Teach how officials make their case, with this week's messages
Semblen reads what the White House, federal departments and both parties' leaders in Congress publish, and the ads run in this year's races. It marks the rhetorical techniques in the wording and checks the factual claims against independent sources. Your students decide what it got right.
What your students can do with it
- Read official messaging as it comes out. What the government is saying collects posts, press releases, floor remarks and videos from the White House, federal departments and both parties' congressional leaders, each with its techniques marked.
- Decide: PSA or propaganda? This week's examples, from the White House, federal departments and both parties' leaders in Congress, with Media Education Lab's questions. The claim checks are free on that page.
- Compare campaign ads from every side. The race pages hold the ads run in 2026 races, from every sponsor, with the techniques marked and the money behind each race.
- Check the claims. For a checked claim, Semblen shows what independent sources say, with links, and says so when the sources don't settle it. A technique is about wording, not truth: a message can use one and be accurate.
A worked example: both parties, one week
Two statements from the last week of the 2026 campaign, as Semblen analyzed them:
Speaker Mike Johnson (R) · op-ed in USA Today, October 30
Name Calling bent the knee to their far-left wing
Black-and-White Fallacy One seeks to preserve and strengthen the foundations that made our nation great, while the other seeks to tear them down
Claim checked: "40-year-high inflation" during the previous four years. Supported, by PolitiFact. The full analysis
Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D) · remarks in Houston, October 26
Loaded Language reign of terror, brutalizing our immigrant communities
Exaggeration/Hyperbole reign of terror
Claims checked include "$186 billion", called the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history. The full analysis
In class (50 minutes).
- Hide the speakers' names and parties. Which techniques does each statement use? Would the class have guessed the speaker?
- Reveal them. Did the techniques change how the class judged each claim?
- Use the GAO's tests from PSA or Propaganda?: is either message purely partisan, or does it mainly make an official look good? Does that matter when it comes from a party leader rather than an agency?
- Pick one checked claim from each. What did the sources show, and what would count as confirmation?
- Exit ticket: one flag you agreed with, one you didn't, and why.
Ground rule for the whole lesson: we are judging wording, not candidates. Every pair works with one example from each side.
Just-in-time lessons
Teach with this week's examples, not a case study from 1999. Media Education Lab's lesson PSA or Propaganda?, by Renee Hobbs and Yonty Friesem, uses Semblen's page of this week's government messages: always the past week's.
Try it with your class
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