https://www.newsbusters.org/ en https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/28/journalist-kara-swisher-anti-american-oppose-young-pro-hamas On The Chris Wallace Show on CNN on Saturday morning, leftist journalist Kara Swisher claimed it was "un-American" not to support young people protesting against Israel and shutting down campuses. She said this after being confronted with protesters saying Zionists don't deserve to live.  Wallace opened the show with Joe Biden's "very fine people on both sides" quote about the protests, that "he continues to walk a fine line between defending the protesters and denouncing them." Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch said these disruptive protests on campuses are "almost all political upside" for the Republicans. Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson said "I think it's a missed opportunity for presidential leadership. I think it's good politics to come out against protesters who are telling Jews to go back to Poland and saying Zionists don't deserve to live. Those are direct quotes from leaders of the Columbia protests. It's good politics for Biden to stand against that. The problem for him, of course, is that the left wing of his party, Representative Ilhan Omar, are showing up at the protest to shore them up. So of course, he would alienate the left flank of his party. But I do think it's a missed opportunity for him to fade into the background of this." Swisher, a longtime Wall Street Journal tech reporter who more recently was a columnist and podcaster for The New York Times, somehow thought it was anti-American to be anti-Hamas, as our Brent Baker captured it: “Not to support” the anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian protesters taking over colleges “is sort of anti-American” – @karaswisher on CNN’s Chris Wallace Show pic.twitter.com/vLeFIZ8BxB — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 27, 2024   KARA SWISHER: Well, some people are saying that, and I think you have to be -- the question is, are you for order and against chaos, or for protests and the right to free speech? And what's interesting is how quickly everyone and shifting. All the free-speech warriors are suddenly like, order, order, we must have order. And so there are heinous things that are said, but there is a line where you have to support also young people, especially when they do things that they do badly. Not to support them, is sort of anti- American in a way. JOHNSON: Free speech is fine, but USC has canceled its graduation. Columbia University has canceled classes and put them online. We've gone well beyond free speech and into shuttering the operations of universities. And I do think it's a missed opportunity for Biden to say there are limits. We've gone beyond speech and into harassment and disruption here. And we will not stand for that. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, New York Times: Yes, I think we've also, though, seen a reaction from some of the police and others that have been deployed on campuses that have been -- SWISHER: Excessive. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Excessive, thank you. SWISHER: Like Texas today, or Indiana, because then then that's a whole different story as these young people -- you are changing the political mentality of young people right now. And if you push down too hard on it, especially at this age, and not being able to express yourselves, I think you have a much bigger problem later on. Leftists typically question any police use of force against protesters, and rarely think leftist protesters should be questioned for their tactics. We can all guess where Swisher would have come down if the "young people" had been Tea Party kids disrupting an Obama event.  They would be anti-American. April 28th, 2024 6:07 AM Tim Graham 283934 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2024/04/27/msnbc-bites-biden-left-failing-pack-supreme-court On Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, hosts and guests alike bemoaned Biden's failure to seek to pack the Supreme Court. Their comments came in response to oral arguments at the Court this past week on the case regarding Trump's claim of presidential immunity. The panel expressed fears that the Court might expand presidential immunity -- if not to the extent of the right to assassinate political rivals, as Trump's lawyer suggested could be an immune act.  Co-host Alicia Menendez teed up the packing notion, saying that in light of what happened in the Court last week, clearly something "structural"--packing or court "reform" is necessary. Guest Ankush Khadori strongly agreed, calling Biden's failure to push for packing a "historic political miscalculation."   Co-anchor Symone Sanders Townsend, mentioning that she had worked for Biden, said that he is someone who believes in "the rule of law." But Sanders suggested that it is "time to do things differently." Again Khadori agreed, flatly saying that in supporting the rule of law, Biden "is holding the wrong view. I hate to say that about the president. He's been wrong about this the whole time." Wait a second! Isn't the Democrats' big beef against Trump that he refuses to accept the rule of law? But discarding the rule of law is a good—indeed a necessary—thing if it benefits Democrats? Khadori claimed "this Court, over the last few years, is systematically running roughshod through our Constitution. They, in just the last few years, they overturned Roe, they've invalidated affirmative action in higher education, and they basically legalized same sex discrimination. They threw out part of the Biden administration's signature domestic policy effort on the student loan forgiveness plan." But even legal scholars on the left have acknowledged that Roe was poorly decided. Indeed, MSNBC's own legal analyst Danny Cevallos opined, before the Dobbs decision came down, that Roe was "ripe" to be overturned because "the right to privacy [upon which Roe was based] does not exist either in the history or the text of the Constitution, and that Roe "stands on a weak foundational basis." As for affirmative action, the phrase itself is a euphemism for reverse racial discrimination, a clear-cut violation of the Equal Protection clause and legislative prohibitions of racial discrimination. The "student loan forgiveness" Biden has granted by ignoring Congress and court rulings against him. Who's "running roughshod through our Constitution" again?  Here's the transcript. MSNBC The Weekend 4/27/24 8:22 am EDT ALICIA MENENDEZ: If you were part of the 70% of Americans who agree that the president should not have absolute immunity, and then you watched what transpired this week in court, what is left as recourse, right? There's court reform, there's stacking the Court? What do you see as the path forward, because clearly something more structural is necessary. ANKUSH KHADORI: Yeah, I agree with that. I think, actually, as we think about this administration and its legacy, I think it was -- it will go down as having been a historic political miscalculation. MENENDEZ: You're talking about the Biden administration. KHADORI: Biden administration, to not have made a real, earnest effort at Supreme Court reform. They put together a commission that produced a report that nobody read. It was not a serious effort to actually pursue Supreme Court reform, and now -- SYMONE SANDERS TOWNSEND: Why? Because the president, President Biden, I mean, I worked for him at that time. I was a part of the transition, and I worked in the White House, and I know for a fact, and Eugene, you've been asking the questions too -- I was there.  He himself does not believe that that is an avenue that should be explored. Joe Biden is somebody that believes that, in the rules of law and laws the systems. And one could argue, I [inaudiable], whew!--it's time, it's time to do things differently. KHADORI: Well look. I mean, yeah, I am aware he has that view. He is holding the wrong view. I hate to say that about the president. He's been wrong about this the whole time. And now, this Court, over the last few years, is systematically running roughshod through our Constitution. They, in just the last few years, they overturned Roe, they've invalidated affirmative action in higher education, and they basically legalized same sex discrimination. They threw out part of the Biden administration's signature domestic policy effort on the student loan forgiveness plan.  And now they seem poised to issue some sort of ruling that will change the law which has already been in place for a couple hundred years. We all assumed a president could be criminally charged after he, leaving office, to now come up with some crazy new doctrine. And -- MENENDEZ: To say nothing of the Idaho case that they are listening to right now, which is like all of their chickens coming home to roost. SANDERS TOWNSEND: Yeah, and its like yeah, we don't want to save women. KHADORI: All of the cases coming back to them after Dobbs is a mess. And this, this immunity ruling, if it comes out as most of us are expecting, it will go down in history as a practical effect, as a practical matter, as a sequel to Bush versus Gore. April 27th, 2024 10:50 PM Mark Finkelstein 283930 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2024/04/27/pbs-sympathizes-pro-hamas-camping-protesters-columbia-free-speech Tuesday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour took a deep-dive look at the anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas protesters camped out at Columbia University, with some “protesters” spewing eliminationist rhetoric at Israel and telling Jewish students to “go back to Poland.” One girl stood in front of a group of Jewish counter protesters holding a sign that read “Al Qassam’s next targets.” (Al Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.) Yet anchor Geoff Bennett’s intro was disconcertingly mild, ignoring all the disgusting details of the pro-Hamas demonstrators, while predominantly portraying them as victims of an over-aggressive college administration. Whatever actual goals the protests may have (divestment by the universities from Israel companies, perhaps) weren’t mentioned. Bennett: College campuses in several parts of the country are struggling tonight with just where to draw the line between allowing protests and free speech and preventing antisemitism and intimidation….Police said they were called in by university officials, who said protesters breached barricades and behaved in a -- quote -- "disruptive and antagonizing manner." Some faculty disputed that characterization by the school…. Hundreds of students have turned out for protests. On Thursday, [Columbia’s president] Shafik called the New York Police Department to break up tent encampments, and more than 100 protesters were arrested. Many students and faculty felt Shafik's crackdown has been excessively harsh in squelching free speech. Bennett put the genuine threat to Jewish students in passive terms, noting “but some students, Jewish students, in particular, as well as some alumni and faculty, say there's too much hostility on campus, leading some to feel threatened for their safety.” After quotes from a concerned non-Jewish student and the Anti-Defamation League, he pivoted: Bennett: But protesters say the crackdown is not justified. Aya Lyon-Sereno is a sophomore at Barnard College, which is part of Columbia, majoring in urban studies. She's Jewish. Aya Lyon-Sereno, Student, Barnard College: Barnard students have been evicted from dorms they're paying for, have been given 15 minutes to gather any belongings and are not allowed to eat in any dining halls, are not allowed to, like, use their meal plans and have been really, really criminalized. (A shame PBS didn’t cover such unfair practices by colleges during the COVID hysteria, when they were kicking out students out of housing they’d paid for, for the crime of…grocery shopping.) He brought Irene Mulvey into the studio, president of the (hard-left) American Association of University Professors, who delivered hypocritical talking points about defending freedom of expression on campus. Yet Mulvey signed an open letter at the height of the Black Lives Matter hysteria voicing concerns about “microaggressions” on campus. But now violent threats against Jews are part of “free speech.” Mulvey called them “peaceful protesters,” and pompously lamented “we saw the suppression of speech and silencing of voices because somebody might not like what they're saying. And that is a real danger in a democracy.” When Bennett asked, “How should a university balance the expression of free speech and student safety?” Mulvey was dismissive: “There's genuine -- there's harassment and antisemitism has, is not new, it's not the first time hate speech has reared its ugly head on campus. There are policies in place to deal with these kinds of things. And that's where we should go, policies that ensure due process for the students. And then what we're seeing instead is new policies being drafted on time, manner and place of protest….” Bennett followed up strongly: Well, thinking about this from the perspective of Jewish students who say they feel intimidated. If there is a climate of harassment on campus, isn’t the administration morally compelled and also compelled by law, by Title IX, to address it and shut it down? Mulvey said in times like these, “….you have to err on the side of free and open inquiry. There -- hate speech, antisemitism has no place on campus or anywhere and there are policies to deal with that. But in higher education, our primary focus should be academic freedom, free speech, and -- free speech and associational rights for students.” Bennett then went to Dr. Andrew Marks at Columbia University, who quibbled with a couple of Mulvey’s false assertions and noted examples of anti-Semitism on campus, but also praised Columbia’s president and said things were quieting down. This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 4/23/24 7:03:29 p.m. (ET) Geoff Bennett: College campuses in several parts of the country are struggling tonight with just where to draw the line between allowing protests and free speech and preventing antisemitism and intimidation. As the school year nears its end, Columbia University announced it would stay on a hybrid schedule until the end of the spring semester next week. And students were arrested at New York University last night. Police arrested more than 100 people at NYU, as the turmoil that has roiled Columbia over the past week spreads to other schools. Protester: It's a really, really outrageous crackdown by the university to allow the police to arrest students on our own campus. Geoff Bennett: Police said they were called in by University officials, who said protesters breached barricades and behaved in a — quote — "disruptive and antagonizing manner." Some faculty disputed that characterization by the school. It came as a wave of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments have spread in the past week since Columbia University President Minouche Shafik testified before a congressional committee about antisemitism on campus. Many are students, but not all are from the respective school where they are protesting. Earlier in the day, at least 60 people were arrested at Yale. There have been similar protests at Emerson, MIT, Boston University, the University of Michigan, and the University of California. Protesters: Free, free, free Palestine! Geoff Bennett: Columbia has been the flash point for a week now. Hundreds of students have turned out for protests. On Thursday, Shafik called the New York Police Department to break up tent encampments, and more than 100 protesters were arrested. Many students and faculty felt Shafik's crackdown has been excessively harsh in squelching free speech. Protesters: The people united will never be defeated! Geoff Bennett: But some students, Jewish students, in particular, as well as some alumni and faculty, say there's too much hostility on campus, leading some to feel threatened for their safety. Michael D'Agostino is a junior at the engineering school. He's not Jewish, but says he's watched what's happened too often. Michael D’Agostino, Student, Columbia University: The campus, honestly, it's full of a lot of hate and disagreement. And it's honestly just sad to see. It seems a pretty awful thing said to not only practicing Jews, but, I mean, people that are ethnically Jewish, simply for wearing like a Star of David.   Geoff Bennett: The Anti-Defamation League posted a video, contending it had become too dangerous as well. Man: Two individuals threw a rock at my head, hit me right in the face. I'm calling public safety. NYPD, where are you? Geoff Bennett: But protesters say the crackdown is not justified. Aya Lyon-Sereno is a sophomore at Barnard College, which is part of Columbia, majoring in urban studies. She's Jewish. Aya Lyon-Sereno, Student, Barnard College: Barnard students have been evicted from dorms they're paying for, have been given 15 minutes to gather any belongings and are not allowed to eat in any dining halls, are not allowed to, like, use their meal plans and have been really, really criminalized. Geoff Bennett: She also said the administration's approach has backfired. Aya Lyon-Sereno: The atmosphere on campus has been really tense, and I and many other students attribute that to the administration's actions, that people are feeling like it's tense on campus, people are feeling unsafe because there's a ton of cops in riot gear here. Geoff Bennett: For his part, President Biden also criticized many of the protests yesterday. Joe Biden, President of the United States: I condemn the antisemitic protests. I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians. Geoff Bennett: And, today, before he went into court, former President Donald Trump blamed President Biden. Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: What's going on at the college level, at the colleges, the Columbia, NYU and others, is a disgrace. And it's a — it's really on Biden. He has the wrong signal. He's got the wrong tone. He's got the wrong words. Geoff Bennett: The situation is also starting to affect the commencement season. The University of Southern California canceled all outside speakers, it says, out of concern for public. That followed a much-criticized decision to cancel the remarks of valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a Muslim student, over unspecified safety concerns. While Columbia University's administration has faced criticism for how it's handled the events and the arrest of students, concerns remain about the safety of Jewish staff and students on campus. We will get both of these perspectives first from Irene Mulvey, President Of The American Association of University Professors. She spent 37 years teaching mathematics at Fairfield University before retiring. Dr. Mulvey, thank you for being with us. And we should say that members of the Columbia University chapter of your organization are expected to move to censure the university president for her decision to call in the NYPD last week to arrest demonstrators. Why? Why is that warranted, in your view? Irene Mulvey, President, American Association of University Professors: Well, I think the idea of calling in police in riot gear on peaceful protesters protesting outside is a remarkably disproportionate and wrong-ended response to the events we're seeing on campus, because higher education is founded on listening, learning, discussion, debate, free and open inquiry. We challenge students to challenge their most deeply held beliefs in order to justify them to themselves and to others. Our goal is communication in service of understanding. Instead, we saw the suppression of speech and silencing of voices because somebody might not like what they're saying. And that is a real danger in a democracy. Geoff Bennett: Well, how should a university balance the expression of free speech and student safety? Irene Mulvey: There's genuine — there's — harassment and antisemitism has — is not new. It's not the first time hate speech has reared its ugly head on campus. There are policies in place to deal with these kinds of things. And that's where we should go, policies that ensure due process for the students. And then what we're seeing instead is new policies being drafted on time, manner and place of protest. So, your protest has to be over in a roped-off area in a tiny space on campus. This is suppression of speech. So the idea of, if you're suppressing speech in order to keep students safe, that's a false choice. You can do both. Geoff Bennett: Well, thinking about this from the perspective of Jewish students who say they feel intimidated, if there is a climate of harassment on campus, isn't the administration morally compelled and also compelled by law, by Title IX, to address it and shut it down? Irene Mulvey: The institution is required to allow for the most free and open expression, while also ensuring that conversations are civil and dialogue is respectful. But in situations like this, these are — people have extremely strong positions, and these are polarizing times, that debates are heated and messy. And so you have to err on the side of free and open inquiry. There — hate speech, antisemitism has no place on campus or anywhere and there are policies to deal with that. But in higher education, our primary focus should be academic freedom, free speech, and — free speech and associational rights for students. Geoff Bennett: As protests spread to other campuses, what lessons could other college administrators, university administrators take away from what's transpired at Columbia? Irene Mulvey: They could think about creative ways to respond. They could think about ways to encourage communication and dialogue in open forums across their campus and engaging all students, so that all students have an opportunity to hear other points of view, to understand other points of view, to question other points of view. They should figure out creative ways to respond, because what happened at NYU and Columbia is completely unacceptable. The silencing of speech in a democracy because somebody doesn't like it, this is a real danger. Geoff Bennett: Irene Mulvey is president of the American Association of University Professors. Thank you for your insights. Irene Mulvey: Thank you. Geoff Bennett: Let's turn now to Dr. Andrew Marks. He's the chair of the department of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University. Thank you for being with us. Dr. Andrew R. Marks, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics Chair, Columbia University: Thanks for having me. Geoff Bennett: So how do you feel about Dr. Shafik's handling of the ongoing demonstrations at Columbia? And what do you make of this view that the old policies in place to deal with student demonstrations were sufficient? Dr. Andrew R. Marks: I think she's doing the best that she can. I think that her heart is in the right place. I think it's an incredibly difficult situation and there are no easy answers. The university, Columbia University, has had policies in place which I think are capable of dealing with this situation if they're able to be enforced. Geoff Bennett: Have you witnessed incidents of antisemitism on campus? Dr. Andrew R. Marks: Yes, I have. I have seen antisemitic slurs being hurled at Jewish students. And it's been very painful to watch. I have seen antisemitic hate language written on the college walk in the middle of campus and posters hanging that have been very offensive. Geoff Bennett: What more should Columbia be doing? What more could Columbia be doing to make Jewish students feel safer? Dr. Andrew R. Marks: Well, I think Columbia has already done quite a lot and taken steps. And my personal observation is that, over the last several days, the hate speech has been toned down on campus. The problem is that, as you know, Columbia's campus is in the middle of New York City. And when you leave campus either — in either direction, there's a tremendous amount of antisemitic hate speech being hurled at students and faculty from people outside the campus. Geoff Bennett: When it comes to what's happening on campus, how should a university balance student safety and student expression? Dr. Andrew R. Marks: Well, I think that students should be allowed to protest, absolutely. And I think that the limit has to be on hate speech. So I think that, as long as the protests are civil and respectful of other members of the community, that needs to be protected and encouraged. When it drifts over to hate speech, then it becomes offensive and I think threatening to the Jewish community at the university. Geoff Bennett: What do you think is informing and influencing Dr. Shafik's response to these ongoing protests? Dr. Andrew R. Marks: Again, she's been in an incredibly difficult situation. And I wanted to clarify a couple of things I heard your previous speaker say. First of all, there — the actions taken against students had nothing to do with the content of their speech, except when it comes to hate speech, of course, but in terms of what they were protesting. It really had to do with them breaking the existing rules of the university. And President Shafik is responsible for the safety of all students. And she took an action, which I was not in favor of, bringing in the police. I wanted to negotiate or talk to the students some more before that. But she did that because she felt it was necessary to preserve the safety of the Jewish community on the campus and other people on campus. I was one of the people in the Senate Executive Committee that helped write the event policy. And it's important to note that that was done in complete collaboration and working very closely with students. And while no policy is perfect, we tried to come up with one that was fair. Your previous speaker mentioned that we were limiting protests to tiny parts of campus. That's not accurate. There were designated areas and times and place, which is common for all university campuses. And had the students adhered to those guidelines, things would have gone much differently. April 27th, 2024 8:38 PM Clay Waters 283904 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/27/usa-today-kyle-rittenhouse-campus-speeches-raise-free-speech This will grab your attention. At the bottom of the front page of Thursday’s USA Today was this headline: Shooter Rittenhouse’s tour draws outrage College gun-rights events raise questions about free speech and its impact USA Today thinks pro-gun-rights speech “raises questions”? The online headline was even stronger: Kyle Rittenhouse, deadly shooter, college speaker? A campus gun-rights tour sparks outrage As in: Who’s approving this speech on campus? A video in the online story shows “hundreds of protesters” at the University of Memphis. “Students celebrated his departure with live music and dancing on campus.” They forced Rittenhouse to leave early. This is a triumph in the media's eyes?  Reporter Cybele Mayes-Osterman sounded like an editorial writer from the beginning: Kyle Rittenhouse is not a typical college campus speaker. In 2020, at the age of 17, he took an AR-15-style rifle to a Black Lives Matter demonstration and fired it, killing two people and injuring a third. Rittenhouse said he pulled the trigger in self-defense and was acquitted of wrongdoing. He has since penned a book, “Acquitted,” and has set out on a series of college speaking events dubbed the "Rittenhouse Recap." He is slated to appear Thursday at Clemson University in South Carolina. Rittenhouse is selling books, and ostensibly promoting the right to bear arms on campus, but he’s also trying to persuade young people to join the conservative movement. The key group behind the appearances, Turning Point USA, is led by the self-described “youth director” of President Donald Trump’s first campaign and a key ally rallying votes for Trump this year. (I left in their links, because the reporters don't tend to say Rittenhouse "shot in self-defense," just that he shot people, and that police shot Jacob Blake, but not that he was reaching for a knife.) Who's letting speakers persuade students to become conservatives? Is that where the national newspapers "raise questions about free speech and its impact"? The tour promoter is the Trump-loving Turning Point USA, which is more salt in the USA Today free-speech wound:  The provocative choice of backing the Rittenhouse tour is par for the course for Turning Point and its local affiliates, which have hosted controversial figures like Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier. But it has stirred up devastating pain and disdain in a man he almost killed. "He has used every moment to gloat and to make light of taking life," Paul Prediger said, speaking publicly for the first time about what happened in protest of a Rittenhouse speech last week at Kent State The ADL said Fuentes appeared once at Iowa State in 2019, and the local TPUSA leader resigned over it. But "Prediger" has changed his name from Gaige Grosskreutz. A few paragraphs later, the paper acknowledges Rittenhouse tweeted a video with Prediger/Grosskreutz "admitting he pointed a gun in Rittenhouse's direction before being shot."  USA Today clearly finds the Rittenhouse speaking tour as more objectionable than pro-Hamas protesters creating encampments across the country as their leaders speak of violence against the "Zionists." Their cause isn't lead by some conservative white boy beloved by Trump voters.   April 27th, 2024 7:04 PM Tim Graham 283927 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jeffrey-lord/2024/04/27/elon-musk-called-out-npr-and-pbs-state-affiliated-they-freaked Uri Berliner's expose of the ideological unanimity at NPR reminds the Republican half of America that they send their taxpayer dollars to Washington to have their viewpoints excluded or ridiculed as "far right" hate.  Back there in the Stone Age of 2023, Elon Musk, he of X that is formerly Twitter, antagonized NPR and PBS because - ready? Musk had made some changes to “state-affiliated” media designations, applying the term to both of those outlets. They're state-funded, but not state-affiliated? While stripping the designation from media outlets tied to governments like those of Russia and Iran, Musk had the nerve - the nerve! - to apply it to, among others, America’s NPR and PBS along with the UK’s BBC and Canada’s CBC. This is in the news a year later after CNN’s Oliver Darcy, he of CNN’s Reliable Sources, talks of life after X, and looks back at his decision to remove his CNN newsletter from X in July of 2023. To recall the start of this media kerfuffle, see these headlines.   First, this one in April of 2023 from NPR:  NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as 'state-affiliated media’ The story reported:  NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter's decision to first label the network "state-affiliated media," the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries. Then there was this from the UK Guardian in 2023:  PBS quits Twitter after being labeled ‘government-funded media’ Broadcaster leaves platform a day after NPR’s exit over concerns labels undermine credibility as independent news outlets That story reported:  In a statement to USA Today, Jason Phelps of PBS said the broadcaster’s staffers stopped using the organization’s Twitter account after learning that the platform had relabeled them. Phelps said PBS had “no plans to resume at this time” but added that the organization was ‘continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely’. Here at NewsBusters, reporter Luis Cornelio lasered in on this squabble in May of 2023.  Uh, Oh! NPR Gets Triggered Over Elon Musk — Again Cornelio’s story reported:  Musk initially slapped NPR’s Twitter account with a “state-affiliated” label, a move that triggered a wave of leftist condemnation, with even Biden White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre vouching for NPR’s reporting. NPR President and CEO John Lansing ridiculously pouted that he was “disturbed” by the label. “We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as 'state-affiliated media,' a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR,” Lansing claimed. Musk later changed NPR’s label to “government-funded media.” But NPR was apparently so triggered, it eventually left the platform. Musk mocked NPR’s exit from Twitter in a series of tweets last month, including a short post saying “Defund @NPR." Both PBS and NPR tried to wriggle off Musk’s “state affiliated” description by whining, essentially: “But we don’t take that much money!” Ahhhh. The Western Journal to the clarification rescue. The WJ investigated, headlining:  Fact-Check: How Much of PBS, NPR Revenue Comes from Government Funding? And what did the WJ fact check reveal? This:    So, just how much money does NPR get from government or government-affiliated sources? As noted above, NPR says only 1 percent of its annual budget comes from federal sources. But according to its own numbers, the broadcaster gets a lot more from government sources than it lets on.    For fiscal year 2020, for instance, the broadcaster’s affiliate stations received 8 percent of their revenue from federal appropriations via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They also got 10 percent from colleges and universities — which themselves are publicly funded — and another 5 percent from federal, state and local governments. That is 23 percent, not 1 percent.” As Musk pointed out, WJ says NPR also states on its website that…  federal funding is essential to public radio’s service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR. For its part, PBS gets even more from government or government-affiliated sources. That “even more” amount would be that:…  ….the TV broadcaster says it gets 15 percent of its revenue from the federal government, 13 percent from state governments, 3 percent from local governments, and 8 percent from universities. That’s a total of 39 percent. All of which is to say, Musk has been 100% correct to describe PBS and NPR as “state affiliated” - because they both are. For a fact they receive dollars from the government. According to that Guardian article , a PBS spokesman laughably said that: Twitter’s simplistic label leaves the inaccurate impression that PBS is wholly funded by the federal government. Hello? Needless to say, whether “wholly funded” or “partially funded” or accepting a dollar of government money, PBS is still taking government tax dollars to stay afloat. But, as discussed in this space with the recent, much publicized resignation of longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner, the network exists in a liberal bubble, no dissent allowed.  There was an easy and obvious way for NPR and PBS to answer Musk’s criticism and get out from under his “state-affiliated” designation once and for all. That would be: Stop taking money from the government. Period. Stop taking any money from any government apparatus. Period. Make the “P” in NPR and PBS stand not for “Public” - aka taking government funds - but rather “P” as in “Private.” As in “National Private Radio” and “Private Broadcasting Service.” All of which would make NPR and PBS a genuine private sector competitor with the rest of the American private sector free market in the world of television and radio broadcasting. Would that happen? Of course not. Again, as Uri Berliner documents, the network exists in a liberal bubble. Not even Elon Musk can get through it. They want to challenge Elon Musk - but not like that.  The bottom line? Elon Musk was right. Both PBS and NPR take government funding. They still do. And, one can reasonably suspect, neither has any intention of stopping.  April 27th, 2024 4:00 PM Jeffrey Lord 283925 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/27/nbc-downplays-columbia-leaders-anti-semitism-cbs-still-ignores On Friday morning, ABC, NBC, and CBS all ignored Columbia encampment student leader Khymani James’s January remarks that Zionists don’t deserve to live and they should be grateful he personally isn’t murdering them. Since then, the results have been mixed. Friday’s World News Tonight on ABC played the video and Saturday’s Today alluded to it, but did not play it, and the amount of specifics the viewer got was dependent on their NBC affiliate. Meanwhile, CBS Saturday Morning continued to ignore the video. The best CBS could muster was a recorded segment on the latest developments around Columbia that included an interview with a pro-Israeli counter-protestor. “Nobody’s talking about the hostages,” a Columbia graduate student told correspondent Michael George.     George portrayed concerns about anti-Semitism as something this student was worried about, but he himself felt no need to elaborate on, “This Columbia grad student who took part in the rally argues those in the encampments are promoting anti-Semitism and ignoring the hostages still held by Hamas.” The student added, “If you want peace to be achieved, as we do, and if you want a ceasefire, the hostages need to be released.” Apart from teases and introductions, the only relatively substantive report viewers that have an NBC affiliate that only airs the first 60 minutes of the Saturday edition of Today would've got came from correspondent Liz Kreutz, “At Columbia, the university banning a student protester who made anti-Semitic remarks in a video that surfaced this week. Khymani James apologizing on Friday for the incendiary comments saying they ‘misspoke in the heat of the moment.’” That is not a misprint. James is the kind of guy who calls for the mass murder of Jews while demanding you use he, she, and they pronouns. As for Kruetz, she did not provide any context as to what those remarks might be. Those who get the 90-minute version would’ve gotten an extra report from fellow correspondent George Solis, who provided slightly more context, “Meanwhile, students here at Columbia have been camping out now for 11 days now, and still at issue, pro-Palestinian protesters calling on the university to divest any financial support to Israel. Now, Columbia has banned a student leader in the protests after videos surfaced of the individual calling for the death of Zionists, the student has since apologized for the remarks.” The previous night on ABC, correspondent Stephanie Ramos had her own pre-recorded segment that featured a soundbite from Jewish student Noa Fay, “On this campus, people chant that Zionists are not welcome, calling on, quote, ‘death to the Jewish state.’” Unlike CBS, ABC provided proof that Fay was not being hyperbolic, as Ramos immediately followed up with the clip of James ranting, “Be grateful that I'm not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Ramos wavered a bit when she added, “Back in January, Columbia student protester Khymani James live-streamed those comments after a disciplinary hearing with the school probing similar posts. Today, protest organizers distancing themselves from him.” An unnamed camper provided the context that James was not a mere protestor, but a leader, “He apologized and he asked for space to reflect and learn and grow and that he will step away from being press spokesperson.” It seems likely that James is simply sorry he got caught rather than truly remorseful for his actual remarks, as Ramos added, “Tonight, the university addressing that video posted by that student, calling it ‘extremely alarming,’ adding that calls for violence are unacceptable.” If only NBC and CBS viewers could be made aware of such alarming threats. Here are transcripts for the April 26 and 27 shows: ABC World News Tonight 4/26/2024 6:40 PM ET PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTORS: Bring them home! Bring them home! STEPHANIE RAMOS: Outside Columbia University, pro-Israel counter-protesters calling for the release of hostages. LEAT UNGER [Family member of Israeli hostage]: The release of hostages must come first and foremost to end the suffering on both sides. RAMOS: Today, Jewish students called on Columbia to keep every student safe. NOA FAY: On this campus, people chant that Zionists are not welcome, calling on, quote, “death to the Jewish state.” KHYMANI JAMES: Be grateful that I'm not just going out and murdering Zionists. RAMOS: Back in January, Columbia student protester Khymani James live-streamed those comments after a disciplinary hearing with the school probing similar posts. Today, protest organizers distancing themselves from him. PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTOR: He apologized and he asked for space to reflect and learn and grow and that he will step away from being press spokesperson. RAMOS: Tonight, the university addressing that video posted by that student, calling it “extremely alarming,” adding that calls for violence are unacceptable. *** NBC Today 4/26/2024 7:07 AM ET LIZ KREUTZ: At Columbia, the university banning a student protester who made anti-Semitic remarks in a video that surfaced this week. Khymani James apologizing on Friday for the incendiary comments saying they “misspoke in the heat of the moment.” … 8:05 AM ET GEORGE SOLIS: Tensions escalating this morning as a large police presence is unfolding in Boston, where authorities are dismantling a student encampment there at Northeastern and making arrests. Meanwhile, students here at Columbia have been camping out now for 11 days now, and still at issue, pro-Palestinian protesters calling on the university to divest any financial support to Israel. Now, Columbia has banned a student leader in the protests after videos surfaced of the individual calling for the death of Zionists, the student has since apologized for the remarks.  *** MICHAEL GEORGE: At Columbia university as talks between school administrators and pro-Palestinian protesters continue— PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTORS: Bring them home! GEORGE: -- pro-Israeli demonstrators, many non-students, made their voices heard outside the campus. PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTOR: Nobody’s talking about the hostages. GEORGE: This Columbia grad student who took part in the rally argues those in the encampments are promoting anti-Semitism and ignoring the hostages still held by Hamas. PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTOR: If you want peace to be achieved, as we do, and if you want a ceasefire, the hostages need to be released.   *** NBC Today 4/26/2024 7:07 AM ET LIZ KREUTZ: At Columbia, the university banning a student protester who made anti-Semitic remarks in a video that surfaced this week. Khymani James apologizing on Friday for the incendiary comments saying they “misspoke in the heat of the moment.” … 8:05 AM ET GEORGE SOLIS: Tensions escalating this morning as a large police presence is unfolding in Boston, where authorities are dismantling a student encampment there at Northeastern and making arrests. Meanwhile, students here at Columbia have been camping out now for 11 days now, and still at issue, pro-Palestinian protesters calling on the university to divest any financial support to Israel. Now, Columbia has banned a student leader in the protests after videos surfaced calling for the death of Zionists, the student has since apologized for the remarks.  *** MICHAEL GEORGE: At Columbia university as talks between school administrators and pro-Palestinian protesters continue— PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTORS: Bring them home! GEORGE: -- pro-Israeli demonstrators, many non-students, made their voices heard outside the campus. PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTOR: Nobody’s talking about the hostages. GEORGE: This Columbia grad student who took part in the rally argues those in the encampments are promoting anti-Semitism and ignoring the hostages still held by Hamas. PRO-ISRAEL PROTESTOR: If you want peace to be achieved, as we do, and if you want a ceasefire, the hostages need to be released. April 27th, 2024 2:00 PM Alex Christy 283931 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/christian-toto/2024/04/27/can-colbert-ignore-genocide-joe-chants-dnc Stephen Colbert is a master at compartmentalization. CBS’s “Late Show” host has spent three-plus years looking the other way as President Joe Biden bumbled through his first term. Colbert ignores the endless gaffes, senior moments and shocking inflation rates. Not to mention crazed tales of uncles eaten by cannibals.   BIDEN: "I made it clear to the Israelis — don't move on Haifa!" Haifa is a major city *IN* Israel. pic.twitter.com/BdNgoDlGkM — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 18, 2024   And, when a Special Counsel dubbed Biden “an elderly man with poor memory,” Colbert spun the awful news to Biden’s advantage. That isn’t easy. His job as the Democrats’ late-night propagandist is about to get even harder. CBS has announced that Stephen Colbert will host his Late Nightshow from Chicago as the city plays host to the Democratic National Convention and will broadcast from the Auditorium Theatre in the Loop from August 19 to the 22nd. The decision makes sense on several levels. Colbert will be able to book major Democratic players. The comedian recently joined a Democratic fundraiser to boost President Biden’s re-election chances, making his commitment to the party official. “The Late Show” could get an energy boost from being in the belly of the political beast. Except this year isn’t going to be a typical DNC event. Pro-Palestinian protesters have been harassing Democrats for weeks in public over the Israel/Hamas war. The far-Left contingent has no qualms attacking mainstream Democrats and disrupting events. Some dubbed the Commander in Chief “Genocide Joe” for his quasi-support for the state of Israel.     We’re seeing violent protests across cities and campuses nationwide, and the movement seeks as much media attention as possible. And it’s getting louder. Politico, a liberal news outlet, echoed a phrase many are saying about the upcoming event. Democrats descend on Chicago as specter of ‘68 convention looms Here’s a refresher course from that tumultuous chapter in history which also took place in Chicago. As delegates flowed into the International Amphitheatre to nominate a Democratic Party presidential candidate, tens of thousands of protesters swarmed the streets to rally against the Vietnam War and the political status quo. By the time Vice President Herbert Humphrey received the presidential nomination, the strife within the Democratic Party was laid bare and the streets of Chicago had seen riots and bloodshed involving protesters, police and bystanders alike, radically changing America’s political and social landscape. That was without social media, YouTube and other ways to share information at the speed of a click. Another factor could weigh heavily this time ’round. Then-Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley had no qualms summoning both the police and the National Guard to keep the peace. They collectively failed. Today, blue cities like Chicago are far less interested in law and order. Violent, anti-semitic protests are the new norm in urban pockets and academia. Those breaking the law often go unpunished. That only emboldens them. What happens when that energy is left more or less unchecked? What impact will it have on the national mood, let alone the November elections? Will Biden’s poll numbers suffer even greater drops as a result?     Should the authorities attempt to keep the peace it might enrage the party’s base. Plus, these protesters have no qualms about breaking the law. Kobi Guillory, a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC, says protests will happen in August whether or not organizers are able to secure permits. The 1968 debacle followed a stunning change of leadership. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he was withdrawing from the race in March, replaced by Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Will President Biden, diminished by age and sagging in the polls, be swapped out before the convention begins? More importantly for pop culture watchers, can Colbert look away as the city he temporarily calls home is roiled in chaos? Early projections expect north of 30,000 protesters to greet Team DNC. Will he or his audience be in the mood for garden-variety “clapter” if chaos envelops the nearby convention? What will Colbert say about the far-Left protesters, a group that will never vote for President Donald Trump or his fellow Republicans? Can he cover his ears while protesters chant, “Genocide Joe has got to go?” Colbert has kept his political head in the sand for three-plus years. It may be impossible to do the same come Summer. April 27th, 2024 1:30 PM Christian Toto 283924 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/27/pbs-frustrated-lack-nuance-reaction-campus-encampments New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart both claimed to be “frustrated” on Friday's PBS NewsHour that the encampments occurring on college campuses are not being treated with the “nuance” they deserve. They both called for the anti-Semitic among the demonstrators to be expelled, but insisted most are honest and sincere people who simply want to see the suffering of Gazans end. Host Amna Nawaz started by asking Brooks, “David, they have spread very quickly. They are sustaining on campuses. How do you look at these? I mean, should these be a sort of warning sign to the Biden Administration? What do you make of how quickly and widely they spread?”     Brooks claimed to “have been frustrated that people aren't making some distinctions here. So, I think most of the protesters are appalled by the horrors the Palestinians are suffering and they're well-motivated by compassion. There are some people who are probably hard-left people, and they get to have their views.” He also noted, “There are a lot of people who are anti-Semitic and violent. And so you should not be able to say, as one of the Columbia students said, ‘Zionists don't deserve to live.’ If that happens, you should be expelled. And so, in my view, they should let them protest. But if somebody says something, ‘Go back to Poland,’ or even a pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, ‘Go back to Gaza,’ that's ruining the community of the campus and so those people should be expelled.” It wasn’t some random student who said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” it was one of the leaders. At what point do the people who style themselves as peace activists who genuinely, but naively simply want a ceasefire and Palestinian administration of the West Bank have a moral obligation to dissociate themselves from leaders who want to destroy Israel and murder its supporters? After reiterating his call for expulsions, Brooks worried that “As for the Biden administration, I do worry that the Chicago convention is going to look a lot like 1968 and that will just be terrible for the Biden administration. The president will look hapless and powerless.” After Brooks rattled off some polling data showing the Israel-Hamas War ranks 15th out of 60 issues for young people, it was Capehart’s turn. He echoed Brooks, “I think the discussion about what's happening on these-- in these protests is missing a lot of nuance. Not everyone who's protesting is anti-Semitic, is rooting for violence, or is he even causing the violence? They are there for legitimate reasons. And I agree with David. If a person of the college community is disrupting and saying racist, anti-Semitic things, then, yes, they should be expelled.” At the same time, Capehart urged caution, “But we also should be mindful that, who are these people who are saying these things? Some might be members of the university or college community, but some could be from the outside. And my big fear from the BLM movement is, folks from the outside causing violence and then the blame being foisted upon the people who are legitimately protesting. And that is my big concern when we talk about this latest national protest.” The BLM leaders also professed to being Marxists, so maybe instead of shaming people for noticing their major protest movements are run by radicals and horrible people, the left should get better protest leaders with better causes. Here is a transcript for the April 26 show: PBS NewsHour 4/26/2024 7:41 PM ET AMNA NAWAZ: Meanwhile, as you saw earlier in the show, we continue to report on the spread of these campus protests, pro-Palestinian protests, by and large, and protesting Israel's war conduct in Gaza. David, they have spread very quickly. They are sustaining on campuses. How do you look at these? I mean, should these be a sort of warning sign to the Biden Administration? What do you make of how quickly and widely they spread? DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I have been frustrated that people aren't making some distinctions here. So, I think most of the protesters are appalled by the horrors the Palestinians are suffering and they're well-motivated by compassion. There are some people who are probably hard left-people, and they get to have their views. There are a lot of people who are anti-Semitic and violent. And so you should not be able to say, as one of the Columbia students said, “Zionists don't deserve to live.” If that happens, you should be expelled. And so, in my view, they should let them protest. But if somebody says something, "Go back to Poland," or even a pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, "Go back to Gaza," that's ruining the community of the campus and so those people should be expelled. So, that's the distinction that should be made. And, somehow, the people who are really threatening the community by threatening violence, they're not being expelled. And I think that would have the deterrent effect that would separate really the bad actors from the people who are just well-motivated to do — to try to save lives. As for the Biden administration, I do worry that the Chicago convention is going to look a lot like 1968. NAWAZ: Really? BROOKS: And that will just be terrible for the Biden administration. The president will look hapless and powerless. One other final thing that I just found interesting, Harvard does this survey. What are young adults interested in, what issues? Israel/Gaza is 15 out of 60. And so a lot of people I know are passionately in on both sides of this issue. NAWAZ: Yeah. BROOKS: But most young voters are interested in inflation, crime, health care, the normal issues. And so it's important for us, those — especially those of us who are in “educated circles,” not to generalize from our own immediate experience, because a lot of people are thinking about very different things than this. NAWAZ: Jonathan? JONATHAN CAPEHART: I would say I agree with you, David. I think the discussion about what's happening on these in these protests is missing a lot of nuance. Not everyone who's protesting is anti-Semitic, is rooting for violence or is he even causing the violence? They are there for legitimate reasons. And I agree with David. If a person of the college community is disrupting and saying racist, anti-Semitic things, then, yes, they should be expelled. But we also should be mindful that, who are these people who are saying these things? Some might be members of the university or college community, but some could be from the outside. And my big fear from the BLM movement is, folks from the outside causing violence and then the blame being foisted upon the people who are legitimately protesting. And that is my big concern when we talk about this latest national protest. April 27th, 2024 10:00 AM Alex Christy 283929 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2024/04/27/amanpour-cues-guest-fret-over-trump-undoing-climate-regulations On Monday's Amanpour & Co. -- simulcast on both PBS and CNN International -- host Christiane Amanpour promoted the liberal alarmist view that a President Donald Trump would be a danger to the environment as she interviewed ProPublica's Abrahm Lustgarten. Pivoting from a segment that discussed the possible impact on foreign policy of President Trump being elected again, Amanpour fretted: Now, the other concern about Donald Trump is his effect on the climate after rolling back many environmental provisions in his first term, not to mention pulling out of the Paris climate accord. April 22nd, today, is World Earth Day, and my next guest says the verdict is in: Americans are already being displaced by the climate crisis, and it will only get worse. Abrahm Lustgarten is a climate reporter, and he works for ProPublica. His new book, On the Move, explores how climate is about to profoundly reshape American life. After Lustgarten promoted the prediction that wildfires caused by rising temperatures will affect migration within the U.S., Amanpour followed up by repeating the liberal trope blaming global warming for Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans in 2005: ...in your book, you write, "People have always moved as their environment has changed, but today, the climate is warming faster, and the population is larger than at any point in history." And in one -- one chapter, you talk about Hurricane Katrina, and what it did to Louisiana. You detail the life of one woman who became a climate migrant -- just one story -- but explain how climate, you know, affects just this one individual. Her guest recalled the case of a woman who left New Orleans after the 2005 flooding and gave up on the possibility of ever living there again in spite of initially intending to move back. But the strength of Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans as a category 3 storm was not unprecedented, and the catastrophe happened because of a failure to maintain the levees so they would hold the flood waters back. And on the subject of recent hurricanes being stronger and more frequent than in the past, it has been pointed out by right-leaning meteorologist Joe Bastardi that hurricane activity goes through cycles that last for decades, and that there have been previous periods of strong storm activity or more frequent storms. According to NOAA's list of hurricanes that have made landfall in the U.S. since 1850, in the 25 calendar years from 1998 through 2022, there were 15 hurricanes of at least category 3 strength that made landfall in the United States, compared to 18 between 1945 and 1969. Additionally, between 1998 and 2022, there were seven hurricanes that were at least a category 4 while, between 1945 and 1969, there were 11. The segment concluded with more handwringing about how Trump might effect the climate if he gets back into office: AMANPOUR: Are you concerned about, you know, since the evidence of Trump in his first term was to, you know, roll back so many protections, are any locked in and sort of Trump-proof now? LUSTGARTEN: No, nothing's locked in. And there's enormous risk of reversing some of the positive progress, not both American emissions cuts, which have been legislated, but the example that we set globally. So I think it's a very precarious position, and if you take back some of those measures, you know, it will have dramatic consequences globally. AMANPOUR: Abrahm Lustgarten, thank you so much indeed. Transcript follows: PBS's Amanpour & Co./CNN International's Amanpour April 22, 2024 CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, the other concern about Donald Trump is his effect on the climate after rolling back many environmental provisions in his first term, not to mention pulling out of the Paris climate accord. April 22nd, today, is World Earth Day, and my next guest says the verdict is in: Americans are already being displaced by the climate crisis, and it will only get worse. Abrahm Lustgarten is a climate reporter, and he works for ProPublica. His new book, On the Move, explores how climate is about to profoundly reshape American life. He's joining me now from Berkeley, California. (...) ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN, PROPUBLICA: -- and we had a terrible fire season -- this was 2018-2019, string of fires near where live in the San Francisco Bay area, and it really made clear how much Americans are also being effected by rising heat, by smoke, by the danger of fires, by sea level rise on our coasts, and caused me to start looking, not only at my own situation, but to consider, from a reporter's perspective, what this means for Americans as the climate gets hotter. AMANPOUR: So, we're going to discuss the effect in a moment, but in your book, you write, "People have always moved as their environment has changed, but today, the climate is warming faster, and the population is larger than at any point in history." And in one -- one chapter, you talk about Hurricane Katrina, and what it did to Louisiana. You detail the life of one woman who became a climate migrant -- just one story -- but explain how climate, you know, affects just this one individual. LUSTGARTEN: Yeah, so, Collette is the subject of this story, and she is from a town called Slidell, Louisiana, just a little bit north of New Orleans, and when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 in her area, her town was really devastated. She was living in Washington, D.C., and she moved back to Louisiana, and she moved back with this hope of -- from a legal perspective and from an organizational perspective, and as a member of her community, seeing if she could help rebuild and help keep that community in place and kind of prevent this migration -- this diaspora. And her story is a 15-year battle to do that, and sort of slowly coming to realize that, in some sense, it is a losing proposition or a difficult proposition in southern Louisiana, and that's because Hurricane Katrina, so many years ago, was really the start of a shift of population out of that region, and we see, you know, along the Louisiana coast, which is sinking and being subsumed by sea level rise already, a gradual decline in population, and so, Collette's story is kind of an example of the nuance of American climate migration, where it's not black and white, it is not a disaster happens and people move, but it is sort of a long and emotional battle... (...) AMANPOUR: You also have a chapter called "The Great American Climate Scam." What is that? LUSTGARTEN: Well, one huge question that comes up when you look demographically at where people live in the United States is why -- as climate impacts have grown, as hurricanes have become more common and more powerful, and as heat has overwhelmed the South -- why those are still some of the fastest growing parts of the country, and there's a lot of reasons for that, but one of the sets of reasons is a host of perverse incentives that the United States has always had to attract people and effectively blind them from the risk that they face in moving to places like coastal Florida, and one of those subsidies is the provision of homeowners insurance, or property insurance, and Florida's a great example of this. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, insurers were leaving the state, and it might have suggested that property was uninsurable, but the state stepped in and said, "We don't want all these people to leave the state because of this economic risk, so we are going to provide our own insurance," and so they created a state-subsidized plan that basically said, "Anybody can get insurance, and we'll promise it's going to be cheaper than any other insurance on the market." And that's the type of thing that has attracted many more people to Florida and has been replicated across 30-odd states in the country, and that's the kind of just one example of policies that tend to sort of blunt the risk and the personal economic household decision-making that people have to make about where they live in this country. (...) AMANPOUR: Are you concerned about, you know, since the evidence of Trump in his first term was to, you know, roll back so many protections, are any locked in and sort of Trump-proof now? LUSTGARTEN: No, nothing's locked in. And there's enormous risk of reversing some of the positive progress, not both American emissions cuts, which have been legislated, but the example that we set globally. So I think it's a very precarious position, and if you take back some of those measures, you know, it will have dramatic consequences globally. AMANPOUR: Abrahm Lustgarten, thank you so much indeed. April 27th, 2024 9:10 AM Brad Wilmouth 283909 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/26/newsbusters-podcast-cassidy-hutchinson-nails-those-cnn-talking CNN primetime host Kaitlan Collins gushed over former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for 20 minutes on April 24. Hutchinson nailed all the CNN-pleasing talking points. Collins introduced her as “now a frequent target of Donald Trump's, after her explosive testimony before the January 6 Committee." Hutchinson warned: "It's really important to stress that the American people were not given the truth about Donald Trump in 2016, and he won. He almost won in 2020. And he very well could win again, if the American people do not, are not made aware of who he actually is." CNN types think Trump voters are so dumb that they have no idea who Trump is. She didn't say out loud she'll vote for Biden, but her underlining of how crucial it is to defeat Trump sends the message loud and clear. She's advertising for Biden-Harris, and CNN is happy to air it for free.  Only at the end of this 20-minute interview, in the last two minutes, do we get a slight hint of how Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony turned out to be wrong, this tale of Trump grabbing the steering wheel. We know now that Trump's driver says that never happened. But Collins could only negotiate around the phony story. A Secret Service agent "could not corroborate your testimony of something that you said you were told by the White House Deputy Chief of Operations, at the time, Tony Ornato. And he's gone after you publicly as you've spoken out bravely." So Hutchinson poses as one who speaks the truth, and CNN doesn’t really want to challenge that. And it certainly doesn’t want to challenge her wild claims that this could be the final election: "what scares me more is the fact that this could potentially be the final election of our American democracy, as we know it, if he's reelected." That paranoid line couldn't please CNN bosses (or viewers) more.  Hutchinson claimed she really doesn't want to be a public person, but it's worked out well for her. She had the book deal with Simon & Schuster, and she speaks in public for money (not on CNN, but the CNN appearances don't hurt). Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  April 26th, 2024 10:29 PM Tim Graham 283928 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2024/04/26/npr-baby-sleep-training-sacrifices-our-babies-well-being-altar Greg Rosalsky of National Public Radio’s podcast “Planet Money” (which aims to explain the economy to listeners) has returned back from “lengthy parental leave” smitten by leftist social media rants, as shown in Monday’s segment “Sleep training: Life preserver for parents or "symptom of capitalism"?” No surprise, given the woke lunacy that has taken over taxpayer-supported NPR. ….Now that I'm a working parent, I want to take just one brief moment to complain on behalf of all of us. Like millions of parents before me, I've discovered it's hard to be productive when you're sleep deprived. He explained the concept of "sleep training," a “euphemism for the most infamous and controversial method: Cry It Out. Basically, you put your baby in a crib or bassinet in a separate room and don't come back until the morning. If they cry, so be it. The idea is they will learn to self-soothe and become good sleepers.…" Facebook and other companies have begun "subsidizing the cost of sleep training coaching for their workers." But then Rosalsky, who worked in the Obama White House, went off on a bizarre tangent, triggered by a stray political comment. For example, my wife was targeted with a post from a baby sleep consultancy called Taking Cara Babies that marketed their services to us (and our employers)….. It seemed pretty innocuous. But the most liked comment was the following: "Wish we had actual parental leave like the rest of the modern world so we weren't forced to sleep train and get back to work like good little capitalists." It turns out this sentiment can be found across the internet….There's a large community of parents who disparage sleep training -- and, in particular, any form of cry it out -- as basically a cruel practice that sacrifices our babies' well-being on the altar of capitalism. He went on, quoting comment after comment, before reining it in slightly. Whole Mother Therapy, which provides online therapy to parents, for example, argues on their blog that "Sleep training is a symptom of capitalism -- it cuts parents off from the natural attachment and nurturance that is essential for infant and baby development." "Sleep training is breaking your child's mind and nervous system to fit into the productivity model capitalism requires," tweeted an X user named HR. But is not wanting to be really sleep deprived only driven by economic concerns? If I had the luxury of not working, I probably would still want to be well-slept. And aren't there a whole bunch of countries that have capitalist economies -- but, at the same time, robust safety nets -- that give parents greater opportunity to stay home and be sleep-deprived without having to go into work? I'll let you be the judge. His concluding snark made no sense: As for us, we've pursued a strategy that you might call sleep training lite. Basically, when our baby cries in the night, we either feed him if it's been a while since he's eaten or we hold his hand and sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to him while he stays in his crib. Honestly, it worked really well between months 4 and 7. But recently, he started teething, and... well, we're both really tired. Take that, capitalism. Public-funded radio: Come for the sleep tips, stay for the socialism? PS: Christopher Rufo used this story to mock an NPR reporter being all about "factual news" on the website: This NPR employee wants you to believe that NPR is a home for unbiased, factual news, but the first story on the homepage is: "Sleep training: A life preserver for parents or a 'symptom of capitalism'?" Everyone knows NPR is biased, except NPR employees who are paid to deny it. https://t.co/zUZbTc92K7 — Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 23, 2024 April 26th, 2024 9:50 PM Clay Waters 283875 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/erick-erickson/2024/04/26/most-disturbing-part-it The Big Ten, the Pac-12, and the Ivy League are overrun with antisemitic students protesting in favor of Hamas. They claim they support Palestinians, but “Globalize the intifada” and “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” are explicit genocidal slogans of Hamas. Democrats insist words mean things. These words mean the students are terrorist sympathizers. Some of the protestors are chanting “Death to America.” At least one Columbia University student screamed at Jewish students, “The seventh of October is going to be every day for you!” Jewish students have been pushed off campuses, harassed, attacked, and silenced. The protestors say it is about Israel and “Zionism” but attack any Jewish student without first asking the student’s views on Israel and Zionism. The protests are not organic. They are organized by several antisemitic groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine. That organization claims, “Resistance comes in all forms -- armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.” Nationwide, these college kids did not all spontaneously run to their local REI and buy tents. There were organizers and organizations advancing the funds, coordinating and getting ready for action. It is no coincidence the protests really took on a life of their own on April 20. That is Hitler’s birthday. The kids who would otherwise be getting stoned instead decided to stone some Jews. But one aspect of this has been more disturbing than everything else we have seen. And what we have seen has been disturbing enough. The antisemites have harassed Jewish students. They have antagonized Jewish professors. They have assaulted Jews. They have stormed into events organized by Jews to chase out the speakers and harass the attendees. At Columbia, one blond-haired white girl with a keffiyeh covering her face stood in front of a group of Jewish students who were waving Israeli and American flags. The girl held a sign with an arrow pointing to the students that read “Al-Qasam’s Next Target.” Al-Qasam is the military wing of Hamas that orchestrated the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. Around Yale and Columbia, students have chanted for Al-Qasam to target Tel Aviv, kill more Jews and otherwise commit violence. But that was not the most disturbing thing to happen. The most disturbing thing was a video of a Jewish student approaching the protestors with a microphone and camera asking the white American kids if Hamas should release the remaining Israeli hostages. Many of the protestors refused to answer, but of those who did, every last one of them said, “No.” The video came out the day Hamas released a proof-of-life video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Goldberg-Polin had attended the music concert for peace on Oct. 7. He and others went into a bomb shelter to escape Hamas, which began throwing grenades in. Goldberg-Polin and a friend started throwing the grenades back. The friend died. Goldberg-Polin lost his hand. Hamas took him hostage. White, privileged American kids think Hamas can keep him. Now the protestors have trotted out Jewish students who are protesting to claim the protests are not really antisemitic. On social media, Black trans-conservative (a progressive who identifies as a conservative) Candace Owens has been on a tweet storm defending the Nazis. A Black defender of the Nazis no more absolves the Nazis of their racism than a few ethnically Jewish rubes absolve the protestors of their vile antisemitism. Every barbarous regime depends on useful idiots for cover. Queers for Palestine would be thrown off buildings in Palestine if they ever went there. The white, blond Americans chanting “Globalize the intifada” would be shot. Hamas killed Vivian Silver. The 74-year-old Canadian lived in Israel championing the Palestinian cause. What we are witnessing on American college campuses is evil. It has infected college campuses across America. Only the Southeastern Conference has seemingly remained untouched along with most of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Those concerned about the rise of antisemitism should look to those schools for future workers and the rest of us need to understand something -- too many academic institutions have become breeding grounds for evil. April 26th, 2024 5:12 PM Erick Erickson 283926 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/stephanie-hamill/2024/04/26/truly-appalling-mrcs-hamill-reacts-media-coverage-anti-israel Media Research Center (MRC) contributing writer Stephanie Hamill was a guest on Newsmax2 with host John Bachman on Wednesday where they discussed the anti-Israel protests sweeping American Universities across the nation and the mainstream media’s coverage of it.  The MRC has documented several examples of the bias in regards to the anti-Israel protests –– from a CNN analyst demanding colleges ‘allow space’ for anti-Semitic rallies, to the lack of coverage on the threats and violence against Jewish students. Hamill: We see a lot of the networks portraying this as peaceful protests, they’re trying to push the violence and threats against Jews under the rug, discredit Jewish student, –– the media coverage on this is truly appalling.   April 26th, 2024 2:33 PM Stephanie Hamill 283923 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2024/04/26/par-course-google-ai-gemini-justifies-censorship MRC researchers caught Google’s biased artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini presenting an argument for censoring so-called climate “misinformation,” while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge any evidence undermining the “mainstream” climate narrative. While Gemini AI did admit that most so-called climate “misinformation” — or analysis that the left disagrees with — is protected free speech, it still offered an alternative argument for censoring such content. What made this particularly concerning is that the Google AI apparently classifies any evidence or data undermining a climate alarmist narrative as “misinformation,” repeatedly pushing narrative over scientific evidence. This included questioning the reliability of some experts and downplaying evidence against “man-made” climate change and “green” energy. MRC Free Speech America researchers asked on Earth Day, “Is climate information free speech under the First Amendment?” Gemini confessed, “Yes, climate information is generally considered free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The First Amendment protects the right to express ideas and information, even if they are controversial or unpopular.” After explaining why climate information was free speech, however, Gemini asserted “there are some limitations to free speech.” Gemini pontificated that “Incitement to Violence” and “Fraudulent Speech” or “Speech intended to mislead for personal gain … can be restricted.” Gemini did not clarify how climate information could potentially fit into these categories. And while Gemini was correct to point out that there are limits on permissible speech under the Constitution, Google’s AI went on to regurgitate what amounted to leftist propaganda on the issue of climate change. For instance, while admitting the scientific expertise of Dr. John Clauser, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Gemini then critiqued his evidence-based argument against climate alarmism. Clauser argues that the earth has a built-in thermostat and that atmospheric CO2 and methane have little effect on climate. Refusing to provide any of the arguments Clauser has made, however, Gemini instead sneeringly cited his ties to “climate change denial organizations.” The Google AI added that “it's important to note his recent comments differ from the established consensus.” Of course, consensus is not the standard for ascertaining truth in science. After all, the consensus once was that the Earth was the center of the universe.  In striking contrast to its criticism of Clauser, Gemini aggressively defended and praised leftist climate change propagandist Greta Thunberg — even while admitting she has no scientific credentials — because she “amplifies the scientific consensus on climate change.”  Indeed, throughout some dozen questions about climate and climate experts, Gemini consistently provided little to no scientific data or evidence. Rather, it emphasized “consensus” and “mainstream” narratives. Surprisingly, when asked whether liberal climate propagandist and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was reliable and why his predictions have always been wrong, Gemini replied, “I'm still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.” But Gore’s mistakes aren’t hard to find. As far back as 2007, a British court ruled there were eleven inaccuracies in Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” film. In fact, the Arctic ice cap actually increased in size the same year Gore predicted it would disappear. Furthermore, Google Search is equally problematic as it pertains to bias. A recent MRC Free Speech America study on Google election interference illustrates this bias. For instance, Google used its algorithm to promote Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, and, in 2024, Google has suppressed campaign websites for Biden opponents.  Google’s Gemini also consistently and clearly took the side of climate alarmism on issues where evidence supports an opposing view. For example, there is data to support the argument that the Earth is cooling rather than warming, including UAH satellite-based temperature data. But when asked about the apparent cooling trend, Gemini fumbled, “Focusing on a single year or even a few years can be misleading due to natural variations. … While some regions might see cooler-than-average years, the long-term trend shows a clear warming pattern.  Each of the past five years has been among the warmest on record.” The latter claim depends largely upon which source of temperature data a person chooses to evidence the point made, particularly in this case, since some sources seem to show warming while others show cooling. For instance, The Heritage Foundation explained in January, “Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy.” Gemini also listed National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a “trusted” source for climate data. But NOAA was just recently exposed for presenting questionable data. According to a recent MRCTV report, 30 percent of its “temperature stations” for estimating global warming do not even exist.  When asked about the left’s favored so-called green energy sources, Gemini did acknowledge some potential “drawbacks” of wind turbines and solar panels, including “hazardous materials” involved in their manufacture and requirements for a “significant amount of land.” The Google AI, however, instead of simply stating facts, defended leftist energy policy: “While solar panels and wind turbines aren't perfect, they represent a significant step towards cleaner energy production.” In actuality, both solar panels and wind turbines are extremely toxic to manufacture and to dispose of. Even leftist news site NPR has acknowledged how “expensive” these leftist alternative energy sources can be. Policy experts have also pointed to their unreliability and how they provide no long-term benefits to offset their heavy negatives. Google’s AI failed to mention that solar and wind cannot produce enough electricity to power America, despite evidencethat they cannot, and directed users to Biden’s Department of Energy, which aggressively promotes wind and solar, for more information (see below). Google has censored content in the past to enforce the leftist narrative on climate. Back in 2021, Google and its YouTube video platform banned advertising on so-called climate “misinformation,” or information that goes against the left’s preferred narrative.  Conservatives are under attack. Contact Google at 650-253-0000 and demand it be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 26th, 2024 2:19 PM Catherine Salgado 283922 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2024/04/26/hot-damn-ny-posts-nelson-details-failedcoup-oust-kjp-biden-aides The great Steven Nelson of the New York Post has always had great questions at White House press briefings and even went over half a year without being called on by the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre, so it won’t be entirely shocking when it happens again thanks to his bombshell Friday morning piece about what the headline dubbed a “failed White House coup to oust” Jean-Pierre. While it was surprising to see Nelson report the depths to which even senior White House officials were behind this, what was unsurprising was it failed due to Jean-Pierre’s stubborness that one source described as “come hell or high water” to stay through the election and the reality that a black lesbian axed by white people would make her a martyr. Nelson began by explaining “[t]op aides to President Biden secretly hatched a plan this past fall” to oust her as even they had seen she “developed the exasperating habit of reading canned answers directly from a binder to reporters at her regular briefings” and thus provided “a less-than-compelling pitch for the 81-year-old Biden”. As for who led this, Nelson revealed it was “[d]e facto White House communications chief Anita Dunn, 66, the wife of Biden personal attorney Bob Bauer” who “decided to call in prominent Democrats to explain to Jean-Pierre, 49, that the time was ripe to move on” with one source saying “[t]here were a number of people she asked to engage Karine” such those who she “trusts” about quitting. While Dunn herself has one of the widest leashes in any Democratic administration, Nelson said this had both the blessing and backing of White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients According to one source, this gentler approach was deployed because they “‘were trying to find Karine a graceful exit’ because of the ugly optics of removing her against her will” and “afraid of what” the DEI crowd were “going to say” if they kicked her out. A source had some brutal words for their colleague, which has been plainly obvious to those in reality, ripping Jean-Pierre for lacking “an understanding of the issues and she reads the book [binder] word-for-word” while simultaneously not “hav[ing] a grasp of the issues and doesn’t spend the time to learn.” The source was correct in pointing out predecessor Jen Psaki would remark during briefings about studying up on issues beforehand (and we would add Kayleigh McEnany also did in sharing facts she learned from experts and fellow White House officials). Despite Jean-Pierre’s failure to even speak basic English, the source said Jean-Pierre believes “she’s doing an amazing job” and, unfortunately for Team Biden knows she won’t leave “on her own.” A different source had more hard truths for Jean-Pierre that, despite what some people may think, “[t]here’s an enormous amount of work that goes into getting ready” and, of course, she doesn’t do any of that. Nelson connected this to what NBCNews.com reported in February about one possible escape hatch of having Jean-Pierre resign to take over the pro-baby-killing group EMILY’s List (click “expand”): In December, not long after word of Dunn’s plan circulated in the White House, Jean-Pierre received and rejected an unsolicited offer to become president of EMILYs List, a major Democratic group that raises money for female candidates who support expanded abortion rights. When NBC News reported on the offer in February, the outlet said Jean-Pierre had emphatically told the group that she was “committed to the president” and “I’m not going anywhere.” Both the initial offer to Jean-Pierre from EMILYs List and its disclosure to NBC are topics of intrigue within the White House — with unsubstantiated theories suggesting the hand of Dunn behind the approach and Jean-Pierre behind its leak. EMILYs List did not respond to a request for comment. By December, Dunn appeared to have accepted that Jean-Pierre was secure in her post. A West Wing official supportive of the press secretary provided The Post with text from an email written by Dunn ahead of Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi’s Dec. 11 article that noted National Security Council spokesman John Kirby’s increased profile as co-briefer alongside Jean-Pierre. “I am happy to talk to [Farhi]. And tell him KJP isn’t going anywhere so this is a ridiculous piece,” Dunn wrote in the message. The pro-Jean-Pierre official also told The Post that Dunn was among those who had backed the press secretary’s promotion from being Psaki’s deputy — with the comms chief even calling in a former White House official to request their help communicating to reporters that “Karine is very strong and doing a very good job in the briefing room.” “She is an incredibly quick study on a variety of policy issues that she has to be appraised of every single day,” that ex-official said. And, on the reported feud with frequent briefing partner and longtime Democratic foreign policy and military spokesman John Kirby, Nelson cited one source who said “[s]ometimes he talks to her and she acts as if he is not talking” with Jean-Pierre “pretty aggressive[ly]...marking her territory.” It’s plainly obvious for briefing observers that not only does Kirby come off as more prepared and professional, but also that he’s “widely respected by journalists as a valuable source of both information and soundbites”. Nelson wrapped with a few words on Jean-Pierre still “hav[ing] important allies within the White House, including first lady Jill Biden’s top adviser Anthony Bernal,” whom Nelson recently reported as having sexually harassed colleagues. April 26th, 2024 2:12 PM Curtis Houck 283921 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/tierin-rose-mandelburg/2024/04/26/media-ignore-liberty-universitys-massive-pro-israel Hundreds of pro-Hamas protests have erupted at college campuses throughout the country in the months since the terrorist group attacked innocent Israeli citizens on October 7. And the media have been consistent in reporting on anti-Israeli voices and outcries as a way of encouraging more students and protestors to act the same This week, as contrast, the private Christian school Liberty University held a massive prayer vigil for the people of Israel - and the media couldn’t care less. It’s obvious where they stand in this debate. Liberty University held its event on the campus’ Academic Lawn on Wednesday night, where a huge crowd of students stood together to pray, worship, and read the Bible. Here’s what Liberty’s chancellor told Fox News Digital: While so many campuses are erupting in anger, hatred and violence; it is refreshing to see the students at Liberty University reflecting the love of Christ as we are commanded to do by Scripture. Jesus clearly tells us to love, and it is so telling that in higher education today, it seems as if some of the only places where love is being displayed are from the campuses of Christian universities like Liberty University. “We do this because Christ is King and today He is seated at the right hand of the Father!” - @jonathanfalwell I’m eternally grateful for the leadership at @LibertyU and their constant commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Truth of God’s Word! pic.twitter.com/8ojMqJf4FC — Jesse Hughes ✝️🇺🇸 (@JesseHughesNC) April 26, 2024 The students at Liberty University stand in stark contrast to students at other schools. Recently we’ve seen pro-Palestine terrorism apologists praise Hamas and advocate in every way shape and form against innocent Israeli lives. including threatening Jewish students on American campuses. On April 23, a group of young protestors shouted in support of Hamas rockets being fired on Israeli citizens, chanting, “Al-Qasam you make us proud, take another settler out," before screaming."Tell Hamas we love you, we support your rockets too!” Student-led demonstrators at Columbia University called for the murder of innocent Jewish students while other students from the school danced around with red strings as a form of “solidarity” with Palestinians. One of the Columbia protest leaders said during a live-streamed school meeting back in January that “Zionists don’t deserve to live," and that he'll kill them if he has to. Related: Anti-Jew Protests Engulf American Schools, and It's Not Surprising At All The violence at these schools has also not gone unnoticed. The University of Southern California even canceled the official commencement portion of their graduation amid the violence concerns. MRCTV’s Managing Editor Brittany Hughes released an episode of The Brittany Hughes Show this week with more in-depth analysis the anti-Israeli hate and called all these acts part of “seeing the destruction of America in real time.” While all this is happening, the media are incredibly partial in their reporting. They said nothing about Liberty’s prayer vigil for Israel, but are covering everything under the sun when it comes to universities proclaiming their support of Palestine and Hamas. Yet, the media are not necessarily condemning the violence, rather just amplifying the voices. Follow us on Twitter/X: Woke of The Weak: The Left's Broken Moral Compass Whether it's shoving prosthetic breasts in the faces of children or barking at strangers for attention, the left has their heads screwed on backwards. pic.twitter.com/K10xekDnBp — MRCTV (@mrctv) April 23, 2024   April 26th, 2024 1:48 PM Tierin-Rose Mandelburg 283920 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/26/pbs-tries-blame-conservatism-mass-stabbing Thursday’s Amanpour and Company demonstrated everything wrong with public broadcasting by using hushed and solemn tones to offer up the most incendiary hot takes. This particular hot take came from feminist, gender, and sexuality studies Prof. Kate Manne and NPR’s Michel Martin as they tried to tie conservatism to the recent mass stabbing in Australia. As Manne acknowledged, the perpetrator was “a diagnosed schizophrenic who had recently, according to his family, discontinued medication, and he was living in a way that was largely itinerant.” However, “But I think we can recognize that when it comes to that question of why he targeted girls and women and why it is invariably a Joel rather than a Jane, a man rather than a woman, who has this kind of horrifically violent eruption after romantic or sexual disappointment, then we can recognize that his father's explanation is, again, helpful that he was motivated by the sense of entitlement to women's labor and to be ministered to and cared for by women.”     Later, Martin started the process of trying to tie this schizophrenic woman-hater to conservatives, “Some people feel like there's kind of a worldwide movement of trying to sort of reclaim male dominance. Like, for example -- like in South Korea, for example, there's like a whole political movement to kind of fight feminism, right? The argument that there are like political parties and political leaders whose main organizing principle is that. And I'm just wondering, do you see something worldwide? And if so, what is it?” Manne, of course, agreed, “Yes, we are absolutely seeing a rise in anti-feminist leaders worldwide who are basically capitalizing on the fact that between men and women, particularly what we see this when it comes to young men versus young women, there is a real disparity in attitudes towards feminism… And we also see that these attitudes are very common -- more common, unsurprisingly, in young Republican men and to some extent, women.” That just means people have different definitions of feminism. Young women associate it with equality and women’s rights while Republicans associate it with abortion and fake news about unequal pay, and young men associate it with the anti-male stereotyping that Manne would soon engage in after Martin asked, “Why do you say unsurprisingly?” Manne replied with all the left-wing buzzwords, “Well, I do think that anti-feminism and conservatism are in lockstep, partly because conservative ideology is often invested in patriarchal roles and expectations being maintained, particularly for people who are also invested in white supremacy and racist ideals and values being promulgated and maintained in society.” Later, Martin asked, “What do you think would make a difference?” Manne responded, in part, by declaring: So, I think we have to go right to the root of it and really start with education. Parents and educators need to be teaching people in general, children in general, but young boys in particular, that they are not entitled to social and sexual services from girls and women… I think we need to address intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and also forms of incel ideology in our education systems. And I think that there is a real call for not just teaching the nuts and bolts of sex, but also what coercive and misogynistic sexual practices look like. One example of this is there has been an alarming rise as a recent New York Times report by Peggy Orenstein showed in the rates of strangulation by men upon women during sexual encounters, and that is not a safe practice from the perspective of brain health. Did Manne actually read Orenstein’s piece? The words “conservatism” and “misogyny” do not appear. Things that do appear include pornography, ShoTime’s Californincation, Fifty Shades of Grey, HBO’s Euphoria and The Idol, and “The chorus of Jack Harlow’s ‘Lovin On Me.’” Here is a transcript for the April 25 show: PBS Amanpour and Company 4/25/2024 MICHEL MARTIN: When the father of the killer expressed these thoughts, he said he wanted a girlfriend and he has no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain, some people thought that he was blaming the victim -- victims, but I felt that he was just describing what he saw, and I just wonder -- I thought that was helpful information to know that he -- that that was what was in his mind. KATE MANNE: I admit that when I initially saw the remarks taken out of context, I worried that it was an example of what I call himpathy, where sympathy is extended to a male perpetrator of violence and misogyny over his female victims. But when I saw the entire interview of this grieving father, my reaction was very different. I think he was just trying to explain, not excuse or justify his son's actions. I think he was horrified by what his son did. His statement had a recognizably both and form. He said, “I am loving a monster. And to you he's a monster, to me, he's a sick boy. He's a very sick boy. Believe me, he's a sick boy.” And that is not inaccurate. Joel Cauchi was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had recently, according to his family, discontinued medication, and he was living in a way that was largely itinerant. He was on the fringes of society. We don't have to sympathize with him whatsoever to recognize that when it comes to a particular question, why did this man, who was aggrieved and lonely, snap on this day, then we can invoke the fact that he had a particular kind of mental illness that unlike most kinds of mental illness does result in an increased rate of violence. But I think we can recognize that when it comes to that question of why he targeted girls and women and why it is invariably a Joel rather than a Jane, a man rather than a woman, who has this kind of horrifically violent eruption after romantic or sexual disappointment, then we can recognize that his father's explanation is, again, helpful that he was motivated by the sense of entitlement to women's labor and to be ministered to and cared for by women. … MARTIN: Some people feel like there's kind of a worldwide movement of trying to sort of reclaim male dominance. Like, for example -- like in South Korea, for example, there's like a whole political movement to kind of fight feminism, right? The argument that there are like political parties and political leaders whose main organizing principle is that. And I'm just wondering, do you see something worldwide? And if so, what is it? MANNE: Yes, we are absolutely seeing a rise in anti-feminist leaders worldwide who are basically capitalizing on the fact that between men and women, particularly what we see this when it comes to young men versus young women, there is a real disparity in attitudes towards feminism. And we see this in the U.S. context too where almost half of young Democratic men in a recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2022 showed that nearly half of Democratic men believed, when they were young, that feminism was a backward step and that it was a mistake and a negative for society. And that is in marked contrast to women's attitudes where young women, it was less than a quarter who said that. And we also see that these attitudes are very common -- more common, unsurprisingly, in young Republican men and to some extent, women. MARTIN: Why do you say unsurprisingly? MANNE: Well, I do think that anti-feminism and conservatism are in lockstep, partly because conservative ideology is often invested in patriarchal roles and expectations being maintained, particularly for people who are also invested in white supremacy and racist ideals and values being promulgated and maintained in society. We're seeing a lot of feminist social progress. We're seeing women educated in record numbers, and women being able to achieve positions of power and prestige and leadership and having a voice in new ways, we're seeing women tell their stories as in the MeToo movement in ways that are unapologetic and unashamed. But it's not in spite of that, but I think precisely because of that we also simultaneously see anti-feminist backlash where patriarchal forces are trying to re-entrench and re-establish the status quo, and that you often see people who are influenced by those social forces being caught in the grip of misogynist ideologies, and also those misogynistic ideologies being used and exploited to elect certain people who are anti-feminist positions of power worldwide. MARTIN: What do you think would make a difference? MANNE: So, I think we have to go right to the root of it and really start with education. Parents and educators need to be teaching people in general, children in general, but young boys in particular, that they are not entitled to social and sexual services from girls and women, and that they need to be obligated to other people and reciprocating forms of care that we all owe to each other, but not because of our gender, rather, just because we're decent human beings. I think we need to address intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and also forms of incel ideology in our education systems. And I think that there is a real call for not just teaching the nuts and bolts of sex, but also what coercive and misogynistic sexual practices look like. One example of this is there has been an alarming rise as a recent New York Times report by Peggy Orenstein showed in the rates of strangulation by men upon women during sexual encounters, and that is not a safe practice from the perspective of brain health. So, we need to be teaching young people that this is not a sexual practice that is safe. And it is one that is rooted in a form of domination and control that is deeply misogynistic. I think that some of the answers also have to do with having better mental health care available for victims recovering from these kinds of assaults and traumas and even just the everyday weathering that we suffer as the result of street harassment. And also, yes, potential perpetrators also need access to better mental health care in America and Australia alike. April 26th, 2024 1:45 PM Alex Christy 283918 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/tom-olohan/2024/04/26/dan-schneider-facebook-election-interference-98-firepower MRC Free Speech Vice President Dan Schneider went after Facebook for not only repeatedly engaging in election interference but also for relentlessly censoring conservatives.  During the April 24 edition of WJLA-TV’s The National Desk, Schneider hammered this point again. “Basically, 98% of the firepower is directed to conservatives,” he said. “There are instances where Facebook has taken down liberals. But typically, those liberals are either in opposition to Joe Biden, you know, like RFK Jr., or else they were in opposition to Facebook itself.” The April 23 MRC Special Report by MRC Assistant Editor Gabriela Pariseau and Schneider compiled 39 examples of Facebook interfering in American elections. As Schneider mentioned, the vast majority of these cases targeted conservatives, repeatedly censoring Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races across the country.  READ IT: 39 Times Facebook Interfered in US Elections Since 2008 Schneider alluded to this point in reference to Facebook’s censorship of criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the fall of the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. Schneider suggested that in this case Facebook was “trying to help Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the same time.” Facebook censorship of the left largely targeted the opponents of Democrats in power. For example, Facebook acted against supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016; and against Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in this election cycle.   The Daily Wire host Michael Knowles also addressed the “really good” MRC Special Report on the April 25 edition of The Michael Knowles Show. After reading examples from the report, Knowles agreed with its assessment of Facebook censorship and Schneider’s point about Facebook protecting the liberal establishment.  “Facebook censored Bernie Sanders—then, you know something of a real challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president—just censored him outright, censored conservative topics and news,” Knowles said. “We experienced this, I saw this part really first hand, and it not only hurt conservatives, it hurt any opponent to the liberal establishment, including Bernie Sanders.”  .@theMRC is giving us the goods! According to their new study, Facebook has interfered in elections 39 times since 2008. Power doesn't go away. When we limit what governments and candidates can do, power goes to private corporations and super PACs. pic.twitter.com/iO1mGOjZqB — The Michael Knowles Show (@MKnowlesShow) April 25, 2024 Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 26th, 2024 1:44 PM Tom Olohan 283919 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/26/networks-ignore-columbia-camp-leaders-blood-thirsty-rant All week, the Big Three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have been trying to gaslight Americans into believing that the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas encampments sprouting up like weeds across the country were peaceful gatherings where nothing bad was going on. But video resurfaced of the leader of the Columbia University encampment going on a blood-thirsty diatribe where he called for the murder of Jews. Between their morning and evening newscasts, the Big Three dedicated a whopping ZERO minutes and ZERO seconds to the story. While the networks all acknowledged that Columbia University was the “epicenter” of the current encampment trend to support Hamas (they’d falsely label the students as just “pro-Palestinian”), they didn’t want to put a spotlight on the camp’s dangerous leader Khymani James.   Meet Khymani James, a student leader of Columbia University’s anti-Israel Gaza Solidarity Encampment who openly states that "Zionists don’t deserve to live" He made the comments during a meeting with the school that he live-streamed. We put together the highlights: pic.twitter.com/JFlxnRkNC2 — Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) April 25, 2024   The video in question came from a live-stream James did of a months-ago hearing he had with Columbia’s Center for Student Success and Intervention about his disturbing conduct. In the interview, James proudly announced he felt “very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die.” He also enthusiastically declared that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and he was willing to kill them with his bare hands: These were masters who were white supremacists. What is a Zionist? A white supremacist. So let’s be very clear here, I’m not saying that I’m going to go out and start killing Zionists. What I am saying is that if an individual who identifies as a Zionist threatens my physical safety in person, i.e., puts their hands on me, I am going to defend myself and in that case scenario, it may come to a point where I don’t know when to stop. “Zionists don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone Zionists don’t deserve to live…Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists,” he added. The hearing was in regard to an Instagram post in which James talked about meeting up with Zionists to fight and how “I fight to k***.” Despite these threats, Columbia decided against further disciplinary actions. Instead of reporting on James during Friday’s Today show, correspondent Emilie Ikeda scoffed at the idea that anti-Semitic rhetoric was a staple of the encampments. “But what protesters are defending as free speech, some Jewish students call hate speech,” she downplayed the intent of students like James.     Ikeda actually feared for the Columbia encampment: “And overnight at the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Columbia University ramping up security. As counter-protests from outside groups March near campus, demonstrators clashing on campus.” While the liberal broadcast networks were ignoring the blood-thirsty Columbia leader, NewsNation’s Leland Vittert was exposing him to the world during On Balance throughout the week. In addition to sharing part of James’s rant to Columbia’s conduct board, Vittert unearthed audio of him defending his racism against white people.   A couple of nights ago, Vittert also exposed James's racism against white people. "I too hate white people," he proclaimed while defending what he was saying. pic.twitter.com/IYSic7iD6q — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 26, 2024   This was the biggest story to rock the Columbia encampment, but CBS couldn’t even be bothered to write a story for their website. Instead, they wrote one boasting about the students “filed a federal civil rights complaint against the school, accusing the university of discriminating against Palestinian students and pro-Palestinian protesters.” Meanwhile, there’s a video of James infringing on the free-speech rights of pro-Israel counter-protesters by rallying his pro-Hamas ilk to run them out of campus. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: NBC’s Today April 26, 2024 8:10:21 a.m. Eastern (…) EMILIE IKEDA: But what protesters are defending as free speech, some Jewish students call hate speech. JEWISH STUDENT: Freedom of speech is very important, and I'm very for that, but I think [Transition] there's a point where the university itself has a duty to protect all of its students, including the Jewish ones. IKEDA: And overnight at the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Columbia University ramping up security. As counter-protests from outside groups March near campus, demonstrators clashing on campus. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 1: You guys should be sent back to Europe. IKEDA: The clock is ticking on negotiations with students on site of the encampment, though with no clear deadline from the university. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 2: I'm absolutely worried what happens at the university brings in the NYPD, it's going to change the university forever. [Cuts back to live] IKEDA: And it does appear Columbia University is still preparing to hold its graduation scheduled to happen in less than three weeks. Walking around campus you'll see stacks of chairs, signs, bleachers, but many of the students I talked to are doubtful it will actually happen. A sore point for some, part of a class that graduated high school four years ago in 2020, that also cancelled by the pandemic. April 26th, 2024 1:03 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283917 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/26/ex-nbc-disinformation-reporter-new-ceo-onion No, that headline is not satire. Ex-NBC disinformation reporter Ben Collins announced on his Twitter account on Thursday that he is the new CEO of The Onion. It’s a fitting end for both parties as they tailspin into the depths of bitter politics. Before he was suspended by NBC for having an unprofessional obsession with Elon Musk, he was on the network’s disinformation and extremism beat, which was exclusively focused on the right side of the political spectrum. Collins’s shtick was to find the most outrageous things coming from the internet and pretend that they represented all conservatives. For example, he declared that Kanye West’s anti-Semitism was within the Republican Party’s Overton Window.   NEWS: My friends and I now own and run The Onion. I’ll be the CEO. We’re keeping the entire staff, bringing back The Onion News Network, and share the wealth with staff. Basically, we’re going to let them do whatever they want. Get excited.https://t.co/CQtWzFHn4A — Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2024   He also claimed ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s plagiarism scandal was no big deal because the people most likely to talk about it were conservatives, that the opposition to Critical Race Theory is made up to scare people into voting for Republicans, and falsely blamed Fox News for spreading conspiracy theories about the 2019 fire at the Notre Dame cathedral. Now, he’s going to be the CEO of a dying satirical website. To that end, Collins and his business partners have been tweeting and urging people to donate $1 to help rescue the site.   Pitch in your $1 here:https://t.co/IAHe5uoINv — Jeff Lawson (@jeffiel) April 26, 2024   After 9/11, The Onion made it okay for Americans to laugh again by making fun of the hijackers by reporting that they were surprised to find themselves in hell. Now, The Onion has devolved into essentially terrorist propaganda as it bitterly runs story after story after story after story after story after story after story, with borderline blood libel claims that Israel is some sort of death-loving nation intent on wiping out the Palestinians and Americans simply don’t care. Additionally, The Onion agrees with Collins on Gay and CRT. Collins made his name defending social media censorship as necessary to combat fake news and disinformation. Some of Facebook’s fact-checking partners still do not have satire labels and now Collins is going to the country’s predominant left-wing humor/fake news websites. Behind the joke, there is an argument being made and based on both their histories, The Onion is about to become more insufferable just when nobody thought that was even possible. April 26th, 2024 11:37 AM Alex Christy 283916 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/tierin-rose-mandelburg/2024/04/26/calif-teacher-pleads-no-contest-raping-14-year-old Michelle Solis, 46, pled no contest after being accused of raping a 14-year-old student on the child’s eighth grade graduation day in 2021. A press release from District Attorney Mike Ramsey indicated that Solis, who was a 20-year veteran educator, raped the 14-year-old inside a locked classroom on graduation day, Daily Mail reported. Solis also allegedly sent explicit photos to the boy which “made their way back to local parents," facilitating the investigation by police. Solis, who was the boy’s teacher at the middle school, “friended” him on Instagram a few weeks prior to his graduation. Records indicate that was the start of her inappropriate relationship in which she allegedly sent him four inappropriate images. Then, on the day of his graduation from Sycamore Junior High School in northern California, she raped him. That seems like a horrible graduation gift if you ask me. Solis was arrested last November and released on $15,000 bail. She’s technically free right now until her sentencing hearing, scheduled for June 6. As part of the agreement and her no contest plea, “she agreed to register as a sex offender.” It’s likely that she’ll only face as much as four years in state prison. Unfortunately, Solis’ case isn’t rare and is part of an ongoing trend of female teachers raping their students. In March, a Texas teacher faced a series of grooming and sexual assault charges that could involve up to 12 young boys. Reports indicate that she bought young boys vaping accessories, got them intoxicated and then raped them. To add to the story, after resigning as a science teacher, the woman told officials she was pregnant. In February, a 24-year-old teacher from Minnesota admitted to having sex with one of her 18-year-old students. Since she lived with her parents, the teacher admitted to bringing the student to a hotel room a “handful” of times for sex. Additionally in February, a 25-year-old teacher from the Richmond, Va. area pled guilty to four counts of carnal knowledge and one count of indecent liberties of a minor. She engaged in sexual relations with her 14-year-old student, sneaking into his home and into his bed to rape him. Sadly, those are just a few of the recent examples of how absolutely out of touch with reality these teachers are. It’s heartbreaking to see that their delusional sense of what they consider appropriate behavior is harming countless innocent children in these ways. If you needed another reason to homeschool, this would be a good one to consider. April 26th, 2024 11:04 AM Tierin-Rose Mandelburg 283915 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/26/daily-show-tells-netanyahu-campus-encampments-are-his-fault Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the anti-Semitism at multiple encampments on college campuses across the United States and that did not sit well with Comedy Central’s temporary co-hosts of The Daily Show, Jordan Klepper and Ronny Chieng on Thursday. Conceding there are “plenty of bad actors,” the duo argued that the encampments are Netanyahu’s fault because of “Israel’s disproportionate use of force.” After playing clips of Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Josh Hawley calling for the National Guard to break up the encampments, Klepper teed up a clip of Netanyahu, “Honestly, I can't think of anybody worse to give their opinion on how to protest the war in Gaza. Well, there is one guy.”     In the clip, Netanyahu declared that “what’s happening in America's college campuses is horrific. Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over a leading university. [jump cut] It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped.” The protests are ostensibly about Netanyahu and his country’s policies. In reality, many of the demonstrators are protesting his country’s existence, but either way, of course, the leader of the Jewish State is going to have thoughts about these people. Nevertheless, Klepper responded, “Oh, thanks for taking the time to give your feedback, Benjamin Netanyahu! Is there nothing else going on with you?” Chieng followed by starting the blame game, “Yeah, I know, this guy is like, ‘The situation in U.S. college campuses is unacceptable, do you see how the buildings are not rubble? I am disgusted!’" Klepper was happy to play along, “Here's the point: there’s a lot of noise and plenty of bad actors, but fundamentally, what's driving these protests is anger over Israel's disproportionate use of force. So before we respond to the protests with disproportionate force, maybe we should listen to what they have to say, and then, if we still don't agree with the students, then we can send in the college improv troupe.” If you are someone who simply has genuinely heartfelt, but nevertheless wrong-headed ideas about how a ceasefire is needed to end suffering and pursue a two-state solution, then why are you at a protest movement led by people who do not support such a policy? The point where the naïve among the protesters should have disassociated themselves from the “plenty of bad actors” has long since passed.  Here is a transcript for the April 25 show: Comedy Central The Daily Show 4/25/2024 11:17 PM ET JORDAN KLEPPER: Honestly, I can't think of anybody worse to give their opinion on how to protest the war in Gaza. Well, there is one guy. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: What’s happening in America's college campuses is horrific. Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over a leading university [jump cut] it’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. KLEPPER: Oh, thanks for taking the time to give your feedback, Benjamin Netanyahu! Is there nothing else going on with you?  RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, I know, this guy is like "The situation in U.S. college campuses is unacceptable, do you see how the buildings are not rubble? I am disgusted!" KLEPPER: Here's the point: there’s a lot of noise and plenty of bad actors, but fundamentally, what's driving these protests is anger over Israel's disproportionate use of force. So before we respond to the protests with disproportionate force, maybe we should listen to what they have to say, and then, if we still don't agree with the students, then we can send in the college improv troupe. April 26th, 2024 9:57 AM Alex Christy 283914 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/26/column-leftist-reporters-pretend-theyre-not-partisan-news-squashers Eight years ago, the leftist media took great offense to being dismissed by Donald Trump as “fake news,” but they never seemed to grasp this is exactly how they painted the conservative media, as truth-defying propaganda outlets. When the Trump trial turned to the National Enquirer, we could find national unity that the Enquirer defines “fake news.” The lefties are very excited to remind voters how the Enquirer was a Trump-allied tabloid full of garbage stories. But the liberal media spread some of them. In May 2016, the Enquirer uncorked some garbage that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had cheated on his wife. ABC, CBS, and NBC spent a combined 15 and a half minutes spreading the word of this character assassination campaign. The pro-Biden “media reporters” are still upset this week about the Enquirer and how they played “catch and kill” with Trump accusers, squelching stories that might embarrass Trump. NPR’s David Folkenflik complained to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that burying salacious stories is “not a journalistic impulse, it's not even a tabloid gossip impulse, this is essentially a partisan or propagandistic arm of the Trump campaign in all but name." This is coming from NPR, which aggressively trashed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “pure distraction.” Folkenflik engaged with the story only to dismiss it as “a story marked more by red flags than investigative rigor." When The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories acknowledging Hunter’s laptop was real in March and April of 2022, Folkenflik didn’t file a story with his regrets. He just kept attacking Fox News, his usual bread and butter. So on the Hunter laptop, we can throw it back in Folkenflik’s face – NPR’s suppression was not a journalistic impulse, and NPR was essentially a propagandistic arm of the Biden campaign in all but name. Worse yet, we fund it with our taxes. That gravy train should end. Ex-CNN reporter Brian Stelter said the same thing on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show about the Enquirer: “It has nothing to do with journalism.” David Pecker’s “not a news man. He’s an advertiser! He’s a marketer, and his product was Donald Trump.” Thanks, Sherlock Stelter. Nobody should define Mr. Pecker as a news man. Like Folkenflik, Stelter squashed the Hunter Biden laptop in 2020 as a Murdoch plot, or as a Russian disinformation campaign, because CNN’s a marketer and its product was anyone but Trump (meaning Joe Biden). Stelter also showed up on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show. Wagner was hopping mad, asking what’s the point of a gag order on Trump when you have a “media-industrial complex that is effectively acting as a public defense line” for Trump? Once again, Wagner can’t imagine MSNBC acting as a “media-industrial complex” for the Democrats. So does Wagner wish the judge could issue a gag order for the entire conservative media landscape? No criticism allowed of the get-Trump prosecutors and judge? I thought this was a democracy. Stelter broke out the usual bravado that the liberals live on “Earth One,” and they must see what’s happening on “Earth Two,” which is an alternative universe of hallucinations. Stelter claimed “For Jesse Watters, Trump is God, and that is the programming every hour of every day on these other networks.” That sounds like some crazy religion. Would Stelter survive a little fact check on whether Fox and Newsmax perpetually pray hourly to the Orange Lord and Savior? Both sides suggest the other side of the media is fake. But both sides are slinging a lot of opinionated hot takes, and Stelter can certainly flip a flapjack on that skillet. April 26th, 2024 6:01 AM Tim Graham 283910 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/stephanie-hamill/2024/04/26/mrcs-hamill-blasts-msnbc-over-john-legend-interview-lies-about MRC contributing writer Stephanie Hamill was a guest on Tuesday’s The Balance on Newsmax with host Eric Bolling where they examined a recent interview of singer John Legend with host Jen Psaki on MSNBC, where he accused former President Donald Trump of ‘being racist to his core’  –– this of course without any real evidence.  Legend's commentary was met with no push back or further questions. Instead, Psaki appeared to just shake her head in agreement.  Hamill: When it comes to Donald Trump, I mean the Hollywood people don't like him because of his politics. They all sing the same tune and use the same regurgitated talking points, –– which is exactly what he's doing. MSNBC brought him on for a purpose, which is, Biden is doing so poorly in the polls, they're rolling out the Hollywood people to try to help boost him. But as we saw in 2016, that actually didn't really get Hillary Clinton over the finish line, if you will. So many Americans are tired of these Hollywood people lecturing us on how to vote. But then they come out and just, you know, roll out all these blatant lies. You have to wonder where the fact checkers are on this.    April 26th, 2024 5:43 AM Stephanie Hamill 283907 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/dawn-slusher/2024/04/26/cbss-fbi-most-wanted-pushes-anti-capital-punishment-agenda With pro-abortion propaganda so heavily pushed in Hollywood since Roe’s overturning, it’s been awhile since they took on another important pro-life issue, the death penalty. But that changed on the latest episode of FBI: Most Wanted when they made their position quite obvious with their usual tactic of heavily dramatizing the rarest cases to play on viewers’ heartstrings. As a pro-life, Christian conservative, I am conflicted on the issue. Capital punishment was permitted in the Bible, and I understand it can be a strong deterrent, thus saving lives. Murderers aren’t innocent like pre-born babies, either. They make a conscious decision to risk their life via the death penalty when they take a life. However, as demonstrated in the episode “Bonne Terre,” there are instances when innocent people are killed. Though rare, it’s still concerning, because even one innocent life ended is one too many.   Not surprisingly, the show made it into a right versus left issue, stating Missouri is a “conservative state.” So, of course the judges haven’t cared that Emmett (Benny Elledge), the man falsely convicted, has a limited mental capacity due to a traumatic brain injury and recanted his coerced confession made without a lawyer present. His new lawyer Abby (Susan Misner) explains the dire situation to FBI agents Remy (Dylan McDermott) and Hana (Keisha Castle-Hughes) who are working to solve three new murders possibly connected to Emmett’s case: Remy: What can you tell us about 'em? Abby: Um, well, this is Tina on the left. And that's Ashley. She lost a part of her leg in a skiing accident when she was in high school. They were both seniors at Thornton. Remy: How were they murdered? Abby: Well, the girls had a party at their house one night, and about a dozen boys showed up. There was lots of drinking, and the party broke up around midnight. Later that night, someone came back and abducted and killed them both. Hana: Your client. Abby: So they say. Emmett was the landlord's handyman. So, he knew the girls well. He was around the house a lot. He bought them the alcohol. He even drank with them for a while. His DNA was on Tina when they found her. Remy: What about Ashley? Abby: Ashley's body was never recovered. Hana: So how did they convict him of her murder? Abby: Because Emmett confessed, allegedly. Remy: Was he coerced? Abby: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. He got hit in the head when he was 16. He has a limited mental capacity. He had no lawyer. He was scared. He was willing to say whatever those detectives wanted for an orange soda and a ham sandwich. Remy: Did this come out in trial? Abby: Not as much as it should have. I mean, he had a public defender. Emmett later recanted, which is when I took the case. And I have been making the mental defect and coercion arguments on appeal for seven years. But Missouri is a really conservative state. And no one will listen. His execution is set for tomorrow. Remy: Tomorrow? Abby: Yeah. 6:00 P.M. Hana: Well, that's 26 hours from now. Even AI notices the agenda, as the system the MRC uses automatically suggested the title, “Murder and Injustice in a Conservative State” for this clip. With time running out, Hana rushes to find more evidence in the hopes of proving Emmett’s innocence. Abby and Remy stay back with Emmett, whose child-like demeanor makes him a very sympathetic character - propaganda at its finest: Remy: Do you know what's happening, Emmett? Emmett: Yeah. They denied my appeal again. Remy: I mean what's happening... Next? Emmett: Why do we kill people to prove that it's wrong to kill people? I read that on a bumper sticker once. Remy: Except you didn't kill anyone, right? Emmett: No. I didn't. Ashley and Tina were my friends. They liked me. Abby: Yeah. Guard: It's time. Emmett: I thought you said it was at 6:00? Abby: It is. We just have to take a short ride to another prison in Bonne Terre. Emmett: That's where they put me to sleep? Okay. I'm ready. I’m sure the writers thought viewers would marvel over the “profound” quote and maybe even be swayed to become anti-capital punishment if they weren’t already. Except the point of the death penalty isn’t to prove anything. It’s to deter people from committing murder and to provide justice for victims. Despite finding mountains of evidence proving Emmett’s innocence, including capturing the real killer Curt Rowan (Nicholas Michael McGovern) and finding the second body which has foreign DNA inside of it that doesn’t match Emmett’s, the judge still refuses to stay his execution. Of course. Dang those mean, old conservatives! In an unexpected turn, however, the show portrayed a Catholic priest positively and handled the quoting of Scripture respectfully. Quite shocking considering Hollywood’s long record of bashing Christians and Christianity: Priest: This is not the end of your journey, but the beginning. You're on this journey to meet your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Emmett: So, God will save me? Priest: Have you accepted him in your heart? Emmett: I have. Priest: Then God will save you. Warden: I need you to change into these, Emmett. Emmett: Diapers. What are these for? I don't have to go to the bathroom. Abby: It's just something they make you do, Emmett, okay? We'll give you your privacy. Remy: Barnes, tell me you have him. Barnes: We do, but he's asked for a lawyer. Remy: The execution is happening. Barnes: He does not care. Remy: Jab a swab down his throat and get his DNA to the lab right away. Barnes: ERT's on their way with a kit. They're minutes away. Remy: We don't have minutes. They're about to walk him into the death chamber. Remy: We're doing the best we can, Remy. Wait a second. I see them. They're pulling in now. Remy: Tell them to hurry. Emmett: I thought you said God would save me. Priest: It's okay, Emmett. Have faith. Emmett: What are you doing? Ow. Ow! Priest: God is calling you home, son. Tech: I'm going to try the other arm. Emmett: Uh, that hurts. You're hurting me. Priest: Remember what we talked about? That Bible verse? Emmett: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall… Both: Want not. Emmett: He restores my soul. He leads me through paths of righteousness. Ow! Perhaps Hollywood is hoping to appeal to Christians who support the death penalty, so they were smart enough not to offend them this time. After failing to place an IV in Emmett because his veins are small and difficult, the warden announces they’re doing a “cutdown” procedure, seemingly without anesthesia. The procedure makes Emmett scream even louder in agony and fear as his mother and a sister to one of the victims wait with frustration in the gallery: Victim’s Sister: It's been 47 minutes. Why aren't they opening the curtain? Emmett’s Mother: Something's wrong. They can't do this to my boy. It's not right. Victim’s Sister: It's called justice. After what he did to my sister, I hope it takes forever. Let him feel the pain. Abby: Anything? Remy: ERT has Rowan's DNA typed. They're waiting for the lab to match it against the foreign DNA in question. What's happening here? Abby: I'm not sure. Oh, Warden, what is happening? Warden: We can't find a vein. I've asked for a cutdown. Remy: What? Warden: It's a simple medical procedure. Abby: No, that is not true. It is not. Warden: Step back, please. Doctor: Here you are, Warden. Remy: Wait, you're gonna cut him open? Warden: It's protocol, Agent Scott. Abby: Is he gonna have an anesthetic? Warden: Please, just take a seat in the gallery. All right? The fight is over. Remy: No, it's not. Warden: I've got to do my job. When Rowan’s DNA comes back as matching the foreign DNA in the second victim, Remy and Abby call the governor to appeal for clemency: Remy: He kept her prosthetic as a trophy of his kill. And we just got confirmation that his DNA is a 100% match to the unidentified DNA in Tina Adams' body. Rowan killed those girls. Not Emmett Allen. Abby: Ashley and Tina were innocent victims. Please just don't let another innocent person die. Governor: I have to admit, I'm no longer fully convinced of Emmett Allen's guilt. Let me speak with Warden Nesbit. Halt the execution. Warden: Are you sure, sir? Governor: We'll explore clemency in later hearings. I'm sure Emmett's lawyer will waste no time filing a motion. Abby: Yes, sir. And thank you. Warden: Get him up. Bring in that microphone. Get ready to open the curtain. The governor has granted clemency. The execution is off. Remy: See? Mother: Oh, my God! Thank you, God, for my baby's life. Oh, and you too, of course. Of course. Emmett: I love you, Mama. Mother: Oh, I love you, too, my baby boy. As a mom of a grown son who will always be my baby boy, I have to admit that scene hit hard. That’s what Hollywood’s “propaganda machine” is supposed to do. However, since innocent people have been wrongly executed, it’s a valid concern. It just would be nice if Hollywood would entertain without politics. But we all know that’s a lost cause. Kudos, though, for showing that prayers can be answered miraculously just when we least expect it. But don’t think Christians will soon forget how they’ve been treated by Hollywood. April 26th, 2024 4:48 AM Dawn Slusher 283913 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2024/04/26/networks-omit-removal-secret-service-agent-vp-harriss-detail Yet another major scandal is swirling around the Secret Service. This time, a member of Vice President Kamala Harris’ protective detail was removed due to an incident including what appears to be an apparently violent mental health episode. But none of the evening network newscasts picked the story up. Per CBS News: Washington — A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris exhibited "distressing behavior" Monday morning at Joint Base Andrews and was hospitalized, authorities said. Harris was not present at the airbase at the time. In a statement provided to CBS News, the U.S. Secret Service said that at about 9 a.m. local time Monday, the agent "began displaying behavior their colleagues found distressing. The agent was removed from their assignment while medical personnel were summoned." Two sources briefed on the situation told CBS News the agent spouted gibberish, was speaking incoherently and provoked another officer physically. According to sources, the agent in question pushed the special agent in charge while they were near the lounge of Joint Base Andrews. Harris was at the Naval Observatory at the time, USSS said, and the incident had "no impact on her departure from Joint Base Andrews." Sources said it occurred about one hour before Harris arrived at the airbase for a flight to Wisconsin. The Secret Service has not been without problems, going back to the Obama years and the scandal involving agents carousing with prostitutes in Colombia. Since then, agents have been successful in avoiding overseas prostitutes. Unfortunately, they’ve been unsuccessful in avoiding President Biden’s dogs and their teeth.  This more recent scandal involving the meltdown of an agent on the Vice President’s detail goes beyond the facts of what happened on Monday at Joint Base Andrews. Per Real Clear Politics: An incident involving a physical attack by a female Secret Service agent tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris is raising questions about whether the agency had thoroughly vetted her during her hiring and whether an ongoing push to increase the numbers of women in the service and boost overall workforce staff played a role in her selection.   It appears that the Secret Service signed on to an initiative to ensure that the agency is no less than 30% female. There are now very serious questions over whether this particular agent, a former law enforcement officer with a very questionable shooting on her record, should’ve even been in the Secret Service to begin with.  This isn’t just a scandal about a Secret Service agent having a meltdown but is now about DEI, and whether self-imposed diversity mandates at the Secret Service could have potentially placed the Vice President’s life at risk. And that’s the reason why this story, so far, has gone entirely unreported on the major evening network newscasts. But we'll be watching. April 26th, 2024 12:28 AM Jorge Bonilla 283912 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2024/04/25/purest-victim-nbc-absolves-biden-role-current-inflation We’ve often said that the Regime Media, often cast President Joe Biden as the truest, purest victim of whatever calamity they happen to be reporting on. And so it is with inflation, which is at or near the top of the list of voter concerns ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Here is how NBC Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander began his report on inflation: PETER ALEXANDER: Tonight after more than a year and a half of strong spending, some of the steam is now coming out of the economy. The GDP rate slowing to 1.6% in the first three months of this year. Well below expectations. STEVE LEISMAN: What it means is that the core of the economy, business and consumer spending, is doing just fine. Inflation numbers, they are not fine. ALEXANDER: Inflation, while down from 40-year highs just a couple of years ago remains stubborn. Those consumer prices we all pay, up nearly 3.5% a bigger jump than just three months ago. This perfectly sums up the report inasmuch as it throws out a lot of figures but does not assign responsibility. There is no explanation of HOW things got to where they are- only commiseration over these things that seem to have randomly happened. There is the lamentation over the slowing of the economy, but no explanation as to why there is a slowing. There is the interview fragment with the registered dietitian mom who deals with high food prices by limiting herself to two grocery bags. But again, there is no explanation as to HOW food got so expensive. Nor is there any discussion of how a dietitian gets to the point of creating a hard “two bags” rule due to high food prices. The report closes out with both a weird non-sequitur about families going on vacation despite inflation, and dismay over the effects of persistent inflation upon the Fed rate cuts everybody was hyping just a few months ago. This story, unlike the recent CBS story over “sticker shock”, acknowledges the existence of President Biden. But it is only to cast him as the purest and cleanest victim of inflation- as opposed to its chief instigator. If it weren’t for Regime Media, we’d have none at all. Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on NBC Nightly News on Thursday, April 25th, 2024: LESTER HOLT: New evidence about how the high prices we’re still paying for so many things are slowing down the economy, while President Biden tries to maintain a positive message. Peter Alexander now with the latest. PETER ALEXANDER: Tonight after more than a year and a half of strong spending, some of the steam is now coming out of the economy. The GDP rate slowing to 1.6% in the first three months of this year. Well below expectations. STEVE LEISMAN: What it means is that the core of the economy, business and consumer spending, is doing just fine. Inflation numbers, they are not fine. ALEXANDER: Inflation, while down from 40-year highs just a couple of years ago remains stubborn. Those consumer prices we all pay, up nearly 3.5% a bigger jump than just three months ago. Taking its toll on Christy Coughlin and her family in Bend, Oregon.  You're a registered dietitian. Food is your life. So how have your grocery shopping habits changed? CHRISTY COUGHLIN: We decided to use the one bag rule or two bags….both filled up. And once those bags are full, we'll walk out. It really eliminates impulse buys. ALEXANDER: In Syracuse, New York today, President Biden optimistic about the economy. JOE BIDEN: America manufacturing is back. That’s what it is- it's a comeback story creating new jobs, new businesses, new hope. ALEXANDER: But with most Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy, the president has some convincing to do before the election this fall. Still, as summer comes, despite higher costs, Americans are willing to spend to get away. At Dollywood theme parks in Tennessee, they're on pace to surpass last year's record attendance. American families booking further in advance and coming from farther away. These latest figures complicate the Fed's decision about when it could finally cut interest rates, reinforcing concerns that borrowing costs for consumers and businesses could stay higher for longer. Lester. HOLT: All right, Peter Alexander at The White House. Thank you.   April 25th, 2024 11:22 PM Jorge Bonilla 283911 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2024/04/25/everyone-point-and-laugh-team-biden-hating-nyt-not-being-liberal In need of a laugh? Check out this unintentionally comical story running 3,850 words from Thursday in Politico about the Biden regime’s apparently disgust with The New York Times: “The Petty Feud Between the NYT and the White House; Biden’s people think they’re ‘entitled.’ The Times says ‘they’re not being realistic.’” In short, Politico’s Eli Stokols revealed the Biden campaign and White House are up in arms with The Times for being what they’ve come to believe are insufficiently loyal to The Cause of liberalism and not antagonistic enough toward Donald Trump given democracy supposedly being on the line in November. The comical tale of liberal eating themselves began with a seemingly innocuous mix-up between a Times reporter not on the White House beat being unaware with how to attribute quotes from a junior White House press aide becoming a hissy fit that resulted in the Times temporarily being kicked off the administration’s “‘tier one’ email list for background information about various briefings and other materials”. “Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president,” Stokols explained. Stokols further summarized his tome as based on “interviews with two dozen people on both sides” about “the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives” that’s become “remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust.” Here came the first of many laughers as Stokols proclaimed that “the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience — and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work.” Biden? “[W]orking-class sense of himself”? Please. Not surprisingly, Team Biden must think they’re owed Obama-like snuff pieces seeing as how, in their mind, The Times has “fall[en] short in a make-or-break moment for American democracy, stubbornly refusing to adjust its coverage” away from “impartial neutrality, often blurring the asymmetries between former President Donald Trump and Biden when it comes to their perceived flaws” when America itself is at stake. Stokols further explained with more hilarious prose and revealed the resentment dates back to Biden not being The Times’s preferred candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary (click “expand”): Biden aides largely view the election as an existential choice for the country, high stakes that they believe justify tougher tactics toward the Times and the press as a whole. Some Times reporters have found themselves cut off by sources after publishing pieces the Bidens and top aides didn’t like. Columnist Maureen Dowd, for example, complained to colleagues that she stopped hearing from White House officials after a column on Hunter Biden. For many Times veterans, such actions suggest that the Trump era has warped many Democrats’ expectations of journalists. “They’re not being realistic about what we do for a living,” Bumiller told me. “You can be a force for democracy, liberal democracy. You don’t have to be a force for the Biden White House.” [A]ides to Biden...said they didn’t know anyone on the politics team well. “Unlike some outlets, the Times just never invested in a reporter who really knew and understood Biden and his appeal,” said one former campaign staffer. “And the coverage reflected that.” (....) While Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was gaining ground in early polls and enjoying positive early coverage, stories about Biden in the Times frequently depicted him as a relic, out of step with younger, more liberal primary voters and, following defeats in the early contests, poorly organized. Although it had nothing to do with the newsroom, the Opinion page’s double endorsement of Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota....helped cement Biden world’s view that the Times was out of touch with the broader electorate — an electorate personified by the Times security guard who gushed over Biden in the Times elevator as he was headed up for his interview with the editorial board. (....) Biden aides, who spent months privately imploring the paper’s editors and reporters not to write him off too early in the cycle, still hold a grudge under the belief that the paper was institutionally aligned toward Warren and progressives. Worse yet, Team Biden resented the fact that The Times would even acknowledge Hunter Biden’s life of ruin (even if they were part of the 2020 coverup of Hunter’s laptop). Stokols later pointed out The Times has “devoted pages of coverage to the president’s early legislative successes”, but none of that has mattered to the regime as a “focus on Biden’s advanced age and his low numbers in the NYT’s approval poll have frustrated the president and top aides to no end.” Once again, the White House is apparently gnashing its teeth over the paper even entertaining the slightest allusions to Biden’s age and other concerns or critiques because, in their eyes, their friends in the media should be wholly focused on the danger of Trump. In other words, stories like these, these, these, and these are verboten (despite stories like this one and this one that do what their elected overlords want). Along with those gripes, check out the hilarious quotes from two Times leaders about their supposed impartiality, including claims they “don’t” “put [our] thumb on the scale” and instead “hold power to account” everyday (click “expand”): The Times’ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, whose stories about Biden’s age have regularly strummed a particularly sensitive nerve, told me that the administration’s frustrations over his and his colleagues’ coverage wasn’t all that unique. “Every White House I’ve covered complains about our coverage. It comes with the territory,” he said. “But because of Trump, there’s this new assumption that the New York Times and other media are supposed to put their thumb on the scale and take sides and we don’t do that.” Privately, other Times reporters who have engaged with the Biden White House and campaign view the frustration with the paper as a misguided effort to control its coverage. Beyond that, they believe writing about Trump with the stronger language Biden aides seem to want would likely do more to affect the newspaper’s brand, and the public’s trust in it, than Trump’s. “We haven’t been tough enough on Trump? I mean, give me a break,” Bumiller responded when I asked about that oft-heard complaint. “Have they read our coverage? I don’t have to go through all the things we have covered on Trump so I just — we just do our jobs.” Still, the White House and campaign officials most incensed by the Times’ coverage often trace their outrage back to Trump, who they see as a true threat to American democracy and, by extension, a free press...[t]hey viewed the matter as bigger than their or even Biden’s self-interest, expressing aggravation over the Times’ determination to maintain its neutral voice of God approach to an election that, in their view, is a matter of democracy’s survival. When describing their grievances with the Times, almost every Biden administration and campaign official used the word “entitled” to characterize the institution writ large and several of the individuals within the newsroom, where “Timesian” is an adjective routinely deployed without irony. Those officials described reporters who refused to correct minor errors or mischaracterizations in stories or those who haven’t been willing to engage with anyone besides the most senior administration officials. That said, many White House officials maintain productive working relationships with most of the Times reporters who cover the beat. Bumiller and other Times White House reporters note that it’s always been the newspaper’s prerogative to determine what to cover and how. “This is pretty much par for the course,” Bumiller said. “No White House has ever been happy with our coverage and I don’t see why they should be. Our job is to hold power to account.” The end of Stokols’s piece revolved around a story in Semafor about off-the-record visits by news organizations to Biden’s reelection headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware to meet with staff and specifically that details of The Times’s visit leaked out. “Times reporters believe the leak had to have come from the campaign, the only ones who’d have had knowledge of all the meetings. And it led to conversations on the politics staff about whether to even engage with Wilmington in an off-the-record capacity. But campaign aides are certain the leak came from the Times side,” he explained. But the most public backlash to the piece on Thursday came from the other half of the piece, which alleged The Times’s coverage of Biden has been dictated by publisher AG Sulzberger’s annoyance with the President refusing to sit for an interview with Times reporters. On that, he would admittedly have a point as Biden has only given two print interviews thus far with one going to AP backscratcher Josh Boak and the other to his own personal biographer, Evan Osnos, to publish in The New Yorker. In response, multiple Times personalities have lashed out and denied these claims of retribution and a spokesperson sent out a lengthy statement pushing back. Go figure. April 25th, 2024 6:28 PM Curtis Houck 283908 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/25/abc-cbs-whine-about-schools-cracking-down-pro-hamas While NBC’s Today was praising the resolve of the anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas students encamped at Columbia University on Thursday, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings lamented that other schools were cracking down and forcefully removing the encampments. They were also dismayed by the hundreds of arrests that were made. “Now, to another tense day of protests over Israel's war in Gaza. Those protests taking place on college campuses now all across the country. From coast to coast, hundreds of people have been arrested in Massachusetts, Texas, and California,” decried CBS Mornings co-anchor Natalie Morales. Completely ignoring the video evidence of the crowd chanting their “love” of Hamas and the signs saying Jewish counter-protesters should be murdered, CBS correspondent Nancy Chen reported: “Here at Columbia University, students say their encampment is peaceful.” According to Chen, the police were the problem. “Overnight, chaos erupted as police tried to break up a pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson College in Boston,” she said. “On Wednesday, demonstrators clashed with school security at USC in Los Angeles after school police ordered students to move their encampment.” Chen also decried the rallies authorities were able to shut down. “By nighttime, police shut the gates to the school and pushed pro-Palestinian protesters out. Also on Wednesday, hundreds gathered at the University of Texas at Austin where they were met with a show of force, as well,” she lamented.     Over on Good Morning America, correspondent Trevor Ault also bemoaned the successful crackdowns. He huffed that “up to 100 protesters [were] arrested at Emerson College after they “attempt[ed] to form a human wall to stop police.” “Police at the University of Southern California arresting 93 people while removing tents and clearing protesters from a Gaza solidarity camp, one precinct now full of arrested protesters,” he noted. He reported that one of ABC’s reporters, Mireya Villareal, was caught up in the crackdown at the University of Texas at Austin where they “used horses to disperse crowds.” “A cameraman filming the demonstration, grabbed by police and thrown to the ground,” he added, editing out the part where the Fox 7 Austin cameraman named Carlos ran up and used his camera as a weapon to ram into an officer.   What NOT to do, as a member of the press: Ram a police officer with your camera.pic.twitter.com/V1iiEl7XKX — Bree A Dail (@breeadail) April 24, 2024   Ault didn’t seem to like that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) threatened to pull federal funding from the schools that were allowing anti-Semitism and threats to Jewish students, nor Johnson’s encouragement to bring in the National Guard: AULT: The Speaker telling our Linsey Davis schools could lose federal funding. JOHNSON: They've been camped on the campus. They are threatening people with their lives and they are preventing them from exercising their freedom. That's the limit. That's the line. [Cuts back to live] AULT: And Speaker Johnson even said it's possible they could call in the National Guard to these schools if needed. At least when Chen reported that Johnson had said Columbian had been “taken over by a radical and extreme ideology,” she admitted he was, “Citing several recent incidents of anti-Semitic language by protesters on and off campus.” The transcripts are below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s Good Morning America April 25, 2024 7:08:16 a.m. Eastern (…) TREVOR AULT: This morning the nationwide movement of campus demonstrations leading to sometimes violent. Overnight at Emerson College in Boston, protesters attempting to form a human wall to stop police moving in, up to 100 protesters arrested. Police at the University of Southern California arresting 93 people while removing tents and clearing protesters from a Gaza solidarity camp, one precinct now full of arrested protesters. These tense moments after a scuffle between officers in riot gear and a pro-Palestinian group, the university now closed to anyone but students. JAKE PUZEL (USC student): It makes me feel threatened and intimidated and I think the anti-Semitic rhetoric must be condemned by the university. AULT: An unauthorized protest breaking out at the University of Texas in Austin. Dozens arrested as officers used horses to disperse crowds. Some nearly crashing into our Mireya Villareal, who was on the scene. A camera man filming the demonstration, grabbed by police and thrown to the ground. Similar encampments springing up at Brown University and Harvard. And at Columbia, university officials extending a deadline to remove this large encampment to Thursday night as negotiations with students continue. SPOH ASKANASE (Pro-Hamas Barnard College student): Myself, my peer, my colleagues, my friend, we're not going to stop. We're not going to rest. We will stand here until the university divests from Israeli apartheid and their genocidal campaign in Gaza. AULT: House Speaker Mike Johnson visiting campus, criticizing school officials for allowing the continued demonstrations. SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We just can't allow this kind of hatred and anti-Semitism to flourish on our campuses. [Transition] They have chased down Jewish students. They have mocked them and reviled them. They have shouted racial epithets. AULT: The Speaker telling our Linsey Davis schools could lose federal funding. JOHNSON: They've been camped on the campus. They are threatening people with their lives and they are preventing them from exercising their freedom. That's the limit. That's the line. [Cuts back to live] AULT: And Speaker Johnson even said it's possible they could call in the National Guard to these schools if needed. (…) CBS Mornings April 25, 2024 7:07:47 a.m. Eastern NATALIE MORALES: Now, to another tense day of protests over Israel's war in Gaza. Those protests taking place on college campuses now all across the country. From coast to coast, hundreds of people have been arrested in Massachusetts, Texas, and California. Nancy Chen is at Columbia University once again for us. It has been a flashpoint there for more than a week now. Nancy, good morning. NANCY CHEN: Natalie, good morning to you. Here at Columbia University, students say their encampment is peaceful. Meantime, at colleges across the country it has been a very different picture over the past 24 hours. [Cuts to video] Overnight, chaos erupted as police tried to break up a pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson College in Boston. As the latest flashpoint in a growing movement at campuses nationwide protesting Israel's war in Gaza. On Wednesday, demonstrators clashed with school security at USC in Los Angeles after school police ordered students to move their encampment. RANDA SWEISS (Pro-Hamas protester): Both sides of my family were displaced from Palestine, and I'm here using my voice because my grandparents couldn't. CHEN: By nighttime, police shut the gates to the school and pushed pro-Palestinian protesters out. Also on Wednesday, hundreds gathered at the University of Texas at Austin where they were met with a show of force, as well. In New York, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was interrupted by loud booing during his visit to Columbia University. The epicenter of demonstrations calling for cutting all school financial ties to Israel and amnesty for students punished for participating in protests. He claimed the university is being taken over by a radical and extreme ideology. PRO-HAMAS ANTI-SEMITIC PROTESTER: Go back to Poland! CHEN: Citing several recent incidents of anti-Semitic language by protesters on and off campus. (…) April 25th, 2024 4:59 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283906 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/gabriela-pariseau/2024/04/25/mary-poppins-censorship-back-again The winds have unfortunately changed and brought the former director of the defunct Disinformation Governance Board back — and with her a new censorship organization. Nina Jankowicz, the self-proclaimed “Mary Poppins of disinformation,” announced her newest censorship venture, The American Sunlight Project. During an interview with CNN’s America’s Choice, Jankowicz described her group as “bipartisan” and “big tent,” claiming to “represent people on both sides of the political spectrum.” But as is often the case with these allegedly neutral censorship efforts that attack free speech, bipartisanship seems to be the spoonful of sugar that helps the bias go down. Apparently, nobody told Jankwicz that if you want to be considered “bipartisan,” maybe don’t attack Republicans and “conservative media,” calling them “extremists” in a welcome blog on your website. “Since April 2022, extremists have been running a campaign to undermine critical disinformation research ahead of the 2024 election and beyond,” the group wrote, linking to an article from The New York Times titled “How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation.” The group continued, “Encompassing elected officials, conservative media, attorneys, paid-for ‘journalists,’ and online influencers, the campaign has falsely claimed the Federal Government is overseeing a vast censorship regime in coordination with social media platforms, academic institutions, and civil society organizations.” The American Sunlight Project seems to be dismissing the very real concerns that came from The Twitter files and The Facebook Files, which showed executive branch agencies and non-profit groups pressuring Big Tech companies and their employees a censor posts. The new group even sent a carefully worded letter to the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government condemning the committee’s investigations into Big Tech-government collusion and calling for more transparency. Jankowicz has even repeatedly painted so-called “disinformation” researchers, censors really, as victims of government oversight and public criticism, and her new group is following suit. In its welcome blog, The American Sunlight Project even went so far as to call these researchers “canaries in the coal mine” who are being “snuffed out” and “intimidated” by the Select Subcommittee’s investigations. The group placed an emphasis on being not only bipartisan but also transparent. And yet when asked about her donors in an interview with The New York Times, Jankowicz kept her donors in the shadows and out of the “Sunlight.” Jankowicz was previously the director of the now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board, also known as the Ministry of Truth. She was criticized heavily in 2022 for her support of Twitter’s fact-checking program “Bird Watch” and “demoting content.” She also repeatedly framed, without evidence, the New York Post’‘s Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian propaganda. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 25th, 2024 4:04 PM Gabriela Pariseau 283905 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/tom-olohan/2024/04/25/cnn-gloats-over-biden-killing-us-energy-signals-end-coal The left’s cheerleaders at CNN had only good things to say about President Joe Biden’s latest anti-energy power grab.  During the April 25 edition of CNN News Central, CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir celebrated the impending demise of a major American energy source, enthusing, “This is really, really significant and essentially signals the end of coal as a power source in the United States.” Weir's upbeat reporting referred to the new EPA rules on coal and natural gas, which the Biden-led EPA announced on Thursday. Weir and CNN Anchor John Berman spent a segment discussing how the EPA’s rules would impact climate emissions. Yet, the CNN duo spent not a single second on how this might impact American jobs, energy independence, grid reliability or states and communities depend on coal revenue.  Although the EPA claimed the new rules were designed to avoid “disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity,” Weir admitted to CNN viewers that the coal industry did not have the technology to comply with these regulations. “Four new rule changes,” Weir said of the EPA announcement, “they also include cutting down on the neurotoxin Mercury … but the big one is this new rule that would require coal-fired plants to reduce 90% of their planet-cooking pollution and right now there's not really a technology capable of doing that.” He continued, “The industry has never really taken carbon capture and sequestration seriously in the United States, and so it will essentially push most of the remaining 200 or so coal-fired plants out of business—about a quarter of them are scheduled to retire anyway.”  The regulation also cracks down on new natural gas plants. This means that the Biden EPA is not only obliterating coal-fired power plants that many Americans depend on but also ensuring that the country can’t replace them with another cheap energy source.  Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) agreed that the rule was designed to kill the coal industry, but responded with the compassion entirely missing at CNN. “Electricity demand is soaring, but Biden's EPA is killing reliable electricity production,” he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). “EPA's new rule would kill coal powerplants - which produce 20% of US electricity - forcing dependence on unreliable wind & solar. This will destroy the American way of life & empower China.” CNN didn’t explore this angle nor did they provide suggestions on how to cheaply replace one-fifth of America's energy. Instead, Weir told Berman that “Republican governors and utility lobbies” might object to these regulations to the Supreme Court. Tellingly, Berman and Weir did not explore why these utility companies might object.  According to West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore, his state gets “nearly a billion dollars in what’s called severance taxes from those fossil fuels,” which makes up a significant part of the state budget. This means that Biden’s EPA regulations would ultimately make it significantly harder for West Virginia to deliver on its obligations. Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News at 818-460-7477, CBS News at 212-975-3247 and NBC News at 212-664-6192 and demand they hold Biden and his cronies accountable for attempting to restrict fossil fuel production and Americans’ choices. April 25th, 2024 2:12 PM Tom Olohan 283903 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/star-parker/2024/04/25/defense-speaker-mike-johnson Author Herman Wouk captured well how to understand heroism. “Heroes are not supermen; they are good men who embody — by the cast of destiny — the virtue of their whole people in a great hour,” observed Wouk. We have today an American hero in the name of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Anyone with eyes open knows the world today is a very dangerous place. Johnson, a conservative Republican and a devout Christian, knows that the way for it to become even more dangerous is for the leader of the free world to withdraw from its responsibilities as such. In the face of threats from some within his own party, in the face of the possibility of a purge like that which happened to his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, Johnson stepped up, rounded up 101 Republican votes in the House and, together with Democrats, passed a $95 billion military aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. As a Christian, Johnson understands that there is no understanding of what freedom is without appreciation that there is good and evil in this world. Our tendency in our country is to emphasize individual rights when we think about freedom. But the equal and opposite side of rights is responsibilities. Without responsibility, whether as individuals or as a nation, freedom is gone. As President Ronald Reagan famously observed, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” Speaking to reporters after the vote, Johnson noted that this is a “critical time” and that “Xi (China) and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil.” This is not a matter of our nation aspiring to be the world’s policeman. It is matter of knowing that the force of evil cannot be ignored and the price of believing that it can be ignored only grows and becomes increasingly more dangerous. Is this a matter of focusing abroad at the expense of what is happening at home? Certainly not. If a hero, in the words of Herman Wouk, embodies the “virtue” of his or her people, how do we define the virtue of the American people? It’s about the principles of a free nation under God. We also face great danger at home as we have departed from these principles. The $95 billion that will go in aid abroad is peanuts compared to what we waste at home in spending programs that do nothing. The Biden administration has appropriated $80 billion to the IRS to bolster tax collection. But at the same time, Biden has submitted a 2025 budget to Congress increasing federal spending by some $800 billion. We are now trillions of dollars in the red as result of bankrupt entitlement programs that are basically socialism. These programs are gushing red ink because they are not about, and never have been about, American principles of freedom and personal responsibility. We, of course, need to assure that those that immigrate to our country come to embrace the principles that make our country great. But Republicans need to contend with a president and his party who have long abandoned those principles. Enough Democrats do seem to understand the importance of defending our principles abroad, and here Republicans and Democrats must work together. So it’s not a matter of either/or. Freedom is about knowing that we have choices, that there is good and evil, and we must fight evil everywhere by choosing the good. Johnson has done us all a favor through his principles and courage. We have great challenges at home, but we cannot ignore what’s happening around us. Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.” Her recent book, “What Is the CURE for America?” is available now. To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. April 25th, 2024 1:57 PM Star Parker 283902 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/25/cnn-wonders-why-johnson-cares-about-anti-semitism-columbia When Speaker Mike Johnson traveled to Columbia University on Wednesday to call for President Minouche Shafik's resignation, he was joined by CNN’s Erin Burnett who sat down with Johnson for an interview on OutFront. Burnett would claim that it was a good thing Johnson was booed or the situation might have spun out of control and also asked him why he cares so much about anti-Semitism at Columbia considering it is a private university. Previewing her interview, Burnett recalled, “They were, and I'm going to show you here, this is my cell phone video, chanting ‘Free Palestine,’ heckling, booing when Johnson called for the president of the school to resign. They were not friendly. They couldn't actually hear the Speaker, which I can tell you is a good thing, because much of what he said would have incensed that crowd.     During the recorded interview, Burnett wondered if Johnson was overreacting, “The NYPD, at least as of Monday, said they've not received a single call from Columbia University of reports of any physical harm.” Johnson pushed back: But you have to speak to these Jewish students who are in fear of their lives, who are cowering in their apartments right now, who are not coming to class. In fact, the administration recognized the threat was so great, they canceled classes. Now they've come out with this hybrid idea, ‘Well, if you're Jewish, maybe you do want to stay at home. Maybe you'd be better off for you.’ It is so discriminatory. It's so wrong in every way. The responsibility of a university administrator is to keep peace on campus and ensure the safety of students -- job number one. If they're incapable of doing that, they need different leadership. I think this is time for a really strong hand. Not convinced, Burnett tried again, “I'm trying to understand, though, why as Speaker of the House, this is an issue you would want to get involved with? It's a private university. It's an issue happening here. Why is this something that you are choosing to get involved in calling for the removal of the president of a private university?” Johnson, again, held firm, “Well, they receive federal funding as well. And Congress is looking at all of these aspects to determine how they're using those funds. Is that appropriate? If they can't fulfill their basic obligations, I don't think the American taxpayers want to be funding this kind of thing.” He also noted that it isn’t just students, “We know that professors are engaging in this as well, some of their professors. Some have been supportive of the Jewish your students, but I believe it's a small subset from what I'm told. They've allowed this to go on and it is not okay with the American people. This isn't a partisan issue. This is about right and wrong, and we've got to call it for what it is.” Burnett then asked, “And so, when -- when people talk about genocide and say that Israel is engaging in genocide, do you think that that is a legitimate conversation that they should be allowed to have as part of First Amendment rights here, or no?” Johnson reminded Burnett that he used to be a First Amendment lawyer when he answered, “when you shout down and physically threatened with intimidation and threats of violence the other side, that is not a peaceful expression, as peaceful -- peaceful exchange of ideas. That's something very different and that's what we're saying that they need to get control of.” Elsewhere in the interview, Burnett would ask, “The main thing they were chanting was ‘Free Palestine.’ How is that anti-Semitic?” and “Do you think that protesting the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, protesting the tens of thousands of innocent people who have died there is anti-Semitic in and of itself?” Both times Johnson would throw the blame back where it belongs: Hamas, but it should also be added that by “Free Palestine” many, if not most, of these people do not mean ending Israeli administration of certain parts of the West Bank. Rather, they mean Israel’s destruction and, yes, that is anti-Semitic. Here is a transcript for the April 24 show: CNN Erin Burnett OutFront 4/24/2024 7:57 PM ET ERIN BURNETT: They were, and I'm going to show you here, this is my cell phone video, chanting "free Palestine," heckling, booing when Johnson called for the president of the school to resign. They were not friendly. They couldn't actually hear the Speaker, which I can tell you is a good thing, because much of what he said would have incensed that crowd. … BURNETT: All right. So let me ask you about that because when it comes to that, the NYPD, at least as of Monday, said they've not received a single call from Columbia University of reports of any physical harm. MIKE JOHNSON: Well – BURNETT: No physical harm. JOHNSON: Right. But you have to speak to these Jewish students who are in fear of their lives, who are cowering in their apartments right now, who are not coming to class. In fact, the administration recognized the threat was so great, they canceled classes. Now they've come out with this hybrid idea, “Well, if you're Jewish, maybe you do want to stay at home. Maybe you'd be better off for you.” It is so discriminatory. It's so wrong in every way. The responsibility of a university administrator is to keep peace on campus and ensure the safety of students -- job number one. If they're incapable of doing that, they need different leadership. I think this is time for a really strong hand. BURNETT: I'm trying to understand, though, why as Speaker of the House, this is an issue you would want to get involved with? It's a private university. It's an issue happening here. Why is this something that you are choosing to get involved in calling for the removal of the president of a private university? JOHNSON: Well, they receive federal funding as well. And Congress is looking at all of these aspects to determine how they're using those funds. Is that appropriate? If they can't fulfill their basic obligations, I don't think the American taxpayers want to be funding this kind of thing. We know that professors are engaging in this as well, some of their professors. Some have been supportive of the Jewish your students, but I believe it's a small subset from what I'm told. They've allowed this to go on and it is not okay with the American people. This isn't a partisan issue. This is about right and wrong, and we've got to call it for what it is. BURNETT: And so, when -- when people talk about genocide and say that Israel is engaging in genocide, do you think that that is a legitimate conversation that they should be allowed to have as part of First Amendment rights here, or no? JOHNSON: Of course, look, I was a First Amendment lawyer for 20 years, I went to the courts and defendant the -- our First Amendment freedoms, religious expression, the right of free speech on campus. I litigated those cases. Of course, the university is supposed to be the free marketplace of ideas. But when you shout down and physically threatened with intimidation and threats of violence the other side, that is not a peaceful expression, as peaceful -- peaceful exchange of ideas. That's something very different and that's what we're saying that they need to get control of. When they camp out around the campus and they prevent students from exercising their rights, that's the problem.  April 25th, 2024 1:38 PM Alex Christy 283900 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/25/top-ten-egregious-reasons-defund-npr Anyone who spends time reading about NPR on NewsBusters is going to roll their eyes when NPR executives blather about how they believe in "viewpoint diversity" and "inclusion" of important voices. It's readily apparent on a daily basis that NPR is a sandbox for left-wingers, polishing Democrats and punishing Republicans, touting liberal journalists as heroic and conservative journalists as a pox on the First Amendment. Coming up with a list of ten egregious examples to advocate for separating NPR from the taxpayers is difficult, because there are many more examples than just ten. We decided to limit it to the Trump era, since that's roughly how long Uri Berliner was complaining inside NPR. Anti-Patriotic Song. On July 4, 2018, NPR's All Things Considered ripped a classic Irving Berlin song under the headline “For 'God Bless America,' A Long Gestation And Venomous Backlash.” NPR reported that leftist folksinger Woody Guthrie thought it was "a whitewash of everything wrong in America" and that it’s “annoyed many” people (NPR staffers and audience members, surely) "who hear it as a tune of syrupy nationalism and trivialized faith." Pro-Marxism. On February 24, 2023, NPR On The Media host Brooke Gladstone touted The Communist Manifesto: "like Hamlet’s ghost, the Manifesto is both impossible and imperative in its call for action.” It’s a “stalwart text…it’s stirring! It scans!” For the oppressed, it’s “music for their dreams.” Her Marx-interpreting guest China Mieville said true communism has never been tried, and “If you see this new sadistic hard right as an inevitable feature of capitalism, then the stakes of moving beyond capitalism become ever more urgent.” Pro-Chinese Communism. On October 1, 2018, NPR’s Morning Edition celebrated the 70th anniversary of the communist takeover of China. Co-host Ailsa Chang was in Beijing to gush. “It's communist in name, but it is not the party of the proletariat; it's the party of state capitalism. And it's a party that promised to lift people out of poverty, which, you know, to be -- truth be told, it has done a spectacular job of.” Chang interviewed a young woman who said China was doing great, that “we know the leader would make steady, wise choice, unlike (laughter) the United States.” Pro-Looting. On August 27, 2020, NPR's blog "Code Switch," with the slogan "Race In Your Face," posted an interview promoting a new book titled In Defense of Looting. Natalie Escobar promoted author Emily Osterweil's view that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of ‘law and order,’ and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.” Pro-Rioting. On The NPR Politics Podcast on July 17, 2021, NPR reporter Danielle Kurtzleben brought on Yale law professor Elizabeth Hinton to promote her book on the acceptability of violence as a protest tactic against police. Kurtzleben explained: “You talk about these clashes as rebellions -- and quite pointedly, not as riots. It's a very meaningful choice. It really kind of shapes how the reader perceives these clashes.” Kurtlzeben proclaimed “It’s an excellent book!” Pro-Sabotage. On NPR’s Fresh Air on April 15, 2023, their movie critic John Powers praised the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline, hailing it as “hugely timely” when “people are frustrated by society's inability, indeed unwillingness to even slow down ecological disasters like climate change.” The movie’s a fictional take on the Andreas Malm book of the same name – “the most compelling argument I’ve read for eco-sabotage,” proclaimed Powers. He praised the movie for treating the saboteurs not as villains or “parody radicals,” but as “ordinary people whose reasons we can sympathize with.” Pro-Abortion Audio. On November 3, 2022, NPR’s Morning Edition featured reporter Kate Wells at an abortion clinic in Detroit, and they actually aired audio of an abortion of an 11-week-old baby. The abortionist told the woman,“you’re going to hear this machine turn on now, okay? It makes a loud noise.” NPR’s website warned some “may find it disturbing.” The doctor advises the patient to breathe during the killing. When the baby is dead, an assistant tells the woman, “Don’t you ever tell yourself that you can’t do something.” Anti-“Fox Monster.” On 2021, NPR’s On The Media devoted an hour to what they called “Slaying the Fox Monster.” Host Bob Garfield said “we're discussing how the marketplace might force Fox News Channel into responsible behavior or even into financial catastrophe." (In 2022, NPR also promoted Fox-deplatforming activist Nandimi Jammi, who quipped “you can’t chop off Fox News’s head in a day.”) Treasonous Mitch? On NPR’s Fresh Air on October 1, 2018, host Terry Gross discussed emerging claims on Trump-Russia collusion, and she imagined Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell might be treasonous: “If it can be proven that McConnell knew that Russia was trying to interfere in our election and influence the outcome of it and then tried to cover it up, to deny that it was happening, is that treason? Is that, like, legally treason?” Washington Post reporter Greg Miller wouldn’t bite. Hunter Laptop Deniers. The most egregious example is NPR's red-hot loathing of Biden scandals. On October 20, 2020, NPR “Public Editor” Kelly McBride tweeted,  "Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story?" She quoted Terence Samuel, NPR's Managing Editor for News. “We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” He dismissed the Post story as a “politically driven event.” Today, McBride’s tweet remains, but the link to her newsletter doesn’t work. Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletter➡️ https://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf — NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020 April 25th, 2024 1:30 PM Tim Graham 283898 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/25/arent-going-anywhere-nbc-praises-resolve-anti-semitic-pro NBC’s Today kicked off their show Thursday by hyping up and lionizing the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas extremists calling for the murder of Jews at Columbia University. Completely ignoring the video evidence of the crowd chanting their “love” of Hamas and the signs saying Jewish counter-protesters should be murdered, NBC correspondent Stephanie Gosk boasted of their resolve to stay encamped on campus “until their demands are met.” “Columbia University extended the deadline from the tent encampment here by 48 hours, but that deadline runs out tonight at midnight and the students I’ve spoken with here say they aren't going anywhere,” she touted at the top of her report. Gosk did fret that “tension around the country is growing, it's spreading, it's leading to dramatic confrontations with police and dozens of arrests.” She seemed disheartened that people were growing tired of the pro-Hamas rallies with some schools cracking down: The temperature this morning on some college campuses reaching a boiling point. A growing number of protests forming over the ongoing war in the Middle East at campuses across the country, some leading to standoffs including the University of Texas at Austin. Students and police clashing during protests Wednesday. More than 30 were taken into custody. Protesters gathered outside the jail, with some faculty saying in a statement they would not work today. And overnight, police and protesters clashing at the University of Southern California. Officers hit with objects arrested more than 90 people, though it's unclear how many were students.     Ignoring videos of the Columbia students chanting things like “Hamas we love you! We support your rockets too,” Gosk tried to water down their anti-Semitism with propaganda from the terrorist-linked Center for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) about the rise in Islamophobia. “The tensions rising nationwide as reports of anti-Semitism and islamophobia have skyrocketed since last October, with the Anti-Defamation League and Center for American Islamic Relations each reporting record high complaints,” she reported. In wrapping up her report, Gosk marveled at the Columbia encampment and commended the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas extremists on “how well organized they are” and how “they have a lot of food coming in, they have good tents, the weather is not that bad.” “They say they are willing to stay here until their demands are met even if it means weeks,” she beamed. Gosk didn’t seem to show enough journalistic curiosity to ask who was paying for all that food and those good tents. But she did anticipate that a clash between the extremists and the police would soon occur, noting: “And in three weeks, this campus is going to have its graduation and it takes place exactly where that tent encampment is set up right now.” The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: NBC’s Today April 25, 2024 7:04:07 a.m. Eastern (…) STEPHANIE GOSK: You know, Columbia University extended the deadline from the tent encampment here by 48 hours, but that deadline runs out tonight at midnight and the students I’ve spoken with here say they aren't going anywhere. As you mentioned tension around the country is growing, it's spreading, it's leading to dramatic confrontations with police and dozens of arrests. [Cuts to video] The temperature this morning on some college campuses reaching a boiling point. A growing number of protests forming over the ongoing war in the Middle East at campuses across the country, some leading to standoffs including the University of Texas at Austin. Students and police clashing during protests Wednesday. More than 30 were taken into custody. Protesters gathered outside the jail, with some faculty saying in a statement they would not work today. And overnight, police and protesters clashing at the university of Southern California. Officers hit with objects arrested more than 90 people, though it's unclear how many were students. And back on the east coast a dramatic scene at Emerson College; where students are encamped on an alleyway in the middle of downtown Boston. Police and demonstrators facing off. The tensions rising nationwide as reports of anti-Semitism and islamophobia have skyrocketed since last October, with the Anti-Defamation League and Center for American Islamic Relations each reporting record high complaints. (…) 7:06:39 a.m. Eastern HODA KOTB: Steph, it seems like every day we're reporting on another campus where these protests are breaking out. So, what happens next? GOSK: Well, they're here to stay, according to the students I've spoken with here at Columbia. And we were walking around that encampment yesterday Hoda and I was struck by how well organized they are, they have a lot of food coming in, they have good tents, the weather is not that bad. They say they are willing to stay here until their demands are met even if it means weeks. And in three weeks, this campus is going to have its graduation and it takes place exactly where that tent encampment is set up right now, Hoda. KOTB: All right. Stephanie Gosk for us there at Columbia. Steph, thank you. (…) April 25th, 2024 1:15 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283899 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2024/04/25/buckle-ccp-tied-tiktok-announces-conspiracy-theories Communist Chinese government-tied TikTok is doubling down on election-interfering censorship even as it faces a potential U.S. ban. President Joe Biden signed into law a Republican-led bill that could force TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app or have it banned in America. TikTok came under fire for a March update to its “For You feed Eligibility Standards,” where the app announced its determination to censor alleged “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories” and “false or misleading” election content. This could constitute foreign election interference ahead of the 2024 election, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) owns a board seat and maintains a financial stake in TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. TikTok’s update to its “Standards” details the alleged “Misinformation” it bans specifically for the “For You” feed, including “General conspiracy theories that are unfounded and claim that certain events or situations are carried out by covert or powerful groups, such as ‘the government’ or a ‘secret society.’” Can TikTok be trusted to determine what constitutes “Misinformation” unbiasedly? The platform's record suggests it cannot. TikTok has censored content to please the CCP in the past, including about Tibetan independence and Tiananmen Square, leaks have suggested. As for accusations against the American government, at least some of those would fall under the category of free speech.  MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider said, “It is a fact, not a conspiracy theory, that the Biden administration coordinated and coerced Big Tech to censor conservatives who criticized Biden and his radical policies. But with Biden using TikTok as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, it is now very possible that TikTok will do his bidding and hide this kind of information from voters.” Moreover, the Chinese-owned app’s standards also ramble vaguely about additional content that could get censored: “Unverified information related to an emergency or unfolding event where the details are still emerging” and “Potential high-harm misinformation while it is undergoing a fact-checking review.” The lack of clarity in these standards could lead to biased censorship of free speech. Finally, TikTok declared its ban on alleged “[u]nverified claims about the outcome of an election that is still unfolding and may be false or misleading.” The app does have indirect ties to the Chinese government which makes this new policy particularly dangerous. Multiple former TikTok employees recently told Forbes that the app has much closer ties and extensive data sharing between TikTok and ByeDance. This raises serious concerns about TikTok’s potential election interference. Conservatives are under attack. Contact TikTok via email at communitymanager@tiktok.com and demand Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 25th, 2024 12:48 PM Catherine Salgado 283897 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2024/04/25/mrcs-bozell-condemns-facebook-election-interference MRC President Brent Bozell once again condemned Facebook's repeated election interference detailed in a bombshell MRC Free Speech America’s Special Report. During a Thursday morning interview with WMAL-FM’s Larry O’Connor, Bozell reiterated the findings featured in the report: Facebook has interfered in U.S. elections a whopping total of 39 times since 2008.  Bozell suggested that the censorship was vast and overwhelmingly biased, including “candidates,” “political action committees” and “organizations that either support a Republican or criticize a Democrat.” ICYMI! See MRC Free Speech America’s Harrowing Findings on Facebook “Target number one was Trump, and he was the target in two different ways,” Bozell said, detailing how Facebook banned the then-sitting president in 2021, while coincidentally strangling “any coverage of anything that would hurt Joe Biden.” Earlier in the interview, an appalled O'Connor asked Bozell to describe the implications of the MRC findings, which he described as “insidious interference.”  To this, the MRC president replied that election interference by way of censorship leaves Americans without knowledge “about the issues of the day” because of the deliberate actions “by these massive monopolies.” Must Read! Bozell and Levin on ‘Systematic’ Nature of Facebook’s Election Interference During the WMAL-FM interview, co-host Julie Gunluck asked Bozell to break down some of the examples found in the report. Bozell was well-prepared and did not hold back.  “Let's take 2016: Facebook partnered with this left-wing organization funded by Soros, the Poynter Institute, to create a network of left-wing fact-checkers,” Bozell said. But there was more, Bozell warned, asking rhetorically, “What did they then do? Over and over again, they suspended numerous pro-Trump Trump pages. They elevated liberals in their trending news, giving them preference over conservatives. They blacklisted [Sen.] Ted Cruz; they blacklisted [Sen.] Rand Paul.” Bozell’s remarks come a little over a month after a similar MRC Free Speech America report found that Google, like Facebook, interfered in U.S. elections 41 times. “Corporations can't be involved in political action at the federal level. Yet, you've got Big Tech that is picking winners and losers in elections, and when they do it the way they're doing it, it becomes a very serious threat to democracy itself,” Bozell said on April 17, alluding to the MRC report on Google’s election interference. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 25th, 2024 12:03 PM Luis Cornelio 283896 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/25/hayes-dismisses-johnson-angry-columbia-press-conference MSNBC’s Chris Hayes reacted to the latest developments at Columbia University and campuses around the country on Wednesday’s edition of All In by seeking to provide cover to the protestors by claiming they are simply “anti-war” and that all the anti-Semitism is from off-campus “trolls.” As for the GOP response, he dismissed Speaker Mike Johnson as “angry.” Coming out of a commercial, Hayes declared that “Fresh off the passage of those foreign aid bills that President Biden signed today, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson didn't take a victory lap. Instead, the LSU graduate made an angry press appearance on the campus of Columbia University in New York, where he was booed by most of the crowd assembled.”     Was Johnson supposed to be happy? The fact that the crowd booed him says more about the crowd than it does about Johnson, but Hayes continued, “As you probably heard, the school has been the center of the media world for the last week over student protests of Israel's war in Gaza.” He added: Last week, the school's president, after appearing before a House committee, had many of those students arrested by the New York Police Department, thrown out of their university housing amid allegations of harassment against Jewish students on campus, or at least near the campus gates, where non-students and trolls have gathered to spout some truly genuinely vile, threatening stuff in viral scenes.  As Hayes was acknowledging the anti-Semitism present among the demonstrators, MSNBC showed pictures of some of these people. One was a group marching behind a banner that read “From Gaza to Jenin” and “Revolution to Victory” with a map of what they imagine a future Palestinian state should look like. It was a map that included not simply Gaza and the West Bank, but all of what is internationally unquestionably recognized to be Israeli territory. That is something that groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, who are students demonstrating on campus, would agree with, and they are given platforms on MSNBC. Yet, Hayes sought to dismiss concerns about this form of anti-Semitism, instead claiming they are simply anti-war and that the real problem is that Republicans want to put an end to these illegal encampments: Even as the anti-war protests spread to other universities across the country, and conservatives like Johnson blast higher education as a bastion of radicalism, again, Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley have even called for the National Guard to come in. Today, Greg Abbott sent in the Department of Public Safety into the UT Austin campus. None of this new for any of these conservatives. Cotton, you’ll remember, wanted the Army to crush protests against police brutality in 2020. It was more that Cotton wanted to end the rioting and the looting, but why would Hayes let facts get in the way of a good narrative? Additionally, these demonstrators aren’t anti-war, they’re just upset that their side is losing a war that it started. Here is a transcript for the April 24 show: MSNBC All In With Chris Hayes 4/24/2024 8:45 PM ET CHRIS HAYES: Fresh off the passage of those foreign aid bills that President Biden signed today, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson didn't take a victory lap. Instead, the LSU graduate made an angry press appearance on the campus of Columbia University in New York, where he was booed by most of the crowd assembled.  As you probably heard, the school has been the center of the media world for the last week over student protests of Israel's war in Gaza. Last week, the school's president, after appearing before a House committee, had many of those students arrested by the New York Police Department, thrown out of their university housing amid allegations of harassment against Jewish students on campus, or at least near the campus gates, where non-students and trolls have gathered to spout some truly genuinely vile, threatening stuff in viral scenes.  Even as the anti-war protests spread to other universities across the country, and conservatives like Johnson blast higher education as a bastion of radicalism, again, Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley have even called for the National Guard to come in. Today, Greg Abbott sent in the Department of Public Safety into the UT Austin campus. None of this new for any of these conservatives. Cotton, you’ll remember, wanted the Army to crush protests against police brutality in 2020. April 25th, 2024 10:50 AM Alex Christy 283895 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2024/04/25/seven-brand-new-biden-gaffes-abc-cbs-nbc-are-hiding The Biden gaffes keep coming and the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) keep ignoring them.  If Donald Trump or any Republican president was committing mistakes at the rate Biden is, you can bet network reporters and anchors would jam their broadcasts with their bloopers, but it’s not so for President Joe Biden.  In just the past week, he’s insulted Jews, middle-class Americans, and caused a minor international incident with his bumbling statements.  The following are seven brand new Biden blunders the networks have refused to cover:   Biden Reads Instructions Off Teleprompter: “Four More Years, Pause”          On April 24, FoxNews.com reported:  President Biden seemed to suffer a verbal slip-up during a speech at a trade union conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. Biden, reading off a teleprompter, appeared to incorporate script instructions in the middle of his speech, resulting in an awkward applause line. The moment came during a section of his remarks straight out of a campaign stump speech. “I see an America where we defend democracy, not diminish it. I see an America, where we protect freedoms, not take them away,” Biden said. “I see an economy that grows a lot in the bottom up where the wealthy pay their fair share, so we can have child care, paid leave and so much more, and still reduce the federal deficit and increase economic folks. “Imagine what we could do next. Four more years, pause,” he said before laughing. ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: PENDING   Biden Claims Uncle Was Eaten By “Cannibals” in New Guinea, Sparks International Incident         On April 22, the New York Times reported:  Prime Minister James Marape of Papua New Guinea has hit back at President Biden’s suggestion that his uncle, a U.S. serviceman whose plane went down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Guinea during World War II, had been eaten by cannibals there. “President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Mr. Marape said in a statement provided to news organizations including The Associated Press and Reuters. Twice last week, Mr. Biden suggested without evidence that his uncle had been eaten by cannibals. “He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Mr. Biden said of his uncle during an address on steel and aluminum tariffs in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Papua New Guinea has become an important strategic partner of the United States in the region. Mr. Marape has twice visited the White House. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Mr. Biden’s description of his uncle’s death does not match military records. Ambrose Finnegan, a brother of Mr. Biden’s mother, was a passenger in an aircraft that “for unknown reasons” had to ditch in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea on May 14, 1944, according to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Both of the plane’s engines failed at low altitude. There is no indication the aircraft was shot down. Mr. Finnegan and two other men “failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash,” the Pentagon records state. “One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.” Mr. Biden made a similar suggestion that his uncle had been cannibalized when he visited a war memorial bearing Mr. Finnegan’s name in his childhood hometown, Scranton, part of a three-day campaign swing through the key battleground state of Pennsylvania. ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: 0 seconds.   Biden Urges Americans to “Choose Freedom Over Democracy”      On April 19, FoxNews.com reported:  Critics of President Biden slammed him on social media for making a puzzling statement encouraging voters to “choose freedom over democracy” by re-electing him to the presidency. Conservatives expressed confusion over Biden’s message, and others insisted it was yet another gaffe showing his cognitive decline.  Biden made the claim while accepting the formal presidential endorsement of the Kennedy family in Pennsylvania on Thursday. During the political rally, half a dozen Kennedy family members appeared alongside President Biden to publicly back him over Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an independent candidate for president in 2024. Kennedy Jr.’s own sister Kerry Kennedy spoke at the event, stating, “President Biden has been a champion for all the rights and freedoms that my father and uncles stood for.” After being introduced by the Kennedys, Biden addressed the crowd. Toward the end of his speech, he asked, “Are you ready to choose unity over division? Dignity over demolition? Truth over lies? Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that's America.” The last stanza turned heads with its seemingly contradictory message.  Author and Canary CEO Dan K. Eberhart commented, “He’s fine. Everything’s fine. Biden is definitely not in severe mental decline. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: 0 seconds.   Biden Mixes Up Israeli City With One in Gaza: “Don’t Move on Haifa”        On April 18, the New York Post reported:  President Biden on Tuesday confused the Israeli port city of Haifa with the last refuge for civilians in the Gaza Strip — Rafah — in a stunning blunder.  The 81-year-old president made the gaffe when asked in a one-on-one interview with Nexstar Media’s Reshad Hudson about his plan to win back pro-Palestinian voters in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas.  “I’ve been meeting with them, number one,” Biden said. “Number two, I made it clear that we have to vastly increase the amount of food, water, healthcare going into Gaza.” “And I made it clear to Israelis – don’t move on Haifa,” he added, apparently meaning to say Rafah. … Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city and a popular tourist destination, is more than 100 miles north of Rafah.  Numerous social media users mocked Biden over the gaffe.  “I think Israel should accommodate Biden’s demand not to attack Haifa,” former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman wrote on X. “Think there’s strong likelihood Israel refrains from hitting Haifa,” former New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind similarly tweeted, calling the error, “seriously embarrassing.” ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: 0 seconds.   Biden Falsely Claims He Never Earned $400,000 In His Lifetime On April 19, CNN.com reported:  In Scranton, Biden repeated his regular promise that nobody making less than $400,000 per year will pay even a cent more in taxes under his proposals. He then added, “I hope you’re all able to make $400,000. I never did.” Facts First: Biden’s “I never did” claim is false. In fact, his presidential salary is $400,000 per year; the joint tax filings of President Biden and first lady Jill Biden showed $619,976 in income last year, $579,514 in 2022 and $610,702 in 2021. In addition, Biden earned millions in 2017 and 2018, when, during his time as a private citizen following his vice presidency, he and Jill Biden signed a lucrative book deal and he delivered paid speeches. The Bidens’ joint tax filings showed a total of about $11 million in 2017 income and about $4.6 million in 2018 income. Biden, who was a US senator for 36 years prior to his vice presidency, did regularly earn less than $400,000 per year before 2017. As PolitiFact has previously noted, the Bidens’ joint filings reported less than $400,000 in income in each year from 1998 through 2016 except for 2013, when they were just over $407,000. ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: 0 seconds.   Biden Gets Basic Demographics Wrong On China  On April 19, CNN.com reported:  In a Wednesday speech in Pittsburgh that was focused on US steel competition with China, Biden said, “I always say to my colleagues — when I meet other world leaders, I say, ‘Would you trade places with China? Would you trade places with their problems?’ They’ve got a population that is more people in retirement than working.” Facts First: The claim that China has more retired people than working people is false. Fuxian Yi, a University of Wisconsin-Madison senior scientist who is an expert on Chinese demographics, called Biden’s claim “overstated and premature.” China reported having more than 740 million employed people at the end of 2023, while it also reported having just shy of 297 million people age 60 or above that year. (Sixty is the normal retirement-benefits age for Chinese men; it’s 50 to 55 for women depending on the nature of their jobs.) And some of the 60-plus population is still working.  Yi noted that China’s ratio of working people to seniors is shrinking as the country’s population ages. But Biden’s claim that the number of retirees already exceeds the number of people working is clearly not correct, even if you apply the usual dose of skepticism to official Chinese data. “It’s certainly the direction they’re heading, but still an exaggeration,” Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank who is an expert on the Chinese economy, said of Biden’s claim. Biden made a similar claim in 2021, which CNN fact-checked as false at the time. ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: 0 seconds.   Biden Has His “Very Fine People On Both Sides” Moment      On April 22, FoxNews.com reported:   President Biden’s latest comment on antisemitic protests on college campuses is being called his “very fine people on both sides” moment by some on social media. Following the president’s Earth Day comments at Prince William Forest Park in Virginia, reporters caught up with Biden and asked for a comment on anti-Israel protests occurring across multiple universities at the time. “Do you condemn the antisemitic protests on college campuses?” Biden was asked. “I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians,” he said. Equating the antisemitic protests with people who “don’t understand” the Palestinians ignited several comments accusing Biden of echoing Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” Charlottesville comment from 2017. “This sure sounds like he’s ACTUALLY saying there are very fine people on both sides,” OutKick founder Clay Travis remarked. “Very fine people on both sides,” RedState writer Bonchie agreed. American Spectator writer Nate Hochman noted, “I’m old enough to remember when ‘good people on both sides’ was evil and racist.” The Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway wrote, “President Biden says there are good people on both sides of October 7.” ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning show coverage: 0 seconds. (It should be noted that CBS and NBC both briefly reported Biden’s comments, but NEVER indicated they represented any kind of miscue. ABC failed to even mention Biden’s remarks.) The following are the relevant transcripts: CBS  Evening News  April 22, 2024 [13 seconds] CORRESPONDENT MEG OLIVER: Late this afternoon president Biden denounced anti-semitism. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I condemn the anti-semitic protests, that’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on and the Palestinians. … CBS CBS Mornings April 23, 2024 [12 seconds] CORRESPONDENT MEG OLIVER: President Biden yesterday condemned the anti-semitic comments directed towards Jewish students but added that he also condemned anyone who doesn’t realize what Palestinians are going through. Gayle?  CO-HOST GAYLE KING: Meg, thank you. … NBC Nightly News April 22, 2024  [17 seconds] ANCHOR LESTER HOLT: And Erin tonight, the White House is weighing in on all this.  CORRESPONDENT ERIN MCLAUGHLIN: That’s right, Lester. Tonight President Biden saying he condemns both anti-semitic protests and those who, quote, “don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” Lester? HOLT: Erin McLaughlin tonight. Thank you. April 25th, 2024 10:20 AM Geoffrey Dickens 283886 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2024/04/25/rare-cnn-airs-criticism-basis-bragg-case-against-trump The Regime Media has promoted, covered, and obsessed over the Bragg prosecution of Donald Trump in New York City- the so-called “hush money” trial. And they have done so, continuously. But tonight, CNN takes the extraordinary step of airing the case against the indictment. Watch as Boston University law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman lays out the case, as aired on CNN NewsNight With Abby Phillip on Wednesday, August 24th, 2024 (click “expand”): ABBY PHILLIP: Professor, you say- see, three red flags with this case. What are they? JED HANDELSMAN SHUGERMAN: Well the three red flags are: first, that there has- there's no reported case. I've checked the records of state cases. There's no state case that shows a state prosecutor using the Federal Election Campaign Act, which is the- really the crime that the prosecutors are alleging here. A federal election violation, a federal campaign filing violation as the basis, either directly or indirectly, for any crime. So that is a first example of what's unprecedented here, and there- this is not just a coincidence. There are good reasons why a federal prosecutor has complete control to the exclusion of the states for enforcing something as complicated as the Federal Election Campaign Act. That's the first one.  The second problem is that there is no example of this statute that relies on an intent to defraud being such a broad general public. The idea that one would be defrauding the general public or voters. There's no precedent for using it for election interference.  And the final problem is the use of this statute. But basically what the business filing violation is, a misdemeanor with intent to defraud, it becomes a felony only if the prosecutors can show an intent to commit or conceal another crime. The Trump lawyers pointed out, made an argument that- in New York, there is a problem with trying to use the filing. The mis filing to upgrade it to a felony, relying on another jurisdiction. And the Manhattan DA could only point to two examples, neither of which is a judicial interpretation. So it's an untested theory. Those two cases, one was a guilty plea and one was jury instruction. Neither one counts as a judge hearing an argument and ruling on it. So those are examples of how this case, three examples of how it's unte- based on untested legal theories and on unprecedented applications. Shugerman is the author of an op-ed recently published in The New York Times, subtly titled: I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It’s a Historic Mistake. In criticizing the case as a selective prosecution, Shugerman writes: Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law. This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America — and promote bipartisan reforms of our partisan prosecutorial system. Nevertheless, prosecutors should have some latitude to develop their case during trial, and maybe they will be more careful and precise about the underlying crime, fraud and the jurisdictional questions. Mr. Trump has received sufficient notice of the charges, and he can raise his arguments on appeal. One important principle of “our Federalism,” in the Supreme Court’s terms, is abstention, that federal courts should generally allow state trials to proceed first and wait to hear challenges later. This case is still an embarrassment of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selective prosecution. Nevertheless, each side should have its day in court. If convicted, Mr. Trump can fight many other days — and perhaps win — in appellate courts. But if Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all. It should be noted that Shugerman is no Trump fan. During the segment he claimed to have never voted for a Republican, and criticized Trump’s description of the Bragg prosecution as “election interference”- citing the Biden Department of Justice’s refusal to bring the case forth.  Abby Phillip questioned Shugerman’s theories, then had her legal panel do likewise. Shugerman held his own and then some. The panel was an extremely rare break from the hysterical “walls are closing in” coverage that the media have given this matter to date. Will there be more of it? Given the ease with which Shugerman made his case, I’m not so sure. April 25th, 2024 1:03 AM Jorge Bonilla 283893 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2024/04/24/course-cbss-odonnell-asks-progressive-pope-francis-obligatory CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell delivered this evening’s newscast from Rome, and her interview with Pope Francis featured heavily within the newscast. But if the early tease is any indication, O’Donnell devoted the interview to the reheating of the media’s same old talking points regarding the Catholic Church. Case in point: the media love Francis on climate change, and often hail him as a “progressive”.  Watch as O’Donnell does both of these things: NORAH O’DONNELL: Francis is also the first pontiff to make climate change a priority. In 2015, to make an important point, images of the environment were projected onto St. Peter's Basilica, the dome designed in the mid-16th Century by Michelangelo. What do you say to the deniers of climate change? POPE FRANCIS: There are people who are foolish, and foolish even if you show them research, they don't believe it. Why? Because they don't understand the situation or because of their interest. But climate change exists. O’DONNELL: His progressive style has made him popular worldwide, with millions coming here to St. Peter's Square to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father. OF COURSE O’Donnell asked the question and CBS aired it, given Francis’ proclivities and economic orthodoxies, as well as the fact that “Earth Day” was observed earlier this week. The questions with answers reflecting that the Pope is still a Catholic, such as on abortion and marriage, will have to wait for the full broadcast three and half weeks from now. The interview opens with O’Donnell trying to bait the Pope into calling Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza a “genocide”, an invitation to attack Israel that Francis appears to resist based on the footage aired tonight. The Pope then takes another question on Gaza and redirects it towards Ukraine.  After some conversation on children comes the climate question, which Francis answers in a manner that temporarily delights the left. O’Donnell goes on to hail the Pope’s “progressive style” and implied subsequent  popularity, before citing data suggesting that Church membership in the U.S. is declining. The full interview will air in three and a half weeks and feature O’Donnell running the Pope through the entire leftwing policy pupu platter. Very predictably so. Click “expand” to view the  transcript of the interview fragment as aired on the CBS Evening News on Wednesday, April 24th, 2024: NORAH O’DONNELL: Oh, my goodness. Bongiorno, Your Holiness. What an honor. So wonderful to meet you.  POPE FRANCIS: Lovely to meet you.  O’DONNELL: Love to meet you. Yes. Thank you so much for doing this.  We met Pope Francis today at Casa Santa Marta, the guest house where the pontiff lives, instead of the lavish papal palace. At 87 years old, he may have trouble walking, but he had no difficulty sitting down with us for an hour long conversation. How is your health? POPE FRANCIS: My health is good. O’DONNELL: In nearly every address… POPE FRANCIS: …who suffers so much from the war…  O’DONNELL: The pope often calls for peace. He condemned Hamas' October 7th attack, but has also called on Israel to use restraint.  There are now pictures of starving children coming out of Gaza. What about those that call that a genocide? POPE FRANCIS: Genocide. Every afternoon at 7:00 P.M., I call Gaza to the parish. There are about 600 people there, and they tell me what’s going on. It's very hard. Very, very hard. Food goes in, but they have to fight for it. It's very hard. O’DONNELL: I know you call for peace. You have called for a ceasefire in many of your sermons. Can you help negotiate peace? POPE FRANCIS: I can pray. I do. I pray a lot. O’DONNELL: During World Children's Day, which is the end of May, the U.N. says over a million people will be facing famine in Gaza. Many of them children. What can be done? POPE FRANCIS: Not only Gaza. We should think about Ukraine. Those kids don't know how to smile. I tell them something, but they forgot how to smile. And this is very hard when a child forgets to smile. That's really very serious. Very serious. O’DONNELL: Do you have a message for Vladimir Putin when it comes to Ukraine? POPE FRANCIS: Please. Countries at war, all of them. Stop the war. Look to negotiate. Look for peace. A negotiated peace is better than a war without end. O’DONNELL: His Most Holy Father is considered one of the most influential people in the world. Leading nearly 1.4 billion Catholics. He is the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit, and will host the Vatican's first World Children's Day next month. I love that you take the kids in the Popemobile with you and bring them up to the Apostolic Palace when you say a prayer. Why do you do that? POPE FRANCIS: Children always bear a message. They bear a message and it is a way for us to have a younger heart. O’DONNELL: Francis is also the first pontiff to make climate change a priority. In 2015, to make an important point, images of the environment were projected onto St. Peter's Basilica, the dome designed in the mid-16th Century by Michelangelo. What do you say to the deniers of climate change? POPE FRANCIS: There are people who are foolish, and foolish even if you show them research, they don't believe it. Why? Because they don't understand the situation or because of their interest. But climate change exists. O’DONNELL: His progressive style has made him popular worldwide, with millions coming here to St. Peter's Square to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father. MARY BENNETT: It has made us emotional, just being here, going into St. Peter's Basilica, going into the Sistine Chapel, just tears coming into our eyes because we are actually, you can feel the spirit. O’DONNELL: Sophia and Aaron came with their family from San Diego, California. How did it make you feel when he came out the window? SOPHIA: It made me feel good, like butterflies in my stomach. O’DONNELL: Still, the number of Catholics in America is dwindling. In the U.S., only 20% of adults identify as Catholic, and that is down from 24% in 2007.  I wonder if you could speak to those who don't go to Mass anymore, or maybe don't see a place for themselves in the Catholic church. POPE FRANCIS: I would say there is always a place, always. If, in this parish, the priest doesn't seem welcoming, I understand, but go and look. There is always a place. Do not run away from the Church. The Church is very big. It's more than a temple. It's more. You shouldn't run away from it. O’DONNELL: We also asked the Pope about the migrant crisis, gay rights, women's role in the church, and whether he’s thinking about retirement. We'll have that and much more on "60 minutes" on Sunday, May 19th, and then, a prime time special on Monday, May 20th, right here on CBS.   April 24th, 2024 11:11 PM Jorge Bonilla 283892 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/24/newsbusters-podcast-pretending-trump-prosecutors-are-nonpartisans ABC and CBS almost completely refuse to identify Trump's elected Democrat prosecutors -- Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Fani Willis -- as Democrats, and certainly not Democrats elected on a promise to get Trump. NBC dabbles with the D. For example, elected Democrat Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney of Manhattan, was described as a Democrat in 16 of 59 evening-news stories on NBC programs. But CBS never did in 48 Bragg stories. On ABC, there were 56 stories, but viewers only once heard that Bragg was a Democrat — on February 26, 2024, when correspondent Aaron Katersky relayed how “a spokesman for Trump... called Bragg ‘another deranged Democrat prosecutor.’” He's only described as a Democrat when they can make it sound like a wild Trump accusation. Elected Democrat Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York state, NBC mentioned her Democrat-ness in seven of 26 stories. But ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 44 stories mentioning James’s civil suit against Trump and his businesses, yet only one -- back in November -- showed the word "Democrat" in a fleeting on-screen graphic that was shown for less than two seconds. CBS also had one citation (in 35 stories), but only on screen: the March 24, 2024 Sunday night newscast briefly showed a Trump campaign message demanding that “Insane radical Democrat AG Letitia James” keep her “FILTHY HANDS OFF OF TRUMP TOWER.” Elected Democrat Fani Willis, the District Attorney of Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia drew 60 stories on ABC’s World News Tonight (60) and 39 stories on the CBS Evening News, and ZERO out of 99 mentioned she was a Democrat. NBC were the "rampant" labelers at eight out of 50 stories (meaning they skipped it in 84 percent of stories. Longtime MRC Director of Research Rich Noyes (now freelancing from Connecticut) was at MRC headquarters to explain his latest study numbers (ending right before the Trump trial in Manhattan began) and projects it into this election year. He noted that while the networks liked to point out that Kenneth Starr was a "Republican independent counsel," he was never elected, but had served as Solicitor General under the first President Bush. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. April 24th, 2024 10:37 PM Tim Graham 283891 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/tom-olohan/2024/04/24/watch-schneider-solomon-discuss-most-comprehensive-report MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider addressed over a decade of rampant Facebook election interference in a conversation with Just the News founder John Solomon.  During the April 24 edition of Just the News, No Noise, Schneider went after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook for 39 instances of election interference between 2008 and 2024. “Facebook has engaged in censorship over and over and over,” Schneider said in response to an MRC Special Report. The report demonstrated a pattern of Facebook censoring free speech, including silencing criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the fall of the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi and muzzling Republican candidates for office during the 2022 midterm elections.  Solomon praised the “extraordinary detail” of the study and called it the “most comprehensive review of Facebook’s interventions.” In response to a question from co-host Amanda Head, Schneider pointed out that these 39 instances are just the tip of the iceberg of Facebook censorship, but emphasized that they are serious, carefully researched examples of Facebook putting its thumb on the electoral scale.  Schneider said, “Well of course there are thousands of instances of Facebook censoring people, the great bulk of them are conservatives. But these are the 39 times that we've found where it's clear that they were meddling in the election, that they were trying to sway the election.”  The MRC Free Speech America vice president went on to refer to a video exposing insane bias within Facebook staff. “And we've got quotes from their own internal staff saying, “‘Yeah, you know the CEO, he may claim that that it's a free speech platform but we are not going to allow Trump to win the election again.’ That kind of language is being used internally,” said Schneider. Expanding on his remarks, Schneider added: “Mark Zuckerberg has said to us, to us conservatives that the people of Facebook … don't understand who conservatives are or what we believe.’ They only understand the will to power and to use their company to try to promote, you know, the next president of the United States. Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 24th, 2024 5:42 PM Tom Olohan 283890 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/24/cnn-analyst-demands-colleges-allow-space-anti-semitic Anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas rallies have been spreading like hateful wildfire across American universities, with encampments spouting up in UT Austin and Harvard on Wednesday. And on CNN News Central that afternoon, Harvard professor and former Obama DHS official Juliette Kayyem demanded that universities like hers “allow space” for those mini-Nuremberg rallies. “And I'm pretty clear about this,” Kayyem declared. She demanded that schools “allow space for students to protest” in favor of Hamas. Essentially her defense of the students was ‘kid will be kids.’ “This should not be a shock to anyone with teenagers or young, young adult children. They have strong feelings and they’re passionate,” she argued. Coddling the anti-Semites, Kayyem said they needed to be given “off ramps” before the schools cracked down on any violent rhetoric or other misconduct. As if the students didn’t agree to a Student Code of Conduct when they joined the school, she huffed: “You've got to give students rules about what they are and are not allowed to do. And maybe this happened at USC, but they have to be clear about, ‘Yes, you can protest. No, you can't block a building and this is what's going to happen if you block the building.’” She did admit that at some point the schools might need to consider when to get police involved. “I mean in other words, these kids who are violating these rules these students then have some sort of punishment and whether you need the police or something less than that is each college and university’s decision,” she said.     But a few minutes later, Kayyem proved herself to be a hypocrite and declared schools “cannot” get the police involved at all. She whined they were “terrifying students" who were just "expressing their dismay with the war”: What are the rules of engagement? We cannot put police officers, especially non-university police officers, as we've seen in some of these jurisdictions, just out there fully armed, terrifying students who are maybe they just viewed themselves as just expressing their dismay with the war or their criticisms of the Biden administration. That wasn’t the only way Kayyem was a hypocrite on the issue. In 2022, she opposed the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” that was protesting their county’s COVID restrictions by blocking critical roads. She lashed out at them and demanded authorities “slash the tires” of their semi-trucks. “Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks,” she wrote. “The notion that these are rational people that will change if asked is long gone,” she sneered in a follow-up post. “This disruption is an irrational gang and, again, we should stop being so nice.” Kayyem also used to have a hair-trigger when it came to antisemitism. In 2019, she accused former New York City Mayor Ruby Giuliani of “antisemitism” when he called out Democratic Party dark-money donor George Soros. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN News Central April 24, 2024 3:10:55 p.m. Eastern (…) JULIETTE KAYYEM: And so, colleges and universities have to do three things. And I'm pretty clear about this. One, is they do have to allow space for students to protest. I said you've got to give them an outlet. The students are allowed to protest. This should not be a shock to anyone with teenagers or young, young adult children. They have strong feelings and they’re passionate. Because if you just immediately go to arrest, it's going to cause I think some of the what we're seeing on air which is nothing's happening. And then lots is happening. You want to give students space as long as you're protecting students who want to go to classes, Jewish students, if they’re targeted. The second is you have to have off ramps. You have to, in terms of these colleges and universities you've got to give students rules about what they are and are not allowed to do. And maybe this happened at USC, but they have to be clear about, “Yes, you can protest. No, you can't block a building and this is what's going to happen if you block the building.” And then third is, of course, then exert your outcomes, right? I mean in other words, these kids who are violating these rules these students then have some sort of punishment and whether you need the police or something less than that is each college and university’s decision. (…) 3:14:13 p.m. Eastern KAYYEM: What are the rules of engagement? We cannot put police officers especially non-university police officers, as we've seen in some of these jurisdictions, just out there fully armed, terrifying students who are maybe they just viewed themselves as just expressing their dismay with the war or their criticisms of the Biden administration. So, what are the rules of engagement? The second is, is there – is there a reach out as we're seeing in some of these colleges and universities to these student organizations to engage them on what is and is not appropriate activity? In other words, we don't have to treat the protesters as enemies. They just disagree with the institution or they disagree with the government. And that can help de-escalate as well. And then third, is the punishment that we're talking about. If someone is violent, if someone is threatening students, if someone ought not to be there and is exacerbating the tensions. (…) April 24th, 2024 5:36 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283889 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2024/04/24/election-year-pandering-nets-spend-22-mins-peddling-biden On Wednesday, ABC, CBS, and NBC combined for a whopping 22 minutes and 18 seconds on their lead morning shows playing Baghdad Bobs and Barbies, touting the Biden regime as dedicated to the American people with segments on their fight to ban non-complete clauses in the workplace, cracking down on airlines slow-walking refunds when things go wrong, expanding overtime rules, and letting women murder their babies at will. When including its third-hour, NBC’s Today came out on top with 10 minutes and 55 seconds. It started with the Biden administration fighting to ensure baby murder remains easily accessible in Idaho. Co-host Hoda Kotb touted the “blockbuster” Supreme Court arguments “concerning reproductive rights, raising the legal and political stakes headed into the November election.” Senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson hyped the case as part of an issue that will have “enormous” “stakes” on the outcome of the election. She eagerly adopted the Biden administration’s framing and even referred to an expecting mother as “a pregnant patient”. She at least gave a soundbite to the great Roger Severino with our friends at the Heritage Foundation (click “expand”): JACKSON: The question: whether a federal law guaranteeing emergency care for patients overrides an Idaho law banning most abortions with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The Biden administration saying that federal law should take precedence, arguing Idaho’s law requires doctors to wait until the health of a pregnant patient gets worse before performing an abortion. But Idaho’s attorney general, in a statement, accuses the administration of showing a “reckless disregard for Idaho’s right to protect life.” SEVERINO: The Biden administration has twisted this law. [SCREEN WIPE] They’re trying to use federal executive power when the law does not support it. This is beyond the breaking point and I’m hopeful the Supreme Court will rein them back in. JACKSON: And with Idaho allowed to enforce the near total abortion ban for now, many OBGYNs are leaving the state, including Dr. Lauren Miller, who moved her practice to Colorado. She says Idaho’s law has created a dilemma for doctors. (....) JACKSON: The legal fight raising political stakes heading into the November upcoming election with voters in 11 states likely to decide abortion rights on ballot measures this fall. President Biden, in Florida Tuesday, slamming that state’s six-week abortion ban set to go into effect six days from now and blaming his predecessor. The show went next to the daily messaging from the Department of Transportation. Co-host Savannah Guthrie touted the “big news regarding air travel” with co-host Craig Melvin adding “it could affect folks in a good way.” Longtime transportation correspondent Tom Costello even explicitly said he’d be providing “the bullet points coming from the Biden administration” about their desire to have airlines “provid[e] compensation quickly to passengers who are owed money from an airline and if that passenger declines other alternative transportation needs or credits” that’ll be “cutting through all of the clutter and making it very clear what the rules are for every airline.” Costello and Melvin then focused on the other piece with fee transparency, the latest step in Biden’s ongoing obsession with ending so-called junk fees. In the 3rd Hour of Today, Costello returned for more banter and praising the regime for these crackdowns. ABC’s Good Morning America came next with six minutes and 33 seconds over four segments.  Like NBC, they began with abortion. Congressional correspondent Rachel Scott passed along the Biden Justice Department’s arguments and stomped on a single sentence provided to the opposition, which led into a nauseating love letter voiced by chief White House correspondent and chief Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce (click “expand”): SCOTT: And the stakes here are high. This is the first time that the Supreme Court is considering the scope of a state’s abortion ban since Roe vs. Wade was overturned. At the center of the case is Idaho. The state bans abortions in nearly all cases. It does include a narrow exception to save the life of the mother. But the Justice Department is arguing that, even in states where abortion is banned under federal health care law, hospitals are still required to terminate pregnancy if the patient’s life or health is at serious risk. The Justice Department is pointing to a law from decades ago before Roe vs. Wade was overturned that was originally created to ensure patients who do not have insurance are turned away from hospitals. Anti-abortion rights advocates argue that the Biden administration is misusing this law to try to justify abortions. On the other side, though, we have talked to doctors and patients who told us they are caught in a web of confusing laws. Some doctors have told us they have questioned whether or not their patient is sick enough before they can even provide life saving care. And doctors, of course, face serious penalties, loss of license, fines, and, in some cases, even prison time. And, all of this is playing out in the back drop of an election year where the Biden administration is hoping to use this to energize voters ahead of a very critical, George. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, Rachel, on that point, President Biden is targeting Donald Trump over abortion rights, blasting him yesterday at a Florida campaign event over a six week abortion ban going into effect in the state next week. [BIDEN CLIP] (....) BRUCE: Well, President Biden is eager to put the issue of abortion front and center in this campaign. As you heard there, he is trying to make Donald Trump own this, blaming him for the new restrictions and bans that we are seeing across the country. Yesterday, in that speech in Florida, the president’s first major campaign address on this issue, by our count at least a dozen times the President argued Trump should be held accountable and is to blame for us. Now, Donald Trump has bragged about overturning Roe vs. Wade, appointing the three justices who helped strike it down. And since then, 21 states have now enacted tough new restrictions and bans. The former President, though, said this should be up to the states. He says they are handling it brilliantly. President Biden, obviously, strongly disagrees. He says Trump has to be held accountable and he is hoping this issue will drive voters to the polls in November. He is well aware that every time this issue has been on the ballot since Roe was struck down, abortion rights have won. Bruce’s North Korean-state-run-media behavior went right into ABC’s airlines segment. Co-host Robin Roberts proclaimed that “[t]he Biden administration [is] taking action this morning to protect airline consumers” with “[n]ew rules that mandate automatic refunds.” “This is a major change from the Department of Transportation. And, again, it affects your money,” said transportation correspondent Gio Benitez at the start of his report. In the second hour, ABC made sure to reiterate all the supposedly great things a President running for a second term has done for Americans. This time, correspondent Elizabeth Schulze held up a vote by the Biden Federal Trade Commission “that could make it easier for workers to quit their jobs”. “The FTC voting to ban non-compete agreements, which prevent workers from switching jobs to work for a rival company. The nationwide ban means workers applying for a new job wouldn’t be forced to sign a non-compete and almost all existing non-compete clauses would be voided,” she added. For good measure, Schulze also shared a Biden Labor Department initiative that’ll be “a major expansion of overtime” which, starting in July, will see the salary threshold of workers eligible for overtime rise to $44,000 ahead of a $60,000 ceiling in January. CBS Mornings clocked in third with a still-strong four minutes and 50 seconds of stenography. After a segment about the Senate passing the bill to force TikTok to be sold from its Chinese parent company (or be banned in the U.S.), co-host Tony Dokoupil brought up the airlines and FTC stories as other examples of “words turning into action in Washington” with “[s]ome big changes there that could have an effect on millions of Americans”. Transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave and senior tech correspondent Jo Ling Kent came next doubling as regime mouthpieces (click “expand”): VAN CLEAVE: The next time you run into travel troubles, you could be eligible for a cash refund. These new Department of Transportation rules that will be going into effect say you can get a refund for a canceled flight, but if you’re delayed more than three hours for a domestic flight or more than six hours internationally, you can also get a refund if you choose not to fly. Also, bag fees must be refunded if a checked bag is significantly delayed, and refund must be given if any services you paid for aren’t provided like broken wi-fi. Airlines are also required now to disclose what fees they charge up front for things like a checked bag, a carry-on bag, a cancel or change fee. Now, most airlines in the U.S. already do that. These new rules will be phased in over the next 12 months[.] (....) KENT: [T]he Federal Trade Commission wants to make it easier for you to get a new job. It plans on banning non-compete clauses, and those are the parts of employer contracts that bar workers across industries from leaving for a competitor or starting a competing business. Now, some saying non-competes help employers protect their trade secrets and allow them to invest in training for employees without fear of losing them, while others argue the clauses are overly restrictive on the workers. The FTC says its ban would translate to $524 more each year for the average worker, yield as many as 29,000 more patents, and create at least 8,500 new businesses. But, of course, this is not set in stone yet. The U.S. Chamber of commerce called the ban an unlawful power grab and said it would sue the FTC to block it. CBS conveniently and immediately pivoted to abortion, but longtime Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford kept it straight (as usual). While she said “the Biden administration is challenging Idaho’s pretty strict restrictions with a really creative legal argument”, she also gave two soundbites to Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador (R) to defend his state’s pro-life law. To see the relevant transcripts from April 24, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC). April 24th, 2024 5:36 PM Curtis Houck 283888 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/gabriela-pariseau/2024/04/24/us-gives-tiktok-ultimatum-sell-or-wave-american TikTok might be on its way out of America if it does not separate from its ties to the communist Chinese government. After House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-AL) maneuvered to include a TikTok ultimatum in a bipartisan foreign aid package, President Joe Biden signed H.R.815 Wednesday. The foreign aid spending bill forces TikTok’s  Chinese-controlled parent company, ByteDance to divest itself from TikTok, or risk being banned from the U.S. The legislation also penalizes app stores and web hosting services that carry foreign adversary-controlled apps or websites to American users barring divestiture. The law applies not just to Chinese-controlled apps, but also to those controlled by Russia, Iran and North Korea. TikTok must divest itself from China if it wants to do business in the United States. We at the MRC have been consistent from the beginning. TikTok is a national security threat. @BrentBozell pic.twitter.com/FfSh1futU3 — Media Research Center (@theMRC) March 12, 2024 The new law empowers Biden to effectively block TikTok from doing business in the U.S. if ByteDance does not sell it to a company not based out of the forenamed countries.  The legislation gives TikTok nine months to decide whether or not to divest, which ends notably just after the 2024 presidential election. Biden, who endorsed the TikTok provision, can even grant an additional three-month grace period. Biden, however, will have to do more than sign a bill to prove he is serious about banning TikTok. As MRC has repeatedly noted, the president has actively used TikTok for his 2024 presidential campaign. To date, he has posted 149 TikTok videos even though he issued an executive order two years ago barring federal employees from using the app on government-issued devices. 🚨 @SpeakerJohnson won a victory for America's security, but now our Commander-in-Chief needs to abide by both the spirit and the letter of the law. President Biden has signed into law the bill requiring TikTok to separate itself from its masters at the Chinese Communist Party,… — Media Research Center (@theMRC) April 24, 2024 “Biden wants to have it both ways,” MRC wrote in a statement. “He wants to run out in front of the parade to eliminate a serious security threat from America’s biggest adversary while simultaneously using TikTok in a lame attempt to lure back voters who have grown tired of his failed policies.” When legislation targeting foreign adversary apps was first introduced by the House, in March, MRC President Brent Bozell came out in support of the bill. “It is absolutely correct and necessary for TikTok to divest itself of any control from the communist Chinese government in China if it wants to do business in the United States,” he said. While the bill puts great emphasis on national security concerns associated with the communist Chinese government-tied TikTok app, some Republicans and free speech advocates fear that it could be abused in ways that may hinder freedom of speech with regard to other platforms. The law will fine violating app stores and web hosting services $5,000 per user for violations of the provision. X owner Elon Musk and Reps. Thomas Massie (R- WV) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have voiced concern that if the legislation is abused, it could lead to more online censorship. In an interview with Newsmax’s First Edition, MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider addressed similar concerns about government overreach and abuse. He said critics were “right to be concerned especially with Biden sitting there in the white house with all the 25-year-olds who are pulling the strings and moving his mouth and lips.” Schneider added, however, that “under our constitution, the president is the one who controls our foreign policy and right now China is such a threat to America that they are actively infiltrating America both with troops and with data, scouring the internet for all our information. They are working aggressively to control us and TikTok is their number one tool and it’s got to be stopped.   Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 24th, 2024 5:08 PM Gabriela Pariseau 283887 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/john-stossel/2024/04/24/norberg-swedens-socialism-loneliness-epidemic-degrowth-other-myths Capitalism and racism go together? I hear it all the time. “Racism is intricately linked to capitalism,” says famous Marxist Angela Davis. “It’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place.” “Anti-racist” activist Ibram X. Kendi says, “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” This is just silly. In my new video, Swedish historian Johan Norberg explains how free markets discourage racism. Capitalists make a profit by serving their customers. The more customers they please, the more money they might make. It hurts the bottom line to exclude any groups. “Look around the world,” says Norberg, “The least racist societies with the fewest expressions of racist attitudes are the most capitalist countries.” Norberg’s new book, “The Capitalist Manifesto,” highlights a Journal of Institutional Economics study that found a correlation between economic freedom and “tolerance of ethnic groups.” “Capitalism,” he says, “Is the first economic system where you only get rich by opening up opportunities for others. It pays to be colorblind. It pays to be open to willing customers and workers who could enrich your company no matter what religion or race. ... It doesn’t mean that every person will be colorblind. There will always be idiots. But in capitalism, it’s costly to be an idiot.” He reminds us that in the Jim Crow South, businesses fought racism, because the rules denied them customers. “It’s often forgotten that owners of buses, railways, streetcars in the American South didn’t really segregate systematically until the late 19th century,” says Norberg. “It was probably not because they were less racist than others in the South, but they were capitalists. They wanted money, they wanted clients, and they didn’t want to engage in some sort of costly and brutal policing business in segregating buses.” Even when segregation was mandated, some streetcar companies refused to comply. For several years after Jim Crow laws passed, Black customers sat wherever they wanted. Norberg adds, “Those owners of public transport, they fought those discriminatory laws because they imposed a terrible cost. ... They tried to bypass them secretly and fight them in courts. They were often fined. Some were threatened with imprisonment.” The streetcar company in Mobile, Alabama, only obeyed Jim Crow laws after their conductors began to get arrested and fined. Those business owners may have been racist -- I can’t know -- but they fought segregation. “We got Jim Crow laws,” says Norberg, “Because free markets weren’t willing to discriminate.” Capitalists cared about green -- not black or white. Free markets all over the world coordinate and cooperate. Many don’t know of each other’s existence, and if they did meet, they might not get along. But they work together in search of profit. It’s odd that socialists now call capitalism racist, when the opposite is more often true. The Soviet Union invited African students to study science in major cities. But “Soviet citizens often treated the Africans in their midst with disdain and hostility,” New Lines Magazine describes. Russian children’s books portrayed Blacks in animalistic ways. Name-calling was common. Today, China and Cuba claim to have “zero-tolerance” for racism, but during the Covid pandemic, authorities forcibly tested Blacks and ordered strict isolation. Landlords evicted African tenants. Businesses often refused to serve them. In Cuba, Castro insisted he would eliminate racism. But “Racism persists,” reports France 24, saying it’s “banned by law,” but “alive on the streets ... In local jargon, a white woman with a black boyfriend is ... ‘holding back the race.’” Cuba’s government is still instituting programs to “combat racism.” It’s capitalism that makes people less racist. April 24th, 2024 4:25 PM John Stossel 283885 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/tierin-rose-mandelburg/2024/04/24/tennessee-bill-allows-teachers-possess-concealed A year after transgender Audrey Hale entered and shot innocent people at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that would allow teachers to carry guns at school to protect their students and themselves. In a 68-28 vote on Tuesday, Tennessee legislators voted in favor of HB 1202/SB 1321, which allows some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds. The bill also indicates that parents and other teachers won't know which staff members have possession of a handgun.  All but four Republicans supported the bill and all Democrats voted against it, but it still passed with flying colors. Armed teachers will go through intense training in order to be allowed to carry concealed handguns in their classrooms and around their school if Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) doesn’t veto it when it reaches his desk (Lee has reportedly never vetoed a bill). Additionally, the school district’s director of schools, the school principal and the chief of the area’s law enforcement agency must sign off on each staff member’s authority to carry a gun. As The Tennessean noted, staff would also be required to pass criminal and mental health background checks prior to gaining the authority to carry a gun on school grounds. This bill comes at a time when six families are still heartbroken after their loved ones were shot dead when Audrey Hale entered the Christian school and ruthlessly took their lives. While the bill has the potential to stop a school shooter like Hale, it faced criticism and pushback.  Some critics insisted it would lead to “unintended consequences,” like a teacher accidentally leaving the gun unattended for a “student to find” or that it is a “bad disaster and tragedy waiting to happen,” The Tennessean reported. Other critics insisted that Tennessee schools should just rely on School Resource Officers (SROs) to be armed and protect the school, but realistically SROs can’t possibly protect hundreds of students at one time, not to mention “nearly 600 schools do not have an SRO in place” due to staffing issues, The Tennessean added. Bill sponsor, State Rep. Ryan Williams (R-Dist. 42), noted that the bill doesn’t force anyone to carry a gun at school but opens up the option in the case that approved personnel do want to - it simply requires that school personnel consider allowing qualified and approved carriers to possess a gun on school grounds.  Williams hopes that this, as well as the fact that it won’t be publicized which teachers and staff are carrying, will serve as a deterrent from violent people who seek to shoot up schools.    Opponents of the bill called it “absolutely insane” and said that they “think it’s a parent’s job to know if their child is being put at risk by having someone in the classroom with a firearm that another child could find, that could be discharged and actually harm them or other kids.” Others held signs outside the State House saying things like “SHAME” and “1 Kid > All the guns.” Other opponents staged a “die in” where they laid on the floor of the house building and later screamed like lunatics once it was passed.  On the other hand, supporters thought similarly to Williams and those who voted for the passing of the bill. Here’s what Vigilant News reported:  And here we find the disconnect that anti-gun advocates don’t grasp:  They seem to believe that the mere presence of a gun will automatically trigger violence, as if it has magical powers to attract and inspire evil.  In reality, the problem is evil people, not “evil” objects.  There’s nothing stopping a bad person from acquiring and using a firearm for terrible purposes at any place of their choosing.  Gun free zones only prevent good people from carrying. Tennessee would become at least the 30th state that allows some teachers to carry firearms, if passed, but time will tell. Whether the bill becomes law or doesn't, it seems like there’s going to be some people on both sides who are not satisfied. April 24th, 2024 4:06 PM Tierin-Rose Mandelburg 283884 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/christian-baldwin/2024/04/24/platform-targeted-libs-tiktok-turned-blind-eye Slack, a workplace communications provider, used its terms of service to push an ideological agenda and sabotage conservative customers, a new report alleged. On April 24, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation released a new report written by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accusing Big Tech companies like Slack of weaponizing ambiguous terms of service to target their ideological adversaries, including prominent voices like Libs of TikTok, 12x All-American swimmer Riley Gaines and podcast host Matt Walsh.  As the Ranking Member of the @SenateCommerce Committee, one of my top priorities is holding Big Tech accountable. Recently, my team and I complied a report detailing how Big Tech giants are wielding their terms of service against conservatives and conservative causes. In this… pic.twitter.com/LBTmLQN9MI — Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) April 24, 2024 According to the report, Slack claimed that Libs of TikTok’s workspace violated its Acceptable Use Policy. Slack’s internal review of the account claimed that Libs of TikTok violated its terms of service by allegedly “encouraging hate against LGBTQ+ individuals, and enabling or encouraging threats against children’s hospitals, libraries, and various LGBTQ+ communities.” Slack’s team also proclaimed that the purpose of Libs of TikTok’s account was to “incite hatred.” One of the posts that got Libs of TikTok booted was a tweet merely reporting on Boston Children’s Hospital offering “‘gender affirming hysterectomies’ for young girls.”  The post was entirely accurate and corroborated by a March 2022 MDPI study, which refers to the Center for Gender Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital as “the first pediatric center in the United States to offer gender-affirming chest surgeries for individuals over 15 years old and genital surgeries for those over 17 years of age.”  Related: Babylon Bee CEO Says Slack CANCELED Libs of TikTok Account, Gave Vague Explanation Why Other purportedly offending posts were flyers advertising drag queen shows for all ages.  One post read, “An LGBT youth group is holding a drag show happy hour for all ages at a bar in Woodland, CA. They encourage kids to tip the drag queens.” There were no additional comments or personal opinions expressed in the post.  The report said that on Feb. 24, 2023, Slack used the internal investigation as a pretext for suspending Libs of TikTok’s workspace. In addition, the report highlighted that Slack platforms many other organizations that have advocated for, or even participated in, blatant violence and other alleged illegal activity. For instance, Antifa has its own Slack workspace and is yet to be suspended despite the group’s frequent participation in acts of arson and terrorism, according to the report.  During the George Floyd Riots of 2020, Antifa members and other leftist militants seized a six-block neighborhood in Seattle’s East Precinct, dubbed the CHAZ or “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.” The armed occupation resulted in the death by shooting of a 16-year-old boy and another 14-year-old boy being critically injured. Another communist group, the Stop Cop City movement, is also still platformed on Slack. The group was formed to impede by force the construction of a new training facility for cops and firefighters in Atlanta. On March 6, 2023, the Atlanta Police Department announced the arrest of 23 militants on charges of domestic terrorism after the rioters allegedly threw bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails at police officers.    Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 24th, 2024 4:01 PM Christian Baldwin 283883 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/24/politico-exposes-medias-anti-trump-legal-echo-chambers-meetings Cable news has often been described as an echo chamber, but a Tuesday report from Politico’s Ankush Khardori provided evidence that cable news legal analysts regularly meet up to discuss what talking points they should bring with them when they are on the air. Khardori begins, “As the Jan. 6 committee was working on its bombshell investigation into the Capitol riot and President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election, committee staffers took some time out of their seemingly 24-hour jobs one day in 2022 to brief a group of lawyers and legal pundits on a Zoom call.” He further notes, “The group’s gathering was not a one-time event, but in fact an installment in an exclusive weekly digital salon, whose existence has not been previously reported, for prominent legal analysts and progressive and conservative anti-Trump lawyers and pundits. Every Friday, they meet on Zoom to hash out the latest twists and turns in the Trump legal saga — and intellectually stress-test the arguments facing Trump on his journey through the American legal system.” The meetings resemble cable news itself, “Some group members wouldn’t describe themselves with any partisan or ideological lean, but most are united by their dislike of Trump.” Khardori further reports that former Obama official and Trump Impeachment 1.0 lawyer Norman Eisen hosts the group. Other regulars include a who’s who of anti-Trump media figures and famous liberal law professors such as Bill Kristol, Laurence Tribe, John Dean, George Conway, Andrew Weissmann, Jeffrey Toobin, Harry Litman, Barbara McQuade, Joyce White Vance, Jennifer Rubin, Mary McCord, Karen Agnifilo, Elliot Williams, Ryan Goodman, Renato Mariotti, Asha Rangappa, Shan Wu, and Norman Ornstein. Apparently, multiple people thought it was a good idea to welcome Toobin to a Zoom call. Apart from the regulars, “Sometimes there is a special guest,” Khardori adds, “like the Jan. 6 committee staffers (who recalled briefing the group). One Friday last May, after E. Jean Carroll defeated Trump in the first of her two defamation cases to go to trial, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan joined as a guest to talk for roughly half an hour about her strategy for beating Trump in court. Another time, J. Michael Luttig, a conservative legal scholar and former judge who helped lead the public campaign to disqualify Trump under the 14th Amendment, showed up to make his case.” Khardori does note later on that CNN’s Elie Honig once challenged Luttig on his arguments and Khardori himself notes that echo chambers tend to make their members look foolish, “The conversations, though, could also spread dubious analysis, or perhaps lead to wish-casting. The effort to disqualify Trump under the 14th Amendment never really had a chance, but many commentators — including some who participate in the calls — publicly argued otherwise.” Additionally, Khardori recalled, “As I was reporting this story, I learned that some members of the group were understandably anxious about its publication. Trump has claimed that there is a legal conspiracy against him, and there is a risk that news of a group such as this could give Trump and his allies an attractive target.” The people present on these Zoom calls may portray themselves as a bunch of law nerds bouncing ideas off of each other, but the end results look like a group of people who agree with each other about how awesome they are and who then go on air and tell their audiences what they want to hear. April 24th, 2024 3:08 PM Alex Christy 283882 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/24/networks-praise-pro-hamas-solidarity-movement-spreading The three major American broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) were out in force Wednesday morning as all three of them took to praising the pro-Hamas extremists taking over college campuses across the country. Ignoring the raging antisemitism that was on full display and captured on videos circulating on social media, they praised the “solidary movement” that was spreading to more campuses. They also promoted the so-called “boycott, divest, and sanctions” movement, omitting its anti-Semitic roots. “Pro-Palestinian protests have spread across university campuses from coast to coast. Columbia here at the center of this solidarity movement,” ABC correspondent Stephanie Ramos boasted on Good Morning America. In something of a skeptical tone, Ramos seemed to cast doubt on Jewish students who felt unsafe and threatened by the pro-Hamas crowd that was literally calling for Jewish blood: “Columbia University offering virtual learning for the last week of class after some Jewish students said they felt unsafe on campus…” Noting that it’s been 200 days since the start of the war, Ramos cheered that pro-Hamas rallies were “spreading” with “protesters digging in” across the country. She also promoted their anti-Semitic demands of divestment. “Protesters demanding colleges divest from companies they say profit from ties with Israel,” she said.     Over on CBS Mornings, they abdicated the moral high ground they occupied on Tuesday when they called out the antisemitism. On Wednesday, correspondent Nancy Chen promoted divestment as “one of the most crucial components [of their demands]”: PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 1: Our first demand is complete divestment from anything related to Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. CHEN: The words apartheid and genocide are loaded but the idea of divestment is a refrain echoed over and over by protesters we spoke to on campus. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 2: Financial divestment, financial transparency. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 3: Is financial divestment from any companies that profit off of Israeli apartheid. After noting that Columbia students “remained defiant,” Chen hyped: “From coast to coast, California to Massachusetts, demonstrations expressing anger over Israel's bombardment of Gaza.” Correspondent Erin McLaughlin was back on NBC’s Today to cheer Columbia University for capitulating to the pro-terrorist mob. “Now, it seems the deadline has extended; as this morning university spokesperson telling NBC News they'll be in talks with students for the next 48 hours. And we're hearing they made progress,” she touted. She too was excited by how the anti-Semitic crowds were taking over other campuses. “Columbia's encampment inspiring protesters at at least 15 other universities, including at Cal Poly Humboldt where dozens occupied a campus building and at the University of Minnesota where nine were detained trespassing. Students at NYU walking out of class Tuesday,” she said, omitting the violence at CPH. What none of them dared to show was the video of Columbia students chanting for the murder of Jews. In a video shown on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper on Tuesday, the pro-Hamas students were clearly heard chanting: “Al-Qassam you make us proud, take another settler out!" and "Hamas we love you! We support your rockets too!"   This morning, @ErinNBCNews suggested there were no chants or acts of antisemitism at Columbia University. You should watch this Erin: "Al-Qassam you make us proud, take another settler out!" "Hamas we love you. We support your rockets too!" pic.twitter.com/KHnXKaLUh1 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 23, 2024   The transcripts are below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s Good Morning America April 24, 2024 7:10:11 a.m. Eastern (…) STEPHANIE RAMOS: Pro-Palestinian protests have spread across university campuses from coast to coast. Columbia here at the center of this solidarity movement. [Cuts back to live] This morning, images showing protests turning violent at Cal Poly Humboldt. Police struggling to control hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the college campus. The school, now closed today. This comes on the heels of demonstrations across the country. NYU ramping up security with a new barricade after clashes with police. Columbia University offering virtual learning for the last week of class after some Jewish students said they felt unsafe on campus, like Aiden Hunter who tells us he understands why people are protesting. AIDEN HUNTER: I don't mean to diminish that. But I'd say the majority of my friend, especially my Jewish friends, feel a sense of insecurity at this time. RAMOS: It's been more than 200 days since the start of the Israel/Hamas War prompting pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, which are spreading. Protesters demanding colleges divest from companies they say profit from ties with Israel. MIRYAM ALWAN (Pro-Hamas protester): We’re not planning on packing up and going home. Because people in Palestine are going through so much worse. RAMOS: Protesters digging in from Berkeley to the University of Michigan to the University of Minnesota, where police took down tents and made arrests. (…) CBS Mornings April 24, 2024 7:02:54 a.m. Eastern (…) NANCY CHEN: Outside of Columbia University's campus, demonstrators continue to rally. After the school's administration warned students on campus to dismantle their camps or face consequences, some were seen breaking them down, while others remained defiant. From coast to coast, California to Massachusetts, demonstrations expressing anger over Israel's bombardment of Gaza. (…) CHEN: Earlier in the day at Columbia, protesters reiterated their demands including an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. And one of the most crucial components – cutting off any financial interest connected to Israel. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 1: Our first demand is complete divestment from anything related to Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. CHEN: The words apartheid and genocide are loaded but the idea of divestment is a refrain echoed over and over by protesters we spoke to on campus. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 2: Financial divestment, financial transparency. PRO-HAMAS PROTESTER 3: Is financial divestment from any companies that profit off of Israeli apartheid. (…) NBC’s Today April 24, 2024 7:07:26 a.m. Eastern (…) ERIN MCLAUGHLIN: It appears the situation here at the university is changing by the hour. Now, originally the university had called for the student encampment to be taken down overnight. Now, it seems the deadline has extended as this morning university spokesperson telling NBC News they'll be in talks with students for the next 48 hours. And we're hearing they made progress. [Cuts to video] This morning, Columbia University – a flash point in the nationwide unrest at college campuses across the country – reporting progress in negotiations with pro-Palestinian protesters who’ve been encamped on campus since last week. A Columbia spokesperson telling NBC News this morning, students have committed to dismantling and removing a significant number of tents and have agreed to prohibit discriminatory or harassing language. The school has been flaring with unrest with a growing pressure on its president Minouche Shafik, amidst allegations that the university is not doing enough to de-escalate tensions or adequately protect the safety of Jewish students. (…) MCLAUGHLIN: Columbia's encampment inspiring protesters at at least 15 other universities, including at Cal Poly Humboldt where dozens occupied a campus building and at the University of Minnesota where nine were detained trespassing. Students at NYU walking out of class Tuesday. (…) April 24th, 2024 2:20 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283881 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2024/04/24/mrcs-brent-bozell-levin-staggering-facebook-election Media Research Center President Brent Bozell called out yet another Big Tech company for interfering in U.S. elections — and he has the receipts to prove it. During a Tuesday interview with nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin on The Mark Levin Show, Bozell lambasted Facebook following an MRC Special Report detailing how the Meta-owned social media platform interfered in U.S. elections 39 times since 2008.  Bozell minced no words in his response to the MRC findings, stating, “We looked at Facebook since 2008. We found 39 examples of Facebook directly interfering with political campaigns.” Bozell said, “This is, it’s systematic. … These Big Tech companies have got to stop interfering.” The MRC president referred to a bombshell report published by MRC Free Speech America on Monday. READ IT: 39 Times Facebook Interfered in US Elections Since 2008 The report found that while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has publicly embraced the First Amendment and the freedom of expression, his companies’ censorship acts have directly interfered with the democratic process in American elections.  The evidence shows that while censorship was not exclusively directed toward Republicans, a large proportion of it was aimed at non-Democrat candidates, ultimately reaching its height in the lead-up to, and shortly after, the 2020 election. “In 2020, [Facebook] censured Trump ads; Trump super PAC ads; Hunter Biden suppression is what exploded in 2020; and then you have the anti-COVID posts, which were all taken down,” Bozell told Levin.  Tellingly, Facebook censored Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), then a Democratic presidential candidate, for launching an ad “calling for breaking up Big Tech companies,” Bozell added, before saying in jest, “I love it.” The censorship was vast and rampant, Bozell continued. “They also removed an anti-Antifa ad that was run by [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). In 2021, they officially suspended Donald Trump from their platform.” The MRC report on Facebook’s election interference comes just weeks after it published a similar report on Google's election interference tactics. The Google report found at least 41 times the tech giant used its power to interfere in U.S. elections. Related: 41 Times Google Has Interfered in US Elections Since 2008 “Their algorithms are being tinkered with so that they can advance the left in America. … Google has the power to define what is and what isn’t truth,” Bozell said of Google at the time. You May Also Like: MRC President Bozell Details Startling Reality About Google: It Has ‘Power to Define’ Truth Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 24th, 2024 12:07 PM Luis Cornelio 283880 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/tierin-rose-mandelburg/2024/04/24/scotus-hears-idaho-defense-life-act-opening On Wednesday, April 24, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from the Idaho Attorney General’s office insisting that the Biden administration acted unlawfully when it sued the state of Idaho in an attempt to allow emergency room doctors to violate state law and conduct illegal abortions. Many pro-lifers and pro-aborts showed up in Washington D.C. outside the court and users online put their two cents in as well. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, the state of Idaho enacted the Defense of Life Act to protect women and unborn children in the state and ensure that abortions don’t take place unless absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother. Shortly after the ruling, the Biden administration sued the state and cited the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The administration used a radical interpretation of EMTALA in order to mandate abortion and force Idaho emergency room doctors to perform illegal and unnecessary abortions. While EMTALA, passed in 1986, was designed to help uninsured people receive emergency care, including care for pregnant women and their “unborn child[ren],” the Biden Administration has convinced pro-aborts that Idaho’s law won't help pregnant women in emergency situations. Obviously, that’s a lie.  After some blocks and overrules, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, with help from the Alliance Defending Freedom and Cooper & Kirk law firm, facilitated the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments about how the Biden Administration is “continuing to manipulate EMTALA to override Idaho’s law and force emergency room doctors to take vulnerable lives.” At its core, Idaho’s “law is consistent with EMTALA because it limits only elective abortions,” Washington Examiner reported. Yet, the pro-aborts have been manipulated into believing the Biden administration’s new interpretation, which would allow for abortions even when not absolutely medically necessary. Wednesday was that day and many pro-lifers and pro-aborts showed up to hear. A group of protestors laid on the floor with white sheets covered in red paint to look like blood draped over them. Behind them stood people with signs that read “Without EMTALA, women in Idaho will die.” The signs were all the same except the state listed was different on each one. They were created by the Women’s March which, in an email encouraging pro-aborts to show up at SCOTUS, insisted that “anti-abortion extremists want to exclude pregnant people from this protection and force doctors to turn away patients suffering emergency pregnancy complications.” The Supreme Court is hearing a case today on whether ER physicians in Idaho can provide abortions in emergency situations despite the state’s near-total ban, which has narrow exceptions The question before the justices: Does federal law (EMTALA) preempt the state’s ban? pic.twitter.com/UdgmzOkpoH — Oriana González (@OrianaBeLike) April 24, 2024 The thing is, if an abortion is absolutely necessary to save the life of a mother, it’s perfectly legal in Idaho to do so. The state is simply arguing that if abortions aren’t absolutely necessary, then they shouldn’t be done. It’s that simple. A group from the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising held signs that said “Expose & Shut Down the Abortion Industrial Complex NOW!” and yelled “Pro-choice is a lie, babies never choose to die.” Members were also spotted holding signs that said “We need free birth not more abortion” which was a stark difference from the pro-abort signs that read “Abortion is health care,” “Abortion is our right” and “Abortions save lives!” Over on X, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life wrote, “Today, we see that abortion is both FEDERAL & STATE. Biden’s team is trying to force abortion into Emergency Rooms and Idaho fights to protect the lives of both mother and preborn child." LifeNews.com wrote, “Every state with an abortion ban allows emergency medical care for pregnant women, including Idaho.” The pro-aborts continued spewing lies, insisting that if the Supreme Court allowed Idaho to protect life, that pregnant women wouldn’t be helped in emergency situations. One user insisted that Idaho was treating women as second class citizens and that they may “end up disabled or harmed in the name of being pro-life” if they need medical attention while pregnant. The thing is, even with the federal law of EMTALA, which was set up to protect life, Idaho can still follow through with its state's decision to protect life at all costs and at all points and only conduct abortions when absolutely necessary. But, leave it to our current administration to lie and purposely cause a divide. To conclude, Washington Examiner summed up our administration’s goals well: The lawsuit involving Idaho now before the Supreme Court shows the extent of the Biden administration’s unhealthy obsession with abortion, even if it means spreading misinformation and lies about women’s health. It also shows that the underlying motive for the litigation is not about women’s health because Idaho and all other states already protect the lives of pregnant women. The Biden administration’s ultimate goal is to mandate abortion. April 24th, 2024 11:52 AM Tierin-Rose Mandelburg 283879 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/24/npr-ceo-disses-distraction-bias-complaints-bad-faith-criticism-her Wall Street Journal media reporter Alexandra Bruell secured an interview with new NPR CEO Katherine Maher, and naturally, she discovered NPR doesn't want anyone focusing on the "distraction" of leftist tilt. They don't want anyone disturbing their "mandate" of taking taxpayer money from Republicans and whacking them with it. The headline defined it:  NPR Chief Defends Coverage, Accuses Critics of ‘Bad Faith Distortion’ of Her Views Katherine Maher said controversy stemming from an editor’s essay criticizing the radio network has been a distraction Bruell offered a sort of "poor thing" spin in how Maher's tenure had a rocky start with the Uri Berliner expose and conservative Christopher Rufo's unearthing of her woke tweets before joining NPR:  Critics have scrutinized her political views and seized on past comments she made on everything from the First Amendment to misinformation to the idea that written history is tilted toward the worldview of white men.  “All of this frankly is a bit of a distraction relative to the transformation our organization needs to undergo in order to best serve our mandate,” Maher said in an interview. Which "mandate" is that? We aren't told. She said NPR should be open to criticism...but clearly, she prefers internal conversations, not objections from, you know, the "public" when it comes to public radio. “We have robust conversations across the organization, including in response to the article,” she said. “Clear and well-reasoned pieces” from reviewers, like a write-up from NPR’s public editor and Poynter executive Kelly McBride that examined coverage of Israel and Gaza, have “found that our journalism is really solid,” Maher said. Citing McBride is especially perfect, since McBride went on Brian Stelter's podcast and divided NPR critics as supporters (liberals) and "bad faith" critics (conservatives). McBride sounds less like a Public Editor (working on behalf of the audience) and more like a Public Cheerleader (working on behalf of company morale). Maher's rah-rah memo to staff (posted on NPR's website) attacking Berliner for criticizing staffers for "who they are" instead of their on-air propaganda wasn't enough:  Days after Maher sent a note to staff addressing Berliner’s essay, NPR employees wrote to her urging stronger support for employees and asking her to call out factual inaccuracies in the piece “Without true leadership, resentment and discontent are festering among your staff,” the staffers wrote.  In a statement, Berliner said, “I wish that the company would have addressed and taken seriously some of the points I made.” If NPR wants to foster a broad range of views, “suspending and then rebuking a staffer is not the best way to go about it,” he said. The Journal reporter somehow didn't get any reaction from Rufo about all the Maher tweets about "cis-White mobility privilege" and so on. Maher tried to suggest her personal opinions are set aside in her professional life:  “There are many professions in which you set aside your own personal perspectives in order to lead in public service, and that is exactly how I have always led organizations and will continue to lead NPR,” she said. But Maher's attack on Berliner for his complaints about wokeness and "affinity groups" in the newsroom surely reflect her publicly-aired personal wokeness. Maher said their internal research shows people see NPR as “accurate and intellectual,” she said. “We want to be able to speak to folks as though they were our neighbors and speak to folks as though they were our friends.” That's not the way conservatives hear it on the radio. April 24th, 2024 11:29 AM Tim Graham 283877 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/24/kimmel-mocks-red-states-book-bans-cites-books-banned-left Tuesday was World Book Day and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel celebrated by bringing a quintet of librarians together to tell Republicans to “shut the [bleep] up” over their supposed book bans. The only problem was that the books Kimmel and his new friends highlighted, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, are regularly targeted by race-obsessed progressives. Kimmel began by declaring, “It’s also World Book Day today or as the state of Florida calls it, Bonfire Day.” After a digression into the demise of the phone book and the Yellow Pages, Kimmel continued, “All jokes aside, this World Book Day is a weird one. There are at least 100 bills in various red states, three of which have become law already, threatening librarians with prison for the crime of lending books. Books that aren't government-approved. Which to me, not only is this the opposite of what our country's supposed to be about, it's completely nuts. We're going to throw librarians in jail for loaning out Huckleberry Finn. This is not what they signed up for. I think it's disgusting and wrong and anti-American.”     Schools that target Huckleberry Finn generally do so under the guise that the book contains the N-word and therefore removing the book from the curriculum is needed “to protect the dignity of our students.”  Kimmel then played a sketch the show put together of five librarians reacting to Kimmel’s anti-red state diatribe. The librarians informed viewers that they are “not groomers,” “not sex fiends,” “not pornographers,” and “not Satanists.” One lamented, “Some people want to make us criminals,” while another declared, “It's not meth. It's Judy Blume.” They wondered why Republicans want to “make books the enemy” and “make knowledge the enemy.” Three of them responded that conservatives should “shut the [bleep] up.” In a post-credit scene, one added, “You can have To Kill A Mockingbird when you pry it from my cold, dead hands! Or you can check it out.” Like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird is targeted by blue school districts for its unsettling, but historically accurate language, while also being attacked for the alleged white savior complex of its protagonist. Meanwhile, Kimmel’s monologue and the corresponding skit from the librarians were just another case of Jimmy Kimmel Live! not sufficiently checking their facts. Here is a transcript for the April 23 show: ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live! 4/23/2024 11:46 PM ET JIMMY KIMMEL:  It’s also World Book Day today or as the state of Florida calls it, Bonfire Day. … All jokes aside, this World Book Day is a weird one. There are at least 100 bills in various red states, three of which have become law already, threatening librarians with prison for the crime of lending books. Books that aren't government-approved. Which to me, not only is this the opposite of what our country's supposed to be about, it's completely nuts. We're going to throw librarians in jail for loaning out Huckleberry Finn. This is not what they signed up for. I think it's disgusting and wrong and anti-American. But don't take it from me, take it from these real-life librarians. MALE LIBRARIAN: I'm a librarian. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: I'm a librarian. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 2: I've been a librarian for 26 years. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 3: We're librarians. MALE LIBRARIAN: Masters of the library sciences. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: Not groomers. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 2: Not sex fiends. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: Not pornographers. MALE LIBRARIAN: We're the people who hand out library cards. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: We do story times. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: We put away the books you guys leave out on the tables instead of putting them on the reshelf cart. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: The clearly labeled reshelf cart. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 2: You can read that, right? MALE LIBRARIAN: We're not the deep state. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: We're not Satanists. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: We're librarians. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 3: But some people want to make us criminals. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 2: Put us in jail. MALE LIBRARIAN: I would not do well in jail. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: It's not meth. It's Judy Blume. MALE LIBRARIAN: Judy effing Bloom. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: Judy effing Bloom. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: Fine us thousands of dollars? FEMALE LIBRARIAN 3: Like we have thousands of dollars. FEMALE LIBRARIAN: Make books the enemy? MALE LIBRARIAN: Make knowledge the enemy? FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: And you know what we say to this? ALL: Shh! FEMALE LIBRARIAN: Shut the [bleep] up! FEMALE LIBRARIAN 2: Shut the [bleep] up. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 4: Please shut the [bleep] up. MALE LIBRARIAN: What's wrong with you? NARRATOR: Paid for by Americans Against Americans Against Librarians. FEMALE LIBRARIAN 2: You can have To Kill A Mockingbird when you pry it from my cold, dead hands! Or you can check it out. April 24th, 2024 10:08 AM Alex Christy 283876 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2024/04/24/need-hanky-taylor-lorenz-ugly-cries-over-neutral-meta The Washington Post’s in-house cry-bully Taylor Lorenz apparently only seems to care about Big Tech when its policies affect leftists’ ability to spread their off-the-rails agitprop all over the social media landscape.  Meta announced Feb. 9 that it would be limiting all political content recommended writ large to its user bases on Instagram and Threads. This apparently struck a nerve with Lorenz, who jumped on the news with a Feb. 10 piece of her own lambasting the move as “angering some news creators” who were “gearing up for a crucial election year.” Talk about projection.  Lorenz is apparently still miffed, as her Apr. 10 piece regurgitated the bellyaching of leftist “content creators” pleading for Meta and its subsidiary Instagram in an open letter to “reverse” course, despite it being a neutral policy that affects everyone, both left and right-leaning content creators. The letter was spearheaded by the radical LGBTQ group GLAAD — a drag-queen-shows-for-kids apologist organization — and the anti-free speech leftist group Accountable Tech, which has deep ties to the Democratic Party, which Lorenz failed to disclose.  In 2023, Accountable Tech was “beefing up its team with former Democratic staffers to combat what they call an undermining of the information ecosystem and democracy ahead of next year's elections,” reported Axios at the time.  Accountable Tech’s co-founder, Jesse Lehrich, was a foreign policy spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign. The group’s current chief of staff, Robbie Dornbush, served on then-candidate Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Accountable Tech’s communications director Bianca Recto previously worked for the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), in addition to the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) 2020 presidential campaign.  Lorenz didn’t bother letting readers know about any of this, but perhaps that’s because in Lorenz’s world, targeting right-leaning content is OK, but a neutral policy that even remotely affects left-leaning content is a foul ball. Hypocrisy much? Lorenz whined that Meta’s new apolitical policy (no pun intended) “alarmed users who post about social issues, including LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, racial inequality and disability.” According to Lorenz, so-called “Independent” journalists and content creators “say they’ve struggled to reach their audiences in recent weeks since the change was rolled out.” Conveniently, nowhere does Lorenz mention that Meta’s new policy affects all sides of the political spectrum, not just the woke, social justice warriors she’s mourning about.  Is Lorenz going to take issue with Meta in light of MRC Free Speech America’s latest study showing that Facebook interfered in U.S. elections to the overwhelming benefit of leftist candidates at least 39 times since 2008? Doubtful. But Lorenz did manage to complain in her April 10 screed that LGBTQ creators were potentially going to be inhibited from promoting sex changes for children. Yes, she actually wrote that: LGBTQ creators have been particularly concerned by the limitations because they were imposed as some states were placing restrictions on medical treatments for transgender youths. It’s a wonder how many more buckets of lefty crocodile tears Lorenz is going to cry before she starts treading water.  Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.     April 24th, 2024 9:32 AM Joseph Vazquez 283874 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2024/04/24/column-anti-censorship-group-pen-america-canceled-pro-hamas-authors The leftist “free expression” group PEN America collided with a brick wall of radicals who don’t like anyone who expresses a sympathetic view of Israel after the Hamas slaughter of October 7. Their literary awards ceremony had to be cancelled due to a substantial withdrawal of authors striking a “pro-Palestinian” pose. If you disagree with that view? You’re “complicit” in genocide. Agree with the mob, or you favor mass murder. Their view is so obviously correct that they cannot understand how anyone could possibly disagree with it. “We refuse to gild the reputation of an organization that runs interference for an administration aiding and abetting genocide with our tax dollars,” a group of nominees wrote in an April 17 letter addressed to PEN America leaders. “And we refuse to take part in anything that will serve to overshadow PEN’s complicity in normalizing genocide.” Of 61 authors and translators nominated for a book prize this year, 28 declined. For the most prestigious book prize — the PEN/Jean Stein award, which comes with $75,000 — nine of 10 finalists dropped out. The fiasco will continue. PEN America’s annual World Voices Festival has also been hemorrhaging participants. Activists want heads to roll. “The fact is that Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people. PEN’s perpetuation of false equivalences, their equivocation and normalizing, is indeed a betrayal.” PEN America replied: “The current war in Gaza is horrific. But we cannot agree that the answer to its wrenching dilemmas and consequences lies in a shutting down of conversation and the closing down of viewpoints.” This furor underlines what conservatives have been saying about PEN’s self-righteous “book ban” posture. They’re not “anti-censorship.” They’re promoting a leftist revolution in literature and libraries. What the Left wants is a system where the "experts" — educators and librarians — select all the books, and the "nonexperts" — parents — shut up and accept them. So it’s amazing to see the Left eating its own over who can position themselves with moral authority as the most “pro-Palestinian.”  Free expression is nowhere to be found. The Washington Post reported many of the withdrawing activists objected to a January event where author Randa Jarrar was physically removed after she screamed incessantly during a PEN-sponsored discussion of American comedian Moshe Kasher’s memoir Subculture Vulture, which featured Israel-supporting actress and Jeopardy host Mayim Bialik. Protesters were the censors: “Jarrar and other protesters from the group Writers Against the War on Gaza were shouting, through a loudspeaker, the names of Palestinian writers killed in Gaza.” The group tweeted video, complaining: “With delusional liberal aplomb, PEN America claims objectivity while platforming genocidal Zionists and silencing Palestinians.” As usual with the radicals, “objectivity” or "bothsidesism” is painted as evil, and anyone speaking in support of Israel is automatically a maniacal Zionist who must be deplatformed. The Post story ended with a quote from novelist (and former Andrew Cuomo speechwriter) Camonghne Felix: “We cannot hope to change every institution, but we hope that by changing ourselves what we will accept, that the organizations will have no choice but to bend towards us.” The notion of free expression is going to crumble when the leftist “negotiating” position is “no choice but to bend.” April 24th, 2024 6:00 AM Tim Graham 283871 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2024/04/24/state-propaganda-abc-wishcasts-abortion-driving-biden-florida-win Among the major broadcast network evening newscasts, ABC’s is often the likeliest to go into over-the-top campaign propaganda for Democrats holding power. Case in point, ABC Whirled News Tonight’s coverage of President Joe Biden’s Florida speech on abortion. Watch as anchor David Muir and Chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce being a heavy dose of hopium to their abortion coverage:  DAVID MUIR: We turn now to President Biden tonight, hoping to put the state of Florida back in play this November. Tonight, the president's major abortion rights speech in Florida, with that state's new six-week abortion ban just days now from going into effect. Mary Bruce in Florida. MARY BRUCE: President Biden today traveling to Florida, just days before the state's strict new abortion law goes into effect. Banning the procedure at just six weeks, when many women don't even know they're pregnant. JOE BIDEN: There's one person responsible for this nightmare, and he's acknowledged, and he brags about it, Donald Trump. BRUCE: It's Biden's first major campaign speech on abortion, an issue he’s putting at the center of his re-election bid. Disney-owned ABC got into the dream business with this report, and I will respectfully remind you all that a dream is a wish your heart makes. Or in this instance, a wish Muir and Bruce make- the idea that abortion will help Biden carry Florida. The report was laden with what our friend Curtis Houck calls Team Biden apple-polishing. There was tons of that, for sure, crammed into 2 minutes and 11 seconds. After the usual Biden talking point-parroting, Bruce trots out someone from out of state to talk about how abortion is on the ballot. And then Bruce proves the dangers of being an Acela type parachuting into a state to talk local politics. She closes out her report by saying: BRUCE: And Florida is one of 14 states where abortion could be on the ballot in November The Biden campaign hoping that could put this state in play for them. They know every time the issue's been on the ballot, even in red states, abortion rights have won. In fact, an abortion question is on the Florida ballot in November. Not “could be”. Bruce might have known this had she read about it on ABC News dot com. A little more reading would’ve yielded the fact that recreational marijuana is also on the ballot, and that Florida Republicans have in the past won elections where there are also liberal ballot questions before the voters. Consider the sparse attendance at Biden’s Florida events where he was hyping abortion despite abortion already being on the ballot. Abortion isn’t the driver that Bruce and Muir are telling viewers it is.  But, alas, those apples aren’t going to polish themselves. Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024: DAVID MUIR: We turn now to President Biden tonight, hoping to put the state of Florida back in play this November. Tonight, the president's major abortion rights speech in Florida, with that state's new six-week abortion ban just days now from going into effect. Mary Bruce in Florida. MARY BRUCE: President Biden today traveling to Florida, just days before the state's strict new abortion law goes into effect. Banning the procedure at just six weeks, when many women don't even know they're pregnant. JOE BIDEN: There's one person responsible for this nightmare, and he's acknowledged, and he brags about it, Donald Trump. BRUCE: It's Biden's first major campaign speech on abortion, an issue he’s putting at the center of his re-election bid. Florida one of 21 states to ban or severely restrict abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump boasts of appointing three of the justices who struck Roe down. DONALD TRUMP: We broke Roe v. Wade, and we did something that nobody thought was possible. We gave it back to the states. And the states are working very brilliantly. BRUCE: Today, Biden calling Trump out. BIDEN: Individual state laws are working, in his words, brilliantly. Brilliantly. It's a six-week ban in Florida, it's really brilliant, isn't it? Even before women know they're pregnant. Is that brilliant? BRUCE: Biden is counting on the issue to energize voters, especially women. He was introduced today by Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana. She was almost 12 weeks pregnant when she suffered a miscarriage. When she showed up at the hospital bleeding, doctors refused to treat her, afraid of running afoul of Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban. KAITLYN JOSHUA: Another hospital basically just told me they would send me home with prayers, but were not able to medically diagnose miscarriage. BRUCE: They said they would send you home with prayers… JOSHUA: Correct. BRUCE: …but couldn't give you medical advice? JOSHUA: That's correct. BRUCE: Her message to women tonight -- JOSHUA: Abortion is absolutely on the ballot this year. If this is not a topic that you think is going to touch you or doesn't touch you currently. It absolutely will. BRUCE: And Florida is one of 14 states where abortion could be on the ballot in November The Biden campaign hoping that could put this state in play for them. They know every time the issue's been on the ballot, even in red states, abortion rights have won. David. MUIR: Mary Bruce, traveling with the president in Florida. Mary, thank you.   April 24th, 2024 12:36 AM Jorge Bonilla 283873 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2024/04/23/what-threats-against-jews-disappear-pro-hamas-protest-coverage The evening network newscasts are barely into their second weeknight covering the violent, pro-Hamas protests outside Columbia University and throughout college campuses across the nation, and there is already a discernible shift in their coverage. Direct threats against Jewish students have all but disappeared from coverage. In place of the threats and violence, we get a lot more militancy across the dial. Case in point and most emblematic is this snippet to close out CBS’s coverage of the protests: NANCY CHEN: From coast-to-coast, campus to campus, protests are growing louder in solidarity. Students are also joining in at UC Berkeley. MALAK AFANEH: Quite frankly, I think it's important that people start to align themselves with the Palestinian resistance. CHEN: Here at Columbia University, the seventh day of protests. Demonstrators want the school to divest from all business that supports Israel. STUDENT: I think it's time to divest from those weapons manufacturing and re-divest(sic) them into other important things. CHEN: They are also demanding amnesty for all students who have been punished.  Is the goal to stay here until those demands are met? STUDENT: Yes. CHEN: And as you can see behind me, demonstrators both on and off campus are still demanding to be heard. Meanwhile, there are growing calls for the university's president to resign. ABC and NBC were not that much better.  Somebody got to the media, plain and simple. Just yesterday, newscasts were reporting on the young girl that stood in front of a group of Jewish counter protesters while holding a sign that read “Al Qassam’s next targets”. Today, those very real, tangible, and unresolved threats hung in the air as each of the networks reported nearly exclusively from the protesters’ perspective. It would appear, judging from the coverage, that the media is inching towards a left-consensus position from which to cover the protests- that is, as Pro-Hamas as possible. What Jews were featured tonight were there only to discuss unspecified “discomfort”- not narrate getting poked in the eye with a Palestinian flag or having “go back to Poland” yelled at them. And in ABC’s case, immediately had that concern followed up with by a Jewish protester’s perspective: AIDEN HUNTER: I don't mean to diminish that, but I'd say the majority of my friends, especially Jewish friends, feel a sense of insecurity at this time. STEPHANIE RAMOS: But among the pro-Palestinian protesters here are also some Jewish-Americans, like professor Alex Wolf. ALEX WOLF: Anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing. And that is one thing to have beliefs -- beliefs of the Jewish religion, and it's another thing to support the policies and actions of the Israeli state. NBC’s Erin McLaughlin went off on a weird tangent as she described “a new flashpoint between free speech and hate speech.”  MCLAUGHLIN: The university said many of the protesters were not affiliated with the school, and that they'd witnessed disorderly, disruptive and antagonizing behavior, pointing to intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents reported. The days of protests following congressional testimony from Columbia's president, creating a new flash point between free speech and hate speech.  What does that even mean? There is only “speech”. Far from protecting Jewish students by keeping their stories away from the gaze of the viewing public, this increasingly pro-Hamas coverage actually puts them at risk.  Click “expand” to view the transcripts of the aforementioned reports as aired on their respective network evening newscasts on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024: ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT: DAVID MUIR: We turn now to the violent scenes breaking out at campus protests across this country over the war in Gaza. Dramatic images tonight. Mass protests at Columbia, NYU, M.I.T., Yale, the University of Minnesota, Berkeley, and several more campuses. At NYU, New York City's mayor blaming outside agitators for tossing bottles and chairs at officers. At Cal Poly Humboldt in northern California, protestors clashing with police in riot gear trying to get them to leave. ABC’s Stephanie Ramos at Columbia tonight on the scenes playing out across this country. STEPHANIE RAMOS: Tonight, these images show protests turning violent, as police struggle to control students at Cal Poly Humboldt. Demonstrations spreading from coast to coast. Protesters facing off with police in riot gear. Using furniture to barricade themselves inside this academic building, as officers with shields try to move in. One protester bashing police with an empty water jug. It comes after more than 150 students and faculty were arrested at NYU overnight, when police moved in to clear pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to move. The crowd then marching to Police headquarters. New York's Mayor Eric Adams blaming outside agitators for a violent turn in campus protests. Pointing to this video he says shows bottles and chairs thrown at officers. ERIC ADAMS: People who peacefully protest for an issue, they’re not throwing bottles and chairs. The chair dented the helmet. Can you imagine if he didn't have the helmet on? RAMOS: Today, NYU ramping up security with a new barricade. Protesters are now digging in. From Berkeley, to the University of Michigan, to Minneapolis, where police today took down tents and made arrests. Colleges struggling under a new wave of solidarity protests inspired by the movement at Columbia University. The encampment here at Columbia University is at the center of this campus. Demonstrators are studying and sleeping here, all while workers try to set all of this up for graduation just three weeks away. Protesters are demanding colleges divest from companies they say profit from ties to Israel. MARYAM ALWAN: We're not planning on packing up and going home. We are here because people in Palestine are going through so much worse. RAMOS: Columbia offering virtual learning for the last week of classes, after some Jewish students said they felt unsafe on campus. Like Aiden Hunter, who tells us he understands why people are protesting. AIDEN HUNTER: I don't mean to diminish that, but I'd say the majority of my friends, especially Jewish friends, feel a sense of insecurity at this time. RAMOS: But among the pro-Palestinian protesters here are also some Jewish-Americans, like professor Alex Wolf. ALEX WOLF: Anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing. And that is one thing to have beliefs -- beliefs of the Jewish religion, and it's another thing to support the policies and actions of the Israeli state. RAMOS: Columbia University says they are still in talks with protesters, adding, “that work continues in good faith.” David. MUIR: Stephanie Ramos again tonight. Steph, thank you. CBS EVENING NEWS: MAURICE DUBOIS: Now to those escalating clashes and threats of violence on college campuses. Protests are growing as more students across the country are staging demonstrations against Israel's war in Gaza. CBS's Nancy Chen tonight on what protesters are demanding. PROTESTERS: We are not afraid of you! NANCY CHEN: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators clashed with police at Cal Poly Humboldt in northern California, after a group of students used chairs and other furniture to barricade themselves inside one of the school’s main buildings. At NYU, NYPD officers in riot gear cleared out a pro-Palestinian encampment last night after students defied the university's order to leave PROTESTER: We want to see an acknowledgment from our university that there is a genocide happening. NYPD: Leave now or you will be arrested for trespassing. CHEN: 120 people were arrested. PROTESTERS: Free Palestine! Free Palestine!  STUDENT: If you’re going to host a protest, you should host it in a spot that is not so busy and dependent upon students' classes. CHEN: Today, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said students who protest peacefully are not the problem. ERIC ADAMS: We can't have outside agitators come in and be destructive to our city. There was- someone wanted something to happen at that protest at NYU that police officers didn't respond to. CHEN: From coast-to-coast, campus to campus, protests are growing louder in solidarity. Students are also joining in at UC Berkeley. MALAK AFANEH: Quite frankly, I think it's important that people start to align themselves with the Palestinian resistance. CHEN: Here at Columbia University, the seventh day of protests. Demonstrators want the school to divest from all business that supports Israel. STUDENT: I think it's time to divest from those weapons manufacturing and re-divest(sic) them into other important things. CHEN: They are also demanding amnesty for all students who have been punished.  Is the goal to stay here until those demands are met? STUDENT: Yes. CHEN: And as you can see behind me, demonstrators both on and off campus are still demanding to be heard. Meanwhile, there are growing calls for the university's president to resign. Maurice. DUBOIS: And no real end in sight tonight. Nancy Chen at Columbia University in New York. Thank you. NBC NIGHTLY NEWS: LESTER HOLT: Tonight's other top story, the growing number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and people being arrested on America's college campuses from coast-to-coast. And there’s concerns over antisemitic rhetoric. Erin McLaughlin now with late developments for us. PROTESTERS: Shame on you, shame on you! ERIN MCLAUGHLIN: Clashes and arrests from the streets of New York to the University of Minnesota to Cal Poly Humboldt. As more universities crack down on pro-Palestinian protests citing safety concerns and antisemitic rhetoric. Pro-Palestinian encampments now across more than a dozen campuses as students call for universities to divest from companies connected to Israel. PROTESTER: We're paying a lot of tuition to be here. We want to know where our money is going. We want to know where the investments are going as students. MCLAUGHLIN: Overnight at New York University, police say 120 protesters were taken away in zip ties. 116 were released with summons for trespass, including assistant professor Zach Samalin.  Did you have the opportunity to leave? ZACH SAMALIN: I did have the opportunity to leave, yes. But what I did instead was I linked arms with my colleagues on the faculty of New York University in order to protect our students from the police. MCLAUGHLIN: The university said many of the protesters were not affiliated with the school, and that they'd witnessed disorderly, disruptive and antagonizing behavior, pointing to intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents reported. The days of protests following congressional testimony from Columbia's president, creating a new flash point between free speech and hate speech.  Why do you believe they stopped this protest? SAMALIN: NYU has been engaged in a campaign of repressing pro-Palestinian speech for six months, seven months. That is- I'm unequivocal about that. MCLAUGHLIN: Students insisting the protest was peaceful. Today with the NYU business school barricaded… PROTESTERS: The people! United! Will never be defeated! CHEN: Students gather in nearby Washington Square Park. STUDENT: It's really frustrating because they say they're for free speech and they say they're for academic freedom. MCLAUGHLIN: At nearby Columbia University, classes are being offered online the rest of the year. The pro-Palestinian encampment still standing following last week's mass arrests. HAGAR CHEMALI: It's not safe. MCLAUGHLIN: Associate professor Hagar Chemali says the university needs to do more for Jewish students to feel safe. CHEMALI: It shouldn't be that we have to shut down classes and go virtual and force us to stay home and encourage Jewish students to stay home because the protesters have created an unsafe environment. It should be the other way around. MCLAUGHLIN: Meanwhile, U.S. House Republicans demanding Columbia's president resign immediately for failing to crack down.  HOLT: And Erin joining us live now from New York, where demonstrations are taking place. Erin, the House Speaker will visit nearby Columbia University tomorrow. MCLAUGHLIN: That's right, Lester. According to his office, House Speaker Mike Johnson will meet with Jewish students on the Columbia University campus tomorrow. He’s expected to hold a press conference after that. Lester.  HOLT: Erin McLaughlin in New York, thank you.   April 23rd, 2024 11:50 PM Jorge Bonilla 283872 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2024/04/23/nyt-reporter-stuns-cnns-goldberg-spinning-anti-semitic-protesters On Tuesday's CNN This Morning, while right-leaning contributor Jonah Goldberg was condemning the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas rhetoric used by far-left protesters on college campuses, New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro got snippy as she jumped in to cut him off and argue against the use of police against anti-Israel protesters harassing Jewish students. After host Kasie Hunt had just interviewed Congressman Josh Gottheimer -- a Jewish moderate Democrat from New Jersey -- about his visit to Columbia University and his calls for the university administration to protect Jewish students, she then went to Goldberg to begin a panel discussion. The right-leaning CNN contributor and Fox News alum complained: Look, I think the anti-Semitism stuff, particularly at Passover, is a big issue. It's a legitimate issue to talk about. It's a serious issue, and I think there's a lot of anti-Semitic stuff going on out there. But when you're saying you're Hamas, when you're praising Hamas, when you're praising Hezbollah, when you're saying you're going to globalize the intifada --     Garcia-Navarro took exception to his commentary and jumped in to interrupt: GARCIA-NAVARRO: Excuse me, I'm so sorry. GOLDBERG: Yeah? GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm sorry, but everyone is -- GOLDBERG: I'm going to finish my point. It means you're pro-terrorist. If you are celebrating Hamas, you are pro-terrorist. After declaring that she was "not disputing" that part of his analysis, she then spun for left-wing student organizers who did not act to stop anti-Semitic rhetoric at their demonstration by recalling that left-wing Jews had also protested against Israel: "Yeah, but what I'm saying is there are selective quotes that are being taken not from students themselves -- in the encampments in Columbia, they have said this -- there are Jewish students who are actually part of this." As Goldberg reacted with a befuddled facial expression, the Times journalist added: "And I just would say more broadly, when people are calling for action -- like Representative Gottheimer -- what are they actually calling for? You already had police go on --" Hunt jumped in to inject: "Well, hold on. If there are -- if the people in those encampments -- whether they're Columbia students or not -- if the university can clear them from that encampment, that is something the university can do." Garcia-Navarro continued: But they've already put -- let me just say how we got here. Columbia chose to bring police to clear the encampment that inflamed the situation to where you're now seeing these protests spread to Yale, to New York University, and beyond. I am -- many people have said that the action of bringing police into a group of people who are already feeling that they are sort of representative of the oppressed -- who are inspired by what happened with George Floyd in 2020 and seeing what is happening in Gaza, that that has really only acted as a catalyst here. And so I wonder at the wisdom of bringing in the armed police into what is essentially a university campus. Goldberg was visibly taken aback as the two went back and forth again: GOLDBERG: I question the wisdom of having a double standard that says it's okay to shout hateful pro-terrorist things at Jews, but you can't --you have to have total -- GARCIA-NAVARRO: No one is endorsing that. GOLDBERG (after looking shocked): A lot of people are endorsing that. A lot of people aren't -- GARCIA-NAVARRO: Not here. GOLDBERG: -- condemning it. Yeah. A lot of people aren't condemning it, and I -- look, I agree with you. Universities and the Democratic party and the left have a huge problem trying to figure out how to cut this Gordian knot that they've created for themselves. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN This Morning April 23, 2024 6:55 a.m. Eastern (after interview with Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) (a moderate Democrat) about anti-Semitic protests on college campuses) KASIE HUNT: Just how troubling is this? And how did we get to this point? JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Gosh, you got an hour? HUNT: We have six minutes. GOLDBERG: I think there's a long tradition of campus protests in this country that goes back to before the founding. It has gotten much more intense whereas schools -- they consider part of your academic college experience to be protesters. And I think that sort of encouragement gives a lot of administrators a blind eye to when these things go off the rails. Look, I think the anti-Semitism stuff, particularly at Passover, is a big issue. It's a legitimate issue to talk about. It's a serious issue, and I think there's a lot of anti-Semitic stuff going on out there. But when you're saying you're Hamas, when you're praising Hamas, when you're praising Hezbollah, when you're saying you're going to globalize the intifada -- LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO,  NEW YORK TIMES JOURNALIST/CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Excuse me, I'm so sorry. GOLDBERG: Yeah? GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm sorry, but everyone is -- GOLDBERG: I'm going to finish my point. It means you're pro-terrorist. If you are celebrating Hamas, you are pro-terrorist. GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm not disputing that. GOLDBERG: Okay, that's my point. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, but what I'm saying is there are selective quotes that are being taken not from students themselves -- in the encampments in Columbia, they have said this -- there are Jewish students who are actually part of this. And they are being used -- (Jonah Goldberg displays a confused facial expression) -- wait, let me -- let me -- GOLDBERG: You didn't let me finish my point -- GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's true. GOLDBERG: -- but go ahead. GARCIA-NAVARRO: And I just would say more broadly, when people are calling for action -- like Representative Gottheimer -- what are they actually calling for? You already had police go on -- KASIE HUNT: Well, hold on. If there are -- if the people in those encampments -- whether they're Columbia students or not -- if the university can clear them from that encampment, that is something the university can do. GARCIA-NAVARRO: But they've already put -- let me just say how we got here. Columbia chose to bring police to clear the encampment that inflamed the situation to where you're now seeing these protests spread to Yale, to New York University, and beyond. I am -- many people have said that the action of bringing police into a group of people who are already feeling that they are sort of representative of the oppressed -- who are inspired by what happened with George Floyd in 2020 and seeing what is happening in Gaza, that that has really only acted as a catalyst here. And so I wonder at the wisdom of bringing in the armed police into what is essentially a university campus. There have, you know, to try to be (inaudible) GOLDBERG: I question the wisdom of having a double standard that says it's okay to shout hateful pro-terrorist things at Jews, but you can't --you have to have total -- GARCIA-NAVARRO: No one is endorsing that. GOLDBERG: A lot of people are endorsing that. A lot of people aren't -- GARCIA-NAVARRO: Not here. GOLDBERG: -- condemning it. Yeah. A lot of people aren't condemning it, and I -- look, I agree with you. Universities and the Democratic party and the left have a huge problem trying to figure out how to cut this Gordian knot that they've created for themselves. But that doesn't mean I have to sort of condone or not call out. I spent -- I got a lot of scars from calling out horrible statements on the right over the last 10 years. I call out anti-Semitism and bigotry all the time on the right. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Of course. GOLDBERG: I don't hear a lot of that from the sort of Squad adjacent type people calling out this stuff on the left. HUNT: So John Fetterman had put out a tweet yesterday saying, like, "We are very close to Charlottesville for some of this stuff." Do you agree with that? GOLDBERG: I think the comparison can go too far, but I think Joe Biden's statement yesterday where he basically -- basically did "there are good people on both sides" kind of thing, was not the kind of moral clarity. The written statement was pretty good, but, look, Democrats have a huge problem here because there's a big chunk of Biden's coalition that does not like to hear criticism of any of this, you know, anti-Israel stuff, and they don't know how to get out of it. April 23rd, 2024 6:13 PM Brad Wilmouth 283861 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/tom-olohan/2024/04/23/marc-morano-biden-energy-agenda-exact-opposite-anything Climate Depot founder Marc Morano spoke out against President Joe Biden’s decisions to slow down American energy production while potentially easing energy sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran. On the April 22 edition of Fox Business’ The Evening Edit, anchor Elizabeth MacDonald told Morano that a recent foreign aid bill passed by Congress includes “fine print” suggesting that Biden doesn’t have to enforce sanctions on Iranian oil. “What do you think of that fine print there?” MacDonald asked. Morano responded by blasting the administration for putting Americans last. “The fine print is just, I hate to say it, ‘Screw America,’ once again from this administration, especially on energy. They begged Venezuela, the Middle East for more and more oil, at the same time restricting our domestic energy,” Morano said. “When you look at what he's trying to do, you have to wonder, this is the exact opposite of anything in the interest of the United States national security.”  Morano went on to say that these awful decisions would have to come from people blinded by an “ideology that believes shutting down American energy … somehow benefits the world.” Later in the interview, MacDonald played a clip of Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) making a similar point about Biden’s Alaska drilling restrictions on the April 21 edition of CBS News’s Face the Nation.  “This president won't sanction the Iranian oil and gas regime … but he has no problem sanctioning Alaska,” Sullivan decried. The senator pointed out the extent of Biden’s anti-energy push in his state: “This administration has issued 63 executive orders and executive actions singularly focused on Alaska to shut our state down.” Sullivan added that this decision would not only hurt Alaskans who benefit from the industry but would also hurt all Americans. Beyond Biden “putting off limits thirteen million acres of land in Alaska” for oil drilling—as MacDonald said—he has also halted future liquified natural gas projects. Additionally, Biden reversed a number of former President Donald Trump’s pro-energy policies shortly after taking office. Among other things, Biden rescinded the approval of the Keystone pipeline and put restrictions on the use of public land for energy extraction. He has been critical of the oil and gas sector for allegedly not making new investments while simultaneously demonstrating his leftist intent to phase out the industry through his actions and statements.  Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News at 818-460-7477, CBS News at 212-975-3247 and NBC News at 212-664-6192 and demand they hold Biden and his cronies accountable for attempting to restrict fossil fuel production and Americans’ choices. April 23rd, 2024 4:54 PM Tom Olohan 283870 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/tierin-rose-mandelburg/2024/04/23/new-german-law-says-parents-can-change-childs It seems progressives in Germany may have had too much beer before deciding on this recent law, because no sober-minded individual should’ve voted yes for this! Earlier this month, the German Parliament, Bundestag, passed a policy that would enable parents to change the gender on their child's birth certificate if the kid isn’t satisfied with their biological sex at birth, and enforce fines for any citizens who "deadname" or "misgender" other civilians. The Self-Determination Act (SBGG) is an extreme policy that caters to delusion and desire over fact and truth. As Reduxx reported, parents can alter the sex on a child’s birth certificate once the child turns five, if there is “mutual consent” between the parent and said five-year-old. Here’s more from Reduxx’s report: According to a description of the bill on the Bundestag's official website, the Self-Determination Act was designed "to implement a core idea of ​​the Basic Law, the protection of gender identity, by giving people the opportunity to change their gender entry and first name without discrimination." It continues that following a change, a one-year "blocking period" will apply where no further changes are allowed, though a person may change their name and sex once again after the year passes. Additionally, if a child is at least 14 years old, they can change their sex and name themselves, but need parental consent. Since that may cause roadblocks for some kids, the parliament will allow a family court to “decide based on the best interests of the child,” so the parent’s decision could be overruled. Related: Exposing Fake Breasts to Children, Barking for Attention & Genderseasons The new law is set to replace the 1980 law which required "trans" people to provide a local court with two separate “expert reports” that indicated to “a high degree of probability” that the individual was not going to go back and forth and revert to his or her original gender identity. Apparently people complained that the original law made the name and sex changing process too cumbersome and lengthy, hence the updated and easier path.  Not The Bee summed it up well when writing: There's no way to parody this. They're really writing it into law that you can choose your baby's sex at birth. And of course this has nothing to do with normal sane people who assign their children the correct sex at birth. It's the crazies who want to immediately throw their boy in a dress, or their girl in a "chick magnet" shirt as some sort of sick and twisted science experiment. This law is literally written to protect insane people who are hell bent on creating sociopath children. The same decision by Bundestag declared that a fine of up to €10,000 (about $10,625) would be leveled against anybody who uses a transgender person's “deadname” (the name they were born with) or "misgenders" them.  This is absolutely flabbergasting. I hope and pray nothing like this comes over to the States, because I know leftist loonies over here would be ALL over it. Follow us on Twitter/X: Things That Need To Be Said: Our Congress Does Not Represent Us Those elected to represent us are overwhelmingly serving against the interests of the American people. pic.twitter.com/tNH61Was1J — MRCTV (@mrctv) April 22, 2024   April 23rd, 2024 4:10 PM Tierin-Rose Mandelburg 283869 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2024/04/23/just-join-biden-campaign-abcs-bruce-celebrates-biden-celebrating Another day, another act of Biden campaign propaganda. As we’ve seen day after day, ABC’s Good Morning America openly and unapologetically ate out of the hand of the Biden press office with a full report on the regime’s preferred topic of the day. On Tuesday, it was chief White House correspondent and chief Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce cheering Biden traveling to Florida to celebrate murdering children in the womb. A simple perusing of the NewsBusters tag for Bruce would show she’s a diamond-level frequent rider of the Biden train.     Co-host Robin Roberts did her part as well setting the table: “And now, this morning, President Biden taking his message about a woman’s right to choose to Florida exactly one week before the state’s new law outlawing most abortions goes into effect.” Even the chyron served its purpose: “New This Morning; President Biden Heading to Florida; States’s New Abortion Ban Takes Effect in One Week”. Bruce giddily boasted of “the Biden campaign...trying to seize this moment, blasting new abortion restrictions across the country” and huffing that “Donald Trump did this as he boasts of appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe.” Ignoring the fact that Florida is increasingly a fervently red state, Bruce added: “Now, in Tampa today, President Biden will hold his first major campaign on the issue, one week before Florida is set to ban most abortions after six weeks before most women even know that they are pregnant.” After pointing out “Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the charge on this issue” before Tuesday’s visit, the brisk, 56-second segment wound down with her waving pom-poms for Biden as “a staunch defender of the abortion access” amid “a complicated evolution on the issue” since he’s “a Catholic.” Challenge for Mary Bruce: Please be objective and keep yourself from getting weak knees over your liberal handlers. Impossible. Right to the end, she shilled in claiming abortion would define the election: “[T]he campaign knows this is going to be a defining issue for this campaign and they’re eager to put it front and center, Robin.” To see the relevant transcript from April 23, click “expand.” ABC’s Good Morning America April 23, 2023 7:15 a.m. Eastern [ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: New This Morning; President Biden Heading to Florida; States’s New Abortion Ban Takes Effect in One Week] ROBIN ROBERTS: And now, this morning, President Biden taking his message about a woman’s right to choose to Florida exactly one week before the state’s new law outlawing most abortions goes into effect. Our chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce will be traveling today with the President. Good morning, Mary. MARY BRUCE: Good morning, Robin. Well, the Biden campaign is trying to seize this moment, blasting new abortion restrictions across the country, urging Donald Trump did this as he boasts of appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe. Now, in Tampa today, President Biden will hold his first major campaign on the issue, one week before Florida is set to ban most abortions after six weeks before most women even know that they are pregnant. Now, so far Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the charge on this issue. The President, of course, is a staunch defender of the abortion access, but, as a Catholic, he’s had a complicated evolution on the issue, but the campaign knows this is going to be a defining issue for this campaign and they’re eager to put it front and center, Robin. ROBERTS: Alright, Mary, thank you. And safe travels today. April 23rd, 2024 3:44 PM Curtis Houck 283868 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/23/abc-tries-brush-aside-evidence-antisemitism-columbia While NBC was busy trying to discredit Jewish students who were victims of anti-Semitic attacks and threats caught on camera at Columbia University on Tuesday, ABC’s Good Morning America thought they could get by without admitting there was antisemitism coming from the pro-Hamas crowd. Instead, correspondent Stephanie Ramos simply said Jewish students “don’t feel safe” with no explanation as to why. Instead of focusing on the anti-Semitic attacks and rhetoric that caused classes at Columbia’s main campus to go virtual for the rest of the year, Ramos huffed about university administrators who allowed an increased police presence on campus and the crackdown on trespassers: RAMOS: Security heightened at Columbia University where student protesters pitched tents at the center of campus. The encampments still in place this morning. Classes there going virtual Monday. University president Minouche Shafik authorized the NYPD to make arrests last week. MIKE GERBER (NYPD deputy commissioner, legal matters): They informed us they had students who were trespassing. They asked us to come on to campus and we did. RAMOS: Demonstrators demanding institutions divest from companies with ties to Israel.     At those gatherings, far-left, pro-Hamas students chanted anti-Semitic slogans like “Go back to Poland” and held up signs calling for Jewish student counter-protesters to be killed. But instead of showing the ABC audience the far-left’s hatred of Jews, she highlighted one of the students arrested: RAMOS: Columbia PhD student Linnea Norton tells us she was one of the arrested and just wants her voice to be heard. LINNEA NORTON: We were all just sitting cross-legged together in a circle and then the NYPD came in and arrested us one by one. Immediately zip-tied us with our hands behind our backs. Ramos did note that “Many Jewish students telling us they don't feel safe on campus,” and interviewed one who explained: “It's not only mentally exhausting. I found these past few days it's been like physically affecting me. And I got told that an Israeli flag is a Nazi flag.” But that didn’t do justice to show how dangerous the situation actually was. Over on CBS Mornings, correspondent Meg Oliver showed a video of the “go back to Poland” chant. “Like near Columbia University where some demonstrators chanted anti-Semitic slogans. In one video, a protester can be seen holding a sign near Jewish students that reads ‘Al-Qasam’s [sic] next targets.’ A-Qassam is Hamas’s military arm,” she added. “Columbia announced that, to ensure safety, most classes on its main campus will be hybrid for the rest of the semester. It has also more than doubled security after a recent series of anti-Semitic incidents,” Oliver reported. At the end of her report, Ramos concluded by noting that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft (an alum of Columbia) was “reconsidering his support for the university” without noting it was in regard to the antisemitism. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s Good Morning America April 23, 2024 7:04:39 a.m. Eastern (…) STEPHANIE RAMOS: Security heightened at Columbia University where student protesters pitched tents at the center of campus. The encampments still in place this morning. Classes there going virtual Monday. University president Minouche Shafik authorized the NYPD to make arrests last week. MIKE GERBER (NYPD deputy commissioner, legal matters): They informed us they had students who were trespassing. They asked us to come on to campus and we did. RAMOS: Demonstrators demanding institutions divest from companies with ties to Israel. Columbia PhD student Linnea Norton tells us she was one of the arrested and just wants her voice to be heard. LINNEA NORTON: We were all just sitting cross legged together in a circle and then the NYPD came in and arrested us one by one. Immediately zip tied us with our hands behind our backs. RAMOS: Tensions have been mounting at universities since the Israel/Hamas conflict began last October. Many Jewish students telling us they don't feel safe on campus. How has this hit you, the demonstrations over the last couple of days? UNNAMED JEWISH STUDENT: It's not only mentally exhausting. I found these past few days it's been like physically affecting me. And I got told that an Israeli flag is a Nazi flag. (…) April 23rd, 2024 3:26 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283867 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/tierin-rose-mandelburg/2024/04/23/exposing-fake-breasts-children-barking-attention Welcome to Woke of the Weak where I’ll update you about the most woke, progressive, insane, and crazy clips and stories that the left thinks is tolerable and well, point out why exactly they’re nuts. This week we took a look at how far from normal the left is.  We started out by watching a drag queen shimmy his prosthetic breasts in the face of a toddler, another drag queen didn’t shimmy as much but made sure to shake his hips and drop it low for a different young child. A transgender was invited to a queer prom to secretly talk to kids about queerness and started his announcement with “hey guys, gals and nonbinary pals.” Speaking of queer kids, a furry and a purple-haired freak at a college bent down to smell, lick or taste something out of another furry’s booty while others with intense black eyeliner barked as a form of protest. A man in pink booty shorts and a crop top, was spotted leaving the women’s restroom at the University of Tampa and a different transgender posted a video of his reaction to getting his lower bits tamed and groomed before his bottom surgery. Why he thought that was appropriate to post on the internet, I will never know. Next we saw a pink-haired individual explain that there’s something called “genderseason” which is supposedly a gender identity that is linked with a season. It represents someone who may identify as a female in the springtime, a male in the summer, neither in the fall and both in the winter...whatever. As a final nod to the strange behavior of the left, climate activists sang and chanted in long red robes with white painted faces and red gloves at what looked like some sort of church. I’m sure their little skit really helped stop climate change. April 23rd, 2024 3:09 PM Tierin-Rose Mandelburg 283866 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/daniel-mccarthy/2024/04/23/foreign-policy-splits-parties In 2024, foreign policy doesn’t pit Republicans against Democrats so much as it pits Republicans against Republicans and Democrats against Democrats. For Joe Biden’s party, Israel is the fault line, with Democrats split between supporters of the Jewish State and those of Palestinian sympathies. For the party of Donald Trump, the internal conflict is over Ukraine, and the bitterness of the battle risks costing Mike Johnson his speakership. These crises in the Middle East and on NATO’s frontier are catalysts for tensions that have been growing in both parties’ coalitions since the end of the Cold War. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world, by far; what obligations does that impose on us for using our power to promote our values? And what are those values anyway? The anti-colonialist left thinks America is too wicked to do good on the world stage. The anti-interventionist right thinks the world is too unlike us to benefit from our crusading — which instead only undermines what makes us special and strong at home. The more internationalist right, on the other hand, sees greater danger to our institutions and way of life arising from insufficient engagement with a dangerous world, which will turn away from our values and interests if we don’t actively promote them. That requires, they say, supporting friends and allies around the globe and confronting hostile states, ultimately, if necessary, with military force, and by every means short of that in the meantime. The interventionist left, for its part, has the same confidence in government’s ability to improve the world outside our borders as it has in the competence of government at home. And if engaging with the world erodes American distinctiveness, as some on the right fear, that’s a benefit rather than a drawback as far as these progressives are concerned. These are basic dispositions. They’re complicated by several hard realities that can’t be avoided no matter what one’s ideal policy might be — external threats, for one thing, and the limits of America’s unprecedented but not unlimited wealth and power for another, as well as the limits of national morale and political will in support of any long-term project. There are serious debates to be had both on the left and the right. Yet on the left, as is typical for that side of politics, protest often takes the place of serious discussion, especially on college campuses. To judge by social media, one might think the right can’t have an adult conversation about foreign policy, either. But an event I recently moderated suggests that conservatives can grapple intelligently with their differences. The University of Texas at Austin held a debate — organized by UT’s Civitas Institute and my employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute — on the proposition “Resolved: America’s Defense of Ukraine Is Vital to Upholding the Liberal International Order,” with National Review’s Noah Rothman affirming the proposition and former Trump administration national security official Michael Anton opposing it. Although Rothman and Anton didn’t come to a meeting of minds by the end of the debate, each made points that arguably worked in the other’s favor. After an audience member asked Rothman how his fears of further Russian aggressions beyond Ukraine differed from Vietnam-era “domino theory,” Anton added that Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew was reputed to have said that America really won the Vietnam War. How so? The resolve America showed in fighting the war signaled to the wider Indo-Pacific region that Communism could not expand easily and without resistance, even if Washington proved unable to save South Vietnam. That message fortified the willingness of other states to resist Communism, including Singapore. I asked Anton if this lesson applied to Ukraine. Would it mean that even if American support wasn’t enough to defeat Russia, the heightened cost of Putin’s war would still discourage further depredations by Moscow — or anyone else — and strengthen other nations’ inclinations to resist them? Anton wasn’t convinced the precedent would apply in today’s circumstances. Nevertheless, in sharing Lee’s opinion, he helpfully complicated the debate. In turn Rothman acknowledged that his support for Ukraine did not extend to sending American troops to fight for Kyiv, even if Anton proved correct in his contention that nothing less than that would secure victory for Ukraine. Rothman believed, however, that supporting Ukraine was the best way to keep America out of a European conflict, as Russian success would foment chaos on NATO’s borders and weaken the alliance architecture that kept Europe at peace. There were no concessions on either side, yet the debate showed how conservatives with starkly different views could compare them productively. It also showed a college campus can still hold a mature debate, not just another protest. Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com April 23rd, 2024 2:37 PM Daniel McCarthy 283865 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/23/stewart-mocks-msnbc-tapper-obsessing-over-trump-trial The media is obsessed with Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial to such a degree that even Jon Stewart can’t help but mock them. On Monday’s edition of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, Stewart ridiculed the media for their priorities, with MSNBC and CNN’s Jake Tapper bearing extra scrutiny. Of course, it is not the first time the media has obsessed over something Trump-related, as Stewart recalled, “This trial will obviously be a test of the fairness of the American legal system. But it's also a test of the media's ability to cover Donald Trump in a responsible way, a task they have acknowledged they have performed poorly in the past.”   Jon Stewart mocked the media's (particularly MSNBC's) obsession with Trump's trial "it's also a test of the media's ability to cover Donald Trump in a responsible way, a task they have acknowledged they have performed poorly in the past." (1/?) pic.twitter.com/u6UESghJpk — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 23, 2024   Stewart then played a montage of several MSNBC and CNN personalities lamenting media coverage of Trump. John Heilemann claimed it was “irresponsible” to “give Donald Trump hours and hours of free air time,” while Audie Cornish claimed, “All of us have learned some very valuable lessons from the last couple of years in delineating what's significant, what's important.” After the montage, Stewart returned to introduce another series of clips, “So brave. Well done. And I think for this trial, we will see the seeds of that introspection bear fruit. Or we will learn that learning curves are for pussies.” With the exception of one clip from a local news analyst, it was exclusively MSNBC. It included multiple claims that we are witnessing “the trial of the century” and the return of the classic, “The legal walls, closing in around Donald Trump.” The trial is obviously newsworthy, but Stewart suggested, “Perhaps if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand, and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details, perhaps that would help.” That cued yet another montage of Tapper and local news reporters following Trump’s motorcade. The last reporter waxed poetic as she claimed Trump was “arriving at this intersection of American history with defiance.”     An exasperated Stewart wondered, “Seriously, are we going to follow this guy to court every [bleep] day? Are you trying to make this O.J.? It's not even a chase! He's commuting. So, the media's first attempt, the very first attempt on the first day at self-control failed. And I'm sorry to say that it didn't -- I'm sorry, hold on, we're getting breaking news.” In the next clip, Tapper was interrupting his guest, “I'm sorry to interrupt, I've just-- one second. I apologize. We're just showing the first image of Donald Trump from inside the courtroom. It's a still photograph that we're showing there. Just want to make sure our viewers know what they're looking at.” Stewart wasn’t convinced viewers needed this information, “Yes, for our viewers who are just waking up from a 30-year coma, this is what Donald Trump has looked like every day for the past 30 years.” Later, after skewering MSNBC for interviewing a dismissed juror who almost saw Trump, Stewart teed up another clip of Tapper, “Anyway, coming up, more of our three-part interview with a guy who nearly saw Donald Trump in the courtroom. So, we have a photograph—it’s freaking me out, that picture— we have a photograph, we have eyewitness accounts, but do we have anything in a pastel?” Tapper marveled about “A courtroom sketch that we're getting in right now. I'm looking at the courtroom sketch and Mr. Trump looks like he is glowering [jump cut] I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a glower or just a glance [jump cut] I don't know how this -- it's art. It's not necessarily -- it's artistic journalism, but it's not a photograph.”     Stewart then turned to Tapper’s colleague, Erin Burnett, “Why are you showing it to us? It is a sketch… Well, I guess we'll never know. Unless! We could talk to the person who drew the sketch! But do we have the time? Nothing but!” Burnett was shown conversing with sketch artist Christine Cornell, “I want to show one of your sketches today. We're going through some of them, but this one, it appears in this one that his eyes are closed. What was happening here?” Cornell didn’t have the profound answer Burnett was looking for, “My apologies, ma'am. I was sitting 50 feet away. I was having such a struggle to try and get those eyeballs in.” If that's not a metaphor for media coverage of Trump's legal battles, then nothing is. Here is a transcript for the April 22 show: Comedy Central The Daily Show 4/22/2024 11:02 PM ET JON STEWART: This trial will obviously be a test of the fairness of the American legal system. But it's also a test of the media's ability to cover Donald Trump in a responsible way, a task they have acknowledged they have performed poorly in the past. NICOLLE WALLACE: I think to the degree that the media had lessons to learn in '16, they seemed to have been learned. JOHN HEILEMANN: It was irresponsible for cable news networks to give Donald Trump hours and hours of free air time. BRIAN STELTER: Way too much speculation and liberal wishful thinking in attempts to connect dots that did not connect. RACHEL MADDOW: It's the media's responsibility to not get distracted. NICHOLAS KRISTOF: I think we were much too busy chasing after shiny objects. AUDIE CORNISH: All of us have learned some very valuable lessons from the last couple of years in delineating what's significant, what's important. STEWART: So brave. Well done. And I think for this trial, we will see the seeds of that introspection bear fruit. Or we will learn that learning curves are for pussies. WALLACE: Here we go. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It's on, it's happening, history will be made. ALEX WITT: Shaping up to be the trial of the century. FEMALE LOCAL NEWS ANALYST: Maybe the trial of the century. CHRIS HAYES: The trial of the century. WALLACE: What just might be the trial of the century. KATIE PHANG: The taxman is here, Donald Trump. AYMAN MOHYELDIN: He will finally be forced to face the music. CHRIS JANSING: The legal walls, closing in around Donald Trump. ANTHONY COLEY: The legal walls are starting to close in on Donald Trump. STEWART: Yes, this time, Mr. Bond, it truly is your doom! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to leave this room. Obviously, when I leave, I'm not going to press the button that opens all the doors and dismantles the killing machine I've established. Don't follow me, Mr. Bond. Perhaps if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand, and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details, perhaps that would help. JAKE TAPPER: You're looking at live pictures in New York City of Donald Trump's motorcade. MALE LOCAL NEWS REPORTER: It's about a 20-minute drive between Trump Tower and the court building. FEMALE LOCAL NEWS REPORTER: Trump leaving Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. MALE LOCAL NEWS REPORTER 2: They're now making their way across town along 57th Street. [jump cut] They just crossed Park Avenue making their way up towards Lexington Avenue. BRETT TOLMAN: He's heading down the FDR. RANJI SINHA: To the Manhattan courthouse on Chambers Street. FEMALE LOCAL NEWS REPORTER 3: Arriving at this intersection of American history with defiance. STEWART: Arriving at the intersection of American history with defiance. The brilliant juxtaposing of the gravitas of the moment with simple traffic terms was... [Chef's kiss] "He arrived at the intersection of American history, where he put a quarter in the parking meter of destiny. Leaving the car, looking to avoid stepping in the urine puddle of jurisprudence."  Seriously, are we going to follow this guy to court every [bleep] day? Are you trying to make this O.J.? It's not even a chase! He's commuting. So, the media's first attempt, the very first attempt on the first day at self-control failed. And I'm sorry to say that it didn't -- I'm sorry, hold on, we're getting breaking news. WILLIAM BRENNAN: You know, he wanted to get a jury seated. So we had a lady – JAKE TAPPER: Will, I'm sorry to interrupt, I've just-- one second. I apologize. We're just showing the first image of Donald Trump from inside the courtroom. BRENNAN: Okay. TAPPER: It's a still photograph that we're showing there. Just want to make sure our viewers know what they're looking at. STEWART: Yes, for our viewers who are just waking up from a 30-year coma, this is what Donald Trump has looked like every day for the past 30 years. … STEWART: Anyway, coming up, more of our three-part interview with a guy who nearly saw Donald Trump in the courtroom. So, we have a photograph—it’s freaking me out, that picture— we have a photograph, we have eyewitness accounts, but do we have anything in a pastel? TAPPER: A courtroom sketch that we're getting in right now. I'm looking at the courtroom sketch and Mr. Trump looks like he is glowering [jump cut] I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a glower or just a glance [jump cut] I don't know how this -- it's art. It's not necessarily -- it's artistic journalism, but it's not a photograph. STEWART: Why are you showing it to us? It is a sketch. Why would anyone analyze a sketch like it was—it’d be like looking at The Last Supper and going, "Would you say Jesus looks sad here? What do you think? It's because of Judas? What if we interview one of the waiters at one of the tables from, like, a different section of the restaurant who maybe actually didn't see him? But you know, we got time to kill."  Well, I guess we'll never know. Unless! We could talk to the person who drew the sketch! But do we have the time? Nothing but! ERIN BURNETT: Christine Cornell was in the courtroom today, the official sketch artist [jump cut] I want to show one of your sketches today. We're going through some of them, but this one, it appears in this one that his eyes are closed. What was happening here? CHRISTINE CORNELL: My apologies, ma'am. I was sitting 50 feet away. I was having such a struggle to try and get those eyeballs in. STEWART: Damn it, woman! Does Donald Trump have eyeballs or no, ma'am? Does he or no? You were in the room! Tell me! Or I will not come to your trinket shop in Newport! April 23rd, 2024 1:56 PM Alex Christy 283864 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/04/23/nbc-tries-discredit-jewish-victims-antisemitism-columbia In recent days, the pro-Hamas gatherings at university campuses across the country have grown more violent and more brazen with their anti-Semitic rhetoric; causing Jewish students to feel unsafe and universities to advise them to stay away as they shift to virtual learning. But despite all the videos of these incidents, the Tuesday edition of NBC’s Today (via correspondent Erin McLaughlin) worked hard in an apparent attempt to discredit the Jewish students who were trying to get the world’s attention and expose the far-left. At the top of her report, McLaughlin lamented that police were cracking down on violent pro-Hamas riots. “Overnight, a tense scene at New York University after pro-Palestinian protesters were forced to leave a campus plaza. NYPD moving in with riot gear, police breaking down encampments as a sea of protesters marched through the city streets,” she mourned. McLaughlin actively tried to discredit the accounts of Jewish students who witnessed the crowds chant anti-Semitic slogans, and were assaulted and chased from pro-Israel protests: MCLAUGHLIN: Students like Andrew Stein who said he was on campus late Saturday night for a pro-Israel counter-protest, but left terrified by an angry mob. ANDREW STEIN: They started say in Arabic: “Hamas, Hamas our beloved please bomb Tel Aviv.” MCLAUGHLIN: Stein says this video shows him being followed off campus. STEIN: Me and my friend had water poured – physically poured in our face. MCLAUGHLIN: At the pro-Palestinian encampment in the heart of the university, heated confrontations. UNNAMED FEMALE STUDENT: “Go back to Poland” is not anti-Zionism, it’s anti-Semitism and that’s what was said.     She tried to contradict them with claims from the pro-Hamas side who, as she put it, “say they have no knowledge any antisemitism on campus Saturday night.” “Anyone who makes any thread to any Jewish student, we oppose you, we do not associate with you,” a pro-Hamas student told her. It was the same student who was confronted about the “go back to Poland” chant in the block quote above (included in the embedded video). While McLaughlin wanted to suggest there was no evidence of the antisemitism, over on CBS Mornings, correspondent Meg Oliver showed a video of the “go back to Poland” chant. “Like near Columbia University where some demonstrators chanted anti-Semitic slogans. In one video, a protester can be seen holding a sign near Jewish students that reads ‘Al-Qasam’s [sic] next targets.’ A-Qassam is Hamas’s military arm,” she added. “Columbia announced that, to ensure safety, most classes on its main campus will be hybrid for the rest of the semester. It has also more than doubled security after a recent series of anti-Semitic incidents,” Oliver reported. While McLaughlin was trying to discredit and ignore the violence and anti-Semitic incidents caught on camera, she was more concerned about Islamophobia: “Meanwhile at Rutgers University on Monday, a 24-year-old man was charged with a federal hate crime for allegedly breaking into that university's Islamic center during the Eid celebrations earlier in the month.” “Many are left wondering if this will continue to spread,” she feared. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: NBC’s Today April 23, 2024 7:04:16 a.m. Eastern (…) ERIN MCLAUGHLIN: Overnight, a tense scene at New York University after pro-Palestinian protesters were forced to leave a campus plaza. NYPD moving in with riot gear, police breaking down encampments as a sea of protesters marched through the city streets. It comes as tensions flair at Columbia University, now entering its seventh-consecutive day of pro-Palestinian protests; with the school announcing main campus classes will be hybrid until the end of the semester, stating “safety is our highest priority” after the university president's call to “de-escalate the rancor.” A massive NYPD presence was around the campus as a growing number of Jewish students report feeling unsafe. Students like Andrew Stein who said he was on campus late Saturday night for a pro-Israel counter protest, but left terrified by an angry mob. ANDREW STEIN: They started say in Arabic: “Hamas, Hamas our beloved please bomb Tel Aviv.” MCLAUGHLIN: Stein says this video shows him being followed off campus. STEIN: Me and my friend had water poured – physically poured in our face. MCLAUGHLIN: At the pro-Palestinian encampment in the heart of the university, heated confrontations. UNNAMED FEMALE STUDENT: “Go back to Poland” is not anti-Zionism, it’s anti-Semitism and that’s what was said. MCLAUGHLIN: The pro-Palestinian students we spoke to say they have no knowledge any antisemitism on campus Saturday night. SHERIF (Columbia University Student): Anyone who makes any thread to any Jewish student, we oppose you, we do not associate with you. MCLAUGHLIN: Patriots owner and Jewish alum Robert Kraft, a major donor, announcing he is pulling his support until corrective action is taken. (…) 7:06:26 a.m. Eastern MCLAUGHLIN: Meanwhile at Rutgers University on Monday, a 24-year-old man was charged with a federal hate crime for allegedly breaking into that university's Islamic center during the Eid celebrations earlier in the month. Many are left wondering if this will continue to spread. CBS Mornings April 23, 2024 7:08:05 a.m. Eastern (…) MEG OLIVER: The mood on campus is tense. Columbia announced that, to ensure safety, most classes on its main campus will be hybrid for the rest of the semester. It has also more than doubled security after a recent series of anti-Semitic incidents. But on many campuses, police trying to contain the demonstrations have been met with resistance. [Cuts to video] [Video of pro-Hama rioters beating police] A chaotic scene at Cal Ploy Humboldt in northern California as police in riot gear clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters. And at New York University last night, the NYPD broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment. The demonstrations have spread to campuses across the country with Palestinian supporters angry over Israel's war in Gaza and many Jewish students expressing fear after incidents of anti-Semitism. [Video of pro-Hamas man yelling “Go back to Poland”] Like near Columbia University where some demonstrators chanted anti-Semitic slogans. In one video, a protester can be seen holding a sign near Jewish students that reads “Al-Qasam’s [sic] next targets.” A-Qassam is Hamas’s military arm. UNNAMED JEWISH STUDENT: Jewish students are petrified to go onto campus. (…) April 23rd, 2024 1:54 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 283863 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2024/04/23/pbs-news-show-defends-unhoused-punitive-laws-banning-street-camping Sunday’s edition of PBS News Weekend spent 13 minutes out of its allotted 25 taking the loose liberal attitude toward homelessness (“the unhoused”) as a Supreme Court case looms. PBS found yet another liberal, an assistant public health professor at Cornell University, to make its preferred ideological case in the first segment, arguing an Oregon law limiting homeless camping in public spaces punishes people for being on the streets. JOHN YANG: Tomorrow, the Supreme Court hears arguments about whether laws limiting homeless encampments in public places are unconstitutional because they punish people for being homeless. The case is about laws in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city of about 40,000 in the state’s southwest corner, but the outcome could reshape policies nationwide for years to come. CHARLEY WILLISON, Cornell University: ….cities generally use much more punitive policies, these criminalization approaches that are at the heart of Johnson vs. Grants Pass to effectively punish people who are experiencing homelessness for behaviors that are associated with the realities of homelessness. Now, importantly, the use of these punitive policies actually facilitate cycles of homelessness and does not effectively end homelessness…. (Willison would throw in another “punitive” description before she was done.) Asked about Florida’s new camping ban, she responded similarly: “So these camping bans and other broadly punitive responses again, where we see people who are experiencing homelessness being either fined through civil penalties or criminalized through criminal penalties for realities associated with homelessness….” She responded to Yang’s question about a new California law to provide more drug treatment with liberal fantasizing, with no opposing views from Yang: ….For example, having more accountability, where cities are required to spend a certain proportion of their budgets on housing will likely help improve the situation and require cities to engage in these evidence-based policies which are far more effective. The anchor transitioned directly to a field report from Montana, with reporter Joe Lesar of Montana PBS speaking to Steve and Belinda Ankney, “[who] have been living in their trailer on the streets of Bozeman for the past three years.” Lesar admitted “Both have struggled with addiction” and Belinda has been previously jailed, which she blamed on “not getting the right help, not being on the right meds.” Lesar: To tackle this growing issue, Bozeman recently implemented a new ordinance limiting camping in the same spot to 30 days with an option for filing for an extension. There are rules about keeping camps clean, and after three warnings $25 civil penalties will be issued…. The reporter at least provided some anecdotes from citizens helping pay for homeless upkeep, with the head of an environmental consulting firm noting he’d suffered thefts on his company’s property and the harassment of an employee. But he ended with the view of a hand-wringing social worker and a lecture from the trailer-living denizen: Heather Grenier, Human Resources Development Council: Just general sentiment that everyone deserves the safe warm place to sleep is that doesn’t really resonate with everyone anymore. Steve Ankney: “….there are good people in Bozeman, just the ugly overshadows the good so bad.” The segment ended with a graphic of a federal government statistic claiming a 551% increase in “individuals experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness” from 2007 to 2023, which is a bit vague. When even the liberal Washington Post editorial page admits “There is no constitutional right to pitch your tent on the sidewalk” -- the kind of common-sense argument absent from PBS -- it’s clear that taxpayer-supported outlets like PBS and National Public Radio are pitched far to the left of the average American taxpayer who is involuntarily supporting them. This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular, and taxpayers like you. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Weekend 4/21/2024 7:12:56 p.m. (ET) JOHN YANG: Tomorrow, the Supreme Court hears arguments about whether laws limiting homeless encampments in public places are unconstitutional because they punish people for being homeless. The case is about laws in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city of about 40,000 in the state southwest corner, but the outcome could reshape policies nationwide for years to come. Charley Willison teaches public health at Cornell University. She`s the author of "Ungoverned and Out of Sight: Public Health and the Political Crisis of Homelessness in the United States." Charley, in the filings for this case Grants Pass as well there these laws are about public health and public safety. The two homeless people who have brought this case say it`s really about pushing homeless people out of the -- out of Grants Pass getting them to move on to go someplace else. What`s your take on that? CHARLEY WILLISON, Cornell University: This is such an important question. And what this case is really getting at is a deep tension that American cities face when thinking about how to respond to homelessness across the country, but especially in West Coast cities that have very limited shelter capacity, and are also in the midst of a housing crisis. And these two tensions that I`d like to emphasize are that cities generally use much more punitive policies these criminalization approaches that are at the heart of Johnson versus Grants Pass to effectively punish people who are experiencing homelessness for behaviors that are associated with the realities of homelessness. Now, importantly, the use of these punitive policies actually facilitate cycles of homelessness and does not effectively end homelessness. While the alternative addressing homelessness through the use of more housing, as well as housing paired with access to social and medical services, does successfully end homelessness. However, we have seen cities across the United States have much less emphasis on the use of housing and supportive services compared to these punitive policies that are at the heart of this case. JOHN YANG: But at the same time, these camping bans are really spreading just this spring. Governor DeSantis and Florida signed a ban statewide banning camping in public places. But you say this really doesn`t help homelessness is it, does it hurt it? CHARLEY WILLISON: So these camping bans and other broadly punitive responses again, where we see people who are experiencing homelessness being either find through civil penalties or criminalized through criminal penalties for realities associated with homelessness, whether it is sleeping in public sitting down in public eating public, things like this do actually promote cycles of homelessness. Now, the Florida law that is in question is a ban on camping. However, it is also using an interim solution where there are temporary shelters and that will hopefully be used, as opposed to criminalizing people. So banning camping as opposed to incarcerating people, or finding people directing people into temporary shelters, which appear to be sanctioned camping sites. JOHN YANG: What about the ballot proposal that narrowly passed earlier this year in California that directs counties to spend more money on housing programs and drug treatment programs? Will that help? Will that make a difference? CHARLEY WILLISON: Proposition one in California, which passed just about a month ago, this raises the issue of the housing crisis itself, and the need for West Coast cities in particular, but especially cities across the United States, to engage in more housing based solutions, which are the only solution that effectively successfully ends homelessness. Across the country having these investments and in California, especially where there are by far very limited or far more limited shelter and housing opportunities compared to other East Coast cities. For example, having more accountability, where cities are required to spend a certain proportion of their budgets on housing will likely help improve the situation and require cities to engage in these evidence based policies which are far more effective. JOHN YANG: From your perspective, what`s the public health issue or what`s the public health effect implications of homelessness? CHARLEY WILLISON: There are many, many grave public health effects of homelessness. If we think about homelessness, in general, people experiencing homelessness, whether it is short term or long term face group far greater morbidity and mortality compared to the general population. And this is both in the short term and the long term. For example, we know that people who are experiencing sheltered homelessness, so this is when they don`t have to sleep outside, they have a place to go their mortality rates are about three times higher than the general population. Whereas people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness, which is the population that is at the heart of this court case, have mortality rates are about 10 times higher than the general population. So when we`re thinking about population health and homelessness is absolutely a public health problem because of the grave and dire consequences for people and their health in these ways. JOHN YANG: In your view, what`s at stake in this case? CHARLEY WILLISON: There are many things at stake in this case, but I would say probably the most important thing is again, going back to this tension, where cities have placed a lot of very robust resources in these punitive responses to homelessness. Now, if they are allowed to continue to do this, the question will be whether or not cities will be incentivized to create these alternative solutions using housing paired with social medical services, which we know actually successfully ends homelessness. However, if the court rules in favor of Johnson, we I think this is a very big opportunity for cities to engage in these evidence based solutions and make investments especially in West Coast cities, where they have not previously done so, so that we may actually successfully reduce and end homelessness. JOHN YANG: Charley Willison of Cornell University. Thank you very much. CHARLEY WILLISON: Thank you so much. JOHN YANG: In some cities with growing numbers of homeless people, the issue goes beyond encampments and public places. They`re also coping with more people living in cars and RVs parked on city streets. Montana PBS`s Joe Lesar reports on how city leaders in Bozeman Montana are dealing with the tensions arising from this more visible display of homelessness. STEVEN ANKNEY, Bozeman resident: Terry, oh, man, you got to have thick skin out here. BELINDA ANKNEY, Bozeman resident: Oh, we got the windows broke out. Not went up there. It`s just completely gone. STEVEN ANKNEY: Yeah, that one`s had the BB come through there. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Steve and Belinda Ankney, have been living in their trailer on the streets of Bozeman for the past three years. STEVEN ANKNEY: We take plates around or if people are having a hard time and they`re not eating, they`ll stop by and ask if we can help her anyway. JOE LESAR (voice-over): The rising cost of living has only compounded issues they I`ve been facing for years.   BELINDA ANKNEY: I was raised with the drugs. I was raised with the alcohol. That`s all I knew. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Both have struggled with addiction. Belinda works full time at a restaurant. But health issues made worse by inconsistent access to care have affected Steven`s ability to work. BELINDA ANKNEY: One of the biggest misconceptions is that we want to be here that we`re not trying to get out. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Belinda`s legal troubles out another barrier to securing housing. BELINDA ANKNEY: Yeah, the mental health issues. The drug issues the in and out of incarceration not getting the right help not being on the right meds, you know, just as (inaudible). JOE LESAR (voice-over): Urban camping as it`s been named, has increased by 200 percent in the last two years, according to city officials. It`s a growing issue. It`s increasingly dividing Bozeman. WOMAN: If Bozeman is too expensive to live in, choose another place to live. MAN: But it feels more like a warzone with all these housing crises and no solutions to anything. MAN: Bozeman doesn`t owe anybody anything. MAN: I`ve never seen or been in a city where there`s so much conflict over how this homelessness thing. JOE LESAR (voice-over): To tackle this growing issue, Bozeman recently implemented a new ordinance limiting camping in the same spot to 30 days with an option for filing for an extension. There are rules about keeping camps clean, and after three warnings $25 civil penalties will be issued. If unsanitary conditions continue, the city can clear camp 72 hours after giving notice. But some are criticizing city leaders for putting too much of a burden on the unhoused. Others feel they`re being too lenient. Mayor Terry Cunningham says the rules about where camping will be allowed will help make the situation more manageable. MAYOR TERRY CUNNINGHAM, Bozeman, Montana: You can`t be parked in front of a business, you can`t be parked in front of a school, childcare facility, residence, et cetera. So narrowing the areas that it is acceptable to camp in front of is important so we can get some level of predictability and control. JOE LESAR (voice-over): But many camps are already in compliance with those rules. A group of businesses are suing the city alleging that it is refusing to enforce existing laws within the homeless encampments. Andrew Hinnenkamp runs one of the businesses involved in the lawsuit. ANDREW HINNENKAMP, Principal, Modulus Corporation: Early on, we had some thefts of services on the property. We had a little bit of a harassment interaction with an employee and one of the individuals. TERRY CUNNINGHAM: homelessness has always been on the radar. This with urban camping RV`s, more cars. This is a recent phenomenon. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Because of the generators, new model cars and TV antennas, there`s a sentiment in Bozeman that people are choosing to camp in order to save money on housing. City officials acknowledged that some people are doing that and will be asked to move on. But figuring out who those people are comes with challenges. TERRY CUNNINGHAM: One of the difficulties is having the discussion and saying why are you currently homeless? We -- they are not required to provide us with that information and often are uncomfortable answering those types of questions. JOE LESAR (voice-over): The population of people experiencing homelessness in Bozeman has increased by 50 percent since 2020. In the groups providing services to this growing population have struggled to meet the demand. HEATHER GRENIER, President, Human Resources Development Council: As a result of COVID there was this big uptick in demand and there was this outpouring of support. And now that outpouring of support has dropped off, but the demand has stayed up at this level and the resources are very insufficient to meet the need. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Heather Grenier, who runs the nonprofit Human Resource Development Council, says her organization`s caseload is at capacity. And there are not many alternatives available. HEATHER GRENIER: It`s remarkably difficult because there`s no pathway for us to help them. There`s no housing. There`s no rental assistance to help them get into housing. And even if there were a housing unit, there`s no transitional housing. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Usage of HRDC overnight shelter has nearly doubled since 2019. Some of that needs should be eased when they`re new 24/7 shelter opens, but that`s not expected until next year. Grenier believes this newer, more visible form of homelessness has caused a shift in attitudes around Bozeman. HEATHER GRENIER: Just general sentiment that everyone deserves the safe warm place to sleep is that doesn`t really resonate with everyone anymore. BELINDA ANKNEY: Are we out? Are we out for it? STEVEN ANKNEY: No. I`ve seen not. I don`t know. BELINDA ANKNEY: OK. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Cost between a lack of services and a frustrated community, are people like Steven and Belinda? STEVEN ANKNEY: There are good people in Bozeman there. Yeah. It`s just the ugly overshadows the good so bad. This is what it`s about. We are having me struggles and we are having these problems. But as soon as we get through them, we are going to be okay. We are going to get to the other side. JOE LESAR (voice-over): Yeah. For PBS News Weekend, I`m Joe Lesar in Bozeman, Montana. April 23rd, 2024 1:51 PM Clay Waters 283858 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/christian-baldwin/2024/04/23/watch-absurd-reason-senator-claims-elon-musk-should Elon Musk has been targeted by yet another authoritarian government for his company X’s reluctance to censor political content.  In an April 23 interview with Sky News, Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie appeared to threaten Elon Musk over his well-known advocacy for free speech and the way his company X handles political content on its platform, specifically X’s refusal to censor videos of recent attacks in Australia, contradicting the orders of the country’s eSafety commission.  Lambie engaged in a vitriolic spree against the tech mogul and considerably blackened his character. “So when it comes to the tech billionaire, like I’ve already said, I think he’s a social media nob with no social conscience,” Lambie said. “He has absolutely no social conscience.” The senator then proceeded to issue explicit threats against Musk, advocating for him to be imprisoned. “Someone like that should be in jail, and the key be thrown away,” Lambie asserted. “That bloke should not have a right to be out there on his own ideology platform and creating hatred, you know, showing all this stuff out there to our kids and all the rest.” Australian politicians want to shut down X and imprison Elon Musk because free speech is a danger to their fragile democracy that’s run by fragile, pathetic people. You couldn’t make this up. pic.twitter.com/mEBLqMtO6f — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 23, 2024 In another interview, Lambie made her threats even more explicit and suggested that the  Australian government should introduce new rules to target X. “And quite frankly, the bloke [sic] should be jailed, and the sooner we can bring rules in or do something about these sorts of game-playing with their social media, the better off we’re going to be.” Lambie did not immediately respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment. She is not the first Australian political figure to try to criticize the tech mogul for protecting the free expression of X users. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also taken issue with X’s handling of what he terms “misinformation” and “disinformation.” “By and large, people responded appropriately to the calls by the [eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant],” Albanese recently commented. “They stand, I think … I find it extraordinary that X chose not to comply and trying to argue their case.” Albanese appeared to rationalize his stance against the rights of X users by arguing that it was simply the will of Australians. “We know, I think, overwhelmingly Australians want misinformation and disinformation to stop,” he said.  The controversy comes after X was ordered by Grant on April 16 to take down two videos of stabbings.  One video depicted a bishop and a priest being stabbed during a live-streamed mass, and the other video showed a knife-wielding assailant killing six at a mall. X refused to comply with the request because its Global Government Affairs team argued that the request was not within the scope of Australian law nor did the videos violate X’s own policies.  As reported by Time Magazine, the orders required X to make the videos inaccessible even to users outside Australia or face a fine of $785,000 AUD (about $500,000 USD).               Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.   April 23rd, 2024 12:27 PM Christian Baldwin 283862 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/cal-thomas/2024/04/23/empires-begin-strike-back With all that is occurring in our political and cultural life, there are signs some Americans have had enough. Google recently fired 28 employees from its New York and Sunnyvale, California, offices for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel. The reason given by the company’s vice president for global security, Chris Rackow, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, was that the sacked employees “took over office spaces, defaced our property and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” violating company policies. They apparently aren’t familiar with this sage advice: don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Another optimistic sign. Columbia University decided they had enough of protesters disrupting the campus and shouting antisemitic, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas slogans. Police were called and arrested 108 protesters who had set up shanty-like tent camps on school property. Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the occupiers posed a “clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University.” The definition of “student” ought to bring some humility to these don’t-know-it-alls: “ a person formally engaged in learning.” For too long and in too many places – and not only on many college campuses – adults have ceded their leadership responsibilities to teenagers and twenty-somethings, too many of whom regurgitate what they have been told by leftist professors and friends on social media. At Columbia, at least three tenured professors dispense propaganda about the history of the Middle East. The New York Post identified them: “ Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and history, has faced widespread calls to be fired ever since he referred to the Oct. 7 attack inflicted by Hamas terrorists (on Israel) as ‘awesome.’” Mohamed Abdou, who is described on Columbia’s website as “a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition and decolonization.” Abdou declared on social media, “Yes, I’m with Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.” There is also Hamad Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies. The Post reports Dabashi “has come under fire in recent years for a slew of controversial social media posts, including a since-deleted one in which he blamed Israel for every “dirty” problem in the world: “Every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious happening in the world just wait for a few days and the ugly name ‘Israel’ will pop up in the atrocities,’ Dabashi wrote in a 2018 Facebook post, cited by the Jewish Journal.” There are likely more professors with views like these at Columbia and elsewhere, but you get the picture. It may be a generalization, but too many young people have been treated as though they were the font of all wisdom while older, wiser, and more experienced people have been sidelined and their views silenced. Few speak of responsibility or accountability for actions once deemed illegal, immoral, impractical, uninformed, duped and just plain stupid. Students who take out big loans to learn propaganda and worthless subjects at too many universities now expect those loans to be forgiven at taxpayer expense. When I flunked out after my freshman year at American University in Washington, my father said he wasn’t going to pay the bills anymore. When I went back a year later and paid my own way a remarkable thing happened. My grades went up because I was now invested in my education and had to take responsibility for the outcome. I also paid back my student loan. Let’s hope that others follow the lead of Columbia’s president and Google management and we stop wet nursing kids who for too long have demonstrated their ignorance and in some cases denounced America while reaping its benefits. April 23rd, 2024 12:21 PM Cal Thomas 283860 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2024/04/23/liberal-media-soros-funded-group-attack-ted-cruz-forhosting For years, the liberal media have constantly lost their noodles over the alleged, supposed crime that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is a walking campaign violation for co-hosting a hit podcast that’s been three years running, Verdict With Ted Cruz. Originally launched during the first Trump impeachment with Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, the show continues to publish episodes three times a week alongside longtime conservative talk show host and commentator Ben Ferguson. The liberal media helped set the table with a litany of sites coincidentally publishing nearly identical stories. Here’s the headline from one of two stories by the tools at the Daily Beast: “The Ugly Truth Behind Ted Cruz’s Super PAC Podcast”. And Newsweek — which has an unhealthy obsession with the junior senator from Texas — had not one but two stories waving pomp pomps about said complaint. Here was the headline for one of them: “Ted Cruz Faces Second Investigation in Less Than a Year”. Expand the scope and there was everyone from local and state media (the Austin American-Statesman, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Texas Monthly, Texas Tribune, and Laredo Morning Times to name a few) to liberal gadflys at Business Insider, The New Republic, Raw Story, and Rolling Stone. As for the complaint, National Review’s James Lynch wrote last week that, along with the constant liberal belly-aching, “[l]eft-wing legal and advocacy groups are targeting” him for alleged “campaign finance issues” just so conveniently as the general election between Cruz and Congressman Colin Allred (D-TX) begins in earnest. Lynch explained that “[t]he Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and End Citizens United, two left-leaning watchdog groups, filed a complaint last week with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing Cruz of campaign finance violations by putting podcast ad revenue towards a pro-Cruz super PAC.” “The complaint demands the FEC investigate the situation and accuses Cruz of violating campaign finance laws prohibiting corporations from contributing directly to campaigns,” he added. With some help from the Capital Research Center, Lynch revealed to what’s probably no surprise to you, NewsBusters readers, that said groups are funded by none other than George Soros: Left-wing foundations such as the Sandler Foundation, Ford Foundation, McArthur Foundation, and George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society have bankrolled the Campaign Legal Center, according to Influence Watch, a project by watchdog think tank Capital Research Center. “Campaign Legal Center is a Soros-funded left-wing attack group, and its 501(c)(4) arm was a puppet of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced ex-crypto-billionaire who gave Democrats almost as much cash as Soros. End Citizens United is little better than a scam PAC and endorses Democratic candidates. In short, Sen. Cruz is lucky in his enemies, because these groups disgrace themselves when they pretend to be nonpartisan watchdogs,” Capital Research Center President Scott Walter told National Review. CLC has repeatedly targeted Cruz with ethics complaints, and each time the complaints have been rebuked. In 2022, CLC filed an ethics complaint to the Senate ethics committee accusing him of improperly accepting a gift from iHeart media. The Senate Ethics Committee shot down the CLC complaint. A Cruz spokesman called it “bewildering to see...lazy attacks during an election year”, particularly on something he does “for free”. Cruz himself spoke to Houston-area CBS affiliate KHOU about this nonsense and tore into these leftist “front groups” looking to engage in election interference (click “expand”): There are two groups that file these complaints. And they’re both Democrat front groups. So what they do every election cycle is they file complaints against Republicans. And that’s what they exist to do—create news stories that are just attack vehicles. It’s interesting because these same groups previously filed a complaint...about my podcast...The Senate Ethics Committee dismissed it and said that [my podcast] is entirely consistent with law...I’m very proud of my Podcast...Verdict with Ted Cruz. I do it three days a week, and we have nearly a million people across Texas and across the country who tune in. The reason that I do the podcast is to tell Texans and Americans what’s happening in Washington...I do it because much of the media refuses to report the news fairly. And so people are turning to podcasts to understand what’s really going on...The podcast is something I’m very proud of. I think it’s integral to my job as a Senator to talk to Texans about what is happening in the U.S. Senate that affects the state of Texas and to talk to Texans about the threats that they are facing, whether from open borders, releasing criminals, or Iran getting billions of dollars from the Biden administration—all of which are topics that I have discussed at great length on the podcast. April 23rd, 2024 12:00 PM Curtis Houck 283859 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2024/04/23/hard-believe-google-spreads-climate-propaganda-earth Leftist Google displayed its search engine bias yet again on “Earth Day” with a specialized logo and promotion of climate alarmist propaganda. Users going to Google’s search engine on April 22 noticed a doodle specially designed for Earth Day. Clicking on the doodle brought up biased information on alleged “climate change progress” and “climate justice.” This aligns with Google’s previous history of censoring content that doesn’t support a climate hysteria narrative. Below the sponsored sites Google provides, the tech giant proudly explains its doodle. “Happy Earth Day 2024! Today's annual Earth Day Doodle features the planet's natural beauty and biodiversity and reminds us of the importance of protecting it for future generations,” Google enthused. Google then promoted outlets and organizations including left-leaning USA Today, Wikipedia and the anti-free speech United Nations. MRC Free Speech America researchers found the top, sponsored search result in this Google search engine Earth Day tribute to be from Global Human Rights on “Climate justice definition.” The organization insanely claimed “Climate change is an existential threat to humanity” and “a leading cause of human rights violations.” You May Also Like: CNN Virtue Signals to Save Planet by Releasing Hysterical Letter: ‘To My Son, Born in the Climate Crisis’ Google has censored content in the past to enforce this leftist narrative on climate. For instance, in 2021, Google and its YouTube video platform banned advertising on so-called climate “misinformation.”  YouTube has also censored and fact-checked climate content, including putting context labels on 2024 GOP and Democrat presidential candidates’ videos, particularly Vivek Ramaswamy. Junk Science’s Steve Milloy highlighted the hypocrisy of such climate virtue-signaling on Earth Day, “The green agenda has focused on total control of society through the climate hoax and not at all about the environment we live in.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact Google at 650-253-0000 and demand it be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable. April 23rd, 2024 11:41 AM Catherine Salgado 283857 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/gabriela-pariseau/2024/04/23/39-times-facebook-interfered-us-elections-2008 If Facebook, the company, had a personal Facebook profile, its “relationship status” with free speech would say, “It’s complicated.” The platform, however, has consistently courted election interference efforts. MRC Free Speech America researchers compiled 39 times Facebook was caught interfering in U.S. elections since 2008. The platform’s record of election-interfering censorship began in 2012, reached a crescendo in 2020 and has begun fading somewhat in the early stages of the 2024 electoral cycle. All the while, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly made pro-free speech comments including during his famous 2019 speech at Georgetown University. “We can either continue to stand for free expression understanding its messiness but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide that the cost is simply too great,” said Zuckerberg. “I'm here today because I believe that we must continue to stand for free expression.” He has similarly called politically-motivated censorship “dangerous” and said that Facebook and other social media platforms should not be acting as the “arbiter of truth.” And yet, from 2012 through 2024, Facebook has vacillated between a hands-off approach to free speech online and repeated election interference through policy changes and outright censorship of political candidates and ideas. Below are some of the highlights of MRC’s findings. In 2012, Facebook suspended a Veteran PAC for a meme drawing attention to the attack on Benghazi. Just over a week before the 2012 presidential election, Facebook suspended the account of Special Operations Speaks, a veteran-led PAC. The group had posted a meme reminding its followers that Navy SEALs were denied backup during the tragic terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The meme showed pictures of then-President Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden along with the words “Obama called on the SEALs and THEY got bin Laden. When the SEALs called on Obama THEY GOT DENIED,” Breitbart News reported. Facebook removed the post, which it claimed “violate[d] Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” according to screenshots Breitbart News included in its reporting. The page administrator proceeded to repost the meme, which was subsequently also removed. After Breitbart News ran the story, then-Facebook Manager Andrew Noyes responded to the accusation denying all fault. “I assure you that removing the image was not an act of censorship on our part. This was an error and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused,” he reportedly wrote.  In 2016, Facebook censored then-Democratic Party candidate for president Bernie Sanders and “conservative topics” and news. Facebook used to have a trending section on its website that included trending news manually curated by contractors. Several of the curators who worked for Facebook in 2014 and 2015 told Gizmodo the articles that appeared in Facebook’s Trending News section often depended on the biases of the curator and what Facebook wanted to be trending at the time. “Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” a former curator who asked to remain anonymous said. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.” Stories about then-presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) were also reportedly excluded. Facebook’s anti-spam algorithm also flagged many different Facebook groups, including six groups created for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporters, in the Democratic Party primary race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  In 2018, Facebook censored multiple candidates for Congress and state legislatures. Facebook removed ads for Sen. (then-Rep.) Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) and Michigan state Senate Republican candidate Aric Nesbitt. The platform additionally censored an ad promoting border security paid for by then-President Donald Trump. Similarly, the platform reportedly removed a video promoting an AR-15 giveaway that Senate candidate Austin Petersen (R-MO) was conducting on his own website. In 2020, censorship on Facebook exploded.  The platform censored posts and ads from then-sitting President Donald Trump at least four times and took down seven political ads paid for by the political right. One of these ad campaigns Facebook killed just over a month before the election. The ad reportedly pointed out the incongruence between Democrats’ open borders and COVID-19 lockdown policies. The Washington Post reported at the time, “There were more than 30 versions of the ad running on the social network, according to Facebook’s ad transparency library. It had gathered between 200,000 and 250,000 impressions.” Other candidates impacted by censorship included Rep. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Florida candidate and activist Laura Loomer (R) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).  2020 election interference came to a head, however, when the platform censored the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden report documenting the Biden family’s financial scandals and then ultimately placed an indefinite suspension on then-sitting President Trump’s accounts shortly into 2021. In 2022, Facebook censored multiple gubernatorial candidates and candidates for U.S. Congress. The platform censored Rep. (then candidate) Rich McCormick (R-GA), Virginia GOP congressional candidate Jarome Bell, Tennessee GOP congressional candidate Robby Starbuck, and Missouri GOP U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens. In McCormick’s case, the congressman made an ad criticizing President Joe Biden’s “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.” Facebook removed the ad for violating its “'Disruptive Content' policy," McCormick wrote in a Facebook post. The platform similarly censored Arizona, Alabama and Texas Republican gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake, Governor Kay Ivey and Chad Prather respectively. In the case of Lake, she said her Instagram account was restricted for 24 hours after “posting photos of Arizona and Arizonans.” In 2024, Facebook and Instagram are limiting users’ access to political content. Meta already began limiting its distribution of political content in 2022 but has continued to lean into that in the lead-up to the 2024 election. In February, Meta announced that Instagram and Threads (a new social media platform owned by Meta) will no longer recommend political content by default, but users can opt in to having such content promoted to them. “If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow,” Instagram wrote in a blog. “So we’re extending our existing approach to how we treat political content – we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads.” Although the move sounds harmless, it makes it more difficult for those who produce political content to grow their page and for more viewers to decide for themselves whether or not they want to follow that content. The platform has also censored GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder, Democrat-turned-Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.   Recommendations House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) should direct relevant committees and committee chairmen to investigate Facebook for interfering in elections. State legislatures should ensure that Big Tech cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination. State attorneys general and state secretaries of state should take appropriate action to enforce state election laws as it relates to Facebook’s election interference.  In the spirit of openness and transparency, Facebook should establish a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to address the election interference and censorship issues outlined in this report.   You can read the full study here.   April 23rd, 2024 11:09 AM Gabriela Pariseau and Dan Schneider 283856 https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2024/04/23/reid-claims-columbia-hamas-protests-are-singing-about-peace MSNBC’s Joy Reid pulled out the head in the sand strategy for Monday’s edition of The ReidOut when discussing anti-Semitism being prevalent at Columbia University. During an interview with Rev. Mark Thompson and Maryam Alwan of Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justine in Palestine, Reid claimed she simply “didn’t hear it.” Addressing Thompson, Reid claimed that things at Columbia are fine, “I saw, Mark, these students singing and singing about peace and singing salaam, singing words of peace. So, it just didn't square with what I was even hearing on television and television commentators saying was shrieking anti-Semitism, I didn't hear it.”     Perhaps Reid wasn’t looking because a rabbi has advised Jewish students to avoid campus and return home. As for Thompson, whose MSNBC chyron labels him as a “social justice activist,” he also wanted to act as if the majority of demonstrators are simply peace activists, “No, I was there yesterday, and it was very peaceful and very moving. The-- one of the institutions affiliated with Columbia, of course, is Union Theological Seminary and the Union students held a Sunday worship service and served communion there on campus, even to those beyond the gates who couldn't get in. So, this betrays the imagery of there being violent rhetoric spewed.” Thompson conceded that “I do have a colleague whose daughter is a freshman at Barnard and she has faced some harassment, but as Maryam said, these are outliers and in the movement, we’ve always had –” Reid interrupted to add, “It happened at Black Lives Matter rallies,” as Thompson continued, “So, that’s—but, in general, it’s not a good idea to generalize what is going on. These are peaceful and non-violent demonstrations.” Meanwhile, Reid generalizes about people all the time. Almost every show is the same: conservatives are racists, sexists, religious weirdos, and Trump cultists. She does not get to claim that those who want Hamas to survive to possibly commit another October 7 get to disassociate themselves with Hamas supporters who hold signs reading “Al-Qasam's Next Targets” while pointing to Jewish counter-protestors or over 100 professors who want to “recontextualize” October 7 and frame it as a “military response.” Turning her attention to Alwan, Reid wondered, “What do you make of leaders of your school seeming, I guess, to appease maybe members of Congress that have been all over your president and want her to resign, calling the NYPD on you all?” Naturally, Alwan decided to portray herself as the victim, “It feels like it's been a McCarthyite campaign to try to equate our peaceful protest, calling them to divest from violence, and they are calling us violent instead. It was horrifying to be carried out in zip ties when we were just, you know, peacefully calling for an end to the violence.” Reid, claimed she didn’t see any anti-Semitism at Columbia, yet by referencing BDS, Alwan proved it was right there at her desk. Here is a transcript for the April 22 show: MSNBC The ReidOut 4/22/2024 7:50 PM ET JOY REID: I saw, Mark, these students singing and singing about peace and singing salaam, singing words of peace. So, it just didn't square with what I was even hearing on television and television commentators saying was shrieking anti-Semitism, I didn't hear it. MARK THOMPSON: No, I was there yesterday, and it was very peaceful and very moving. The-- one of the institutions affiliated with Columbia, of course, is Union Theological Seminary and the Union students held a Sunday worship service and served communion there on campus, even to those beyond the gates who couldn't get in. So, this betrays the imagery of there being violent rhetoric spewed. I will say this, I do have a colleague whose daughter is a freshman at Barnard and she has faced some harassment, but as Maryam said, these are outliers and in the movement, we’ve always had – REID: It happened at Black Lives Matter rallies. THOMPSON: You’ve got provocateurs.  REID: Yeah. THOMPSON: So, that’s—but, in general, it’s not a good idea to generalize what is going on. These are peaceful and non-violent demonstrations. REID: Let me, what do you make of leaders of your school seeming, I guess, to appease maybe members of Congress that have been all over your president and want her to resign, calling the NYPD on you all? MARYAM ALWAN: It feels like it's been a McCarthyite campaign to try to equate our peaceful protest, calling them to divest from violence, and they are calling us violent instead. It was horrifying to be carried out in zip ties when we were just, you know, peacefully calling for an end to the violence. April 23rd, 2024 10:30 AM Alex Christy 283855