The figures that matter most, each traceable to one entry and one named source.
Standing rule: no scores. Color marks whether something is in force, reversed, contested, concluded, or permanent, not good or bad.
Unscored · 100 entries · last change August 18, 2026
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Color is a legal fact, not an opinion. It shows (whether something is still in force, was reversed, or is contested in court), never whether it was good or bad.
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A daily automated scan of the Federal Register and the Senate roll-call record — primary documents and votes only, never news coverage. Nothing below is an archive entry yet; see the term above for how this differs from the rest of the site.
▲ and ▼ are direction. Color is measured : who paid, who gained, not whether that was right. Click a figure that has an entry. Not every figure here is a cost. Filter to just .
▲$2.8T
added to the national debt so far this term
18 months in; the JEC reported $2.77T year-over-year in April 2026
Net cost
Added since January 2025 — from $36.22T to roughly $39T. Borne by future taxpayers through debt service; sources put the range at $2.2T–$2.8T depending on cut-off.
Gross national debt · Treasury / Federal Reserve
▲53
more federal judges confirmed this term
On top of 234 in the first term
Transfer
10 appellate, 42 district, 1 Court of International Trade. Ahead of the 2018 confirmation pace but with a far thinner pipeline — 60 nominees submitted against 137 by this date in 2018.
Lifetime judgeships filled this term · Senate confirmation record
▲716K
total jobs added, Jan 2025 – Jun 2026
vs. 2,007,000 in the final 17 months prior
Transfer
Positive but roughly a third the pace of the preceding 17 months. Private sector +902K, offset by federal cuts.
Total nonfarm employment · BLS via FactCheck.org
What this archive is made of
100 entries, 210 effect claims, 537 sourced estimates, 282 linked documents. Zero scores, grades, or rankings.
Where every entry stands today
Color here is a legal and operational fact, not an opinion: whether the action is still in force, was reversed or never fulfilled, is contested in court, has concluded, or is irreversible.
Coverage by domain
Bar segments show the standing mix inside each domain. Click any row to open it in the ledger.
The honesty check on the whole archive. If nearly everything claimed Direct, the archive would be overreaching. Amber marks claims where credible sources reach incompatible conclusions.
Direct139
Contributory29
Contextual22
Disputed20
What the evidence is made of
Every estimate in the archive, grouped by the kind of institution that produced it. Advocacy sources are admissible but never appear alone.
Primary document159
Government data78
Party to the action70
Academic / peer-reviewed54
Nonpartisan scorekeeper43
Advocacy — labeled30
Journalistic verification29
Named / interested parties27
Archive reasoning — not a source17
Mixed / other16
Cross-ideological convergence12
Polling aggregate2
The disagreement, charted
These are the numbers people argue with. Each bar is one published estimate at its own value, never averaged into a single figure, because the width of the gap is itself the finding.
10-year deficit effect — OBBBA
$ trillions, 2025–2034
CBO, excl. interest3.4
CBO, incl. interest4.1
CBO, dynamic (thru 2035)4.7
CRFB, if made permanent5.5
10-year deficit effect — TCJA
$ trillions
JCT, dynamic1.07
JCT, conventional1.46
CBO, incl. interest1.9
Project 2025 implementation — competing trackers
% of that tracker’s own agenda list
CPR / GFI — 532 proposals, method published53
Crowdsourced tracker — 317 objectives, no method48
Employment effect — steel & aluminum tariffs
jobs
Steel production jobs added1000
Steel-consuming mfg. jobs lost-75000
August 16, 2026 · Foreign policy & defense · action
Ulchi Freedom Shield 2026 cut short on Trump's order
100 of 100
North Korea's response and any change to future joint-exercise posture are still developing.
Layer 1 — Action
On Truth Social, August 16, 2026, Trump ordered Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to "substantially reduce" US participation in Ulchi Freedom Shield 2026, hours before the exercise's scheduled start. Stated reasons: the drills are costly, send a signal "totally inappropriate and hostile" to North Korea, his relationship with Kim Jong Un, and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's refusal to help with US operations against Iran.
Hours before the annual US-South Korea joint military exercise began, Trump ordered it substantially reduced, citing cost, his relationship with Kim Jong Un, and South Korea's refusal to help with US operations against Iran; South Korea's government said it had no advance notice of the announcement, and North Korea responded with a missile launch after the shortened drill ended.
Originally an 11-day exercise beginning August 17-18 with roughly 18,000 South Korean troops and thousands of US personnel, it was cut short by about a week, ending August 21; live-training events were reduced, with some canceled or converted to simulations, and the planned second "counteroffensive" phase was dropped. South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told lawmakers "neither our government nor US officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social" and that they "were not notified in advance" of the post itself; South Korea's Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back separately described being in "close consultation" with US counterparts on implementing the reduction once it was announced — both statements are recorded here rather than treated as contradictory, since one concerns advance notice of the announcement and the other concerns coordination afterward. North Korea's Kim Yo Jong dismissed the reduction on August 20 as not changing the exercise's "provocative" and "aggressive" nature, and North Korea launched roughly ten short-range ballistic missiles on August 21, the day the shortened exercise ended; US Pacific Command said the launches "didn't pose an immediate threat to U.S. territory or its allies."
Verified as of August 2026
South Korea's account of the announcement (no advance notice of the Truth Social post) and its account of the implementation (close consultation on the reduction itself) both come from South Korean officials and are not actually in tension, though press framing sometimes presents them as if they were. Whether cutting the exercise short helped or hurt the relationship with North Korea is unsettled: the stated rationale was de-escalation, but North Korea's own response — a pointed dismissal followed by a missile launch — did not signal reduced tension.
Layer 3 — Measured effects
Whether the reduction affects US-South Korea military readiness.
The Pentagon said the adjustments "preserve essential readiness and training objectives" and that "there will be no degradation to U.S. training objectives."
Pentagon statement
Party to the action
Outside coverage raised readiness concerns, including analysis headlined as risking turning alliance readiness into "a bargaining chip," and reporting that the cuts fueled concern the reduction "could undermine joint efforts to reinforce deterrence amid North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threats."
The Diplomat; Korea Times
Journalistic verification
Whether reducing the exercise achieved its stated aim of improving the relationship with North Korea.
Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's sister, dismissed the reduced exercise on August 20 as not changing North Korea's assessment of it as "provocative" and "aggressive."
Kim Yo Jong statement
Foreign government — interested party
North Korea launched approximately ten short-range ballistic missiles on August 21, 2026, the day the shortened exercise ended; US Pacific Command said the launches did not pose an immediate threat to US territory or its allies.
US Pacific Command statement; contemporaneous reporting