THE THING ABOUT IT IS.

THE THING ABOUT IT IS.

The stories we're arguing about. What's happening, our read, how we know.

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Political camps make claims about what the other side really wants, and those claims travel long before anyone checks them. We write each one down twice, in its plainest form and its widest, work out what each version would have to predict if it were true, and go and check.

PlainHoldsWidestFails
Two coin sacks set on either side of a capitol lectern, both tied off with the same colour of ribbon
W37tech/AI The claim

Coxon's warning and the industry's dismissal of it show that the AI industry's billionaires are greedy oligarchs buying Congress to escape any check on their power, and that their China argument is a pretext.

The catch

Public First Action, the bipartisan pro-regulation network, had raised more than 80 million dollars by 30 June, including 20 million from Anthropic and a personal 1 million from Amodei recorded in FEC filings.

PlainOpenWidestFails
An account book open under glass, and a chair shoved from the table then pulled back up to it
W37tech/AI The claim

Coxon's resignation and the chorus that followed show that the AI safety camp is a funded and organised operation whose warnings are a pretext for seizing control of the technology.

The catch

Axios reported that Coxon left four months into a six-month vesting cliff and forfeited his unvested Anthropic equity, and the Daily Wire's Neal Pollack, writing inside the frame, concedes 'None of this proves anyone orchestrated Coxon's resignation.'

PlainFailsWidestFails
A coach at a rural crossroads with a local rosette in its window, one foreign stamp in the dust below
W37tech/AI The claim

The data-center backlash shows that Americans who oppose data centers are dupes or instruments of Chinese influence operations, China-funded far-left networks and degrowth ideology, and have no genuine grievances of their own.

The catch

In the same remarks that carried 'Chinese agitprop', Bessent said the data-center companies and the large language labs have 'done a horrendous job reaching out to communities' and that 'I don't blame people for having a backlash'.

PlainHoldsWidestFails
A mountain of envelopes on a counter with a tiny stack set apart, the same stamp lying between two ledgers
W37MAHA-aligned reading of the Democratic establishment as a suppressor of vaccine-injury voices vs. the mainstream reading of Kennedy as an anti-vaccine activist holding the health department The claim

The Democrats' handling of vaccine-injury complaints shows that the party cruelly silenced tens of thousands of mothers who believe their children were vaccine-injured, betraying its own believe-women creed.

The catch

A claimant law firm's tally as of 1 July 2026, eighteen months into Kennedy's tenure, counts 14,146 Covid-vaccine claims filed and 62 compensated under the same program.

PlainMixedWidestFails
A faded rosette pinned to an empty chair in a hearing room, four days crossed off on the wall calendar
W37Purity contest inside the Canadian right over Covid mandates and the vaccine-injured, the People's Party reading the Conservative leadership's freedom rhetoric as pretense vs. the leadership's account of quiet support The claim

Poilievre's absence from the Allison Inquiry shows that the Conservative leadership is hiding from the consequences of mandates it never opposed, and that its freedom rhetoric is a pretense.

The catch

Bill C-278, the Prevention of Government-imposed Vaccination Mandates Act, was introduced in June 2022 with Poilievre publicly championing it, and in September 2022 he demanded on camera that the military mandate end.

PlainMixedWidestFails
An open filing drawer in a public lobby beside a wall calendar left on a spring page
W37Health-freedom reading of Ottawa, the health bureaucracy and the legacy press as indifferent to Covid vaccine injuries and hiding the numbers vs. the mainstream reading of the inquiry as a partisan listening exercise without findings The claim

The near-empty MP benches and thin legacy coverage at the Allison Inquiry show that Ottawa and the legacy press do not care about vaccine-injured Canadians, dismiss them as antivaxxers, and bury the country's own vaccine injury numbers.

The catch

The Public Health Agency of Canada's statistics page publishes 3,557 claims received, 252 approved and 21,474,722 dollars paid through 30 November 2025, with reporting paused since the program moved in April.

This Week

The whole week →

We follow the news and what people say about it, and in particular how an event gets picked up and turned into a story about what some group of people is supposedly like. A few of those stories end up as plain hatred, and that's what this column holds, quoted and dated, with a link back to where it was said.

A narrow strip of a coastal map rubbed down to bare paper with the eraser set to go over it again
Calls for violenceW37Protected groups
What was said

'Netanyahu didn't go far enough in Gaza,' posted as the answer to Muslim people said to be celebrating killings.

Who it targets

Palestinian and Muslim people, with more killing in Gaza endorsed

A scorched envelope propped against a lamppost at the edge of a settlement of tin shelters
Calls for violenceW37Protected groups
What was said

Migrant shacks burned in Ceuta, and a fire the account treated as arson called 'a loud and clear message.'

Who it targets

Migrants whose shacks in Ceuta burned, with the fire framed as arson and as a message

An hourglass run empty on a windowsill, thin smoke rising from a hillside of tin roofs beyond
Calls for violenceW37Protected groups
What was said

Shacks burning in Ceuta, explained as what happens when 'patience has a limit.'

Who it targets

Migrants whose shacks in Ceuta burned, with a fire the account treated as arson justified as exhausted patience

A crossroads signpost with two blank arms, one toward a ferry port and the other toward a barracks gate
Calls for violenceW37Protected groups
What was said

'Remigration or war': mass removal offered as the only alternative to fighting.

Who it targets

Migrants in Britain, with war conditioned on their non-removal

A paint roller loaded with one colour run straight across a row of different campaign posters on a wall
HatefulW37Protected groups
What was said

'Ghetto, black, communist' returns as one label for a Florida Senate candidate, with her supporters called 'black supremacist miscreants' on top.

Who it targets

A Black candidate for the US Senate labeled ghetto and black as a compound slur

A memorial candle burning on a city hall desk beside a blank charge sheet in the in-tray
HatefulW37Protected groups
What was said

New York's Muslim mayor called a supporter of Islamic terror and a disgrace on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, for his religion alone.

Who it targets

The Muslim mayor of New York, cast as a supporter of terror on religion