| Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Records of dead people show how the pro-Trump spin machine keeps going In a March 4 address to Congress, Trump asserted that millions of people above the age of 120 were getting Social Security payments, The Washington Post on Feb. 19 had already published a detailed article that documented how claims of such payments — originally circulated by billionaire Elon Musk, then head of the cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service — were wrong. Social Security databases rely on COBOL, a nearly 70-year-old computer programming language, and COBOL doesn't have a standardized way to store dates. The problem was well known to people familiar with Social Security's systems. In fact, since 2015, the Social Security Administration has automated the termination of benefits to people once they reach age 115 — and no American has ever lived to be 120 years old. On May 23, DOGE made an announcement in a social media post: "After 11 weeks, Social Security has finished this major cleanup initiative: ~12.3M individuals aged 120+ have now been marked as deceased." The post was carefully worded. It did not claim that 12 million people had received improper payments. The White House confirmed our understanding. But many Trump supporters said — or suggested — that Trump's original false claim was confirmed. So, within the echo chamber of the pro-Trump universe, a problem that never existed now has been fixed. To read the full fact check, click the link below. | 
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