RIGGED? PBS Touts Focus Group of Two-Time Trump Voters Switching to Biden After Verdict

The PBS NewsHour quickly rounded up its semi-regular focus group of GOP voters one day after Donald Trump’s conviction in a Manhattan courtroom on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records (misdemeanors inflated to felonies). They touted that six of nine in their collection of two-time Trump voters said that Trump’s conviction made them less likely to vote Trump in 2024. PBS pounced on Friday, with anchor Amna Nawaz getting the focus-group scoop via "Republicans Against Trump" organizer Sarah Longwell and the staff's biggest liberal activist, White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez. Laura Barron-Lopez: Amna, this focus group was of voters who voted for Donald Trump twice in 2016 and in 2020. And they were slightly already a little souring on him, but some of them could have very well gone back to him. And it was conducted by a group run by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell. And so after this verdict, they said, about six of them, there were nine total, about six of those voters said that the fact that these were felonies that Trump was convicted of carried more weight for them than if they had been misdemeanors. And out of those nine voters, five of them said that this made them less likely to support Donald Trump, including 52-year-old Michele from Florida. Barron-Lopez emphasized life-long Republican Michele, who said Trump “as a convicted felon is completely unfit” for office. Valerie from Georgia wanted him to serve jail time. Only one of the nine, Mark from Georgia, called the trial a double standard and that the case (reviled as a hit job in conservative circles and even seen as dubious in some liberal channels) would make him more likely to vote Trump. Who might have guessed that the "Republicans Against Trump" lady would nudge her focus group into voting for Biden? No rigging there... But the end of the segment was a wall of fear-mongering, with the host and reporter spinning justified questions about, and criticism of, the case into Republican attacks on “the judicial system” itself. Amna Nawaz: Laura, as you know, and we heard earlier, Mr. Trump also continued his attacks on the judge in this case, Judge Merchan. In the last 24 hours, we have now seen Republicans relentlessly attacking the judge, the judge's daughter, the judicial system. What is the impact of all of that rhetoric? As often happens on liberal channels, PBS didn’t bother to mention the Democrat tilt of the Merchan family: That Judge Merchan made a small but still illicit donation to the Biden campaign (New York State judges are barred from political donations) and that his daughter Loren Merchan is a highly partisan Democrat fundraiser.  Barron-Lopez responded with talking points from a left-wing nonprofit that in her phrase, “tracks far-right social media.” Sound objective? Barron-Lopez: Well, we're starting to see some direct impact, Amna, because, as you noted, a lot of Republicans, in addition to Donald Trump, have said that -- tried to sow doubt about the justice system, have directly attacked the judge in this case. And I was working with Advance Democracy, a nonprofit investigative group that tracks far-right social media, and provided us an early look at data that they have been gathering since the verdict came out yesterday. And they were tracking social media across X, formerly known as Twitter, Telegram, TRUTH Social -- that's Trump's social media site -- and they found an increase in calls for violence and violent rhetoric. They also found an increase in calls to dox jurors and to dox the judges. And here are some examples. On Telegram, one posted: "Hang the judge for corruption." On a site called Patriots Win, another follower said: "Someone in New York with nothing to lose needs to take care of Judge Merchan. Hopefully, he gets met with illegals and a machete." And then another one posted: "We need the judge's address, along with his daughter's. And we will be peacefully protesting, but, ultimately, the gloves are off and do your duty." This sudden concern about doxing comes from the same network that didn’t mention the assassination attempt by Nicholas Roske on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh outside the justice’s home until a week afterward, and then in three brief sentences in a “news wrap” segment. This segment was brought to you in part by Cunard. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 5/31/24 7:06:06 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: For more on the political fallout of Trump's guilty conviction, Laura Barron-Lopez heard from Republican voters about how this impacts their thoughts on the former president and the upcoming election. Laura, good to see you. Laura Barron-Lopez: Good to be here. Amna Nawaz: So you watched this focus group today with a group of voters the day after that guilty verdict. How were they reacting? Laura Barron-Lopez: Amna, this focus group was of voters who voted for Donald Trump twice in 2016 and in 2020. And they were slightly already a little souring on him, but some of them could have very well gone back to him. And it was conducted by a group run by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell. And so after this verdict, they said, about six of them, there were nine total, about six of those voters said that the fact that these were felonies that Trump was convicted of carried more weight for them than if they had been misdemeanors. And out of those nine voters, five of them said that this made them less likely to support Donald Trump, including 52-year-old Michele from Florida. Michele, Florida: I'm tired of the lies. I'm tired of the nonsense. And I believed the testimony. And that is why I am happy that the jury found him guilty. And I think also, now that he is a convicted felon, he's completely unfit. He can't pass a basic security clearance at this point. I'm not sure if he can vote in Florida. He may not be allowed to go to different countries as a felon. This is not appropriate. Knock it off, Republicans. Find somebody else. Laura Barron-Lopez: And Michele, that voter, Amna, Michele, she had voted for Republicans her entire life, voted for Trump twice. But this verdict carried a lot of weight with her. It carried a lot of weight with a number of the other voters, who also some of them raised January 6 as something — the insurrection as something that had started to convince them that they maybe couldn't vote for Trump again. Amna Nawaz: So, Michele from Florida less likely to vote for him as a result of the verdict. Was anyone pushed further towards Mr. Trump as a result of the verdict? Laura Barron-Lopez: One out of the nine voters in this focus group said that this verdict made him more likely to support Donald Trump. And that's Mark, 54, from Florida — sorry — from Georgia, and he called it a sham trial. Mark, Georgia: It's a double standard. It was a politicized prosecution. It was the elevation of what are misdemeanors into felonies just for political purposes. Laura Barron-Lopez: And the voters were also asked whether or not this verdict made them trust the justice system more, trust the justice system left, or it didn't change their mind. And three of them said that it made them trust the justice system more. Most said it didn't change how they viewed the system. Mark, who we just heard from in Georgia, said that it made him not trust the justice system as much. But as for whether or not they thought that Donald Trump should go to jail, Valerie, 64, also from Georgia, had a very strong response to that. Valerie, Georgia: He should start jail time, the crime — the — pay paid the penalty for the crime. We all know what's going to happen. They're going to negotiate and renegotiate. And he's not going to serve any time, but he will get more time on television right here at election time. Laura Barron-Lopez: And, at the end of the day, they were asked, if you had to pick between President Biden or Donald Trump, who would you pick come November? And roughly six of them said that they would vote for Joe Biden. One, Mark, who we heard from, said that he would vote for Trump. And one to two of them were basically unsure or said that they may not vote. Amna Nawaz: Fascinating insight there. Laura, as you know, and we heard earlier, Mr. Trump also continued his attacks on the judge in this case, Judge Merchan. In the last 24 hours, we have now seen Republicans relentlessly attacking the judge, the judge's daughter, the judicial system. What is the impact of all of that rhetoric? Laura Barron-Lopez: Well, we're starting to see some direct impact, Amna, because, as you noted, a lot of Republicans, in addition to Donald Trump, have said that — tried to sow doubt about the justice system, have directly attacked the judge in this case. And I was working with Advance Democracy, a nonprofit investigative group that tracks far right social media, and provided us an early look at data that they have been gathering since the verdict came out yesterday. And they were tracking social media across X, formerly known as Twitter, Telegram, TRUTH Social — that's Trump's social media site — and they found an increase in calls for violence and violent rhetoric. They also found an increase in calls to dox jurors and to dox the judges. And here are some examples. On Telegram, one posted: "Hang the judge for corruption." On a site called Patriots Win, another follower said: "Someone in New York with nothing to lose needs to take care of Judge Merchan. Hopefully, he gets met with illegals and a machete." And then another one posted: "We need the judge's address, along with his daughter's. And we will be peacefully protesting, but, ultimately, the gloves are off and do your duty." Now, posting these on Telegram, Amna, that is a Web site that is also used by Proud Boys. The Proud Boys were at January 6. So, overall, there has been an increase in calls for violence, an increase in calls for doxxing. And, potentially, it appears that one user may have actually doxxed a juror, but they're still trying to verify whether or not it's that juror's address. Amna Nawaz: Laura Barron-Lopez, great reporting, as always. Thank you so much. Laura Barron-Lopez: Thank you.

Amanpour, Guest Compare Trump to Joe McCarthy; Were Hamas Rallies ‘Pro-Peace’?

On Monday, the interview show Amanpour & Co., which airs on CNN International and taxpayer-supported PBS, aired a conversation between host Christiane Amanpour and Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School, both fretting over the perils of Trump and bringing the Joe McCarthy era into the discussion (you know it's serious when journalists bring up the Red Scare). The show included this laugher of a line fromAmanpour: "And yet, most journalists, most -- I guess, mainstream media would say, it's not our job to tell people how to vote." Could have fooled us!     Cobb agreed in “yes, but” fashion, insisting journalists must make the “Joseph McCarthy” level dangers of a second Trump administration clear. Interestingly, Trump’s name was barely mentioned, as if he was Voldemort, but it was clear who Amanpour and Cobb were fretting over. Last year, Cobb awarded Amanpour the Columbia Journalism Award at the school's graduation ceremony, and she made a fiery liberal speech in which she also suggested the media treat Trump like McCarthy. Cobb and Amanpour are clearly like-minded liberals, “mainstream” or not Cobb: I don't think that we have to be in the business of telling people how to vote. But at the same time, we really should be in the business of pointing out things that are exceedingly dangerous. You know, we don't tell you what to wear in the morning, but we do tell you that it's going to rain. And so, you know, these are the things that we have to, really seriously, foreground in our work. And we've seen some of it, the eight years since this threat emerged, but I still don't think we're necessarily where we should be as an industry and as a profession. That “threat” of course, was a five-letter word that starts with T. Amanpour suggested the press treat Trump like McCarthy and ignore him: Amanpour: Are there historic examples that you teach at the Journalism School or that we should be aware of? I mean, I remember reading, and I'm just going to get this a little fuzzy, but I think it was one of the main national newspapers back at the height of McCarthy's lies, basically. Cobb: That's right. Amanpour: And his Red Scares and his blacklists and destroying the lives of people. They decided that they would not any longer print stuff that did not, what, reach the level that could be defended in a court, right? Cobb: And so, here's the amazing thing about this, the parallels with the Joe McCarthy era and in American history are astounding. One of the things that began to happen as a result, and McCarthy would say outrageous things and newspapers would just print them or put them on the headlines, they had a built-in conflict of interest because if you said something outrageous, you knew that people were going to pick up the paper and buy it…. Switching to the campus protests at Columbia, Cobb surprisingly admitted there were “some people who were legitimately dangerous who found their way onto campus.” Yet, the dean of the journalism school found no threatening left-wingers, even though protesters forcefully occupied a campus building and at least one student protest leader was banned from campus for threatening to murder “Zionists.” He was talking about “far-right” Proud Boys as the true threat. Some journalism! Cobb: Well, some far-right groups, actually, who were Proud Boys and they were kind of a presence there. And so those were things that complicated the scenario. But for us, we err on the side of free speech and free press at every turn. Amanpour dropped a stunning bit of news – those pro-Hamas contingents at Columbia and elsewhere, harassing Jews and taking the side of terrorists, were actually “pro-peace”: What do you think the lasting fallout will be? Because it really was an upheaval on American campuses and in this -- the domain of free speech versus hate speech, or intimidating speech, or even acts of violence. Because I read that UCLA, which called in the police to stop, actually, a pro-Israel group attacking the pro-peace group. A transcript is available, click “Expand” to read: Amanpour & Co. 5/27/24 1:37:33 p.m. (ET) AMANPOUR: So, what do you make of the challenge for all of us, and for you, as the dean of the major journalism school of what's happening right now, as I said, this avalanche of disinformation right around yet another important election? COBB: Yes. So, I think this is not a new problem. AMANPOUR: No. COBB: No, obviously -- AMANPOUR: But it's getting worse. COBB: It's getting worse. And the problem that I think we really confront is the learning curve for us, you know, socially, you know, as democratic societies and professionally, particularly in the journalism world, we have not quite figured out the formula that we need in order to address how we operate in a disinformation ecosystem. And all these things are coming to a head as we see this wave of elections around the world and this is going to be a defining issue in the coming -- AMANPOUR: And you're in London and you're meeting with a lot of likeminded people. COBB: Sure. AMANPOUR: And from here, you can really see the rest of the world and all the elections that are going on. But my question, Jelani, is you're also a journalist. We're not quite up to it, but it's been -- how long has it been since Trump was first elected? And we still haven't got it right. How would you think the mainstream media, let's just say television since we're on television, is covering Trump in a -- now, you know, taking everything that he says live and all the rest of it? COBB: So, I mean, I think that we see things like still treating him as if he were a normal candidate. Still reporting on him, you know, and the kinds of protocols you would use for a normal candidacy. Not kind of drilling down on facts. Being susceptible to the distractions. If he says or does something outrageous and, you know, we chase after it like a pet chasing a shiny toy as opposed to drilling down on fact after fact after fact, doing the things that are boring, quite frankly, the things that are less spectacular, but the things that really go to the heart of saying who this person is, what he actually stands for, what the threats, the potential threats to -- in the United States, our democratic system and the -- by implication, the threats globally, that could be a product of his presidency if he were to be elected again. Like that's the work that I think that we have to really emphasize. AMANPOUR: I mean, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw a headline that -- I'm paraphrasing -- Trump declares the FBI was locked and loaded ready to kill him when they were searching Mar-a-Lago for these, you know, classified documents that shouldn't have been in his possession and that he was actually not forthcoming about. So, that's the kind of craziness that we're dealing with. And yet, most journalists, most -- I guess, mainstream media would say, it's not our job to tell people how to vote. Are those two connected? COBB: Yes. I don't think that we have to be in the business of telling people how to vote. But at the same time, we really should be in the business of pointing out things that are exceedingly dangerous. You know, we don't tell you what to wear in the morning, but we do tell you that it's going to rain. And so, you know, these are the things that we have to, you know, really seriously, you know, foreground in our work. And we've seen some of it, you know, the eight years since this threat emerged, but I still don't think we're necessarily where we should be as an industry and as a profession. AMANPOUR: Are there historic examples that you teach at the Journalism School or that we should be aware of? I mean, I remember reading, and I'm just going to get this a little fuzzy, but I think it was one of the main national newspapers back at the height of McCarthy's lies, basically. COBB: That's right. AMANPOUR: And his red scares and his blacklists and destroying the lives of people. They decided that they would not any longer print stuff that did not, what, reach the level that could be defended in a court, right? COBB: And so, here's the amazing thing about this, the parallels with the Joe McCarthy era and in American history are astounding. One of the things that began to happen as a result, and McCarthy would say outrageous things and newspapers would just print them or put them on the headlines, they had a built-in conflict of interest because if you said something outrageous, you knew that people were going to pick up the paper and buy it. But over the time, as people began to see the corrosive effects of what they were doing, they began to correct him in headlines, parenthetically, McCarthy accuses a congressman of being a communist, parentheses, no evidence this is true. And so, there was a learning curve where they recognized the real danger of what they had been doing. AMANPOUR: And what did that do to his -- the potency of his lies and his red baiting? COBB: Well, it certainly made it more difficult for him to be able to do that. And the other part of it was that, just as he had been a product of the news media, it was television media that brought him down. You know, and so, it was a kind of almost immune response. AMANPOUR: People like Edward R. Murrow. COBB: Edward R. Murrow, that's right. AMANPOUR: And his forensic digging into it all. COBB: And that is exactly the case study that we used. Yes. AMANPOUR: OK. But we know that we're not there anymore. We've got multiple television organizations. We've got multiple, multiple online silos and social media platforms. How is anybody meant to know which has the so- called good housekeeping seal of approval in terms of journalism? COBB: Well, I think one of the problems is that, you know, we on, you know, the broader kind of regulatory side, you know, that's an environment that was infinitely more complicated than it was in the 1950s in the United States. But we haven't come to any real conclusions about what should be done with disinformation, about whether protected speech includes lies. You know, that's a really complicated area of American law. So, some of this is in the realm of what journalists have to be, you know, thinking about. Some of this is in the realm of governments and policy and judiciary and legislatures. You know, this is really a multifaceted, layered problem that we're trying to grapple with all at once. AMANPOUR: And you are, as I said, the dean of Columbia Journalism School and a practicing journalist. How did you grapple with what was happening on your campus, the protests, calling in the police, essentially the struggle between protest and speech? COBB: Sure. So, you know, at the Journalism School, we kind of looked at this in a slight -- I think maybe slightly differently from other – some of the other institutions at Columbia, because this is something we would report on. And so, we followed the protocols of any news organization. Youknow, we were proponents of the free press, proponents of free speech, and went out and covered the story. And it was a really amazing moment to see, you know, our faculty and people who were literally in their classes out working shoulder to shoulder and reporting on what was going on. And so, you know, there were complicated kind of issues around, you know, whether there were threats, you know, there were some people who were legitimately dangerous who found their way onto campus, you know, who -- AMANPOUR: Outsiders, as the police said? COBB: Well, some far-right groups, actually, you know, who were Proud Boys and they we're kind of a presence there. And so, those are things that complicated the scenario. But for us, you know, we err on the side of free speech and free press at every turn. AMANPOUR: What do you think the lasting fallout will be? Because it really was an upheaval on American campuses and in this -- the domain of free speech versus hate speech, or intimidating speech, or even acts of violence. Because I read that UCLA, which called in the police to stop, actually, a pro-Israel group attacking the pro-peace group. COBB: Sure, sure. AMANPOUR: Now, the -- UCLA has dismissed some of those -- their own law enforcement officers and things. So, what do you think the fallout is going to be on campus? COBB: It's hard to say. Honestly, we can't predict. The one thing that I can say is that this story seems to have abated because, you know, schools are in recess and graduation has taken place. By no means should we presume that that means the story is over. That the implications and ramifications of this will likely continue into the next academic year, if not beyond. AMANPOUR: And globally, where do you see journalism as a defender of democracy? Obviously, truth, but that's a pillar of democracy. COBB: Well, it's really disturbing because, at the same time, we talked about all these threats of misinformation and authoritarianism and so on. It is disturbing to see that we have had -- even if we exclude, you know, Gaza and Israel, we have had an astounding number of journalists die in the course of conducting their work. Certainly, in Ukraine, in Latin America, in Africa, the Committee to Protect Journalists has been all over this story and pointing out the tremendous uptick. And so, I think the general climate of anti-democracy has translated into very real dangers for us as we go about doing this work. And the fundamental reality of it is, is that we believe, optimistically, that the world is a better place when we know what is going on around it, so much so that we're willing to risk our lives to provide people with information. If nothing else, that's a banner an indicator of how important democracy is.

New York Times Can't Handle Fetterman's Rightward Shift: 'Caustic...Hostile'

On the front page of Sunday’s New York Times, congressional correspondent Annie Karni sympathized with recent criticism of Pennsylvania’s freshman Democratic senior, John Fetterman - once mocked in Republican circles for his Senate floor fashion sense but now reviled by the left for his support of Israel and other iconoclastic positions - in “Fetterman, Flashing a Sharper Edge, Keeps Picking Fights With the Left.” Karni led off with an anecdote to make the left’s case of Fetterman, a Democratic mental health hero turned cranky troglodyte: Senator John Fetterman was hard to miss, lumbering down an empty hallway in a Senate office building dressed in his signature baggy gym shorts and a black hoodie. So when Stevie O’Hanlon, an environmentalist and organizer from Chester County, Pa., spotted him recently, she took the opportunity to question her home-state senator about a pipeline in her community. Mr. Fetterman’s reaction was surprisingly hostile. Raising his phone to capture the confrontation on video, the senator began ridiculing her. “I didn’t expect this!” Mr. Fetterman said, feigning excitement. “Oh my gosh!” As Ms. O’Hanlon politely pressed him on what she called his “change of heart” on the issue of the local pipeline, which he had previously opposed, Mr. Fetterman pulled faces of faux concern until he stepped onto an elevator and let the closing door end the interaction. Ms. O’Hanlon, a co-founder of the progressive Sunrise Movement, was stunned. “I’ve talked to Republicans who are much friendlier than that,” she said in an interview, after a clip of the interaction circulated widely on social media. “The person that we voted for is not the person who mocks constituents when they bring up concerns.” What kind of monster is this? Ms. O’Hanlon is not the only one wondering who Mr. Fetterman has become. Since last fall, the first-term Democratic senator from Pennsylvania has undergone a significant change in political persona. He routinely takes aim at the left wing of his party that he once courted -- and appears to enjoy the spasms of anger he produces because of it, as well as the strange new respect he commands from right-wing media outlets that once dismissed him as a vegetable and lobbed sexist attacks at his wife. Mr. Fetterman’s sharpest break with the left has been on the Israel-Hamas War. A firm backer of Israel before the war, he decided early in the conflict that he would offer unconditional support for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He has relentlessly hewed to that stance, at times provocatively. Fetterman was fine until he started leaning rightward, apparently. The hostile characterizations continued: But those who have observed his recent transformation also describe a shift in demeanor by Mr. Fetterman, who has begun to express himself in more caustic, sometimes hostile ways. She blamed Fox News and the New York Post for creating this Frankenstein Fetterman: Former staff members and supporters suggest there is more at play, both personally and politically. Mr. Fetterman, who swore off social media, and news in general, after his hospitalization for depression, for a time relied on staff to curate a package of clips that kept him up to speed on what he needed to know. But his return to work and sharp break with the left has coincided with a distinct shift to the right in his media diet; he sometimes appears sucked into a vortex dominated by social media, The New York Post and Fox News, where for the first time in his political career, he is receiving approving coverage. Karni admitted Fetterman's "repudiation of the left" has helped him in Pennsylvania polling. But now that he supports Benjamin Netanyahu’s “far right government” in Israel, it’s suddenly important that Times readers know “he lacks a deep familiarity with the region.” (This after the Times fiercely defended Fetterman from Republican attacks on his mental capability after his hospitalization for depression.) Karni was far more supportive of Fetterman in 2023, when “hard-right” Republicans targeted him for his slobby attire on the Senate floor in defiance of Senate rules.

PBS Doc Falsely Blames Big-Spending Nixon for Punitive Repression of Blacks

“The Riot Report,” the latest entry in PBS’s historical documentary series American Experience, regrets the lack of influence of the radical 1967 government-issued report on race relations, widely known as the Kerner Commission Report. The report’s infamous concluding statement encapsulated liberal pessimism on race, and that the billions of dollars spilled out for anti-poverty programs wasn’t nearly enough: “This is our basic conclusion. Our nation is moving toward two societies. One black, one white. Separate and unequal.” The two-hour PBS program was larded with left-wing voices like Elizabeth Hinton of Yale University, and Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School. Before the main course, a small sample platter was another cold serving of misguided Nixon-bashing. Hinton came out against preventive policing designed to keep crimes from happening. "The police also supported tactical patrol units who walked the streets in order to prevent crime before it occurred. Essentially subjecting people of color to a set of laws that people in middle-class suburban and white communities would never be subjected to," she said. Later, she enthused the Kerner Commission wanted even more spending to address the inner city “rebellions” (don’t call them riots). Jelani Cobb of Columbia was pleased that the report led to more media diversity and coverage of urban issues “with more nuance, and more balance” -- in other words, the coverage became even more liberal as the 1960s and 1970s wore on.     In February 2023, Cobb appeared on PBS to forward the wild argument that the five black police officers who killed Tyre Nichols could have been motivated by self-hatred, having internalized “white supremacy.” Robert Kennedy, who would run for president in 1968 before being assassinated in Los Angeles, was lauded by another hand-picked liberal historian, John Powell of the UC Berkeley Othering & Belonging Institute (gee, wonder which way he leans politically?): I think Robert Kennedy really cared about the country. And increasingly to him that included marginalized people, including African Americans….I have to believe, maybe 'cause I wanna believe, that if Kennedy had lived, the Kerner Commission would've lived and the country would be in such a different place. But instead Nixon comes along and says, we're not doing this. The producers found a convenient long-time liberal bogeyman in new president Richard Nixon. President Nixon, archive: For the past five years, we have been deluged by government programs for the unemployed, programs for the cities, programs for the poor, and we have reaped from these programs an ugly harvest of frustration, violence, and failure across the land. I say it's time to quit pouring billions of dollars into programs that have failed in the United States of America. (...) Hinton: Lyndon Johnson had introduced a new punitive element in national policy. Of course, Johnson did this alongside his ambitious social welfare program. But when Richard Nixon took office, he abandoned the social welfare part and really seized on the punitive elements of the Great Society and expanded them. Over the scene of Nixon being sworn into office, Hinton lamented: "So we begin to see even more aggressive policing tactics being embraced by national policy makers. We begin to see more draconian laws and sentencing provisions being enacted. And the carceral state continued to expand." Commission staffer David Boesel huffed that the riots ushered in “a racially conservative political era in which law and order and repression pretty much prevailed, and that suited most of the white citizenry of the country.” Despite the liberal conventional wisdom spouted on PBS, Richard Nixon, his administration actually proposed a precursor to the left-wing notion of Universal Basic Income and ended up expanding the welfare state, according to scholar Richard P. Nathan: “Over the six years Nixon held office, Nathan writes, total domestic spending rose from 10.3 percent of the gross national product to 13.7 percent.” No such inconvenient thoughts pieced the left-wing tax-funded bubble. Columbia’s Cobb paid tribute to Kerner via a left-wing “touchstone,” the 1992 Rodney King “uprisings” (or as normal people know them, riots): "My first serious engagement with the Kerner Report was in 1992, in the aftermath of the Rodney King uprisings in Los Angeles…"

PBS Surprise: CBS’s O’Keefe Slaps Down NPR Hysteria on Alito Flag Issue

During a segment entitled “Alito Under Fire,” the latest episode of PBS’s Friday political roundtable Washington Week with The Atlantic aired some less-collegial-than-usual exchanges between CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe and Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, concerning the flag controversies the media was wrapping around conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, with Democrats pouncing to demand Alito recuse himself from upcoming January 6 related cases. Liasson, public radio’s representative on the panel, was the most vituperative and historically ignorant regarding the second shoe to drop (or flag to unfurl) in this so-called scandal, so lame the Washington Post passed on the scoop when it was offered in 2021 -- the “Appeal to Heaven” flag that flew outside Alito’s beach house in New Jersey. "[Alito] was so quick to blame his wife on the upside-down flag, he hasn`t said anything about this other flag, which is also a symbol of the insurrection." she falsely proclaimed. "So, you’d think if he had a handy excuse, he would have used it."     Liasson had to be gently reminded by host Jeffrey Goldberg that "One handy excuse is that it is an actual Revolutionary War flag." The choppy conversation continued. Liasson: Yes, but it’s become a symbol of the kind of -- Goldberg: The extreme credulity is what you’re suggesting? Liasson: Yes. Goldberg: Yes. Ed, any thoughts about the lasting impact of this or this is -- O’Keefe was the only panelist concerned about where such prying into the personal lives of judges could lead and already had led: O’Keefe: This is -- and now everything is fair game. What you do on, at, or in your house as a public official is now fair game. And is official Washington and are we as a country okay with that, because that`s where this is going now? Goldberg: Are we as a country okay with it? O’Keefe: We’ll see. Liasson retorted: What do you mean, that everybody should be able to fly insurrectionist flags over their house if they want to, if they`re a Supreme Court justice, without any damage to the court`s reputation? O’Keefe shrugged: O'Keefe: The court’s reputation was already damaged. Liasson: This damages it more. O’Keefe: Sure, in the eyes of 50 percent of the -- Liasson: Yes. It looks like the court is not just conservative, it`s partisan. O’Keefe: Sure, but I think that perception has been there for about 24 years. Liasson: Yes, I agree, but this confirms it. O’Keefe actually expressed concern about where the liberal outrage may lead, perhaps referencing the attempted assassination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh in June 2022: O’Keefe: So, okay, but my point is, we’ve had federal judges targeted in their homes. Their children or husbands shot. We’ve had legislation introduced to try to keep their addresses out of the public sphere. And now we go and do this. And the shoe will be on the other foot at some point, and it’ll be Republican senators accusing liberal justices, and the whole dichotomy will shift, and now, as you said, the politicization of the courts is here, and this is how it’s always going to be now, if this is what we’re all focused on. And that’s fine, if that`s where the debate is headed, but that’s where the debate is headed now, if this is the conversation….

In One Segment, PBS Makes Alito an Insurrectionist and Trump Hitler

Before it compared Trump to Hitler, Thursday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour made the Justice Alito flag controversy an all-encompassing scandal. First, the network’s Supreme Court expert Marcia Coyle discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to allow a Republican-drawn congressional district in South Carolina to stand but segued into the controversy over two flags being flown over two of Justice Alito’s homes – an American flag hung upside down at his residence and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag hung outside his beach home in New Jersey. On those feeble grounds, the New York Times Jodi Kantor, who broke the story in the paper and previously appeared on the NewsHour to suggest Alito had “insurrectionist” January 6 views, since the upside-down U.S. flag and the Appeal to Heaven flag (featuring a pine tree below the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven”) were allegedly symbols of the “Stop the Steal” movement in support of Donald Trump having won the 2020 election.     On Thursday, Coyle said that when she saw the flags, “I wanted to call Justice Alito up and say, what were you thinking? Because it's just something -- it's incomprehensible.” From there, host Geoff Bennett moved onto Flag-gate Part II: “Appeal to Heaven,” with slanted report from the show’s most biased correspondent, White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez. BENNETT: We're going to focus more closely now on that New York Times reporting about that Appeal to Heaven flag seen flying outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's New Jersey beach home last year. The flag has origins dating to the Revolutionary War, but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's 2020 election win. The flag was also carried by rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021…. Barron-Lopez explained the flag dated back to the Revolutionary War but was recently popularized by pastor Dutch Sheets of the New Apostolic Reformation. She ran a clip from scholar Matthew Taylor, who said the “Appeal” flag had “become a symbol of right-wing Christian extremism, of Christian supremacy, of aggressive Christian nationalism” and support for Donald Trump. "So, as Taylor says, the flag was popularized by the New Apostolic Reformation. but it has become much bigger to represent the 2020 election lies," she added. PBS used the flag and its “undercurrent of violence” as a gateway to talk more about “right-wing extremism,” via a bad video that the Trump team posted and later removed from social media: BENNETT: So how does this fit into the bigger picture of right-wing extremism? BARRON-LOPEZ: So there were two other examples of extremism from Trump and his allies this week, Geoff, that we want to highlight. And on his TRUTH Social account, Trump posted a video that referenced a -- quote -- "unified reich" if he's elected in November. Trump's campaign said that that was reposted by a staffer, it wasn't a video that campaign created and that they weren't aware of that reference in the video. But this isn't the first time, Geoff, that Trump has echoed Nazi Germany. He has repeatedly talked about migrants -- quote -- "poisoning the blood of the country" on the campaign trail, which historians point out that that is a direct reference to Adolf Hitler and his use of the terms blood poisoning…. Evidently any odd thing Trump says could conceivably herald the dawning of fascism. Barron-Lopez even cited a Yale historian, who said Trump’s claim that Biden’s FBI wanted to assassinate him (as recollected by Barron-Lopez) “is essentially a classic tactic used by fascist movements, that they want to get a monopoly on victimhood...." Your tax dollars at work. This segment was brought to you in part by BNSF Railway. The Transcript is below. Click "expand": PBS NewsHour 5/23/24 7:29:30 p.m. (ET) Geoff Bennett: We're going to focus more closely now on that New York Times’ reporting about that Appeal to Heaven flag seen flying outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's New Jersey beach home last year. The flag has origins dating to the Revolutionary War, but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's 2020 election win. The flag was also carried by rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has been covering this and joins us now. So, Laura, you have reported on this flag before, but tell us more about how it's become popularized in recent years. Laura Barron-Lopez: As you noted, Geoff, this flag dates back to the Revolutionary War. It was used by the Colonies a lot during that war, but now it's connotation have changed. It's very different. And in recent years, it was popularized by a pastor named Dutch Sheets, a leader in what's known as the New Apostolic Reformation, and they believe that it's destiny for the U.S. to be a completely Christian nation. And I spoke to Matthew Taylor, an expert on Christian nationalism and a Protestant pastor with Institute — a Protestant scholar — excuse me — with the Institute of Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies. And he described the modern symbolism of that flag. Matthew Taylor, Institute of Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies: I would say it has become a symbol of right-wing Christian extremism, of Christian supremacy, of aggressive Christian nationalism, especially built around ideas of spiritual warfare and fighting against the demons that they believe have taken over the United States. So it attaches itself to all these different things, and it especially connotes support for Donald Trump. And, today, to fly the flag is, in many ways, to reference January 6, to point back to this other moment where people believed that they were appealing to heaven to see an election overturned. Laura Barron-Lopez: So, as Taylor says, the flag was popularized by the New Apostolic Reformation, but it has become much bigger to represent the 2020 election lies. Geoff Bennett: Well, tell me more about this movement and how it's grown. Laura Barron-Lopez: So leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, like Dutch Sheets, who I mentioned, who helped popularize the flag, are strong supporters of Donald Trump. They were some of the first Christian leaders to rally around him in 2016. And this movement, specifically, just to expand on that, Geoff, believes in Christian supremacy, believes that Christianity should be the official religion of the United States, ending any separation of church and state, and trying to enact their vision of a Christian society. And as the popularity of that New Apostolic Reformation has grown, so has Trump's popularity amongst Christians and evangelicals. And these Christian nationalists have essentially worked since 2015, Matthew Taylor said, to get more Republican lawmakers and government officials to fly this flag. And as we reported earlier this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson has this Appeal to Heaven flag, has — has put it outside of his Capitol Hill office. And Johnson's office told us at the time that they did not see any affiliation with January 6 in him putting this flag outside of their office. They denied that wholeheartedly and said that the speaker simply liked the historical — the history of the flag going back to the Revolutionary area. But key context here, Geoff, is that there's always been an undercurrent of violence attributed to this flag, whether it's the Revolutionary War history, but more commonly now, which is that this movement that has really popularized it believes in spiritual warfare. Geoff Bennett: Well, unpack the context around this inverted American flag that, according to The New York Times, was seen flying outside Justice Alito's Virginia home shortly after the election. Laura Barron-Lopez: That flag, which was an upside-down American flag, was also a flag that was carried by rioters on January 6. And that flag was flown outside Alito's Virginia home 11 days after the insurrection, three days before President Biden's inauguration. And it flew for multiple days out there, according to The New York Times. And I spoke to Jodi Kantor for "PBS News Weekend" a few days ago, and she said that Alito hasn't answered some key questions, whether it's about he doesn't believe in the peaceful transfer of power, if he is or isn't aware of the connotations around that upside-down flag. Geoff Bennett: So how does this fit into the bigger picture of right-wing extremism? Laura Barron-Lopez: So there were two other examples of extremism from Trump and his allies this week, Geoff, that we want to highlight. And on his TRUTH Social account, Trump posted a video that referenced a — quote — "unified reich" if he's elected in November. Trump's campaign said that that was reposted by a staffer, it wasn't a video that campaign created and that they weren't aware of that reference in the video. But this isn't the first time, Geoff, that Trump has echoed Nazi Germany. He has repeatedly talked about migrants — quote — "poisoning the blood of the country" on the campaign trail, which historians point out that that is a direct reference to Adolf Hitler and his use of the terms blood poisoning. And then Trump took to TRUTH Social also this week, claiming that the Justice Department authorized the use of deadly force against him during their search of Mar-a-Lago, claiming that Biden's FBI wanted to assassinate him. And so I spoke to a Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, who said, when you look at this in the big scale of things, Geoff, that ultimately Trump's comments about Biden trying to — his FBI trying to assassinate him is essentially a classic tactic used by fascist movements, that they want to get a monopoly on victimhood, so that way they can justify any actions they take, whether it's overturning an election or using violence against their enemy.

PBS: Are the Alitos 'Insurrectionists Who Oppose the Peaceful Transfer of Power?’

Taxpayer-funded PBS took another bite out of the Justice Alito flag controversy on Sunday’s edition of PBS News Weekend, interviewing New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, who made the front page with her scoop that the American flag briefly flew upside down outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021. Laura Barron-Lopez, perhaps the network’s most biased reporter, was substitute anchor over the weekend and coincidentally or not, the usually sleepier Weekend shows were more ideologically charged than usual. The harder edge was apparent from Saturday’s show introduction, using the upside-down American flag that flew over Alito’s home in January 2021 to condemn the conservative Supreme Court. Anchor Laura Barron-Lopez: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, the Supreme Court’s credibility is called into question after a photo emerged of a Stop the Steal flag outside a justice’s home…. During the seven-minute story which appeared under the graphic “Election Denialism,” she used Trump’s “lie that President Biden stole the 2020 presidential election, which led to the violent January 6 insurrection,” as her segue to a wild extrapolation. Barron-Lopez: “And we also learned this week that a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement reached the highest court in the land. The New York Times reported that in January of 2021, an upside-down American flag, an emblem now widely associated with the lie of a stolen 2020 election, was flying at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. I spoke with Jody Kantor, the New York Times reporter who broke the story, earlier today. We discussed the implications of such a symbol flying at Alito’s home 11 days after rioters stormed the Capitol. Kantor; ….At this point, that flag had really become a symbol of the Stop the Steal campaign. And neighbors are just having a kind of ‘what the heck’ reaction. Because first of all, these are Washington, D.C. area people they know that federal judges are never supposed to make political displays. That is a very bedrock rule. And second of all, they`re looking at and saying wait a second, are the Alitos insurrectionists who oppose the peaceful transfer of power? It leads to these bedrock questions about law and trust and rules and democracy. Short answer? No. But Democrats inside and outside the media want "Democracy" to be an issue, meaning conservatives hate Democracy. Barron-Lopez relayed Justice Alito’s explanation that his wife placed the flag upside down in response to a neighbor’s display (a sign with a four-letter insult of Trump). Always a willing partisan, Barron-Lopez used the controversy to tar another conservative justice through something his wife did. Barron-Lopez: Alito isn’t the only Supreme Court justice with apparent ethics violations. Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginny Thomas was directly involved in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and he has refused to recuse himself from any related cases. Do you think that this time will be any different? …. Barron-Lopez: Jodi, finally, the Stop the Steal lies about a stolen 2020 election haven’t gone away. Donald Trump continues to say that he won in 2020. Election denialism is essentially a litmus test for entrance to the GOP. What do you think this flag incident means looking forward to the 2024 election? Kantor was eager for her Alito scoop to impact the election, and insisted Justice Alito himself was all to blame for the flag controversy: Kantor: So first of all, I think we have to see, we just broke this news a few days ago. Let’s see how it enters the bloodstream. But the idea of a Supreme Court justice flying this flag outside his home, even if it was his wife, as he says, I think does connote a kind of mainstreaming of Stop the Steal, it says that, you know, this was accepted by a lot of people, a lot of people in power, and that even if it was his wife who did it, that flag didn’t come down for a couple of days…. This anti-Alito segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Weekend 5/19/24 7:05:27 p.m. (ET) LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The lie that President Biden stole the 2020 presidential election which led to the violent January 6 insurrection is alive and well. A CBS investigation found that there are nearly 80 officials overseeing elections across seven battleground states who don`t believe the 2020 election results or supported the actions of January 6. On the campaign trail Saturday, former president Donald Trump again lied about his 2020 defeat. DONALD TRUMP, Former U.S. President: But they want to rigged that just like they rigged the presidential election of 2020. They want to rig it. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And we also learned this week that a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement reached the highest court in the land. The New York Times reported that in January of 2021, an upside down American flag and emblem now widely associated with the lie of a stolen 2020 election was flying at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, I spoke with Jody Kanter, The New York Times reporter who broke the story earlier today. We discussed the implications of such a symbol flying Alito`s home 11 days after rioters stormed the Capitol. Jodi Kantor, The New York Times: I kind of want to start with the neighbors and what they saw. They`re walking down the street during this very fret period, as you say, right after January 6, but also critically, it`s three days before President Biden`s inauguration. And they see this upside down flag hanging outside the Alito home. At this point, that flag had really become a symbol of the Stop the Steal campaign. And neighbors are just having a kind of what the heck reaction. Because first of all, these are Washington DC area people they know that federal judges are never supposed to make political displays. That is a very bedrock rule. And second of all, they`re looking at and saying wait a second, are the Alito`s insurrectionists who oppose the peaceful transfer of power? It leads to these bedrock questions about law and trust and rules and democracy. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In response to your reporting, Justice Alito said that he had, quote, no involvement in placing the flag that his wife, Mrs. Alito put up the flag in response to a neighbor of theirs a display that they had. So I just want to dive into this because what are the implications of his response? Did he not know that this upside down flag was flying outside of his home for multiple days? JODI KANTOR: Well, the response is a fascinating one, because first of all, he`s not denying that it was there. He`s not denying knowledge that it was there. And he`s not denying that this was a Stop the Steal symbol. He`s making a kind of surprising argument, which is to say, even though this was my home, and even though judicial ethics rules are all about the impression of a lack of fairness, they`re not only focused on what you actually do as a judge. They`re focused on the impression you give other people. And he`s saying despite all of that, this was, you know, just something my wife did and part of a neighborhood spat. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Why does this revelation matter? Now, as the Court prepares to rule on two cases involving the January 6 insurrection? JODI KANTOR: In the next few weeks, we are going to get two major decisions from the Supreme Court that are going to shape the legacy of January 6, the accountability for January 6. Former President Trump`s scope of accountability, it may shape the future criminal trial, if one takes place, it could really also directly affect the next election because polls are showing that whether or not former President Trump is convicted might have some impact on what voters think of him. So, the court already had an enormous challenge in getting these decisions kind of accepted by the American people. It`s such a partisan time. Everything is so fractured. These cases are so politically fraught. It makes it much more challenging for the court to earn broad acceptance of whatever their legal reasoning is, and whatever the outcome is. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Alito isn`t the only Supreme Court justice with apparent ethics violations. Justice Clarence Thomas`s wife, Ginny Thomas was directly involved in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and he has refused to recuse himself from any related cases. Do you think that this time will be any different? JODI KANTOR: So recusal is an interesting question. On the one hand, so there are two categories of rules we`re dealing with. One is the code of conduct for judges. That`s really the ethics code. That`s voluntary. The court recently adopted a new one, it`s pretty loose. It`s not that strong. That is what govern things like political displays. The second set of rules we`re dealing with is a federal recusal statute that binds all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices. But at the Supreme Court, it`s essentially self-administered. And the Court has said that justices have to police their own recusal. So, I don`t think Justice Alito has spoken directly to this. But as you know, he was already involved in the case. And I don`t see any sign right now that he`s planning to recuse himself halfway through the process. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Jodi, finally, the Stop the Steal lies about a stolen 2020 election haven`t gone away. Donald Trump continues to say that he won in 2020. Election denialism is essentially a litmus test for entrance to the GOP. What do you think this flag incident means looking forward to the 2024 election? JODI KANTOR: So first of all, I think we have to see, we just broke this news a few days ago. Let`s see how it enters the bloodstream. But the idea of a Supreme Court justice flying this flag outside his home, even if it was his wife, as he says, I think does connote a kind of mainstreaming of stop the steal, it says that, you know, this was accepted by a lot of people, a lot of people in power, and that even if it was his wife who did it, that flag didn`t come down for a couple of days. So I think you`re right to ask the question, and let`s see how this becomes part of the bigger story of what happened in the last election and what will happen in the next one. LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Jodi Kantor of The New York Times, thank you for your time. JODI KANTOR: Thanks for having me.

PBS's Washington Week Sees Dangerous GOP, Is Sad Hunter Trial May Make Joe Unhappy

It was a livelier-than-usual roundtable on Friday’s Washington Week with The Atlantic, as the import of former President Trump’s polling strength in the face of multiple trials seemed to be causing panic among the press corps. Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg led the feisty journalists in the discussion, including Laura Barrón-López of PBS NewsHour, Eugene Daniels of Politico, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, and Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio. Susan Glasser of The New Yorker suggested it was only Republican members of Congress who were "play to the crowd" and "the cameras": Institutions are unraveling, not just the institution of the U.S. Congress, in fact, you see the Trumpification arguably of the Senate Republican conference, where the traditions have held up across-aisle-civililty much stronger until more recently. I think that this is, we’ll talk more about the Supreme Court, we’re seeing not only the hyper-politicization of our institutions but a kind of constant playing to the crowd, to the cameras, to the social media, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is a very effective example of this strand of our politics. It’s not going to go away.”     Glasser found it tacky for Congressional Republicans to travel to New York to support Donald Trump on trial. Then she really went low: GLASSER: ….not only is it Trump's party, but they even dress up like Donald Trump now. And that was something that -- for me, that is a visual marker, in some ways, of just what the decline of the Republican Party has been in many ways into a kind of a cult of personality, right? So, it's not only that the Republican Party is going to have as their nominee, someone who might well be convicted of felony crimes, who's even essentially acknowledged already in a court of law to be a sexual assaulter. GOLDBERG: He is a civilly adjudicated sexual offender? GLASSER: Yes. You know, this is a phrase that you used and I thought it was really notable. I don't think it's broken through to most people, a civilly adjudicated sexual offender is going to be the third time in a row the nominee of the Republican Party, and here they are dressing up like him. Meanwhile, Democratic President Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit while president in 1998. He spoke to the 2000 Democratic National Convention as president and at every convention since then, so he’s not yet a party pariah, not even after the #MeToo era. As for dressing up in solidarity for a cause, surely Glasser recalled the Democratic leadership dressing and kneeling wearing kente cloth to support police-reform legislation after the killing of George Floyd. She can read her own magazine for some pungent criticism of the stunt. Eugene Daniels of Politico was worried that average people weren’t as scared of Trump as the smart journalists who were paying attention, harping on a tweet from Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in support of Trump: “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President”: DANIELS: …the folks that are paying attention right now are were all kind of nervous about it, but the American people really aren't making those kinds of connections, right? When you talk to the American people, they say Congress is broken versus the Republican Party is, you know, all going on the Acela up to New York to dress the same, to defend Donald Trump, to do all the things he can't do, and also to wink and nod to the most dangerous aspects of the Republican Party, the most dangerous aspects of the Trump base, that, hey, we may need you to do something here. And this would be hyperbolic if the insurrection hadn't happened on January 6th…. GOLDBERG: Steve [Inskeep], I just want to ask you to switch subjects to another trial that is coming next month -- the Hunter Biden trial, gun possession. Now, Hunter Biden is not running for president, there is a big difference. But the question is, how is this going to affect the mood and happiness and effectiveness of Joe Biden? Hmm. WAs that really the big question? There was no speculation or even a hint regarding President Biden’s own possible culpability, even though the president was allegedly heavily intertwined with his son Hunter’s financial mis-dealings. For journalists, it’s always only about the president’s personal anguish of seeing his son on trial. Inskeep also kept the issue on a personal, not legal, level for the President: “…he’s gonna take it personally because he takes this personally.” Goldberg somberly stated: “He's a father and it’s gonna affect him.”

As United Methodist Church Empties Out, PBS Celebrates LGBTQ vs. 'Heteronormativity'

The latest example of taxpayer-supported celebration of the gender alphabet came on Friday’s PBS NewsHour. Anchor Geoff Bennett set the scene of a Christian denomination in crisis. Geoff Bennett: We turn now to a seismic shift within the United Methodist Church. It recently voted to lift bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages….In late April, hundreds of delegates from around the world gathered in Charlotte, the first such meeting since 2019….They voted overwhelmingly to end the church's bans on same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy. Bennett ran down the evolution of the church’s teachings on gay matters, including most recently a 1996 prohibition on churches officiating gay marriages, but explained the rules weren’t always enforced, resulting in conservative branches leaving the denomination, even before this year’s vote to end the church’s gay bans: “By 2022, the United Methodists had 5.4 million members in the U.S., less than half their peak in the 1960s. The recent departures have seen that number drop even further.” But after laying out those grim facts, Bennett didn’t grill his guest, Rev. Valerie Jackson, about the mass exodus from the denomination. He certainly didn’t invite an opposing religious conservative voice into the debate. There was no debate about the import of LGBTQ acceptance in the churches. Instead he asked about how lifting the bans in 2019 had “resonated with her” personally. No surprise, given the NewsHour’s documented 90% favoritism toward the “alphabet movement” of gender self-expression. Jackson, lead pastor of a United Methodist church in Denver, appeared remotely, clad in a rainbow scarf and basking in the latest LGTBQ triumph within the religious hierarchy, complete with calling straight couples “heteronormative” and other flaky comments. Rev. Valerie Jackson’s response was rambling and odd. Rev. Jackson: I didn't think I was really feeling the oppression of the rule until it was lifted. And then, once it was lifted, I became aware of how much I embodied that oppression. And it surprised me that, on the last day of the conference, I so freely danced. And I don't do that. I don't do that in public anyway. I danced freely by myself in the middle of the assembly hall on the last day of general conference. It was beautiful. There was a single, gently phrased rebuttal to the culturally leftist happy talk: Bennett: What do you say, Reverend Jackson, to those conservative Methodists who argue that the church is now buying into the culture, that the Bible hasn't changed, but the church has changed? What's your reaction to that? Jackson: The church is changing, and thank God. The church is becoming aware of who God is, in comparison to who writers throughout generations have said about God and who those religious leaders that have been dear to us throughout the generations have also declared that God is…. When Bennett asked what the move meant “for the future of the United Methodist Church” Jackson replied with the thought of LGBTQ couples holding hands in church, “just like those who are heteronormative,” and looked forward to “a church where all people will get to thrive in love, life and liberation.” So much for that old-time religion. This “religious left” segment was brought to you in part by Cunard. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 5/17/24 7:21:57 p.m. (ET) Geoff Bennett: We turn now to a seismic shift within the United Methodist Church. It recently voted to lift bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages. I spoke to a Methodist pastor about these changes, but, first, a bit of background. Woman: And the results should now appear on the screen. Geoff Bennett: It was described as the most consequential meeting of the United Methodist Church in more than half-a-century. In late April, hundreds of delegates from around the world gathered in Charlotte, the first such meeting since 2019. Woman: The affirmative has it, and the motion is adopted. Geoff Bennett: They voted overwhelmingly to end the church's bans on same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy. Bishop Tracy Malone, Council of Bishops President, United Methodist Church: And these decisions that have been made over these last few days is a testimony that we are claiming that we are a church where everyone belongs. We are a church with open hearts, open minds and open doors. Geoff Bennett: In 1972, the Methodists adopted language that "the practice of homosexuality was incompatible with Christian teaching." In 1984, they banned clergy who are "self-avowed practicing homosexuals." And, in 1996, the church prohibited clergy from officiating same-sex marriages. Man: We will not leave this church of Jesus Christ. Geoff Bennett: After heated discussions at a conference in 2019, delegates voted to uphold those bans. But in the years that followed, some 7,600 U.S. conservative Methodist congregations located mostly in the South left the church over its lack of enforcement of the anti-LGBTQ policies. By 2022, the United Methodists had 5.4 million members in the U.S., less than half their peak in the 1960s. The recent departures have seen that number drop even further. For more on the significance of these changes, I spoke recently with the Reverend Valerie Jackson, the lead pastor at Park Hill United Methodist Church in Denver. She joined the Methodist Church from the Baptist Church years ago. I asked Reverend Jackson how the church lifting its bans has resonated with her. Rev. Dr. Valerie Jackson, Leader Pastor, Park Hill United Methodist Church: I didn't think I was really feeling the oppression of the rule until it was lifted. And then, once it was lifted, I became aware of how much I embodied that oppression. And it surprised me that, on the last day of the conference, I so freely danced. And I don't do that. I don't do that in public anyway. I danced freely by myself in the middle of the assembly hall on the last day of general conference. It was beautiful. Geoff Bennett: When you say that you were embodying the oppression, help us understand what that means. How did that show up in your life? Rev. Dr. Valerie Jackson: What that means is, even though I had the privilege of living in a conference, in a region where being LGBTQ was not criminalized, that, somewhere deep within me, I still knew that I was at risk, that my ordination was at risk, that a claim could be filed against me, that I could go to trial. Somewhere deep within me, I knew that. And so it's almost like looking over your shoulder unconsciously or subconsciously all day, every day, 365 days a year. That's a lot of pressure. Geoff Bennett: Nearly a quarter of the United Methodist Church broke away. What is the impact of that on the church and really on the faith? Rev. Dr. Valerie Jackson: Well, it's multilayered, right? So the impact is grieving the loss of United Methodist siblings. Even though we did not have the same theology or the same values, they were family. And so you grieve the loss of family members. On the other hand, it was liberating because it's like being in a marriage where you grow apart and you don't share the same vision for the lives that you have or the future that you're living into. And so, when you finally make that courageous decision to separate and go your different ways, it's freeing, it's liberating, and it gives the space for people to live into being who they really are. It's tiring to code-switch depending on who you're talking to and who is in the space. Think about the time that it takes for the mind to take in, in seconds who is in the room and what you are allowed to say and what you should not say. And to live like that is so profoundly tiring. Geoff Bennett: What do you say, Reverend Jackson, to those conservative Methodists who argue that the church is now buying into the culture, that the Bible hasn't changed, but the church has changed? What's your reaction to that? Rev. Dr. Valerie Jackson: The church is changing, and thank God. The church is becoming aware of who God is, in comparison to who writers throughout generations have said about God and who those religious leaders that have been dear to us throughout the generations have also declared that God is. I know what it's like as a former Baptist to be indoctrinated with a particular teaching and to not be able to see anything beyond that teaching. I know what that's like. I know how difficult it is to break through that. So we are not responsible for the systems that we are born into, but we are accountable and responsible for the decision to remain in those systems. And so I pray for my siblings, and I pray that they will one day be liberated and set free and come to experience the liberating, unconditional love and grace of God. Geoff Bennett: Lastly, what does all of this mean for the clergy, for your congregants, and for the future of the United Methodist Church? Rev. Dr. Valerie Jackson: We are looking forward to preserving a church for the future, for those who are coming behind us that will not have to worry, can they walk through the doors? Will they be loved? Will they be accepted? Will they be seen? We look forward to leaving a church where those who are in the LGBTQ community can walk into the church holding hands, can sit in the pews in each other's arms, just like those who are heteronormative? There are so many things about being LGBTQ that we have to give up that those who are heteronormative never have to think about. So we look forward to a church where all people will get to thrive in love, life and liberation. Geoff Bennett: The Reverend Dr. Valerie Jackson is lead pastor at Park Hill United Methodist Church in Denver. Thanks so much for your time and for your insights this evening. We appreciate it. Rev. Dr. Valerie Jackson: Thank you so much for having me.

PBS NewsHour Wrecks Texas for Abbott Pardon, Pressured by 'White Right-Wing Conservatives'

The PBS NewsHour on Friday questioned Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of “convicted killer Daniel Perry” as a sop to “white right-wing conservatives.” Host Geoff Bennett loaded his lead to tar Abbott’s decision right from the start. Geoff Bennett: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has pardoned a man convicted of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in the summer of 2020. Abbott had faced pressure to issue the pardon from white right-wing conservatives, including then- Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Reporter Stephanie Sy also loaded her description, complete with an extraneous mention of the white victim’s “black fiancé,” but barely mentioning that the BLM-supporting victim, Garrett Foster, was also armed and allegedly raised his weapon at Perry. (An AK-47 rifle no less, a tool feared by the liberal media.) Sy: Yesterday, the Texas State Parole Board, whose members are appointed by the governor, unanimously recommended the release of convicted killer Daniel Perry and the restoration of his firearm rights. He walked free just hours after the pardon was issued. Perry was serving a 25-year prison sentence for the murder of Garrett Foster, an armed white man who was attending a racial justice protest with his black fiance. In court, Perry argued he shot Foster from his car in self-defense. Prosecutors argued he sought out the encounter, and the jury ultimately agreed. For more on what led to Perry's pardon, we're joined by KVUE and Austin-American Statesman investigative reporter. Tony Plohetski. Tony, welcome to the NewsHour. The board said it did a meticulous review of this case. But critics say this is politics, and you had right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson calling for this for a year. What was the biggest justification Governor Abbott gave for this pardon? The pardon power was once strongly embraced by liberals, but no longer, at least when Republican presidents and governors use it. Tony Plohetski, Austin-American Statesman: Well, to your point, while the parole and pardons board issued this statement saying that they had done a meticulous review, what was absent from their statement was any sort of legal rationale, in terms of recommending that the governor issued this pardon. In a separate proclamation, the governor, however, says that Texas has a very strong, one of the strongest, in his words, self-defense, stand-your-ground laws here in Texas. And so he saw this as upholding that law, and that the conviction of Daniel Perry in this case were, in his words, a travesty of justice. Sy immediately suggested Abbott was guilty of hypocrisy:  Sy: How does this fit into Abbott's broader record on pardons? Is this a governor who has shown mercy to others who have been convicted of such serious crimes? Plohetski: Well, certainly this adds fuel to the already burning fire between Republicans here in Texas and progressive district attorneys like district attorney Jose Garza here in Austin. There has been a lot of back-and-forth discussion about what crimes get prosecuted and what crimes don't get prosecuted here in Austin. But with regard to the governor's record with regard to pardons, over time, the governor has issued precious few of these pardons, usually doing so at the end of the year…. Sy read from a hysterically strong letter from Foster’s fiancé, entering it into the media record: With this pardon, the governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan and U.S. Air Force veteran and impugned that jury's just verdict. He has declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his and different from those in power can be killed in this state with impunity. Sy tried to make Plohetski say the pardon was out of bounds: "Pardons, as you know, Tony, are often political. Does this pardon go beyond a norm? Does it set a new precedent?" Plohetski hinted agreement, citing concern among “the criminal justice community in Austin” that future similar moves would risk “further upending the criminal justice system.” This segment was brought to you in part by Cunard. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 5/17/24 7:15:42 p.m. (ET) Geoff Bennett: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has pardoned a man convicted of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in the summer of 2020. Abbott had faced pressure to issue the pardon from white right-wing conservatives, including then FOX News host Tucker Carlson. Stephanie Sy has the story. Stephanie Sy: Yesterday, the Texas State Parole Board, whose members are appointed by the governor, unanimously recommended the release of convicted killer Daniel Perry and the restoration of his firearm rights. He walked free just hours after the pardon was issued. Perry was serving a 25-year prison sentence for the murder of Garrett Foster, an armed white man who was attending a racial justice protest with his Black fiance. In court, Perry argued he shot Foster from his car in self-defense. Prosecutors argued he sought out the encounter, and the jury ultimately agreed. For more on what led to Perry's pardon, we're joined by KVUE and Austin-American Statesman investigative reporter Tony Plohetski. Tony, welcome to the "NewsHour." The board said it did a meticulous review of this case. But critics say this is politics, and you had right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson calling for this for a year. What was the biggest justification Governor Abbott gave for this pardon? Tony Plohetski, The Austin-American Statesman: Well, to your point, while the parole and pardons board issued this statement saying that they had done a meticulous review, what was absent from their statement was any sort of legal rationale, in terms of recommending that the governor issued this pardon. In a separate proclamation, the governor, however, says that Texas has a very strong, one of the strongest, in his words, self-defense, stand-your-ground laws here in Texas. And so he saw this as upholding that law, and that the conviction of Daniel Perry in this case were, in his words, a travesty of justice. Stephanie Sy: And he also had criticism for Travis County's DA's handling of the case, right? But how does this fit into Abbott's broader record on pardons? Is this a governor who has shown mercy to others who have been convicted of such serious crimes? Tony Plohetski: Well, certainly this adds fuel to the already burning fire between Republicans here in Texas and progressive district attorneys like district attorney Jose Garza here in Austin. There has been a lot of back-and-forth discussion about what crimes get prosecuted and what crimes don't get prosecuted here in Austin. But with regard to the governor's record with regard to pardons, over time, the governor has issued precious few of these pardons, usually doing so at the end of the year. We're talking, Stephanie, only about a handful per year, most of them nonviolent offenders who were convicted, some of them after serving years or in some cases even decades in prison. This pardon, however, stands very distinct from that, in that Daniel Perry has only been in prison a little more than a year. Stephanie Sy: I want to read a statement from Whitney Mitchell, Garrett Foster's surviving fiancee. She was at the protest that night. She testified during the trial. And she said through her attorney — quote — "With this pardon, the governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan and U.S. Air Force veteran and impugned that jury's just verdict. He has declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his and different from those in power can be killed in this state with impunity." Pardons, as you know, tony, are often political. Does this pardon go beyond a norm? Does it set a new precedent? Tony Plohetski: I can tell you that that is certainly the concern, not only here in the criminal justice community in Austin, but really across the state, what this might lead to with regard to other cases that are on dockets, not only in Austin, but across the state, whether or not Governor Abbott may lend support to those offenders, should they be convicted sometime down the line, and, in the minds of some people here in Texas, further upending the criminal justice system. Stephanie Sy: How else are you hearing reaction from this, particularly from the family and Black Lives Matter protesters? Tony Plohetski: Well, I can assure you that the reaction of Whitney Mitchell is consistent to a lot of feelings here in Austin. Austin has a very strong community with regard to activism and demonstrations. And so they were alarmed the night that Garrett Foster was killed. But let me assure you that, elsewhere in the state, a deeply conservative state, others view this, other loud voices, including, for example, the attorney general, view this as righting a wrong, that a miscarriage of justice occurred in this case. And so they see this as the governor using his authority, legally using his partner authority to right that wrong. But, again, the reaction really does range, depending on who you talk to, not only in Austin, but across the state of Texas. Stephanie Sy: Tony Plohetski with The Austin-American Statesman, thank you so much for joining the "NewsHour." Tony Plohetski: Thanks for having me.

PBS Takes Pro-Hamas Line on Israel, Nakba: 'Mass Expulsion' of Palestinians in 1948

Wednesday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour forwarded pro-Hamas historical talking points to paint Palestinians as endless victims of yet another war they launched against Israel, matching up with the network’s consistently slanted coverage of the current Israel-Hamas war. It’s been 76 years since Arab countries attacked the fledgling state of Israel en masse in 1948 to strangle the Jewish homeland in its crib, but were repelled. PBS portrayed the al-Nakba, or “catastrophe,” using the Palestinian rhetoric of “mass expulsion,” with no caveats or actual historical explanation given. Host Geoff Bennett stirred in the anniversary to portray Palestinians as endless victims of unjust Israel aggressions, based on two wars begun by Arab/Islamic entities. The full report: Bennett: In the Middle East, there's been intense fighting across the Gaza Strip, including in the southern city of Rafah. An Israeli government spokesperson said today that Israel will eliminate the four remaining Hamas battalions there, but not necessarily every Hamas fighter. Separately, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Jabalia refugee camp near Gaza City. Medics say at least three people were killed and 20 others injured. This all comes as Palestinians marked 76 years since the Nakba, or catastrophe, which refers to their mass expulsion from what today is Israel. Some displaced Gazans say the war now is even worse. Faridah Abu Artema, Displaced Palestinian (translation): My mother and father told me about the Nakba, but this here is worse. This is destruction. What we have seen, no one else has seen. Every day is a catastrophe, the catastrophe of hunger, the catastrophe of illness. Every day, we move from place to place. The children are sick. I don't know what to say. Bennett: The U.N. says more than 80 percent of Gaza's population have fled their homes since the start of the war. Many have relocated more than once. The historical reality: In 1948 Britain partitioned the Palestinian Mandate, cleaving out a Jewish state and an Arab state, with the Jews accepting statehood but the Arabs refusing to live alongside the Jews in the region. Several Arab countries then launched a failed war on Israel they day it declared independence. PBS managed to out-do the slanted description from Wednesday’s CBS Evening News. These pro-Hamas talking points were brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.

New York Times Admits 'MSNBC's Leftward Tilt,' But Presents NBC News Shows as Neutral!

The New York Times devoted nearly 3,000 words by writer-at-large Jim Rutenberg and media reporter Michael Grynbaum to a topic rarely acknowledged: Media bias from the left, in “How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications.” (Right-leaning Fox News, by contrast, is a constant target of the paper’s hostility.) But what does it say about the paper’s own tilt when its reporters constantly appear on the left-wing airwaves of MSNBC? The story began: MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down. Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts. The channel has become a landing spot for high-profile alumni of President Biden’s administration like Jen Psaki, who went from hosting White House press briefings to hosting her own show. On Super Tuesday, when producers aired a portion of a live speech by former President Donald J. Trump, Rachel Maddow chastised her bosses on the air. The moves have been a hit with viewers. MSNBC has leapfrogged past its erstwhile rival CNN in the ratings and has seen viewership rise over the past year, securing second place in cable news behind the perennial leader, Fox News. The unintentionally funny part is when NBC News suggested MSNBC was ruining it branding as "straight news." Who believes that any more?  But MSNBC’s success has had unintended consequences for its parent company, NBC, an original Big Three broadcaster that still strives to appeal to a mass American audience. NBC’s traditional political journalists have cycled between rancor and resignation that the cable network’s partisanship — a regular target of Mr. Trump — will color perceptions of their straight news reporting.  NBC faced "tensions" in an election year, on "how to maintain trust and present neutral, fact-based reporting in a fractionalized era when partisanship carries vast financial and cultural rewards." The report talked about how they tried to take some of the hyperpartisan tone out in the last decade by moving Al Sharpton to weekends, bringing Greta Van Susteren over from Fox, and creating a daily version of Meet the Press. But then Donald Trump showed up, and even those cosmetic shifts were scuttled: Then, Mr. Trump’s ascent shocked the Democratic base and spiked viewership of Ms. Maddow and other left-leaning hosts, whose programs became a kind of televised safe space. MSNBC’s ratings surged. The story centered on NBC News boss Cesar Conde and how he's tried to bring Republican voices on NBC, including the brief Ronna McDaniel Debacle, and Kristen Welker's incredibly combative interview with Donald Trump on her debut at Meet the Press host. The Left has a fit any time NBC interviews Republicans, and so the interviewers end up sounding fiercely oppositional.  At least, Rutenberg and Grynbaum acknowledged that MSNBC was “tightly embracing its partisan direction” by hiring Biden press secretary Jen Psaki and another Biden aide, Symone Sanders: “It was the kind of revolving-door hiring that liberal pundits used to criticize when it happened with Fox News and the Trump administration.” Left out of the long story were any mentions of the myriad Times reporters (including authors Rutenberg and Grynbaum themselves) that have appeared as guest talent on the "comfort food for liberals" channel during the Trump era and beyond, presumably contributing to what the Times itself calls the network’s “leftward tilt.” some with contributor contracts. A partial list of Times journalists who’ve appeared on MSNBC in recent years would include Susan Craig, Nicholas Kristof, Nicholas Confessore, Katie Benner, Jeremy Peters, Annie Karni, Carl Hulse, Michael Schmidt, Nicholas Confessore, Jeremy Peters, Mike Isaac, Megan Twohey, as well as the story’s authors Jim Rutenberg and Michael Grynbaum (the article contained no disclosure of their previous MSNBC appearances). Appearances by Times scribes are much thinner on right-leaning Fox News, though ex-NYT staffer Nellie Bowles did appear on America’s Newsroom on Wednesday to promote her eyebrow-raising criticism of wokeness, including some bizarre anecdotes from her days at the Times.

PBS Drools Over Dem Success on Abortion Issue: 'Could You Ever Vote Republican Again?'

The PBS NewsHour on Monday attempted to bolster the struggling Biden re-election campaign by focusing on a purported Democratic issue, abortion -- or as PBS labels it, “reproductive health care” -- in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all 50 states. It’s a partisan tactic they’ve tried several times before both on weekdays and the weekend edition. Monday’s story featured the program’s most biased reporter, political correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez, complete with labeling bias. Besides the euphemistic references to “reproductive health care” and the “right to choose” a "procedure," the reporter used the term "conservative" twice, but no liberal or even “progressive” ones. Amna Nawaz: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, Republicans have banned abortion in 14 states and restricted it in more. But, when given the chance, voters have overwhelmingly supported ballot initiatives to protect access to the procedure. This election year, abortion will again be a defining issue. Laura Barron-Lopez reports from the battleground of Michigan, where Democrats plan to keep reproductive health care front and center. Annie Sharkus, Michigan Voter [to her child]: You got it? Great job. Laura Barron-Lopez: Raised in a deeply religious and conservative household, Annie Sharkus stayed out of politics, until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Sharkus: I gathered signatures. We organized, like, a rally. I gave a speech at one, started going to, like, coffee hours and things like that with our local politicians, just getting more involved, because I didn't want my kids to look back at this point in time and say, like, OK, well, what did you do, and I couldn't tell them that I did nothing. Sharkus told PBS she doesn’t “specifically identify as Democrat or Republican,” but if you can't ever imagine voting for Republicans again, you sound like a Democrat.  Barron-Lopez: Do you think that you could ever vote Republican again? Sharkus: I don't think that I would with the current direction that the Republican Party is going. I am so far from identifying with what they want to happen that I don't see it ever happening. Barron-Lopez: Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin wants to keep women like Annie squarely in the Democratic column. Her message to voters, abortion will always be on the ballot. ...When voters turned out for abortion rights in Michigan in 2022, it was a victory for Democrats. In 2024, they're trying to replicate that success here and in states across the country. Slotkin, now running for the U.S. Senate, is one of many down-ballot Democratic candidates trying to maintain urgency. Shanay Watson-Whittaker of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) combined belief in God with the “right to choose” abortion. Slotkin has been endorsed by this abortion lobbying group, and boasts a 100 percent pro-abortion voting record. But neither Slotkin nor the abortion lobby are apparently "liberal" or "leftist." Even the conservative in the story sounded liberal on the issue, not wanting to make it a federal issue. Barron-Lopez: Nolan Finley is the conservative opinion editor at The Detroit News. What exactly would you like to see either the presidential nominee, Donald Trump, lay out or other Republicans across the board in terms of the specific policy towards abortion? When asked by the reporter to pin down a time frame during the pregnancy, Finley was amenable to a ban after 20 weeks, far past the first trimester of pregnancy. Finley: Fifteen, maybe twenty, wherever -- somewhere in that range where people can settle and say, this is fair. This allows people time to make their decision…. There were a couple of a Trump soundbites as well, so it wasn't completely one-sided. After soundbites from two other pro-abortion voters, Barron-Lopez huddled up again with Rep. Slotkin and gave her the last word, sounding the “wakeup call for Democrats” against the party’s previous “complacency” on the issue. This pro-abortion, pro-Democratic segment was brought to you in part by Cunard. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 5/13/24 7:24:01 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, Republicans have banned abortion in 14 states and restricted it in more. But, when given the chance, voters have overwhelmingly supported ballot initiatives to protect access to the procedure. This election year, abortion will again be a defining issue. Laura Barron-Lopez reports from the battleground of Michigan, where Democrats plan to keep reproductive health care front and center. Annie Sharkus, Michigan Voter: You got it? Great job. Laura Barron-Lopez: Raised in a deeply religious and conservative household, Annie Sharkus stayed out of politics, until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Annie Sharkus: I gathered signatures. We organized, like, a rally. I gave a speech at one, started going to, like, coffee hours and things like that with our local politicians, just getting more involved, because I didn't want my kids to look back at this point in time and say, like, OK, well, what did you do, and I couldn't tell them that I did nothing. Laura Barron-Lopez: Now abortion access is protected in Michigan, but voters are still thinking about it. Even though it's not on the ballot in Michigan this time around, do you still think that it is a top issue for a lot of voters? Annie Sharkus: Even if we're not worried about it in our state in particular, yes, it's definitely something that people are using to gauge how they're voting. Laura Barron-Lopez: The stay-at-home mom of two, who lives in the suburbs of Detroit, isn't excited to vote for Joe Biden. But Annie thinks he will ultimately make access to abortion safer. Annie Sharkus: With voting for Joe Biden, it is hard, because I'm not a single-issue voter. I don't specifically identify as Democrat or Republican. While I will vote for him, I wish that there was another option. Laura Barron-Lopez: Do you think that you could ever vote Republican again? Annie Sharkus: I don't think that I would with the current direction that the Republican Party is going. I am so far from identifying with what they want to happen that I don't see it ever happening. Laura Barron-Lopez: Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin wants to keep women like Annie squarely in the Democratic column. Her message to voters, abortion will always be on the ballot. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI): The other side has made this a central issue for them for 50 years. Their actions speak louder than words. And their actions are currently, like, as we speak, trying to threaten a woman's right to choose, and people see that. Laura Barron-Lopez: When voters turned out for abortion rights in Michigan in 2022, it was a victory for Democrats. In 2024, they're trying to replicate that success here and in states across the country. Slotkin, now running for the U.S. Senate, is one of many downballot Democratic candidates trying to maintain urgency. Rep. Elissa Slotkin: We have to understand that most people see this as a kitchen table issue. A decision about whether to have a child or not is the most profound kitchen table issue that we have. It's not separate from inflation. It's not separate from the economy. It's like your whole family trajectory and whether you are going to be able to afford that life. Laura Barron-Lopez: What happened in Michigan became a blueprint for how to organize around abortion effectively. Ohio followed suit in 2023. Now the right to an abortion will be on the ballot this November in three states, including Florida, which currently bans any kind of termination after six weeks of pregnancy. And similar initiatives could end up on the ballot in up to nine other states this year, including the battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada. Shanay Watson-Whittaker, Reproductive Freedom for All: What happened in 2022 wasn't an anomaly. Laura Barron-Lopez: Back in Michigan, state activists like Shanay Watson-Whittaker, who works for the nonprofit Reproductive Freedom for All, were instrumental in mobilizing voters in 2022. Two years later, she's sharing that strategy. Shanay Watson-Whittaker: Michigan, for a lot of folks, has been like a North Star. We specifically and intentionally had conversations with Black clergy, with clergy from other denominations, sat them down and talked about reproductive freedom. What people forget are that clergy are humans. They have experienced loss — miscarriage loss. They have had abortions. We believe in God and we believe in Jesus. And,at the same time, we believe that government should not interfere with a woman's right to choose. Laura Barron-Lopez: Meanwhile, Republicans who cheered the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe are struggling to find their footing. In March, the presumptive GOP nominee, Donald Trump, spoke favorably of a national 15-week abortion ban. Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: People are really — even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be — 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at. Laura Barron-Lopez: Then, last month, he flip-flopped, saying states could decide for themselves. Donald Trump: The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state. Laura Barron-Lopez: Still, some top Republicans in Congress support the national 15-week ban and measures that would make it a crime to transport minors across state lines for an abortion without parental consent. Donald Trump: Thank you, Wisconsin. Laura Barron-Lopez: More recently, Trump told "TIME" magazine he'd allow states to both monitor pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. Nolan Finley, Opinion Editor, The Detroit News: Republicans keep handing Democrats this issue every election cycle. It never seems to be out of the political picture. Laura Barron-Lopez: Nolan Finley is the conservative opinion editor at The Detroit News. What exactly would you like to see either the presidential nominee, Donald Trump, lay out or other Republicans across the board in terms of the specific policy towards abortion? Nolan Finley: Well, I would like them to stay away from a federal policy. I think that's what's the point of the Dobbs ruling. But I think the Nikki Haley solution of let's all sit down and find out where we can agree in terms of a point in the pregnancy where were going to say you have had time to make your choice. Laura Barron-Lopez: Whether it's six, 15 weeks? Nolan Finley: Fifteen, maybe 20, wherever — somewhere in that range where people can settle and say, this is fair. This allows people time to make their decision. This allows you to deal with rape and incest, et cetera, but it also prevents something I think most people would be opposed to, and that is abortion in the last month or so of pregnancy. Laura Barron-Lopez: For voters we spoke to in Lansing, they're heeding calls that abortion is an issue to turn out for in November. Matt Allswede, Michigan Voter: Michigan voters, they recognize that this is an issue that goes beyond the borders of the state of Michigan. Susan Anderson, Michigan Voter: I think we have all found out that we cannot rest on our laurels, that we must come out and vote for the right people. Laura Barron-Lopez: Ultimately, Roe was a wakeup call for Democrats like Congresswoman Slotkin, one that she says exposed their party's complacency. Rep. Elissa Slotkin: I think we let ourselves get comfortable, that we didn't believe the other side when they said, we're coming for Roe v. Wade and we want to overturn it. We saw all that happening, but we just had a failure of imagination. What I want to do is say publicly to the whole country that we have a 10-year plan to get back to a federal right to an abortion. We're not going to let it just be a state issue. We're actually going to organize and mobilize to do the thing we didn't do for 50 years, which is pass a piece of federal legislation to codify Roe. Laura Barron-Lopez: The results in November could determine if Slotkin's plans takes 10 years or another 50. For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez in Michigan.      

New York Times Roots for Pro-Hamas Competition: 'Al Jazeera Finds Fans On Campus'

The radical leftists on campus don't trust newspaper like The New York Times for their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, but the Times doesn't mind. On the front of Monday's business section, they offered a laudatory look at the pro-Hamas, Qatar-funded network Al Jazeera, under “Why Al Jazeera is the Go To News Source for Student Protesters.” Santul Nerkar, a young journalist at the paper, never used terms like "leftist" or "radical" or even "progressive." They're just "pro-Palestinian." The print headline: “Al Jazeera Finds Fans On Campus.” He began: Nick Wilson has closely followed news on the war in Gaza since October. But Mr. Wilson, a Cornell student, is picky when it comes to his media diet: As a pro-Palestinian activist, he doesn’t trust major American outlets’ reporting on Israel’s campaign in Gaza. When conservatives say they don’t trust the mainstream press to cover Republicans fairly, they’re often smeared as ignorant or racist or McCarthyite. (The Times certainly doesn't respect the right-leaning New York Post.) Yet when leftists readers spout distrust, journalists from those same outlets under attack sound supportive. Strange how that works. Instead, he turns to publications less familiar to some American audiences, like the Arab news network Al Jazeera. “Al Jazeera is the site that I go to to get an account of events that I think will be reliable,” he said. Nerkar listed a few freak-show outlets, including Jewish Currents, which spouts about “Israel war crimes and “genocide,” as reliable reportorial options. Many student protesters said in recent interviews that they were seeking on-the-ground coverage of the war in Gaza, and often, a staunchly pro-Palestinian perspective -- and they are turning to alternative media for it. There’s a range of options: Jewish Currents, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and even independent Palestinian journalists on social media, as they seek information about what is happening in Gaza. .... Israel’s recent ban on the local operations of Al Jazeera has only elevated the network’s status among many student protesters. They prize coverage from reporters on the ground, and Al Jazeera has a more extensive operation in Gaza than any other publication. Students also noted the sacrifices it has made to tell the story there. Two Al Jazeera journalists have died since the start of the war. What didn’t make it into this report: Al-Jazeera’s pro-terrorist coverage like throwing a “birthday party” with cake and fireworks in 2008, to celebrate the release of a Lebanese terrorist who killed four in Israel, including a four-year-old girl. Al Jazeera reporters Ismail Abu Omar and Mohamed Washah were caught moonlighting as Hamas commanders. In February, The Times of Israel reported that "the IDF revealed a trove of images" that showed Washah in a Hamas uniform training fighters how to shoot rocket-propelled grenades, build warheads, and operate drones armed with an RPG. Nerkar oddly described Hamas as "armed resistance," not as engaged in the slaughter of civilians and hostage-taking. Critics say its coverage veers into support of the armed resistance to Israel. The Israeli government, which has accused Al Jazeera of acting as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas, last Sunday seized its broadcast equipment and shut down its operations in the country for at least 45 days. This is apparently Al Jazeera’s idea of balance: Terrorist videos as well as Israeli government news conferences. Al Jazeera called the government’s accusation “baseless” in a statement, adding that it has broadcast every news conference held by the Israeli cabinet and representatives for the Israel Defense Forces, in addition to videos from Hamas. …. The protesters rattle off a list of mainstream American publications as having coverage they find objectionable, including CNN, The Atlantic, the BBC and The New York Times, among many others. Nerkar approached the truth when he quoted scholar Hussein Ibish that the show’s “distinctly anti-American bent” had found a new fanbase on American college campuses: “There’s a third-worldist, anti-imperial point of view, and that’s also the view that many college kids have adopted.” Can’t disagree with that.

NPR Loves Far-Left Tik-Tok Effort to Punish Celebrities For SILENCE on Gaza

Chloe Veltman, a correspondent on National Public Radio’s “Culture Desk” who last year celebrated the “Nation's first 'drag laureate,'" is still guarding the far-left ramparts of U.S. culture for NPR with Saturday’s “The Met Gala has fueled backlash against stars who are silent about the Gaza conflict.” She demonstrated, as if any more evidence was needed, the tax-supported network’s rigid adherence to a left-wing worldview that offends at least half its intended audience. Even as other outlets are trying to rein in the woke left and open public debate back up with more tolerance of opposing views, Veltman went all-in in support of anti-Israel (i.e. pro-Hamas) social media-fueled cancel culture targeting the outlandish Met Gala in NYC. A collective effort on TikTok and other social media platforms to push celebrities to speak publicly about the conflict in Gaza went into overdrive this week after The Met Gala. Creators on TikTok have earned millions of views for videos they've made linked to hashtags like #celebrityblocklist, #letthemeatcake and #blockout. Many of these posts list the names of actors, musicians and other high-profile figures whom the video creators say had not yet spoken out against Israel's attacks on the region -- or hadn't spoken out sufficiently -- and therefore should be blocked. And there's been a special push in recent days to name those who attended the opulent, star-studded annual Met Gala on Monday. They're not punishing celebrities speaking out for Israel. They're for punishing celebrities who say nothing about Israel or Gaza. This doesn’t sound sinister at all: "I made a Google Doc of every celebrity that attended the Met Gala, and now I'm going through and writing if they've been silent, or if they've been using their platform to speak up about the genocide in Gaza," said one TikTok user in a video displaying a long list of celebrity names against a black background with the word "SILENT" in red next to some, including Zendaya, Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban and Andrew Scott…. (There’s an unrelated “Zionist authors” version of this sort of hate-list as well.) Veltman the NPR culture journalist sounded precisely like Veltman the far-left activist: Calls on social media to boycott celebrity silences have been on a slow burn for months. But the fact the New York event, with its unchecked display of privilege and wealth, took place at around the same time as thousands of Palestinians were being forced to flee Rafah at less than 24 hours notice as Israeli troops took control of the Gaza territory's border crossing with Egypt, fanned the glowing embers into full-on flames. …. The rationale behind the calls on social media to block celebrities, thereby negatively impacting their advertising revenue, is to put pressure on them to use their massive influence to try to stop the violence in Gaza. The journalist concluded her taxpayer-supported segment celebrating the destructive, ultra-online temper tantrums for somehow helping “Gaza” (though calling for Israel to stop its war on Hamas would benefit the terrorists who run Gaza). And even if the many, much-viewed videos aimed at canceling celebrities don't help to bring about a change for the people of Gaza, there's at least an emotional reward for those doing the canceling. "It does provide some sense of agency," said the University of Michigan's Collins. "A sense that I've done something to influence other people to do something that perhaps maybe might make a difference. Because in the minds of those folks, it's better than doing nothing."

PBS Slights Non-Protester Rights on Campus: 'No Right to...Most Convenient Path to Library'

Tuesday’s PBS NewsHour actually brought on a critic of the pro-Hamas protesters currently infesting college campus quads across the country, which so far have gotten a nearly free ride from scrutiny (there’s certainly been little scrutiny of the pro-Biden groups funding them). New York Times columnist David French is certainly no hard-core conservative -- he's pretty close to PBS regular David Brooks -- but his opinion that the “camping” protesters posed a threat to other students and should be removed was a strong counterpoint to PBS’s knee-jerk support of the agitators and its exquisite sensitivity to the radicals’ demands. That was too much for NewsHour reporter and interviewee Lisa Desjardins, who found bizarre ways to excuse the mobs, which have often targeted Jewish students in disgusting ways. She introduced French as someone "who says colleges are not doing enough to crack down" on protests. Journalists have been terrible at distinguishing peaceful protests and occupying public or private spaces.  Desjardins suggested to French he's weak on injustice:  "Protesters do say they see an injustice overseas and America tied to that injustice some — they say, through its support of Israel. They see this as a life-and-death cause. They're talking about nothing less than starvation, violent deaths of civilians. What should protesters be doing when they see injustice like that, in your view?" FRENCH: Well, they should absolutely lift up their voices in protest, and the schools should absolutely provide an avenue and a place for people to protest. They can engage in their own boycotts. They can engage in all kinds of constitutionally protected activities to lift up this issue. But they do not have the ability, under American law, to violate the rights of others because they think it's for a good cause. That is not the way this works. You cannot — my First Amendment rights and my rights to study, to sleep, to receive the benefit of an education do not depend on whether or not another group of students consider that a cause is important enough to disrupt my rights. That's not how this works. Desjardins lectured that non-protesting students shouldn't complain about little inconveniences: "As you know, there's not the same kind of right to free speech on private college campuses as there is on public, but many embrace that ideal. But I also don't know that there is an espoused right to sleep or right to have the most convenient path to the library….the Founders themselves espoused rebellion, not just their own.” Jew checkpoints on campus aren’t exactly the same thing as a “convenient path to the library." Bonus coverage: In the previous segment, NewsHour congressional reporter Laura Barron-Lopez claimed Donald Trump had “demonized Palestinian refugees” at a campaign rally. What awful thing did Trump say? Her clip: Donald Trump: Your towns and villages will now be accepting people from Gaza, lots of people from Gaza, because, under chain migration, they can bring everybody they ever touched. Under no circumstances should we bring thousands of refugees from Hamas-controlled terrorist epicenters like Gaza to America. We just can't do it. This segment was brought to you in part by Certified Financial Planner. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 5/7/24 7:32:27 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: Protests against the war in Gaza continue on a number of campuses across the country. As part of our ongoing coverage, Lisa Desjardins has a conversation tonight about the wave of crackdowns at some colleges and universities and how they are being justified. Lisa Desjardins: Amna, the past day shows more action and reaction. Police made dozens of arrests as they broke up an encampment at the University of California, San Diego. At the University of Chicago, police disbanded another encampment. But, at MIT, pro-Palestinian protesters refused to move, despite the threat of academic suspension. Today, in his own speech recognizing Holocaust Remembrance Day, House Speaker Mike Johnson charged that many schools are hostile places for Jewish people and have — quote — "succumbed to an antisemitic virus." Last night, we looked at the idea that colleges have themselves fomented these protests. Our guest tonight says colleges are not doing enough to crack down on them. David French is an opinion columnist for The New York Times. And, David, what do you think universities are getting wrong here? David French, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times: Yes, what they're getting wrong is, they're ignoring their own reasonable time, place and manner restrictions that should allow all parties to have equal access to campus facilities. This is something that universities who have tens of thousands of students often, but not — they don't have the public spaces big enough to encompass everybody who might want to engage in free expression. So, when you have a time, place and manner restriction, what that does is, it says everyone's going to have equal access to the campus, and also that place and manner restriction means that people can't disrupt the actual educational process of the school. And so what's happening is that many of these protests, particularly encampments, are occupying space on the quad. They're, by necessity, excluding others who might want to use it. And then, with the nature of the protests, they're interfering with the students' ability to study, to learn, sometimes even to sleep. And some of these Jewish students are finding that their access to campus is limited by the protests as well. And so by blowing through these time, place and manner restrictions, the protesters are actually violating the rights of other students. And in that circumstance, the university has to step in. Lisa Desjardins: Some of these protests, as you say, have raised a lot of concerns, but so has the idea of calling in police. Police have more power than students. How do you see the idea that perhaps how do you make sure that a get-tough approach doesn't go too far? David French: Well, the bottom line is that these universities have a legal obligation to protect the rights of all of the students and also to protect the Jewish students on campus from antisemitic harassment. So, when these encampments violate the rights of others and they refuse to leave, then, sometimes, there's no option but to bring in law enforcement. Now, that doesn't mean that law enforcement can do whatever it wants. It should be disciplined. It should be restrained in its use of force. But when a group of students is violating the rights of other students, there are legal obligations that attach to the university to defend the rights of others. And so if these students won't move, the university is, in many ways, their hands are tied, because they cannot continue to consent to the violation of other students' rights. Lisa Desjardins: Let me get at this idea of what is civil disobedience and what is actually problematic, unlawful conduct, as you're saying. For example, if there was a sit-in at a diner… David French: Right. Lisa Desjardins: … and those conducting the sit-in were preventing the business from conducting its own business and preventing other patrons from entering, is that something that you see in the same kind of light? And is it civil disobedience or not? David French: Well, when we saw the civil rights movement, what you saw was protesters violating unjust laws, like prohibiting Black Americans from eating in the same diners as white Americans. That's violating an unjust law and then accepting the consequences. So you accept the consequences of your legal violation, which upholds the rule of law. But that's the key. There's an unjust law that you violate, and then you accept the consequences, and you do it all peacefully. Here, in many ways, what they're doing is, they're violating just laws. In other words, they're actually in violation of laws that protect the rights of others, and then they're refusing to accept the consequences. They're covering their faces to avoid detection. They're often in outright defiance of the police when the police try to move them. And that's when you're moving from civil disobedience, which is honorable and respects the rule of law, to outright lawlessness, where they're violating just laws and refusing to accept the consequences. Lisa Desjardins: Protesters do say they see an injustice overseas and America tied to that injustice some — they say, through its support of Israel. They see this as a life-and-death cause. They're talking about nothing less than starvation, violent deaths of civilians. What should protesters be doing when they see injustice like that, in your view? David French: Well, they should absolutely lift up their voices in protest, and the schools should absolutely provide an avenue and a place for people to protest. They can engage in their own boycotts. They can engage in all kinds of constitutionally protected activities to lift up this issue. But they do not have the ability, under American law, to violate the rights of others because they think it's for a good cause. That is not the way this works. You cannot — my First Amendment rights and my rights to study, to sleep, to receive the benefit of an education do not depend on whether or not another group of students consider that a cause is important enough to disrupt my rights. That's not how this works. Students have ample opportunity to express their views, and they also have opportunity to engage in true, genuine, peaceful civil disobedience. But what we're seeing on many campuses, not all, but many campuses is something an order of magnitude beyond that. Lisa Desjardins: As you know, there's not the same kind of right to free speech on private college campuses as there is on public, but many embrace that ideal. But I also don't know that there is an espoused right to sleep or right to have the most convenient path to the library. All of this is sort of weighing with something you pay attention to, our founders. You're an originalist. You pay attention to their intention here. The founders themselves espoused rebellion, not just their own. How do you weigh that idea of this sort of American tension between, yes, speak up, even do rebellious acts for something you believe in, but also perhaps follow the law? David French: In many of these campuses, if you're talking about people in their own dorms, in the comfort of their own dorms, there is a right to some peace and safety and security here. And it is in fact violation of federal law, anti-harassment law, in particular, when, in particular, Jewish students can't have full access to campus, can't have — can't sleep, can't rest. These things actually violate federal law when it rises to that level. And in that circumstances, these universities have to do something to protect the rights of other students. The right to rebellion, I would say that that was seriously diminished after the loss in the Civil War by the Confederacy. I don't think there's any real concept of a right to rebellion. In this circumstance, if you have an actual rebellion against authority on campus, where people move beyond these reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, they're violating the rights of others. And I'm sorry, the law protects all of us. It doesn't just protect a small cohort of people who decide to occupy part of a campus. Lisa Desjardins: David French, part of a national conversation here, we appreciate your time.

Desperate NY Times: Valid Soros Criticism Equals 'Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes'

As pro-Hamas campus protesters scream end-of-Israel slogans on college campuses and President Biden cuts off weapons to Israel, the New York Times put its investigative journalism to a very political task, neutralizing any attempt by Republicans to campaign against antisemitism:  How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel Prominent Republicans have seized on campus protests to assail what they say is antisemitism on the left. But for years they have mainstreamed anti-Jewish rhetoric. The Times spent some 3,500 words and used Artificial Intelligence and four staffers (Karen Yourish, Danielle Ivory, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, and Alex Lemonides) to try to paint the GOP as the true anti-semitic party. Their methodology?  The Times used a variety of methods to examine the extent to which federal politicians have used language promoting antisemitic tropes. Reporters examined official press releases, congressional newsletters and posts on X (formerly Twitter) of every person who served in Congress over the past 10 years that contained the words “Soros,” “globalist” or “globalism” — terms widely accepted by multiple historians and experts on antisemitism as “dog whistles” that refer to Jews. The paper’s ideologically motivated thesis rests heavily on the false assumption being that criticism of left-wing ideological financier George Soros is by definition anti-Semitic. Some “seizing” occurred on the “largely peaceful” (really?) campus protests, which the Times severely underplayed. Amid the widening protests and the unease, if not fear, among many Jews, Republicans have sought to seize the political advantage by portraying themselves as the true protectors of Israel and Jews under assault from the progressive left. While largely peaceful, the campus protests over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that has killed tens of thousands have been loud and disruptive and have at times taken on a sharpened edge. Jewish students have been shouted at to return to Poland, where Nazis killed three million Jews during the Holocaust. There are chants and signs in support of Hamas, whose attack on Israel sparked the current war. A leader of the Columbia protests declared in a video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Debate rages over the extent to which the protests on the political left constitute coded or even direct attacks on Jews. But far less attention has been paid to a trend on the right: For all of their rhetoric of the moment, increasingly through the Trump era many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots. The conspiracy theory taking on fresh currency is one that dates back hundreds of years and has perennially bubbled into view: that a shady cabal of wealthy Jews secretly controls events and institutions contrary to the national interest of whatever country it is operating in. The Times will not tolerate any criticism of leftist financier George Soros. The current formulation of the trope taps into the populist loathing of an elite “ruling class.” “Globalists” or “globalist elites” are blamed for everything from Black Lives Matter to the influx of migrants across the southern border, often described as a plot to replace native-born Americans with foreigners who will vote for Democrats. The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions. The reporters extrapolated wildly to make standard political rhetoric “hate-filled speech of the extreme right.” This language is hardly new -- Mr. Soros became a boogeyman of the American far right long before the ascendancy of Mr. Trump. And the elected officials now invoking him or the globalists rarely, if ever, directly mention Jews or blame them outright. Some of them may not immediately understand the antisemitic resonance of the meme, and in some cases its use may simply be reflexive political rhetoric. But its rising ubiquity reflects the breaking down of old guardrails on all types of degrading speech, and the cross-pollination with the raw, sometimes hate-filled speech of the extreme right, in a party under the sway of the norm-defying former, and perhaps future, president. The reporters spared a few paragraphs of their diatribe to note left-wing anti-Semitism, referencing the campus protests and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) “for her statements after the Hamas attack, including ‘from the river to the sea.’” The Times repeated the same snotty “In fact…” formulation for the pro-Hamas protests. An “indirect” connection is still a connection, no matter how often the press throw around “anti-Semitism” in Soros’s defense. In fact, Mr. Soros’s connection to the protests is indirect: His foundation has donated to groups that have supported pro-Palestinian efforts, including recent protests, according to its financial records….

PBS NewsHour: Trump's Wild Gestapo Remarks vs. Biden Faces 'Jaded Electorate'

The “Politics Monday” segment of the PBS NewsHour, as hosted by substitute anchor William Brangham, was spicier than usual. Brangham found “controversy” on Trump’s side (no surprise there) but President Biden eluded blame for his poor polling -- blame a “jaded electorate” instead. Brangham: It's already shaping up to be a busy political week, as Republicans navigate the fallout from controversial remarks made by former President Trump at a fund-raiser over the weekend. Meanwhile, six months out from the election, President Biden continues to deal with a jaded electorate, as he wrestles with the political ramifications of the war in Gaza. He was joined by the usual Monday political duo, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Brangham huffed: Six months out, as I just mentioned, from this election, this weekend, Donald Trump was at this campaign event and he made these comments where he basically equated the Biden White House with the Nazis, saying that they are running a -- quote – ‘Gestapo administration.’ Now, this is, obviously, Amy, the -- just the latest in a long history of Trump saying things like this. But one of his fellow Republicans, one who's vying to be the number two on the Trump ticket, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, came out and defended Donald Trump. Here's what he had to say. Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND): The majority of Americans feel like the trial that he's in right now is politically motivated. And if it was anybody else, this trial wouldn't even be happening. So I understand that he feels like that he's being unfairly treated. In sarcasm mode, Brangham interjected his own thought. "So feeling like a trial is unfair is equivalent to being part of the Nazi secret police."  As if Democrats haven’t been calling Trump or all the other Republican presidential candidates some form of “fascist” for time immemorial. Walter lamented how Republicans must suck up to Trump to be his vice presidential candidate, as if that’s a novelty. Kamala Harris didn't have to demonstrate loyalty? Walter: What we are seeing as well, as you pointed out, Doug Burgum reportedly on the short list to be a vice-presidential candidate, is that loyalty to Donald Trump is always important. I think, in a Trump 2.0, it will be very, very top priority in picking who is around him. And so, when we talk about, what are the constraints or what are the restraints or the guardrails around a Trump presidency for things that he says or does, who's going to maybe rein him in, stand up and say no in the way that the vice president, Mike Pence, did, these folks are not saying that they would like to… Brangham: They're saying: I won't do that. Don't worry, boss. NPR’s Keith explained a sort of running mate beauty contest in Palm Beach. She mocked it as comparable to the soapy reality show The Bachelor: Tamara Keith: They brought all of these candidates, potential vice-presidential picks in, and then many of them went out on the Sunday shows. And what they had to do was show their loyalty to former President Trump. As Amy said, he does not want another vice president who will be loyal to him only up until when it matters and when the Constitution is on the line. He wants someone who will go out there and prove and tie themselves in knots, like Senator Tim Scott did on Meet the Press, just tie themselves in knots to stick with the reality that is Trump's reality, even if it is not true. Then Brangham ran the infamous clip from NBC’s Meet the Press of host Kristen Welker hassling Republican Sen. Tim Scott, a possible Trump VP choice, asking him SIX times if he would accept as valid the results of a presidential election that hasn’t taken place yet. No panelist admitted their fellow journalist's questioning was hackishly excessive, though both Keith and Walter agreed it went on “for a long time,” and the PBS clip skipped the part when Scott finally said in frustration, “This is why so many Americans believe that NBC is an extension of the Democrat Party.” The panel then turned to Biden’s poor polling. This snotty segment was brought to you in part by BDO. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 5/6/24 7:45:57 p.m. (ET) William Brangham: It's already shaping up to be a busy political week, as Republicans navigate the fallout from controversial remarks made by former President Trump at a fund-raiser over the weekend. Meanwhile, six months out from the election, President Biden continues to deal with a jaded electorate, as he wrestles with the political ramifications of the war in Gaza. Following this all closely is our Politics Monday duo, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR. So nice to see you both. Happy Monday. Six months out, as I just mentioned, from this election, this weekend, Donald Trump was at this campaign event and he made these comments where he basically equated the Biden White House with the Nazis, saying that they are running a — quote — "Gestapo administration." Now, this is, obviously, Amy, the — just the latest in a long history of Trump… Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report: Yes. Yes. William Brangham: … saying things like this. But one of his fellow Republicans, one who's vying to be the number two on the Trump ticket, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, came out and defended Donald Trump. Here's what he had to say. Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND): A majority of Americans feel like the trial that he's in right now is politically motivated. And if it was anybody else, this trial wouldn't even be happening. So I understand that he feels like that he's being unfairly treated. William Brangham: So feeling like a trial is unfair is equivalent to being part of the Nazi secret police. Amy Walter: Well, first, let's talk about the majority of Americans, as the governor said right there, feel that this is unfair, which, according to the most recent poll, the NPR/PBS/Marist poll, that is not true; 54 percent in that poll thought that it's fair. Now, 46 percent think it's unfair. So there are a lot of people… William Brangham: Right. Amy Walter: … who think the way the North Dakota governor does. But if we think that this candidate Trump or a Trump 2.0 president is going to look any different than the candidate we have known since 2016 or the person who was president for four years, you're going to be sorely mistaken. This is the reality of — this is just who Donald Trump is, how he's going to operate, how he is going to speak and behave. What we are seeing as well, as you pointed out, Doug Burgum reportedly on the short list to be a vice presidential candidate, is that loyalty to Donald Trump is always important. I think, in a Trump 2.0, it will be very, very top priority in picking who is around him. And so, when we talk about, well, what are the constraints or what are the restraints or the guardrails around a Trump presidency for things that he says or does, who's going to maybe rein him in, stand up and say no in the way that the vice president, Mike Pence, did, these folks are not saying that they would like to… William Brangham: They're saying: I won't do that. Don't worry, boss. Amy Walter: I'm pretty good with — I'm pretty good with the way that Trump is going to operate. Tamara Keith, National Public Radio: Yes. Right now, we are in the audition phase of the vice presidential pick contest… Amy Walter: Yes. Tamara Keith: … or, like, an episode of "The Bachelor" or something. And he — they had this event in Palm Beach. They brought all of these candidates, potential vice presidential picks in, and then many of them went out on the Sunday shows. And what they had to do was show their loyalty to former President Trump. He — as Amy said, he does not want another vice president who will be loyal to him only up until when it matters and when the Constitution is on the line. William Brangham: Right. Tamara Keith: He wants someone who will go out there and prove and tie themselves in knots, like Senator Tim Scott did on "Meet the Press," just tie themselves in knots to stick with the reality that is Trump's reality, even if it is not true. William Brangham: Let's take a look at what Tim Scott had to say, because he was asked about, will you accept the election results, regardless of who wins? Here's what he had to say. Kristen Welker, Moderator, "Meet the Press": Well, Senator, will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024, bottom line? Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC): At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump. And I'm excited to get back to low inflation, low unemployment, and… (Crosstalk) Kristen Welker: Wait, wait. Senator, yes or no, yes or no, will you accept the election results of 2024, no matter who wins? Sen. Tim Scott: That is my statement. William Brangham: I mean, Kristen Welker went back and forth about this multiple times. Tamara Keith: For a long time. Amy Walter: Yes, for a long time. Tamara Keith: And this is relevant because former President Trump is still denying the results of the last election. He is going to Wisconsin and Michigan and saying, oh, no, I actually won here, when he didn't. So, it's entirely relevant whether you will accept the results of the 2024 election. He has also said in that "TIME" magazine interview that — it came out last week — that he doesn't think that there will be violence or any issues, as long as the election is fair. But, at the same time, he is saying that the last election, which was fair, wasn't. William Brangham: Fair meaning, "I won." Tamara Keith: Generally speaking, yes. (Crosstalk) Amy Walter: Yes. William Brangham: Amy, meanwhile, Biden has got polling that again showing not great news for his campaign. We want to put up this graphic here. A majority of the U.S. adults, 54 percent, disapprove of Biden's performance. That is a 3 percent jump since March. Now, that's within the margin of error. Amy Walter: Yes. William Brangham: But it is his worst rating since 2019. I mean, how panicked should that campaign be? Amy Walter: Well, he is deeply unpopular, but he's not that much more unpopular than Donald Trump is. And the poll that you're citing are — the Marist poll. So, Donald Trump's overall approval rating is 42 percent, the president being at 40 percent. Where we sit right now is really fascinating. It feels like we have been — this campaign has been going on for about 100 years, because it basically has. (Laughter) Amy Walter: We're rerunning 2020. William Brangham: You both look great for 100-year-old people. (Laughter) Amy Walter: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. But the focus right now is on Joe Biden. He's the president now. Obviously, four years ago, it was Donald Trump. If the question is, should we go — which president do you think did a better job in his first term, right now, Trump is winning that argument. And you see in poll after poll when they ask questions about what do you think — who you did a better job on the economy, whose policies do you think have helped you the most, Biden or Trump, Trump is beating Biden on those matters. But if you talk about a campaign, which is about the future, that's the conversation that we haven't really gotten into yet. And that's why you saw even the Tim Scott interview. You hear the surrogates, as well as Donald Trump, talk a lot about, remember back in the days, let's bring us back to those days of four years ago… William Brangham: Right, booming economy. Amy Walter: … when the economy was great and inflation was low. So, remember, remember how great those times were. It's up to the Biden campaign to make the case that — not so much to fight about whether those times were great, but to talk about the next four years and what an administration of Biden's would look like and his policies and compare them to Donald Trump's. Tamara Keith: Which is why the Biden campaign continues to highlight all of the things that Trump says… Amy Walter: Yes. Tamara Keith: … like the Gestapo comments and everything else that he has said, while also really trying to amplify what he is saying he would do… Amy Walter: That's right. Tamara Keith: … and, in particular, on abortion rights, where he is trying not to say what he would do, and on any number of policy matters. In that "TIME" magazine interview, again, where he talked about wanting to round up migrants and… William Brangham: Right, deploy the military inside the U.S. Tamara Keith: Yes. And then he was asked, well, but the military being used on civilians? And he said, oh, no, they're not civilians, which is a pretty significant departure from norms. William Brangham: Right. Amy Walter: Yes. And this — the case hasn't really been prosecuted yet. Tamara Keith: Yes. Amy Walter: Believe it or not, we are still, which feels like either six months, you think, is a long time from now or a very short time from now. I tend to think of it as a short time. I think most normal voters think, well, we're a long way away from the election. William Brangham: So they just haven't dialed in yet. Amy Walter: Yes. And the — and both candidates soon enough will be on the airwaves making their case to voters. Theoretically, there will be debates between these candidates, where the differences between the two will become more of the conversation. William Brangham: Theoretically, on those debates. Amy Walter, Tamara Keith, so nice to see you both. Thank you. Amy Walter: You're welcome. Tamara Keith: Thanks, William.

NYT's Hypocritical Horror Over Al-Jazeera Ban: Tried to Kick Murdoch Out of AUS, UK

The New York Times came out stridently in defense of pan-Arab news network Al-Jazeera after the Israeli government temporarily shut down its local operations, claiming it was threatening Israel’s security by serving as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas. The paper was highly aggrieved over the “anti-democratic” move while ignoring Al-Jazeera’s history as a virulently anti-Israel outlet Arab news network. Of course, wartime censorship is not unheard of even in democracies (including Ukraine) or the Arab world in general, and Israel is existentially vulnerable surrounded by enemies and with elite opinion firmly on the side of the pro-Hamas demonstrators on college campuses throughout America. Five reporters in all contributed to The Times' report, “Israeli Cabinet Votes to Shut Down Al Jazeera’s Operations in the Country,” in Monday’s edition. Israel moved on Sunday to shut down local operations of Al Jazeera, the influential Qatari-based news network, in an unusual step that critics denounced as anti-democratic and part of a broader crackdown on dissent over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Al Jazeera, a major source of news in the Arab world that has often highlighted civilian suffering in Gaza, of harming Israel’s security and inciting violence against its soldiers. Israeli officials did not immediately provide examples of Al Jazeera content it claimed posed a threat. In a statement, Al Jazeera called the decision a “criminal act” and said that “Israel’s suppression of the free press to cover up its crimes has not deterred us from performing our duty.” …. Pointing to the government’s diminishing tolerance for freedom of expression, Ms. Touma-Sliman noted that in November, she was suspended from all parliamentary activities for two months after publicizing press reports about Israeli forces attacking Gaza’s main hospital. The military had denied the accounts. Meanwhile, reporter Steve Lohr found “media experts” to condemn the only democracy in the region as a censor: “Media experts condemn Israel’s move against Al Jazeera.” The Israeli government’s decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in that country and block its reports there was condemned by American media and free speech experts as a troubling precedent and further evidence that Israel was engaging in a harsh wartime crackdown on democratic freedoms. There was no criticism of Al-Jazeera from the Times itself, which merely relayed accurate Israeli criticism in a dismissive tone, even though Al-Jazeera has shown terrorist sympathies like throwing a “birthday party” with cake and fireworks in 2008, to celebrate the release of Lebanese terrorist, who killed four in Israel, including a four-year-old girl (see MEMRI’s clip). The Times also failed to mention that Al Jazeera reporters Ismail Abu Omar and Mohamed Washah were caught moonlighting as Hamas commanders. In February, The Times of Israel reported that "the IDF revealed a trove of images" that showed Washah in a Hamas uniform training fighters how to shoot rocket-propelled grenades, build warheads, and operate drones armed with an RPG. "Abu Omar infiltrated into Israel and filmed from inside Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s onslaught," they noted.   #عاجل #خاص في الصباح صحفي في قناة #الجزيرة وفي المساء مخرب في حماس! @AJArabic ⭕️خلال نشاط لقواتنا قبل عدة أسابيع داخل احدى معسكرات حماس في شمال قطاع غزة تم ضبط كمبيوتر متحرك يعود إلى المدعو محمد سمير محمد وشاح من مواليد 1986 من البريج حيث يتضح من المستندات ان محمد وشاح هو قائد… pic.twitter.com/s8CX1kOfvP — افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) February 11, 2024   By contrast, the Times has eagerly highlighted moves to squash outlets run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s supposedly dangerously right-wing news outlets. Censorship fever (from another media outlet!) ran particularly high in late 2020 and 2021, with the Times attacking Murdoch on bogus issues like climate change or spreading extremism. In February 2021, London bureau chief Mark Landler’s obsessive hostility toward Murdoch’s media empire was on display in his coverage of two fledgling right-of-center news outlets, in “Murdoch to Challenge U.K.’s Fairness Statute With Fox News Playbook.” He began with a tiresome attack against the “poisonous political culture” of Fox News, then suggested Murdoch could be banned in Britain, “where television news is regulated to avoid political bias.” In October 2020, Times reporter Isabella Kwai filed on an online petition in Australia targeting Murdoch, posted by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, asking “the government to establish a Royal Commission, the country’s highest form of inquiry, into the dominance of Australian media by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp.” Rudd called “Murdoch “an arrogant cancer on our democracy.” An impartial voice for sure! In January 2021, columnist Nicholas Kristof launched a quest to ban Fox News from basic cable packages (just for a start) in order to “stop supporting networks that spread lies and hatred, and cable companies should drop channels that persist in doing so….” But now that a left-wing anti-Israel outlet is being temporarily suspended during wartime, the Times conveniently morphs back into free-speech absolutists.

Ugh: PBS Hails ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Court Win for Minors, Including Mastectomy

The PBS NewsHour was back to its old rhetorical tricks this week on the LGBTQ front. Lately the outlet has been reacting with pro-transgender alarm when yet another state restricts transgender surgery for minors. But it had cause to celebrate on Tuesday, covering a “groundbreaking ruling” that somehow didn’t shake up the other media outlets enough to cover. PBS teamed up with its fellow taxpayer-funded outlet National Public Radio to bring the joyful news that a federal appellate court in Richmond had ruled that so-called “gender-affirming care” must be covered by state health care plans in West Virginia and North Carolina. They used that Orwellian term no less than ten times in the segment. including in the supportive introduction from host Amna Nawaz: “A federal appeals court issued a groundbreaking ruling last night ensuring that gender-affirming surgery is covered by state-run health insurance programs.” The entire exchange took place in a liberal bubble, with zero mention of conservative counterpoints -- no  inconvenient questions about gender transition, or how a biological man can become a woman, or if the government should be obligated to pay for such a change. NPR health reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin -- who provided a similar bubble of an interview to transgender Biden appointee Adm. Rachel Levine two years ago, that there was "no scientific debate" on these surgeries -- only cared about how the "trans community" greeted the news. Reporter Stephanie Sy explained: ...this decision centered around two lawsuits, with trans people in West Virginia and North Carolina suing to secure insurance coverage for gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy and surgery." Sy crowed, "It is a win for the trans community, but it may not be the final word on the issue." Selena Simmons-Duffin, health-policy reporter, NPR: I think this is a really significant ruling. The Fourth Circuit's majority opinion was really strong and called discrimination against trans patients on these plans to be -- quote -- "obviously discriminatory." I think that the big takeaway is that insurers are not going to be able to say that they're going to cover this care for some patients with some diagnoses and not for others. If they're going to be covering things like sex hormones and mastectomies for some patients, they're going to have to cover it for trans patients as well. And I do think that it's really seen in the trans community as a major win, and it cuts against some of the trends of more litigation and more restrictions that we have seen in statehouses across the country. Sy: Selena, how far-reaching is this ruling? Does this mean trans people with state medical plans are now covered for gender-affirming care where they couldn't or where they weren't before? Simmons-Duffin explained that the ruling was a signal that “trans people are protected under the law,” as if they weren’t protected by law before. Both reporters ignored the traumatic effects of gender surgery (including hormone replacement theory and even chemical and physical castration) on children in their eagerness over the medical insurance decision, while continuing their happy talk about “gender-affirming care.” Sy: We have seen in the last few years some two dozen states pass restrictive laws on gender-affirming care specifically for minors. Does this decision, Selena, apply to minors covered by state medical plans, even in states where legislatures have banned care? Simmons-Duffin: ….it is important to differentiate this from some of the other cases around gender-affirming care for minors, because this is really about insurance coverage and whether insurers can make the distinction that they're going to cover hormones and mastectomies with certain conditions, but not for people with gender dysphoria. In this case, they said that's not going to fly and that needs to stop…. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS NewsHour 4/30/24 7:13:54 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: A federal appeals court issued a groundbreaking ruling last night ensuring that gender-affirming surgery is covered by state-run health insurance programs. Stephanie Sy has that report. Stephanie Sy: Amna, this decision centered around two lawsuits, with trans people in West Virginia and North Carolina suing to secure insurance coverage for gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy and surgery. The federal appellate court in Richmond, split 8-6, ordered that the state health care plans — quote — "reinstate coverage for medically necessary services for the treatment of gender dysphoria." The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote briefs in support of the trans plaintiffs. It is a win for the trans community, but it may not be the final word on the issue. For more on all of this, I'm joined by NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin, who covers health policy for NPR. Selena, it's good to see you on the "NewsHour." So, as you know, there are numerous court cases around the country about transgender rights and access to gender-affirming care. How significant was this ruling, and what are the big takeaways to you? Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR: I think this is a really significant ruling. The Fourth Circuit's majority opinion was really strong and called discrimination against trans patients on these plans to be — quote — "obviously discriminatory." I think that the big takeaway is that insurers are not going to be able to say that they're going to cover this care for some patients with some diagnoses and not for others. If they're going to be covering things like sex hormones and mastectomies for some patients, they're going to have to cover it for trans patients as well. And I do think that it's really seen in the trans community as a major win, and it cuts against some of the trends of more litigation and more restrictions that we have seen in statehouses across the country. Stephanie Sy: Selena, how far-reaching is this ruling? Does this mean trans people with state medical plans are now covered for gender-affirming care where they couldn't or where they weren't before? Selena Simmons-Duffin: Well, actually, in both of these cases, the state plan in North Carolina and Medicaid's — Medicaid in West Virginia, they already had to start covering this care after the district court ruled in the plaintiff's favor in 2022. So people have been able to bill for this and get coverage for this in the last two years, but what the appellate ruling does is really solidify that coverage. And as I said, it also signals to other plans in other states around the country that this is care that needs to be covered and that trans people are protected under the law. Stephanie Sy: We have seen in the last few years some two dozen states pass restrictive laws on gender-affirming care specifically for minors. Does this decision, Selena, apply to minors covered by state medical plans, even in states where legislatures have banned care? Selena Simmons-Duffin: I should say that there were plaintiffs in these cases that were minors. So, for example, in North Carolina, there were some members of the plan who joined the case on behalf of their dependent minor child who was transgender. And so they were seeking coverage for the care of that child. But I think it is important to differentiate this from some of the other cases around gender-affirming care for minors, because this is really about insurance coverage and whether insurers can make the distinction that they're going to cover hormones and mastectomies with certain conditions, but not for people with gender dysphoria. In this case, they said that's not going to fly and that needs to stop. But one thing I also wanted to mention is that, in the realm of bans across the country in different states for gender-affirming care for youth, just today, in Kansas, the Statehouse was unable to override the veto of the governor who had vetoed the ban on gender-affirming care for youth in that state. So I think advocates are really hoping that this does — even beyond the realm of its actual reach, it does send a signal to different places, to governors, to statehouses to say, this isn't a winning issue and the courts are starting to fall in their favor, although it has been a mixed bag in the courts. Stephanie Sy: Yes, absolutely. In this particular case — and you quoted it — the majority wrote that, when it comes to the state's exclusion of gender-affirming care for medical plans — quote — "We hold that the coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity." It said the exclusions, in essence, violate the 14th Amendment and provisions in the Affordable Care Act. There are so many transgender rights issues mired in the courts right now. Selena, do you see the Supreme Court taking all this up any time soon? I know, in this case, West Virginia's attorney general has already said he is appealing. Selena Simmons-Duffin: Yes, I mean, court watchers and policy watchers that I have talked to really think that a case is going to reach the Supreme Court at some point, and probably soon. But the Supreme Court has been sending some mixed messages on this. So there was a gender-affirming caravan in Idaho that the Supreme Court allowed to take effect. But then there are other cases, including one from the Fourth Circuit that was related to transgender students participating in sports, that the Supreme Court declined to take. And that was a win for the transgender plaintiff in that case. Court watchers suggest that it seems like the Supreme Court is maybe reluctant to jump into the fray, but there has been so much litigation in this area and so many laws being passed that it just seems inevitable that the Supreme Court will have to weigh in and give some clarity.

NPR: Columbia Agitators' Call for 'Intifada' Just an 'Anti-Israel Slogan'?

Taxpayer-supported National Public Radio has picked sides in the Israel-Hamas war, supporting the students/terrorist supporters camping on the quads of progressive colleges campuses. This is how NPR’s Up First newsletter (a summary of what NPR considers the must-know stories of the day) on Wednesday morning described the illegal occupation by pro-Hamas agitators at Columbia University: NPR's Brian Mann tells Up First that Columbia students were shocked, dismayed, and stunned by the overwhelming force used by police. Columbia spokesman Ben Chang said in a press conference that protesters were frightening other students. Mann adds that despite this, there’s been a lot of community support for these encampments. Lena Whitney, a City College graduate who witnessed the police action last night, told NPR, “These students are putting their lives at risk; they’re putting their jobs, their diplomas at risk because they’re fighting for something bigger -- the right to life for Palestinians.” One would have to dig up the online transcript of Mann’s report, which aired first on Wednesday’s Morning Edition --“NYC police used force to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment at Columbia” -- to confirm the campus disruptors at Columbia heard on the report's background tape were in fact chanting “intifada,” support for the killing of Jews. A Martinez, Host: ….Across the country, the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University is gone this morning, and the campus building that protesters had seized is empty. Police forced their way into the building and arrested and zip-tied the hands of dozens of students who began their demonstration two weeks ago…. NPR’s reporter Mann committed bias by omission, reporting only that “Hundreds of students were defiant at first, A. They were chanting anti-Israel slogans and calling for divestment from doing business with Israel.” Calling for Israel’s destruction via “intifada” -- which Mann didn’t even acknowledge directly -- isn’t just an “anti-Israel slogan” and certainly isn’t a mere call for divestment. It calls up memories of the Second Intifada and the suicide bombers who murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians on buses and in cafes. Unidentified Protester: (Chanting) Intifada, intifada. Unidentified Protesters: (Chanting) Intifada, intifada. Unidentified Protester: (Chanting) Long live the intifada. Unidentified Protesters: (Chanting) Long live the intifada. Still, NPR stuck up for the terrorist supporters and their (illegal) occupation of a campus building. Mann: At one point, A, a student appeared on top of Hamilton Hall. That's the building they occupied Monday night. That student waved a Palestinian flag. But then around 9:30 p.m. last night, a huge number of NYPD officers in riot gear charged the campus. And the student crowd fell back. They were clearly frightened. The NYPD used a massive armored vehicle to push a bridge into a window of Hamilton Hall…. Martinez: Wow, what a scene. How did students react to all this? Mann: Yeah, with shock and dismay. I spoke to one student who was stunned by the overwhelming force. She wouldn't give her name because she fears reprisal by Columbia University. Unidentified Student: Myself and many other students have just felt horror seeing the swiftness with which the NYPD came and deploy themselves onto our campus. Mann ran a bite from a Columbia spokesman who said protesters had “created a threatening environment for many, including our Jewish students and faculty.” Still, the reporter located “a lot of community support” for the agitators, including the bystander Up First found interesting. Mann: You know, many politicians in New York City, including bipartisan members of Congress have condemned these protests, describing them as unlawful and antisemitic. That's a charge many students reject. There's also been a lot of community support for these encampments. NPR spoke last night with Leena Widdi, who watched this police action. She's a graduate of City College. Leena Widdi: Students are putting their lives at risk. They're putting their jobs, their diplomas at risk 'cause they know that they're fighting for something bigger, which is the right to life for Palestinians.

PBS’s Amanpour Celebrates ‘Heart of the Pro-Palestinian Campus Peace Movement’

On Monday’s Amanpour & Co., which runs on PBS and CNN International, host Christiane Amanpour took the side of the pro-Hamas campus protesters who are spewing anti-Jewish rhetoric on “progressive” college campuses nationwide -- no surprise given her long-standing journalistic hostility toward Israel. Against all evidence she insisted that the campus occupiers were “mostly nonviolent” idealists and that concerns had been blown “out of proportion.” Occupying private property is illegal, hence police may be called. Amanpour: Now, a major development sparked by this war is a growing protest and peace movement on college campuses across the United States. Though mostly nonviolent, several schools have called in local police and National Guard troops….the epicenter of all of this is Columbia University, where today, with negotiations between students and the administration at an impasse, the university called on protesters to clear their encampment or face suspension. Amanpour invited on a student journalist, introduced in the show opener like this: "Isabella Ramirez editor in chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator, reports from the heart of the pro-Palestinian campus peace movement." Ugh.   To her credit, she asked her about “student-on-student verbal harassment that has been cited as very damaging and uncomfortable and frightening by some of the Jewish students.” Ramirez replied her paper had “compiled pretty extensive reports regarding this, most particularly when in the aftermath of one of our campus rabbis telling Jewish students, hundreds of Jewish students to leave campus, to not stay because of the environment," including "particularly violent signage that was used to refer to actually Hamas...." But Amanpour then made the college administration the aggressors for calling on the local police to dissolve the disruptive and threatening takeover of the campus. Amanpour complained Columbia's president Minouche Shafik had been "hauled before" Congress to answer to anti-semitism on campus.  Amanpour:  I'm just fascinated to know what you think and how you're writing about the very targeted political situation that's layered upon all of this. Because after that, Shafik, did, as we've been talking, call in the NYPD to break up the protest. Now, it's interesting that the chief of the NYPD patrol on the U.S. said the students who were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner. And your newspaper wrote in an editorial, history has made clear who stood on the wrong side then. And it's clear that this is the side you are aligning yourself with now…. Ramirez replied with a laundry list of past protest movements at Columbia, then said her paper's editorial board was trying to warn the college president about her legacy if the wake of “the forceful removal of students from campus and also this crackdown on student protests.” Amanpour: And as we continue to chat, you know, we've seen on other universities, including Emory, it caused a huge ruckus, what happened on Emory, when a teacher -- a professor was essentially manhandled. Other teachers tried to help, faculty members, student, I think it was the police and the state guard or whatever they call them. It was a very rough situation over the weekend in Atlanta…. Ramirez turned understandable concerns about anti-Semitic rhetoric and “scholarship” by Columbia professors into a free speech issue (this after years of liberal academics calling out “micro-aggressions” against campus minorities). She said, "there has been this really big question as to whether the university has done enough to kind of protect academic freedom." Amanpour relayed the views of left-wing students and faculty, which seemingly morphed into her own view of the situation, that concerns about the campus encampments were being blown “out of proportion,” while inviting Ramirez to criticize mainstream media coverage of the protests, as if they were all too conservative. Amanpour: ….a lot of the faculty and some of the students have criticized the way we, the press, have covered these protests, some call it a peace movement. It's not even, you know -- it's not meant to be violence, it's meant to be nonviolent. And obviously, social media is blowing it out of proportion. You're watching it from the inside. Do you have a comment on the way the national press has been covering it? Ramirez demurred, and talked only about how the students can cover it because they live right there on campus. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS Amanpour & Co. 4/30/24 1:48:55 a.m. (ET) CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, a major development sparked by this war is a growing protest and peace movement on college campuses across the United States. Though mostly nonviolent, several schools have called in local police and National Guard troops. Today in Paris, French police entered the Sorbonne University campus to remove students occupying the main square. Now, the epicenter of all of this is Columbia University, where today, with negotiations between students and the administration at an impasse, the university called on protesters to clear their encampment or face suspension. Some of the most valuable reporting on all this comes from inside the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator. Editor in Chief Isabella Ramirez. Joins us from New York. Isabella Ramirez, welcome to the program. And, you know, I can't tell you how much we've read about what an excellent job you are doing and your, you know, student newspaper, your on campus journalist. What can you tell us is the latest right now as we sit here talking? ISABELLA RAMIREZ, EDITOR IN CHIEF, COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR: Today is going to be a very significant day in terms of our developments. This morning, our president, Minouche Shafik, sent out an e-mail effectively saying that negotiations failed to reach an agreement. And it, for the first time, outlined very explicitly that Columbia will not divest from Israel, which is the central demand of the protesters. As well as, in that e-mail, it laid out, what, the university actually brought to the table to those negotiators, to those student negotiators and included a series of very interesting things, including offering a list of financial transparency of direct holdings of the university that is -- would be accessible to students and updating that list. It also offered to potentially invest in health and education in Gaza, as well as create an expedited process for divestment proposals. And those were all the things that essentially those students would have rejected because it did not fulfill what their central demands would be. And one of the interesting things as well is that that e-mail did not include anything about amnesty for the students, which has also been a very big thing for the arrested and suspended students. And so, now, the university has been handling out notices to those students at the encampment at this moment warning of disciplinary action, and they have until 2:00 p.m. today to potentially clear out if not to face, again, disciplinary action. And at the same time that this is happening, we're hearing word from the encampment, they made an announcement essentially saying that they have voted to stay. AMANPOUR: Wow. RAMIREZ: So, the students currently have voted to stay past 2:00 p.m. and face those suspensions. And just to add one more thing, the suspensions are actually even more severe than previous. The previous suspended students who were suspended simultaneous to the first wave of arrests that happened, you know, on April 18th, those students were allowed to stay on campus, at least in the residential spaces. This interim suspension says they would have no access to any campus buildings, including residences, dorms, dining, et cetera, IDs completely deactivated, which would effectively evict a lot of those students or at least leave them without access to the residence halls and other important buildings. So, the consequences are now much more severe. AMANPOUR: So, it seems, honestly, Isabella, that it's a real standoff that there seems to be, you know, little peace building or bridge building between either side and both sides, administration and students are really holding the toughest positions right now. I don't know whether you see any way forward, but what I want to ask you is, you know, you're watching this, you're talking to people on campus, you also see the ruckus that's being created outside the campus. Can you tel us what is the real picture? What -- is it dangerous, violent on campus? Is that off campus? What are you seeing as journalists from inside? RAMIREZ: So, at the very beginning stages, there were -- there was a lot of activity in terms of protest activity, both outside of our campus on campus. To be frank, that off campus protest activity has held quite a bit. It has calmed down. That is where a lot of people were sort of citing a lot more tension in terms of when it came to, you know, certain chance or certain incidents that were arising from those outside protests. But predominantly for right now, the encampment has sort of remained the same. And there's been very few updates sort of on the day to day. That's why today is actually quite a big day. But, you know, I was just at the encampment pretty recently distributing our newspaper and really, when you walk on and you see it, it's students sort of laying on the lawn, you know, chatting, reading books, getting water, getting food. It's a really interesting environment because we are certain that there are a lot of students who have reported feeling uncomfortable, have reported feeling unsafe by the presence of the encampment. But also, when you walk onto it, there isn't like active protests necessarily occurring on the encampment itself, it's mostly just the state of occupying that space and kind of being on that space, and there being kind of a series of other activities often but very little in terms of tangible protest. There is going to be probably more escalation we can anticipate as a result of the university's crackdown. And that's sort of why we saw, in the first place, some of those outside protests come in and also some of the students themselves start to galvanize in terms of upping their protest activity was because or was in response to the arrests and also university crackdown. But for these past few days where everything hs been at sort of a -- the negotiations have stalled, it has been pretty, you know, regular in terms of just the students laying on the lawns and, you know, kind of doing their day-to-day activity and programming, sometimes even tuning in to class from the lawn. AMANPOUR: Isabella, did you see, or were you able to hear the kind of, you know, student on student verbal harassment that has been cited as very damaging and uncomfortable and frightening by some of the Jewish students? RAMIREZ: Yes, we have compiled pretty extensive reports regarding this, most particularly when in the aftermath of one of our campus rabbis telling Jewish students, hundreds of Jewish students to not -- to leave campus, to not stay because of the environment. We, in that report, were able to compile a series of incidents that had happened. I believe on the Saturday following the arrests, much were related to off campus protest somewhere on campus that involved certain rhetoric, some of which was evocative of the Holocaust, telling students to go back to Poland, go back to Europe. And there were also other particularly violent signage that was used to refer to actually Hamas and that was one singular protest, that was a protester that was holding that sign and referring to the pro-Israel protesters behind them. And so, we have seen those incidents, and for sure, it has come up quite a lot in the dialogue when it comes to Shafik's communication to the community and all communication we've been receiving from the administration has been very strongly condemning the particular incidents that have arisen from this. Now, is that to say that that represents the entirety of the protesters at the encampment or all of the sort of different moving pieces? I think that is, of course, probably too wide sweeping, but there have certainly been these incidents that should draw concern for our community in half. AMANPOUR: So, let's go back. There's so much politics as well. You just mentioned the president, Minouche Shafik, who is new, let's face it. She started at the beginning of this academic year and has been hauled, like the others, in front of the special committee in Congress. I want to play a little bit of what happened on April 17th as you guys were -- well, not you, but the campus protesters were building the encampment. This is an exchange between Shafik and the GOP Representative Lisa McClain. REP. LISA MCCLAIN (R-MI): Are mobs shouting, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free or, long live the intifada. Are those antisemitic comments? MINOUCHE SHAFIK, PRESIDENT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: When I hear those terms, I find them very upsetting. And I have heard -- MCCLAIN: That's a great answer to a question I didn't ask. Is that fall under definition of antisemitic behavior? Yes or no? Why is it so tough? SHAFIK: Because it's a difficult issue. MCCLAIN: Maybe I should ask your task force. Does that qualify as antisemitic behavior, those statements? Yes or no? Yes. OK. Do you agree with your task force? SHAFIK: Yes, we agree. The question is what to do about it? MCCLAIN: So, yes. So, the -- so, yes, you do -- AMANPOUR: So, I'm just fascinated to know what you think and how you're writing about the very targeted political situation that's layered upon all of this. Because after that, Shafik, did, as we've been talking, call in the NYPD to break up the protest. Now, it's interesting that the chief of the NYPD patrol on the U.S. said the students who were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner. And your newspaper wrote in an editorial, history has made clear who stood on the wrong side then. And it's clear that this is the side you are aligning yourself with now. This will be your legacy. Are you -- were you addressing the president and the administration? RAMIREZ: Yes. So actually, our editorial board, I do not serve on, but it represents a sector of our opinion team who is very talented and has been working very hard on, you know, kind of reflecting discourse in a different way, because I oversee both the opinion and the newsroom. But that was -- that piece in particular was addressing Shafik herself. It was attempting to say, Shafik, take a look at what your legacy looks like right now to the public, to your students, to the administration. And I think a lot of it is inspired as well by what we know from previous protests at Columbia, 1968, Vietnam, antiwar, South African apartheid, these are all huge moments in Columbia's history in which those presidents also have been looked upon for the decisions that they made at that time. And now, when we reflect on it now, there is, of course, a lot of disdain and criticism for those decisions. So, I believe what the editorial board was really trying to get out here is, you know, really warning President Shafik as to what your legacy will entail if it means, you know, the forceful removal of students from campus and also this crackdown on student protests. Now, of course, there are many differing opinions here, but that was the opinion reflected by our editorial board in terms of what the majority voted for. AMANPOUR: And as we continue to chat, you know, we've seen on other universities, including Emory, it caused a huge ruckus, what happened on Emory, when a teacher -- a professor was essentially manhandled. Other teachers tried to help, faculty members, student, you know, the -- I think it was the police and the state guard or whatever they call them. It was a very rough situation over the weekend in Atlanta. But I guess what I want to ask you, because Columbia is known around the world for, you know, it's history of student protests, but most importantly, it's very enviable and distinguished Middle East program. You have a very important Middle East studies on Arab and Palestinian studies. You have very, very important Jewish studies program. What do you think happened? Why can't people talk to each other? RAMIREZ: I think part of it is that there is -- encircling all of this, encircling the protest activity is there's a big conversation about academic freedom at Columbia and sort of what are the limits of that, but as well as has the university done enough to protect those -- the academic freedom of the professors on our campus. And we saw that as well in the congressional hearing. Congress went very, very hard on Columbia for, naming multiple faculty members by name, most of whom came from the department regarding statements that they had made, scholarship, and other things that they have taught in their classrooms as, of course, labeling them antisemitic and unsafe. And so, there has been this really big question as to whether the university has done enough to kind of protect academic freedom in the first place to allow that discourse to even happen. And so, I think, you know, in terms of agree, like our tradition here at Columbia of both our Middle Eastern Studies Department, but also our immense connections too, we have the Jewish Theological Seminary, we have a -- controversial, but we have a relationship through a program with Tel Aviv University. We have these very deep-seated ties to this issue in particular Edward Said, many scholars who are considered foundational in Israeli and Palestinian issues. And so, a big question here has, though, been, what is academic freedom, what is the university's role in protecting it, and has Columbia, in this time frame, under political pressures, under student pressures, has it done enough to protect that and allow that discourse to occur on its campus? AMANPOUR: And briefly, we got just a little bit left. You know, a lot of the faculty and some of the students have criticized the way we, the press, have covered these protests, some call it a peace movement. It's not even, you know -- it's not meant to be violence, it's meant to be nonviolent. And obviously, social media is blowing it out of proportion. You're watching it from the inside. Do you have a comment on the way the national press has been covering it?

PBS's Favorite 'Republican' Claims the GOP Now Is an 'Autocratic Movement'

Former Mitt Romney strategist Stuart Stevens is senior adviser of the Lincoln Project, a never-Trump “Republican” outfit whose pathetic anti-GOP stunts and scandals have discredited it everywhere but in the mainstream media, where it remains a reliable source for smears of the modern-day Republican party as fascistic. Stuart took his familiar act to Tuesday’s edition of Amanpour & Co., which airs on PBS. Host Christiane Amanpour used Steven’s spicy quote in her show opener: Stuart Stevens: Now, it's been a lot of sleepless nights trying to come to grips with it, but the Republican Party now is an autocratic movement. (Stevens is a popular “Republican” in PBS-land. In October 2023 he pumped his then-new book The Conspiracy to End America on the PBS NewsHour comparing his old party to Nazis.) Stevens was interviewed by co-host Walter Isaacson, who identified Stewart as “part of the anti-Trump movement in the Republican Party.” What? He's a former Republican. Isaacson asked him if Trump being on trial would hurt or help his presidential campaign. Stevens had to admit the optics of Trump on trial could work in the candidate’s favor: "It's the grievance campaign. I am your retribution. The deep state is out to get us. What better proof that the deep state is out to get us than the deep state has me on trial.” Prompted by Isaacson, Stevens alleged Trump supported Russian dictator Vladimir Putin before getting to the money quote. Stevens: “And I've spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to come to grips with it, but the Republican Party now is an autocratic movement. And I think what you see in front of the Supreme Court, where they're actually trying to make the case that a president is above the law, it's just further proof that. It's why they -- the conservative movement is in love with Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin.” Isaacson quoted from Stevens saying the Biden team has to be amazed at "how is this guy still in the race?" Stevens painted the GOP as racist. Stevens: You know, a lot of this ultimately has to do with race, Walter. We're a country that's headed to becoming a minority-majority country. If you're 16 years and under in America, you -- the majority are nonwhite. Trump's base is 85 percent white. And it's that reality that drives so much of the Republican Party's efforts to change election laws and to sort of curate the election.” Prodded by Isaacson, Stevens got more and more worked up, and, yes "alarmist." Stevens: ….it's difficult to talk about this without sounding alarmist, and language is one of the issues that, you know, we struggle with. But I think if Donald Trump wins this election, it will be the last election that we can recognize as a normal American election. I know these people. As bad as you think they are, they are worse. They want a different America, and they're open about it when you really listen to them, and that's why they embrace Russia so much. They look at Russia, and they say, OK. Russia, no nonwhite people in power. Putin says there's no gays in Russia. There's no women in power. Elections are performative, but not decisive. That looks pretty good. And they embrace that…. Excepting a question about anti-Trumpers, including Sen. Liz Cheney, journalist Isaacson just facilitated Stevens and his long, broad smear of one of America’s two main political parties. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” Amanpour & Co. 5/1/24 2:03:04 a.m. (ET) CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Stuart Stevens, a former Republican strategist, admits that he's still coming to grips today's GOP and its embrace of a man facing 91 criminal charges, and the grand old party's creeping authoritarian character, as he explains with Walter Isaacson. WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Stuart Stevens, welcome back to the show. STUART STEVENS, SENIOR ADVISER, THE LINCOLN PROJECT AND AUTHOR, "IT WAS ALL A LIE": Great to see you, Walter. Thanks. ISAACSON: You've been a Republican strategist most of your life, worked for George Bush, Mitt Romney, and then have been part of the anti-Trump movement in the Republican Party. Now, you're watching him on trial. In some ways, he's running on the notion of grievance and persecution. Does this trial help him or hurt him? STEVENS: Well, you know, I mean, I think that the sort of headline on this is that Trump is still a viable candidate and he's on trial. That in itself is extraordinary. Look, I think if you're one of the smart people running the Trump campaign, and they do have smart professionals now, this isn't what your ideal scenario would have been. But at the same time, it's not disqualifying for Trump, which it would be for any other candidate I can think of. And what -- the essence of that is that Trump's campaign, particularly in this cycle, is based on being a victim. It's the grievance campaign. I am your retribution. The deep state is out to get us. What better proof that the deep state is out to get us than the deep state has me on trial. ISAACSON: And you say these are really smart people running the campaign. Are they going to use this to help this politics of grievance? STEVENS: Yes, they're going to use it to try to eat as a proof point. You know, if you have -- you have to get inside their heads, Walter, the whole Trump thing. So, in their world, Trump won the presidency, the White House has been stolen. And the only way that they can stop Trump, who was the legally elected president, they say, from winning again is to put them in jail. So, this is just that process of the deep state trying to take away from you, the voter, your right to choose your president, and they would say, restore democracy. It's sort of like the aliens built the pyramids. Once you understand that, everything else makes a lot of sense. You know, the problem is aliens didn't build the pyramids. But that's how they see the world and this fits into that worldview. ISAACSON: If Trump were not on trial, if there had not been all of these indictments, would he be in a stronger or a weaker position? STEVENS: I think that the indictments helped him in the primary because it then became necessary to support Trump in the primary to prove that what the Democrats were saying and they put in the same Democrats in the deep state are exactly the same. I don't think it is going to help him in the general election. I think that there's something that is going to be disconcerting and wearing the people to see a potential president of the United States, a former president of the United States on trial in multiple jurisdictions. ISAACSON: But wait, haven't people been saying this for a year or two that eventually wear down? STEVENS: Yes. Yes. But the audience has been -- the audience that has been voting has been that primary audience. And it was fascinating to see the split in the primary electorate that pretty much the threshold belief that if you voted for Trump, you believe that he won the presidency last time. Very few of Nikki Haley's voters believe that. The majority of the country doesn't believe that. So, I just think that -- you know, I've compared the Trump candidacy to somebody walking around with a paper bag full of water. I don't think it's going to leak, but I think there's a very good chance it's going to go -- and when it goes, it's going to be very hard to put the water back in the bag.   ISAACSON: Were you surprised that the Republican Party, not just a hardcore base, but a majority of people in the primaries, rallied around him that way?   STEVENS: Oh, Walter, you know, I had a going out of business sale with any optimism in the Republican Party. I think that we've seen a complete collapse of any moral authority of the party. And the people to blame are not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is just being Donald Trump. It's all of the people that you and I know, and I helped elect a lot of them, who before Trump, they wouldn't have had lunch with Trump. They wouldn't let Trump in their house. They know that he's destructive to democracy. They know he's not a conservative. They know that Putin helped elect him. And yet, they still support him. ISAACSON: Why is that? STEVENS: That is a profound question. And I asked myself that. And that led me to write this book, "It Was All a Lie." And what -- the only conclusion I come to that makes any sense to me, and I think it makes any sense at all, is that all of these things that we espoused as deep values, Walter, that the party held, character counts, strong on Soviet Union, strong on Russia, the deficit matters, all of these things, we said were values were in fact just marketing slogans. So, OK, that's not the case then. So, character really doesn't count. Sure, we'll support the candidate who supports Vladimir Putin in, you know, the largest war in Europe since World War II. I don't know how else to come to a conclusion because people don't abandon deeply held beliefs in a couple of years. And the party has just walked away from these.   You know, the Republican Party now doesn't really exist as a normal American political party in any kind of tradition. It exists to defeat Democrats. And, you know, that's how cartels operate. Nobody asks OPEC, what is your higher purpose? You sell oil. And, you know, it's not like a fun thing to admit. And I've spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to come to grips with it, but the Republican Party now is an autocratic movement. And I think what you see in front of the Supreme Court, where they're actually trying to make the case that a president is above the law, it's just further proof that. It's why they -- the conservative movement is in love with Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. ISAACSON: There's a group of people in the Republican Party who have, of course, pushed back Liz Cheney, most prominent among them, even Senator Mitt Romney, Former Vice President Mike Pence. Do you see the possibility that more and more Republicans like that will come forward between now and the election? STEVENS: I don't think there's many Republicans like them. I think if Trump is convicted it might make a difference with some. You know what – I think it's very interesting to look at, say, Chris Christie, who was a former client of mine. Loved the guy. Could not believe he endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. I remember standing at Atlanta Airport and seeing, you know, CNN and literally tears came to my eyes. It was like, how is this person that I love doing this. And I think he would say it was a mistake now, which is good. What he's going out there and saying now is what should have been said. But when you listen to Chris Christie, how do you come to any other conclusion but you have to support Joe Biden? Same with Asa Hutchinson, who ran in the Republican primary, former governor of Arkansas, another former client of mine, a really good and decent human being, and you may not agree with his politics. He has to support. Liz Cheney has to support Biden. Mitt Romney will support Biden. I think --   ISAACSON: Well, you think or he should -- STEVENS: I think they will. I think those two definitely will. ISAACSON: Do you think that Biden -- and Biden hadn't called them yet? Do you think Biden should reach out to all of them and create a Republicans for Biden committee? STEVENS: Sure. When the time is right. You know, if a prominent Republican came to me and said, I want to endorse Joe Biden, my advice, as wearing my political consultant hat, would be, that's great. I would wait. Because if you do it now, it's not going to mean as much as if you do it, say, during the Democratic Convention. And timing is pretty much everything in politics. So, I hope this will happen. If Trump is convicted, it may make that entry ramp a little smoother. But really, you don't need a conviction in any of these trials to know that Donald Trump should not be president. So, you know, it's just -- I mean, think about it, Walter, the Republican Party doesn't have room for a Cheney? Really? A Cheney? What do you do with that? And there is no Republican Party to go back to. And people just have to come to grips with that. There's a kind of false hope that somehow we can just look beyond Trump, and McConnell expressed a lot of this, and a lot of these sort of gentry Republicans have held their nose and say, well, you know, we're just going to be able to put Trump behind us. No, no. The party -- there is a need for a center right conservative party in America. That cannot be the Republican Party as it's currently construed.   ISAACSON: So, wait. What happens if there's a need for a center right party and the Republican Party has abandoned that? What do you see down the road?   STEVENS: I think 2032 is the best hope that you could have a sane center right party that will emerge. You know, pain is the best teacher in politics. Arguably, maybe the only teacher. And what needs to happen is Republicans need to lose, and they need to lose again and again. And then, out of some sense of survival, you could see a sane party emerging. You know, a lot of this ultimately has to do with race, Walter. We're a country that's headed to becoming a minority majority country. If you're 16 years and under in America, you -- the majority are nonwhite. Trump's base is 85 percent white. And it's that reality that drives so much of the Republican Party's efforts to change election laws and to sort of curate the election. ISAACSON: You talk about the politics of grievance and of anti-corporate, anti-state feelings. How does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fit into this equation? STEVENS: It's a great question. I think it comes down to who RFK. Jr. is. If come October, and RFK Jr. is defined as a crusading environmentalist lawyer that took on big corporations, that guy's going to hurt Joe Biden. If RFK Jr. is defined as this wacky conspiracy nut who has said that there is no safe vaccine, which means he's basically the, you know, anti-polio vaccine candidate who believes -- has expressed these conspiracies about the CIA killing his father and how, you know, Prozac leads to school shootings, I think that guy will probably hurt Trump more. But, you know, if it was up to me, I would rather just have a straight race with no third-party candidates. It's a cleaner race. You have to make it a choice between Trump and Biden. And there are voters out there who don't like Trump, who are uncomfortable with Biden. If you give them any sort of socially accepted off ramp, my fear is that they'll take them. That was a great fallacy of a No Labels candidate. And all the candidates they talked about definitely would have just helped elect Donald Trump, which maybe is one of the reasons that ultimately, they didn't go forward. But, you know, in The Lincoln Project, we're out there defining Robert Kennedy for what he is, a conspiracy nut who's anti-vaxxer. I think that's what needs to be done. And I hope that's who he is in October. ISAACSON: The last few lines of your op-ed, let me quote them to you. You say, we should not normalize how extraordinary it is that Mr. Trump is still a viable candidate for president. The Biden campaign will watch the spectacle unfold asking, how is this guy still in the race? So, let me ask you, how is this guy still in the race? STEVENS: It goes, I think, to a fundamental hollowness that existed within the Republican Party that Trump brought to light. ISAACSON: But also, the American electorate? STEVENS: Well, you look at among Democrats, Trump is, you know, not getting a lot of support. But yes, you would have to say he is appealing to a dark side of America. And we've had other candidates who did that. George Wallace did it. We just didn't have him nominated by a major political party. The Democratic Party rejected George Wallace. The Republican Party embraced it. You know, I think that there has been, by the establishment of the Republican Party embracing Trump, it has given a permission structure for people who are troubled by a lot of Trump to say, well, he couldn't -- he must not be that bad. I think he's a little weird and all this, but, hey, my governor -- I know my governor better. My Senator, they're normal humans. They support Trump. And that is the failure of the party not to stand up to Trump. But look, if you're going to ask me if Donald Trump wins his next race, does it say something that's very, very troubling about the future of democracy? My answer overwhelmingly is yes. You know, it's difficult to talk about this without sounding alarmist, and language is one of the issues that, you know, we struggle with. But I think if Donald Trump wins this election, it will be the last election that we can recognize as a normal American election. I know these people. As bad as you think they are, they are worse. They want a different America, and they're open about it when you really listen to them, and that's why they embrace Russia so much. They look at Russia, and they say, OK. Russia, no nonwhite people in power. Putin says there's no gays in Russia. There's no women in power. Elections are performative, but not decisive. That looks pretty good. And they embrace that. So, the idea, you know, America is rapidly changing, non-college educated white voters have the largest declining demographic in the country, and they find it unsettling and troubling and they would like to stop that. And they will -- they are about the business of trying to change elections so that they reduce the power of those who see a different America. And that's -- the Electoral College facilitates that. Biden won by 7 million votes, but it's 45,000 votes to change hands in just exactly the right places Trump would still win. So, I think it's a race about the future of America. I think the cliche this is the most important race of our lifetime has never been more true. ISAACSON: Stuart Stevens, thank you so much for joining us again. STEVENS: Thank you, Walter. AMANPOUR: So, that was two Republicans, two former Republicans, talking about their party today.