Newsbusters

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

At 94 years old, leftist billionaire George Soros has established the blueprint for how his enormous Open Society Foundations, fueled with $32 billion of his fortune, will continue fulfilling his dark vision throughout the world under the leadership of his more extreme son Alex. Part of that vision involves using the ever-evolving specter of climate change as a springboard to impel the world towards a New World Order. The utopia that the elder Soros envisions is one that has banned fossil fuels, with everyday human existence regulated into oblivion. The COVID pandemic in 2020 provided what he called a “revolutionary moment” to recognize what kind of social control could be accomplished.

MRC Business, in partnership with Bongino Report, conducted a three-month investigation into the Soros empire’s reach into the global climate-change movement. We uncovered a vast radical leftist network of hundreds of powerful Soros-funded grassroots organizations, universities, and international NGOs with influence in some of the most powerful policy-making institutions, such as the United Nations.

This is what we found.

345 Eco-Activist Groups Push the Soros Climate Agenda Worldwide: MRC Business tallied 345 groups around the world that the Soros empire has bankrolled between 2016 and 2023 that have acted as conduits for his vision, with some groups even holding sway in the most powerful international governing bodies. The Soros-funded Climate Action Network (CAN), for example, bills itself as “a global network of more than 1,900 civil society organisations in over 130 countries driving collective and sustainable action to fight the climate crisis and to achieve social justice.” If that wasn’t indicative enough of the kind of power this organization wields, it prominently notes that it “convenes and coordinates civil society at the UN climate talks and other international fora.” MRC Business found that the Soros empire under George and Alex committed an enormous $193,895,617 in climate/environment spending split between these 345 radical groups between 2016 and 2023 alone.
Eco-Extremism Pushed by Soros-Backed Groups Is Nothing Short of Terrifying: The groups financed by Soros have pushed everything from elimination of the internal combustion engine, to war on the fossil fuel industry, to adoption of a Global Green New Deal, to transform youth into climate radicals, and to direct intimidation of politicians who don’t properly toe the eco-extremist line. In one of the most extreme cases, the Climate Action Network, which has major influence in the U.N., condemned Israel’s so-called “climate violence” for daring to launch a defensive attack against terrorist organizations like Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon after both perpetrated genocidal attacks against the Jewish state within months of each other.
$618 Million to Buy an Eco-Utopia: Between the $193 million fortune funneled into eco groups and hundreds of millions pledged in commitments between 2016 and 2024, the Open Society Foundations under both the elder Soros and his son Alex’s leadership respectively have allocated at least a whopping $618,895,617 collectively toward exploiting the issue of climate change to overhaul global politics to be more in line with its dark vision for the world. 
Soros-Backed Eco-Extremist Groups Publicly Intimidate Politicians: Soros-backed eco-extremist groups like the notorious Sunrise Movement are infamous for publicly disturbing the peace and intimidating politicians to do their bidding, even if it means blocking roads and streets and causing great disruptions to do it. In October 2021, Sunrise shut down Manhattan highways during rush hour while barking demands that President Joe Biden “save the planet.” The southbound West Side Highway was blocked at West 34th Street for over an hour. Police arrested “13 protesters on the FDR and another 32 demonstrators on the West Side Highway,” according to NBC New York. The youth-led extremist group’s activists also caused a prolonged climate change-charged ruckus at the 2025 Democratic National Committee meeting following President Trump’s electoral victory. According to Fox News, DNC chair-candidate Jason Paul reportedly stated that Sunrise and other protesters were “hijack[ing] the whole evening” and turning the event “into scream night.” 
READ THE ENTIRE MRC REPORT ON THE SOROS EMPIRE’S GLOBAL CLIMATE INFLUENCE BELOW:

 

The death of Pope Francis serves as a refresher in the perils of media projection. Mourning the loss of a perceived fellow traveler, the media have chosen to project their narrow leftwing culture and ideology on to Pope Francis.

Watch as CBS rehashes former Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell’s interview of Francis from last year, in particular: a telling exchange on conservatism:

NORAH O’DONNELL: As pope for 12 years, Francis was known for his humility. He stuck to Church doctrine, but extended his hand to those he felt were marginalized, especially migrants and the LGBTQ community.

You have said, “Who am I to judge? Homosexuality is not a crime.”

POPE FRANCIS: No, it’s a human fact.

O’DONNELL: There are conservative bishops in the United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions. How do you address their criticism?

POPE FRANCIS: You used an adjective, “conservative.” That is, “conservative” is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.

You’ll recall that the original interview, which we covered here, was largely a paean to migration and climate change. There were no questions on abortion or same-sex marriage, leftwing policy preferences where Francis did NOT deviate from longstanding Catholic teachings. As we noted at the time, after Francis got his softball climate question:

Here, again, is an issue where Francis’ stances align with those of the Regime, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage (individual non-couple benedictions notwithstanding). More curious minds would have presented Francis with the idea of climate advocacy as a Malthusian enterprise, and asked him to square that with his pro-life positions and teachings. 

“Pope Francis was still Catholic” does not make for a sexy, transgressive headline. Instead, we get these media exercises in projection and narrative. This is why you get gauzy coverage about Francis taking the subway and living humbly, but none whatsoever about his chumminess with Latin American socialist regimes and what that entailed.

And yes, you can call that liberal mythmaking. The decision to rehash this interview on the occasion of Francis’ passing proves it. 

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, April 21st, 2025:

MAURICE DuBOIS: Our Norah O’Donnell was the only to interview Pope Francis.

JOHN DICKERSON: She met with him at The Vatican in May of last year.

NORAH O’DONNELL:  Do you like when you’re called “The People’s Pope?”

POPE FRANCIS (VIA INTERPRETER): The Pope of the People. I’ve always been a pastor. You are a pastor for the people, not for yourself. A pastor has to be for the people.

O’DONNELL: Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina in 1936 into a family of Italian immigrants. Bergoglio was on his way to a party when he passed a church and felt compelled to go to confession. That moment led him to the priesthood. Decades later, he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires, with a focus on the poor. And in 2001, Pope St. John Paul II elevated him to cardinal. As pope for 12 years, Francis was known for his humility. He stuck to Church doctrine, but extended his hand to those he felt were marginalized, especially migrants and the LGBTQ community.

You have said, “Who am I to judge? Homosexuality is not a crime.”

POPE FRANCIS: No, it’s a human fact.

O’DONNELL: There are conservative bishops in the United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions. How do you address their criticism?

POPE FRANCIS: You used an adjective, “conservative.” That is, “conservative” is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.

O’DONNELL: What do you hope your legacy is?

POPE FRANCIS: I never really thought about it. The church is the legacy. The Church, not only through the pope, but through you, through every Christian, through everyone. Personally, I get on the bandwagon of the Church and its legacy for all.

DuBOIS: Norah joins us, and I never get tired of watching this interview. So why do you think he decided to sit down with you?

O’DONNELL: Well, this interview was almost exactly one year ago, and it surrounded the Vatican’s first World Children’s Day, something incredibly important to Pope Francis. You know, the Holy Father has used his papacy to focus on children, what world is being left for them, whether that is for migrant children, climate change, or issues of war and peace. In many ways it was a reset for the Church which has been beset by the child sex abuse scandal. In our interview he talked about the reforms, and the zero tolerance for any abuse within the Church.

DICKERSON: Norah, you spent so much time with him. What surprised you about your time with the Holy Father?

O’DONNELL: I was surprised by his warmth, his graciousness. He gave us an hour of his time for this wide-ranging conversation. I mean, popes don’t give interviews, but he answered all of our tough questions about doctrines. And one of my favorite parts was when I asked him if he likes being called “The People’s Pope”, and he had this huge smile on his mouth. And I think that’s exactly what he wants his legacy to be, this pastoral outreach and a legacy of inclusiveness. 

DICKERSON: Norah O’Donnell on her extraordinary interview. Thank you, Norah.

 

Since the 1980s, in the hearty middle of Pope John Paul the Great’s leadership, we’ve been writing at the Media Research Center about how the secular liberal media reports on the Catholic church. If it helps the Left, it’s happy news. If it opposes the Left, it’s a horrible obstruction.

When Pope Benedict died at the end of 2022, reporters called him  “God’s Rottweiler” and NBC’s Anne Thompson said he looked “cartoonish.” The breaking news on the late Pope Francis was much more positive, he was “inclusive” and “reformist” and was “throwing doors open.” This is how liberal reporters describe someone they feel is an ally. The headlines demonstrated the point: 

The Wall Street Journal: “Breaking: Pope Francis, who sought to refocus the Catholic Church to promote social and economic justice rather than traditional moral teachings, has died.”

The New York Times: “After decades of conservative leadership, Francis tried to reset the course of the Roman Catholic Church, emphasizing inclusion and care for the marginalized over doctrinal purity.”

The Columbus Dispatch: “Pope Francis, 88, a humble reformer who sought to make the Catholic Church more inclusive much to the ire of some conservatives, has died”

The Bulwark: “A Pope Who Preached Decency in Indecent Times”

The Hill: “Pope Francis, the trailblazing Catholic leader known for his human-rights advocacy and sharp political edge, died Monday…Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a devout Catholic, lionized Francis, portraying him as the perfect embodiment of the gospel of Matthew…”

Listening to the BBC News Hour in the car this morning, one pope trope was that unlike other popes, Pope Francis had a “common touch.” We know Benedict was bookish, but John Paul II didn’t have a “common touch”? John XXIII? Reporters sound like they’ve forgotten already. Or never knew.

It’s only natural for reporters to leap on the OPTICS of Pope Francis — he arrived in a humble car — and not on the church teachings. Because that would require some homework.

NBC’s Anne Thompson relentlessly noted in each hour of Monday morning’s coverage that Francis “moved the Catholic church way from the culture wars” and toward “love and mercy, throwing back the doors of the church to all.” 

Pope Francis did not bend on church teachings against abortion and opposed transgender ideology. Conservative opposition to abortion on demand and gender-mutilating surgeries is described as “Culture wars”  Advocating for abortion on demand and gender-mutilating surgeries is the side of “Love and mercy.” Advocating for the unborn babies is not the antonym of “love and mercy.”

Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

 

After Pope Francis died Monday morning, a few hours after blessing a crowd on Easter Sunday, the New York Times started rolling out tributes to the pontiff at nytimes.com, plus a standard 7,000-word obituary by Jason Horowitz and Jim Yardley, the current and former Rome bureau chiefs for the Times., respectively.

Horowitz adored Francis as pontiff, and the obit predictably hailed the left-leaning pope as a force for “inclusion” against “doctrinaire” conservatives (as if “doctrinaire” is a dirty word when talking about religious doctrine!). However, the phrase “liberal” was scarce in the early coverage, while “conservative” opponents of Pope Francis were easy to find and framed as the enemy of openness.

Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet, died on Monday at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. He was 88.

….

His insistence on shaking up the status quo earned him no shortage of enemies. He demoted conservatives in Vatican offices, restricted the use of the old Latin Mass dear to traditionalists, opened influential meetings of bishops to laypeople, including women, allowed priests to bless same-sex couples and made clear that transgender people could be godparents and that their children could be baptized.

One didn’t expect the Inquisition so soon in Pope Francis’s obituary.

Conservative Catholics accused him of diluting church teachings and never stopped rallying against him. Simmering dissent periodically exploded into view in almost medieval fashion, with talk of schisms and heresy.

Horowitz and Yardley only briefly noted Francis was a daft hand at stifling dissent, in favor of his own ideological leanings.

Francis showed a deft political hand at isolating opponents….only days after leaving the hospital after undergoing colon surgery in 2021, Francis introduced sweeping restrictions on the Latin Mass, arguing that its proponents had exploited it to undermine the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and to create divisions in the church.

Apparently the only hostility and divisions came from conservatives, not the Catholic left or Francis himself.

The spats mostly remained internal, but the ascendance of Mr. Trump in the United States gave traditionalist forces in the Vatican a rival power to rally around. A constellation of conservative Catholic news sites, blogs and television channels, many financed by sources in the United States and Canada, constantly sought to weaken the pope….In 2018, Francis criticized the hostile tenor that often reverberated throughout the conservative Catholic blogosphere.

The reporters did criticize Pope Francis for not fighting sexual abuse in the church hard enough, writing “The pope also seemed less than sensitive to the appeals of victims,” even after major investigations in European countries.

The most dishonest portion of the obituary came under the subhead, “A New Openness,” which cast conservative popes as narrow-minded while denying Pope Francis’s own ideological blind spots.

Arguably the most dramatic change Francis brought to the church, his supporters say, was perhaps the simplest: a willingness to open questions for debate, planting the seeds for deep, long-lasting change. He talked in 2018 about an “apostolate of the ear: listening before speaking.”

He once told Father Spadaro, the Jesuit priest and friend: “Opposition opens up paths. I love opposition.”

Some of his predecessors had been less fond of it. Pope Pius X purged Catholic theologians who took a modernist approach to Bible studies. John Paul II treated theological disagreement as profane dissent, and with his doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, the Vatican silenced theologians with differing visions of the church. When he became pope, Benedict ordered the removal of the editor of a Jesuit journal, America, because it entertained ideas anathema to conservative orthodoxy.

Francis did not stifle views he disagreed with and believed in a patient process — he called it discernment — in which ideas and proposals could be weighed before going forward.

Really? Transgenderism, immigration, global warming, homosexuality, the Latin Mass – Pope Francis used his power to stifle church conservatives on many fronts.

The rolling live news feed covered similar ground, under the flattering subhead, “His groundbreaking pontificate worked to make the Catholic Church more inclusive. Cardinals will now decide whether to continue his approach or restore more doctrinaire leadership.” Again, the only quibble was that the pope failed to lead left-wing ideology to triumph within the church, as in Ruth Graham’s piece, “Francis faced defiant, conservative U.S. Catholic leaders.”

Francis led an increasingly ideologically fractured church, including a boisterous right wing that often openly defied him. The United States, with a heated cultural and political battle over abortion and other social issues, was a stronghold of that conservative opposition….Yet those appointments did not fundamentally shift the balance of American church leadership in a more liberal direction. The church hierarchy in the United States remains staunchly conservative and plays a significant role in the nation’s searing debates over abortion, sexuality and gender….

The Times doesn’t broach the argument of papal hypocrisy, as Ed Condon did in The Spectator (UK): “And while Francis preached a vision of synodality, consultation, and collegiality, he showed himself willing to depose bishops from all corners of the world – seemingly on a whim, without due process and sometimes without any reasons given – if they were considered ideologically out of step with him.” Neither did the paper bear down on the theological confusion Pope Francis leaves in his wake.

Appearing as a guest on Thursday’s The Source with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, border czar Tom Homan called out the media’s liberal slant on illegal immigration as the two debated the deportation of alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to his home country of El Salvador.

After Homan gave his opinion that the order of withholding that had previously prevented Garcia from being sent back to his home country became “meaningless” after MS-13 was declared a terrorist organization by the Donald Trump administration, Collins followed up:

I’m glad you brought that up because that withholding of removal order essentially said the one place he can’t go is El Salvador, where he’s from. He claimed he was concerned he could be persecuted if he was returned. Why not simply have him return to the U.S., detain him, and then deport him to a third country. Wouldn’t that be in accordance with the law?

Noting that he is not an attorney and was merely giving his opinion from his experience as a law enforcement officer, Homan reiterated that he believed that it was appropriate to ignore the order of withholding after MS-13 was declared to be a terrorist group, and also argued that, unlike in 2019, El Salvador is a much safer country now so that Garcia would no longer have a legitimate claim of being in danger from rival gangs.

Undeterred, the CNN host followed up: “But why not make that argument in court? If you think that you can make the argument that he is fine to go back to El Salvador, why not — why not just make that argument and try to terminate that order that said that the one place that he couldn’t go to was the one place that he was sent to?”

Homan soon called out the media’s double standard in demanding that illegal aliens be vetted before they are deported but not pressing President Joe Biden to vet them when he was allowing millions to enter the country illegally:

No one asks these questions about the proper vetting of the millions of people the Biden administration pushed across the border and released into this country illegally. No one was concerned about the vetting then, and, all of a sudden, now everybody wants to be concerned about the vetting about the people that are going to be deported. I mean, it seems like a one-sided show. But I stand by the fact that I think things were done right with this case. He’s an MS-13 gang member, he has a final order of removal, he is designated terrorist, and anything beyond that we’ll let the courts settle on it.

After Collins kept pushing on the same issue, making Homan have to repeat himself, he finally declared:

Again, again, we keep going back and back, but, again, that was years ago — country conditions were different. That gang no longer exists in El Salvador. He had been designated a terrorist at that time. Two different federal judges said he was an MS-13 member, a police department said he’s an MS-13 member, ICE data says he’s an MS-13 member, El Salvador says he’s an MS-13 member.

It is noteworthy that CNN has admitted that El Salvador is a much safer country now than it was five years ago, thus undermining the argument that Garcia would need to be protected from gangs in his home country.

Transcript follows:

CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins

April 17, 2025

9:06 p.m. Eastern

TOM HOMAN, BORDER CZAR: And the order of withholding that everybody keeps talking about — order of withholding you set aside because he’s a designated terrorist which means the order of withholding it meaningless, I believe, according to the attorneys. And, look, even if we — even if he came back, people think he’s going to be released and go back to — no, he’s going to be detained, and he’s going to be removed as per the order of removal either to El Salvador or another country. So this person has an order of removal, he’s seen two different immigration judges, and he’s been ordered deported, and that’s exactly what happened.

COLLINS: I’m glad you brought that up because that withholding of removal order essentially said the one place he can’t go is El Salvador, where he’s from. He claimed he was concerned he could be persecuted if he was returned. Why not simply have him return to the U.S., detain him, and then deport him to a third country. Wouldn’t that be in accordance with the law?

HOMAN: I think we’re in accordance with the law. I mean, I’m not an attorney. I’m not at DOJ fighting this case, but my opinion, in the years that I spent doing this job, he is now designated a terrorist — the withholding order is set aside. And we’ve got to remember, the withholding was issued years ago. Things have changed. El Salvador is one of the safest countries in the region because of the stuff President Bukele did. You know, the gangs are no longer operating on the streets of Venezuela. That’s why he built that prison. So I don’t think the gang danger that they once thought was there is even there anymore, so the situation has changed. This is much like temporary protected status — the TPS. That’s only temporary. When the conditions of the country have changed, TPS can be ended, and they can be removed to the country.

COLLINS: But why not make that argument in court? If you think that you can make the argument that he is fine to go back to El Salvador, why not — why not just make that argument and try to terminate that order that said that the one place that he couldn’t go to was the one place that he was sent to?

HOMAN: Look, again, I’m not litigating the case. The DOJ — I think DOJ is continuing to litigate the case, but I think we’re in a good stance. I think we’re in a good place.

(…)

HOMAN: No one asks these questions about the proper vetting of the millions of people the Biden administration pushed across the border and released into this country illegally. No one was concerned about the vetting then, and, all of a sudden, now everybody wants to be concerned about the vetting about the people that are going to be deported. I mean, it seems like a one-sided show. But I stand by the fact that I think things were done right with this case. He’s an MS-13 gang member, he has a final order of removal, he is designated terrorist, and anything beyond that we’ll let the courts settle on it.

(…)

COLLINS: But this administration has admitted in court that he was mistakenly deported — that he should not have been deported.

HOMAN: Look, they said there’s an administrative error, but if you look at the case — if I look at the case as a non-attorney, just an enforcement officer, I think things were done right. Again, they’re talking about, “Well, it might have been paperwork error with the withholding,” but if we look at the case that he’s designated as a terrorist, I think that withholding has been set aside. That is my opinion. But, again, we’ll let DOJ fight it out.

COLLINS: Well, I mean, the solicitor general — who is the third in the chain of command at the DOJ — has said that this was an error.

HOMAN: Then I’ll let them deal with it. I’m giving you my opinion. I said I’m not going to get in the middle of what DOJ is arguing in court. I’m telling you, from my stance, what we’ve done, I believe, is correct, and that’s why DOJ is standing by the fact that what we did was right.

COLLINS: You know, I’ve seen some people — they’re worried that the stance of this — this administration, when it comes to this, is that, if someone is deported by accident, that they have no responsibility for them once they are in the custody of another — a foreign government. What would you say to that?

HOMAN: Well, they’re in the custody of El Salvador. He’s an El Salvadoran national. He was born in El Salvador. El Salvador has him in custody, and El Salvador decides what’s going to happen to him. I mean, again, the El Salvadoran president made it clear he’s not going to release him. So, again, I’m going to go back to DOJ — they can fight this out in the courts — I’m not a part of that. I’m not an attorney — I’m not a prosecutor. So we’ll let the courts decide what the next steps will be.

COLLINS: Even though it was a U.S. immigration judge who said, “The one place he can’t go is El Salvador.” I mean, he could have been deported literally anywhere else, and there would not have been a fight.

HOMAN: Again, again, we keep going back and back, but, again, that was years ago — country conditions were different. That gang no longer exists in El Salvador. He had been designated a terrorist at that time. Two different federal judges said he was an MS-13 member, a police department said he’s an MS-13 member, ICE data says he’s an MS-13 member, El Salvador says he’s an MS-13 member.

Between a Special Report, Today, and the 3rd Hour of Today, NBC pulled out all the stops Monday in its coverage on the death of Pope Francis, unsurprisingly heralding him as a man of the people in the left’s sense of the term for being pro-LGBTQ, “brought the Catholic Church…away from the culture wars and back to Christ’s basic message,” and waged “clashes…with…conservative members” in favor of a “plainspoken manner.”

It all started during an NBC News Special Report in the 6:00 a.m. Eastern hour as longtime religion correspondent Anne Thompson said Francis’s legacy will be his “mercy and compassion,” adding:

Moments later, co-host Savannah Guthrie remarked to National Catholic Reporter’s Christopher White that “in some ways, Pope Francis was a reformer and clashed with more conservative members of — of the clerical order and the cardinals.”

“I think this is a pope that was unafraid to bring the church in dialog with the modern world, to answer and listen to hard questions and to not be afraid…[H]e really wasn’t interested in banging people on the head with doctrine, but he really wanted to accompany people and where they are in life,” he replied.

Guthrie also brought up Francis as righteous with those “conservative members” as more rigid, but conceded he also had “progressives” who “didn’t think” he “went far enough” on other issues (click “expand”):

GUTHRIE: Well, let’s talk about some of that orthodoxy. And I mentioned some of the clashes that had taken place with some of the more conservative members of the Catholic Church over doctrinal things like the Latin Mass, but also about social issues. And, you know, when you look at the whole picture of Pope Francis, there’s a little bit of something for everybody. I mean, in some ways, progressives were heartened by some of his stances, but didn’t think they would — went far enough. There are other ways in which, again, he clashed with conservative members of the church. So where does he fit when you look at the whole picture?

WHITE: You can’t really map Pope Francis onto certainly not American political categories. I mean, one of his, you know, famous lines in one of his early documents was that everything is connected. And so for Pope Francis, he began with a sort of dignity of the human person. And so, that’s what led him to oppose abortion, but also have a very strong defense of migrants and climate change. And so, I think that’s why some people often found him a bit puzzling. How do — how do you characterize this guy? Is he a progressive? Is he — is he a conservative? In a sense, he — he was both.

Melvin also tried this with Thompson on women in the Church, but she correctly pointed out he “did put women in leadership positions across the Vatican…but he would not go as far as to support women’s ordination to the priesthood” and left “unresolved” debate about women as deacons.

Thompson returned for Today with a taped obituary and again framed Francis as “a transformational figure” who supported gays and did away with those pesky “culture wars”:

In a repeat for the show’s second hour, Thompson boasted Francis as having chastised his fellow Catholic leaders of having “spiritual Alzheimer’s.”

Today also worked in a dig at President Trump with senior White House correspondent Garrett Haake taking care of that: “President Trump also met privately with Pope Francis at the Vatican back in 2017…The President afterwards calling the meeting, ‘the honor of a lifetime’ though, the two have since, at times, publicly disagreed on issues, most notably immigration.”

Foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez doubled down on Francis’s progressivism and framed him not solely a Christian, but “a moral and spiritual figure” that argued no one should judge someone on their sexuality and was revolutionary in “his plainspoken manner”:

Sanchez also implied Francis was someone who entertained the notion of atheists being in heaven:

Children brought out his best, nevermore so than when he met a young boy on a parish visit in Rome. The boy was nervous to ask if his father, an atheist, was in heaven. Come and tell me in my ear,” Francis says, and consoles him. “God has a father’s heart,” he tells the boy. The same could be said of Pope Francis.

Finally, Thompson made a third appearance on the 3rd Hour of Today and reiterated Francis wasn’t interested in those pesky “culture wars” (meaning abortion and marriage):

Pope Francis has been a progressive figure and don’t think of it in terms of progressive in American politics, but think of it this way. He is the one who threw open the doors wide of the Catholic Church. He moved the Catholic church away from the culture wars, the bedroom issues that have so dominated the church in the last few years and he went to Christ’s basic mission of mercy. Now, in throwing those doors open wide, he made some enemies, particularly among more traditional Catholics that feel there is — there are doctrines should be adhered to and adhered to strictly. Francis was much more willing to say, look, we are all sinners. We just want you to come back, and at your weakest time, we will show you mercy.

To see the relevant NBC transcript from April 21, click here.

Apparently the recently deceased Pope Francis is the patron saint of “Mother Earth.” At least that’s what the climate Armageddon-obsessed TIME magazine is trying to argue.

TIME senior correspondent and eco-doom prophet Justin Worland’s papal obit read like a cheap comic strip: “The Climate Pope: Francis and His Environmental Legacy,” Worland’s headline read, celebrating the leftist pope for his radical eco crusaderism. According to Worland’s twisted worldview, the first big “environmental move” the pope did upon ascending to the papacy was simply “choosing the papal name Francis after Saint Francis of Assi, known among other things for his appreciation of the natural world which he called a ‘mirror of God.’”

Um, you’d be hard-pressed to convince the Catholic faithful writ large that St. Francis of Assisi was somehow a raving climate activist nut like their “Person of the Year” Greta Thunberg. But in Worland’s perspective, as he bleated in 2021, “climate is everything.” 

This is also the same Worland who screeched like a cat with its tail stepped on nearly five years ago that 2020 was “our one last chance” to save the planet. So it’s not a surprise he’s exploiting the death of a pope to embellish his ridiculous climate change bona fides. “In his 12 year papacy, Pope Francis would go on to become a key figure in the global climate movement,” Worland plastered onto his latest climate babble.

He went on to offer a Malthusian salute to Pope Francis for his supposed condemnation of humanity for its stain on the earth’s climate:

As political leaders debated the technical and economic dimensions of the climate policy agenda, Francis, who passed away on Easter Monday, served as a voice of moral clarity, speaking and writing about the social consequences of human influence on the planet.

Worland specifically highlighted the pope’s Greenpeace-pleasing encyclical Laudato Si from 2015, “Francis paid special attention to the disproportionate impact of climate change on the world’s poorest and critiqued the economic structures that make this a reality.”

Sheesh, Worland. Just call Francis your favorite anti-capitalist and be done with it.

NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham was interviewed by the popular Daily Wire podcast “Morning Wire” about immigration and the state of the debate over defunding PBS and NPR. 

The host, Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley, began with the Geoffrey Dickens study showing a dramatic disparity in recent ABC, CBS, and NBC coverage of “Maryland father” Kilmar Abrego Garcia versus the trial of the illegal alien who raped and murdered Maryland mother of five Rachel Morin.  

“The definition of news is, if it’s negative about Trump, it’s a big story. If it’s a Trump talking point, it is forgotten,” Graham said. He noted the networks can’t say they don’t cover violent crimes like rape and murder, but “It’s a matter of who is the rapist and the murderer that somehow turns into into a zero-seconds story.” He said Rachel Morin’s murder “is not just a Trump talking point, it’s an anti-Biden talking point.”

He said this is how media bias compounds upon itself. “Because is The Washington Post going to ask Sen. Van Hollen a question about this? Are any of the local media here in the DC area, the DC NPR station, [going to ask] about what he has done or has he been in contact with the Morin family?” No. 

Tim found a Nexis search of NPR coverage of found no mention of Rachel Morin now, or when she was killed in 2023. 

 

From there, Bickley asked if defunding PBS and NPR was a “healthy step for the country,” and Graham noted that the MRC was there (and Brent Bozell testified before Congress) when Newt Gingrich proposed zeroing out public broadcasting when Republicans took over the House in 1995.

“It is so long overdue. It is an outrageous that conservative taxpayers should have to send money to Washington so they can be smeared as little Hitlers,” Graham said. “We are long past time for the federal money to dry up for public radio and TV — and if they want to make this outrageous liberal content, they should get more outrageous liberal donors like George Soros to pay for it.” 

Sign the petition to help defund PBS and NPR at defundpbsnpr.org.

ABC This Week host Jonathan Karl interviewed Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Sunday all about their favorite illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but Karl never mentioned the trial about the murder of Maryland mother of five Rachel Morin by an illegal alien. ABC clearly doesn’t care about her family’s loss — and neither did the senator. He went to El Salvador for Abrego Garcia, but never got in touch with Patty Morin, Rachel Morin’s mother.

In a mostly soft interview, Karl was toughest in nudging Van Hollen to push back on the the attacks on his trip, like from the president of El Salvador: “Bukele put out a statement saying, miraculously risen from the death camps and torture and sipping margaritas with you. I mean, they were really trying to make you look like you were hanging out with somebody that they say is a gang member.”

It’s like Karl has no time to investigate what conservative media are putting out, just like he couldn’t figure out Kamala Harris’s actual positions.

In nine minutes with @ChrisVanHollen, ABC’s @JonKarl never asked about the murder conviction this past week for the illegal alien who killed Maryland mom Rachel Morin whose mother appeared in the White House press room on Wednesday to point out how Van Hollen never expressed… pic.twitter.com/dN0Iwd6jvp
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 20, 2025
Karl also raised Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom suggesting this deportation fight plays into Trump’s hands: “Is he right about the politics of this? I mean, the Republicans have taken great joy in portraying you as somebody who is defending somebody who’s in this country illegally, they say as a gang member, and, you know, and — and they’re saying that they’re trying to just enforce the laws.” Van Hollen posed: “Jon, I don’t think it’s ever wrong to protect the Constitution and protect due process rights.”

Karl did add the restraining order from Kilmar’s wife:

The Republicans as you know, the president himself has been attacking you by pointing out some of the aspects of Abrego Garcia’s record, including the fact that his wife had an order of protection against him in 2021, and — and alleged some pretty serious allegations of abuse, and even that that he had — he had detained her.”

Are you concerned about your defense of somebody — obviously, everybody in this country — even those undocumented immigrants have rights. But are you concerned about standing so forcefully with somebody that has, you know, at least a questionable record?

Van Hollen claimed he “wasn’t defending the man,” when he’s acted like a defense lawyer with this gaudy trip that made him the star of the Sunday shows. 

On NBC’s Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker also stuck to Democrat concerns — asking about the Newsom critique, the usual softball about a “constitutional crisis” — but at least she raised the Morin murder to Van Hollen: 

Unlike ABC’s @JonKarl, NBC’s @kwelkernbc confronted Maryland Senator @ChrisVanHollen with the criticism of him from Rachel Morin’s mother whose daughter was murdered by an illegal immigrant. Patty Morin: “To have a Senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge, or barely… pic.twitter.com/osTVOhFbeI
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 20, 2025

WELKER: You know, the other thing that we witnessed at the White House this week, Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who is a Maryland woman who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, you’re very familiar with this, was at the White House. And she did speak from the White House briefing room. I want to play you a little bit of what she had to say and get your reaction on the other side. Take a look.

PATTY MORIN: To have a senator from Maryland, who didn’t even acknowledge – or barely acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother, and now a grandbaby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen. Why does that person have more right than I do, or my daughter?

KRISTEN WELKER: What is your response to Mrs. Morin?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: My heart goes out to the Morin family. They suffered, experienced an unspeakable tragedy in the murder of their daughter. And I said at the time that my heart goes out to the Morin family [in a press statement]. And I’m very glad that the killer of Rachel has been convicted in a court of law….And I’m not sure why Abrego Garcia’s rights should be denied based on an awful murder that he had absolutely nothing to do with.

This past week, the Trump administration revealed more incriminating evidence about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal alien recently deported to El Salvador despite a withholding of removal to that country. Yet liberal cable networks CNN and MSNBC have mostly ignored the latest developments, and instead have continued to obfuscate the truth about this so-called “Maryland man.”

Summary of Findings:

CNN and MSNBC referred to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man” or similar terminology a total of 506 times in three weeks.
Garcia was described as being from Maryland nearly five times more often than he was described as being from El Salvador.
Only 10% of the 318 reports about Garcia on both networks included any mention that he was in the U.S. illegally.
Talking heads on MSNBC were almost twice as likely to misrepresent Garcia’s immigration status as they were to describe it correctly.
MRC analysts looked at all CNN and MSNBC coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from April 1 through April 18, finding 506 instances in which journalists or guests referred to him as a “Maryland man,” “Maryland father,” or some similar misleading term.

Across 161 stories about Garcia, MSNBC only bothered to mention that he was in the U.S. illegally 11 times (6.8%). Furthermore, the fact that he was El Salvadoran, and not an American citizen, was only included in 30 percent of their reports (48 times). Meanwhile, CNN mentioned Garcia’s illegal status just 21 times across 157 different segments (13.4%), and his status as a Salvadoran national featured in 34 percent of reports (54 times).

Both networks together mentioned Garcia’s El Salvadoran nationality in just under one third of all reports: 102 times total across 506 segments. In other words, they were nearly five times more likely to describe Garcia as being from Maryland than they were to correctly identify his country of origin.

Inconvenient New Facts Were Mostly Omitted

Last week, the Trump administration brought forward two new allegations about Garcia, which the liberal cable networks largely ignored.

In 2021, Garcia’s wife filed a protective order in which she accused him of domestic violence. Specifically, the order alleged that he had “punched and scratched” her eye, “leaving her bleeding.” The following year, authorities in Tennessee detained Garcia on suspicion of human trafficking after he was caught driving without a license.

The earliest mention of the protective order on either network occurred on Wednesday, April 16, during the 3:00 p.m. ET hour on MSNBC. From then through the end of April 18, MSNBC mentioned it a five times in total (15% of reports), and the trafficking charges only once (3%).

On CNN, Mrs. Garcia’s protective order was mentioned nine times across a total of 25 segments (36%), and again the trafficking charges received only a single mention (4%).

“Maryland Man” Moniker Became Increasingly Prevalent

Our first study of this topic incorporated all CNN and MSNBC coverage through April 6. Since then, several noticeable trends have emerged in both networks’ reporting.

Most notably, the mendacious habit of referring to Garcia as a “Maryland man” only worsened on both CNN and MSNBC. For CNN, the exacerbation was more pronounced; their usage of this misleading moniker spiked by 58 percent since April 6. On MSNBC, the title’s prominence increased by a more modest 24 percent.

However, both networks grew somewhat more willing to divulge that Garcia was an illegal alien (though never by that terminology). Whereas our first study found each had mentioned it in only 3 percent of the segments discussing Garcia, by April 18 that figure had grown to six percent for MSNBC and 13 percent for CNN.

For both networks, most of the cases in which Garcia’s illegal status was discussed were thanks to just a few individuals. On CNN, three people were responsible for ten of the 21 total mentions: anchor and reporter Kaitlan Collins (three mentions), CNN contributor and analyst Scott Jennings (four mentions), and anchor Jake Tapper (six mentions). On MSNBC, Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were responsible for five of the eleven total mentions.

MSNBC Blurred the Lines Between Inaccuracy and Outright Dishonesty

Analysts also identified 26 outright falsehoods about Garcia’s supposed “legal” status in the country. MSNBC was responsible for 20 such mistruths, while CNN aired the remaining six. Put another way, reporters on MSNBC falsely portrayed Garcia’s immigration status almost twice as often as they described it correctly (20 times versus 11).

Readers will recall that the only relief Garcia received from an immigration court was a 2019 withholding of removal to El Salvador. That narrow ruling did not bestow him with legal residency, and he was still able to be deported at any time. However, the U.S. government was temporarily prohibited from sending him to El Salvador specifically, though they still were able to send him to any other country that was willing to take him.

With that context established, below are some of the most egregious falsehoods about Garcia’s immigration status uttered on Cable TV:

 

Aside from one erroneous assertion by comedian John Fugelsang that Garcia “had temporary protected status,” the falsehoods on CNN  were limited to inaccurate statements about Garcia’s supposedly “legal” residency. MSNBC, however, aired two particularly pernicious inaccuracies that merit individual mentions, especially because both came from long-time employees of the network.

On both April 1 and April 4, Ari Melber, host of The Beat, claimed that the U.S. had deported “the wrong person.” While Garcia’s withholding of removal to El Salvador did qualify his subsequent deportation to that country as an error, there is absolutely no evidence that the Trump administration ever confused him with someone else. To the contrary, it appears they were acutely aware of who Kilmar Abrego Garcia was, and Melber’s repeated claims to the contrary were stunningly dishonest.

On April 7, daytime MSNBC host Chris Jansing aired the second, more egregious claim: that Garcia was a “Green Card holder.” Given the absurdity of this claim, the most likely explanation is that Jansing confused Garcia with Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student whose pending deportation has been the subject of an ongoing legal battle. But regardless of what caused it, an error this severe ought to have resulted in an on-air retraction.

While this study examined the two prominent liberal cable networks, the broadcast networks’ coverage tells a similar story: for whatever reason, the corporate media have decided that the deportation of an illegal alien MS-13 gang member is a hill they’re willing to die on. It’s certainly not an advisable choice, but so long as they keep making this mistake in real time, we’ll continue documenting it.

For this study, analysts relied on a combination of Nexis transcripts and SnapStream recordings to examine all shows airing on CNN and MSNBC between 6:00 a.m. ET and 11:59 p.m. ET, from April 1 through April 18.