THE THING ABOUT IT IS.

Week 37.

2026-09-07 to 2026-09-13. 23 arguments between camps, each one checked against what it would have to predict.

PlainOpenWidestFails
A memorial wreath laid on a stone and two pairs of walking boots side by side on the road beyond
W37Religion in public life: whether a Muslim critic of Israel and of the post-9/11 wars can be presumed sincere about 9/11 and antisemitism The claim

El-Sayed's refusal to disavow Hasan Piker through the 9/11 anniversary shows that El-Sayed shares the hatred behind the attacks, attacks America himself, and leads a party that takes pleasure in them.

The catch

El-Sayed's statement at Lansing's remembrance ceremony on 11 September said 'Nothing can justify the murder of innocent civilians. Nothing.'

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.

PlainMixedWidestMixed
A single megaphone on the kerb and a tarpaulin pulled over the whole street of memorial flowers behind it
W37Religion in public life: whether a Muslim critic of Israel and of the post-9/11 wars can be presumed sincere about 9/11 and antisemitism The claim

The Rogers anniversary attack and the campaign to keep Mamdani from Ground Zero show that the right does not care about 9/11 and uses it only to spread hatred of Muslim people and justify wars, and that Rogers is a monster exploiting victims' pain.

The catch

The largest right-leaning 9/11 posts in the collection, including a widow's clip at 4.77 million engagement, ran on Saudi accountability and the 28 pages.

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.'

PlainHoldsWidestMixed
A merchant's till ringing at a stall of folded shirts beside an empty basketball court with no one on it
W37gender and family The claim

The WNBA trans-athlete panic, run for a month with no trans player in the league, shows that the accounts and businesses pushing it want to attack trans people and profit from doing so, with the protection of women's sport as cover.

The catch

In the window the accounts that ran the panic posted nothing on trans triggers outside sport, and the sixfold sales rise is the company's own claim as relayed by two outlets.

PlainOpenWidestFails
Two chairs pushed apart at a long table, a bookmark a third of the way into the report between them
W37intra-right identity: anti-woke and Zionist-aligned conservatives vs. the 'New Right' around Tucker Carlson The claim

Carlson's defence of El-Sayed and Vance's continued friendship show that the 'Woke Right' is an organised faction that protects Carlson out of shared hostility to Trump and to Jewish people, and that it has become an Islamic movement fused with the Marxist-Islamist left.

The catch

The Jerusalem Center piece Levin offered as the expose describes a convergence limited to foreign policy and records Carlson and Saagar Enjeti disparaging El-Sayed's opposition.

PlainHoldsWidestMixed
A large sealed envelope hung on a string above a ballot box, two older envelopes lying empty beneath
W37populism_vs_elites The claim

The conditional $5,000 dividend shows that Trump and Republicans are desperate to buy the midterms because they cannot win fairly, and are lying because they have no intention of paying.

The catch

The White House said on 11 September it was doubling down, Lutnick said the checks would not be paid with taxpayer dollars, and Vance pointed to tariff revenue as the funding source.

PlainOpenWidestFails
Two coats on one peg above a bin with one crumpled note in it, a finish tape still open outside
W37Pro-Israel and Republican institutional framing of Israel-critical candidates as illegitimate vs. the left-populist reading of that framing as cynical exploitation of 9/11 The claim

El-Sayed's refusal to drop Piker on the 9/11 anniversary shows that he and the Piker-allied progressive bloc share the hatred behind 9/11, attack America, and belong outside legitimate politics.

The catch

El-Sayed told Fox and Friends on 7 April 'Of course I don't think 9/11 was justified', and PolitiFact rated Rogers's attribution of Piker's view to him Pants on Fire on 7 August.

PlainHoldsWidestFails
A ship's bell with a fresh dent in it hung beside two clocks on a wall that no longer agree
W37Cross-ideological collective blame of the administration for Iran-war costs vs. the administration's own account of the war's scope The claim

The week's escalation and Trump's midterm-timed promise show that his Iran war is a reckless, lied-about war of choice that has failed at mounting cost to Americans, prolonged because the administration will not admit failure, and in the left-populist version fought at Israel's bidding and for profit.

The catch

By CENTCOM's own statement, US forces struck the five tankers on 8 September after the IRGC had twice tried in two days to hit a US Navy warship with ballistic missiles.

PlainFailsWidestFails
A framed film still turned to show its plain wooden back, a magnifying glass finding only the wall behind it
W37political violence memory: the right's reading of the left as celebrating Kirk's killing vs. the left's reading of the anniversary as demanded reverence The claim

Netflix UK's 'neck injury' post on the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's killing shows that the company meant to mock his death, that mocking it is the left's shared culture, and that its denial is cover.

The catch

The post's images show Eddie Horniman craning to look back at Susie Glass during his wedding, and 'nearly did himself a neck injury' is a stock British idiom for exactly that look.

PlainHoldsWidestFails
A bench with three folded newspapers and one crumpled paper hat, beside a thick ledger open at its longest column
W37political violence memory: which camp owns it The claim

The anniversary celebrations show that the left celebrates Charlie Kirk's murder, is an ideology of destruction that wants conservatives dead, and that Democrats condone it.

The catch

Hasan Piker's post, at 2,236,529 engagement the largest left-leaning anniversary item, attributes the memes to Kirk's treatment of marginalised groups and stops short of endorsing the shooting.

PlainMixedWidestMixed
A sealed letter propped among memorial flowers at a wall, a folded campaign leaflet blown into the gutter below
W37Pro-Israel and Republican institutional framing of Israel-critical candidates as illegitimate vs. the left-populist reading of that framing as cynical exploitation of 9/11 The claim

The Rogers camp's anniversary attack on El-Sayed and the administration's Iran war show that the right does not care about 9/11 and exploits the attack to justify wars in the Middle East, mass surveillance and racial agitation.

The catch

The largest right-leaning anniversary post in the collection is a clip of a 9/11 widow calling out Saudi Arabia and four administrations from the Ground Zero podium, at 4,767,365 impressions.

PlainMixedWidestFails
An open statute book with one page ribboned on a station counter, three ticket stubs beside it, the road open
W37immigration The claim

The mask ban and the policing of the Dover and Portsmouth protests show that the British establishment intends to suppress patriotic protest and expose protesters to their enemies, while it protects migrants, the masked left and the burqa.

The catch

No one was arrested at Dover or Portsmouth on the first weekend even though officers were assaulted and police vehicles damaged, and Kent police admitted overlooking a tip-off before the Dover blockade.

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'.

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.

PlainMixedWidestFails
A briefing folder closed without a note beside a shelf of dusty statute books, each holding an old ribbon
W37Left-populist reading of the political class as captured by pro-Israel donors vs. the establishment's own account of policing antisemitism The claim

The state-level threats against the UK over its settlement sanctions and Jeffries' elevation of Moskowitz show that US politicians in both parties serve Israel over their own constituents and knowingly sacrifice their interests whenever Israel or its lobby asks.

The catch

Axios reported that Prime Minister Burnham briefed Trump on the sanctions in advance, that Trump offered no pushback, and that a White House official said Ambassador Huckabee's BBC threat was his own and had not been agreed with the White House or the State Department.

PlainMixedWidestFails
A ferry gangway lowered for the return crossing, an opened folder on the quay with a bookmark in each half
W37immigration The claim

The Ceuta crisis and the declassified record show that Sánchez and the Spanish socialists are criminals deliberately flooding Spain and Europe with migrants, and that the Red Cross and the NGOs in Ceuta are their accomplices.

The catch

Of the more than 72,000 people who crossed, the government counts about 5,000 still in Ceuta and local authorities more than 10,000, so the great majority were returned on either side's count.

PlainMixedWidestFails
Eleven chairs turned toward a hospital bed and one turned away, a folded newspaper pushed under the door
W37gender and family The claim

The juror interviews and the reporting on the holdout show that the women and left-leaning voices sympathising with the Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children want the killing excused, disregarded the law to get her off, and will destroy the one man who refused.

The catch

The finding the eleven sought, lack of criminal responsibility, leads to psychiatric commitment under Massachusetts law, and Clancy remains held at Tewksbury State Hospital where she has been since 2023.

PlainOpenWidestFails
A postcard of another country pinned above an empty in-tray, a torch beam moving along the fence outside
W37immigration The claim

Democratic votes and a socialist wing's stated aims show that the Democratic Party as a whole wants to abolish ICE and border security, overwhelm American cities, and dismantle capitalism under a Marxist system if it gains power.

The catch

The Democratic official accounts that addressed ICE in the window, Senators Warren, Murphy and Van Hollen, pressed oversight and conduct complaints and none called for abolishing ICE or borders.

PlainHoldsWidestMixed
One empty slot on a library shelf and one dropped hat on the floor of an otherwise silent hall
W37political violence memory: which camp owns it The claim

The convention shouts show that the right loves calling for assassinations, is the violent side, and rewrites reality by deleting the evidence while calling the left violent.

The catch

The shout came from one attendee during a speech about Democratic rhetoric fuelling violence, and Newsweek's expert said one person yelling does not mean the whole room agreed.

PlainFailsWidestFails
A cropped print of a handshake laid on a wide photograph of the same row, every seat still filled
W37Religion in public life: whether a Muslim mayor and the Democrats around him can be presumed to mourn 9/11 The claim

The clip of Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez smiling during the reading of the names shows that they, and the Democrats they represent, do not mourn 9/11 and mock the country.

The catch

Michael Ragusa, Giuliani's security head and a self-described lifelong Republican, wrote that he stood next to them the whole time, that the camera caught a greeting, and that politicians of both parties were laughing and joking behind him.

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.

Every week we score the arguments the two camps are making about each other, and check each one against what it would have to predict. All weeks · How we decide