Facts & Frames

How claims get shaped — and what’s actually true.

Facts & Frames examines common claims about public issues and breaks them down carefully: what’s true, what’s misleading, what’s missing, and what question should really be asked. The goal isn’t to win arguments — it’s to clarify how claims function inside larger systems.

What Facts & Frames does

Facts & Frames focuses on claims — not topics or policies in the abstract. Each piece starts with something people say, hear, or repeat, and then examines how that claim works.

What the claim is actually saying
Which parts are supported by evidence
What context or tradeoffs are being left out
How the framing changes what people think is possible

When Facts & Frames is useful

Facts & Frames is the right place to start when a debate feels stuck — or when a claim sounds simple but keeps driving complex decisions.

You keep hearing the same claim repeated
Different sides seem to be talking past each other
The “facts” are being used selectively
The argument feels persuasive but incomplete

Frames are shortcuts the mind uses to organize meaning. They’re not neutral.
Policy debates hinge on which frame dominates—individual responsibility, market logic, public duty, scarcity, safety, fairness, efficiency.
This project doesn’t tell you which frame to pick. It shows you how each one shifts the story.

Browse Facts & Frames

Each piece below examines one claim in context — slowing it down so the underlying mechanics are visible.

Featured

Do Immigrants Depress Wages? How Labor Markets Actually Respond

Decades of research show immigration does not lower wages for most U.S.-born workers. Small, localized effects are limited, while long-term impacts include job growth and higher productivity. Wage suppression is driven by labor market structure, not immigration.

Immigration: Numbers vs. Narratives

Actual immigration flows, eligibility rules, and economic effects contrasted with political storylines that inflate scale or distort motivation.

School Funding Myths

How schools are funded, why gaps persist, and which assumptions about “waste” or “fairness” don’t match the underlying formulas.

Public Benefits and the “Dependency” Narrative

Who uses benefits, for how long, and why. Data shows churn, work patterns, and structural barriers—not the myth of permanent reliance.

Crime Trends vs. Crime Stories

Long-term crime data compared to the narratives headlines create. What’s actually rising, what’s falling, and why perception diverges.

Housing Costs & Causes

System-level drivers of rising rents and prices—supply constraints, financing rules, zoning, and market power, not individual behavior.

Homelessness: What Data Actually Shows

What’s driving visible homelessness—housing costs, exit bottlenecks, local capacity—and why common explanations miss the underlying system.

Attendance Policy Changes in U.S. School Districts (News Stories)

How states define absenteeism, why measurement shifted, and which structural factors—transportation, health, staffing, funding—drive attendance patterns over time.

Criminal Legal Process

Public Transit Funding

How buses and rail systems are financed, why revenue gaps persist, and how cost structure—not rider blame—shapes service quality and reach.

Childcare Affordability

What families actually pay, why costs climbed faster than wages, and how labor, regulation, and market scarcity drive the affordability crisis.

Want the deeper system explanation?

Claims don’t exist on their own. If you want to understand how the underlying system actually works — and why the claim keeps showing up — explore the deeper explanations.

How It Really Works →