexican Border Defense Medal in the White House on Dec. 15, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
ANALYSIS —Since he entered politics, President Donald Trump has been a regular on our end-of-year list of the most egregious and noteworthy falsehoods and distortions. With Trump back in the White House in 2025, it’s no surprise that he dominates this year’s whoppers.
Trump is known for rhetoric that uses inaccurate and exaggerated claims, which he repeats again and again. In his second term, several such claims were used to justify a whirlwind of policy changes and announcements. Using a method economists said wasn’t legitimate, he calculated “reciprocal tariffs” for goods imported from other countries. In firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he claimed without evidence that low job growth figures were “phony” or “rigged.” In supporting a freeze on foreign aid, Trump said $50 million was being used to buy condoms for Hamas in Gaza, a claim refuted by the contractor identified by the State Department.
In a falsehood-filled press conference, Trump, along with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., touted an unproven link between autism and taking Tylenol during pregnancy. Kennedy, long known for spreading inaccurate information about vaccines, also features prominently in this year’s compilation. In his efforts to change the nation’s vaccine and public health recommendations, he pushed unproven therapeutics for treating measles and made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.
There are other politicians on our full list below, which is in no particular order.
Analysis
Tylenol and autism. Trump said a late September press conference would reveal “one of the biggest [medical] announcements … in the history of our country,” but instead the headline news was an unproven link between autism and the use of Tylenol, or acetaminophen, during pregnancy. Trump repeatedly told pregnant women, “don’t take Tylenol,” and offered the unsound medical advice to “tough it out.”
The administration didn’t point to any new original research on the topic, which has been studied. Some studies have shown an association between using acetaminophen during pregnancy and an increased likelihood of having a child with autism, but no causal link has been established. Recent research indicates there likely isn’t a link.As for Trump’s medical advice, untreated pain or fever during pregnancy can be harmful to both mother and child, and medical groups have long recommended pru45reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedent use of the drug — taking acetaminophen when needed in consultation with a doctor.
HHS Secretary Kennedy later falsely claimed that two circumcision-related studies provided evidence that acetaminophen causes autism when given to children. That’s not what the studies found. In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed a webpage to say that its previous statement that “vaccines do not cause autism” is “not an evidence-based claim,” echoing Kennedy’s prior misrepresentations of science.
Inflation has not “stopped.” As cost-of-living issues continue to be a top concern for voters, Trump has repeatedly claimed that inflation is “stopped,” “dead” or at a lower rate than it actually is, falsely saying the country saw “the worst inflation” in history (or “probably” did so) under former President Joe Biden. That’s not the case. This month, in a speech about the economy in Pennsylvania, Trump wrongly said he “inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.”
The annualized inflation rate was 3 percent when Trump took office in January, and it was 3 percent again for the 12 months ending in September, the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation did rise considerably in the first half of Biden’s term, but it then cooled substantially. From July to December 2024, the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index was below 3 percent.
The CPI went up 2.7 percent for the 12 months ending in November, BLS said today, noting that data collection for the month began Nov. 14 due to the government shutdown.
The worst inflation increase year-to-year occurred after World War I, a 23.7 percentrise from June 1919 to June 1920. There have been numerous other times with inflation higher than the peak point under Biden.
As we head into the midterms, we’d caution voters that politicians often blame their opponents for rising prices, but the causes of inflation are usually more complicated than that. For instance, Labor Day claims from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee blamed House Republicans for “driving up the price of burgers.” But drought conditions in recent years, among other factors, drove up the cost of ground beef.
Russia, not Ukraine, started the war. After U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia in February to discuss an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Trump falsely reprimanded Ukraine, saying, “You should have never started it.” He said Ukraine “could have made a deal.” As we wrote, the war started on Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion, two days after Russia recognized two separatist territories in eastern Ukraine as independent states and sent Russian troops into Ukraine’s Donbas region. While Russian President Vladimir Putin gave “a long list of grievances” to justify the attack, Jeffrey Mankoff, a senior associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an April 2022 report that the “fundamental issue” was “the legitimacy of Ukrainian identity and statehood.”
Throughout the year, Trump also repeatedly and wrongly claimed that the U.S. has provided more money in aid to Ukraine than Europe has. The opposite is true.
“Twisted and manipulated” report that wasn’t.When the Washington Post reported via anonymous sources that a government intelligence assessment concluded the Venezuelan government was not directing the migration of members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the U.S., Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, dismissed the report.She said those “behind this illegal leak of classified intelligence” had “twisted and manipulated [the information] to convey the exact opposite finding.” But when a redacted copy of the intelligence memo was publicly released the following month, it corroborated the Washington Post’s account. According to the intelligence memo, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s “regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
A few months later, Gabbard wrongly claimed to have uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”
RFK Jr.’s dubious measles therapeutics. In March, during a measles outbreak in Texas, Kennedy claimed there were “very good results” from treating patients with a certain steroid and antibiotic, as well as cod liver oil, saying “those therapeutics have really been ignored” by the CDC “for a long, long time.” Neither the steroid nor antibiotic is a specific treatment for measles, experts said, and cod liver oil, which contains vitamin A, also isn’t recommended.
Vitamin A itself is recommended around the world for measles, as a couple high-dose bursts of the vitamin have been shown to reduce measles mortality in lower-income countries where deficiencies exist. But the benefit is unclear in the U.S. and countries without such deficiencies. Cod liver oil would need to be consumed in a potentially dangerous amount to get the vitamin A dosage used for measles.
In other comments, Kennedy downplayedthe outbreak, which ultimately killed two children, and made unsupported and misleading claims about the measles vaccine, which is safe and effective in preventing the highly contagious disease.
No evidence of “phony” Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers. After a BLS report showed less-than-stellar job growth, Trump lashed out at the BLS commissioner, saying “her numbers were wrong,” “phony” and “rigged,” and firing her. There’s no evidence anyone manipulated the data.William Beach, the BLS commissioner during Trump’s first term, wrote on X that the firing of Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, a Biden appointee who had worked in the federal government for more than 20 years, was “totally groundless” and “sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”
Trump also wrongly claimed that “days before the election,” McEntarfer “came out with these beautiful numbers trying to get somebody else elected” and then reduced the employment estimates “right after the election.” That’s not what happened. On Nov. 1, 2024, just before the election, the BLS report showed growth of just 12,000 jobs in October and downward revisions for the prior two months.
Signalgate: Not “total exoneration.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that he received “total exoneration” in an investigative report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General regarding a Signal group chat about a military attack in Yemen. But the report contradicted that assessment, concluding that Hegseth’s messages “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” The report also faulted Hegseth for using a personal cell phone to relay sensitive DoD information and for not retaining the Signal conversations as official records, as required by federal law and Pentagon policy.
Trump’s chart on “reciprocal” tariffs. In a Rose Garden announcement in April of sweeping new “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump held aloft a chart that claimed to give a breakdown of the tariffs other countries charge the U.S. and the corresponding tariff that the U.S. would as a result impose against those countries. But it turned out the values assigned to other countries were not, in fact, the tariff rates other countries were placing on imports of U.S. goods, but rather a calculation of what the administration deemed would be necessary to balance trade with various countries. Economists told us that was not a legitimate way to calculate reciprocal tariffs for countries.
The misleading “reciprocal tariffs” chart, which informed the tariff rates he then set, was just one of the president’s false and misleading talking points on tariffs. Among them, Trump repeatedly, and wrongly, claimed that the tariffs he imposed would be paid by other countries and not, at least partly, by American consumers in the form of higher prices.
mRNA vaccine misinformation. Kennedy, and HHS, made a series of false statements about mRNA vaccines, the technology behind the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. In announcing the termination of half a billion dollars of funding for mRNA vaccine projects, Kennedy said: “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” claiming that “the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”
The science — peer-reviewed scientific literature — and many experts refute that. Studies repeatedly demonstrated the vaccines’ effectiveness and safety, with some estimates of millions of lives saved during the pandemic, and the technology has shown encouraging results against the flu. HHS later released a 181-page list of papers that claimed to show vaccine harms, a document that wasn’t peer-reviewed and was written by people who have spread unsupported claims about COVID-19 vaccination and treatment.
Kennedy also claimed the COVID-19 vaccines posed a “profound risk” to children, even though serious side effects are rare. In ending funding to Moderna for developing mRNA vaccines against influenza viruses, HHS spokespeople wrongly said the mRNA technology is “under-tested.”
DOGE distortions, $50 million not for condoms for Gaza. Before taking office, Trump said entrepreneur Elon Musk would head his new Department of Government Efficiency. Musk had initially promised to cut “at least $2 trillion” in wasteful government spending. Foreign aid was one of the first targets, with Trump setting the tone for questionable information that would plague the program by claiming, “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.” The contractor identified by the State Department said it provides hospital services in Gaza and has not used U.S. funds “to procure or distribute condoms.”
In his address to Congress in March, Trump made the inflated claim that DOGE had “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” However, the DOGE website at the time stated that the department had only generated $105 billion in savings and only purported to provide evidence to support $19.8 billion of that total. (The website currently claims DOGE created $214 billion in savings, providing information on about $61 billion. It’s unclear how much, if any, of that is related to fraud.)
Trump also claimed DOGE had identified millions of dead individuals who were incorrectly labeled as alive in the Social Security database, and misleadingly claimed that “money is being paid to many of them.” Social Security Administration internal audits showed that the number of dead recipients still being sent benefits is likely in the thousands, not the millions.
Crime claims behind National Guard deployments. In making claims about high crime or lawlessness in cities as justification for the deployment of National Guard troops, Trump at times exaggerated or got the facts wrong. In early October, he claimed that Portland, Oregon, “is burning to the ground” or has “fires all over the place.” But Portland Fire & Rescue reported few calls about potential fires near a federal building, the site of protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Portland Police told us the protests “are nowhere near city-wide.”
Trump’s statements about the need for National Guard troops in Portland and Chicago focused on overall crime. “These are unsafe places,” he said. But in court filings and other correspondence, the administration said troops were needed to protect ICE officials and federal property.
In Washington, D.C., where the president is the commander in chief of the National Guard, Trump wrongly said that “murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever.” Murders had been declining since 2023, when the rate was less than half the rate in 1991. After a federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement, Trump falsely said an 11-day period with no murders was the “first time that’s taken place in years.” There was a 16-day period earlier this year.
Molly Sprayregen (She/Her)November 10, 2025, 11:00 am ESTFlorida Attorney General James Uthmeier speaks about the arrest of 28 members of the Mongols motorcycle gang during a press conference at the Stephen Saboda Training Center near Daytona Beach, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. | © Nigel Cook/News-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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