Democrat News

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Thank goodness Sen. Chris Murphy is willing and able to meet this moment with the fire and determination some other Democrats seem to lack.

In a video posted to Blue Sky, Murphy gave what I consider the definitive take on the Senate passage of the Republicans’ Billionaires’ Bonanza Bill, followed by the rallying cry we all need:

“I am shaking with fury over what just happened. That’s the most monstrous piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my time in Congress,” Murphy began.

“What do those Republican senators go back and tell their constituents that they did?” Murphy wondered. “In the final speech, the only thing they mentioned was the money for the border.”

But Republicans have already militarized the border, have already “created an immigration police state,” Murphy added. So what more can they do? It’s a good question, though I hate to think about the answer.

Then he listed some of the horrific, unconscionable harm the bill will cause:

MURPHY: They didn’t mention anything about the fact this bill kicks 17 million people off of their healthcare. There are going to be thousands of people who die in this country because they lose their access to healthcare. There’ll be tens of thousands of other lives that are needlessly destroyed.

This is the biggest cut in child nutrition in the history of the country, I think. There are going to be moms and dads who literally watch their children go hungry.

And why? Because they wanted to pad the pockets of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago friends. That’s the only reason that they are throwing people off of healthcare, that they are rendering little children hungry so that some billionaire can get an extra $200,000 tax cut. It’s just repulsive what they did.

As depressing and infuriating as all that is, Murphy also stressed that there’s a “small but not insignificant chance” of stopping the bill from passing in the House of Representatives. “So, let’s get to work. Let’s keep fighting. Let’s not give up,” he said.

He’s right. Republicans can only afford to lose three votes in the House. There are steps we can all take to keep the bill from getting to Donald Trump’s desk.

But even if the bill does pass the House, we have to keep fighting, Murphy urged. If the bill passes, “We have to make sure that every single senator, every single congressman who voted for this from a swing state or a swing district never sets foot in this building again,” he continued. “If it does become law, we’re going to make sure these people pay politically for what they did.”

Amen.

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The thing about bullies is they don’t have real friends.

They have lieutenants, followers and victims — sometimes all three rolled into one.

Most of us learn this by about third grade, when parents and hard knocks teach us how to figure out whom you can trust, and who will eat you for lunch.

Elon Musk, at age 54 with $400 billion in the bank, just learned it this week — when his feud with our bully-in-chief devolved into threats that the president will have the South African native deported.

Speaking about Musk losing government support for electric cars, Trump this week warned that Musk “could lose a lot more than that.”

“We might have had to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said, referencing Musk’s cost-cutting effort called the Department of Government Efficiency. “DOGE is the monster that … might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?”

Yes, I know. Schadenfreude is real. It’s hard not to sit back with a bit of “told ya” satisfaction as we watch Musk — who has nearly single-handedly demolished everything from hurricane tracking to international aid for starving children — realize that Trump doesn’t love him.

But because Musk is the richest man in the world, who also now understands he has the power to buy votes if not elections, and Trump is grabbing power at every opportunity, there’s too much at stake to ignore the pitiful interpersonal dynamics of these two tantrumming titans.

What does it have to do with you and me, you ask? Well, there’s a potential fallout that is worrisome: The use of denaturalization against political enemies.

In case you’ve been blessedly ignorant of the Trump-Musk meltdown, let me recap.

Once upon a time, nine months ago, Musk and Trump were so tight, it literally had Musk jumping for joy. During a surprise appearance at a Butler, Pa., political rally (the same place where Trump was nearly assassinated), Musk leaped into the air, arms raised, belly exposed, with the pure delight of simply being included as a follower, albeit one who funneled $290 million into election coffers. Back then, Musk had no concern that it wasn’t his own dazzling presence that got him invited places.

By January, Musk had transitioned to lieutenant, making up DOGE, complete with cringey swag, like a lonely preteen dreaming up a secret club in his tree house. Only this club had the power to dismantle the federal government as we know it and create a level of social destruction whose effects won’t be fully understood for generations. Serious villain energy.

But then he got too full of himself, the No. 1 sin for a lieutenant. Somewhere along the line, Trump noticed (or perhaps someone whispered in the president’s ear) that Musk was just as powerful as he is — maybe more.

Cue the fallout, the big “see ya” from the White House (complete with a shoving match with another Trump lieutenant) and Musk’s sad realization that, like everyone else in a bully’s orbit, he was being used like a Kleenex and was never going to wind up anyplace but the trash.

So Musk took to his social media platform to start bashing on Trump and the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed in the Senate on Tuesday, clearing the way for our national debt to skyrocket while the poor and middle class suffer.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” Musk threatened, conjuring up a new political party the same way he ginned up DOGE.

Musk even promised to bankroll more elections to back candidates to oust Trumpians who voted for the bill.

“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk wrote. Presumably before he leaves for Mars.

It was those direct — and plausible — threats to Trump’s power that caused the president to turn his eye of Sauron on Musk, flexing that he might consider deportation for this transgression of defiance. It might seem entertaining if Musk, who the Washington Post reported may have violated immigration rules, were booted from our borders, but it would set a chilling precedent that standing up to this president was punishable by a loss of citizenship.

Because the threat of deporting political enemies didn’t start with Musk, and surely would not end with him.

For days, Trumpians have suggested that New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a U.S. citizen in 2018, should be deported as well, for the crime of backing policies that range in description from progressive to socialist to communist (pretty sure the ones labeling them communism don’t actually know what communism is).

On Tuesday, Trump weighed in on Mamdani.

“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” Trump said, which of course, no one is except for Trump’s attack dogs. “We’re going to look at everything.”

Denaturalization for immigration fraud — basically lying or misrepresenting stuff on your official application — is nothing new. Obama did it, as did Trump in his first term, and it has a long history before that.

But combing the documents of political enemies looking for pretexts to call fraud is chilling.

“This culture of weaponizing the law to go after enemies, it’s something that is against our founding principles,” Ben Radd told me. He’s a professor of law and an expert in political science at UCLA.

“It is very much an abuse of executive power, but [Trump] gets away with it until there’s a legal challenge,” Radd said.

While Musk and Mamdani have the power to fight Trump in a court of law, if it comes to it, other naturalized citizens may not.

There are about 25 million such citizens in the United States — people who immigrated in the “right” way, whatever that means, jumped through the hoops, said their pledge of fealty to this country and now are Americans. Or so they thought.

In reality, under Trump, they are mostly Americans, as long as they don’t make him mad. The threat of having citizenship stripped for opposing the administration is powerful enough to silence many, in a moment when many immigrants feel a personal duty and impetus to speak out to protect family and friends.

Aiming that threat at Musk may be the opportunistic anger of a bully, and even seem amusing.

But it’s an intimidation meant to show that no one is too powerful to be punished by this bully, and therefore, no one is safe.

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Huge twist in the Brian Kohberger trial – he is entering a plea to four murders and will be sentenced to life in prison with no chance to appeal, but his life will be spared. No Death penalty.

NewsNation’s Brian Entin was first to break the news late on Monday. He reported that the prosecution had offered a plea to Kohberger to plea guilty to all four murders and in exchange he will not face the death penalty.

Brian Kohberger, 30, will be sentenced to four life sentences with no opportunity for parole and will waive all rights to appeal. A hearing has been scheduled for July 2nd, this Wednesday, presumably for him to enter a change in plea from not guilty to guilty.

Kohberger will admit to killing four college students on November 13, 2022 in Moscow, Idaho: Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves.

The soon to be admitted murderer was arrested in Pennsylvania less than a month later after his DNA was found on a knife sheath at the crime scene. They also tied him to the location using his cell phone,

The trial was supposed to start in August, but it looks like the families will be spared a horrific trial, although it is reported that not all four are happy with the plea deal.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves posted on Facebook: “It’s true! We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho. They have failed us. Please give us some time. This was very unexpected. We appreciate all your love and support.”

It is unclear if they were unaware of the plea deal or if they are just unhappy that he won’t face the death penalty.

The reality is this – many death penalty cases are overturned on appeal and actual convert to life without parole anyhow. And even if the death penalty sentence sticks, convicted offenders usually sit on death row for literally decades before they are executed.

Justice is coming and this murderer will never have a day of peace or freedom again.

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WASHINGTON — Building the border wall. Increasing detention capacity. Hiring thousands of immigration agents.

The budget bill narrowly approved by the Senate on Tuesday includes massive funding infusions — roughly $150 billion — toward immigration and border enforcement. If passed, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will cement Trump’s hard-line legacy on immigration.

The budget bill would make Immigration and Customs Enforcement the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government, exceeding its current yearly $3.4-billion detention budget many times over. It also would impose fees on immigration services that were once free or less expensive and make it easier for local law enforcement to work with federal authorities on immigration.

The 940-page Senate bill will now head back to the House, which passed its version in May, also by one vote, 215-214. The two chambers must now reconcile the two versions of the bill.

Though the legislation is still evolving, the immigration provisions in the House and Senate versions are similar and not subject to the intense debates on other issues, such as Medicaid or taxes.

Many of the funds would be available for four years, though some have longer or shorter timelines. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that, if enacted, the bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

Here are key elements concerning immigration:

Border wall

• $46.5 billion toward fortifying the U.S.-Mexico border wall and interdicting migrant smugglers at sea.

This includes construction and installation of barrier sections, building access roads, and barrier-related technology, such as cameras, lights and sensors. The legislation doesn’t reference specific locations.

Trump, in his first term, repeatedly vowed that Mexico would pay for the wall. It didn’t.

Staffing

• $32 billion for immigration enforcement, including staffing of ICE and expanding so-called 287(g) agreements, in which state and local law enforcement agencies partner with federal authorities to deport immigrants.
• $7 billion for hiring Border Patrol agents, customs officers at ports of entry, air and marine agents and field support staff; retention bonuses; and vehicles.
• $3.3 billion to hire immigration judges and support staff, among other provisions.

Trump has said he wants to hire 10,000 ICE agents, as well as 3,000 Border Patrol agents.

Detention

• $45 billion to build and operate immigrant detention facilities and to transport those being deported.
• $5 billion for new Customs and Border Protection facilities and improvements to existing facilities and checkpoints. It’s unclear how this could affect California or the well-known Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 near San Onofre.

The bill allows for families pending a removal decision to be detained indefinitely. Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, called that a blatant violation of the so-called Flores settlement agreement, which has been in place since 1977 and limits the amount of time children can legally be detained to 20 days.

Local assistance

• $13.5 billion to reimburse states and local governments for immigration-related costs. These are divided into two pots of funding: $10 billion for the “state border security reinforcement fund” and the “Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide” or BIDEN fund. Both would fund the arrest of immigrants by local law enforcement who unlawfully entered the U.S. and committed any crime.

Altman said: “You can think of it like a gift for [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott.”

Immigration fees

• A fee of at least $100 for those seeking asylum, down from a $1,000 fee outlined in the House bill. Applicants also would pay $100 every year the application remains pending. This is unprecedented — a fee has never before been imposed on migrants fleeing persecution.
• At least $550 ($275 on renewal) to apply for employment authorization for those with asylum applications, humanitarian parole and temporary protected status. Currently there is no fee for asylum seekers and a $470 fee for others.
• At least $500 for temporary protected status, up from $80 including biometrics.

The stated fees are minimums — the bill allows for annual increases and, for many, prohibits waivers based on financial need.

“The paradox of a fee for an employment authorization document is that you’re not allowed to work, but you need to pay for the fee,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Altman noted that imposing a yearly fee on asylum seekers for their pending applications punishes people for the U.S. government’s own backlogged system, which is out of the applicant’s control.

Other sections exclude lawfully present immigrants, such as refugees and those granted asylum, from benefits including Medicare, Medicaid and the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP). Another provision excludes children from the Child Tax Credit if their parent lacks a Social Security number.

Praise and scorn

Altman, whose organization has closely tracked the immigration aspects of the funding bill, said people can look at the bill two ways: big picture — as a $150-billion infusion to supercharge what the Trump administration has already started — or surgically, as a series of policy changes that will not be easy to undo “and make an already corrupt system subject to even fewer safeguards and really go after people’s most basic needs.”

Bush-Joseph had a different view. She said the funding reinforces an outdated and inflexible immigration system without fundamentally changing it.

“That’s why there’s all this money going to the border even though there aren’t a lot of people coming now,” she said.

Money alone won’t change things overnight, said Bush-Joseph. It takes time to hire people and to open detention facilities. Immigration judges will still have a massive backlog of cases. And getting foreign countries to agree to accept more deportees is tricky.

“Arresting and detaining people with private contractors doesn’t get you to an agreement from El Salvador to take five more planes per week,” she said.

During a White House event June 26, Trump urged Congress to pass the bill quickly, saying it “will be the single most important piece of border legislation to ever come across the floor of Congress.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of three senators who voted against the bill Tuesday, had called it “reckless spending,” writing on X: “I’m all for hiring new people to help secure our borders, but we don’t need it to the extent that’s in this bill, especially when our border is largely contained.”

Across the political aisle, Democrats including California Sen. Alex Padilla have slammed the bill, saying the immigration-related funding increases amount to a substantial policy change.

“You would think that maybe just for a moment, Republicans would take this reconciliation process as an opportunity to do what they said before they wanted to do and modernize our nation’s immigration system,” Padilla said last month. “But they’re not.”

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WASHINGTON — In a final push to prevent passage of President Trump’s signature legislation into law, Elon Musk, once his largest benefactor and later his top White House aide, threw the kitchen sink at his former boss.

The world’s richest man threatened to fund primary challenges against supporters of the bill “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” He threatened to fund the creation of a third party based on fiscal responsibility. And he accused the president of using the bill as a vehicle to defund the ability of courts to enforce contempt orders, making it all but impossible to hold him and his allies accountable for violating the law.

There is still a slim chance that Musk succeeds. But a Senate vote approving the bill on Tuesday brought Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to the doorstep of passage. The only thing standing in its way now is a handful of Republican lawmakers in the House.

Trump reacted to Musk’s campaign on Tuesday with a pointed threat. The Department of Government Efficiency, a federal program Musk ran at the start of the administration that aimed to reduce federal spending, could be directed to gut Musk’s properties of federal contracts, the president warned.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. Musk owns SpaceX, an aerospace company with deep ties to NASA, as well as Tesla and the X social media platform. “You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon — wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”

“If DOGE looks at Musk, we’re going to save a fortune,” Trump later added. “I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.”

The “Big Beautiful Bill” included several provisions that could have rankled Musk, including a phaseout of green energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration that have benefited companies like Tesla.

But Musk said his priority in the bill was not its impact on the electric vehicle market. Instead, his concern is its overall price tag — a ballooning of the federal debt over the next decades that he said fundamentally undermines his work in the administration.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version of the bill will add $4 trillion to the debt by 2034, and even more if Congress votes later on to remove a series of expiration dates built into the legislation.

Musk left the Trump administration at the end of his tenure as a special government employee in late May, honored in the Oval Office by Trump with a press conference and a custom embroidered key. But the men fell out dramatically days later, trading insults in an acrimonious public feud that included Musk taking credit for Trump’s election victory.

Even within the last few days, Trump has offered mixed messages on the state of his relationship with Musk, wishing him only the best in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.

By Tuesday morning, he was telling reporters that he would “take a look” at deporting Musk, a U.S. citizen.

“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and head back to South Africa.”

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Critics of President Trump may have cheered the defamation lawsuit filed by Gov. Gavin Newsom against Fox News for giving the White House a spoonful of its own litigious medicine.

Newsom is suing the conservative-leaning network alleging it intentionally distorted the facts in its reports on the timeline of the governor’s conversations with Trump amid the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles during immigration raids in the city.

But legal experts are concerned that it may just be the bipartisan escalation of an ongoing trend: use of defamation suits as a political weapon. The tactic, largely used by Trump and his allies until Newsom’s salvo, has put the media business and its legal defenders on high alert.

“There has been an outbreak of defamation lawsuits over the last 10 years since President Trump came on the scene and threatened to open up the libel laws,” said Ted Boutrous, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. “It has been remarkable and has a chilling effect on speech.”

Trump has aggressively used the courts to punish media outlets he believes have crossed him.

Trump extracted $15 million from ABC News after George Stephanopolous said the president was convicted of rape rather than sexual abuse in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll. He’s pushing for a massive payment from CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview he claims was edited to make former Vice President Kamala Harris more coherent.

Although CBS denies Trump’s claims and 1st Amendment experts say the case is frivolous, the parties are reportedly headed for a settlement.

Trump is also continuing his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register over a poll that showed him losing Iowa in the 2024 election, moving it to state court Monday after the case appeared to be faltering at the federal level.

Trump hasn’t stopped there.

Last week, he threatened CNN and the New York Times with legal action over their coverage on an early intelligence report that said the military attack on Iran’s nuclear program had only set it back a few months. On Monday, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on border policy, called for the Department of Justice to investigate CNN for reporting on the existence of an app that alerts users to ICE activities.

“We have crossed over into a new world,” said Lee Levine, a retired 1st Amendment attorney whose clients included CBS News. “Everybody has taken note and tried to position themselves the best that they can to weather the assault.”

Newsom, a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, took his shot last week with a suit alleging Fox News intentionally manipulated its coverage of a late-night June 6 phone call he made to Trump. Trump later falsely stated on June 10 that the two were in contact “a day ago,” while Newsom asserted they never spoke after June 6.

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

The governor’s legal team alleged the conservative network’s coverage covered up Trump’s false statement that the two had spoken on June 9 while a banner on the bottom of the screen said “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”

The suit asks for $787 million — the amount Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems to settle its defamation case over false statements — if Newsom doesn’t get a retraction and on-air apology from host Jesse Watters who presented the segment on the calls. (Fox News has called the suit a publicity stunt and said it will fight it in court.)

Andrew Geronimo, director of the Dr. Frank Stanton First Amendment Clinic at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, believes Newsom’s actions are tailored to get the public‘s attention rather than that of the court itself. Newsom has been aggressive in his efforts to combat misinformation disseminated by right wing media outlets, and the lawsuit clearly turned it up a notch.

Experts say high-profile politicians have the ability to get their message out without going to court. “The idea that there is this dollar amount in the millions that they’ve been damaged by the reporting rather than coming out there and account the facts straightforwardly I think is sort of laughable,” Geronimo said.

The calls for possible legal actions against journalists reporting on information leaked by government officials, as is the case in the Iran intelligence stories, is considered a far more troubling development.

The long-term danger is that the suits can ultimately weaken laws that protect press freedoms, such as the ability to publish government information as long as it was obtained in a lawful matter.

“With everything the U.S. Supreme Court has been doing lately, all of these press protections could be on the table,” Geronimo said. “Journalists for years have relied on Supreme Court case law that, if someone leaks something to them, they can publish it as long as they did not participate in the illegal collection of it.”

The chilling effect could be particularly acute for large publicly owned media companies that have business before the government. It’s unlikely that CBS parent Paramount Global would settle over “60 Minutes” if it did not have an $8 billion merger deal pending that requires approval of the Federal Communications Commission now led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr.

“The fusion of libel suits and government officials in office is a pernicious development,” said Boutrous. “When you have the president of the United States… wielding defamation suits when they have some degree of power over those companies that they can assert, that puts the companies in a terrible position.”

It also puts more strain on the legal system. While Trump and Newsom are getting headlines, Boutrous noted there are similar politically motivated defamation cases coming in with “useless claims that we have to litigate.”

“It’s costly for people who are just participating in a public debate,” he said. “We’d rather have less business and more freedom of the press.”

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Donald Trump told reporters that if detained migrants try to escape from Ron DeSantis’ new detention center in the Florida Everglade, they will be eaten by alligators.

How sick is this?

Last year, we remember JD Vance promoting the lie that migrants were eating cats and dogs in Ohio, which Demented Donald also repeated. Now, Trump is looking forward to watching migrants trying to escape and being eaten alive.

It’s embarrassing enough seeing a US president looking disheveled and ridiculous wearing an ugly campaign hat, but what came out of his mouth was worse.

Off camera, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked, “With Alligator Alcatraz, is the idea that if some illegal immigrant escapes, they just get eaten by an alligator?”

TRUMP: I guess that’s the concept. This is not a nice business.

I guess that’s the concept.

If you, you know, snakes are fast.

But alligators, we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, okay, if they escape prison.

How to run away.

Don’t run in a straight line.

Run like this.

And you know what?

Your chances go up about 1%, okay?

Not a good thing.

Trump dementedly mocked migrants and told them how to swim away from the alligators. He’s a monster.

Will Rumble post cameras all around the facility, hoping to capture in real time an escapee being devoured?

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Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.

Following the decision to bomb Iranian nuclear targets without first seeking congressional approval, the Trump administration renewed its ongoing war against the media for reporting factual information.

Hegseth even went after Fox

President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other Republicans challenged reporting that revealed that the Pentagon did not believe Iran’s nuclear capability had been decimated. In fact, the Trump administration argued that journalists should celebrate Trump’s actions.

“How about we take a beat, recognize first the success of our warriors, hold them up, tell their stories, celebrate that, wave an American flag, be proud of what we accomplished,” Hegseth insisted during a briefing at the Pentagon.

Hegseth even complained about the reporting of one his former Fox News colleagues, Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin, for asking a mild question meant to verify the Trump administration’s claims about the strike.

Republicans, particularly Trump and his orbit, have spent more than a decade whining about media coverage—which has largely been laudatory of him and has promoted his favored (false) narratives—but this week’s behavior explicitly argued that the press should “cheer” for Trump, as Hegseth said.

Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made a similar demand of the press.

John McCormack, senior editor of the conservative outlet The Dispatch, asked Greene a series of follow-up questions following her mild criticism of Trump’s bombing. Greene alleged, without evidence, that McCormack sought to “twist” her words and said she would tell the Capitol police “you’re harassing me.”

In 2000, when he was first running for the presidency, President George W. Bush was caught on a live mic referring to The New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a “major league asshole.” And Vice President Dick Cheney agreed, responding, “Big time.”

Decades before that, Vice President Spiro Agnew went after the media in a press conference in 1969. He fumed that the media responded to President Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” speech about the Vietnam War with “querulous criticism,” and he argued that the press was not effusive enough in its praise of Nixon.

Both Nixon and Agnew would later separately resign from their positions due to scandal.

The right works the media refs

The right has spent decades beating up on the media, with Trump repeatedly calling them the “enemy of the people.” The entire conservative movement has dedicated itself to the falsehood that the “liberal media” is an arm of the Democratic Party designed to take down the right.

Organizations like the Media Research Center have been funded with millions of dollars to hammer at this false narrative, with reports and other media releases purportedly showing media bias.

Trump complains about “fake news” when unflattering facts are reported about him, but he thinks nothing of lying as easily as he breathes. This has taken the form of racist conspiracies about President Barack Obama, the argument that climate change is a made-up “hoax,” and the insistence that COVID-19 would simply melt away in early 2020.

The “liberal media” is a GOP fantasy

The “liberal media” talking point is easily debunked.

Mainstream media is far more likely to broadcast and print false right-wing assertions without pointing out the lies to the public. It also loves to regurgitate narratives meant to harm Democrats, like Hillary Clinton’s emails, Joe Biden’s age, or the Bush administration’s serial lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, supposed “liberal media” bastions like The New York Times have openly portrayed an “age of Trump,” regurgitated easily debunked Trump spin, and lied to their readers by portraying GOP political operatives and their opinions as ordinary everyday Americans.

The world deserves truth—not capitulation

Trump’s actions have serious consequences. He has a presidential track record of actions that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, and his rhetoric has inspired terrorism, racism, and crime.

People need to know the truth about someone like Trump and the sycophants in his orbit. There are early signs that outlets like The New York Times and CNN are somewhat pushing back against Trump’s cheerleading demands, but their track records on this type of resistance are spotty.

Honest journalism is vital and necessary—cheerleading is absolutely not.

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Fox News host and unabashed “Christian” Harris Faulkner had the nerve to smear prominent Jewish New Yorkers like Jerry Nadler and Brad Lander for supporting Zohran Mamdani for Mayor in New York City.

Fox News’ attacks on Zohran Mamdani in NYC are so outrageous, their hosts are now claiming Democratic Jews are supporting antisemitism if they stand by Mamdani.

On Monday’s Outnumbered, Democratic supporter Marie Harf was explaining Mamdani’s candidacy and his supporters when Harris Faulkner smugly interrupted.

HARF: He was unknown as of six months or a year ago, right? He is a new candidate who has tapped into energy and concerns about cost of living, things that you mentioned.

He has repeatedly said he abhors antisemitism. Increasing anti-hate crime funding by 800%, that’s real.

That will help in New York.

And don’t take my word for it. Prominent Jewish New Yorkers, Jerry Nadler, Brad Lander, they have said they have endorsed him.

FAULKNER: You’re talking politicians who want their party to be in office, irrespective of anything that they believe in.

HARF: If they’re Jewish….That’s not true.

FAULKNER: I mean, honestly.

HARF: Are you questioning Jerry Nadler or Brad Lander’s commitment to Judaism?

FAULKNER: 100%! 100%.

HARF Wow. I wouldn’t question anyone’s commitment to their faith.

FAULKNER: The same way that I would question Chuck Schumer, who works against the interests of his own people at times for the politics.

Harf came back and said,”Prominent Jewish New Yorkers have said they have met with him. They believe that he abhors anti-Semitism and will help New York do better.”

Wow, just wow.

Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer are not Jewish if they support something or someone Faulkner disapproves off.

How classless.

How narcissistic.

How Fox News of her.