This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians “crying wolf” over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the “liar’s dividend,” may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying of core supporters. We administer five survey experiments to over 15,000 American adults detailing hypothetical politician responses to stories describing real politician scandals. We find that claims of misinformation representing both strategies raise politician support across partisan subgroups. These strategies are effective against text-based reports of scandals, but are largely ineffective against video evidence and do not reduce general trust in media. Finally, these false claims produce greater dividends for politicians than alternative responses to scandal, such as remaining silent or apologizing.

Welfare programs place burdens on citizens to document their vulnerability through means-tested regulations in the United States, but theories of the welfare state do not necessarily account for mismatches between residents’ eligibility and their legibility to state infrastructure. Focusing on housing instability during the COVID-19 pandemic, we explain how Chicago residents who were eligible for emergency rental assistance programs (ERAPs) were unable to render their vulnerability and survival strategies legible to formal bureaucratic systems. This meant that despite the extensive federal funding allocated to state and municipal ERAPs during the pandemic, many people who were behind on rent did not even apply for support. Based on 76 in-depth interviews with low-income renters and 25 interviews with people working with these programs in Chicago, we document three mismatches between renters’ survival strategies and the requirements of formal bureaucratic systems of categorization. First, we illustrate how people who informally leased apartments in Chicago struggled to properly document their housing instability and the administrative burdens they faced in doing so. Second, because of acute housing precarity and fear of eviction, some renters prioritized their rent over other needs and then could not translate their vulnerability into ERAP eligibility. Third, we explain how undocumented Chicagoans often avoided ERAPs because of the perceived risks associated with becoming legible to the state. Being unable or unwilling to access aid created a cascade of other precarious conditions.