The FEC really needs to restructure individual contributions data such that people stop double-counting donations made through Joint Fundraising Committees. Way too common

Sen. Kennedy is using these numbers to promote his new bill, which would create an additional definition of poverty that treats in-kind health benefits as income. It's based on a recent CBO report, but CBO itself says that the measure "should be interpreted with caution."

Not great that the WSJ will just go out and publish a piece with such an easily-checked error!

How Not to Measure Poverty Some notable errors in some recent writings by some important people.

New post! I take an in-depth look at a viral op-ed's dubious math on welfare benefits and Sen. John Kennedy's efforts to define away poverty:

‘Suicide is only one option': Social Security staff newly assigned to phone duties raise concerns over training Experts and SSA employees question wisdom of telling callers in crisis that suicide is an option.

SSA is training call center employees to tell suicidal callers that "suicide is only one option and that there is no urgency to make any decisions."

Just so I'm not accidentally one of those guys: I have no idea if this has any shot of passing. I would guess probably not. I just thought it was a crazy way to structure a tax credit.

Fun bill introduced in Oklahoma: nonrefundable child tax credit only for "married mothers and fathers of biological children." Explicitly excludes adoptive parents and widowed parents and you get a bigger credit if you were married before the child was born.

This bill in Missouri to codify Medicaid work requirements *in the state's constitution* passed out of committee yesterday

Insane stat: Nearly a quarter of all federal hires in September 2025 were ICE agents.

Normally, the agency hires 100-200 people per month, but in September, that number skyrocketed to over 2,800.

In Nick Shirley's hourlong interview with "David" released yesterday, David says that Somalis are committing fraud to "further their goal of a world caliphate"

We use novel, large-scale data on 17.5 million Americans to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources affects children's long-term outcomes. Using the 2000 Census and 2001–13 American Community Survey linked to the Social Security Administration's NUMIDENT, we leverage the county-level rollout of the Food Stamps program between 1961 and 1975. We find that children with access to greater economic resources before age five have better outcomes as adults. The treatment-on-the-treated effects show a 6% of a standard deviation improvement in human capital, 3% of a standard deviation increase in economic self-sufficiency, 8% of a standard deviation increase in the quality of neighbourhood of residence, a 1.2-year increase in life expectancy, and a 0.5 percentage-point decrease in likelihood of being incarcerated. These estimates suggest that Food Stamps’ transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment in young children, yielding a marginal value of public funds of approximately sixty-two.

If your concern is about fraud, and making sure the poorest receive funds, block grants are the opposite of what we should do. They allow states to redirect the money away from the neediest.
OTOH, there is very persuasive evidence that SNAP really helps people.
academic.oup.com/restud/artic...

The Big Beautiful Bill has a SNAP Poison Pill How states will get the blame for massive cuts to food stamps

The WaPO editorial equates error rates with fraud, and applaud Trump laws that will penalize states for error rates. Either they don't know that is incorrect, or they don't care. Here, @pamherd.bsky.social explains what error rates actually mean.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-big-be...

The Washington Post editorial board comes out in favor of the Venezuela attack/operation to capture Maduro

Shout out to @willroyce.bsky.social —an excellent researcher who later corroborated my id and had collected some valuable screenshots before they disappeared!

Meet the “researcher” who Nick Shirley relied on for his viral Minnesota fraud video:

Unnamed Source in Viral Minnesota Somali Fraud Video Is Right-Wing Lobbyist Who Called Muslims “Demons” David Hoch, who goes by his first name in Nick Shirley’s video allegedly exposing Somali fraud, referred to “demon Muslims” on social media.

NEW: The anonymous "researcher" in Nick Shirley's viral "fraud" video--treated as a concerned citizen on Fox News and elsewhere--is actually a Minnesota state lobbyist and political activist who worked with a GOP House staffer to provide Shirley info/

theintercept.com/2026/01/03/m...

Seems like basically everyone whose actual work/investigations they cited is saying something similar.

Remember that City Journal story that claimed Minnesota taxpayers are funding Al-Shabaab?

Apparently the only named source in the story says it's “bullshit." www.startribune.com/city-journal...

Idaho DOGE recommends Medicaid expansion repeal, defunding Hispanic commission • Idaho Capital Sun Idaho’s DOGE recommend Medicaid expansion repeal and eventually eliminating the state funding for the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs.

"Idaho’s DOGE Committee will recommend repealing Medicaid expansion and eventually eliminating the state funding for the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs."

These are really egregious errors, especially this first one. I took the time to email WSJ requesting a correction. You should too! I can send you what I wrote.

I also don't know how you write a piece arguing that the government is over-counting poverty by not accounting for in-kind benefits...

... and never once mention the Supplemental Poverty Measure?

(Also saying Medicaid = income because money is fungible is really wrongheaded)

Additionally, saying they "*would* also receive" instead of "*could* also receive" is badly misleading. For TANF and housing vouchers, only ~20-25% of eligible families receive benefits!

Gonna email WSJ requesting correction, but first I want to figure out how much this family would lose in SNAP benefits if they actually received that amt of $ in rental assistance -- they would not be able to receive those amts concurrently, as the article states.

This op-ed is making the rounds on conservative Twitter. Tons wrong with it, but just to give you an idea:

A single parent with two school-age children earning $11,000 is not eligible for $3,400 in CTCs. The real amount is $1,275—less than half of what they say.

WSJ fact-checking a bit lackluster.

In Easton, CT (ZIP code 06612), the median household income is $190,000. Very high!

Except ~12% of children living in the ZIP code live in poverty. Ray Dalio's money won't go to any of them.

Within ZIP code inequality is real! @billionaires

Can someone in good standing with the billionaires PLEASE tell them to stop using median household income within ZIP codes as a targeting mechanism!

Also, really neither here nor there, but the blog post above uses en dashes to bracket interrupters instead of em dashes. Irked me.

Making Government Cool Again Welcome to opm.gov

This comes days after OPM announced the creation of a U.S. Tech Force where "early-career engineers" will work with "to tackle our nation’s top technical challenges."

I know one place they could start!

I've been waiting for OPM to release updated federal employment data for months. In July, the agency said that "beginning this fall," it would release data in a "reimagined format."

But it seems that OPM is missing its own deadline. As of today, it says updated data will be available in January.

The result of allocating money based on ZIP codes’ median incomes rather than actual household income:

INELIGIBLE: Household making $30k in South Boston (median income $156,000, child poverty rate ~26%)

ELIGIBLE: Household making $500k in Yonkers (median income $142,000, child poverty rate ~3%)