Stories don't end when the headlines move on.

This story tracks the historical evidence regarding the causes of the American Civil War. The evidence relies primarily on contemporaneous primary documents—including secession ordinances, declarations of causes, speeches, constitutions, and official government records—along with modern historical scholarship. Because many political, constitutional, and economic issues were debated before the war, this story distinguishes between immediate causes, underlying causes, and broader political narratives.

It is commonly claimed that either Democratic or Republican presidents are consistently better for working- and middle-class Americans. The evidence is more nuanced than campaign rhetoric suggests. Academic research has found that several broad macroeconomic measures—including GDP growth, unemployment, and income outcomes for lower-income households—have historically been stronger under Democratic presidents on average. Researchers disagree about how much of that pattern should be attributed to presidential policy, as opposed to inherited conditions, oil and productivity shocks, and other factors outside the White House.

Public debate has frequently asserted either that critical race theory (CRT) was widespread in elementary and secondary education or that it was entirely absent. The available evidence points to a more nuanced picture: CRT originated as a legal academic framework and was not part of standard K–12 curricula nationwide, while some educators or districts have used materials influenced by CRT or referenced its concepts. This story tracks the evidence for the prevalence of CRT in K–12 education rather than broader political narratives.

Each month, the headline U.S. jobs number leads the news — then quietly gets revised as more data arrive. In February 2026, annual benchmark revisions cut 2025’s job growth by more than 400,000, leaving just ~181,000 jobs added for the entire year: an already-soft labor market was even softer than first reported.

This story tracks what constitutional scholarship, legal history, and judicial interpretation establish about the original public meaning of the Second Amendment. The debate centers on whether the Amendment should be understood primarily through the historical context of late-18th century militia institutions or as expressing a broader constitutional principle that extends to future developments in firearms and individual self-defense. The available evidence consists of founding-era documents, historical scholarship, Supreme Court opinions, and academic research. No single historical artifact resolves the interpretive dispute, and scholarly disagreement remains substantial.

This story tracks the evidence regarding claims that routine childhood vaccines cause autism spectrum disorder. The question became widely public after a 1998 Lancet paper that was later retracted. Subsequent epidemiological studies, systematic reviews, and official health agency assessments have extensively examined the claim.

This story tracks the evidence comparing criminal offending and incarceration rates among immigrants and U.S.-born Americans. The evidence includes peer-reviewed research, government crime statistics, census data, and official analyses. Because "crime rate" can refer to arrests, convictions, incarceration, self-reported crime, or victimization — and because immigrants include both lawful and unauthorized immigrants — claims are evaluated separately where possible.

This story tracks the empirical evidence behind the claim commonly associated with "trickle-down economics": that reducing taxes on corporations and high-income earners produces measurable economic growth, higher employment, and broader gains for the general population. The evidence base consists primarily of peer-reviewed research, international organization working papers, and cross-country datasets. While there is broad agreement that tax policy influences investment incentives, there is continuing debate over the size, consistency, and distribution of any resulting economic gains.

This story tracks what public health surveillance, peer-reviewed medical research, and official statistics establish about abortions performed at or after 21 weeks of gestation in the United States. The evidence addresses two separate questions: (1) how frequently these abortions occur, and (2) what medical and non-medical factors are documented as contributing reasons. National surveillance reliably measures frequency but does not comprehensively record patients' reasons, leaving important evidence gaps.

This story tracks what the biblical texts themselves state regarding marriage and same-sex sexual relationships, while distinguishing those texts from later religious interpretation. Biblical quotations use the New American Standard Bible (NASB). The evidence also includes scholarly research on historical and linguistic context. Because the Bible does not name modern civil same-sex marriage as an institution, and because biblical marital practice includes arrangements beyond lifelong monogamy, contemporary appeals to a single "biblical definition of marriage" involve interpretation rather than a one-to-one mapping from text to modern law.