Newsbusters

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.

NBC’s report on the Pennsylvania limestone mine currently occupied by the Office of Personnel Management’s retirement division is insightful, clarifying, fun, and…should’ve aired a month and a half ago. Consider that reporting on things that would’ve been insightful a long time ago is its own form of omission.

Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Monday, April 8th, 2025 (click “expand” to view full transcript):

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

4/7/25

6:44 PM

LESTER HOLT: Back now with a major DOGE project: upgrading the federal retirement system. For decades, retirement requests have been requested entirely on paper in an old limestone mine. Our Garrett Haake has been granted rare and exclusive access inside.

GARRETT HAAKE: Very deep inside this mine in western Pennsylvania is a little known government office that handles a critical mission for the federal workforce. Now set to be overhauled by the Department of Government Efficiency. 

From the mine entrance which they call The Portal, we took some golf carts a few hundred feet down into the mine. You can feel the air change when you get inside, and you can see this is all just roughly cut out of the limestone. This was once a limestone mine. And down here, this is where we find the OPM office where a few hundred federal employees process all retirement paperwork for the entire federal government. 

It’s an analog operation, all done on paper. It can take months for the Office of Personnel Management to process a case, potentially delaying retiree benefits. The facility has literally miles of files. Some 26,000 filing cabinets filled with retirement paperwork. Some of them stacked ten high. Matt MacIsaac runs the day-to-day operations inside. 

When you look out over all of this, what do you see?

MATT MacISAAC: I see people. I see careers. I see service.

ELON MUSK: …you know, like, what do you mean, a mine?

HAAKE: When Elon Musk brought the mine in an Oval Office appearance back in February as a target ripe for reform, MacIsaac agreed.

MacISAAC: He’s right. We have to improve the way that we do things for federal employees and for the American public.

HAAKE: Musk asked billionaire AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia to take on the project of modernizing not just the mine’s operation, but the entire retirement system. 

When you look at a project like this, where do you even start?

JOE GEBBIA: Well, how about here on File Cabinet 56?

HAAKE: Gebbia says DOGE engineers are working to create a fully digital experience with federal retirees being hopeful, happy customers.

GEBBIA: Why can’t we have an Apple Store-like experience in the government- where you have great user experience, beautiful design, and up-to-date software? 

HAAKE: Aiming to upgrade a process long seemingly set in stone. Garrett Haake, NBC News, Boyers, Pennsylvania.

I’m old enough to remember when DOGE was covered like it was the plague, with nightly victim porn stories designed to fearmonger the public into believing that Elon Musk was a villain on the scale of George Soros. There were endless stories about DOGE cuts alternately getting you eaten by bears, putting you at potential risk of soiling yourself at a national park, and even ruining SPRING, among other such dopey reporting. 

And when DOGE sucked up all the headlines, the networks spent their time running victim porn stories about people being fired at the different agencies (and interviewing Samantha Power’s contractor speechwriter). Elon Musk spoke about the limestone mine in late February- but there was little interest in delving deeper. It didn’t bleed, therefore it didn’t lead.

Fast-forward to the present day and several stories have bumped DOGE off the A-block: first Signalgate, now Tariffgeddon. One now HAS to question the timing of the airing of such a light and refreshing story (which absolutely delighted The White House, as it should) after all the damage has been done. This story would have been useful BEFORE deranged leftists were burning Tesla service centers and smearing poo on parked Model 3s.

Now? The limestone feature, although a great report on its own, has an odor similar to that of all the campaign postmortems disclosing the extent of President Joe Biden’s catastrophic cognitive decline.

 

“America’s Police State Has Arrived,” screamed a column in Sunday’s New York Times by Masha Gessen, who was a prominent gay rights activist in Vladimir Putin’s Russia before escaping to the United States and writing books on Putin’s Russia.

She’s using the byline “M. Gessen” now, and here’s how “they” are identified by the Times: “They won a George Polk award for opinion writing in 2024.”

Unfortunately, after less than three months into the second Trump Administration, Gessen is seeing Putinism inside every black car in America, judging by the hyperbolic tone of this piece. The online title: “Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.”

No one will ask Times “fact checker” Linda Qiu to get involved. Within three paragraphs we’re in Stasi territory.

Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity. “I never realized until this moment how much fear I carried with me from my childhood in Communist Romania,” another friend, the literary scholar Marianne Hirsch, told me. “Arrests were arbitrary and every time the doorbell rang, I started to shiver.”

….

It’s the chilling stories that come by word of mouth. ICE is checking documents on the subway. ICE is outside New York public libraries that hold English-as-a-second-language classes. ICE agents handcuffed a U.S. citizen who tried to intervene in a detention in Harlem. ICE vehicles are parked outside Columbia. ICE is coming to your workplace, your street, your building. ICE agents are wearing brown uniforms that resemble those of UPS — don’t open the door for deliveries. Don’t leave the house. The streets in the New York neighborhoods with the highest immigrant populations have emptied out.

Of course “word of mouth” isn’t journalism, which Gessen later implicitly admitted.

And then there was a German green card holder at Boston’s Logan Airport who was allegedly stripped and deprived of sleep and his medications by Customs and Border Protection — actions that could fit the legal definition of torture. (The agency has denied the allegations.) And a Canadian with a job offer who was detained at the southern border and held for 12 days. And another German, a tourist, who was detained at the southern border and held for more than six weeks….

Gessen was obliged to mention the extenuating circumstances to the above horror stories but still suggested it was just window-dressing to cover Soviet-style repression.

It’s the way we dig down for the details of these stories to reassure ourselves that this won’t happen to us, or that there is some logic to these arrests. The German man had a misdemeanor charge a decade ago. The Canadian was possibly using a crossing not meant for people submitting work visa applications. The other German, a tattoo artist, was carrying her equipment and customs agents might have suspected that she was planning to work illegally….

When the range of factors that can get a person arrested stretches from political speech to a paperwork error, we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and we’ll find the infraction.”

After a decade of liberals indulging in promoting career-damaging lists of dangerous sexists or conservatives, after years of curtain-twitching liberals turning in unmasked people or unapproved gatherings during the COVID hysteria, of the ongoing efforts of lefties joining with their former enemies at the FBI to track down January 6 “insurrectionists,” suddenly, lists are dangerous.

It’s the lists. More than anything else, in fact, it’s the lists. A private company has launched an app called ICERAID, billed as a “protocol that delegates intelligence-gathering tasks to citizens that would otherwise be undertaken by law enforcement agencies.” The app promises rewards for “capturing and uploading images of criminal illegal alien activity” and possibly even bigger rewards for self-reporting — for adding oneself to the ICERAID registry if one is “an honest, hard-working undocumented immigrant with no criminal history.” The app, in other words, combines two time-tested secret-police techniques: incentivizing some people to denounce their neighbors and inducing others to add themselves to registries.

Gessen concluded her self-discrediting rant:

….we have to say what we see: The United States has become a secret-police state. Trust me, I’ve seen it before.

ABC News should change the name of The View to “The Flag” since the liberal ladies change the direction of their outrage depending on which way the wind was blowing. Despite telling poor Americans to sit down and shut up about high prices during the election, they were suddenly up in arms Tuesday over President Trump’s post about those he dubbed “panicans,” the “new party based on weak and stupid people.”

Still juvenilely refusing to say Trump’s name, moderator Whoopi Goldberg kicked off the show by huffing:  

Yesterday, you-know-who responded on social media to everyone who’s growing more concerned about this whose, you know, lives are potentially being played with by somebody who doesn’t know them. And this is what he wrote, quote, “Don’t be a panican,” defining as “a new party based on weak and stupid people.”

“A panican?” Hostin asked in confusion, giving Goldberg the opening to feign her outrage:

GOLDBERG: Apparently that’s what panicans are. So, that means all our parents who are still living, who are living on Social Security –

HOSTIN: And 401Ks.

GOLDBERG: – and all of our children who may be going through all kind of health issues, all of our families who are trying to feed each other trying to get everything done, we’re all stupid. We’re all stupid.

HOSTIN: And weak also.

GOLDBERG: And weak, yeah. All right.

Further in the segment, co-host Sunny Hostin tagged in to fear monger that Trump would cause “Some people will become unhoused. Some people will not be able to feed their children.” Goldberg chimed in to add that “Some are going to die” because of Trump.

Hostin then started shouting that “We should call this the Trump slump. This is the Trump slump…Trump slump! This is all on him! All on him!”

 

 

In January of 2024, Goldberg, a multi-millionaire with her own brand of prosecco, told Americans struggling with high prices not to care about it because Trump was supposedly going to put them in a concentration camp.

“You’re worried that you can’t pay your bill? Wait until the other guy becomes president, and you won’t have to worry about it because you’ll be in some camp somewhere because that’s his promise. His promise to us is he’s going to force people to do his bidding,” she proclaimed, without evidence.

Hostin also attacked Americans by suggesting that their attitudes toward high prices were driven by racism:

‘I can’t pay my electric bill. My gas bill’s high. I need my food. Why is that? Why is my station in life like this? It’s because that black guy got into Harvard and became president,’ or ‘it’s because that immigrant is over there doing better — driving a nicer car than I’m driving.’

In April of that same year, Goldberg lashed out at those same Americans for being angry at President Biden. Suggesting that he had no control over prices, and being profoundly ignorant of their profit margins, she told them to be angry at the grocery stores: “I think our kvetch is not with him for grocery prices. I’m mad at the grocery stores, because if all of the things have been open why are you still raising prices?”

Hostin also backed up Goldberg’s scapegoating of grocery stores. “Maybe we just need corporations like these grocery stores to be good corporate citizens and stop gouging! Stop trying to make money off of our backs!” she shouted.

While Hostin was insistent on Tuesday to call it the “Trump slump” and it’s “all on him,” in 2022, she refused to acknowledge Biden’s recession.

The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:

ABC’s The View
April 8, 2025
11:02:22 a.m. Eastern

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: So, this morning the economic roller coaster continues over tariffs imposed last week. Yesterday, you-know-who responded on social media to everyone who’s growing more concerned about this whose, you know, lives are potentially being played with by somebody who doesn’t know them. And this is what he wrote, quote, “Don’t be a panican,” defining as “a new party based on weak and stupid people.”

SUNNY HOSTIN: A panican?

GOLDBERG: Apparently that’s what panicans are. So, that means all our parents who are still living, who are living on Social Security –

HOSTIN: And 401Ks.

GOLDBERG: – and all of our children who may be going through all kind of health issues, all of our families who are trying to feed each other trying to get everything done, we’re all stupid. We’re all stupid.

HOSTIN: And weak also.

GOLDBERG: And weak, yeah. All right.

(…)

11:10:12 a.m. Eastern

HOSTIN: Some people will become unhoused. Some people will not be able to feed their children. Some people will not be able to educate.

GOLDBERG: Some are going to die. Let’s not get away from that.

HOSTIN: But I will say one last thing, we need to name what it is. Because we had someone saying this is Trump’s economy. This is trump’s economy. We should call this the Trump slump. This is the Trump slump.

[Applause]

This is his deal. He needs to own this. And we should not let him off the hook. Any time he says something like, ‘well, it’s probably going to be good, I’m using it as a negotiation,’ as you pointed out. Trump slump! This is all on him! All on him!

(…)

A Monday night interview between PBS’s Amanpour and Company guest host Bianna Golodryga and Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran about the protests going on in her native country surrounding the arrest of the leader of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main opposition took a sharp detour as Temelkuran compared Erdogan to President Donald Trump. She went so far as to claim both anti-Erdogan and anti-Trump protestors are pushing back against the same global “rise of fascism.”

Golodryga asked, “And in the last 20 years, I mean, now you have a system where 90 percent of the media is government controlled. I know you and many others have compared this to the Gezi Park Protest movement in 2013. Can you talk about the similarities here and what, if any, lessons have been learned that organizers of this movement can take with them?”

 

 

Whatever one thinks of Trump’s legal issues, it is a fact of life that the previous administration arrested him for two different cases. Trump, so far, has not arrested anyone from the Biden Administration. Nevertheless, Temelkuran declared, “Bianna, the main difference is that this time people went onto the streets knowing the risks. There was a protest ban already. So, they went onto the streets against the ban. They knew that they were going to meet with massive police violence, which happened. And the other difference is, of course, this is another world now in 2013, there was more democracy in the world and there wasn’t Trump in America or several other leaders, similar leaders in Europe. So, the world was watching Turkey in a favorable way during the 2013 Gezi uprisings.”

Temelkuran also mourned that, “This time, Turkey is different. There’s a lot of oppression, much more oppression than 2013. And the world is different. It is more silent when it comes to masses demanding democracy. That is a very, very dark and unfortunate silence of course.”

Later in their interview, Golodryga asked Temelkuran what she thought of the protests against Trump in this country. Seeing an opportunity to promote her book, Temelkuran declared, “So, I think when, you know, Trump policies are touching them every day, they are coming to their senses and they are realizing that as citizens, they’re political subjects. I am longing for these protests because — this is why I wrote How to Lose a Country. It wasn’t only to, you know, tell what’s going to come to United States, but it was also to show the common patterns, so that by knowing these common patterns, we can build a global solidarity. And I see demonstrations in United States as part of a global wave that is in Serbia, in Turkey, in several other places as well, against the rise of fascism.”

She added, “So, I am not optimistic. I don’t believe in this optimism, pessimism thing, but I do think that this kind of demonstrations are refreshing our faith in ourselves, in other humans in terms of protecting our dignity when it’s under attack.”

Golodryga had previously noted that the Turkish government controls 90 percent of the media. That is another not-so-subtle difference between Trump and Erdogan. Erdogan controls the media; Trump wants to taxpayer money to stop subsidizing PBS’s re-airing of CNN International’s Amanpour.

Sign the petition to help us defund another MSNBC in PBS and NPR at defundpbsnpr.org.

Here is a transcript for the April 7-taped show:

PBS Amanpour and Company

4/7/2025

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And in the last 20 years, I mean, now you have a system where 90 percent of the media is government controlled. I know you and many others have compared this to the Gezi Park Protest movement in 2013. Can you talk about the similarities here and what, if any, lessons have been learned that organizers of this movement can take with them?

ECE TEMELKURAN: Bianna, the main difference is that this time people went onto the streets knowing the risks. There was a protest ban already. So, they went onto the streets against the ban. They knew that they were going to meet with massive police violence, which happened. And the other difference is, of course, this is another world now in 2013, there was more democracy in the world and there wasn’t Trump in America or several other leaders, similar leaders in Europe. So, the world was watching Turkey in a favorable way during the 2013 Gezi uprisings.

This time, Turkey is different. There’s a lot of oppression, much more oppression than 2013. And the world is different. It is more silent when it comes to masses demanding democracy. That is a very, very dark and unfortunate silence of course.

…

TEMELKURAN: Yeah. Well, it’s a good thing, because America is not as political as Turkey, has never been. Citizens are afraid of politics and also, they — it’s somehow honorable to say — think to say that I am apolitical. I don’t — I hate politics and so on. I think United States, American citizens are finally realizing that being apolitical is not an option or saying that I hate politics is only bad politics. It is politics though.

So, I think when, you know, Trump policies are touching them every day, they are coming to their senses and they are realizing that as citizens, they’re political subjects. I am longing for these protests because — this is why I wrote How to Lose a Country. It wasn’t only to, you know, tell what’s going to come to United States, but it was also to show the common patterns, so that by knowing these common patterns, we can build a global solidarity. And I see demonstrations in United States as part of a global wave that is in Serbia, in Turkey, in several other places as well, against the rise of fascism.

So, I am not optimistic. I don’t believe in this optimism, pessimism thing, but I do think that this kind of demonstrations are refreshing our faith in ourselves, in other humans in terms of protecting our dignity when it’s under attack.

On Friday and Tuesday, CBS Mornings Plus covered a newly revealed policy change during the Biden administration and kept in place under Team Trump that federal government workers stationed in China are barred from engaging in romantic relationships with Chinese citizens out of fear of spies engaging in honeypotting, or seducing Americans to elicit information pertinent to our national security.

Incredibly, Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and his long-rumored tryst with Chinese spy Fang Fang never came up in CBS’s nearly eight minutes (7:45) of coverage.

Friday’s mention came up during the “Caught Our Eye” segment with co-host Tony Dokoupil calling it “a sign of the — the risk of Chinese spying and the security concerns that the U.S. has about it happening,” noting the Associated Press “reports that the U.S. has banned all U.S. government employees working in China from any sexual or romantic relationships with any Chinese citizen.”

 

 

Citing its unprecedented in the post-Cold War era, Dokoupil zeroed in on the seemingly obvious from the AP: “Intelligence services across the world have long used attractive men and women to obtain sensitive information.”

After noting this was done because “U.S. diplomats and intelligence experts say that Beijing continues to aggressively use so-called Honey Pots to access American secrets” and thus “not something only in the movies.”

Co-host Adriana Diaz replied she “totally get[s] it” as “low-hanging-fruit intelligence” of sending someone out to “start a conversation in a bar” and then having “one thing lead[ing] to another and the intelligence can be at risk.”

Dokoupil ended with the obvious question about what are people to do who are already seeing a Chinese national and working in the communist country: “[I]f you’re already a government worker in China and you’re in a relationship currently, you now have to apply for an exemption and if it’s denied, you have to break that relationship or leave the job. That’s how serious this is.”

Tuesday’s segment opened with a scene from the James Bond film Dr. No as a segue for Dokoupil to say “honey pot espionage is real,” defining it as “when undercover operatives — attractive ones typically — seduce someone to gain intel” and while “[i]t sounds like something out of a spy movie and often is, but it is also, I promise, and I just learned this myself, a very real strategy, a common one even.”

Joking he’s “learned so many things recently,” he rehashed the basic facts from Friday’s segment before saying he’s “want[ed] to know more,” so brought in CBS News contributor and former Obama and Biden administrations official Samnatha Vinograd to explain this was not, in fact, something that’s only transpired in movies.

Not surprisingly, she said it’s effective in part due to human emotions and the real psychological struggle of Americans often being stationed in foreign countries without their family and friends (click “expand”):

DOKOUPIL: I am naive apparently. I just thought that this was the imaginings of Hollywood, but apparently it’s the imaginings of espionage agencies all over the world. How big of an issue is it?

VINOGRAD: Well Tony, in the global game of espionage, seduction is one of the oldest tricks in the book and that’s why the U.S. government has, for decades, required its personnel, including me in government, to disclose any ongoing romantic relationship or sexual relationship with a foreign national. The U.S. government’s goal has been to ensure that its personnel aren’t being targeted by honey pots to get access to information and influence over policy. This shift to prohibiting U.S. Government personnel in China from engaging in any dating game with the foreign national while on the ground really speaks to the sophistication of the Chinese intelligence services and probably the effectiveness of honey pots in China in gaining access — [DIAZ AND DOKOUPIL LAUGH] — to U.S. government information.

DIAZ: Well, Sam, that was going to be my next question. How effective is this? Because when we talked about this on the show a few days ago, I kind of thought, like, yeah, this is low-hanging fruit in intelligence gathering. It’s easier to send out a honey pot than perhaps gather intelligence via other means.

DOKOUPIL: Yeah.

DIAZ: How effective is this?

VINOGRAD: It is an incredibly effective strategy. Foreign intelligence services want to get access to information and they prey upon individuals’ vulnerabilities. Loneliness, romantic feelings, sexual desires, those are a vulnerability and we’ve seen honey pots be incredibly effective over the course of history. And again, that’s why the U.S. government has required its personnel to report any of these relationships in the past and particularly when individuals are stationed overseas, oftentimes away from familym and friends, and things that they’re familiar with. They can be incredibly lonely and perhaps even more susceptible to exploitation and just not having their guards up when it comes to being targeted by foreign intelligence service.

She went onto explain the spies use all sorts of entry points given “[t]here’s a lot of ways to meet someone to date these days, whether it’s online, whether it’s at a sporting event, whether it’s at a bar and honey pots can be incredibly sophisticated” by “identify[ing] their targets…what their target likes to do, what their likes, what their dislikes are, and then, over time, because they’re so skilled, they very subtly start to solicit information and to report that back to headquarters.”

Dokoupil closed things with the reality this is more stereotypically an issue with men being seduced by female spies….which would have been a great time to bring up Swalwell, but alas, no dice (click “expand”):

DOKOUPIL: So, we’ve been careful with the language here. It’s gender neutral — we’re saying they. But, you know, I have a low enough opinion of men — [DIAZ LAUGH] — that my guess is — my guess — 

DIAZ: I think you’re right. I think you’re right.

DOKOUPIL: — is that men are most frequently targeted and most frequently, it’s a woman who’s the honey pot.

VINOGRAD: Typically, it has been females acting as honey mot — honey pots and I will not offer comment on — [DIAZ AND DOKOUPIL LAUGH] — who’s more susceptible to having their romantic feelings exploited by foreign intelligence services. But the truth is, Tony, when I was stationed here in D.C., when I was stationed overseas in Iraq and the Middle East, I had to abide by the same requirements to disclose anybody that was a foreign national that I was dating or starting a relationship with, so that a security officer could run a background check and make sure that they weren’t a foreign spy. This shift, again, to prohibiting any kind of relationship overseas in China just really speaks to the sophistication of Chinese intelligence and the threat that Chinese intelligence just poses to U.S. national security.

To see the relevant CBS Mornings Plus transcripts, click here (for April 4) and here (for April 8).

For his Sunday show, HBO’s John Oliver decided to take a deep dive into the world of transgender sports. The Last Week Tonight host tried to concede that the issue is maybe more complicated than bathroom preference, but what he ultimately ended up doing was missing the point as he argued that even in famous examples of transgender athletes winning competitions, the stories are more complicated.

In one example, Oliver recalled, “You may have seen this photo of two trans high-school runners in Connecticut coming first and second at a state track meet. They were the subject of a lawsuit claiming, among other things, their participation wasn’t just unfair, it threatened to deprive their competitors of scholarships. But you should know, one of the plaintiffs actually beat one of those girls twice, just two days after the suit was filed. Also, most of the plaintiffs ended up getting scholarships, while these two did not.”

 

 

Another example Oliver cited earlier was a San Jose State University volleyball player. He directed viewers towards an ESPN article claiming the player in question had an average spike velocity of 50 miles per hour—about average for women’s volleyball—not 80 as originally claimed. But if ESPN is good enough for that, it is also good enough to add context to the Connecticut example:

The lawsuit centers on [Terry] Miller and another transgender sprinter, Andraya Yearwood, of Cromwell High School, who have frequently outperformed their cisgender competitors. The two seniors have combined to win 15 girls state indoor or outdoor championships since 2017, according to the lawsuit [emphasis added].

As it was, Oliver continued to another famous example:

But the most famous example is probably Lia Thomas. As you probably know, she’s a swimmer who initially competed on the University of Pennsylvania men’s team—including one year while undergoing hormone therapy as a part of her medical transition, as per the NCAA’s rules at the time. She made national headlines after she won the NCAA championship in the women’s 500 freestyle. She got a good time in that race—her best of the season—although it was also a full nine seconds behind the record set by Katie Ledecky. It’s also the only race she won at that meet. She came in 8th in the 100 freestyle. And, in what’s weirdly her most consequential race, she tied for fifth in the 200 free with Riley Gaines, who catapulted to conservative stardom off the back of that race.

Thomas’s performance vis-à-vis Ledecky isn’t the standard. Ledecky is the best female swimmer ever, who has won 14 Olympic medals. Thomas was a college student competing against other college students. The question is how Thomas’s ranking changed after moving from the men’s college competition to the women’s.

Later, Oliver tried to understand what motivates people to oppose men in women’s sports, “And at this point, it’s worth asking what’s really behind all this vitriol? Because, again, I do believe that some speaking against trans participation are just talking about women’s sports—and the truth is, at the elite levels of competition, this isn’t a cut and dry issue, but in many other cases, the opposition comes from a much more toxic place. It’s not just about denying trans women the right to play, it’s about denying them the right to exist. Mike Johnson basically said as much after the House passed its ban on trans athletes, when he said this.”

In a clip, Johnson declared, “We know from scripture and from nature that men are men and women are women, and men cannot become women.”

Not appreciating the difference between characters in Biblical stories and Biblical beliefs, Oliver mocked the Speaker, “That’s right, Mike. As scripture tells us: Men are men and women are women, and God is his own Son, and some mothers are virgins, and some mothers-in-law are pillars of salt, and some daughters are sex partners, and colorful coats are dream tellers, and brothers are murderers, but also brothers are backup husbands for wives, and babies can be for splitting in half, and water is wine, and also with you—sorry.  And with your spirit.”

Sure, one mother was a virgin; that’s why it’s called a miracle. But Johnson is still correct, and the countless other stories that Oliver ignored back him up.

Here is a transcript for the April 6 show:

HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

4/6/2025

11:32 PM ET

JOHN OLIVER: You may have seen this photo of two trans high-school runners in Connecticut coming first and second at a state track meet. They were the subject of a lawsuit claiming, among other things, their participation wasn’t just unfair, it threatened to deprive their competitors of scholarships. But you should know, one of the plaintiffs actually beat one of those girls twice, just two days after the suit was filed. Also, most of the plaintiffs ended up getting scholarships, while these two did not. 

But the most famous example is probably Lia Thomas. As you probably know, she’s a swimmer who initially competed on the University of Pennsylvania men’s team — including one year while undergoing hormone therapy as a part of her medical transition, as per the NCAA’s rules at the time. She made national headlines after she won the NCAA championship in the women’s 500 freestyle. She got a good time in that race — her best of the season — although it was also a full nine seconds behind the record set by Katie Ledecky. It’s also the only race she won at that meet. She came in 8th in the 100 freestyle. And, in what’s weirdly her most consequential race, she tied for fifth in the 200 free with Riley Gaines, who catapulted to conservative stardom off the back of that race.

…

And at this point, it’s worth asking what’s really behind all this vitriol? Because, again, I do believe that some speaking against trans participation are just talking about women’s sports — and the truth is, at the elite levels of competition, this isn’t a cut and dry issue, but in many other cases, the opposition comes from a much more toxic place. It’s not just about denying trans women the right to play, it’s about denying them the right to exist. Mike Johnson basically said as much after the House passed its ban on trans athletes, when he said this.

MIKE JOHNSON: We know from scripture and from nature that men are men and women are women, and men cannot become women.

OLIVER: That’s right, Mike. As scripture tells us: Men are men and women are women, and God is his own Son, and some mothers are virgins, and some mothers-in-law are pillars of salt, and some daughters are sex partners, and colorful coats are dream tellers, and brothers are murderers, but also brothers are backup husbands for wives, and babies can be for splitting in half, and water is wine, and also with you—sorry.  And with your spirit.