Newsbusters

Wednesday’s CBS Mornings Plus showed its thoughts on whether borders and citizenship actually mean anything as they dedicated a segment to a Columbia University Law professor informing illegal immigrants to cheer up and not as fearful because everyone enjoys the same rights under the Constitution, no matter whether you immigrated legally, we’re born in this country, or came illegally at anytime under any pretense.

“Recent deportations have fueled fear, uncertainty, and misinformation around traveling. We’ll talk to an expert so you know the facts and your rights,” featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers boasted in the “Eye Opener,” making it seem like CBS is concerned with giving safe harbor to illegal immigrants.

 

 

No word on whether CBS journalists will help them evade Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) or do future segments fawning over helping illegal aliens avoid capture like The Washington Post did.

Co-host Adriana Diaz set up the interview with Columbia’s Elora Mukherjee by saying this week’s CBS News Confirmed segment would discuss “travel and immigration, sifting through so called advice online to get to the truth about your rights” since “videos have gone viral on social media talking about experiences going through U.S. Customs.”

Asked “what should eveyrone know,” Mukherjee said she had been “inundated with calls from students, scholars, researchers, ordinary people who are wondering how to stay safe in this very difficult and unprecedented moment,” wondering if their social media posts or political activities would put them in danger.

Mukherjee more or less explained those concerned shouldn’t be and continue going about their lives, holding whatever views they so choose:

In terms of what everyone should know, people should know that the U.S. Constitution applies to them regardless of their immigration status. Everyone has a right to remain silent, regardless of immigration status, if they’re approached by law enforcement officers or immigration officers. The First Amendment protects the speech of all people regardless of their immigration status. And due process applies to people who are lawful permanent residents and visa holders to a certain extent. So people should know that they should be taking steps to stay safe and that the U.S. Constitution does apply.

Duthiers shifted to green card and long-term visa holders (i.e. those “in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen”) and asked again for Mukherjee to reiterate: “Your point being that the U.S. Constitution covers everybody.”

After saying “yes,” she added the caveat one’s “level of due process…may depend on the length of time that they’ve been in the United States” with the particular dividing line being two years with those above that line safer in demanding “a hearing before they are subject to deportation.”

The conversation then turned to political speech with Mukherjee unsurprisingly defending the anti-Semitic mobs that took over her university (click “expand”):

DIAZ: So, professor, you’re talking about people’s due process rights, their First Amendment rights. But we are seeing in the news students, including former students at Columbia, who are being detained and their lawyers are saying it’s unlawfully, it’s — it’s in violation of their constitutional rights. What should people make of what you’re saying people’s rights are? And then what they’re seeing happening.

MUKHERJEE: The executive branch right now is pushing the bounds of executive power beyond that, that is allowed by the U.S. Constitution pushing beyond the checks and balances system that is set up by our laws and our constitutional democracy. We are at a moment that is unprecedented in terms of the executive branch testing the limits of the judiciary. And in the coming days and weeks, we will see whether and to what extent the executive branch respects the law that is set forth by the federal courts.

Before thanking Mukherjee for having given viewers “really important information,” Duthiers fretted “Customs and Border Protection agents do have the right to search your phone if they ask you when you’re coming into the United States” and wondered if those entering the U.S. should wipe their social media or fall back on the First Amendment.

Mukherjee provided one last dose of assurance that “[t]he First Amendment protects everyone who is within the United States” although “[i]t’s more complicated at ports of entry” such as airports.

To see the relevant CBS transcript from April 9, click here.

In late February, Dr. Mahendra Amin settled his defamation suit with MSNBC (for an undisclosed amount) after they falsely claimed that he had performed medically unnecessary hysterectomies on illegal immigrant women in the custody of ICE, erroneously dubbing him “the uterus collector.” NewsBusters recently spoke with Dr. Amin’s lead counsel Georgia State Representative Stacey Evans (D) and co-counsel Scott Grubman about the case and the future of defamation law.

Evans, who has been practicing law for 22 years and defamation law for 15, is an elected Democrat in the Georgia House of Representatives and was shocked when learning about the accusations against her client. “[W]hen I had heard the allegations and, you know, they sounded horrible” and “particularly stood out because the allegations against him were so egregious,” she said.

Even with the political nature of the case and the on-going election year at the time, Evans said she didn’t shy away from it because “we need to hold [MSNBC] accountable for it” and get the truth out:

I have learned, you know, that the media doesn’t always get it right. And so while I think Scott [Grubman] and his partner may have thought at first that I would shy away from this one because of my politics and because that we were in the middle of an election cycle. I said, ‘no, absolutely not.’ If they got this wrong, we need to hold them accountable for it. And while I knew it was going to be challenging because of the fact that the media had already run him through the wringer, so to speak, I was very glad to, to dig in and get to the truth.

Grubman noted that politics played a role in why the story against his client gained traction. “It is a political issue, and we believe that a big part of why all these allegations were made, and then … it spread so much through the media, is because of all the political stuff going on,” he said.

On Dr. Amin’s politics, Grubman noted that his client “is not a political person in any way, shape, or form.” Adding: “He doesn’t get involved in politics … he practices medicine, he keeps his head down and that’s it.”

What happened was MSNBC ignored “an alarm bell going off to them that they did not have this story right,” Evans explained. “And in the face of all of that, they broadcast to the world that Dr. Amin was this evil caricature of a doctor in his basement collecting uteruses.”

Explaining how the MSNBC’s lies hurt Dr. Amin, Evans said the false reports, “really cut to the heart of who he is as a person, which is a very caring, very dedicated, very selfless doctor.”

Dr. Amin’s practices in a very rural part of southeast Georgia, which Evans explained to NewsBusters as “very remote, very rural area” with “a lot of poverty” that Dr. Amin very much wanted to help. “[H]e treats patients regardless of the ability to pay, and he’s often been the only OBGYN in the county and sometimes in a pretty large radius of the area of Georgia,” she stated.

Both Evans and Grubman pointed out that MSNBC’s false claims particularly hurt him because they accused him of targeting migrants when he was an immigrant himself.

The reporting also led to Dr. Amin receiving death threats, as recounted by Evans:

The fact that he received death threats, that he was being followed, that even when he wasn’t being followed, he felt like he was being followed. He was compared to Nazi doctors experimenting on patients. He was called some of the vilest names that I think any of us would probably ever even imagine being called and that was his life. I mean, it was awful. It affected his, his family, his staff, because they were getting harassing phone calls at work. And of course the toll that it took on him affected everyone around him. Because Doctor Amin is a selfless doctor whose dedicated himself to a very underserved area of the country and the state of Georgia.

Looking up Google reviews of Dr. Amin’s practice, NewsBusters can verify that people were indeed saying very heinous things about him while trying to sink him. “He’s a eugenicist and sterilizes migrant women without telling them in order to pad his wallet. Pure evil,” one reviewer wrote. Another unrionically proclaimed “Do your research!!” before going on a 345-word tirade against him parroting the same lies MSNBC pushed.

Regarding some of those statements made by MSNBC, Grubman pointed that Judge Lisa Godbey Wood found in summary judgment that “multiple of these statements, crucial statements made by MSNBC and Rachel Maddow on the air, were false as a matter of law.”

The media outlets that were reaching out to Dr. Amin to comment essentially wanted him to break HIPPA laws. They wanted him to answer the allegations they were baselessly leveling against him, but in order to do that he needed to break doctor-patient confidentially, which he refused to do.

When asked if we’re seeing more defamation suits against the media these days, Evans wasn’t sure about raw numbers but did think more outlets were willing to call each other out over it. She was also seeing more “good faith” efforts to have certain aspects of defamation law better defined and work for victims:

I do think that folks are getting braver at trying cases and pushing for good faith changes in the law and standards. And I think you’ve seen a lot of effort to try to have higher courts look again at actual malice standards and private versus public figures and how we treat people differently, and what that actually means. You’re seeing a lot more, you know, nerdy academic discussion of the law and what have we put in place and should we have and should that change.

So, I do think you’re getting a lot more discussion about defamation cases. I’m not sure that we’re actually having more defamation cases.

Evans was happy to see those efforts taking place “because it is important for folks to know that that old adage that you learned as a kid, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. They do. They do hurt and it’s real pain, and it’s real damage.”

“And in today’s day and age, because of the fact that things can get amplified so quick and go around the world so fast, it can ruin you in a second, and that matters,” she declared. “And people should be held accountable when they are so reckless with their words that they destroy somebody’s reputation, which you work your whole life to develop, and the fact that someone can destroy it in a second. Should not go unchecked.”

Factcheck.org may be the best of the fact-checking websites that recently saw their influence decline when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to break up with them. However, a nearly 3,000-word SciCheck essay from Catalina Jaramillo on Monday proved that is still not good enough to justify the previous partnership, as she took aim at a series of transgender-related executive orders from President Donald Trump.

First, Jaramillo focused on the executive order that declared there to be only two sexes. The order defined female as “the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” and male as “the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

That is like saying “Snowflakes are ice crystals formed in clouds and fall to the ground, but experts say they are also white.”  

Jaramillo got super pedantic. She admitted that the definition is accurate, but argued it can be expanded upon, “Scientists told us that although biological sex can be defined by the size of a person’s reproductive cells, or gametes, that definition doesn’t always work given there are multiple factors that define sex in humans.” Such factors “include external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones.”

Still, Jaramillo did the traditional thing of pointing to the existence of intersex people, “The definition in the executive order ‘should not and cannot apply’ to people with a [Differences of Sex Development], according to a statement from the [Pediatric Endocrine Society]. That’s because some people with a DSD, which is also called intersex, don’t produce sperm or eggs, produce both of them, or produce a reproductive cell that doesn’t match their biological sex development.”

The order was about recognizing that Homo sapiens is a two-sex species, which is true. Inter literally means “between,” so intersex is “between sexes,” not a unique third sex.

Moving onto “Medical Gender Transition Treatments,” Jaramillo noted another executive order “later defined children as ‘individuals under 19 years of age.’” 

She then reached for the common non-sequitur, “But experts have told us that gender-affirming surgeries typically take place after age 18, the legal age of adulthood in most states, and after a case-by-case assessment by a medical team.”

Of course, something being rare is not the same thing as it being nonexistent. Still, Jaramillo seemed to contradict herself as she made an unconvincing argument that surgery should be treated differently than hormone treatment, “Puberty blockers, or medications that delay the beginning of puberty, are the first medical intervention and are typically offered between ages 8 to 13 for girls and 9 to 14 for boys. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is typically offered around age 16, when adolescents are capable of making an informed decision that weighs the potential risks and benefits.”

While hyping the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, Jaramillo ignored that countries such as the United Kingdom and Sweden—not exactly run by U.S.-style religious right types—paused such “treatments.”

Again, Jaramillo confused “rare” with “never,” writing, “A separate study by some of the same Harvard researchers, published in JAMA Pediatrics in January, used insurance claims data and found that less than 0.1% of minors ages 8 to 17 with private insurance are transgender or gender diverse and received puberty blockers or hormones between 2018 and 2022.”

During COVID, we were constantly told that mandates and restrictions were necessary because a small percentage of a very big number is still a big number. However, fact-checkers and journalists alike seem uninterested in applying that same standard to minors receiving gender-altering care while also trying to torture the definition of sex into something else.

Our friend and 2023 MRC Bulldog Award winner Andrew Kerr put a spotlight Tuesday on the revelation that a previously censored 2022 Biden administration report on the coronavirus pandemic that he said showed “[s]even Americans may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan in October 2019, several months before the reported start of the pandemic.”

Of course, ABC, CBS, and NBC wanted nothing to do with this and ignored it on their flagship broadcast morning and evening newscasts. The went for all shows on CNN and MSNBC.

Kerr explained the report was required in 2022 as part of the annual reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act into the COVID-like symptoms seven U.S. troops contracted afterwards (which they “all recovered…within six days”).

Specifically, the demand was the report be made “‘publicly available on an internet website in a searchable format’ by summer of 2022” and it was delivered “to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022,” but its whereabouts were unknown “until sometime in late March when the Trump administration quietly uploaded it to a Defense Department website.”

Crucially, Kerr said the bombshell finding ran counter to public declarations by the Biden administration, including their Swiss army knife of a spokesman, John Kirby:

The December 2022 report, which the Biden administration was required by law to release to the public over two years ago but didn’t, reveals for the first time that seven U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19-like symptoms during or after their participation in the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019—contradicting the Biden administration’s public claims in 2021 that there was no evidence that any American participants contracted the virus at those games. The revelation adds to a mounting body of evidence that the virus was circulating in Wuhan for months before China disclosed it to the world in December 2019 and further bolsters the growing consensus that it could have leaked into the human population from a Chinese lab.

(….)

Former Biden Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told the Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had “no knowledge” of any COVID-19 infections among the troops that participated in those games.

The first Trump administration issued similar statements regarding the Wuhan games. In June 2020, the Pentagon told the Prospect that it did not test any of the American troops that participated in the games because they were held “prior to the reported outbreak.”

(….)

The Defense Department uploaded the report sometime in late March to a section of its website dedicated to “quality-of-life” issues for military service members and their families. The Wuhan World Military Games report is sandwiched between two separate reports on military spouses obtaining occupational licenses.

Unsurprisingly, Kerr said the World Military Games just so happened to have been “held within close proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the now-infamous site for taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research on viruses deriving from bats.

He added a June 2020 article in The American Prospect suggested this all along with another all-too-convenient fact about the virus’s initial known spread within the United States: “The American military athletes traveled to and from Wuhan via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, according to the Prospect, which noted that Washington was one of the earliest COVID-19 hotspots in the country.”

To further bolster his case, he noticed the Daily Mail found “[m]ilitary athletes from Germany, France, Italy, and Luxembourg who competed in the October 2019 games also reported coming down with COVID-19-like symptoms during their stay in Wuhan.”

The broadcast networks had other ideas about stories to cover. Alongside their gargantuan amount of tariffs coverage, all three networks marveled at the creepy, real-life act straight out of Jurassic Park with that formerly extinct dire wolf. Oh, and on both Tuesday and Wednesday’s CBS Mornings, they were multiple mentions of co-host Gayle King going to space next week on a Blue Origin civilian flight.

One student arrived at a school track meet with the intent to play sports, while another arrived with an attitude and a knife.

In any other scenario, the question of right versus wrong would be abundantly clear when the thug wielding a knife allegedly stabbed the other athlete to death after a dispute broke out.

It should be natural that we share a collective outrage, as well as remorse for the victims and a deep concern over what would drive a 17-year-old boy to murder another teenager

But wait. This is the age of relativism, tribalism and identity politics where everyone has the inherent right to their own truth.

The murdered boy was white and the suspect is black, so the story must be turned on its head. The white kid must’ve had it coming, according to the media and faceless internet mob. The black kid is the victim, and a GoFundMe page has already raised over $200,000 for his defense.

Racial Marxists insist whitey always deserves to die. Their faceless mob is still fuming because they couldn’t intimidate a New York jury into frying Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran, for defending Subway passengers from a violent bum.

That’s why they’re working overtime to ensure there must be twice as many O.J. Simpson verdicts for every Penny outcome. 

Tune into this episode of “Woke of the Weak.”

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show host of the week, Desi Lydic, welcomed Michigan State Senator and U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow to Tuesday’s show to discuss her book Hate Won’t Win. Both host and guest lamented that “hate is having a moment” after the 2024 election as McMorrow tried to sanitize her record that led her to become famous in the first place.

Lydic wondered, “So, your book is titled Hate Won’t Win. I’m just curious, considering the last election result, are you planning a follow-up book called Okay, Best 2 out of 3?”

 

 

McMorrow replied by calling Elon Musk a Nazi and suggested actually analyzing the arm gesture in question to determine whether it actually was a Nazi salute is a waste of time:

Yeah, I think it is safe to say that hate is having a moment. But the title, to me, is a call to action. It is a choice that each and every single one of us have an opportunity to make every day about when Elon Musk goes out there and does what is surely a Nazi salute, and we all know it. Instead of getting angry and spiraling and going online and looking up think pieces about whether or not his hand was raised to just the right angle or not.

After some crosstalk, McMorrow continued and urged people to get involved in Democratic Party politics, “But, when those things happen, and there are a lot of things that happen, the plan of the Trump Administration is to do so many disgusting and horrible things every single day that we shut down and feel powerless. And what if, instead, we put our phones down, and we did one thing? Maybe we reached out to one neighbor. Maybe we found out where there’s a Democratic club that meets in my town, and actually showed up and took a step, just like running, every single day, we take another step and then another step, and long term, if we all do that, hate’s not going to win.”

Lydic then put the ball on the tee again by alluding to a speech McMorrow gave where she tried to appoint herself as one of the country’s leaders of the religious left, “This title, Hate Won’t Win, came from a really powerful moment from a speech that you made on the floor of your State Senate in Michigan. Talk about that moment where you not only found your voice but also realized the power that it had.”

 

 

McMorrow recalled, “So, I woke up one morning on a regular day, and there was a screenshot of an email on Twitter, and it was an email that was sent out by one of my Republican colleagues, mind you, not someone I was running against. Just somebody in a different part of the state that I served with, fundraising for herself. And in the email, she accused me by name of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergartners and wanting 8-year-olds to believe they are responsible for slavery. And that’s a dark day.”

She also claimed, “I realized that I feel horrendous, but I’m not actually the one under attack. So, what if I actually respond? You know, I was raised to believe that bullies just crave attention. Let’s not give it to them. But clearly, that hasn’t worked. It hasn’t stopped them. They are winning. Hate is having a moment. So, I wrote down about myself and my mom and that I was raised in the Catholic Church and what Christianity meant to me. It meant not putting ‘Christian’ in your Twitter bio and using that as a shield to attack and marginalize already marginalized people.”

Back in June 2022, McMorrow responded to a tweet reporting that a Texas state representative was seeking to pass a bill that would ban minors at drag shows by tweeting, “First it was CRT. Then it was trans kids playing sports. Now it’s…drag?”

If you don’t want kids being taught that America is an irredeemably racist country or that a man who declares himself to be a woman really is a woman, then, according to Desi Lydic and Mallory McMorrow, you’re just hateful.

Here is a transcript for the April 8 show:

Comedy Central The Daily Show

4/8/2025

11:23 PM ET

DESI LYDIC: So, your book is titled Hate Won’t Win. I’m just curious, considering the last election result, are you planning a follow-up book called Okay, Best 2 out of 3?

MALLORY MCMORROW: Yeah, I think it is safe to say that hate is having a moment. But the title, to me, is a call to action. It is a choice that each and every single one of us have an opportunity to make every day about when Elon Musk goes out there and does what is surely a Nazi salute, and we all know it. Instead of getting angry and spiraling and going online and looking up think pieces about whether or not his hand was raised to just the right angle or not—

LYDIC: You are saying we should not do that?

MCMORROW: We should not do that.

[crosstalk]

LYDIC: Don’t spiral, you said? Okay, got it.

MCMORROW: Yeah, yeah. Doom scrolling, not good. Not advised.

LYDIC: Doom scrolling: not good. Got it. Okay.

MCMORROW: But, when those things happen, and there are a lot of things that happen, the plan of the Trump Administration is to do so many disgusting and horrible things every single day that we shut down and feel powerless. And what if, instead, we put our phones down, and we did one thing? 

Maybe we reached out to one neighbor. Maybe we found out where there’s a Democratic club that meets in my town, and actually showed up and took a step, just like running, every single day, we take another step and then another step, and long term, if we all do that, hate’s not going to win.

LYDIC: Excellent advice. This title, Hate Won’t Win, came from a really powerful moment from a speech that you made on the floor of your State Senate in Michigan. Talk about that moment where you not only found your voice but realized the power that it had.

MCMORROW: So, I woke up one morning on a regular day, and there was a screenshot of an email on Twitter, and it was an email that was sent out by one of my Republican colleagues, mind you, not someone I was running against. Just somebody in a different part of the state that I served with, fundraising for herself. And in the email, she accused me by name of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergartners and wanting 8-year-olds to believe they are responsible for slavery. And that’s a dark day.

LYDIC: Yeah.

MCMORROW: Just not a good workday, certainly. I was spiraling all day, trying to figure out what to do and my friends were worried about me. But I realized that I feel horrendous, but I’m not actually the one under attack. So, what if I actually respond? You know, I was raised to believe that bullies just crave attention. Let’s not give it to them. But clearly, that hasn’t worked. It hasn’t stopped them. They are winning. Hate is having a moment. 

So, I wrote down about myself and my mom and that I was raised in the Catholic Church and what Christianity meant to me. It meant not putting “Christian” in your Twitter bio and using that as a shield to attack and marginalize already marginalized people. 

And I was very intentional, thinking about 99 percent of people. In the end of that speech, I said, people who are different are not the reason why your health care costs are too high or why teachers are leaving the profession. And wanted to take my own story back. And that speech immediately went viral. Tens of millions of people saw it. I got a phone call from the president and I missed it. It went to voicemail. He left me a message. It was deeply embarrassing. 

On April 7, Facebook pulled the plug on the censorship of “independent fact checkers,” replacing it with a “Community Notes” approach, like Elon Musk’s X uses. No one was more upset than the censorious left-wing “fact” police.

Angie Holan, the leader of the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network, marked “International Fact-Checking Day” by proclaiming they are needed now more than ever. “Fact-checking holds the line on reality for history’s sake. It builds evidence-based records that can withstand political pressures.”

Fact check? False. Poynter’s PolitiFact routinely demonstrates that its so-called “line on reality” is a party line. It doesn’t “withstand political pressures.” It’s a political pressure group seeking to damage Republicans.

The latest glowing exhibit is Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). In his “historic” 25-hour speech on the Senate floor in protest of President Trump, PolitiFact plucked out one innocuous claim and ruled it “True.” Booker said, “The consumer confidence in this country has gone way down.” It’s true. The Conference Board measurement has dropped since Trump won.

But what about the other 25 hours of statements? Were they entirely factual? Don’t count on PolitiFact for a ruling, because they are in the tank for Cory Booker. He’s received five “True” ratings in a row dating back to 2019.

 In 2020, they gave him a “True” for stating the Senate is “dominated by millionaires” and that he is “not one of them.” In 2019, he was ruled “True” for claiming “In 2017, we had more marijuana possession arrests in our country than all other violent crimes combined.”

Isn’t it obvious that Booker bumbled – that marijuana possession is not a violent crime?

Overall, PolitiFact has granted Booker 22 ratings as “True” or “Mostly True” (11 of each), and just eight that were “Mostly False” or “False.” There are zero “Pants on Fire” ratings. So he’s in the “green zone” 64.7 percent of the time, and he’s Code Red just 23.5 percent of the time.

Compare this to the page of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). He’s received 160 “fact checks” over the years, and only 31 of them are “True” or “Mostly True” (19.4 percent). He’s been flagged on the “False” side 107 times (66.9 percent). That includes eleven “Pants On Fire” ratings. Notice these percentages are dramatically opposed to Booker’s, which demonstrates the political tilt of PolitiFact. 

It’s true for the Democrats as a whole. Three Democrat senators have one solitary “Pants On Fire” demerit in the PolitiFact archives: Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Whip Dick Durbin, and Kirsten Gillibrand. No Senate Democrat has more than one. Every other Democrat senator has zero. That’s right: Bernie Sanders has none. Elizabeth Warren has none. (Former senator Kamala Harris has none.)

In fact, 18 Democrat senators (if you include Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats) have absolutely no ratings anywhere on the False side of the meter. Seven have zero ratings whatsoever: Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Peter Welch of Vermont, as well as Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, and then rookies Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, and Andy Kim of New Jersey.

Add up all the Trues and Falses (excluding “Half True” ratings), and the Senate Democrat caucus has a “Truth-O-Meter” ratio of 330 to 165 (66.8 percent in the True lane). As a category, they’re the opposite of Ted Cruz.

So when Holan claimed only “politicians who want to create their own realities are fighting hard against fact-checking,” she was making the classic Stephen Colbert argument: Reality has a liberal bias.  This is why most Americans don’t trust biased “fact checkers.”

Another heinous crime perpetrated by an illegal alien has entered the public discourse: a soccer coach is alleged to have sexually assaulted and murdered a California teenaged boy. And the media are once again having a hard time reporting on the immigration status of the accused murderer.

NBC did not have such challenges, identifying the detainee as an illegal alien in short order. Here is that report in its entirety (click “expand” to view transcript:

LESTER HOLT: There are new questions tonight into the death of a 13-year-old California teen, his youth soccer coach being charged with murder. L.A. District Attorney saying the death penalty is not off the table. Our Morgan Chesky has more.

MORGAN CHESKY: Inside a Los Angeles courtroom, soccer coach Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino will soon hear formal murder charges after being accused of killing one of his own players. Officials say the undocumented 43-year old is accused of killing 13-year-old Oscar Omar Hernandez.

NATHAN HOCHMAN: The Hernandez family, you have our deepest sympathy.

CHESKY: The D.A. stressing the death penalty remains an option as investigators piece together a disturbing timeline. Prosecutors allege Garcia Aquino killed Hernandez on March 28th after his family says the coach hired him to do housework. But Oscar never returned. By March 30th, family reported him missing. Authorities discovered the boy’s body two days later, dumped in a neighboring county. Oscar’s brother breaking down, sharing he didn’t deserve this. Now the family is pressing authorities on why Garcia Aquino was still coaching after two other teams previously accused him of sexual assault.

ESTUARDO REYES: You gotta be careful now. Whoever you go out with, even though you trust them, you never know.

CHESKY: Reporter: Now as a memorial for the murdered teen grows, authorities urging other potential sexual assault victims to speak out.

ROBERT LUNA: You may be here undocumented. We’re not going to ask about that. Please. You need to come forward.

CHESKY: And in addition to those murder charges for Garcia Aquino, late today the DA announcing they’re also adding charges for sexual assault against a minor, saying his new arraignment is set for April 30th. Lester.

HOLT: Morgan Chesky, thanks.

Very straightforward. There is a mention of the coach’s immigration status very early in the report, a narrative of the events as they are claimed to have happened.

But illegal aliens are sacred in some circles. CBS omitted the story entirely, both on Evening News and Evening News Plus. On the Spanish-language side, Univision mentioned the immigration status of the coach while Telemundo did not. ABC World News Tonight ran a story, but excluded immigration status.

We are witnessing a replay of the uneven and often omissive coverage of horrendous murders such as those of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray. Report the crimes if you must, evenly if you must, but don’t neglect to disclose that the alleged perpetrator is an illegal alien. Each omission makes the media look worse.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Tuesday, April 8th, 2025:

ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT

4/8/25

6:45 PM

DAVID MUIR: We turn now to a youth soccer coach in California tonight charged with murdering a 13-year-old. The family reporting their son missing, his body has now been found. Here’s Matt Gutman.

MATT GUTMAN: Tonight, a youth soccer coach, 43-year-old Mario Garcia Aquino, charged in the murder of a 13-year-old boy.

NATHAN HOCHMAN: Mr. Garcia Aquino murdered 13-year-old Oscar Omar Hernandez on March 28th, 2025.

GUTMAN: Authorities say Oscar Omar Hernandez boarded a train in Los Angeles to visit his coach about 70 miles north of L.A., but when he didn’t return home, his family began looking for him, and reported him missing. On April 2nd, investigators finding Hernandez’s body on the side of the road in a remote area, nearly two hours from where he had gone to visit that coach. Hernandez’s mother asking for justice to be served. Garcia Aquino charged with one count of murder during the commission of lewd acts with a child. The district attorney calling Garcia Aquino a predator, and also charging him with sexually assaulting a different teenager at his home in 2022, and accusing him of assaulting another 16-year-old boy in February. And, they say, they think there could be more.

ROBERT LUNA: There’s always a fear that there’s more victims.

GUTMAN: The D.A. says if the coach is convicted, he could face life in prison without the possibility of parole, or even the death penalty, David.

MUIR: Matt Gutman from Los Angeles. Thank you, Matt.

 

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is having a rough day. The same media schlub who waved around the “I told you so” foam finger when stocks whipsawed on April 7 over President Donald Trump’s tariffs is doing the backstroke now after the markets surged just a day later.

“I spent three months after the election warning Republicans they needed to be careful. Three months. I’ve got — we’ve got about ten minutes of clips we could play you,” boasted a snooty Scarborough during the April 7 edition of Morning Joe. Stocks were bouncing over and under the flat line Monday, with the Dow and S&P 500 eventually just being off one percent and the Nasdaq ending in the green by the close, according to Axios.

But Scarborough wagged his finger at the GOP: “We’ve already done it before. Like, play it again. Ten minutes of clips saying, be very careful. We have the strongest economy in the world, but we have bubbles in the stock market. We have bubbles in crypto. We have a fiscal bubble. Be very careful. Manage it wisely. And we will continue to see working Americans taken care of. That’s not happening right now.”

“Regardless of how you feel about tariffs, this is a self-induced war that we started. All right? All right. This is voluntary,” railed Scarborough. It wasn’t just one day after Scarborough’s bombastic lecture that the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,400 points, the S&P 500 ticked up 3.4 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq spiked 4.2 percent on hopes of renewed trade negotiations in the morning before later “losing steam” by the close. Still, watching Scarborough being forced to have to walk back his “W” April 8 during his morning show and bumble over himself to spin the new stock numbers while holding up the front page of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal is must-see-TV: “I will say, Mika, fortunately, the overnight — Asia rebounded pretty strongly. Europe’s looking pretty good. Futures also looking strong right now for the United States.”

Remember when Scarborough called Trump a “jackass?” Who’s the “jackass” now, eh Joe?

Of course, Americans shouldn’t expect anything less from the MSNBC talking head brigade. Both Scarborough and his co-host Mika Brzezinski were recently popping their brain corks over DOGE chief Elon Musk’s March 10 interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, and brazenly lied that Musk was promising to “eliminate” Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that Musk was specifically addressing cutting waste, not the programs themselves.

Early Tuesday night, Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden largely ruled in favor of the supposedly poor souls at the Associated Press (AP) in its ongoing legal fight against the Trump White House for barring them from their entitled, seemingly gilded spot in the White House press pool.

“Defendants shall immediately rescind the denial of the AP’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other limited spaces based on the AP’s viewpoint when such spaces are made open to other members of the White House press pool,” McFadden declared, adding the administration must also “immediately rescind their viewpoint-based denial of the AP’s access to events open to all credentialed White House journalists.”

In the 41-page ruling granting a preliminary injunction, McFadden said the multi-million dollar company has been financially “poisoned…by the Government’s discrimination” and had “its First Amendment rights” “violat[ted],” but made clear the White House doesn’t have “to grant the AP permanent access to the Oval Office, the East Room, or any other media event” or entitle the AP to “‘first in line every time’ permanent press pool access.”

Rather, he said, the White House must “put the AP on an equal playing field as similarly situated outlets” and “cannot…shut [the] doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints” and “[t]he Constitution requires no less.”

AP filed the lawsuit on February 21 after the administration made clear the liberal wire service was being booted from the press pool over its refusal to use the Gulf of America in its Styleguide, an all-but be-all, end-all rules for journalists at every major news outlet.

In intro of sorts, McFadden wrote (click “expand”):

Today, the Court grants that relief. But this injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the Government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events. It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces. It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer. And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views

No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.

Following a court ruling’s standard format, he started with a history/logistical lesson which, in this case, detailed the differences between the press pool vs. press corps, a hard pass vs. a day pass, and — most critically — pool’s construction under the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) versus its makeup following the AP ban and the White House’s February 25 announcement they would be taking over the pool’s schedule of rotations.

McFadden also explained “[n]ews wire services, like the AP, are syndicated outlets that distribute their text reporting and photography by ‘wire’ to subscribers across the country and the globe” and thus “‘guaranteed’ two of the 13 core sports in the pool” as originally determined by the WHCA.

Later, he noted “the AP indeed has been excluded from large events far more often than its peers” such as in the East Room and “its text reporters have been systematically and almost completely excluded from events open to the broader White House press corps since February 13, while its photographers have suffered curtailed access.”

He also ripped the White House for having singled out the AP and painted the liberal behemoth as left suffering in the cold (click “expand”):

The analysis is straightforward. The AP made an editorial decision to continue using “Gulf of Mexico” in its Stylebook. The Government responded publicly with displeasure and explicitly announced it was curtailing the AP’s access to the Oval Office, press pool events, and East Room activities. If there is a benign explanation for the Government’s decision, it has not been presented here. At the evidentiary hearing, the Government conceded that the record reveals viewpoint-discriminatory motives, so all indicators point to retaliation…All that remains is whether the Government’s conduct has chilled or adversely affected the AP.

The ramifications for the AP have undoubtedly been adverse. Start with photography. The AP’s total loss of access to the Oval Office and stifled East Room access has sent damaging ripples across its reporting capabilities. Put more bluntly, the AP is getting “absolutely slaughtered”…Though some other photographers have let the AP use a selection of their own photos out of solidarity, they are not providing it with the most desirable pictures…These images are qualitatively and quantitatively inferior to what the AP would produce itself…More, the AP does not get access to its competitors’ photos in real time, so whatever images it eventually uses are delayed…And this time lapse has a significant adverse impact on AP’s competitive profile…All told, as for photographing these events, the AP is “basically dead in the water”…Thus, there are not any “other sources” the AP can resort to as an adequate substitute….

This erosion of quality and capability is not limited to AP photojournalists—its wire reporting service for White House news is a shadow of its former self too. Text and print wire services “vigorously compete with each other to provide the fastest and most accurate news reporting” during and after the press pool events…Often this reporting is “instantaneous” and reporters can live-post breaking news alerts directly or notify their editors of important developments from the inside of a meeting or briefing.

To state the obvious, if the AP’s wire reporters are not in the room when news happens, they can hardly be the first to break the news. Instead, they are forced to wait and pick up whatever scraps of verifiable information they can find as they watch their competitors break the story first…True, the wire reporters sometimes get access to a video feed of an event…But reporting through secondhand sources simply does not allow for the “same level of completeness” in their reporting as if they had “been there in person”…They cannot look around the room and use all five senses to craft a unique message for publication. And, as Miller pointed out, reporters “don’t know what [they’re] not there to see”…Finally, and obviously, they cannot ask questions from outside a closed door. Those questions, if the President chose to answer, could lead to incisive and cutting-edge reporting that the AP cannot reproduce by watching from afar.

These disadvantages have poisoned the AP’s business model. As its ability to rapidly supply new photographs and breaking news has dwindled, the AP’s customers have expressed concerns and turned to other sources for their needs…These concerns also led an advertiser to cancel a $150,000 deal…The facts reflect the precarious realities of life in the fast-paced world of journalism: A delay in capturing photos and details of breaking news can be catastrophic.

McFadden spent a lion’s share focused on the Oval Office (and then other spaces) as “a nonpublic forum,” given its “a highly controlled location…shrouded behind a labyrinth of security protocols, and few members of the public will ever approach the Resolute Desk.” “Thus, the AP has no standalone right of access to the Oval Office.”

However, in opening up public access, “restrictions must be reasonable and not viewpoint based,” which the judge found the administration as having done because of its Gulf of America holdout.

He gave plenty of love to the AP — including longtime correspondent Zeke Miller — for the evidence it turned up to claim its inability to be ‘in the room’ had left them “irreparably harmed” its credibility and finances (click “expand”):

In sum, the Court credits the AP’s testimony and evidence that its text journalists have been systematically banned from large, limited-access events open to the entire White House press corps since, at the latest, February 13….The Court also credits the AP’s testimony and evidence that its photographers have experienced more limited access to such events compared to other hard pass holders.

(….)

AP journalists are engaged in full-fledged expression when they report from the Oval Office. AP photographer [Evan] Vucci described near-instantaneous transmission of photos to his editors when covering events in the Oval Office. The lag time between a picture’s creation and its publication online to the entire world is sometimes as short as “30 seconds to 45 seconds”…Real-time publication is so vital to his role that he is “hard-wired directly into” three mobile internet devices, each on a different network, to ensure he can always transmit from the White House…He also brings his cellphone into the Oval Office because “an editor or a reporter” may text him asking for specific photographic content—content he can provide on the spot by taking a photo and sending it in under a minute.

(….)

Vucci is not the only journalist who communicates live from the Oval Office. Print journalists sometimes text their editors “[i]f there’s huge news” so the editors can “send out [news] alerts in real time” to the public….Miller can draft news alerts on his phone “while the event is still going on”….He is also in constant contact with his colleagues “[a]t pretty much every event” he covers…He keeps a “running conversation” going where they all exchange “notes and feeds” as events unfold in front of them…When Miller is covering an Oval Office event, other reporters from around the world “can point out something interesting” to him and “respond in real time to an announcement”—all of which “help[s] inform” his reporting…Simply put, AP journalists are “speaking” from inside the Oval Office.

(….)

The AP provided abundant evidence that its First Amendment right to gather and quickly disseminate news about the President has been severely hampered by—and continues to be hampered by—the ban on press pool admission and the highly circumscribed access to limited-access events…And the AP has shown that it remains subject to viewpoint discriminatory exclusions from places that the Government has opened as nonpublic fora…Because the AP has shown that the ban “directly limits” its protected activity, it has established irreparable harm…

The AP’s irreparable harm is not limited to constitutional injuries. This situation has cut deeply into the AP’s business, both financially and in terms of lost opportunities…While solely financial harm is typically not irreparable, the dynamic can change in suits against the Government.

(….)

The AP has been economically hemorrhaging for the last two months, and its condition will only worsen as its customers flee to other news services absent injunctive relief.

(….)

The balance of equities and public interest also favor the AP. While “the White House surely has a legitimate interest in maintaining a degree of control over media access to the White House complex,” policy goals may never triumph over the Constitution…Put more simply: “enforcement of an unconstitutional law is always contrary to the public interest.” 

How about sources of solace for the administration? McFadden suggested that, while their claim of a 2006 case between then-Republican Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich and The Baltimore Sun wasn’t legal ground to bar the AP from the pool, it allows them ignore the AP.

Simply put, there’s nothing unconstitutional about refusing to acknowledge Miller or his colleagues when they ask questions.