Podcast · thebulwark.com
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
The news cycle doesn’t slow down, and neither does The Bulwark. Bulwark Takes brings you bite-sized takes on the news of the day from the entire Bulwark team, including Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, and Bill Kristol, and more.
138 claims
False88% confidence8 sourcesSep 5, 2026Todd M. Lyons serves as the Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Said by AAs of the claim's date (2026-09-05), Todd Lyons no longer served as acting ICE director: he was in the role from March 2025 to May 31, 2026, and David Venturella had replaced him. The claim's present tense is therefore contradicted, though the post's reference to a past range visit may have been to an earlier period when he did hold the post.False85% confidence7 sourcesAug 21, 2026The Treasury Department's bond buyback program caused long-term interest rates to increase.Said by BThe sources contradict the causal claim: the buyback announcement initially pushed long-term yields down, and the later rebound was attributed to deficits, inflation worries and heavy tech borrowing, not to the buybacks. Yields did rise again after the announcement, so the rise happened, but the buybacks did not cause it, and the claim is also dated to 2026-08-21, when yields were rebounding from their post-announcement lows.False55% confidence6 sourcesAug 21, 2026Every one percentage point increase in interest rates costs the U.S. government 600 billion dollars.Said by 4BThe claim's $600 billion-per-point figure is roughly double or more the cost estimates in the sources, which run from about $95 billion to roughly $300–400 billion a year per percentage point, depending on the model. The direction is right, since higher rates do raise federal interest costs, but the magnitude is grossly off. The passage is Trump's own remark, and the extraction matches it faithfully, so the figure is graded as the post's claim.Mixed60% confidence8 sourcesSep 15, 2026The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's executive order regarding mail-in voting regulations.The Supreme Court did block the Trump administration's mail-voting effort on September 14, 2026, declining to let the Postal Service enforce its rule implementing the March executive order. But on August 24 the Court lifted a lower-court block on the executive order itself, so the claim that it blocked the order is only partly accurate. The post's 'effort to police mail voting' is best read as the USPS rule and implementation, which the Court did block.Mixed60% confidence7 sourcesSep 15, 2026The Republican governor of Wyoming complained that Department of Justice officials were meddling in state elections by attempting to gain access to voting rolls.Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon did publicly criticize DOJ election monitors as 'aggressive' and 'irregular' and said he didn't like the federal government 'taking our votes,' so the general complaint of meddling is supported. However, the sources describe his complaint as centered on monitors interviewing voters and seeking access to polling machines at the August primary, not on DOJ trying to gain access to voting rolls, which the claim adds. The passage itself is the claimant's recollection and is not evidence.Mixed60% confidence6 sourcesSep 15, 2026The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court to overrule injunctions against the United States Postal Service's election rules six weeks before election day.Said by CThe Trump administration did appeal to the Supreme Court to lift the injunction against the USPS mail-ballot rule, with its application filed September 3 and renewed September 6. However, that is about eight weeks before the November 3 election, not six, and the Court rejected the bid on September 14.Minor detail. The sources confirm the claim; only a minor detail differs, such as a name's spelling, a title's wording or a rounding.Mixed55% confidence4 sourcesSep 15, 2026The Bulwark is hosting a live show in Springfield, Ohio, on September 25th to benefit the Haitian community.Said by BThe September 25 date and the benefit for Springfield's Haitian community are supported by the Bulwark's own announcement and later coverage, but the sources place the show at the Dayton Masonic Center in Dayton, Ohio, not in Springfield. Read literally ('in Springfield'), the claim conflicts with the venue; read as intended (a Bulwark show benefiting Springfield's Haitian community), it is supported. The claim was made on 2026-09-15, and the Bulwark's pre-event announcement of 2026-09-12 already gave the Dayton venue.Mixed80% confidence8 sourcesSep 5, 2026The judges for Kelly Loeffler's business competition are Nicki Minaj and Grant Cardone.The SBA's own August 31, 2026 announcement confirms Nicki Minaj and Grant Cardone as judges of its Million Dollar Pitch Competition, but it names a third judge, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, so the claim that the judges are only Minaj and Cardone is incomplete. The passage's claim also matches the rest of the coverage in the sources, and the 'Mickey' misspelling is trivial.Mixed60% confidence7 sourcesAug 29, 2026The administration revoked visas for 200,000 people who are in the United States applying for asylum.Said by DSources from August 24-26, 2026 show the administration planned to revoke business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who applied for asylum, but none reports completed revocations of 200,000 visas, and the State Department declined to give a number. The claim's 'revoked' and fixed 200,000 figure depart from the sources' 'plans' and 'up to' framing, though the plan itself is supported.Mixed60% confidence8 sourcesAug 29, 2026The administration is proposing a $100,000 fee for the Optional Practical Training program.Said by BThe administration did propose OPT fees in an October 8, 2026 rule, but the proposal is $70,000 for initial OPT and $30,000 for subsequent OPT, not a single $100,000 fee. The $100,000 figure appears only as a combined total for a STEM OPT path in some coverage (Science, Forbes). The proposal was also published after the August 29 post, when the source record shows only reported contemplation, so the claim departs from the passage's "rumors" framing.Reported in the post, not stated as its own.Mixed55% confidence4 sourcesAug 29, 2026The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency has a $6 billion annual budget.Said by BUSCIS is a real agency funded mainly by fees, but the sources put its total budget near $7.2–7.4 billion (FY2025 total $7.4B; FY2026 annualized CR total about $7.19B), not $6 billion. The claim's figure is off by roughly 17–20%, which is not rounding but also not the gross error that would make it false; the claim also departs from the passage only in its precise wording, not its figure.Mixed50% confidence8 sourcesAug 29, 2026The United States is less generous in its immigration policies compared to Canada and Australia.Said by BWhether the US is less generous than Canada and Australia depends on the measure. By absolute number of legal immigrants the US admits more than either country, while per-capita OECD comparisons (Cato, which puts the US 25th among OECD countries) and the family-versus-economic framing of the other sources point toward Canada and Australia being more open. The claim also departs slightly from the passage, which said the US is 'relatively generous, not incredibly generous' compared to Canada or Australia, and no source directly ranks overall generosity as of 2026-08-29.