Sue Lander

[Daniel Dale @ddale8]

Here are quick fact checks on 16 of President Trump’s claims last night.
1) He claimed, “Food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down.” Not even close to true. Federal figures show overall prices keep rising, food prices keep rising, and far more products are getting more expensive than getting cheaper.
2) He claimed, “Every single promise I made you as a candidate, I’ve delivered on.” Clearly not . The war in Ukraine didn’t end within 24 hours of his inauguration, inflation isn’t dead, Mexico hasn’t paid for the wall. Etc.
3) He claimed “over $20 trillion” has been invested in the US this term. This figure is fiction even the White House can’t justify. The White House website says “$11.2 trillion,” and even that is a wild exaggeration.
4) He claimed he "won the presidency three times,” then explicitly said he won in 2020. Just lies.
5) He claimed his ballroom will use “zero tax dollars.” The final breakdown is unclear, but the Secret Service has acknowledged that public dollars will be used at least for security measures related to the project, which includes an underground complex. Some Senate Republicans tried this year to get hundreds of millions in public money allocated in part to project-related security.
6) He claimed the ballroom project is “under budget.” There is no actual public budget for it, and cost estimates have steadily increased – from $200 million to $300 million to $400 million to $600 million.
7) He claimed that former NC governor and now Senate candidate Roy Cooper released the man who went on to kill Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte in 2025. But NC’s corrections department has explained that the man served his full robbery sentence and was not released early. The man's release, in 2020, happened months before the state's 2021 lawsuit settlement over pandemic-era prison conditions that resulted in some other offenders getting released sooner than expected.
8) He claimed Texas Senate candidate James Talarico was seen wearing a mask just “a few months ago.” No evidence of this; other Republicans have mocked Talarico for masking in 2022, four years ago. Trump also claimed, in what mayyy have been a joke, that Talarico was recently spotted running away and throwing up after eating meat at a barbecue. Clearly didn’t happen.
9) He said gas prices were just $1.85 per gallon in Iowa when he visited before the Iran war. The Iowa average that day was $2.57, per AAA, and GasBuddy found just four stations that day under $2 – at $1.97, to be specific – out of 2,036 stations it tracked there. (Maybe Trump was referring to the E85 ethanol blend only some cars can use, which was around $1.85, but he certainly didn’t say that.)
10) He said the US has the lowest drug prices in the world. Experts say that is not true as a general claim, and the White House hasn’t substantiated it.
11) He boasted that more Americans are working than ever before. That’s true, but it’s a basically meaningless stat because the number of people working rises over time as the population rises. Better ways to measure the labor market show that it has been far from historically strong this term.
12) He claimed “zero illegal aliens” have crossed the border over the last 15 months. Not true; state and federal authorities have acknowledged some migrants evaded apprehension during that period. The Trump administration says it hasn’t “released” any migrants into the country after apprehension, but that’s different than having zero people crossing at all.
13) He claimed “25 million” migrants poured into the country under Biden. This is another fictional figure. Through the last full month of Biden’s term, the government had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants…including millions who were rapidly expelled. Even counting “gotaways,” which the House GOP estimated at under 2.5 million, it’s not 25 million people.
14) He claimed Biden or Democrats allowed “11,888 murderers” to enter the country. This is a gross distortion of federal data about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s first administration, and were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, but remained in the US because they were still serving prison sentences or their original countries wouldn't take them back.
15) He claimed he’d achieved “no tax on Social Security.” His 2025 law created an additional temporary deduction for seniors, expiring after 2028, but the administration has acknowledged millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits.
16) He claimed “trillions of dollars in tariff revenue have come in.” It was in the hundreds of billions, not close to even $1 trillion, even before the big refunds prompted by the Supreme Court decision that ruled some of the tariffs illegal.
More details here: https://t.co/y3zdTtoxzx

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

Gloria Steinem will go down in history as one of the most important activists of all time, leading a movement for the equality of half the world: its women.

She lived a long and passionate life dedicated to this vital and basic cause.

She did it with intellectual precision, emotional awareness, humour and beauty. May she rest in peace and may the cause thrive.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Pflugerville, Texas just killed its Flock Safety contract unanimously after a resident filed a public records request and found 459 outside law enforcement agencies had run 1.6 million searches on the city's 28 cameras in six months. Local police ran 5,078. That's 315 outside searches for every one by Pflugerville PD. The city had told residents nationwide data sharing was turned off. The city manager ordered the lenses physically covered before the council even voted. Pflugerville joins 56 municipalities that have cut ties with Flock in 2026.

My Take
One resident with a public records form did what the city, the police department, and Flock either couldn't or didn't want to do. That's how thin the oversight was on a system searching 1.6 million plates. Nobody was auditing this. Nobody was checking whether the assurances they gave residents were true. It took a guy filing paperwork to find out.

56 cities have walked away from Flock this year and I think that number accelerates once other communities realize they can file the same request. Flock has $500 million in VC money and contracts in 4,000 cities, and civil liberties groups say under 1% of scanned plates ever connect to a crime. Pflugerville's police chief looked at his own data and wouldn't recommend keeping the contract. Every city still running these cameras is one records request away from finding out what their own ratio looks like, and most of them haven't asked yet.

Hedgie🤗

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

An apt day to remember that Dolly Parton once recorded a cover of Stairway to Heaven - and, in defiance of every moral law in the universe, she absolutely owned it.

[Rolling Stone @RollingStone]

Dolly Parton's family asked that, in lieu of flowers, fans make a donation to the singer's Imagination Library.

Here's what the charity does ⬇️
https://t.co/wYj727Ao9I

[NASA Goddard @NASAGoddard]

A stellar Coat of Many Colors for Dolly Parton, forever among the stars 💗

[Michael de Adder @deAdder]

A life of many colours
by @deAdder
Substack:
https://t.co/DdGaNYtWHj

[Sue Lander @barhamsue]

@Mimiiben1 5

[Oklahoma Football @OU_Football]

Clear eyes, full hearts, two weeks.

[Sue Lander @barhamsue]

@JamieBonkiewicz @smc429 Voters can vote him out - limiting his term without any change in legislation.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

Today we honor the Navajo Code Talkers who served with extraordinary courage and developed an unbreakable code that helped win World War II. Arizona is home to the Navajo Nation, and we are proud to honor their service and sacrifice today and every day.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

A new study shows that Medicare for All would save over 114,000 lives and over $1 trillion every year.

The new research out of Yale shows that reductions in administrative overhead, lower pharmaceutical prices, less fraudulent billing, and fewer emergency care trips would lead to massive savings nationwide.

More accessible care would also lead to numerous lives saved.

https://t.co/tOGuaaLG7i

[Olivia Julianna 🇺🇸🦅🗳️ @0liviajulianna]

Just so we’re clear, they’re building a $1 billion wall where the fewest people cross the border, and destroying public lands to do it.

[Mike Johnson @MikeJoh14725926]

Abbott wants to know how to retain high-quality teachers. News flash for you, Greg - 1. Stop taking over districts. Do you think teachers want people with no experience coming in and telling them what to do?
2. Stop making curriculum that involves scripted lessons. 3. Stop forcing teachers to endure endless walkthroughs by people who only want to check on how well they are following the scripted lessons. 4. Quit doing these fake teacher groups and pretending you are listening to teachers. I have messaged over the last ten years, and not once have you listened. Teachers hate phonies. 5. Stop the Republican war against public schools. Teachers really don't respect you when you do this. 6. Fire Mike Morath. There are years of data showing him doing a poor job. Funny that you want to evaluate teachers and schools with data, but he gets a free pass.

@GovAbbottPress

https://t.co/Bu9Ol7Louq

[AMA @AmerMedicalAssn]

Vaccines are among the most thoroughly studied, effective tools we have to protect children from serious vaccine-preventable diseases. Decisions about how and when vaccines are used should be driven by rigorous scientific evidence, patient safety, and independent medical and public health expertise. Altering a proven vaccination schedule without credible evidence risks weakening public confidence and putting children’s health at risk.

If you have questions about vaccines, talk to your child’s physician. Putting our children’s health at risk is not an option

Read our full statement: https://t.co/sV1PlCDAja

[Daniel Dale @ddale8]

Vaccines do not cause autism

Vaccine doses are nowhere close to “the size of a bottle of soda,” they’re a fraction of a teaspoon

The combo MMR vaccine is not “quite lethal,” it’s been very safe for more than five decades

There are no separate M/M/R shots available in the US and won’t be anytime soon 

Autism prevalence wasn’t “1 in 10,000” in 2006, it was 1 in 110

No state has been requiring little kids to get “72 jabs,” nor even by age 18

Fact check on the rapid-fire vaccine misinformation President Trump delivered yesterday while pushing to change US vaccine policy: https://t.co/qSF53N8XJW

[Sue Lander @barhamsue]

@linadreaamy 223

[Sue Lander @barhamsue]

@waitmaya 31

[Amy McGrath @AmyMcGrathKY]

WTF!! They aren’t going after “hardened criminals.” They are going after the families of US active duty and veterans.

[Richard Blumenthal @SenBlumenthal]

As a major Trump political donor—millions of dollars—Taylor Farms tried repeatedly to delay, confuse & obstruct public warning & investigation concerning its cyclospora infected lettuce. https://t.co/HjPT6hZEzp