Ozymandias Trump

Posted on April 8, 2026 by bpriddy

President Trump’s insatiable need to memorialize himself, whether it’s by putting his name on a long-standing building such as the Kennedy Center, minting gold coins, putting his signature on our currency, building a disgracefully tacky ballroom onto the White House, building a Trump Arch in Washington and now we have seen the plans for his presidential library.

All of this is his vain effort to immortalize himself as something far more than what he is brings to mind a couple of 19^th Century British poet friends who engaged in a friendly competition to see whose work would be published first. They probably had heard the announcement that the British Museum had acquired an eight-ton statue of Rameses II.

Both had experienced the classical education of the day, which probably led them to a story by the First Century, BCE, Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who described a great Egyptian statue with the inscription, “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. if any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my works.”

Horace Smith wrote:

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

The better-known of the poems is the one with the same name, Ozymandias¸ by Percy Bysshe Shelley, considered one of the greatest of the English romantic poets, who drowned in a sailing accident at the age of 29. This is the one we are most likely to see in our English textbooks and in the compilations of great poems.

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The poem is considered a commentary on the impermanence of power and the fleeting of time. Litcharts.com puts it this way:

The speaker relates a story a traveler told him about the ruins of a “colossal wreck” of a sculpture whose decaying physical state mirrors the dissolution of its subject’s—Ozymandias’s—power. Only two upright legs, a face, and a pedestal remain of Ozymandias’s original statue, and even these individual parts of the statue are not in great shape: the face, for instance, is “shattered.” Clearly, time hasn’t been kind to this statue, whose pitiful state undercuts the bold assertion of its inscription. The fact that even this “king of kings” lies decaying in a distant desert suggests that no amount of power can withstand the merciless and unceasing passage of time.

Less poetic but nonetheless powerful on its own is a quote attributed to General George S. Patton; you might recognize it as it was spoken by George C. Scott at the end of the movie about the general:

““For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who would know who Percy Bysshe Shelley was (it has been widely reported that he seldom reads anything, even his daily security reports—there have been stories that staff members dumb them down for his short attention span) and while it would not be surprising to learn that he did see the Patton movie, he likely is incapable of understanding that all of his efforts to immortalize himself will someday be nothing more than the equivalent of a pile of ancient stones in the desert of history, an ancient 21^st Century Ozymandias.

(Image credits: Statue—Society of Classical Poets; Trump Library—Youtube)

IGNORANCE

Posted on April 1, 2026 by bpriddy

Any good journalist abhors ignorance, even personal ignorance. Consumers of our products in all of their forms probably have no idea of the number of stories, programs, and books that spring from seeing something and thinking “?” and then learning the answer.

Most people don’t have or don’t take the time to pursue an answer. But it’s the old “who, what, when, where and how” that defines the journalist’s mind and the journalist’s work product.

I often have told people that it is the unknown that journalist face at the start of every day that makes getting up long before the rooster crows and staying up long after the sun sets. At the end of the day we have done something that science says is impossible: We have made something out of nothing. It’s called “news,” the unpredictability of life captured and the story told, a vanquishing of ignorance—-sometimes whether you want it vanquished or not.

Ignorance is dangerous whether it is in common courtesies, traffic codes, health warnings, but especially in politics where ignorance not only is preyed upon by candidates and advocates but by those who have been given great responsibility.

We are alarmed by steps being taken to erase the unpleasant parts of our past and to be dishonest about our heritage and the responsibilities we have as citizens to conquer our baser relations with others, based on how we have overcome them in the past.

Today’s observation was triggered by the appearance of President Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who recently denied to host Joe Kernan of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the President’s interest in Greenland amounts to American imperialism:

“When has the United States engaged in imperialism? Never. Europe has engaged in imperialism. The reason the Danish have Greenland is because of imperialism.”

When has the United States engaged in imperialism? How about two centuries of it. We would not be the United States if it was not for imperialism.

I reached onto my bookshelf for Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire, a volume Landry should read if he wants to rise above the ignorance that soaks this administration. What might we call the administration’s takeover of Venezuela and its threatened takeover of Cuba and Greenland and the earlier blabbering of making Canada the 51^st state if not “imperialism?” Added to that discussion is the frequent dismissal in this administration that Puerto Ricans are not Americans.

The administration in its efforts to cleanse or whitewash our history prefers we are ignorant of many things including that the imperialistic spirit was part of this nation from the beginning, when early explorers operating under an already-ancient papal proclamation that it was proper to seize lands from “infidels,” claimed lands occupied for thousands of years by others in the name of God and Country.

Just 55 years after the landing of businessmen the a few religious dissenters landed at Plymouth, the first war broke out between Europeans and Native Americans when the Europeans wanted to expand the borders of Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island. It was the beginning of a 200 year-plus takeover of territories occupied by dozens of previously independent nations.

Two especially egregious examples are the subjugation of the Cherokees, a people with their own constitution and their own written language, with their own plantations is six southern states, their own capital and their own system of slavery. They were given a new territory to occupy in the 1830s so the Europeans could have their ancestral lands.

Throughout the rest of the 19^th century, similar measures were enforced with the forced movement of other nations, some of whom wound up in the same place, a place set aside for Indians. But the attraction of unassigned territory in that area created the 1889 Land Rush when 50,000 settlers roared in to take over the area. The now-“American” area was recognized in 1907 as the state of Oklahoma. Not until seventeen years had passed did the people displaced through the decades and now disrupted by the land rush—the people of the Indian nations forced there— become recognized by congressional action as American citizens although it was not until 1948 that Congress passed the Indian Voting Rights Act.

The 1846 Mexican war made one-third of Mexico part of the United States. Fifty years later, we went to war with Spain and fought the Philippine War to claim that land.

Immerwahr looks at 1941 as an example of our imperialist holdings: Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states. But these also were NOT foreign countries: Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama Canal Zone, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. (Panama was Panamanian but it was leased to the United States at the time.) One out of eight people in the United States lived outside the 48-state “logo map” as he calls it.

He also notes a “stream of smaller engagements” that have bought at least parts of other nations under our control for military bases. He cites 211 times that American troops have been deployed to 67 other countries since 1945.

The book came out before Venezuela and Iran.

Immerwahr concludes the introduction to his book, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured, and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen”

Landry asked, with his ignorance on full display, “”When has the United States engaged in imperialism?” The truth is in Immerwahr’s book should he care to read it although this seems to be an administration led by a President whose questionable reading habits and abilities have been much discussed and whose preference for historical literacy seems non-existent, a “blessing” he demands be extended to all of us in a year when accurate recall of our history should be our guiding interest.

We leave you with these cautionary words from President Calvin Coolidge:

“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”

And ignorant.

A Congressman Steps Down; Thousands Protest

Posted on March 30, 2026 by bpriddy

It would be nice if the headline reflected reality. But in the case of Congressman Sam Graves, a native of Tarkio in the far northwest corner of Missouri, it’s not his retirement that has triggered the protests. We’re going to offer some quick, surface, observations about these two separate events and how Missouri’s chaotic 2026 elections just got more interesting.

I remember Sam Graves mostly because he caused me some sleepless nights. More on that later.

Sam is now 62. He has served 26 of those years in Congress. He might just be hitting his prime and he’s leaving. The website legistorm.com calculates the average age of members of the U.S. House is 58 (for all of Congress it’s 61.5). However, he has served twice as long as the average length of service for U.S. Representatives. In fact, Graves is 32^nd in seniority among the 435 members of the House (the Dean of the House is Kentucky Congressman Harold Rogers who is 88 and in his 45^th year, his 23^rd term and he will seek a 24^th.).

The longest-serving Congressman from Missouri was Clarence Cannon, from Elsberry, in northeast Missouri. He died in office after 41 years 69 days and planning for more before a fatal heart attack in 1964. He ranks 29^th as the longest-serving member of the U.S. House, 49^th on a list that also includes Senators.

In 1963, the year Graves was born, country music star Jim Reeves put out a song by fellow singer and songwriter Bill Anderson called “I’ve Enjoyed About as Much of This as I Can Stand.” We don’t know if he has heard the song but in joining 35 other Republicans who are leaving, we wouldn’t be surprised if several of them felt that way (there are 21 Democrats who have decided there’s more to life, too).

Already, several fellow Republicans and at least three Democrats have filed or expressed an interest in filing for his seat and it would be no surprise if the numbers did not increase on both sides.

The Sixth Congressional District is a rural one that covers the entire sparsely-settled rural north Missouri—36 of our 114 counties. It has been solidly conservative for a long, long time.

But the political climate nationwide seems to be changing. Last weekend there were at least 33 “No Kings” rallies in Missouri, nine in the Kansas City area, eight in the St. Louis area, thirteen outstate and three more in northwest Missouri.

Here is something to ponder for the sixth district. A “No Kings” rally in Quincy, Illinois—not listed among 33—probably had some attraction for some northeast Missourians in the sixth district. TEN of the scheduled rallies on the Missouri side of the Mississippi were in Graves’ present district. Ten of them. Excelsior Springs, Harrisonville, Kearney, Liberty, Platte City, Madison, Moberly, Maryville, Chillicothe, and St. Joseph.

The “No Kings” movement has survived the winter and the Trump administration’s headline activities from Minnesota to Iran. The sixth district will not have an incumbent with all of the vote-getting power that goes with incumbency.

The sixth district—in whatever form it winds up being after legislative action and courts reviews—might be more in play than it has been for two decades. And both parties know it full well.

Getting back to Sam—pardon the unfamiliarity but he was “Senator” when I covered him in the legislature and the last time I saw him I called him, “Sam,” an uncharacteristic familiarity that I almost never allow myself with present or past political figures.

There he is from the Missouri Official Manual (the Blue Book by more familiar name) for his first term in the Senate. He was in the Senate for the last years of Democrat-domination of state government. I recall that he was collegial with good relationships on the other side of the aisle.

But the main thing about him that I recall is that he kept me up all night on at least two occasions. Sam was not afraid of a filibuster but he rarely took a leading role and didn’t do it so often as to be tiring—as some have done more recently. And he was entertaining, something most filibuster participants never approach.

There were some senators after him who were so boring that I gave one of them a list of books to read that would at least educate those who had to endure them. Sadly, the list went unused.

He talked about being a poor farm boy whose only pet, a three-legged dog named “Tripod,” was the star of some of his stories. The best performance, however, was the night he threatened to read the names of every high school student in his district who was graduating that year. Every time he was interrupted, he started over. As I recall, he finally forced a compromise on the issue under discussion—which is what filibusters should be for if participants respect them.

The only better filibuster story-teller than Sam Graves was Senator Danny Staples of Eminence. I made sure I turned on my recorder whenever he asked another member, “Senator, did you know…..” because I knew what was coming. The State Historical Society has several hours of Staples’ recordings. There are hundreds of other cassettes in the oral history collection that I have to listen to and label one of these days and there has to be some Sam Graves stories on them. Or on the memory chips we used in later recorders.

He was a work horse not a show horse in his political career, as we observed him up close and from a distance. He’s young enough to have a long and prosperous K-Street career in Washington. K-Street is a street known for its offices of the special interest groups.

The folks in the sixth district would be well-served to seek out another work horse in November.

-o-

The Sounds of Their Voices

Posted on March 25, 2026 by bpriddy

I’ve been working on some of the history of my church and once again I have become curious about how the denomination’s founders sounded when they spoke, exhorted, preached, etc.

Two of the group that established the denomination were former Scottish Presbyterian ministers who broke with the church over limits in participation at the Lord’s Table. But both men had been born and raised in Ireland. One live 57 years after coming to this country. Did he still sound Scots-Irish at the end?

When Andrew Jackson shouted his favorite oath, “By the Eternal!” did he have a southern accent? It probably wouldn’t have been as deep as the accents we associate with Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, but would there have been something?

Did Benjamin Franklin speak as Howard DeSilva portrays him in the musical 1776 or as Robert Preston portrayed him in the musical some years earlier, Ben Franklin in Paris?

Two people in particular intrigue me, one because I’m a native of Illinois and wonder about Abraham Lincoln’s voice at Gettysburg, and the other because he is such a towering historical figure and a national founder, Thomas Jefferson.

Lena Torres has written about Jefferson on soundcy.com:

Descriptions suggest he spoke with a soft, measured tone, reflecting his reserved and thoughtful nature, while his Virginia upbringing likely influenced his accent, which would have been characteristic of the Tidewater region. Additionally, his extensive education and role as a diplomat may have imbued his speech with a formal, articulate quality. While we can only speculate, piecing together these details offers a glimpse into how one of America’s Founding Fathers might have sounded.

Thomas Jefferson’s voice, though lost to time, likely carried the distinct cadence of Tidewater Virginia, a region steeped in colonial history. This accent, shaped by the linguistic currents of 18th-century Britain, would have been a hallmark of his speech. Imagine a voice that blended the formality of British English with the emerging nuances of American pronunciation—a linguistic bridge between the Old World and the New…

A practical way to approximate Jefferson’s accent is to listen to recordings of modern British Received Pronunciation (RP) and then soften it with the gentle rhythms of the American South. Think of it as a hybrid—not quite British, yet not fully American as we know it today. For instance, the word “water” might have sounded more like “wah-tuh,” with a subtle elongation of the vowel, a relic of his British-influenced upbringing.

She writes a lot more at Unveiling Thomas Jefferson’s Voice: Reconstructing The Third President’s Speech | SoundCy

And Lincoln? Was he like some actors who have portrayed him—Gregory Peck, or Raymond Massey, as deep voices and deliberate delivery, or the softer and higher-pitched voice of actor Royal Dano at Disneyland ((2098) GREAT MOMENTS WITH MR. LINCOLN Restored Disneyland Vinyl LP – YouTube 28:19 in for the audio animatronic figure’s speech)

A 2011 article for Smithsonian Magazine quotes Lincoln researcher Harold Holzer liked the way actor Sam Waterston (of Law & Order fame) voiced him in Ken Burns’ documentary about the Civil War and in other performances (Sam Waterston Reading The Gettysburg Address #gettysburg #gettysburgaddress).

But the closest might have been Daniel Day Lewis’ interpretation in the movie Lincoln. (Lincoln “Now” scene)

(He explained in an interview how he developed it (BBC News – Daniel Day-Lewis on finding Lincoln’s voice).

Holzer says in the article, “Lincoln’s voice, as far as period descriptions go, was a little shriller, a little higher…People said that his voice carried into crowds beautifully. Just because the tone was high doesn’t mean it wasn’t far-reaching.”

Getting back to Jefferson, Torres has some thoughts about then and now:

…In a world where loudness often equates to importance, Jefferson’s soft-spoken, low-pitched, and deliberate style reminds us of the power of restraint. Whether in leadership, education, or personal interactions, adopting a measured tone can elevate your message, making it more memorable and impactful. Experiment with this approach in your next presentation or conversation, and observe how a quieter, more intentional voice can command respect and foster deeper engagement.

I hope we rediscover that in our political discourses.

It’s Time to Order Another Obelisk

Posted on March 23, 2026 by bpriddy

The Missouri Veterans Memorial at the Capitol is a quiet place, of a slow-moving cascade of water flowing into a reflecting pool around which people can ponder how much is lost to war.

And how much will be.

To the east of the pool is a shaded walk that takes visitors past nine memorial obelisks remembering the nine wars in which Missourians have fought since statehood in 1821—Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and finally the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, less than a year after the ninth obelisk was dedicated—after an end date of that long war was determined—it is time to plan for a tenth one.

As this is written, no Missourian has been killed in Trump’s War—-which is not what it will be called in the black granite when the tenth obelisk is installed. As of now, it probably will say “Iran War,” but it’s too early to carve anything into stone because we don’t know what the scope of this conflict will finally be.

Nor, apparently, does the man who ordered it. He started the war and now he is whining that NATO is giving him no help.

NATO, the people he has spent the last several years insulting and threatening, seems content to letting President Trump stew in his own juice. NATO is more about protecting Ukraine (remember Ukraine, Mr, President?) and itself than helping President Trump.

The Coalition of the Willing has become the Coalition of the Unwilling.

To refresh our minds: then-President George W. Bush declared at a NATO summit in 2002 that if Iraq President Saddam Hussein did not disarm (he was accused of having weapons of mass destruction), that the United States would assemble a “coalition of the willing” to do it for him.

Saddam didn’t. So George Bush’s United States and troops from 48 other countries backed the plan. Four countries eventually put boots on the ground—us, the UK, Australia, and Poland). More than three dozen other countries provided some troops but not major numbers. Some don’t even had standing armies but provide other kinds of help.

The coalition did not hold and it became a topic of political ridicule (Busch had offered foreign aid to participants, a policy that one columnist termed “a coalition of the billing” and another observer considered “a coalition of the shilling.”) By mid-2009 everybody but the United States and the United Kingdom coalition had backed away. The Coalition of the Willing was considered ended in 2010.

President Bush assembled his coalition before the fight began. President Trump just barged right in—BOMBED his way right in—to a new war and did not ask for help until Iran fought back and closed the Straits of Hormuz. Only then did he look for friends in NATO only to find he didn’t have very many anymore.

He’s watching his foreign policy by sledgehammer wielded by amateurs turn into quicksand. He is so desperate that he has lessened some sanctions against Russia—imposed as a reaction to the invasion of Ukraine—in an effort to relieve some pressure on the oil supply which seemingly could help finance further Russian operations against Ukraine, if we understand where this policy is leading. He’s firing missiles the way kids fire bottle rockets on July 4^th while China watches our war-making or defensive armaments dwindle and also watches Taiwan. The early talk about not using troops is ominously sounding like —using troops.

Some observers have suggested that Iran is Trump’s Ukraine.

“Some people will die, I guess,” the President has said.

Order the tenth obelisk. Too bad the state can’t send the bill for it to President Trump.

A few weeks ago, my state representative, Dave Griffith, asked me if I could find how many Missourians died in the wars of the eighth and ninth obelisks (Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan). I could not locate numbers but I did find a website that listed the names of all of the military people who died in those conflicts. I picked out the Missouri names and sent them to him.

Their names won’t be on the obelisks although the number of those who died will be someday.

Their names are on their own monuments scattered throughout the graveyards of Missouri and elsewhere, unfortunately soon to be joined by similar monuments from Trump’s War. Here is the list from President Bush’s War, with the date of official notification. We pray their tragic coalition will not be joined by a new coalition from Mr. Trump’s War, but we fear it will be.

Let us know if your loved one killed in these long wars is not on the list.

Continue reading →

The Boodle Scandal, part Two

Posted on March 18, 2026 by bpriddy

Monday we promised you an opportunity to see a forgotten Missouri political, one of the most sensational ones of the Twentieth Century. Muckraker Lincoln Steffens described how money can distort public policy, a common and visible public concern today.

What was this scandal about? An innocent everyday-used substance that is part of our diet today. Steffens’ magazine article is long. As you read it, you might think, “Nothing has changed.” We’ll comment afterward what happened to some of the participants in his historic controversy.

Enemies of the Republic

Lincoln Steffens

[Reprinted from McClures, VOL. XXIll, October, 1904 No.6]

THE POLITICAL LEADERS WHO ARE SELLING OUT THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AND THE LEADING BUSINESS MEN WHO ARE BUYING IT – BUSINESS AS TREASON-CORRUPTION AS REVOLUTION

EVERY time I attempted to trace to its sources the political corruption of a city ring, the stream of pollution branched off in the most unexpected directions and spread out in a network of veins and arteries so complex that hardly any part of the body politic seemed clear of it. It flowed out of the majority party into the minority; out of politics into vice and crime; out of business into politics, and back into business; from the boss, down through the police to the prostitute, and up through the practice of law, into the courts; and big throbbing arteries ran out through the country over the State to the Nation-and back. No wonder cities can’t get municipal reform! No wonder Minneapolis, having cleaned out its police ring of vice grafters, now discovers boodle in the council ! No wonder Chicago, with council-reform and boodle beaten, finds itself a Minneapolis of police and administrative graft! No wonder Pittsburg, when it broke out of its local ring, fell, amazed, into a State ring! No wonder New York, with good government, votes itself back into Tammany Hall!

They are on the wrong track; we are, all of us, on the wrong track. You can’t reform a city by reforming part of it. You can’t reform a city alone. You can’t reform politics alone. And as for corruption and the understanding thereof, we cannot run ’round and ’round in municipal rings and understand ring corruption; it isn’t a ring thing. We cannot remain in one city, or ten, and comprehend municipal corruption; it isn’t a local thing. We cannot “stick to a party,” and follow party corruption; it isn’t a partizan thing. And I have found that I cannot confine myself to politics and grasp all the ramifications of political corruption; it isn’t political corruption. It’s corruption. The corruption of our American politics is our American corruption, political, but financial and industrial too.

Miss Tarbell is showing it in the trust, Mr. Baker in the labor union, and my gropings into the misgovernment of cities have drawn me everywhere, but, always, always out of politics into business, and out of the cities into the state. Business started the corruption of politics in Pittsburg; upholds it in Philadelphia; boomed with it in Chicago and withered with its reform; and in New York, business financed the return of Tammany Hall. Here, then, is; our guide out of the labyrinth. Not the political ring, but big business,-that is! the crux of the situation.

Our political corruption is a system, a regularly established custom of the country, by which our political leaders are hired, by bribery by the license to loot, and by quiet moral # support, to conduct the government of city, state, and nation, not for the common good, but for the special interests of private business. Not the politician, then, not the bribe-taker, but the bribe-giver, the man we are so proud of, our successful business man-he is the source and the sustenance of our bad government. The captain of industry is the man to catch. His is the trail to follow.

We have struck that trail before. Whenever we followed the successful politician his tracks led us into it, but also they led us out of the cities-from Pittsburg to the State Legislature at Harrisburg; from Philadelphia, through Pennsylvania, to the National Legislature at Washington. To go on was to go into state and national politics and I was after the political corruption of the city ring then. Now I know that these are all one. The trail of the political leader and the trail of the commercial leader are parallels which mark the plain, main road that leads off the dead level of the cities, up through the States into the United States, out of the political ring. into the System, the living System of our actual government. The highway of corruption is the ” road to success.”

Almost any State would start us right, but Missouri is the most promising.

Continue reading →

The Boodle Scandal, Part One

Posted on March 16, 2026 by bpriddy

I want to take you back to the early Twentieth Century when muckraking reporters such as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Upton Sinclair, and Jacob Riis—to name a few—were writing powerful newspaper and magazine articles exposing the ugly underside of government and business and the partnerships between the two that sometimes amounted to a betrayal of our country or our state for their personal or corporate benefit.

Today we call them investigative reporters, people who burrow into the inner workings of business/government relationships that corruptly enrich a few and harm the many—not unlike too many things we are seeing today at the national and even the state levels wherever you might live.

In our entries today and on Wednesday we are going to bring you Lincoln Steffens’ “Enemies of the Republic” from the October, 1904 issue of McClures magazine. But first, we need to set the stage.

“Boodle” in those days referred to bribery. A boodler was one who gave or who accepted bribes to influence public policy.

The story of the great boodle scandal in Missouri came to me many years ago in researching the stories of the ministers of my church in Jefferson City and the brief career here of Crayton S. Brooks, a fiery temperance preacher who came to what was then a pretty wide open town particularly when the legislature was in session every other year.

On Sunday evening, March 1, 1903 Rev. Crayton S. Brooks—whose preaching earlier had led to the closing of pool halls and gambling houses—asserted from his pulpit at the First Christian Church four blocks from the Capitol that “there were $1,000 bills being exchanged in Jefferson City by men not in the habit of handling such amounts of money,” the implication being that they were buying votes in the legislature.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Joseph J. McAuliffe happened to be in one of the pews that night and wrote about the sermon. There is a lot I wish we knew about their relationship and why a St. Louis reporter “happened” to be at the church that night, but we do know that Brooks admired St. Louis prosecutor Joe Folk for his earlier work to bring down Ed Butler, the St. Louis political boss and had made a trip to St. Louis earlier in the year, although the accounts do not say why, leaving the door open to some speculation.

Representative Edward Eversole of St. Louis was named to lead a committee investigation and started summoning witnesses from among the lobbying corps. He said, “We saw men we wanted standing about the corridors and lobby of the Capitol four deep, but as soon as one or two were served there was a wild stampede and the greatest time you ever heard of getting out of town.”

He investigation eventually led to the indictments of four Senators who were accused of taking bribes for their votes on a bill concerning the ingredients of baking powder. Steffans will explain that in his article. Lieutenant Governor John Adams Lee, who planned to run for governor in 1904, was exposed as the middle man who delivered the bribes from the Royal Baking Powder Trust to the four legislators, resigned and fled to Chicago.

Steffens’ article said, “There is nothing partisan about graft. Only the people are loyal to party. The ” hated” trusts, all big grafters, go with the majority. In Democratic Missouri, the Democracy is the party of “capital.” The Democratic political leaders, crying down the trusts, corner the voters like wheat, form a political trust, and sell out the sovereignty of the people to the corporation lobby. And the lobby runs the State, not only in the interest of its principals, but against the interest of the people.”

In 1992, Missourians adopted term limits, an amendment that missed the target it should have hit and as we have seen in the years since opened the door to loss of legislative independence and replaced it with—too often—outside influence. As it was put in 1992, adoption of term limits will end corporate memory in the legislature and the power to set public policy will pass from the legislative chambers to the hallways.

I watched it happen. Only after term limits went into effect did I hear the sponsor of a bill ask someone with an amendment, “Have you run this by so-and-so in the hall?” The question became unnecessary as cell phones proliferated and lawmakers could get messages while debating bills. House and Senate rules ban lobbyists from the legislative floors. But the cell phone’s texting app puts them there electronically.

Ineffective campaign spending limits and a U. S. Supreme Court ruling that corporations are, for political speech purposes, to be considered “people,” have had a profound effect on who gets access, how much of it they get and how they become manipulative of the process.

Understand that this is not saying all of our elected officials are crooked or can be bought. We have to trust the people we elect but we also must be aware of the awful pressures they endure to serve and the all-consuming world they live in for four intense months every year. Political courage sometimes is weakened in that climate because they are human and we sometimes are disappointed when the podium we put them on is not as high as we think it is.

We voters have a responsibility to pay attention to the issues they are dealing with so that our lawmakers are regularly reminded who they really work for.

Citizen cynicism is easy to come by and is a reflection on the citizen who refuses to maintain at least a modicum of awareness and is therefore less likely to be “cornered like wheat.”

That is where the reporter has a place—to expose as well as report. A good reporter has to have a bit of the spirit of Lincoln Steffens inside and our media must recognize the responsibility they have to be unafraid to rake muck when necessary.

Good reporters do not want to be liked by the people they report about. Nor do they want to be hated. They do hope to be respected as a necessary element of a free society. And they should be conscious of their responsibilities to citizens on both sides the aisle. They also must be unafraid, and expect those who employ them to be unafraid, too.

On Wednesday, you will read Lincoln Steffens’ Enemies of the Republic. It, unfortunately, has elements of truth that you will recognize in our present times.

(Picture Credit: Brooks—St. Louis Republic

The Four Freedoms

Posted on March 9, 2026 by bpriddy

In a far distant time, a President would deliver a State of the Union address free of bombast, lies, and accusations.

Here’s one, delivered as one part of the world was back at war and the other part was likely to erupt somewhere, sometime. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke on January 6, 1941. The contrast to what we heard from our present occupant of the White House jumps out at us.

Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end.

Our national policy is this:

First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense.

Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.

Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom…

The Nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fibre of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.

Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world.

For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
††††††††††† Jobs for those who can work.
††††††††††† Security for those who need it.
††††††††††† The ending of special privilege for the few.
††††††††††† The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations…

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception—the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change—in a perpetual peaceful revolution—a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions—without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

Less than a year later the nation knew the principles it was fighting for when a two-ocean war was threatening “the simple, basic things” we stood for…then.

(Image credit: Norman Rockwell exhibition, New York Historical Society)

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War

Posted on March 2, 2026 by bpriddy

It was an interesting juxtaposition of events last Saturday night at a birthday party for a submarine at the American Legion Hall—the USS Jefferson City, which was launched on February 29, 1992.

The boat is based in Guam but none of us knew where it was at that moment. We hoped it and its crew were safe regardless of whether they were involved in the war with Iran—and I think most of us believe it is in the area.

The Jefferson City isn’t the largest class of submarines; the USS Missouri. It is part of the first class of submarines beneath the group of which the USS Missouri is a part. It’s an attack sub longer than a football field with about 140 crew members. It is loaded with missiles.

So, our capital city has a reason to pay attention to what’s happening and what’s going to happen.

There’s not much doubt that the world is a better place without the Iran’s religious leader and ruler but there’s no guarantee his successor will be any less troublesome.

There are many things that are problems with this conflict, the biggest one being Trump pulling this country out of the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal, more formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. We have heard one talking head suggest the President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA was done because it had been achieved during the Obama administration and we’re all well aware of Trump’s disdain for anything Obama did. Among other things, the agreement required interference-free inspections by an international group looking for any signs Iraq was generating bomb-capable amounts of uranium.

The Obama White House said the agreement “blocks every possible pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear bomb while ensuring—through a comprehensive, intrusive, and unprecedented verification and transparence regime—that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful moving forward.” The deal went into effect in January, 2016 after the Center for Arms Control reported Iran had “significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure its program is solely for peaceful purposes.”

President Obama called the issue the “most consequential foreign policy debate that our country has had since the invasion of Iraq.” The deal went into effect in January 2016 after inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency had dismantled and removed two-thirds of Iran’s centrifuges and certified that Iran had shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium elsewhere and dismantled.

President Trump pulled this country out of the agreement, calling it “horrible,” a “decaying and rotten structure,” and “defective to its core.”

It’s too bad nobody has ever been able to pin him down on what was so wrong with the agreement that merited his flamethrower verbiage.

Time and the flow of information will tell us if he is repeating George H.W. Busch’s entrance into a Middle Eastern war because of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and an assumption that a populace relieved of the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein would welcome our troops as heroes—and adopt a democratic form of government.

Regime change is acknowledged as one reason for this war—with Israel as our only apparent ally— against Iran. He has not explained how his attack is a guarantee of peace and stability in the region.

Trump promised he would not involve this country in another endless foreign war. But he has not announced any ending goal. Nor has he announced how Iran will be transformed into a peaceful democratic republic that is grateful to him to for eliminating the Ayatollah. It is unlikely the Iranian military will give up easily or quickly. And it is hard to think that this war can be won without American boots on the ground and American bodies in it.

It is already more than an American-Israeli war against Iran. Iranian missiles have hit other countries friendly to the Trumpian effort. Three American lives have been lost. Nine Israeli people are dead. The United Arab Emirates reports three deaths.

Trump has admitted, “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.”

“That’s the way it is,” he said.

His actions have united our allies and our enemies. Russia has called it “an unprovoked armed aggression” China has expressed “deep concern” and has urged respect for Iran’s security, territorial integrity, and respect for its sovereignty—-something it has not suggest Russia do in is Ukraine war. Europe is keeping its distance. The European Council President calls the attacks “deeply disarming” and calls for full respect for international law.

Good luck with that one.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have condemned the Iranian retaliatory missile attacks that have expanded the conflict to other countries such as Sudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and the Arab Emirates agree.

Congress is waiting to hear about all of this, officially, and might soon be considering stiffening the War Powers Act because of Trump’s attack on Iran as well as his miliary action in deposing Venezuela’s leader.

Is it only an effort to take away Iran’s nuclear capability. Or are his conquests, or planned conquests in Venezuela and Iran focused on controlling much of the world’s oil supply and weaponizing it? Trump has offered no cogent reason for his attack, especially after withdrawing from an agreement that might have made it unnecessary.

If he thinks this conflict with Iran is going to reverse his increasing unpopularity, he’ll find that each American soldier death in what we now can call Trump’s War certainly will not improve his standing.

The United States fought a two-front foreign war in the 1940s in Europe and in Asia. But no President ever has fought a war against an enemy abroad and also fought one against people in his own country until Donald Trump.

Lord knows how all of this will end. But there will be more American blood spilled. In every war there has been a first casualty and nobody ever has found a way to calculate how many more there will be.

“That’s the way it is,” says the man who is causing this.

Looking for the Truth? Hand Me Your Spyglass

Posted on February 26, 2026 by bpriddy

As is our custom, we are turning the CNN’s Daniel Dale and his team of fact searchers when President Trump entertains his supporters with another State of the Union, uh, speech. He spoke for 107 minutes, including all of the overboard partisan applause.

Daniel and his truth sleuths were turning things around even as the president shouted, pointed, insulted, and performed. Here’s the result:

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about the economy, elections and crime in State of the Union

By CNN staff

President Donald Trump made numerous false or misleading claims in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Many of them were long-debunked falsehoods familiar from his rallies, interviews and social media posts. These include various lies disparaging the fairness of US elections, his false claim that he ended wars that were never actually wars or never actually ended, and his fictional “$18 trillion” figure for supposed investment in the US over the past year.

The subject on which he was most frequently inaccurate was the economy. Among other things, Trump overstated the performance of the economy during this presidential term to date, overstated the inflation he inherited from the Biden administration, used highly misleading figures when discussing gasoline prices, and wrongly asserted, twice, that foreign countries are paying the tariffs that are actually being paid by US importers.

Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks:

Economy and inflation

Fact check: Trump falsely claims US has secured ‘$18 trillion’ in investments

Trump repeated his regular false claim that he has secured $18 trillion in investments in the US since returning to office, saying, “In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”

The $18 trillion figure is fiction. As of the night of Trump’s address, the White House’s own website said the figure for “major investment announcements” during this Trump term was “$9.7 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s misleading claims on gasoline prices

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Trump claimed gas prices are “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places, $1.99 a gallon.” But no state had an average gas price on Tuesday below $2.37 per gallon, according to AAA; only two states had an average below $2.50 per gallon. And while there are some individual gas stations selling gas for below $2 per gallon, they are scarce; Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the firm GasBuddy, said during the speech that the firm found just four stations across the country below $2 (aside from special discounts) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks, so about 0.003% of the total.

Trump could fairly say gas prices have fallen during this presidency. They have declined from a national average of $3.12 per gallon on his inauguration day in January 2025, according to AAA, to a national average of $2.95 per gallon on Tuesday.

In addition, Trump claimed, “And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline.” We don’t know what Trump saw, but the average price for a gallon of regular gas in Iowa on the day of the January 27 speech was $2.57, according to data published that day by AAA – and Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, told CNN at the time that GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling for $1.97 per gallon (aside from special discounts) out of 2,036 total stations the firm tracks, so 0.19% of the total.

Trump was fact-checked on this subject by an attendee at the Iowa speech he was referring to. When he spoke of gas in Iowa being $1.95 or $1.85 per gallon, someone in the crowd shouted, “No, $2.63,” according to CNN reporter Steve Contorno, who was on scene. Contorno saw that the gas station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was selling for $2.69 per gallon.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he inherited record inflation

Trump falsely claimed that when he gave his previous address to Congress early last year, he had “just inherited … inflation at record levels.” He added a bit later that former President Joe Biden and his congressional allies “gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country.”

Trump didn’t inherit the worst inflation in US history, and Biden never had the worst inflation in US history. The year-over-year inflation rate in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, was 2.9%, and the rate in the month in which Trump took over partway through, January 2025, was 3.0%; the most recent rate, for January 2026, is 2.4%. The rate did hit a 40-year high, 9.1%, in June 2022, but that was far from the all-time high of 23.7%, which was set in 1920. Regardless, the rate then fell sharply over Biden’s last two-and-a-half years in office.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump touts declines in a smattering of grocery prices, but overall grocery prices are up

Trump accurately touted declines in the prices of a small number of grocery products or product categories during this presidency to date, mentioning eggs, chicken, butter and fresh fruits. But he did not acknowledge that overall grocery prices are up an average 2.1% since January 2025, nor that far more grocery products have gotten more expensive during this presidency than have gotten cheaper.

Trump also said, “And even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly.” The average price of beef and veal did decline in January compared to December, by 0.9% (or 0.4% using seasonally adjusted figures), but it was still 15% higher than it was in January 2025.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s baseless claim about the economy

Trump claimed that he inherited a “stagnant economy” from the Biden administration and that it is now “roaring like never before.” Though there is no firm definition of “stagnant” or “roaring,” the facts don’t corroborate the suggestion that he has presided over a massive economic boom since returning to office in January 2025. The US economy grew 2.2% in 2025, which was lower than in any year of the Biden presidency; there was 2.8% growth in 2024. (The fall 2025 government shutdown likely reduced growth in late 2025.) The unemployment rate, meanwhile, increased from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.3% in January 2026.

The total number of jobs added in 2025, 181,000, was by far the lowest since 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic hit; about 2.52 million jobs were added in 2023 and about 1.46 million were added in 2024.

The year-over-year Consumer Price Index inflation rate did fall from 3.0% in January 2025 to 2.4% in January 2026, and Trump certainly has some other positive data points to cite. But his story about taking the economy from deceased to scorching is just not supported by the overall numbers.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims foreign countries are paying his tariffs

Trump repeated his regular false claim that tariffs are “paid for by foreign countries.” In fact, tariff payments are made by importers in the US, not foreign countries, and those importers often pass on some of their costs to consumers. While foreign exporters may sometimes drop their prices to try to keep their products competitive, various analyses have found that the overwhelming majority of the costs of the tariffs Trump has imposed this term are being covered by a combination of US businesses and US consumers.

In an analysis released in February, officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote, “We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers.” The nonpartisan federal Congressional Budget Office wrote in a February report that “the net effect of tariffs is to raise U.S. consumer prices by the full portion of the cost of the tariffs borne domestically (95 percent),” from a combination of price hikes by US businesses that are importing tariffed products and price hikes by US businesses that are facing less foreign competition because of the tariffs.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s claim that more Americans are working today than ever

Trump repeated his regular claim that there are more people working today in the US than ever before. That’s true, but the claim needs context: the number of people working tends to rise over time because the US population tends to rise over time. Economists say there are far better measures of the health of the labor market.

The employment-population ratio, which measures the percentage of the population that is employed, is down slightly this presidential term so far, going from 60.1% in January 2025, the month Trump returned to office, to 59.8% in January 2026. The unemployment rate, which measures unemployment as a percentage of the labor force, has increased, going from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.3% in January 2026; it hit a four-year high of 4.5% in November before easing. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the population that is employed or actively looking for work, has been almost unchanged, ticking down 62.6% in January 2025 to 62.5% in January 2026.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Taxes, government programs, and the budget

Fact check: Trump’s claim he passed largest tax cuts in American history

Trump once again claimed that the sweeping domestic policy agenda that he signed into law last summer contained the largest tax cuts in American history. But that is not actually the case.

The so-called big, beautiful bill made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, giving additional tax relief to senior citizens and parents of young children and allowing companies to deduct certain investments more quickly. The tax cuts amount to $4.8 trillion, or 1.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), over a decade, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office analysis, released earlier this month.

However, the bill is not the largest tax cut in history, experts said. It ranks seventh in terms of share of GDP since 1918, according to Chris Towner, policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog group. The largest was former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax package, which cost 2.9% of GDP over four years. (Looking at revenue changes as a share of GDP is a common way to assess the size of tax cuts because it shows the changes relative to the size of the economy. It allows for comparisons across time despite shifts in inflation and population, for example.) Similarly, the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, found that the bill is the sixth largest tax cut since 1940, in terms of share of GDP.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump already broke his promise to always protect Medicaid

Trump promised to “always protect” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But he has already broken that promise on Medicaid, making big cuts to the safety net program last year.

The “big, beautiful bill,” which Trump signed into law last summer, slashed more than $900 billion in federal funding over 10 years for Medicaid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimated that the law’s Medicaid provisions would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 7.5 million in 2034.

Among the law’s most impactful provisions are requirements that certain able-bodied Medicaid enrollees ages 19 to 64 work, volunteer, attend school or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month. The mandate, the first of its kind, also applies to parents of children ages 14 and older.

In addition, low-income adults enrolled through the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion provision will have their eligibility reviewed more frequently and will have to pay up to $35 for certain care. Plus, many enrollees will face more paperwork and verification requirements, which could make it harder for some to apply for and maintain their benefits.

Medicaid enrollees could also face other changes, since states would receive less federal funding for the program. This could force some states to eliminate certain benefits or tighten enrollment, among other alterations.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he achieved no tax on Social Security

Trump again falsely claimed that he eliminated taxes on Social Security, one of his key campaign promises in 2024.

“With the great ‘big, beautiful bill,’ we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security,” he said during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

The massive domestic policy package that Trump signed last summer did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more). But as the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump’s false claim on balancing the federal budget by ending fraud

Trump baselessly claimed that eliminating fraud in federal programs would balance the federal budget, saying, “If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly.”

The annual budget deficit far exceeds the estimated amount of money the federal government loses to fraud each year.

A first-of-its-kind estimate that the federal Government Accountability Office released in 2024 found that between $233 billion to $521 billion is lost to fraud annually. But the federal budget deficit came in at just under $1.8 trillion for the most recent fiscal year, which ended in September, according to the Treasury Department – more than triple the highest estimated fraud total.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump’s false claim that payments to service members came from tariffs

Trump said, “Every service member recently received a warrior dividend of $1,776,” then added, “We got the money from tariffs and other things.” But these one-time payments did not come from tariffs. Rather, as CNN’s Haley Britzky reported in December, “a senior administration official said the $2.6 billion cost of the bonuses was being taken from $2.9 billion in extra funding for basic allowance for housing, or BAH, payments appropriated by Congress in July.” The funding was part of Trump’s big domestic policy bill and marked for “improving the quality of life for military personnel.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Immigration and foreign affairs

Fact check: Trump falsely claims a Charlotte killer ‘came in through open borders’

Trump lamented the murder last summer of a refugee from Ukraine, Iryna Zarutska, who was killed on public transit in Charlotte, North Carolina. But Trump added a false claim that the alleged killer had migrated to the US, saying Zarutska “had escaped a brutal war only to be slain by a hardened criminal set free to kill in America – came in through open borders.”

In reality, the man charged with first-degree murder over the killing was, according to all available evidence, from the US. The Charlotte Observer has reported that the man’s Facebook page said he was born in Charlotte and attended high school there, and the newspaper has interviewed his American mother.

The Observer published its own fact check on Tuesday night noting Trump’s claim was not true.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims that Biden allowed ‘11,888 murderers’ to enter US as migrants

While criticizing the Biden administration’s border policies, Trump repeated his regular claim that the Biden administration allowed 11,888 murderers to enter the US as migrants – saying, “They were murderers, 11,888 murderers. They came into our country.”

Trump was inaccurately describing federal data. The Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted that the figure it appears Trump was referring to when he uses the “11,888” number is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration. They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” – which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences, not roaming free as Trump has also claimed.

Fact check: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.

“Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar,” Trump wrote in one post on Friday, the day Harris visited the southern border in Arizona. Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country,” Trump wrote in another Friday post. They “roam free to KILL AGAIN,” he wrote, escalating his rhetoric, on Saturday.

Facts First: Trump’s claims are false in two big ways. First, the statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. Rather, those statistics are about noncitizens who entered the country under any administration, including Trump’s; were convicted of a crime at some point, usually in the US after their arrival; and are now living in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” — where some have been listed for years, including while Trump was president, because their country of citizenship won’t let the US deport them back there. Second, that ICE “non-detained” list includes people who are still serving jail and prison sentences for their crimes; they are on the list because they are not being held in immigration detention in particular.

The new statistics, released by ICE in a letter to a Republican congressman this week, said there were 425,431 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of July 21, 2024, including 13,099 people with homicide convictions.

The statistics have been deployed by Trump and various Republican lawmakers and right-wing commentators as alarming evidence of Harris’ supposed mismanagement of immigration policy. But in addition to exaggerating her role on the file — she was never actually “border czar” — much of the chatter has inaccurately described what the statistics show.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a Saturday email: “The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”

It’s not clear how many of the 13,099 people with homicide convictions on ICE’s non-detained docket as of July 21 are currently incarcerated in jails and prisons. Regardless, John Sandweg, an attorney who served as acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, said in a Saturday interview that it is “100% false” to say all the homicide offenders on the non-detained docket entered the US during Harris’ vice presidency. Sandweg added: “These are individuals who undoubtedly entered the United States over a long period of time. … A lot of them have probably been on the list for 20 years, where the US has just been unable to deport.”

CNN could not immediately find public statistics on how many people with criminal convictions were on the non-detained docket during Trump’s presidency. But there are public statistics from just before and just after his presidency — and those statistics, which we’ll discuss later in this article, make clear that Trump, too, presided over a non-detained docket that included hundreds of thousands of people with criminal convictions.

A Supreme Court decision requires ICE to release some offenders

Trump’s posts left open the impression that the homicide offenders on the non-detained docket had foreign homicide convictions but were nonetheless allowed to cross the US border and live freely in this country. In reality, public data makes it clear that the overwhelming majority of people with criminal convictions on the non-detained docket were convicted in the US, as Sandweg and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, which supports immigration, both told CNN.

Why aren’t these people in immigration detention if they have been convicted of a crime as serious as homicide? Under a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the US government is not allowed to indefinitely keep someone in immigration detention after they have been ordered removed from the country. So if someone has served their criminal sentence for homicide and then is ordered to be removed from the US, but their country is uncooperative with the US on immigration and won’t take them back, they must be released in the US — usually after no more than six months in immigration detention.

“Let’s say you have a Russian who was convicted of homicide. There’s nothing we can do there,” Sandweg said, given how Russia simply won’t accept the deportation. “There comes a point where you just have to release them.” He added that this doesn’t mean the person is “completely free” — people on the non-detained docket often have to check in with ICE or be monitored electronically — “but there’s just no more legal authority to continue the detention.”

Sandweg added: “ICE, of course, is not willy-nilly saying, ‘Okay, people convicted of murder, you’re not a priority.’ … We have a guy convicted of homicide, our strong preference is not to release them onto the streets.”

Reichlin-Melnick, who noted Saturday on social media that the non-detained docket includes people in jails and prisons, wrote on social media on Friday that “anyone on ICE’s non-detained docket with a homicide conviction has likely been in the country for decades, served a full criminal sentence, and can’t be removed because they’re from a country which restricts US deportations.”

Reichlin-Melnick continued: “There are others on ICE’s non-detained docket who have serious criminal records who, after serving their time, managed to win some form of protection and relief from removal. They are now here legally, but remain on the docket and are required to check in with ICE periodically.”

The list of convicted criminals on the non-detained docket includes both people who crossed the border illegally and people who came to the US legally, such as with a visa or green card, and then committed a crime and were placed in removal proceedings or were given a removal order.

What the numbers show

The non-detained docket is not a new creation of the Biden-Harris administration. In fact, there were hundreds of thousands of people with criminal convictions on the non-detained docket during the Trump presidency, too.

A reporter for Fox News, the right-wing outlet whose reporting on these statistics Trump repeatedly promoted on Friday, noted Friday evening on social media that “not all of these criminals entered during the Biden admin, as some are claiming” and that “some of these criminals go back many years across multiple administrations.”

A previous official federal report said there were 368,574 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of August 2016, under the Obama administration, about five months before Trump became president. And another federal document said there were 405,786 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of early June 2021, less than five months into the Biden-Harris administration. Again, the July 2024 number was 425,431 total convicted criminals.

In other words, the list grew about 10% between August 2016 and June 2021 — a roughly five-year period that included the four-year Trump administration — and then grew about another roughly 5% in the three-plus years under the Biden-Harris administration between June 2021 and July 2024.

Because official information on people on the non-detained docket with criminal convictions has only been released sporadically, with dates that don’t line up with the start and end dates of presidential administrations, it’s not possible to say how much of the increase happened under the Trump administration versus how much happened during the final months of the Obama administration and the first months of the Biden-Harris administration.

Regardless, there’s no basis for saying, as Trump kept doing Friday, that all of the people on the docket with homicide convictions came in during the Biden-Harris administration — and the numbers show “the docket certainly grew under the Trump administration,” Sandweg said. (He added that, to be fair, Trump faced the same stubborn issues with uncooperative foreign countries as other presidents.)

The crimes committed by people on the non-detained docket in July 2024 ranged from the most serious offenses, like homicide and sexual assault, to “gambling,” “liquor,” and “obscenity” offenses. The conviction categories with the highest number of people on the non-detained docket were “traffic offenses” (77,074), “assault” (62,231), “dangerous drugs” (56,533) and “immigration” (51,933).

CNN could not immediately find public data on the number of people with homicide convictions specifically who were on the non-detained docket in past years, including during the Trump administration.

It is clear that the total number of people on the non-detained docket, including people without any criminal conviction, has spiked during the Biden-Harris administration. (There are numerous reasons that people can end up on the docket; we won’t get into those here.) ICE says the docket jumped from roughly 3.3 million in the 2020 fiscal year, the last full fiscal year under Trump, to roughly 6.2 million in the 2023 fiscal year.

Harris critics are entitled to cite this real increase. Her presidential opponent, though, is criticizing her dishonestly.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump makes unsupported claim about migrants from prisons and mental institutions

Trump also claimed of migration to the US under Biden, “They poured in by the millions and millions – from prisons, from mental institutions.”

He was vaguer here than he usually is; in many other speeches, he has claimed that foreign countries have deliberately emptied their prisons and mental institutions to send undesirable citizens to the US as migrants. But his Tuesday phrasing still left open the impression that some massive number of former prisoners and people from mental institutions had entered the US under Biden. He has never provided any corroboration for such claims.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he ended eight wars

Trump repeated a familiar false claim about his role in foreign affairs: “My first 10 months, I ended eight wars.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.

Trump explained during the speech that his list of supposed wars settled includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, but that wasn’t actually a war; it is a long-running diplomatic dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. Trump’s list also included another supposed war that didn’t actually occur during his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has sometimes claimed to have prevented the eruption of a new war between those two entities, providing few details about what he meant, but that is different than settling an actual war.) And his list included a war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but that war has continued despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration in 2025 – which was never signed by the leading rebel coalition doing the fighting.

Trump’s list also included an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting temporarily erupted again in December despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration earlier in 2025.

One can debate the importance of Trump’s role in having ended the other conflicts on his list, or fairly question whether some have truly ended; for example, killing continued in Gaza after the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, and Trump said in the speech, “The war in Gaza, which proceeds at a very low level; it’s just about there.” Regardless, Trump’s “eight” figure is obviously too big.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s claim about what Iran has said about nuclear weapons

Trump said of Iran, “We are in negotiations with them; they want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”

We don’t know what representatives of Iran’s government have said during the closed-door negotiations. However, Iranian officials have repeatedly said in public comments that they will never have a nuclear weapon. In fact, on Tuesday afternoon before Trump’s address, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on social media platform X: “Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will we Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people.”

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said, according to a translation on the UN website, “I hereby declare once more before this Assembly that Iran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb.”

Trump is of course entitled to be skeptical of Iranian leaders’ words about the country’s nuclear intentions, as many others around the world have been for years. But Trump’s claim here was about their words, not their actions.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s inaccurate claims about NATO

Trump repeated his claim that before he prodded NATO members to spend more on defense, the US was “paying for almost all of NATO.” That’s an exaggeration. NATO figures show that in 2016, the year before Trump took office the first time, US defense spending made up about 72% of total NATO defense spending; in 2024, the year before he returned to office, it was about 63%. Both figures are big, of course, but “almost all” is a stretch” – and the US contributes a smaller percentage to NATO’s own organizational budget. Under an agreed formula, the US provided about 16% of that budget at the time Trump returned to office in 2025. When he took office in 2017, the US was contributing about 22% of the budget.

In addition, Trump touted NATO members’ 2025 commitment to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense-related and security-related spending by 2035 – including at least 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense requirements that were covered by the previous target of 2% of GDP – saying they agreed “to pay 5% of GDP for military defense, rather than the 2% which they weren’t paying … Now they’re paying 5 (percent) as opposed to not paying 2 (percent).”

But most NATO members are not yet meeting the new higher target, which, again, they have given themselves a decade to meet. NATO estimates show that just three members, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, were at or above 3.5% in core defense spending in 2025, though they may be joined by others in 2026.

“It’s absolutely not true that the Allies are currently ‘paying 5%’ on hard defense, and even by 2035 they’ve only committed to 3.5%, in terms of their defense budget conventionally-understood. As of mid-2025, *no* Ally is spending 5%, in fact not even 4.5%,” professor Erwan Lagadec, who leads the NATO and European Union studies program at George Washington University’s international affairs school, said in a January email.

Lagadec added: “In 2025 the U.S. was ‘only’ at 3.2%, *down* from 2014 in terms of ratios to GDP (the only country in that situation). Hence the case can be made that the U.S. is now the ‘laggard’ going ‘in the wrong direction’; although of course the fact that the U.S. was spending a lower ratio in 2025 than 2014 on defense could be seen as a sign of success, i.e. the outcome of the other Allies doing more.”

Trump’s claim that “they weren’t paying” when the target was 2% needs context. Although most NATO members were not hitting the 2% target as late as 2023, a majority hit the target in 2024; NATO figures show that 18 member countries were at or above 2% out of 31 countries subject to the target.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Elections and crime

Fact check: Trump’s multiple false claims about US elections

Trump made a rapid-fire series of false claims about US elections while calling on Congress to pass a bill requiring voter identification and proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Trump falsely claimed, “Cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.” It’s simply not; all evidence suggests fraud makes up a minuscule percentage of votes cast. Trump referred to “crooked mail-in ballots”; the incidence of fraud is also tiny with mail-in ballots, though experts say it is slightly higher than with in-person voting, and there is no basis to categorically describe them as “crooked.”

He suggested that a Republican elections bill called the SAVE America Act would completely eliminate the use of mail-in ballots, but it wouldn’t. And Trump said, “They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.” That is a lie, as Democrats, like Republicans, are elected all the time in free and fair US elections.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump claims he inherited ‘rampant’ crime, but it was very low by historical standards

Trump claimed that he inherited “rampant crime at home” from the Biden administration. There is no firm definition of the word “rampant,” but crime was very low by historical US standards at the time Trump returned to office in January 2025.

“The US violent crime rate in 2024 was the lowest since 1969 and the property crime rate was the lowest since 1961. Moreover, murder in the US fell at the fastest rate ever recorded in both 2023 and 2024 and was down 25 percent from 2020 levels,” said crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics.

Murder spiked nationally amid the turmoil of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, under both Trump in 2020 and Biden in 2021. But even before the decline in violent crime in the second half of Biden’s presidency and in the first year of Trump’s second presidency, crime rates were nowhere near what they were in the early 1990s and at various points of the 1970s and 1980s.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s two false claims about crime in Washington, DC

Trump claimed that after his takeover of law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, last summer, the capital is “now one of the safest cities in the country.” That’s not true. Nor is his claim that the capital has “almost no crime anymore,” as a cursory glance at public data or police press releases shows; more than 1,300 crimes were reported in the last month.

Asher told CNN in a February email: “DC crime fell substantially in 2025 but it was not anywhere near the safest city in America.”

Of the 50 largest cities tracked by Asher’s Real-Time Crime Index, he said, “DC had the 9th highest murder rate and 12th highest violent crime rate in 2025 of the 50 largest cities in the Real-Time Crime Index.” Trump’s intervention happened in August; in the period running from August through December 2025, Asher said, “DC had the 18th highest murder rate and 17th highest violent crime rate.”

“Even in the post-intervention period, DC’s murder rate was more than 5 times higher than San Diego and San Jose and roughly 3 times higher than cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle,” he said. And he added that crime in the capital was “falling considerably” prior to Trump’s Guard deployment, and continued to fall after the deployment, “in a way that is hard to determine the impact of the deployment itself.”

Trump could have accurately said the capital has had some prolonged recent stretches without a murder; the Washington Post reported that it began the year with a highly unusual three-week period with no homicides. But that stretch ended January 21.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s unproven claim on fraud in Minnesota

Trump repeated his claim that Somali residents of Minnesota have committed $19 billion in fraud, saying: “There’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. We have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that.”

It’s possible this “$19 billion” figure will be proven true, but nothing close to that figure has been proven to date.

In December, a federal prosecutor, Joseph Thompson, claimed that “half or more” of $18 billion in federal funds billed by 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota deemed at high risk for fraud – and now under a third-party audit ordered by Gov. Tim Walz – might be fraudulent.

But $9 billion is not $19 billion, Thompson didn’t say all of the possible fraud was committed by Somali residents, and Walz’s administration challenged Thompson’s claim.

One Walz administration official said in December that they had “evidence of tens of millions of dollars in fraud to this point,” not $9 billion; Walz himself said, “You should be equally outraged about $1 or whatever that number is, but they’re using that number without the proof behind it.” And Thompson – who resigned in January amid tension with the Trump administration over its handling of an ICE officer fatally shooting Renée Good – made clear at the time that the “half or more” comment was an early estimate rather than a firm number.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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