A ten-slide series on the last move in the playbook: so many claims, reversals, and fakes that people give up on knowing what is true. This page has the studies, the transcripts, and the reporting behind every card, with dates, links, and what each one cannot tell you, plus a reading check you can try yourself.
The full text of every card, in order, with the card itself under each one. Select a card to open it full size.
Grouped by card. Each source has a summary of what it says, a scope line saying how far it reaches, and a link to the original.
Two preregistered online experiments in 2020. A short warning that deepfakes can make people appear to say things they never said made viewers more likely to call a real video fake (up 0.73 points on a 7-point scale in the first study), without making them any better at spotting an actual fake. With a real 2002 video of Mitt Romney, the share who said it was a deepfake rose from 24.2% to 34.6% after the warning.
Five preregistered experiments with 15,287 Americans. After reading about a real scandal involving one of four real politicians, two from each party, people who then saw the politician falsely claim it was fake news rated the politician higher. Against a real video of the scandal, the same claim mostly failed. General trust in the media did not fall.
Preregistered experiments with 6,127 people in the United States, Poland, and Hong Kong. Fact-checks, media literacy tips, and news coverage about misinformation all lowered belief in false claims, and most also lowered belief in true ones. In the United States, the effects had disappeared a week later.
A survey of 3,560 U.S. adults, December 8 to 14, 2025: 52% say they are worn out by the amount of news, 34% are not, and 14% are not sure. 60% have cut back on how much news they get.
The law review article that named the “liar’s dividend”: as the public learns that video and audio can be faked, people caught on real recordings can more easily claim the evidence is fake. The authors wrote that the dividend grows in proportion to success in teaching the public about deepfakes (page 1785).
Asked about a video showing something thrown from an upstairs White House window: “No. That’s probably AI-generated.” Asked if it was fake: “Well, it’s got to be, because I know every window up there.” Later in the same exchange: “If something happens that’s really bad, maybe I’ll have to just blame AI,” followed by “But there’s truth to it, because I see so many phony things.”
AP reported that the answer came after the president’s press team had indicated to reporters that the video was real. It quotes the digital forensics expert Hany Farid on the risk once anything can be dismissed as fake: “then nothing has to be real.”
The phrase comes from Steve Bannon, quoted by Michael Lewis in 2018 as saying the way to deal with the media was to flood the zone (his full line includes a profanity). In February 2025 Bannon told Semafor that a news story had slid off the air within two days because the president had flooded the zone with other actions, and that it had worked.
225 executive orders were signed in calendar 2025, 26 of them on January 20 and 143 in the first 100 days. In the first calendar year of earlier terms: 55 in 2017, 77 in 2021, 39 in 2009.
Higher tariffs on dozens of countries took effect just after midnight on April 9, 2025. That afternoon most were paused for 90 days, with a 10% baseline kept and the rate on China raised.
The report showed 73,000 jobs added in July and revised May and June down by a combined 258,000, which BLS called larger than normal. That afternoon the president posted that he had directed his team to fire the commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, and later that the “Jobs Numbers were RIGGED.” She had been confirmed by the Senate 86 to 8 in January 2024.
NBC reported that on January 22, 2026, the White House posted an image it had digitally altered to make a civil rights attorney arrested over a protest appear to be crying. The Homeland Security secretary had posted the original photo, in which she looks ahead calmly, the same day.
After a report that Amazon would show tariff costs next to prices, the press secretary called it “a hostile and political act.” Amazon said its team for a low-cost store had considered listing import charges on some products, and that “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”
After the Supreme Court ruled on February 20, 2026 that the emergency law did not authorize the tariffs, Customs and Border Protection opened a refund portal for importers. Consumers are “not eligible to submit claims for a tariff refund.”
The FTC alleged that a height supplement marketed for children and teens carried “several thousand five-star reviews” that “were actually written by company employees,” under a federal rule against fake reviews that took effect in October 2024. A final order in July 2026 set a $4 million judgment, partially suspended after payment of $750,000.
A company advertised its tool for detecting AI-written text as 98 percent accurate; independent testing on general content found 53 percent. The FTC’s consumer protection director said it “did no better than a coin toss.”
The administration’s report on children’s health cited studies that do not exist: “Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all.” A Columbia epidemiologist listed as an author of one said it was not a real paper. Within hours the White House posted a version with all seven citations replaced, and the press secretary, as reported by AP and CNN, called the problems “formatting issues.”
1,334 adults surveyed September 23 to 29, 2025, the week after the announcement about Tylenol in pregnancy. 77% had heard the claim. Asked whether it is true: 4% definitely true, 30% probably true, 30% probably false, 35% definitely false. KFF found most adults uncertain.
In a survey of 1,045 teens aged 13 to 18, 35% said fake content online had misled them and 22% had shared something they later learned was fake. Separately, Pew found 53% of U.S. adults are not too or not at all confident they can tell whether pictures, videos, or text were made by AI or by people.
Read the article below, then try the six questions. Each one uses a different reading skill from part two, in rough order of difficulty. Write your answer down before you open the strong answer.
Paragraph 19 says the commissioner’s appointment is “at will.” What does that mean?
The president can legally remove the commissioner at any time, even though the job comes with a four-year term.
Paragraphs 18 and 19
When was the Bureau of Labor Statistics founded, and on what day was its commissioner fired?
It was founded in 1884. The commissioner was fired on August 1, 2025, the same day a report showed weakness in the job market.
Paragraphs 1 and 3
In one or two sentences of your own, what is the article’s main point?
The BLS produces numbers the whole country relies on, and firing its head after a weak report could undercut trust in that data, even though one person could not simply fake the numbers. The bigger risk is that the data becomes less trusted and less useful.
Paragraphs 2, 14, 20 and 29
Paragraph 5 says the numbers are routinely revised, and paragraphs 20 and 21 say a large civil-service staff produces them. What can you conclude about whether a big downward revision shows the numbers were rigged?
A revision by itself is not evidence of rigging: revisions are normal, and no single official can change the numbers. The article never puts those two points together; you have to.
Paragraphs 5, 20 and 21
Paragraphs 20 to 23 and 29 compare two kinds of risk. What are they, and which does the author think is more likely?
One is outright faking of the numbers, which he calls very difficult and unlikely to fool economists. The other is shaping the data indirectly, by making it harder to get, cutting resources, closing data series, or nudging the methods, which could make the statistics much less useful. He worries more about the second.
Paragraphs 20 to 23 and 29
Paragraph 15 says the Department of Labor disbanded its advisory committees, stating they “had fulfilled their intended purpose.” How would you check that quotation, and why does it matter?
Open the article the author links, look for a termination notice in the Federal Register, and check the BLS advisory committee page. Similar “fulfilled” wording may come from a different department’s notice about its own panels. Who said something matters as much as what was said, especially in a story about trust.
Paragraph 15
Connect it to the cards: card 5 shows the firing as one wave in the flood. This article slows down on that one wave, which is the habit card 8 recommends. Download the printable worksheet (PDF), with room to write and an answer key. Want more practice? Play Between the Lines: read a current news article, answer twelve questions, and see your reading level.
Every other move needs you to believe something. This one only needs you to stop trying. When the news moves faster than anyone can follow, and real and fake look the same, giving up can feel like the sane response.
What stayed with me from the research is that warnings can backfire. Telling people that anything could be fake made them doubt real video, without making them better at catching fakes. So the answer cannot be to doubt everything. It has to be learning how to check one thing well.
That is where this series started: reading is a set of skills, and skills can be practiced. Pick a few things you care about, follow them all the way to the source, and let the rest go without guilt. That is what I want my kids to know they can do.