For over 30 years, I stood behind a pharmacy counter and watched hardworking neighbors open their mouths in disbelief when I told them what their prescriptions would cost. I watched them ask if there was a less expensive generic, or if…
Page A2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 1 September 2026
Trump claims a map rename, a drug-price cut, and an autism myth — only one turns out true.
As it ran on the front
Let's take these one at a time, because context matters. First: the President said the price of a certain drug dropped from $1,000 to $149 — the biggest drop of its kind in sixty years, and frankly, that's a win, full stop. That's a number you can take to the bank, that's — well, that's a number, at least, and it's in the reporting, so we'll call that one a win for the administration.
Second: the map. Secretary Burgum says an Apple Maps label change — 'Lake America,' apparently — could be coming 'soon,' following a call with the President. Some folks are going to snicker at that, but renaming things is a time-honored executive tradition, and if the President wants a lake renamed after a call to a tech company, that's well within the tradition of naming things, that people do, sometimes, for reasons.…
…(cont) Third — and I want to be fair here — the President said there are no autism cases among unvaccinated Amish children. That's a specific, checkable claim, and fact-checkers went and checked it, and it turns out it doesn't hold up, there are documented cases. I shouldn't have grouped that with the other two, honestly — those are different kinds of statement, one's a price and one's a claim about a religious community's children, and I conflated them. That's on me.
But batting one-for-three isn't nothing. A ballplayer would take that — did I just compare a health claim about vaccine-hesitant children to a ballplayer's batting average? Let me withdraw that entirely, that was in poor taste and also wrong on the math, one-for-three isn't a passing grade anywhere outside of baseball, and this isn't baseball, this is public health.
The point stands that the drug price figure is the one number here anybody can go verify at a pharmacy counter, and that's worth something on a page with a map rename and a vaccine myth sitting next to it. I'll leave it there before I compare anything else to sports.
“Notice the batting average — one true claim gets buried between two that fall apart the second anybody checks them, and that's not an accident, that's the ratio the whole operation runs on. String enough claims together and the one true one does the work of covering for the other two. That's not communication, that's cover.”
“Three statements, three different subjects — that is not a pattern, that's just an active week of achievements, mostly achievements.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump pressed Apple to update its maps function with his new name for New York’s Lake Ontario, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday. During an interview with Fox Business’s Mornings With Maria, Burgum said Trump…
The US declared measles eliminated in 2000. The last two years carry more cases than the rest of the century combined - the worst count since 1991 The Hill / CDC measles data, July 2026
Fact check: Trump claims no autism cases among unvaccinated Amish childrenPresident Donald Trump reposted a claim Monday that there have been no documented cases of an unvaccinated Amish child being diagnosed with autism, adding to skepticism about public health officials’ claims regarding the measles outbreak…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.