It is not looking good for Democrats after they refused to compromise on a deal to fund the government in the upcoming months, but as per usual, their favorite fixer, Google, is on it.
On Tuesday, the search giant’s publishing arm, Google News, propped up a whole host of leftist sources, including NPR, Politico and The New York Times, which deflected Democrats’ role in forcing a likely government shutdown in Google’s Top stories. Not a single right-leaning news outlet appeared on the Google News home page.
In its “Top Stories” section, Google included an NPR piece headlined “Government to shut down after midnight barring last minute breakthrough in Congress.” In the article, NPR arranged its framing to paint Democrats as caring and altruistic for attempting to extend funding for Obamacare — all the while smearing President Donald Trump as a bigot who won’t compromise.
The outlet specifically complained about a meme video Trump posted on Truth Social. “He posted a racist AI-generated video on social media,” the author wrote, adding: “This was accompanied by a vulgar, crudely deep-faked voiceover of Schumer denigrating Democrats.”
Politico similarly led by noting the same AI meme video and subtly claiming it is Republicans who must compromise, even though Democrats are in the minority. “Democrats, following Monday’s meeting, remained steadfast in their opposition to keeping the government open without concessions from Republicans and the Trump administration,” the outlet noted.
Politico revealed its true colors, however, when it objected to how Trump is portraying Democrats.
“Trump’s attack on Monday was more discreet than it has been in recent days when he accused Democrats of wanting taxpayers to subsidize transgender surgeries but its intent is the same: paint the other party as willing to shut the government down over a position that polls poorly,” Politico claimed.
Ironically, Republicans were literally called “villains” by Politico when Biden’s government nearly shut down in 2023 because Democrats refused to increase funding for border security, a top issue in the 2024 election.
Google News also included in its top stories a Times piece about Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech to U.S. generals and admirals at Quantico Marine Corps Base on Tuesday. In the story, The Times questioned why the men who direct military action around the world would want to speak and meet with military leadership:
“It was unclear why, with a shutdown of the federal government looming, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary needed to gather the country’s senior military leaders from overseas deployments to tell them face to face that they were straight out of ‘central casting,’ as Mr. Trump characterized the gathering.”
Google’s promotion of leftist sources comes after Senate Democrats failed to pass all 12 appropriations bills and are now threatening not to pass a continuing resolution that would extend government funding through Nov. 21.
Methodology:
MRC researchers examined the home page of news.google.com and the included aggregated outlets at 10 am on September 30. Researchers then analyzed the articles related to a potential government shutdown for political bias. MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies.
