By James D. Agresti March 12, 2024 Credit: Laken Riley’s Facebook account Overview The “fact checker” PolitiFact asserts that President Biden had nothing to do with the murder of a nursing student by an illegal border crosser because “Biden does not decide who is released into the country.” In reality, the president has vast powers to decide who is allowed into the U.S., and the person charged with this murder was let in as a direct consequence of Biden’s actions. This murder is not an isolated instance. Homicides committed by non-citizens are hundreds of times more common than other types of ..read more

By James D. Agresti February 7, 2024  Credit: Frederic Legrand/Shutterstock.com Overview In a recent trio of posts to X, Elon Musk wrote that (1) illegal immigrants “are not prevented from voting in federal elections,” (2) “you don’t need government issued ID to vote,” and (3) Democrats “are importing voters.” To rebut those statements, the New York Times published an article by Jim Rutenberg and Kate Conger claiming that Musk is “spreading election misinformation” about “illegal voting by noncitizens” and echoing a “conspiracy theory” spread by Donald Trump. While Musk’s words are impre ..read more

By James D. Agresti January 19, 2024 Credit: mikute/Shutterstock.com Overview One of the most effective and devious methods of mass deception is falsely accusing others of one’s own misdeeds. This is called “projecting” or “accusation in a mirror,” and it was used by: corrupt politicians in ancient Rome to purge a statesman who stood in the way of their graft. the Nazis to launch World War II. influential people in Rwanda to incite a genocide. Certain moral frameworks that have gained traction in modern times permit and even encourage this type of propaganda. Although it can be hard to dete ..read more

By James D. Agresti December 27, 2023 Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock.com Overview Even though Donald Trump is now the nation’s front-running presidential candidate in both polls and betting odds, the Colorado Supreme Court has issued a 4–3 decision that bans the citizens of Colorado from voting for him. The supposed grounds for their decision is that Trump can’t be the president under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment because he “engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021.” To support that claim, the Colorado judges—all appointed by Democrats—repeatedly quote Trump out of context to make it s ..read more

By James D. Agresti November 29, 2023  Credit: Fotolia/pololia Overview Despite the passage of state and federal laws that were supposed to reduce fatal drug overdoses, the annual U.S. drug overdose death rate has quintupled over recent decades: Over the most current year of available data, more than 110,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses, a rate of 33 per 100,000 population. In order to measure these deaths in clear, relevant terms, Just Facts enlisted the expertise of a licensed actuary and a Ph.D. mathematician to calculate, double-check, and triple-check the average lifet ..read more

By James D. Agresti November 6, 2023 Credit: Gregory P. Mango for NY Post In the high stakes New York trial of leading presidential candidate Donald Trump, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in September that Trump defrauded his lenders by inflating the value of his famed Mar-a-Lago estate by “at least 2,300%, compared” to an “appraisal” by the Palm Beach County Tax Assessor. Several news outlets from left to right challenged that claim because it’s blatantly flawed. CNN, for example, reported: it’s widely known that the tax assessor valuation is typically, though not always, less than what a propert ..read more

By James D. Agresti October 27, 2023 Overview The average cost of private schools is a vital fact for understanding issues like school choice and public school spending. This is because it provides a market-based comparison to the cost of government schools. Yet, the U.S. Department of Education hasn’t published an estimate for the average cost of private K–12 schools since 1995. To fill this decades-long gap, Just Facts conducted extensive research to develop a methodology that reliably measures private school spending. Beyond analyzing academic papers and government reports, Just Facts perf ..read more

By James D. Agresti October 11, 2023 Credit: Felipe Caparros/Shutterstock.com Overview In a staggering act of journalistic deceit, the New York Times is reporting that Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden without any “evidence of financial wrongdoing or corruption by the president.” Similar statements have been made by a massive array of media outlets and Democrat politicians. In reality, overwhelming proof of Joe Biden’s corruption and wrongdoing has been found, including hard evidence like written records and corroborated testimonies from first-hand witnesses. Collecti ..read more

By James D. Agresti September 18, 2023 Credit: Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock.com. “Robert L. Peters” included by Just Facts. Authenticated documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop reveal that Joe Biden had several email aliases, such as: Peter Henderson: 67stingray@gmx.com Robin Ware: robinware456@gmail.com Robert L. Peters: Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov The last of those addresses was a government account, as evidenced by the domain “pci.gov”. On June 7, 2015, Kathy Chung, a government-paid assistant of then-Vice President Biden, sent an email to his government alias and to Hunter with the subject lin ..read more

By James D. Agresti August 14, 2023 Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock.com Overview The recent indictment of Donald Trump alleges that he criminally lied about election fraud when contesting the 2020 presidential election. In the words of the indictment, Trump “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.” The indictment claims that Trump lied because he “was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue—often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on importan ..read more