The concept of truth feels particularly bleak in 2025. Government leaders deploy up-is-down narratives at an exhausting clip. Online worlds drip with artificial intelligence-generated slop that incites rage. Chatbots answer questions with fabricated information, and the government folds it into a report card on America’s health. The last 10 years have been an ugly era for facts, marked by a drumbeat of untruths and near-constant charges of "fake news" from the decade’s most influential player, President Donald Trump. The trouble with drumbeats is, as a matter of survival or sanity, we tend to tune out or grow numb to them. Even people with influence who might lament "misinformation" move on to other fights. The word itself is downgraded — at best it’s a red flag, at worst it’s a punchline. I understand why the outlook feels hopeless, but it’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families. We have long stuck to the practice of not describing a falsehood or inaccuracy as a "lie," because those three letters confer a degree of intent that we don’t have the capacity to prove. There is one notable exception. Each December since 2009 we have published a year-end report dubbed "Lie of the Year" to recognize a statement, collection of statements or theme that is worthy of note for a consequential undermining of reality. Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s claim that Haitian migrants were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, took last year’s distinction. (It was Trump’s fourth Lie of the Year award; he was a supporting character in three others.) This annual exercise isn’t about finding the most ridiculous of claims; that pool is as wide as the ocean. Our criteria has always been finding claims that tick three key boxes: They are repeated often, demonstrably false and, perhaps above all, consequential. In 2025, options for the top lie include Trump’s made-up math to justify deadly boat strikes off Venezuela’s coast, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s disconnected assessment of food stamp "SNAP machines," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim of "no starvation" in Gaza, and a heaping of dishonest talking points on tariffs, the record-setting U.S. government shutdown, immigration raids and the Jeffrey Epstein files. It’s not uncommon for people to joke or roll their eyes when they hear politicians and pundits say two plus two equals five, or what’s red is really blue. But the stakes are too high for such cultural rationalization or tolerance of assaults on facts. While we are glad that our fans and foes enjoy the debate about the single best/worst whopper, we are stepping back this year and recalibrating the Lie of the Year — focusing less on the offenders who perpetuate the falsehoods, and more on those who are hurt by them. So "congratulations" 2025. PolitiFact names you Year of the Lies. This week, we’ll tell three stories that spotlight what happens when things are not true. The people suffering the consequences of these lies are not aberrations. This is what happened when lies trampled real people: - A farmer couldn’t sell soybeans to his usual big foreign customer or plan for next year’s crop. A tit-for-tat trade war sparked by U.S. tariffs on China left a cloud of uncertainty.
- A pediatrician quit her long practice of seeing patients in person. In clinical care's already pressurized environment, the Trump administration’s unproved claims on everything from Tylenol to vaccines had added chaos and safety concerns to her days.
- Two brothers, who came to the U.S. as children to escape gang violence in El Salvador, attended school, stayed out of trouble and complied with government check-ins, arrived at their most recent appointment only to be suddenly shackled, detained and deported. They and many others like them were not the "worst of the worst" criminals that the administration claimed would be the first to be shipped home.
To be clear, these are just three examples in a Year of the Lies. This week, we invite you to spend some time with each of these stories. They illustrate a broader need to not dismiss that false claims have consequences. We look forward to sharing these stories with you throughout this week, via this newsletter and videos on our social media channels. | 
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