Fact checking

MAGA lies

The volume of MAGA lies is off the charts. A few examples.

The Latin Times reports: "Elon Musk Brands Bono a 'Liar/Idiot' for Telling Joe Rogan DOGE's USAID Cuts Have Cost 300,000 Lives "Zero people have died!" -- Musk insisted, a claim that has been widely debunked by experts. .... The 300,000 figure cited by Bono comes from a model estimating the "human cost" of DOGE's cuts to USAID, developed by Brooke Nichols, a mathematician and infectious disease professor at Boston University. The Washington Post backed Nichols' findings, reporting that roughly 96,000 adults and 200,000 children have died due to foreign aid cuts under the Trump administration."

The NYT reports: "Trump and Allies Sell Domestic Policy Bill With Falsehoods -- As the Senate considers a domestic policy bill to enact the White House’s agenda, President Trump and his allies have sought to assuage some lawmakers’ concerns over its price tag and cuts to Medicaid with inaccurate claims. .... The bill passed by the House will reduce federal spending on Medicaid by at least $600 billion over a decade and reduce enrollment by about 10.3 million people, according to a preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. But most of the changes to Medicaid have little to do with waste, fraud or abuse as defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service."

Even if the 300,000 death estimate is 80% too high, 60,000 have died, or if 90% too high, 30,000 are dead. Neither is zero. Musk is a liar.

Trump and Johnson are liars.

CNN reports on the failure of DOGE to do much of anything other than cause massive damage, despite contrary claims: "How Musk and DOGE could end up costing more than they save -- Picking apart the “estimated savings” of $175 billion on the DOGE website, Tolan told me that less than half that figure is backed up with even the most basic documentation. That means it’s possible only even to start investigating about $32 billion of savings from terminated contracts, $40 billion of savings from terminated grants and $216 million of savings from terminated leases that DOGE claims. .... Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, has estimated in a back-of-the-envelope way that DOGE cuts could end up costing the US $135 billion simply because it will need to retrain and rehire elements of the work force that have been let go. The federal workforce is literally in trauma — something Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, said was an aim of his."

Musk is a liar and Vought is a cruel, corrupt sadist.

How MAGA deals with inconvenient science: Hide it, deny it, claim public support

NBC News reported about a research study the Utah state legislature commissioned to prove that gender-affirming health care was harmful for children and teens. The study was commissioned in a 2023 Utah law that banned gender-affirming care. MAGA legislators believed that gender-affirming care was harmful and they were gonna prove it. The study, about 1,000 pages was published on May 19, 2025 on the Utah state legislature's website. The bottom line from the report: Gender-affirming care was generally helpful, not harmful. 

The study analyzed data from 28,000 transgender minors across 134 clinical studies and concluded that gender-affirming care correlates with improved mental health, reduced suicide risk, and better psychosocial outcomes. NBC News comments:

Utah's Department of Health and Human Services and experts from the state's leading health organizations concluded from a study of thousands of transgender people that gender-affirming care generated "positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes."

"Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult" according to the study. "When left untreated, individuals with gender dysphoria may experience psychological and social harms."

The agency is not taking a position on whether lawmakers should lift the statewide ban on hormone therapy and surgeries for minors. But it reminded lawmakers that they had intended for the prohibition to be temporary until the state could conduct its own research.

Well, now the state has conducted its own research. I asked Pxy to find a link to the study, so I could see it for myself. Pxy gave me this link:   https://le.utah.gov/publications/reports/2025/DRRC_Gender_Affirming_Care_Report.pdf. The study is entitled Utah Legislature: Gender-Affirming Care Study Report. The study was posted on the legislature's website as part of the state’s compliance with SB16 (2023), Utah's gender-affirming ban law. 

Clicking on that link, led to this:

  That's odd. A search of the entire Utah state legislature website led to this:

The study was not listed among the first 100 documents of the 321,162 in the database. I could not find the study.

Straight Arrow News reports: "Utah lawmakers stand by gender care ban after study refutes reasoning -- Study findings: Two years after Utah banned gender-affirming care for minors, the state’s health department released a study finding positive mental health and body image outcomes linked to such treatments. .... What do GOP Utah lawmakers say? The House sponsor of Utah’s 2023 ban and the current chair of the health committee said they have no plans to lift the restriction on gender-affirming care. In a joint statement to The Associated Press, Republican Reps. Katy Hall and Bridger Bolinder said, “Simply put, the science isn’t there, the risks are real, and the public is with us.” "

Well there we have it. According to MAGA politicians, the science isn't there and the public agrees. And it is true, the science isn't there, or at least I can't find it. The document at this link states the reason for doing the study was to inform the legislature about future legislation, e.g., this: "include any other information the department, in consultation with the entities described in Subsection (2), determines would assist the Legislature in enacting legislation related to the provision of hormonal transgender treatment to minors."

Q: Is this exemplary of how MAGA elites will treat inconvenient science going forward, i.e., hiding it, denying it and simply blowing off scientific evidence when it is inconvenient to MAGA dogma?

MAGA vs. the Federalist Society vs democracy

A spate of reporting centered on djt blowing up at the FS (Federalist Society). Some of its hand-picked judges have ruled against some of what djt wants to do. For example, this NYT opinion (not paywalled):

Trump declared himself “so disappointed” in the Federalist Society because of its “bad advice” on judicial nominations. But he reserved his real venom for Leo, calling him a “sleazebag” and a “bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.” .... But there was a problem. The Federalist Society never capitulated to Trump. It’s a decentralized group, and its members are stubbornly independent.

At the beginning of his Truth rant, he refers back to the Court of International Trade and asks: “Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?”

The NYT opinionator goes on to defend the FS as conservative. That felt like sheer nonsense. Pxy, a neutral analyst with no ideological skin in the game, analyzed whether the FS is mostly pro-democracy conservative or mostly anti-democracy authoritarian:

Q: Is the federalist society more authoritarian than democratic, e.g., it believes in the unitary executive theory and unlimited secret special interest spending in politics? Is this analysis of the fed soc reasonable or too soft: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/opinion/trump-judges-federalist-society.html ?

A: The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies stands as one of the most consequential yet controversial legal organizations in modern American history, wielding unprecedented influence over the federal judiciary while maintaining a carefully constructed image as a nonpartisan educational forum. .... An examination of the Society's institutional practices, ideological commitments, and political influence reveals an organization that, while operating within legal bounds, exhibits characteristics that align more closely with authoritarian approaches to power than with democratic pluralism.

The Federalist Society emerged in 1982 from a coalition of conservative law students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago who sought to challenge what they perceived as liberal orthodoxy dominating American legal education 2 3.

The organization's intellectual framework draws inspiration from The Federalist Papers and claims the legacy of James Madison, whose silhouette serves as its logo. This symbolic choice reflects the Society's attempt to ground its mission in America's founding democratic traditions.

However, critics have increasingly questioned whether the Society's actual practices align with its democratic rhetoric. Political scientist Amanda Hollis-Brusky has characterized the organization as having "evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents" 2. This gatekeeping function suggests constitutes an institutional structure more focused on advancing partisan political objectives than on fostering genuine intellectual debate about constitutional principles. (revision added for clarity)
 

The Federalist Society has emerged as a primary institutional advocate for the unitary executive theory, a constitutional interpretation that dramatically expands presidential power over the federal bureaucracy 5 11 20. This theory, which "posits the President should have control over the entire executive branch," represents a fundamental departure from traditional American approaches to separated powers and checks and balances 5. (I have recently warned about the grave authoritarian danger to democracy that is inherent in the unitary executive theory, e.g., here, here and here)

The Federalist Society's relationship with dark money networks represents perhaps the most troubling aspect of its impact on democratic governance. Leonard Leo, the organization's former executive vice president and current co-chair, has constructed an extensive network of nonprofit organizations that channel anonymous donations to support conservative legal causes 6 7. Most dramatically, Leo obtained a historic $1.6 billion donation through connections made via the Federalist Society, creating what may be the largest political donation in American history 6. (once again, we see the ugly specter of the 2010 Citizens United USSC decision)

Conclusion
The evidence strongly suggests that the Federalist Society, despite its democratic rhetoric and educational framing, functions primarily as an institutional vehicle for advancing authoritarian approaches to governance. The organization's advocacy for unitary executive theory promotes dangerous concentrations of presidential power that undermine constitutional checks and balances. Its extensive dark money networks operate in secrecy that contradicts democratic norms of transparency and accountability. Most significantly, its systematic influence over judicial selection has created a federal judiciary that serves partisan political objectives rather than neutral legal principles.

The Society's authoritarian characteristics become particularly evident when examined alongside contemporary scholarship on democratic backsliding and authoritarian capture of democratic institutions. Like authoritarian movements worldwide, the Society employs legal methods to achieve anti-democratic objectives, using the legitimacy of educational discourse to advance political projects that would be rejected if presented openly as partisan advocacy. The organization's success in reshaping American legal institutions while maintaining claims of neutrality demonstrates the sophisticated nature of contemporary threats to democratic governance.  

The New York Times analysis referenced in the query significantly understates these concerns by treating the Society as a legitimate educational organization experiencing normal political tensions rather than recognizing its role as a central node in networks that systematically undermine democratic governance. (emphases added)

So, once again the mainstream media, the NYT opinion in this case, completely intentionally ignores a critically important point. By calling the FS conservative instead of authoritarian, it hides, deflects from and normalizes authoritarianism in American politics. Shame on the NYT. This opinion gets an F-.

Ranking of polls for 2025

The last time I posted Nate Silver's poll ranking (Aug 2024), NYT/ Siena was ranked 1st. Now Silver ranks it 5th (https://www.natesilver.net/p/pollster-ratings-silver-bulletin). AtlasIntel, which was 21st, is ranked 1st, or at least at the top of the list. The first 4 of 27 pages of ranking is shown below.

What a crazy-go-nuts world. 🤪