The Baseline Brief

The Baseline Brief. For Wednesday, August 26, 2026. This episode draws only from 6 published checks.

Check 1. President Donald Trump said: "The United Nations top climate committee just admitted that its own projections were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!". The published verdict is Misleading. A routine update narrowed the range of emissions scenarios, retiring an old worst-case path partly because the world shifted off coal toward renewables. It does not mean climate science was wrong, and researchers stress warming remains a serious, worsening problem.

Check 2. President Donald Trump said: "Among Somalis in Minnesota, 92% of them don't work.". The published verdict is False. Census data show the opposite scale: about 72% of Minnesota Somalis are in the labor force, so roughly 28% are not working, a lower non-working rate than Minnesotans overall. The 92% figure appears to confuse receiving any public assistance with not working.

Check 3. Sen. Chris Murphy said: "There's not a single example in the entirety of American history of an air campaign alone resulting in positive regime change.". The published verdict is Mostly True. Most military historians agree: air power alone has rarely, if ever, produced lasting, positive regime change without ground forces or the credible threat of them. A few cases (Libya 2011, the Balkans) are debated, but each involved ground forces or fell short of Murphy's bar.

Check 4. Sen. Bernie Sanders said: "As a result of the Big Beautiful Bill, 15 million Americans have been thrown off the healthcare that they need.". The published verdict is Misleading. The figure describes coverage losses projected over the next decade, not people already dropped. CBO estimated the 2025 law would add about 10 million to the uninsured by 2034, plus roughly 4 million from expiring ACA tax credits. So far ACA enrollment is down only about 1 million.

Check 5. The published record said: “The United States is the only wealthy country with no national paid family leave.”. The published verdict is True. Among the 38 OECD member countries, the U.S. is the only one with no national paid maternity or parental leave program. Thirteen states and D.C. run their own programs, but there is no federal guarantee.

Check 6. President Donald Trump said: "We are right now producing more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.". The published verdict is Mostly True. True if you count all petroleum liquids: the U.S. produces more total liquids than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. For crude oil alone, the U.S. leads each country but not their combined total.

We do not ask you to trust us. We ask you to check us. Keep your baseline steady.

This is The Baseline Brief for Friday, July third, 2026. The record just grew to eighteen published checks, and this episode walks the new ones — claims from the President, from Senate Democrats, and from a cabinet official, all measured by the same standard. That's the whole point.

First, the economy, where the President has been busy. He said he inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. False. Inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022 — the highest since 1981, but nowhere near the record: prices rose almost 24 percent in the year ending June 1920. And the rate he actually inherited in January 2025 was about three percent.

He also said tariffs helped cut the deficit by a staggering 27 percent in a single year. Misleading. On a fiscal-year basis the deficit fell about two point three percent — from 1.82 trillion to 1.78 trillion. The 27 comes from cherry-picking a window of calendar months, and CBO projects this fiscal year will end higher, not lower.

Gasoline at a dollar ninety-nine? False. When that was said, the national average was two ninety. Not one state averaged under two dollars — the cheapest, Oklahoma, was about two thirty-six.

Factory construction up 41 percent? Misleading. Census data show manufacturing construction spending actually fell about seven percent since the inauguration. The 41 compares recent months against a four-year-old average and quietly pockets the CHIPS Act surge that happened under Biden.

Two that hold up better: the President said America produces more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. Mostly true — counting all petroleum liquids, the U.S. really does out-produce them combined; for crude alone, we lead each but not both together. And "more people working today than at any time in history" — true on the raw number, 158.6 million, but that's what population growth does. The share of Americans working actually slipped. Missing context.

Now the other side of the aisle. Senator Bernie Sanders said fifteen million Americans have been thrown off their healthcare as a result of the Big Beautiful Bill. Misleading. That figure is a projection over the next decade — about ten million more uninsured by 2034 per CBO, plus roughly four million from expiring tax credits. It is not a count of people already dropped. Real number, wrong tense.

Senator Tammy Duckworth said nine percent of American citizens lack the ID the SAVE Act would require to vote. Mostly true — survey research puts it at roughly that share, on the order of twenty million people, though estimates vary by how ID is counted.

And CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz claimed that by federal law, signing someone up for Medicaid gives them the right to vote. False. No federal law ties Medicaid enrollment to voting rights. Medicaid offices must offer voter registration forms — that's the Motor Voter law — but enrollment registers no one and grants nothing.

That's nine claims: verdicts against the President, verdicts for him, and verdicts against his loudest critics — because the standard doesn't care who's talking. Every source is cited and linked at the-baseline-app dot vercel dot app. We don't ask you to trust us. We ask you to check us. Keep your baseline steady.

This is The Baseline Brief for Thursday, July second, 2026 — two new checks on the record, one about the border, one about the pump.

First, the border. The administration says illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded. Our verdict: mostly true. Customs and Border Protection's own numbers show 25,243 nationwide encounters in June — the lowest month in the agency's records, twelve percent below the previous record, and eighty-nine percent below the monthly average of the four years before. That's real, and it's dramatic. So why not a clean true? Two words of caution. Encounters count the people agents actually apprehend or turn back — not the ones who cross undetected. And "ever recorded" means the modern statistical series, not all of American history. The trend is genuine. The superlative runs a step ahead of what the data can literally prove. And a note on method: this verdict favors the administration. We measured, and that's where the evidence landed. The same standard, applied to every side — that's the whole point.

Second, gas prices. The claim circulating since spring: gas hit an all-time record high this year. Verdict: misleading. Here's the kernel of truth — on May twenty-first, the national average peaked at four dollars fifty-six, the highest at any point during either of President Trump's terms. But all-time? No. June 2022 still holds the nominal record at just over five dollars a gallon. And adjusted for inflation, 2012 was the real record — about five dollars seven cents in today's money. As of this week, the average is back down to three eighty-four. A five-year high got marketed as a forever high. That's how misleading claims usually work — a true number, wearing the wrong superlative.

The record now stands at eight claims checked across eight topics — verdicts on both sides of the aisle, every source cited and linked. Read the receipts at the-baseline-app dot vercel dot app. We don't ask you to trust us. We ask you to check us. Keep your baseline steady.

This is The Baseline Brief, for Wednesday, July first, 2026. I'm the voice of The Baseline — the fact-check desk that measures political claims against the empirical record. No outrage, no spin, no team to root for. Every verdict we publish shows its work: the claim, the evidence, and the sources, all in one frame. Here's the record this week.

First: you have heard, everywhere, that Congress just passed a war powers resolution for the first time in history. Our verdict: missing context. Congress actually passed war powers resolutions twice before — Yemen in 2019, Iran in 2020 — and President Trump vetoed both. What is genuinely new this time is the form. The June measure is a concurrent resolution, passed 215 to 208 in the House and 50 to 48 in the Senate. It never goes to the President's desk, which means it cannot be vetoed. That's the real first — narrower than the headlines, but arguably more important.

Second: the claim that violent crime in America is at record highs. Verdict: false. The FBI's own preliminary data for 2025 shows the opposite — violent crime down nine point three percent, murder down eighteen point one percent, the steepest one-year drop since national record-keeping began in 1937. If the numbers hold, the murder rate lands at about four point one per hundred thousand — the lowest ever recorded. Not a record high. A record low.

Third: tariffs. The standing claim is that foreign countries pay them, not Americans. Verdict: false. At the border, tariffs are paid by U.S. importers — that's just how customs works. And on who ultimately eats the cost, the studies agree: economists at the New York Fed and Columbia put roughly ninety percent of it on American firms and consumers. The Congressional Budget Office says about ninety-five. There is no mechanism that sends the bill to a foreign government.

Fourth: interest on the national debt now costs more than the entire defense budget. Verdict: true. C.B.O.'s final tally for fiscal 2025: nine hundred seventy billion dollars in net interest, against eight hundred fifty-nine billion for national defense. Interest is now the government's third-largest expense, behind only Social Security and Medicare.

Fifth: the perennial claim that foreign aid is a quarter of all federal spending. Verdict: false. It's about sixty billion dollars out of a seven trillion dollar budget — under one percent. Surveys show Americans guess twenty-five percent. The real number is one twenty-fifth of that guess.

And sixth: you may have seen that the House just passed the Kids Online Safety Act. Verdict: missing context. The House passed a fourteen-bill package, 267 to 117, that does include a version of KOSA — but with the duty-of-care provision stripped out. That's the legal standard that would let regulators hold platforms accountable for algorithmic harm to kids, and its removal is exactly what the coming Senate fight is about.

That's the record. Six claims, six verdicts, every source cited and linked at our site — the hyphenated address, the-baseline-app dot vercel dot app — where you can read every check, browse the trackers, and see the receipts for yourself. We don't ask you to trust us. We ask you to check us.

The Baseline Brief is produced by The Baseline editorial desk. Non-partisan in method, transparent in funding, and allergic to spin. New episodes as the record grows. Thanks for listening — and keep your baseline steady.