Newsbusters

During the early hours Tuesday in the Middle East, Israel resumed its pummeling of Hamas targets after Hamas rejected one proposal after another to continue peace talks and release more hostages they kidnapped on October 7, 2023. Predictably, the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC blamed Israel for having “shatter[ed]” a “fragile ceasefire” and ensured “war has returned to the Gaza Strip” with hundreds dead…according to Hamas.

“Israel shatters a cease-fire with deadly airstrikes after it says Hamas refused to release hostages,” CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King declared in the “Eye Opener.”

“Overnight, Israel launched the first major airstrikes on Gaza since the ceasefire. Hundreds are dead, we’re told. That’s according to Hamas officials there. Israel’s government blamed Hamas for a breakdown in negotiations to free the hostages,” King later said in tossing to foreign correspondent Ramy Inocencio in Tel Aviv.

 

 

Inocencio lamented the “shock in Gaza after that — those surprise overnight attacks…after a couple of weeks of failed negotiations to extend that ceasefire and to get the release of more hostages.”

He then went into to full sob story mode with plenty of overnight footage from Gaza (likely from Gaza-based and thus Hamas-approved producer Marwan al-Ghoul) (click “expand”):

The fragile ceasefire, barely two months old, was shattered in the early hours of the morning as the Israeli military launched dozens of airstrikes up and down the Gaza Strip. The injured and the dead rushed by the hundreds to barely functioning hospitals. Babies, children, and the elderly treated wherever doctors could find space. In the hysteria, a horse towing a cart of wounded Palestinians crashed. After more than 17 months of war, hospitals and morgues are overflowing once again. As morning broke, Gazans sat stunned amid the dead after the terror of the night. Final moments with loved ones lost in silent grief. This father held his dead daughter in one last embrace. “We were sleeping and the airstrike woke us up,” said Mohamed. “We kept searching for her and praise to God we pulled her body from under the rubble.”

Of course, he made sure to take the animalistic terror group’s spin that they’re “blaming Israel for breaking the original ceasefire agreement” despite noting in the very next thought that Hamas has said the strikes are “‘a death sentence’ for the remaining hostages.”

NBC’s Today wasn’t really any better. Co-host Craig Melvin also teased “ceasefire shattered” and said this meant “hundreds killed as Israel carries out its deadliest attack in months and issues a new warning to Hamas: release all remaining hostages or else.”

 

 

Foreign correspondent Matt Bradley had predictable framing and taking Hamas’s word on fatalities, hook, line, and sinker:

[T]he Israelis say they’re striking Hamas military targets, but Palestinian health authorities in the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas, say well more than 400 people have already been killed. Today, war has returned to the Gaza Strip. Hours after Israel resumed strikes across the enclave, now the fragile cease-fire and hostage deal negotiated by the U.S. shattered.

“Rescuers workers reported attacks on homes and camps. The IDF saying it’s targeting military commanders, and infrastructure. The U.S. has engaged in unprecedented diplomacy to reach a ceasefire to war…But there have been yawning gaps between Hamas and the Israelis. The White House saying overnight that Israel consulted them before resuming the strikes,” he added.

Bradley at least pointed out there’s still 59 hostages in Gaza with “about 35 of those are dead” and one remaining “one living American, 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander.”

Asked by Melvin to expound upon the negotiations, Bradley tried to blame Israel:

[T]he real question was how to move on from the first phase of that ceasefire that ended March 1. The Israelis wanted to continue and extend that first phase, continuing exchanging hostages in the Gaza Strip for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. While Hamas, they wanted to move on to the second phase of the ceasefire, which would eventually see the full withdraw of Israeli troops on the Gaza Strip and a more permanent truce[.]

ABC’s Good Morning America also used the word “shattered,” thanks to co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos.

Chief global affairs anchor Martha Raddatz was forlorn: “There had been hope for the release of the remaining hostages, that ceasefire could hold. But this morning, make no mistake. A major Israeli assault on Hamas is once again underway. This morning, the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas over.”

 

 

She hit similar notes as CBS and NBC (click “expand”):

Israel launching a wave of deadly air strikes across the Gaza Strrip, lighting up Gaza just after 2:30 a.m. local time in the largest assault on Hamas targets since the ceasefire took effect nearly two months ago. [EXPLOSIONS] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the IDF to take forceful action against Hamas after the terror group refused to release more hostages. Netanyahu calling for continued, extensive strikes. [SIREN] Explosions could be heard throughout Gaza. More than 400 people killed and more than 500 injured, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. A number of people are trapped under the rubble, so that number is expected to rise. Hamas saying Netanyahu has overturned the ceasefire agreement. For six weeks, there has been relative calm in the region, with the return of about three dozen hostages in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. That first phase of the ceasefire ended two weeks ago. Since then, negotiations have stalled, with neither side able to agree on a path forward. The second phase was supposed to see the release of nearly 60 hostages and bring an end to the 17-month war that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 of 2023. 

Raddatz also brought up Alexander (though not by name) and, after fretting “[t]his new round of fighting will undoubtedly deepen the humanitarian crisis within Gaza,” conceded “Hamas has rejected all of the proposals it received from President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.”

To see the relevant transcripts from March 18, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

Climate activists have found a new way to force us to pay more for energy.

New York and Vermont passed laws that will raise the price of oil, gas and electricity by taxing the past.

New York’s new law demands fossil fuel companies pay $75 billion for carbon emissions dating back to the year 2000. Other Democrat-controlled states plan to follow suit.

In my new video, Travis Fisher, energy director at the Cato Institute, argues that taxing the past is wrong: “I’ve been filling up my gas tank for 25 years. Will they go after me for every time I’ve filled up my tank?”

Maybe.

A more honest way to punish burning of fossil fuel is a carbon tax. “If you want to change people’s behavior,” says Fisher, “You tell them that their behavior is going to be taxed. This is taxing behavior that’s already occurred — perfectly legal at the time. So, there’s no possible change in behavior.”

Politicians don’t push a carbon tax because they know voters won’t like it. So they pretend oil companies will pay. They know voters don’t like oil companies.

“The deceit from these companies,” shouts California Gov. Gavin Newsom, “playing us for fools!”

He blames fossil fuel companies for his own government’s failures. “Wildfires and floods and droughts,” he says, “this climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis!”

“That just absolves him from any responsibility for anything,” says Fisher. “Power out, wildfires, everything is climate change. Nothing is Gov. Newsom’s fault.”

But Big Oil is so rich, say activists, they can easily pay. A CNN correspondent claims, “The amount of money they are making, some will certainly see as obscene, unconscionable.”

“’Unconscionable’ is actually in (New York’s) text,” says Fisher, adding that these new laws are an expansion of government power that “(sets) a precedent that they could tax anyone for anything going back as far as they want.”

And yet, the new tax won’t change the climate.

“If New York stopped using fossil fuels altogether,” says Fisher, “What impact would that have on the global climate? … Zero.”

That’s because the entire United States, let alone New York, emits just a fraction of the world’s carbon.

In their bill, New York politicians compare fossil fuel producers to tobacco companies, writing, “The actions of many of the biggest fossil fuel companies closely (reflect) the strategy of denial, deflection and delay perfected by the tobacco industry.”

Politicians and greedy lawyers did get tobacco companies to pay more than $200 billion.

But was that justice? I don’t think so.

The lawyers grabbed $8 billion for themselves. But alleged Big Tobacco bad guys who misled people about cigarettes’ risk aren’t paying for the settlement. Most had left their companies long before.

Today’s smokers must pay the bill via costlier cigarettes. Likewise, we fossil fuel users will be the ones paying these new fines.

Although there are big differences between oil and cigarettes.

“If we all quit cigarettes,” says Fisher, “Nothing catastrophic happens. Quit fossil fuels, the world grinds to a halt.”

Eighty percent of our energy comes from coal, oil and natural gas, and that won’t change soon. Solar and wind power aren’t reliable enough.

So these new retroactive oil taxes are mostly a way for state politicians to grab more of your money — in my state’s case, an arbitrary $75 billion.

I ask Fisher, “Isn’t it calculated based on things fossil fuel companies did?”

“No,” He replies. “There’s sophisticated literature about the social cost of carbon. They decided to skip all of that. Skip the trial. You’re just guilty.”

So, in New York and Vermont, everyone who uses fossil fuels will be punished.

Those of you in California, New Jersey, Maryland and Massachusetts will probably be hit by similar taxes soon.

“They’re coming after everyone’s lifestyle. That’s only made possible by fossil fuels,” says Fisher. “It’s a shame because really, when I think about what America could be, we could be so much more prosperous than we are.”

Much more prosperous. But many politicians just won’t let that happen.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”

Having made their beds over the weekend and into Monday, ABC, CBS, and NBC continued to lie in it Tuesday morning as they remained steadfast in expressing horror and rushing to the defense of illegal immigrants who were deported to an El Salvadoran jail based on their alleged membership in the dangerous, murderous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

ABC’s Good Morning America unsurprisingly led the way. Fill-in co-host and former Biden regime apple polisher Mary Bruce boasted in a tease of “a federal judge hauling the Trump administration back to a courtroom after they appeared to ignore a directive by sending hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.”

Take notice of how weekend co-host Whit Johnson took Bruce’s lead in painting the jettisoned illegal aliens as average joes:

We turn now to the Trump administration’s legal battle over the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. A federal judge demanding an explanation as to why the government ignored his order, blocking the deportations and to turn around the planes that had already taken off. 

Senior political correspondent Rachel Scott boasted of “this showdown between the White House and courts only escalating” with federal judge James Boasberg “demanding to know why those deportation flights landed in El Salvador when he ordered that they be turned around.”

Scott reupped the Tren de Aragua-to-Japanese-Americans comparison: “The administration claims the men on board were members of criminal gangs. Many were deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to support people with little to no due process and was last used to round up Japanese Americans during World War II.”

“The White House has not released the identities of those deported or details on their alleged crimes. The Justice Department lawyers refuse to provide any additional information insisting it would pose a national security risk. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accusing the Trump administration of an ‘unlawful…brazen power grab,’” she added.

Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos again teamed up with chief Washington correspondent and three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl to spell more doom (click “expand”):

 

 

STEPHANOPOULOS: [T]he White House has been signaling resistance to the courts since the President was inaugurated on January 20. This is the most direct defiance yet.

KARL: George, we are seeing a wide-ranging, strategic, deliberate effort by this White House to shift the balance of power away from Congress, away from the courts into the presidency, so this is the most direct. I mean, you have a situation where the administration is defying the verbal orders of a judge and then refusing to answer basic questions about who was on those flights. But it’s against the backdrop of the administration disavowing secret — civil service protections in the firing of federal employees. We saw the President himself declare that President Biden’s preemptive pardons are null and void. We have seen the President issue executive orders to sanction law firms who have done work for his political opponents. And we’ve seen the administration fail to comply with an order to resume foreign aid that has been congressionally mandated, passed by Congress. All that against the backdrop of a senior administration official who you heard there in Rachel’s piece say, “I don’t care what judges think.” Now, George, we’ve seen presidents complain and complain mightily about court rulings. But what we have never seen is a president or a White House suggest that they will not comply with a judge’s order. It’s important to point out that, right now though, the administration says they are no longer — at least temporarily halted, consistent with the judge’s order those deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. They are, at least for now, they say, complying with that judge’s order.

(….)

KARL: I should say the administration feels confident that they are going to win many of these cases, that they will ultimately prevail at the Supreme Court, but if the Supreme Court — and remember, this Supreme Court has ruled against this President — if that happens, will they comply with that order? That’s the real constitutional test.

NBC’s Today had chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander on the case and fretted the White House carried out “deportations…without due process” and “critics warn[ing] the Trump administration right now appears to be intentionally ignoring court orders, blocking those flights.”

 

 

“This morning, the Trump administration’s battle with the courts ramping up…with a tense hearing late Monday after the White House’s decision to deport more than 130 alleged gang members from Venezuela to a prison in El Salvador over the weekend despite a judicial order to halt the flights,” he continued.

Over at CBS Mornings, co-host Nate Burleson declared in the “Eye Opener”: “Here in this country, a judge is demanding to know why the Trump administration ignored his ruling to turn around flights sending Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador.”

Senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang reported “[t]op Trump aides are fiercely defending the move and blasting the courts” for rebuking the administration’s flights “carrying Venezuelan migrants.”

 

 

She continued (click “expand”):

JIANG: Ultimately, Boasberg will decide if Trump can use the Aliens Enemies Act to deport immigrants, which does not require standard court proceedings. A big part of the White House’s reasoning is they say the immigrants are dangerous gang members. [TO HOMAN] How do you determine whether somebody is a gang member? What criteria do you use?

HOMAN: I’m not going to share that — all of that with you, but whether through social media, through the activities, to their criminal records here and abroad. So, you know, this is — this was done in a very — the review of this issue was at the highest level I’ve seen.

JIANG: Venezuelan officials say the migrants are being held hostage in a crime against humanity and immigration advocates argue they were stripped of their rights.

ACLU’s LEE GELERNT: Not only have they not had due process to make the showing that they’re not a member of the gang, but the government has repeatedly over — overstated who they’re detaining. I do think we are slipping closer and closer to a constitutional crisis.

To see the relevant transcripts from March 18, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

The so-called “climate emergency” is Exhibit A in the intolerance of “public” broadcasting for any opposing point of view. Either you perpetually believe we’re ten years away from mass death (as PBS projected in 1990), or you cannot appear on PBS.

On Sunday’s PBS News Weekend, the latest hyperbolic hangout was headlined “Earth is ‘perilously close’ to a global warming threshold. Here’s what to know”. The expert doomsayer was Michael Mann, one of those Ivy League leftists from the University of Pennsylvania.

Not only did Mann fear no opponent, he knew PBS would not bring up how he was forced to pay National Review more than $500,000 in legal fees for a frivolous defamation lawsuit, in which he channeled the no-dissent spirit of PBS by saying he viewed his lawsuit as a way to “ruin National Review.”

Weekend anchor Ali Rogin ran through a puffy-pillow set of questions for Mann: 

Simply put, how big a deal is it for the planet to exceed this 1.5 degree threshold?…

And what happens if we do continue to exceed this number? That’ll be a sign that things are continuing to move in that direction in a more permanent way, right?…

And what is it about that 1.5 degree change? I’ve read that it’s not so much that number itself, it’s that it more about what it represents. Is that correct?

This is where Mann uncorks all his drama about how the California wildfires and the hurricane in North Carolina, it’s all signs of the coming apocalypse. But then it turned to Trump, and  Mann the Scientist spoke of the “climate” like it was a caring human being: 

ALI ROGIN: President Trump has started the process of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, which set this 1.5 degree threshold, also easing restrictions on oil and gas production. How does that impact efforts to avoid further exceeding this threshold? And what about the general political climate elsewhere in the world?

MICHAEL MANN: The real problem here is that this sort of sends a signal to the rest of the world that the United States isn’t willing to honor its commitments. We’re the world’s largest legacy carbon polluter. We’ve put more carbon pollution into the atmosphere than any other country, and that’s all the climate cares about. It cares about the cumulative carbon emissions. Over time, we’ve contributed more to the warming of the planet than any other country.

This sounds a little like an old Washington Post article: “The U.S. has caused more global warming than any other country. Here’s how the Earth will get its revenge.”

Rogin ended with one more softball: “And in terms of that global participation, there’s long been a debate about the responsibility of developing countries and what they have to do versus developed first world countries like the United States. How does the reaching and exceeding of this 1.5 degree threshold move the needle on that debate?”

Predictably, Mann said it’s sad that American “disengagement” causes poor countries to wonder why they have to sacrifice anything. So naturally, America better “pony up” for the poor.

PS: 

On the “less than 10 years” business. They were saying this in 1990. Try this howler from PBS, badly predicting doom. https://t.co/FQRWrv4aQP pic.twitter.com/XR8Rryuw5V
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) March 14, 2025

On Tuesday, the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View finally got their highly anticipated chance to rage and vent at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for leading nine other Democrats to vote for the Republican Continuing Resolution to avoid a government shutdown. Their reactions ranged from simply asking “why” to questioning his ability to lead and suggesting he should “step aside” as a leader of the party and make way for younger radicals.

They kicked off the show with a conversation about who the options were to lead the party, with moderator Whoopi Goldberg making clear that the cast had a stake in it. “[W]hich Democrat do you see stepping up to lead the party?” she asked. “[Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) is] not wrong when he says the party is us and what are we going — what are we prepared to do?”

When Schumer finally came on, over 10 minutes later, Goldberg immediately pressed him on why he wanted to avoid a government shutdown. “I’m just going to throw it out there. Why? What were you thinking, and why?” she asked simply.

“Okay. So look, I knew it was a difficult choice and I knew that I’d get a lot of criticism for my choice but I felt as a leader I had to do it,” Schumer defended himself. “And here’s what would happen if we cut off government spending. It would be devastation like we have never seen.”

It did little to dissuade the angry liberal ladies.

Pretend independent Sara Haines came out swinging with a question questioning his leadership given he was only able to convince nine of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate to follow him:

You mentioned this is what a leader does and we were just talking in our last segment about we aren’t seeing a clear leader of the party because –  even though I agree with you, with your decision and I see why, but you were only able to get nine Democrats to go with you. How is that leadership?

 

 

Co-host Joy Behar was angry at Schumer over a Trump post on social media congratulating him on voting to fund the government, suggesting Trump managed to pull one over on him or that they possibly worked together. Schumer and other cast members had to explain to her that Trump was just trolling him (Click “expand”):

BEHAR: If what you’re saying is true, how do you explain the fact that Friday Trump publicly congratulated you for this decision? He said you did the right thing he said your decision, quote, unquote, “took guts and courage.” Was he trying to trick you?

SCHUMER: Troll me.

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: He’s trolling.

SCHUMER: He was trolling me. I know this guy.

BEHAR: It’s so confusing, though. People are reading that!

SCHUMER: Well he’s trying to confuse people. He always tries to confuse people.

Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin, who boasted about voting for Vice President Kamala Harris, came at Schumer from the left and pressed him on leaving Democratic leadership to get out of the way of up and coming radicals. She even cited his behind-the-scenes work to get former President Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.

“There seems to be a disconnect between the younger generation and some of the newly elected Democrats and yours,” she prefaced. “Do you believe that the party has confidence in you to continue to serve as its leader, and as somebody who was influential in helping Biden’s decision to step aside, do you think it might be for you too?”

The outrage directed at Schumer from co-host Sunny Hostin took on a more personal tone, especially after she lamented: “And it gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends, but I think you caved.”

Adding: “I think you and nine other Democrats caved. I don’t think you showed the fight that this party needs right now, because you’re playing by a rule book where the other party has thrown that rule book away.”

“Why did you lead Democratic senators to play by that book that the Republicans are not playing by?” she demanded to know.

Schumer also made headlines during the interview when he bitterly lashed out at Americans who wanted to keep their hard-earned money and didn’t want to pay excessive taxes. “You know what their attitude is, ‘I made my money all by myself. How dare your government take my money from me?’” he decried. “They hate government, government is a barrier to people. A barrier to stop them from doing things.”

 

Dem Senate leader Chuck Schumer mocks Americans who want to keep their hard-earned income and praises the government as a “barrier” to them:
“You know what their attitude is, ‘I made my money all by myself. How dare your government take my money from me?’ … They hate… pic.twitter.com/vb4oDxPQ3V
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 18, 2025
 

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

ABC’s The View
March 18, 2025
11:03:36 a.m. Eastern

(…)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: And voters also said they’re looking for leadership, you know. And so, I guess the question is, which Democrat do you see stepping up to lead the party? I mean, I don’t know if this is — I don’t know you can wait for somebody to step up and lead the party. He’s [Governor Tim Walz (D-MN)] not wrong when he says the party is us and what are we going — what are we prepared to do?

(…)

11:14:44 a.m. Eastern

GOLDBERG: I’m just going to throw it out there. Why? What were you thinking, and why?

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Okay. So look, I knew it was a difficult choice and I knew that I’d get a lot of criticism for my choice but I felt as a leader I had to do it. Here’s why. The CR bill was bad, no question, and it allowed a slush fund which allowed money to be pushed around.

JOY BEHAR: Explain it for the people who don’t know what CR means and what you did.

SCHUMER: CR means continue the government spending. A shutdown, the alternative is cut off the government spending. And here’s what would happen if we cut off government spending. It would be devastation like we have never seen.

GOLDBERG: Worse than we’re seeing now?

SCHUMER: Much.

(…)

11:17:33 a.m. Eastern

SARA HAINES: You mentioned this is what a leader does and we were just talking in our last segment about we aren’t seeing a clear leader of the party because –  even though I agree with you, with your decision and I see why, but you were only able to get nine Democrats to go with you. How is that leadership?

(…)

11:19:36 a.m. Eastern

BEHAR: But if you’re right — if what you’re saying is true, how do you explain the fact that Friday Trump publicly congratulated you for this decision? He said you did the right thing he said your decision, quote, unquote, “took guts and courage.” Was he trying to trick you?

SCHUMER: Troll me.

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: He’s trolling.

SCHUMER: He was trolling me. I know this guy.

BEHAR: It’s so confusing, though. People are reading that!

SCHUMER: Well he’s trying to confuse people. He always tries to confuse people.

(…)

11:21:02 a.m. Eastern

FARAH GRIFFIN: Senator, I want to ask you, because I actually agree with your decision to keep government open. I think no one wins, it costs the economy billions of dollars, federal workers are left in the lurch in a shut down, but I’m a Republican. I’m not really your core constituency.

SCHUMER: I have a lot of Republicans who are Republicans.

FARAH GRIFFIN: But some of the progressive members of your caucus – the House caucus are not with you, Jasmine Crockett questioned your leadership and Hakeem Jeffries dodged a question about your alignment over this and obviously voted the other direction. There seems to be a disconnect between the younger generation and some of the newly elected Democrats and yours. Do you believe that the party has confidence in you to continue to serve as its leader, and as somebody who was influential in helping Biden’s decision to step aside, do you think it might be for you too?

(…)

11:29:36 a.m. Eastern

SUNNY HOSTIN: And it gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends, but I think you caved. I think you and nine other Democrats caved. I don’t think you showed the fight that this party needs right now, because you’re playing by a rule book where the other party has thrown that rule book away.

SCHUMER: True.

HOSTIN: And so, in my view what you did really was, in supporting that GOP partisan bill that Democrats had no input in, you cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, to gut Medicare, to gut Medicaid. Why did you lead Democratic senators to play by that book that the Republicans are not playing by?

SCHUMER: Okay, first I’d say, Sunny, no one wants to fight more than me and no one fights more than me. You got to fight smart.

(…)

PBS News Hour White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez had an eventful Monday show. Within the span of two minutes, she managed to omit that a recently deported visa holder admitted to attending Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral and interviewed Law Professor Kim Wehle, who suggested Trump’s immigration policies writ large should merit a third impeachment.

Barron-Lopez was reporting on Dr. Rasha Alawiegh when she reported, “She’s a kidney transplant at Brown University, an H-1B visa holder from Lebanon, and she was deported last week when returning from visiting family. Now, prosecutors allege she had quote, ‘sympathetic photos of Hezbollah leaders’ and I spoke to Dr. George Bayliss who works with Dr. Alawieh in the kidney transplant department and he said that her deportation has disrupted the clinic and he fears what this could mean for other immigrant doctors as well as that pipeline of immigrant doctors who come to train in the U.S.”

 

 

Not only did Barron-Lopez leave out the fact that Alawiegh attended Nasrallah’s funeral, she also left out that she also had photos of Iran’s supreme leader.

Nevertheless, host Geoff Bennett wondered, “So what does this all mean for this confrontation, some would say crisis, that we’re seeing now as it relates to President Trump and the judiciary?”

Barron-Lopez then switched to Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador and his battles with the courts, “So, when we zoom out, Geoff, I spoke to Kim Wehle. She’s a constitutional scholar with the University of Baltimore. And she already believed that the country was in a constitutional crisis, but that Trump’s actions this weekend make it worse.”

In a video, Wehle declared, “I think we’re in uncharted waters, because presidents up until now did not take this kind of open defiance stance against the rule of law. [jump cut] I don’t think there is a way, if the president is intent on ignoring court orders for the judicial branch to do anything about it. It really would require the United States Congress to step in with impeachment.”

Back in the studio, Barron-Lopez added, “So, the legal experts that I spoke to, whether it’s Wehle or immigration experts, agree that gang members who have been convicted should certainly be deported, but that due process is key here.”

Tying both subjects together, Barron-Lopez concluded, “So whether it’s across the Alien Enemies Act deportations or these deportations and detentions of legal immigrants, Wehle and immigration legal experts that I spoke to say that the Trump administration is trying to avoid due process for undocumented people, as well as those legally here. And Wehle said that, without that right, that makes the Trump administration both the judge and the jury.”

In that case, Barron-Lopez should have talked to a more diverse set of experts.

Here is a transcript for the March 17 show:

PBS News Hour

3/17/2025

7:10 PM ET

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Then third there is Dr. Rasha Alawieh, she’s a kidney transplant at Brown University, an H-1B visa holder from Lebanon, and she was deported last week when returning from visiting family. Now, prosecutors allege she had quote “sympathetic photos of Hezbollah leaders” and I spoke to Dr. George Bayliss who works with Dr. Alawieh in the kidney transplant department and he said that her deportation has disrupted the clinic and he fears what this could mean for other immigrant doctors as well as that pipeline of immigrant doctors who come to train in the U.S.

GEOFF BENNETT: So what does this all mean for this confrontation, some would say crisis, that we’re seeing now as it relates to President Trump and the judiciary?

BARRON-LOPEZ: So, when we zoom out, Geoff, I spoke to Kim Wehle. She’s a constitutional scholar with the University of Baltimore. And she already believed that the country was in a constitutional crisis, but that Trump’s actions this weekend make it worse.

KIMBERLY WEHLE: I think we’re in uncharted waters, because presidents up until now did not take this kind of open defiance stance against the rule of law. [jump cut] I don’t think there is a way, if the president is intent on ignoring court orders for the judicial branch to do anything about it. It really would require the United States Congress to step in with impeachment.

BARRON-LOPEZ: So, the legal experts that I spoke to, whether it’s Wehle or immigration experts, agree that gang members who have been convicted should certainly be deported, but that due process is key here.

So whether it’s across the Alien Enemies Act deportations or these deportations and detentions of legal immigrants, Wehle and immigration legal experts that I spoke to say that the Trump administration is trying to avoid due process for undocumented people, as well as those legally here. And Wehle said that, without that right, that makes the Trump administration both the judge and the jury.

HBO’s John Oliver thinks Republicans are racists, and the fact that Republicans would vehemently reject the label doesn’t matter to him. However, on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, Oliver tried to claim that former Columbia University student and pro-Hamas protest leader Mahmoud Khalil isn’t anti-Semitic because Khalil claims he’s not and therefore the efforts to deport him are an attempt by the Trump Administration to silence opinions they do not like.

Oliver declared that, “Clearly, you shouldn’t be deporting green card holders for their views. And for what it’s worth: Regardless of what others may’ve said or done during those protests, Khalil himself explicitly said, ‘anti-Semitism, and any other form of racism, has no place on this campus and in this movement.’”

 

 

Moving on to a picture of some of the demonstrators’ signs, Oliver added, “It’s also notable some Jewish students at Columbia rallied in support of Khalil this week and while the word bitch in me wants to point out that that’s not how you spell the word fascism, I don’t want to draw attention from the excellent ‘Pigs aren’t kosher’ sign just a few feet behind it. That’s the kind of pithy slogan that would turn Don Draper’s head. He wouldn’t hire a Jewish copywriter until pretty late in the show, but still, put that in your book, kid.”

Blood libel and applying double standards to Israel are absolutely forms of anti-Semitism, and the fact that some self-identified Jews defend people like Khalil means nothing.

Later, Oliver moved onto an interview Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar gave with NPR. As Oliver tells it, Edgar was woefully unimpressive, “Okay, first, when the question is about providing support for Hamas and the answer is ‘Pro-Palestinian activity,’ you are already telling on yourself. And it’s not great when your best evidence is, “I think you can see it on TV, right? That’s the same level of detail my parents would give to the question, ‘What does John do for work?’ ‘I mean, you can see it on TV, right? He says it’s comedy, but we don’t tend to laugh.’

Even if one agrees with Oliver’s assessment of Edgar’s performance, it doesn’t mean Khalil is a martyr. Khalil led an organization and was present at an unauthorized occupation of school property that distributed pro-Hamas literature.

However, Oliver and his trio of journalistic Peabody awards wasn’t interested in any of that, “Because when the accusation is terrorism, you should need a bit more than, ‘The vibes are off.’ Protesting, in and of itself, is not a crime, even if it makes people uncomfortable. Kind of like that DHS guy’s official portrait. Not a crime, but uncomfortable, right? I don’t like it, but it’s not illegal.”

It is not just Oliver’s parents that claim “We don’t tend to laugh” at his “comedy.”

Here is a transcript for the March 16 show:

HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

3/16/2025

11:27 PM ET

JOHN OLIVER: Clearly, you shouldn’t be deporting green card holders for their views. And for what it’s worth: Regardless of what others may’ve said or done during those protests, Khalil himself explicitly said, “Anti-Semitism, and any other form of racism, has no place on this campus and in this movement.” 

It’s also notable some Jewish students at Columbia rallied in support of Khalil this week and while the word bitch in me wants to point out that that’s not how you spell the word fascism, I don’t want to draw attention from the excellent “Pigs aren’t kosher” sign just a few feet behind it. That’s the kind of pithy slogan that would turn Don Draper’s head. He wouldn’t hire a Jewish copywriter until pretty late in the show, but still, put that in your book, kid.

…

Okay, first, when the question is about providing support for Hamas and the answer is “Pro-Palestinian activity,” you are already telling on yourself. And it’s not great when your best evidence is, “I think you can see it on TV, right?” 

That’s the same level of detail my parents would give to the question, “What does John do for work?” “I mean, you can see it on TV, right? He says it’s comedy, but we don’t tend to laugh.” 

Because when the accusation is terrorism, you should need a bit more than, “The vibes are off.” Protesting, in and of itself, is not a crime, even if it makes people uncomfortable. Kind of like that DHS guy’s official portrait. Not a crime, but uncomfortable, right? I don’t like it, but it’s not illegal.

In the second hour of Monday’s CBS Mornings, the crew hawked a new book edited by longtime liberal author Michael Lewis based in part on a series of Washington Post stories about federal workers and lamented “truly inspiring work” is being axed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and too many refuse to see “who these people are, and they’re being treated kind of indiscriminately as one giant, you know, amorphous, faceless, you know, group.”

And the real issue with the federal workforce? Lewis proposed those pesky political appointees — including cabinet secretaries selected by the President, who actually answers to voters — don’t truly have the leeway they deserve. It’s a fact many do live-saving work. But if they’re paid by we, the people, how then should they be held accountable based on merit?

 

 

Co-host Tony Dokoupil had three teases in which he promised an interview about “some of the truly inspiring work” government workers “do” even though they’re “unseen by the American people” and been “the crosshairs of sweeping spending cuts.”

“There’s been a lot of talk, a lot of news lately about federal workers as President Trump and Elon Musk slash their way through what they call waste, fraud and abuse, but others say the administration is firing dedicated public servants doing essential work, so who are these dedicated public servants,” Dokoupil said later in cuing up Lewis.

After Dokoupil acknowledged there’s little granular details the public may know about the federal workforce and that this book “begins to correct that,” Lewis argued the notion of there being “waste, fraud and abuse in the federal workforce” ignores “who these people are, and they’re being treated kind of indiscriminately as one giant, you know, amorphous, faceless, you know, group” when they’re “mission-driven,” “unbelievable” “characters.”

“[I]t’s not just like public service. It’s like people figured out, like, the key to a meaningful life, almost,” he added.

Lewis next went to argue those pesky political types (i.e. those actually accountable to voters) get in the way:

You find these stories and you think, like, why are they available to tell? Like, why hasn’t someone come in and done this? And there are a couple of reasons, and one is the political process, the way we’ve designed our Executive Branch, there are all of these, you know, people from the White House, political people who are the communications people whose job it is to prevent me from getting to know the government. I mean, that it is such an — the work it takes to get through them to the people who are actually doing the work of governing is — it’s such a nuisance that that’s one of the reasons. The other reason is, as people, they’re like — they’re not self- promotional.They’re — the kind of people who go into those jobs do not brag about themselves. And they’re — they — but this is also true of characters, generally. People who don’t think their characters make the best character.

Lewis also explained what’s happened to some of the government workers profiled (click “expand”):

BURLESON: And one of the essays says, the factory of the federal government ain’t going nowhere. So how are the people profiled in this book, how have they been affected by the federal layoffs —

LEWIS: Very good question.

BURLESON: — by the Trump administration.

LEWIS: Very good question. So I’ve taken an informal survey of my characters and the other writers. Two have left, felt uncomfortable and left.

DOKOUPIL: They left voluntarily?

LEWIS: Yes.

DOKOUPIL: Wow.

LEWIS: One — the SEAL Team Six guy in the IRS who has recovered billions — billions money for the taxpayer by finding kind of crypto fraud rings, broken up child sex trafficking rings, he has had his whole unit gutted.

BURLESON: Is his name Jarod Koopman?

LEWIS: Yes. he feels like he can’t — I know that half his unit has been like gutted.

DIAZ: Wow.

LEWIS: The character, the first character I wrote about, the guy who figure out how to stop roofs falling in on the heads of coal miners saved thousands of lives, an amazing story, I think he feels at risk right now. I mean, he’s been told his credit card is being taken away and this —

BURLESON: What?

LEWIS: — all of this kind of stuff. Yes. No, it’s — can I just — I hate to go on, but it is — I think this is an important subject.

BURLESON: Go ahead.

LEWIS: In what large organization do you successfully manage if you start by telling everybody is a crook, a waste, by vilifying the employees? They all feel vilified.

CBS Mornings Plus co-host Adriana Diaz closed things out with a softball question wondering “what do you think the administration is misunderstanding about these federal employees[.]”

Lewis replied the Trump administration has “paid very little attention to what they actually do” and have been “unclear what [they are] trying to achieve.” 

Note how Lewis said what constitutes “waste” is complicated:

[I]t really isn’t like eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, because they’ve done — they’ve done the opposite. They’ve eliminated the people in the government, the Inspector General, who’s looking for fraud. Waste is — waste is complicated, but it’s — they’re going — what they’re doing, I think they have some other agenda. I don’t think the agenda — I think they’re saying they’re doing something different than what they actually want to do, and they don’t actually care very much what people do. I think this is a little experiment on what happens to our society if we decide not to govern ourselves.

To see the relevant CBS transcript from March 17, click here.

Pontificating from his privileged perch as an MSNBC host with a multi-million-dollar contract, Joe Scarborough loves to sneer and condescend to what he views as his journalistic inferiors: bloggers.

For years, Scarborough’s standard shtick was to brand bloggers as losers littered with Cheetos crumbs, living in their mother’s basement. As a NewsBusters blogger, that always offended me. My mother’s house didn’t have a basement. I lived in a loft in her garage. And Cheetos? No way. Pringles have always been my main food group.

Besides, not all bloggers were conservatives. What about the Daily Kos leftists? 

Scarborough was back at his supercilious worst on today’s Morning Joe. He repeatedly said that he would speak slowly so that bloggers could understand. His condescension came in the context of saying that federal judges do have the authority to enjoin actions by the federal branch, and in particular, that Judge James Boasberg had the authority to order the Trump administration to cease deporting members of violent gangs illegally in the US by flying them to El Salvador.

Scarborough wondered if bloggers even existed anymore. The word is out of fashion, but the blogging websites, from NewsBusters to Daily Kos, continue. 

And it was thanks to bloggers that stories like the cover-up of the origins of COVID was uncovered, while “prestige” outlets like the New York Times were [willingly?] “badly misled” into buying the story that the origin was in live animal markets in Wuhan.

And it was bloggers who helped expose Joe Biden’s incapacity for office, while a prominent pompadour pundit insisted that this was “the best Biden ever, and f-you if you don’t believe it.”  

And let me say this very slowly so he’ll understand. That member of the liberal media who attempted to deceive the American public? That was you, Joe Scarborough. 

Note: The screencap shows Scarborough imagining that those backward bloggers still use typewriters.  Ya got me there, Joe,  like I do still bang out my stuff on my trusty 1957 Smith Corona, before faxing it to my NewsBusters editors.
Here’s the transcript.

MSNBC
Morning Joe
3/18/25
6:00 am EDT

FOX NEWS HOST: It doesn’t look like you’re getting support from the Democrats on this. You’re going against the judges now. What’s next? 

TOM HOMAN: Another flight [host laughs.] Another flight every day. The teams are going to be out there every day. Every day the men and women of ICE are going to be in the neighborhoods of this nation arresting criminal, illegal  alien, public safety threats and national security threats. Lawrence, you’re not going to stop us. I’m proud to be a part of this administration. We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming. 

WILLIE GEIST: A defiant message. That’s Tom Homan, the border czar in the Trump administration, after deporting migrants to El Salvador without full due process. We’ll bring you the latest on the legal fight over those flights, which a judge ordered to return to the United States before they reached their destination. So far, the Trump administration ignoring that. 

. . . 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Willie, we just saw a member of the Trump administration saying he doesn’t care what judges think. I, um, newsflash from James Madison, you don’t really have that choice. 

You know, the thing is, I hear a lot of people being shocked about, how could, how could a federal judge do this? Why, Donald Trump won by one-and-a-half percent. How could, heh? 

Well, for bloggers, I’ll say this slowly. This is what happens in Madisonian democracy. Federal judges iido have the power to question the authority of a presidential action. And then, as some Republican senators, I think John Kennedy from Louisiana said, you know, that’s why God created the appellate courts. 

But just, again, for our blogging friends. Do people still blog, Willie? I really don’t know. Do people blog? 

GEIST: I think so, yeah, with the typewriter. 

SCARBOROUGH: [Imagining what a blogger might be writing about] I had this sushi last night.

So for our, I’m going to talk a little more slowly than usual so they’ll understand it. [Speaking very slowly] This happens under America’s Constitution. 

The 36 million who watched President Donald Trump’s address to Congress also watched as Congressional Black Caucus member, Rep. Al Green, shook his cane and shouted at the president.

When he refused to desist, Speaker Mike Johnson ordered him removed from the chamber.

Two days later, in a bipartisan vote, the House censured Green.

The Congressional Black Caucus stood in firm support of Green’s actions and, in their own move to disrupt, CBC members sang “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, as Johnson read the censure on the House floor. When they refused to stop disrupting, the Speaker gaveled the session to recess.

CBC Chairperson Rep. Yvette Clarke, noting Black Caucus support for Green, then went into the usual refrain about refusing to accept spending cuts in “programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security while giving tax cuts to billionaires like Elon Musk.”

But there have been no discussions about cuts in Medicare and Social Security, nor are there tax cuts targeted to billionaires.

Regarding Medicaid, this is the usual Democrat distortion, calling reducing proposed increases in spending a cut.

What Republicans propose is an increase in Medicaid spending over the next 10 years of $1.5 trillion rather than the programmed $2.4 trillion. A reduction in an increase in spending is not a cut, Madam CBC chair.

Per the Wall Street Journal, Medicaid expenditures have increased 207% since 2008 and 51% since 2019. As a share of federal spending, Medicaid has increased from 7% of total federal spending in 2007 to 10% in 2023.

Most offensive is these increases result from scamming the Medicaid program by states, who use the funds beyond what Medicaid was meant to do. Medicaid was supposed to be about health care support for “poor children, pregnant women, the elderly and disabled.”

But it has gone way beyond that. Medicaid funding is used for housing vouchers, food stamps and sundry other non-health care programs.

This happens because federal health care funding matches state funding by one to three dollars per state dollar. So, the more states spend, they get multiples in subsidies from the federal government.

The bottom line is Medicaid is a broken, poorly structured program where federal spending has exploded.

The Civil Rights Movement was about freedom and justice. It was about combatting discrimination in which Black Americans were denied the same inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as other Americans.

Longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer reportedly observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

The Civil Rights Movement culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which set law to address the institutionalized discrimination that existed.

But after the crowning achievement of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the movement was captured by the left and was transformed from being about personal freedom and justice into a movement about endlessly growing government and growing government dependency.

“We Shall Overcome” is now about the struggle against those who want to reduce the dangerous and massive expansion of government.

In 1965, the year after the Civil Rights Act was passed, federal spending stood at 15.9% of GDP. By 2024, it reached 23.1%.

In 1965, federal debt held by the public stood at 35.1% of GDP. By 2024 it was up to 97.1%.

Per the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve arrived in 2025 where the percent of federal spending consumed by interest on our debt is about as large as our defense spending.

The Congressional Black Caucus hurts our country and Black citizens alike by transforming the ideal of freedom to the ideal of big government.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has helped all Americans of all colors by refusing to be intimidated by those militantly carrying the banner of the welfare state.

Star Parker is founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Her recent book, “What Is the CURE for America?” is available now.