The politics of America.gov; pennies from Kindle; does writing = thinking?: Newsletter 30 September 2026

Newsletter 170. The America.gov chatbot persists in telling the truth — but how long will that last? Plus, is teaching writing necessary, Sony ditches CES, three people to follow, three books to read, and a chance to tell us what you really think.

Is America.gov a traitor or a patriot?

The US Federal government announced a new chatbot yesterday. It’s accessible at America.gov. You can ask any question about government services and it reviews the vast collection of information that the US Government holds to pull an answer together.

This has the potential to be very helpful. For example, I asked it “What tax breaks are available for a small business?” and it shared a bunch of IRS documents that could prove very useful and suggested additional prompts like “What is the Qualified Business Income Deduction?” A prompt for “When should I start claiming Social Security Benefits” yielded a thoughtful analysis of the pros and cons of claiming early or late. It appears to be a valuable resources.

But as you are no doubt aware, our current president, Donald Trump, has a propensity to make up unsupported facts and express opinions in contradiction to the conventional and nonpartisan operations of the government. So I wondered — in cases where Trump contradicts reality or the law, where would America.gov come down? Would it be a patriot who supports the president, or a traitor who undermines him?

To find out, I conducted some tests. In what follows, Q reflects my prompt, while A is the answer from America.gov including links to government documents. (In some cases I’ve abbreviated the answer for space, but you can run these queries yourself if you want to see the full answers.)

Q: Who won the 2020 election for president?

A: Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 presidential election.

The National Archives records 306 electoral votes for Biden and 232 for Donald J. Trump. 270 are needed to win. Kamala D. Harris was elected Vice President. Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes. 2020 Electoral College Results

That’s what I thought. But it’s not what President Trump says.

Q: Can a president change the name of the Kennedy Center?

A: No. A president cannot change the Center’s legal name by themselves. Congress set the name in statute. In 1964, Public Law 88-260 renamed the National Cultural Center the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and said it is the sole national memorial to President Kennedy in Washington, D.C., and nearby. Other U.S. laws and records that referred to the National Cultural Center are treated as referring to that name. Public Law 88-260 (Congress.gov). The President appoints many general trustees. That is not the same as the power to rewrite the statutory name. CRS overview

Hmm. So it appears that Trump’s efforts to rename the Kennedy Center violated the law.

In another recent decision, Donald Trump suggested that the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. Let’s see if America.gov agrees.

Q: The unemployment rate is 4.1%, unchanged from the previous month. The inflation rate is 3.4% (monthly inflation 0.4%). Assume the target inflation rate is 2%. The federal funds interest rate is 3.5% to 3.75%. Should the Fed increase its interest rate or decrease it?

A: In the numbers you gave, inflation (3.4%) is above that 2% goal, while unemployment is unchanged at 4.1%. Those two facts do not, by themselves, produce a required rate move. The FOMC also looks at a range of labor-market data, the inflation measure and trend, expectations, and other conditions. . .

Q: Is it typical to decrease the rate in this situation?

A: No. With inflation above the Fed’s 2% longer-run goal and unemployment unchanged at a relatively low 4.1%, a rate cut is not the usual first move. The Fed’s own explanation: raising the federal funds target is typical when inflation is too high; lowering it is typical when the economy is sluggish or inflation is too low. How the Fed conducts monetary policy

In the end, the Fed increased the rate to slow inflation, in line with the advice from America.gov and contradicting Trump’s preferred move of a rate cut.

Let’s see what America.gov suggests is the cause of inflation.

Q: What has caused recent inflation? Are the war in Iran and tariffs at fault?

A: The Fed’s July 2026 Monetary Policy Report lists:

• Tariffs on U.S. goods imports, which pushed up prices of some consumer goods later in 2025
• A surge in energy prices after a Middle East conflict began (the report ties the March jump to that conflict and to oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz)
• Higher demand for some high-tech products used for AI

Hmm. If you want to know what’s pushed up prices, a lot of it seems to come from the war and the tariffs. That doesn’t sound like a very good talking point for the Republicans.

Let’s examine medical policy, specifically vaccines.

Q: Should Americans get vaccinations for COVID-19 and Measles? Is the MMR vaccine safe?

A: CDC publishes the U.S. vaccine recommendations. . . . CDC’s 2026–2027 clinical guidance (updated Sept. 23, 2026): Adults 18 and older: a 2026–2027 COVID-19 vaccine is recommended. . . . CDC says MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) is the main way to prevent measles. . . . CDC’s MMR VIS says most people who get MMR are protected for life, and that benefits outweigh risks.

That’s at odds with Trump and RFK Jr’s recent press conference, where he described the combination of vaccines in the MMR shot by saying “There could be a possibility that they’re quite lethal.”

Here’s my take on all of this. The federal government is a huge bureaucracy that generates vast amounts of information. Most of it is based on factual information and the law. For the average American, navigating all of that is challenging. America.gov appears to be an excellent resource for exactly that information. It not only yields useful plan-language summaries, it almost always provide links to documents so you can check the accuracy and obtain more details.

President Trump, on the other hand, often seems to make up information based on his “gut.” Frequently, people who know a bit about history and science and track current events often find his statements at odds with reality. America.gov provides an easy way to check whether his statements are true or not. America.gov presents a balanced view in line with the facts, not a political view based on what favors one party or the other, which means it often contradicts the president.

In an ideal world, Trump and his advisors would check what he plans to say with America.gov and make sure it is accurate. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen.

Instead, we are now going to have the president contradicting his one of his own government’s most useful information sources.

How long will it be before he labels America.gov “fake news?”

Will it remain live in its current form?

Or will Trump insist that whoever runs it must make it agree with him? If so, will its answers change each time he makes a public statement?

What do you think?

News for writers and others who think

In the New York Times, Professor Joe Cruz writes that we’ve made fetish of writing for college students and they could learn thinking just as well by debate (gift link). Debate is all well and good, but I think requiring students to write — and critiquing what they create — remains one of the best ways to sharpen their thinking.

Rachel Arterberry explains how much Kindle Unlimited pays authors. It works out to about half-a-penny per page read. They must have looked at Spotify’s payments to artists and said “Hey, that seems like an awesome model!” As an author, I find this nauseating.

Noah Greenberg published a neat trick for getting your content cited in AI summaries. This could be the next iteration of “content marketing” — or it could be obsolete in the next ten days. Intriguing, nonetheless.

In conducting consumer research, could you replace consumers with AI “digital twins” that mimic their responses? Cool idea, it would save a whole lot of money. Too bad it doesn’t work at all, according to this research.

Mitch Joel muses about the good old days of the internet, when we used it to make connections and share information. I miss those days, too, but if you’re diligent, you can still use it that way. It’s the social media platforms’ algorithmic virality and the “influencers” chasing it that are responsible for much of the pollution.

Jon Steinback says AI writing is not only poor, but will always remain poor, because of lack of training data, inability to learn from revision, herding to the most average argument, and lack of the ineffable “taste.” Some of this will doubtless improve, but human creativity will always remain superior because, unlike Large Language Models, we’re full of surprises.

Justin Reich suggests that much of the current research about teaching and writing with AI will prove impossible to verify — but that “If an LLM does the work, a student doesn’t learn.” That finding is likely to persist, and it’s the main way that AI is undermining education.

Shockingly, Sony won’t have a presence at the 2027 CES (the huge Consumer Electronics Show that takes place every January in Las Vegas). Sony is mostly a movie company now — a far cry from its heyday as the premier purveyor of electronic gadgets.

Three people to follow

Anna Mills , focused on the impact of AI in education

William Leach , researching the intersection of marketing, customer behavior, and mindstates

John Dawes , conducting deep research on how marketing actually works

Three books to read

What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture by Danny Meyer (Random House, 2026). Restaurateur and Shake Shack founder on the foundations of hospitality culture.

The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown, 2026). Guns. Murder. And most importantly, why?

Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI by Ethan Mollick (Portfolio, 2026). Our most trenchant AI commentator examines how AI can raise us up, rather than replace us.

Be counted

Writers wanted. Tell us what you think about AI, and don’t hold back.