The first Lead Inspector General report to Congress on Operation Epic Fury, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, released 14 September 2026. The Department of War puts the cost at $33.4 billion through 29 June, $22.3 billion of it munitions; its acquisition office says that spending caused strategic inventory shortfalls, while State certified $25.32 billion in emergency arms sales as having no adverse impact on readiness. Also: the ~$17 billion of the $87.6 billion supplemental the report does not itemize, the casualty table that disagrees with its own text, deaths after 7 July filed as overseas operations, the aircraft losses NBC misreported, and the ceasefire collapse. Appendix C: the figures were not audited. Full dossier with page numbers: https://epicfury.dailypoliticalpress.com/ · Video: https://youtu.be/2jSiG4MOaYs

A ridge you can cross without noticing decides whether the rain that falls on you reaches the Chesapeake Bay or the Gulf of Mexico, and which of two very different federal pollution regimes governs the land it fell on. Both sides are under programmes to cut the same two nutrients. This year those nutrients moved in opposite directions: total nitrogen fell about 28 percent from baseline, beating the 20 percent interim target, while total phosphorus rose about 13 percent. The reason is legacy phosphorus stored in soils, groundwater and sediments and released months or years after the inputs stopped, which means a watershed can do the work and not see the number move inside a political cycle. Covered: where the Eastern Continental Divide runs and where it blurs, the Chesapeake TMDL against Gulf hypoxia governance, the Monongahela National Forest and its 2,600 miles of stream feeding nine states, and who actually pays for upstream water quality. Full file at divide.keystonegazette.com

The US Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis reported a $88.6 billion goods and services deficit for July 2026 - up $17.4bn on the month, or 24.4 per cent. Fourteen paragraphs into the same release, the same two agencies report that the year-to-date deficit is DOWN $188.4bn, or 29.6 per cent, against the same period in 2025. Both figures are printed on the same page. Neither is spun. They measure different windows, and which one leads a story is an editorial choice that is almost never disclosed as one. We read the release rather than the coverage. What actually moved: exports fell $6.6bn on crude oil, industrial supplies and nonmonetary gold, while imports rose $10.8bn on capital goods [corrected 3 Sep 2026: an earlier version of this description said $11.1bn]. Inside capital goods, computers rose $6.9bn and computer accessories $6.6bn - $13.5bn from two line items, against an $11.4bn increase in ALL goods imports. The datacentre buildout is now legible in the trade statistics. What the release does not establish is who bought the hardware; it classifies goods by end-use category, not by purchaser, and we did not source that claim elsewhere. Also: the June baseline was revised up after the fact, a third of the widening is price rather than volume, and the Netherlands appears with two different surpluses in two different exhibits of the same document. Every figure cited to its exhibit, with an explicit list of what we could not establish. Full dossier: https://tradegap.dailytexasnews.com/ - Video: https://youtu.be/C_BEwn9dudU

The 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.323 percent on 18 August 2026, its highest since 2007, as Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance reported, with the 10-year near 4.7 percent against roughly 4.2 at the start of the year per CNN. This is a global move: Japanese 10-year debt at a three-decade high, German 30-year bonds costliest since 2011, French 30-year borrowing at pre-2008 levels. The framing most coverage reached for was that Japan was dumping Treasuries. It is the opposite of what happened. The US and Japan ran their first joint yen-buying intervention since 1998, roughly 85 billion dollars over two days per OMFIF, and Tokyo financed it through the Federal Reserve FIMA repo facility specifically to avoid selling Treasuries, with the New York Fed selling euros rather than dollar assets. On 19 August the Treasury said it would at least double buybacks of 10, 20 and 30-year bonds, from two billion to four billion dollars per operation. Those operations do not begin until 9 September. Nothing has been bought back yet, and the relief lasted about a day. In the same week, Freddie Mac survey put the 30-year fixed mortgage at 6.65 percent, down from 6.67 and falling for a second consecutive week. Full dossier, every figure and the outlet that reported it: https://yieldshock.gothamweekly.com/ — Broadside News Group. Sourced, or not stated.

Does a first-time DWI offender in Texas have to install an ignition interlock? There are three answers. Code of Criminal Procedure art. 42A.408(b) says a court MAY require one for a plain first offence — discretionary. Subsection (c) makes it mandatory at 0.15 BAC or with a prior conviction. And Transportation Code 521.246 makes it effectively mandatory for anyone who wants to keep driving, because proof of installation is a precondition of an occupational licence. Also: why fitting the device removes the usual time and place restrictions, and why refusing the test costs 180 days against 90 for failing it. Journalism, not legal advice. Full file with every statute cited: https://interlock.dailytexasnews.com/

A post says the US trade deficit went from $136 billion to $29 billion under Trump. Both figures are real monthly readings. March 2025 was a record because importers front-ran tariffs; October 2025 was the lowest since 2009 because non-monetary gold was about 90 per cent of that month's rise in exports. The year they belong to closed at $901.5 billion against $903.5 billion — and the goods deficit rose to $1,240.9 billion. This episode also carries the strongest fact for the other side, which is missing from the post and from the fact-check we were commissioned from. Full file with sources: https://twomonths.keystonegazette.com/

A poll put Francesca Hong 29 points ahead in Wisconsin's Democratic primary for governor. She lost by half a point. G. Elliott Morris's reanalysis of the raw data explains most of it — an electorate modelled far too young, late movement, non-response bias. This episode credits his work and then covers what it was not trying to cover: a third of voters undecided, three candidates gone from the ballot, and a late endorsement from the sitting governor. Full file with sources: https://latedeciders.dailypoliticalpress.com/

Russia built eight A-50U radar aircraft and has acknowledged losing three. This episode shows the subtraction, the two loss ledgers that disagree about which three, the July 2026 surge that put the entire flyable fleet in the air at once, and the destroyed testbed at Taganrog that ended the replacement programme. Full file with sources: https://fiveairframes.nocarolinachronicle.com/

The United States is the largest oil producer in history and still imports about six million barrels of crude a day. It is not a shortage and it is not politics — most American refineries were built to run heavy, high-sulfur crude, and the shale boom delivered the opposite. This file covers what the refineries were built for, the trade that results, and the eight figures from the source brief that did not survive a check against the primary sources — including a refinery-complexity statistic circulating as current since 1996. Full dossier: https://crudemismatch.northdenvernews.com/

A 25-part thread said Russia's war economy is breaking. We checked every claim against Bloomberg, Reuters, Meduza, Vyorstka, Anadolu and Sberbank's own research. Most of it holds. Four claims diverge, and one is simply wrong. The full file: https://numbersfile.northdenvernews.com/