India, Nov. 1 -- Just 17% of Americans told the Pew Research Center they trust the federal government to do what is either always right, or correct most of the time. When the question was first asked in 1958, the figure was 73%, and it has not exceeded 30% since 2007.

A claim is only worth exactly what can be confirmed, whether a person's CV, a company's balance sheet, or a counterparty's representations. Each is merely a promise. The verifier's job is to measure the gap between what was promised, what was delivered, and what is actually true.

When applying this discipline to governments, the results are uncomfortable, though not in the way the headline numbers suggest. Let's start with the numbers. In September 2025, just 17% of Americ...