Tag Archive for: media bias

Mainstream Media Refuse to Report the Full Facts on ICE Protests, so Americans Must Rely on X Indies

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Want to view one of the many resistance training videos being used by protest organizers in Minneapolis? You won’t find it on The New York Times or The Washington Post. Forget USA Today. And don’t even bother searching for it on NBC, MSNOW, CBS, ABC, or CNN. The mainstream media isn’t interested in reporting that side of the biggest domestic protests since the George Floyd riots of 2020.

But independent journalist Cam Higby has not only made public “Documenting and Responding to ICE,” a training video hosted by a Chicago political activist, Jill Garvey, he also infiltrated the Signal organization that is coordinating, supplying, and directing the chaos on Minneapolis streets.

Higby has posted names of the members of the eight sub-groups within Signal, extensively quoted the group’s internal communications, and documented in detail how members track ICE movements then direct protestors to specific locations where ICE law enforcement officials most likely are trying to remove an illegal immigrant who could be a hardened, violent criminal from the streets.

To appreciate how deeply Higby has infiltrated and documented Signal, check out his X home, then search on “MINNEAPOLIS SIGNAL INFILTRATED.” There you will find multiple posts like this one that documents how the protestors relay tag and other information on an ICE vehicle located in one of the protest areas. Higby’s infiltration has been so effective that Signal’s operators were forced to take counter-measures that temporarily limited their ability to continue operations. Unfortunately for them, those counter-measures came after Higby exposed the most relevant facts about their structure and operations.

To appreciate the logistical depth and detail of the organization behind the Minneapolis chaos, check out this “pop-up Leftist supply depot” videoed and reported by Gunther Eagleman, AKA David Freeman. You want milk, here it is. You need hand warmers, gotcha covered. How about some hot coffee? Or donuts? Crackers? Water? It’s all there and somebody is paying for it.

This is the kind of organized, equipped and strategically directed opposition to federal law enforcement that George Wallace, standing in the “school house door” at the University of Alabama in 1963, could only dream of having at his disposal. Ditto another avowed hard-core segregationist determined to stop federal law enforcement, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, when 101st Airborne troops escorted nine young black students into Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. And imagine the death and destruction former Confederate Calvary General Nathan Bedford Forrest could have wreaked across the Reconstruction period had he access to Signal-level insurrection sophistication and funding?

In fact, Signal is not something new. To the contrary, Signal duplicates and refines what Eric Schwalm, a former U.S. Special Forces warrant officer, saw happening time and again with highly sophisticated, organized, and funded insurgencies overseas:

“From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly. What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t ‘protest.’ It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook. … This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a [Special Forces] team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace ‘ICE agents’ with ‘occupying coalition forces’ and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.”

And Schwalm is worried because Signal isn’t in Afghanistan or Iraq or Gaza, it’s right here in America:

“The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers — complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal — you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.”

Whatever you think of the Minneapolis situation, it could only happen in a limited number of locations in America. How many? Well, Kevin Bass analyzed media reports on anti-ICE incidents around the nation for the past year and found nine counties that accounted for two-thirds of all such violent confrontations.

The nine are all connected to deep-blue big cites with far-Left Democratic mayors and with long-standing sanctuary status, including Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, New York, and Newark. Statistically, those nine counties turned out to be 590 times more likely to experience violent anti-ICE confrontations than all of the remaining 3,134 counties in the United States! Coincidence?

Even given all of the preceding facts, however, there is evidence the Signal operation is not perfect, as seen in this video snapshot on X of a “protestor” who, in the midst of a chaotic demonstration, suddenly finds himself able to lift himself out of his wheelchair to pick something up from the street. Either the age of miracles continues or Signal is sending false signals.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Votes to Dissolve amid Defunding Battle

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) Board of Directors voted to officially dissolve the organization on Monday. According to a press release, the decision comes in response to moves from the Trump administration and within Congress to pull its federal funding.

Nearly 60 years ago, authorized by the U.S. Congress under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, CPB’s roots trace back to a time when commercial broadcasting dominated the airwaves, and there was a push for alternatives that prioritized education and public service over profit. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Act aimed to create a system free from political interference, emphasizing “strict adherence to objectivity and balance.” Over the years, federal appropriations formed the backbone of CPB’s budget, often exceeding $400 million annually in recent decades, with peaks around $525 million before the cuts — with roughly 70% of funds distributed to local stations.

However, in May 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to terminate federal funding for public media outlets such as CPB on the grounds that its reporting failed to be “fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan.” Only months later, the Senate passed the Rescissions Act of 2025, effectively cutting $9.4 billion in federal funding flowing to CPB and its affiliates. This included $1.1 billion specifically earmarked for public broadcasting through fiscal years 2026 and 2027. This rescission package, which also targeted foreign aid, passed along largely party lines, with Republicans arguing that taxpayer dollars should not subsidize what they (and many others) perceived as ideologically slanted content.

In response, CPB had sued the Trump administration as it began scaling down its operations — and to no avail, it would seem, in light of their final decision announced Monday. The dissolution process, set to conclude by late January 2026, involves “the responsible distribution of all remaining funds in accordance with Congress’s intent” as well as the preservation of archives in partnership with institutions like the University of Maryland and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

The organization ultimately pinned the blame on “sustained political attacks that made it impossible for CPB to continue operating as the Public Broadcasting Act intended.” As Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB, put it, “When the Administration and Congress rescinded federal funding, our Board faced a profound responsibility: CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.”

Echoing this, Chair of CPB’s Board of Directors Ruby Calvert claimed “what has happened to public media is devastating,” adding that “after nearly six decades of innovative, educational public television and radio service, Congress eliminated all funding for CPB, leaving the Board with no way to continue the organization or support the public media system that depends on it.”

Calvert ultimately expressed optimism that “public media will survive, and that a new Congress will address public media’s role in our country because it is critical to our children’s education, our history, culture and democracy to do so.” As Harrison went on to claim, “public media remains essential to a healthy democracy.” The corporation’s statement concluded: “While CPB’s chapter is ending, the mission of public media endures. Local stations, producers, journalists, and educators across the country will continue serving their communities, informing the public, and elevating local voices.”

The news of closure has sparked a variety of responses nationwide. While CPB officials and their supporters are lamenting the loss of what they describe as “trusted news, educational programming, and local storytelling,” many others have taken to celebrating. Conservatives, from government officials to everyday citizens, have argued that the closure does not diminish these values but instead advances them by moving away from what they see as an organization that pushed left-wing, government-funded content. And these sentiments echo long-standing criticisms that date back to Republican officials like former President Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who attempted similar defunding efforts but were thwarted by Congress.

Fast forward to now, and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins observed how “this is a very significant development. The end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting signals that real structural change is underway in Washington.” As he further emphasized, “Kudos to the Trump administration. Its defunding strategy is dismantling decades of the Left’s entrenched infrastructure within government. Too often, Republican administrations merely hit the pause button on the Left’s projects — allowing them to resume the moment power changes hands. The Trump administration, by contrast, is hitting the eject button.”

Several members of Congress echoed these remarks, with Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) stating, “The closure of the [CPB] comes on the heels of a tenure dedicated to censorship and leftist ideologies. The organization garnered our tax dollars and made products through NPR and PBS that lacked competitive viewership and undermined American values and free speech.” Similarly, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) referred to CBS as “the scheme bureaucrats used to funnel taxpayer money to NPR and PBS,” emphasizing how its closure is “great news for every American who doesn’t want their tax dollars funding left-wing opinion journalism EVER again.”

As public media transitions to reliance on private donations and other revenue streams, some fear a fragmented media landscape. Others, however, view it as an opportunity for more trustworthy news and storytelling, with less government influence, to finally take the stage.

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Top 5 Most Underreported Stories of 2025

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The Washington Stand published a number of important stories that were largely ignored by the mainstream media in 2025. Here are the top five.

1. The Apparent Decline in Trans-Identifying Youth

As reported by TWS’s Joshua Arnold in October, two studies were released that month showing that a decreasing number of young adults are identifying as transgender. One study showed that between 2023 and 2025, trans identification among students at colleges and elite prep schools declined by half or more. A second study conducted by San Diego State University professor Jean Twenge revealed that “the percentage of U.S. 18- to 22-year-olds identifying as transgender declined from just over 6% in 2022 to just over 3% in 2024” and that “the percentage identifying as nonbinary declined from 5% in 2023 to 2% in 2024.” As noted by Arnold, “While environmental factors like better mental health play a role, so do societal factors, including widespread backlash against the overreach of transgender ideologues and effective leaders showing young people a better way to live.”

2. Chick-fil-A Doubles Down, Keeps DEI on the Menu

In December, TWS’s Suzanne Bowdey reported on how corporate officials at the once Christian-identifying Chick-fil-A restaurant franchise announced that they were fully embracing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies after concerned customers queried the company about why a restaurant in Utah publicly celebrated the marriage of a same-sex couple on their Facebook page. The franchise’s doubling down on DEI comes as dozens of other corporations have dialed back their public support for the controversial policies amid growing consumer outrage and the rescinding of federal DEI policies by the Trump administration.

3. Massive Lobbying Dollars Aid Health Care Insurers in Protecting Their Obamacare Jackpot

In October, TWS’s Mark Tapscott reported that health care insurance lobbyists spent over $439 million “lobbying Congress, executive branch departments, and regulatory agencies,” with a “decisive majority of those donations go[ing] to Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).” As Tapscott noted, a primary reason for the flurry of lobbying activity by health insurers is that billions of dollars have been pouring into the companies’ coffers as a result of the extended Obamacare subsidies that began in 2021 during the COVID pandemic under the Biden administration, and the insurers want Congress to make these subsidies permanent to keep the money flowing. So far, Republicans in Congress have narrowly avoided extending the subsidies, which were originally intended for low-income families but were extended to high-income families under Biden. Extending the subsidies for another decade is projected to cost taxpayers $410 billion.

4. Experts Warn Betting Company with Trump Family Ties Could Pose ‘Economic National Security Risk’

In June, TWS’s S.A. McCarthy reported on a concerning nominee that the Trump administration put forward to potentially serve as commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Brian Quintenz serves as a board member of Kalshi, Inc., which launched a betting platform in 2021 that allows users to bet on virtually anything at any time. But experts and lawmakers swiftly raised concerns that Quintenz would potentially serve on the commission that is supposed to regulate the betting company that he serves on the board for, creating a conflict of interest that experts estimate could financially benefit Kalshi by billions of dollars. In addition, the Trump administration put forward the nomination just a month after Donald Trump Jr. was announced as an advisor to Kalshi. Experts further warned that Kalshi’s unlimited betting platform could destabilize America’s financial and economic systems, creating a national security issue.

In September, the Trump administration withdrew Quintenz’s nomination.

5. Iowa Runner Keeley Knobloch’s Stand against Transgender Competition

In August, TWS’s Sarah Holliday reported on a sub-elite distance runner from Iowa named Keeley Knobloch, who ran for a local club called Running Wild Elite in the Quad City area. After Knobloch discovered that a biological male who identified as transgender was being allowed to compete in the women’s division of the Bix 7 road race, she withdrew from her team so that she would not have to compete directly against the male. The decision cost her a prime starting spot, a chance to improve her women’s division ranking, a chance to win the prestigious Eloise Caldwell award for top Quad City woman, a cold response from her club, and rejection from her teammates. Despite the rejection, Knobloch chose to run the race, not for medals, but for principle, her Catholic faith, and for biological truth.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Public Trust in Mainstream Media Falls to New Low

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Nine months into President Donald Trump’s second administration, the American public’s trust in mainstream media has cratered to an all-time record low. According to a Gallup poll published Thursday, a mere 28% of Americans say that they trust mainstream media a “great deal” or a “fair amount” to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly, down from 31% last year. Meanwhile, 36% of Americans say that they have little trust in the media and 34% say that they have no trust in the media at all, totaling 70% who simply do not trust mainstream media outlets.

Age and political affiliation play a role in predicting trust in mainstream media, according to Gallup. Only 8% of Republicans say that they trust mainstream media, the first time that Gallup has recorded single digits in it’s 53 years of studying the question, and 62% of Republicans say that they don’t trust mainstream media at all. Among Independent voters, 27% report trusting mainstream media, 38% say that they have very little trust, and 32% report no trust at all. Democrats are the only political group with a majority (51%) expressing trust in mainstream media. Only 9% of Democrats say that they don’t trust mainstream media at all.

When examined by age, those aged 65 or older have the highest rate of trust in mainstream media at 43%, while only 28% of those aged between 50 and 64 and those aged between 18 and 29 express trust in media. Those aged between 30 and 49 reported the lowest level of trust in media at only 23%. Republicans of all age groups have the lowest rate of trust in mainstream media: 12% among those aged 18 to 29, 6% among those aged 30 to 49, 8% among those aged 50 to 64, and 17% among those aged 65 or older.

Among Independent voters aged 18 to 29, trust in mainstream media stands at 29%, at 24% among Independent voters aged 30 to 49, at 23% among Independent voters aged 50 to 64, and at 42% among Independent voters aged 65 or older. Democrats aged 18 to 29 trust mainstream media at a rate of 38%, at a rate of 42% among Democrats aged 30 to 49, at a rate of 59% among Democrats aged 50 to 64, and at a rate of 69% among Democrats aged 65 or older.

“Confidence in the mass media is historically low, with fewer than three in 10 Americans now placing trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, fairly and accurately,” Gallup senior editor Megan Brenan wrote of the statistics. “With confidence fractured along partisan and generational lines, the challenge for news organizations is not only to deliver fair and accurate reporting but also to regain credibility across an increasingly polarized and skeptical public.”

Tim Graham, an executive editor with the Media Research Center’s (MRC’s) NewsBusters, said in comment to The Washington Stand, “Trust in the media has collapsed because everyone has figured out the media now exist to elect Democrats and destroy Donald Trump.” He continued, “They’ve sought not merely to defeat him politically — they’ve sought to bankrupt him and put him in jail for the rest of his life. Their toxic ardor against Trump has led most people to see them for the partisans they are.”

“Everyone knows the media play on the team of the Democrats, which is why Democrats trust them most. But even there, Democrat numbers are lower, because they’re apparently not pro-Democrat enough, just as many Democrats think their national leaders aren’t doing enough to destroy Trump,” Graham posited. “Part of the decline in trust isn’t just the bias. It’s that the press has undercut the credibility of all the other institutions in society, leading to an overarching cynicism that comes back to bite them,” he observed. “But their arrogance about how they are saving democracy daily clearly suggests cynicism is in order.”

According to a June 26 report from the MRC, mainstream media outlets CNN, MSNBC, and PBS used variations of the label “far right” over 1,200 times between Trump’s inauguration and June 21, compared to only 86 mentions of the “far left.” Additionally, despite days-long riots targeting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and multiple assassination attempts against Trump the previous year, mainstream media outlets were 5.5 times more likely to associate political violence with the “far right” than the “far left.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Media Goes Full Damage Control On Major Scandal That Could Cost Dems Key Election

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Liberal Media Is in Its Death Throes — What Will Replace It?

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The slow, painful death of the liberal media is hard to watch … okay, not really. Once again, the liberal media has lost all credibility, but haven’t we been here before?

It seems the apparatus of far-left talking heads and “journalists” has a zombie-like ability. The same reporters and news operations keep suffering fatal blows to their journalistic integrity, and yet they manage to struggle on as ratings — and credibility — fade away.

Take just this week, for instance. The Washington Post gleefully published a report that Israeli soldiers fired on Gaza residents waiting to receive humanitarian aid and killed more than 30. If the story sparked your skepticism, you may have better news judgment than many D.C. reporters.

This glaring lie — and the anti-Semitism that it and other lies like it help fuel — are not even surprising from the media class that is frantically grasping at the last shreds of its credibility. Meanwhile, in a move of incredible audacity, CNN’s Jake Tapper is now promoting his new book on the cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental health decline. Polling shows that most Americans could see Biden’s decline with their own eyes. Collective memory and the magic of video tape shows us that Tapper helped lead the charge of that cover-up. In fact, he once lambasted Lara Trump on air for daring to question Biden’s mental fitness. Lara Trump was not the only one to receive such treatment from Tapper.

Now, Tapper is being widely mocked on X and the new crop of center-right podcasts that have gained more political influence — and usually viewership — than cable news shows.

MSNBC saw a plummet in support after President Donald Trump’s election, though they have begun to recover in ratings, if not in credibility. The network axed a handful of anchors, including the notoriously bombastic, and often racist, Joy Reid. Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has taken a slot, which is so far a major flop as ratings plummet and MSNBC scrambles for relevance.

Tapper, Reid, and Psaki are the three horsemen of the liberal cable news apocalypse and the perfect face for this downfall. Tapper represents the hollowness of established cable anchors. Tapper has been in the business for decades and fails to perform the first function of a journalist: holding the powerful accountable. Reid symbolizes the liberal anti-white racism and anti-man sexism that has spread like a cancer through the Democratic Party and helped push an entire generation of young men into the arms of Trump. Psaki symbolizes cable news’s incestuous relationship with the politicians they are supposed to hold accountable. Psaki covered up Biden’s mental decline and was rewarded with a cushy anchor slot. On these shows, there is little room for real thinkers or diversity of thought, only rightly programmed Democratic messengers.

CNN’s Abby Phillips has managed to create a show relevant to the news cycles. Clips of her show regularly go viral, but they usually involve Scott Jennings blistering some poor Democrat. Despite how it helps prop up her show, Phillips never looks overly pleased.

We know from history that communist and totalitarian regimes cannot survive long without propaganda. China has state-owned media, as do North Korea and others.

To build its secular, communist takeover of the U.S., the far Left needs a media propaganda machine (state-owned media) to repeat lies and slander opposition. During the Biden administration, that apparatus grew sizably. The White House leaned on social media companies with great success to silence dissenting views on COVID and other topics. Shadow-banning of conservative viewpoints of all kinds became commonplace on social media. Those who did not toe the line of the LGBT agenda were accused of “hate speech” with a serious tone and deplatformed or demonetized. But the apparatus came crumbling down as the lies about COVID, the vaccine, the Russia hoax, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and more were exposed.

We have a biblical paradigm for this familiar cycle. False prophets, purveyors of the lies of the age, haunt the halls of wicked kingdoms, from the Pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus to Ahab’s 400 false prophets in 1 Kings. In our time marred by evil, do not be surprised when false prophets are found in places of influence.

What does this all mean? The far Left has a problem. Over the last five years, they have seen the credibility of the most reliable propagandists gutted all while media increasingly moves online. More importantly, it means you should expect in the next decades direct attempts to censor dissent and clamp down on internet freedom. Remember, state media shuts down opposition and propagates lies. This will likely be done by weaponized terms like “hate” and “fascism” and “far-right extremism.”

For now, liberal media is on its back foot. But political battles are only won temporarily. You can be sure the liberal media and their puppet masters are scheming about how to regain their power, both through rebuilding their operation and by silencing their opponents.

A false regime can’t thrive without propaganda. Keep exposing the propagandists. Stand up for free speech and against censorship. And the rest of us have a chance to have our children grow up in a free country.

AUTHOR

Casey Harper

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Media Participated in Coverup of Biden’s Decline, Experts Say

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As more details continue to emerge regarding the alarming extent of former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical incapacities while serving in the most powerful office in the world, insiders are pointing out that the mainstream media willingly followed the lead of White House officials who insisted that Biden was perfectly fit to perform his duties despite a multitude of audio and video evidence showing otherwise.

According to a new book coming out this week by CNN reporter Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson entitled “Original Sin,” Biden’s cognitive decline began almost a decade before his 2024 presidential campaign for reelection, when glaring examples of Biden’s mental and physical struggles began occurring in front of cameras on a weekly basis. “Those close to him say that the first signs he was deteriorating emerged after the death of his beloved son Beau in 2015,” Tapper and Thompson write. A ghostwriter for Biden admitted in 2017 that he “was really struggling. … His cognitive capacity seemed to have been failing him.”

Despite the clear signs of Biden’s decline to those in his inner circle years before the 2020 election, his enablers pushed ahead with his presidential campaign. By 2021, Biden’s closest aides began scripting Cabinet meetings, to the point that his agency secretaries would be asked ahead of a meeting, “‘Well, what are you going to ask? If he asks a certain question, what is your answer going to be?’” By the beginning of 2023, the president’s cognitive condition had become so serious that senior White House aides were attempting to “shield him from his own staff so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline.” Even Cabinet secretaries were eventually “kept at bay” and “didn’t get a chance to interact with the President.” The truth was that “five people were running the country,” an unnamed source close to the Biden administration told Tapper and Thompson.

Despite this, no members of Biden’s Cabinet came forward to reveal what was happening. “When they would complain internally, they were told, ‘He’s fine, be quiet,’” Tapper noted in a New Yorker interview. As Tapper and Thompson wrote, however, “The presidency requires someone who can perform at 2:00 a.m. during an emergency. Cabinet secretaries in his own administration told us that by 2024, he could not be relied upon for this.”

As observed by National Review, Biden’s inner circle “admitted to each other that Biden was becoming so physically frail that he might need to use a wheelchair in his second term. But their primary concern appeared to be that nothing be seen that would endanger his reelection — or their own hold on power, which they enjoyed as a result of Biden’s weakness.”

Notably, mainstream media reporters such as Tapper himself spent much of Biden’s term reacting with incredulity whenever the topic of the president’s fitness for office surfaced in the news. As National Review has pointed out, Tapper castigated Republicans like Lara Trump on air as far back as 2020 for highlighting Biden’s cognitive decline. “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” he snapped. Less than a year before his book “Original Sin” was released, he stated on air, “[Biden] is sharp mentally.” Tapper also insisted that a Wall Street Journal article published in June 2024 included “false claims … about President Biden’s mental fitness and acuity.” He also derisively dismissed the article on the grounds that WSJ is “owned by News Corp which is run by the Murdochs.” Tapper even remarked during a segment with Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), “[Biden]’s 81, and his memory, you know, it doesn’t seem great, it’s not horrible, but I don’t understand the outrage.”

Experts like Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway say that the media’s peculiar lack of curiosity about Biden’s noticeable decline must be held to account. “This was a man who was president until January of this year — holding nuclear codes,” she pointed out on Fox News. “Anyone who was involved in suppressing information about the true state of his mental decline should absolutely be asked questions about that, be held to account. And until the media start moving things in that direction, where you’re actually talking to the people who knew and what they did to cover this up, and how the media themselves were co-conspirators in that, there’s no accountability being had.”

Some accountability on the matter may be coming. The House Oversight Committee announced last week that it would “continue its investigation into the cover-up of President Biden’s mental decline and use of autopen.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter observed that the results of the 2024 election were partly in reaction to how Biden’s staff, reelection campaign, and the Democratic Party attempted to cover up the former president’s cognitive decline.

“As many suspected, former President Biden was never up to the task of running the country,” he noted. “Early in his presidency, it became clear President Biden was not up to the job when his administration would call it a day at 4 p.m. As soon as Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report surfaced and his recommendation against pressing charges for Biden because he was a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’ many understood what Hur was really saying: Biden is suffering from cognitive decline.”

“This fact puts into question every policy decision, personnel decision, pardon, and other action from the Oval Office,” Carpenter concluded. “Contrast this with the high-energy pace set by President Trump in his second term, and the American people should be encouraged to raise their expectations for our nation’s top executive.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

PERKINS: Taxpayer Funds Should Respect the Will of the People

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A House DOGE subcommittee put a magnifying glass to NPR and PBS, funded in part with federal tax dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The most recent budget shows that the two left-leaning media outlets rake in just shy of $550 million a year from taxpayers.

DOGE’s triad is waste, fraud, and abuse. An obvious issue lawmakers are debating in this age of multi-media — and our unprecedented $36 trillion of national debt — is whether the government’s funding of these broadcasts is a waste of taxpayer dollars. That’s a legitimate question. Add to that concern the abuse of left-leaning viewpoints, like NPR’s promotion of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts and the fact that there isn’t a single identified Republican working at NPR at the national level, and you can understand the growing concerns about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.

In addition to direct funding, NPR and PBS also enjoy various federal carve-outs that give them competitive advantages over other news providers. Many believe the government should keep its thumb off the First Amendment’s scale and force NPR and PBS to stand on their own — free of federal subsidies.

Yet, the starkest example of waste, fraud, and abuse may be found in the abortion industry — particularly at Planned Parenthood, which surpasses NPR and PBS in the scope of public funding and controversy.

Let’s Talk about Waste:

  • After the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood reportedly raised nearly $500 million. Instead of using that money for health care services at their clinics, which the group claims is their priority, much of it went toward the organization’s political and legal interests.
  • Meanwhile, $699 million in taxpayer funds supported their clinics, where patient numbers have been steadily declining even as abortion procedures have risen.
  • According to The New York Times, Planned Parenthood has spent millions on CEO salaries, such as their national president, Alexis Johnson, whose annual salary in 2023 was $904,000. At the same time, very little funding was allocated to staff training — leading to incidents such as botched IUD placements and abortions.
  • I’m not alone in insisting that taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling the million-dollar salary of the CEO who heads the nation’s largest baby-killing operation. Even after the abortion lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars after Roe fell, 60% of Americans still oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

Let’s Talk Fraud:

  • Planned Parenthood has repeatedly faced allegations of trafficking fetal tissue — “baby body parts” — for profit.
  • There are also multiple reports suggesting Planned Parenthood has covered up criminal behavior and sexual abuse involving the very women it claims to serve.

Abuse?

  • The organization is increasingly pivoting toward so-called “gender-affirming” hormone therapy, including for minors — something many states are trying to prevent for their young residents.
  • Ultimately, it’s an abuse of taxpayer dollars to subsidize an entity involved in taking the lives of 400,000 unborn Americans.

Here is the bottom line: Our leaders should foster true neutrality in public funding and respect the will of citizens who object to financing controversial practices. It’s time to end all government funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood that are killing America’s opportunity to be great again.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Lack of Moral Clarity,’ ‘Weakness of Political Will’ Explain the Left’s Issue with Free Speech: Expert

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After Vice President J.D. Vance made his commitment to free speech clear during an address in Munich, CBS News’s Margaret Brennan did not take to it well.

During an interview with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Brennan compared Vance to Nazis. “[H]e was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” she said. “He met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that.” Rubio promptly disagreed with the news anchor, emphasizing how “free speech was not used to conduct a genocide.”

He was also quick to explain that, “there was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none.” The tussle with free speech at CBS did not end with Brennan.

In a “60 Minutes” episode, a production of CBS, a German lawyer argued that “free speech needs boundaries.” In another episode, three German prosecutors touted similar claims. “They say, ‘No, that’s my free speech,’” remarked Dr. Matthäus Fink. “And we say, ‘No, you have free speech as well, but it also has its limits.’” The episode also featured a police raid on an individual for something they posted online. With the full support of CBS, they characterized the fact that it’s a criminal offense to insult someone in Germany as an effort “to bring some civility to the world wide web” through “policing speech online.”

On Tuesday’s “Washington Watch,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins addressed this issue head on. “So,” he asked, “why does the Left have such a significant issue with free speech?” Mary Hasson, the Kate O’Beirne senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, replied that part of the Left’s problem with free speech is that “they’ve lost their sense of moral clarity.” Ultimately, “if you don’t have a sense of what’s good … right … [and] true,” then “you don’t understand speech as being part of that search for the truth.”

As Hasson explained, speech that stops seeking after truth is “all about power. And that’s what we see here. … [W]hen you lose your moral clarity, when you no longer appreciate the truth, or even the sense that there is a truth, then it’s all about maintaining your power. And that’s where censorship comes in.”

Perkins agreed, stating that this kind of perspective makes it so that “up is down, down is up. Good is evil, evil is good.” The fact that Brennan asserted “that Nazi Germany was the product of free speech” is a clear example, he said, especially when Adolf Hitler’s Germany “suppressed any type of voice that was counter” to the regime.

In addition to the “lack of moral clarity,” Hasson suggested another factor is “a weakness of political will.” For instance, she pointed out that Germany has had “a terrible problem with criminal migrants,” which has caused their crime to spike. “[A]nd yet,” she added, “here they are spending all this energy trying to police what people are saying [online as] they’re doing a very poor job of policing criminality and actually protecting their own people.” As she put it, Germany is “no longer willing to call some things wrong and some things right.” And this, Perkins emphasized, is largely because, like with many leftist ideologies, “their ideas are indefensible.” “[T]hey don’t want to be challenged by free speech.”

Perkins noted that Hasson has experienced this “firsthand.” Hasson has been at the center of what it looks like to be called “hateful” just for disagreeing with someone. “For example, I was recently speaking at ASU and there was a segment of people among the faculty and students who protested my mere presence, even though I wasn’t there to talk about gender ideology per se. … [B]ecause I disagreed with them,” Hasson said, they felt “they were in danger and … not safe because of my ideas.” It all points to this “sense of trying to protect themselves from hurt feelings or from having their ideas challenged,” which is “not how you arrive at the truth.”

“That’s not how we have a free society,” she continued. A society “where we know what’s good and what’s true.” In fact, “we want to have this open conversation to be able to persuade others. But when you’re simply trying to avoid feeling bad, you don’t want to hear what other people have to say,” so conversation gets shut down. As Perkins stressed, “the freedom of speech, which is a part of our First Amendment freedoms, is critical.” It’s like “a pressure valve [that] allows people to vent … [and] express themselves. And when that is short circuited or suppressed, that’s when we have real problems.”

“I completely agree with you,” Hasson emphasized. “And in fact, if you look back at the … political regimes that have suppressed free speech, they don’t … stop people from thinking or seeking the truth or trying to share that truth with others. It all goes underground.” Instead of controlling society, the more authorities try to suppress these pursuits of free speech, the more likely “you’re going to have a rebellion, a revolt.”

Perkins said, “[W]e need more speech, not less, in my view. So, … how can those of us who cherish this First Amendment freedom work together, growing America’s respect for this freedom?” Especially when considering “some of the younger generation … don’t [seem to] have a healthy understanding of the importance of the First Amendment.”

“[A]gain,” Hasson stated, “part of it goes back to this idea that they’ve come to believe that they are too fragile to hear ideas that they disagree with, or that make them uncomfortable.” As such, “we need to be bold and … speak the truth, and to encourage our children to be resilient, to understand that they can and should engage with ideas that they disagree with.” If anything, she concluded, the skill of “self-censorship” often comes into play when talking to “people who are very different from [us.]”

In any conversation, Hasson concluded, we need “to listen, to engage, but then … be confident in speaking the truth.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Gulf of America Floods America’s Gulf

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The conqueror always draws the map. And when President Donald Trump issued among his first executive orders a directive to rename what was formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it was more than simply a naming preference. It was a signal to the world that he was not a man afraid to upset the status quo, even when it came to changing the world’s maps. Without firing a shot, Trump conquered the Gulf of Mexico.

The changing of place names is nothing new. When the biblical Joshua conquered Kiriath-arba, he renamed it Hebron, which you can still find today in a place called Judea, which some now call “the West Bank” but was known long before that as Judea. The Democratic Republic of Congo became Zaire for a few decades, until it became the Democratic Republic of Congo again after another regime change. St. Petersburg, Russia was renamed Leningrad, U.S.S.R for a long minute until it once again became St. Petersburg, Russia. Closer to home, Colonel Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain became officially known as “KFC” in 1991 — the year we frowned upon fried foods. One of these is not like the other, but you get the picture. Circumstances change, and names change along with them.

Most married women in the United States (79%) still adopt their husband’s last name, and civilization somehow adapts. But because of its geographic significance, and more likely because it is Trump, not everyone is happy with the Gulf of America. Most notably, the Associated Press — the nonprofit entity that calls itself “the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats” — has come out in opposition Trump’s name change:

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

This is not insignificant. The “AP Stylebook” is indeed the standard style guide to which most news outlets look to write news copy. From everything to how to handle the Oxford comma (you should handle it!), to whether or not to use “canceled” or “cancelled” (use “canceled” in American publications), the AP sets the standards. If you’ve ever wondered why news outlets use the standard abbreviations for states (e.g., “Tenn.” for Tennessee) instead of the postal abbreviations (“TN”), the AP is the reason. Most news organizations will have their own house style that will supersede the AP on certain items, but by and large, the AP is the defining framework for most news copy out there.

However much the AP gives the appearance of being principled when it comes to name changes, it hasn’t exactly borne that out in practice. The AP has led the way in the pronoun wars, and the way in which it has led is nowhere near the way language has operated “for more than 400 years.” For example, in 2017, the AP issued guidance saying, “Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to both, either, or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people.” That same year, the AP approved the pronoun “they” for singular usage. The AP has also long championed the use of preferred pronouns in place of pronouns that correspond to biology.

Put up against that background, the AP’s bucking against the Gulf of America seems awfully arbitrary. As veteran journalist Mark Hemingway aptly pointed out on X, “News organizations will call a man a woman no questions asked, but ‘Gulf of America’ is a bridge too far?” Hemingway wasn’t alone in noticing the double standard. Georgia Congressman Mike Collins (R) quipped, “Stop deadnaming the Gulf of America.”

But it may be difficult for the Associated Press and its fellow Gulf of Mexico protestors to hold the line. Remember Rand McNally, who published all those paper maps and atlases we used to carry around? They’re playing a wait-and-see game:

“Rand McNally will await final legal and public review through the Secretary of the Interior’s office, as required in President Trump’s Executive Order, before making any adjustments to our Atlases and maps regarding the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m betting they fall in line with the change. Big Tech has a bigger footprint than the AP or paper map companies, and following the federal government, both Google Maps and Apple Maps have both incorporated the gulf’s name change.

While Mexico (the country, not the gulf) is now threatening to sue Google for updating its map, much of the opposition has gotten lost in the flooded zone of Trump’s flurry of executive actions. After all, who has time for the Gulf of America when paper straws are under assault?

The Gulf of America’s abrupt name change is symbolic of Trump’s larger sweeping out of America’s cupboard. It’s a political chess move that has no easy escape except to just go with it. Will a future administration restore it to the Gulf of Mexico? Perhaps, but not without having to own the fact that they’d be giving away America.

Name changes are tough, but conquerors aren’t strangers to new names. As Scripture tells us in Revelation 2:17, those who persist in Christ will also get new names:

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (ESV)

The Gulf of America is only a body of water, and a name change won’t bridge the gulf between Americans. But it may wake America up to the fact that the tide has indeed changed, and we as a nation will have to change along with it. Only names written in stone don’t get changed. Now that we’ve changed the name of the gulf, let’s strive toward the stone.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Public Trust in Government, Media, and the Church Has Fallen. Is There Hope for Change in 2025?

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With President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory and a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House, 2024 seems to be ending on a high note for conservatives. And yet, polls show that there is a significant lack of public trust in government. Not only that, but Americans are increasingly losing confidence in the media. What kind of obstacles or difficulties could this bring going into 2025?

Americans are navigating “through a rapidly evolving cultural and political landscape,” guest host Jody Hice said on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch.” Already, “there are certain … trends that reveal that we have both challenges as well as opportunities facing us.” As Hice explained, Americans seem to be going through a bit of a mental and spiritual crisis, with “Gen Z … bucking the downward trend of Bible engagement … [and] a troubling rise in things like anxiety and depression and suicide rates.”

Hice continued, “I look at 2025 right now on the horizon, [and there’s] no doubt there are many changes that are coming.” Most notably is the Republican control of the White House during “a time when overall confidence in government is probably at historic lows.” He asked, “Is there any way that we might see an increase in trust among the American people with the government?” George Barna, senior research fellow for the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, joined the conversation.

“Well,” he said, “there are a couple of ways of looking at that.” In one sense, it “could easily get higher because it’s so low right now. There’s not too much lower that it can drop.” However, Barna admitted that any increase in the trust Americans have in their government likely won’t come easily. “[C]an it get higher?” he asked. “Yes, it can. But it’s going to take some significant steps forward. One of those would be casting a compelling vision of the future for our nation, and describing ways in which everyone in government is going to work together to see that happen.”

“People are tired of the standstill in government, of all the obstacles that they’re seeing … the outrageous amounts of money being spent, [and] the debt that’s being piled up,” Barna noted. Many Americans “also have this perception that a huge proportion of public officials are corrupt. And so, if we want to change people’s sense of trust in their government, they’re going to have to address those issues full on. They’re going to have to see actual leadership skills demonstrated.” Hice agreed, stating how “that’s a big hill to climb in the current environment.” But beyond Congress, he added, trust in the media has dwindled as well.

In fact, Hice explained how this year saw a significant increase in people who relied on social media platforms for gathering information. With this in mind, he asked, “Is that likely to change or not change in the coming year?” According to Barna, it is unlikely to change. Rather, as he put it, “I think what we’re going to see is a continued movement away from traditional sources of media … toward independent media.” Barna argued that this is because mainstream media now comes across as more subjective and biased than before. So, Americans are “going to look elsewhere,” he argued, further asserting that this also explains why podcasts, for instance, have “skyrocketed in terms of their popularity.”

Barna added, “Is traditional media going to be able to win back their popularity and the sense of trust of Americans? I don’t really see that happening in the next three or four years at least, because people now have set their minds to the point where they’re saying, ‘I can’t trust them. There’s no reason for me to even listen to them.’”

There’s one more notable area where people seem to be losing trust, Hice observed. “I hate to even bring this up, but there’s also seemingly … an increasing distrust for churches, a lack of trust. What do you think this next year holds for the church? Is there anything that they can do to become a greater influence in our culture?”

“[I]t’s interesting,” Barna replied, “because when you look at what’s going on with churches, in some ways it’s very similar to what’s happening with government, where people have less and less trust in the leadership of their churches.” Additionally, he explained how many Christians “feel like they’re not getting real value from their churches. And as we’ve been evaluating that, one of the things that’s become clear is that, often, that’s because they feel they’re not being given practical advice, practical guidance — real, tangible value for their life. … [This] come[s] from preaching God’s word on a consistent basis and breaking it down for people so that they know how to apply God’s truth principles in their personal life.”

But if churchgoers feel that church is not serving them, the question becomes why is that the case? Barna contended that a lot of it boils down to how churches “evaluate their success in ministry … based on how many people show up, how many programs they offer, how many … people they’ve hired, how much money they’re raising, [and] how much square footage they’ve built out.” This is problematic, Barna argued, because “if you think about those five objectives that most churches in America consistently measure to evaluate their ministry effectiveness, one conclusion we can come to is … [that they’re] bound to fail as a set of measures.”

“Why?” he asked. “Because Jesus didn’t die for any of those. That’s not what His life, His ministry, [or] His teaching is all about.” At the heart of the matter, Barna contended, is that “we’ve gotten away from the Bible not only in what we’re teaching, but even in how we’re measuring success and impact in ministry. … [I]n the last five years … half of all adults in America attending a church at least once a month on average [has gone] down to roughly one third of Americans. That’s a huge drop in a short period of time. And … the reason is they’re not getting biblical value from churches.”

“Wow,” Hice sighed. “[T]his is an extremely important issue because the well-being of our whole culture ultimately comes down to the spiritual health of the culture, which ultimately obviously rests upon the health of the church.” Considering this, he asked, “What does the church need to do to get people to come back to church? What kind of changes need to be taking place within a church body to fulfill the mission that God has given them to do?”

According to Barna, it “comes back to the whole issue of worldview. Why is it that young people in particular would say that they often are struggling with fear, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts? … [I]t comes back to their perspectives about how life works. When you’ve got a young adult who doesn’t believe that there’s a God who’s all knowing, all powerful … merciful … just … involved and engaged in their lives, [and] when you’ve got generations of people who say that they don’t believe that there’s anything that happens after they die,” he urged that “it’s imperative that if … churches or families want to be uplifting [and] … a source of strength and hope and optimism, particularly for younger adults, well, then they’ve got to get back to God’s word.”

“[O]ur entire culture [is moving] in the wrong direction,” Barna warned, “and it’s up to churches and parents to raise their children up, to understand the truths of Scripture … to trust the Bible, to know God, to trust Jesus personally, [and] to understand that we’re sinners.” People must understand that “success in life isn’t by your material goods. … It’s not by your fame. It’s not by your popularity. It’s not even by feeling good. It’s about consistent obedience to God.” Another part of this issue is due to a lack of discipleship, he argued, and disciples who aren’t properly equipping themselves.

For anyone grappling with fear, anxiety, or depression, Barna concluded that “Jesus is the antidote. … The Bible shows us an alternative way of living,” and “the more that we can address worldview issues, the more that we can not only rebuild the church, but we can bring back a sense of life and hope and optimism to all Americans.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Mainstream Pollsters Are ‘Mouthpieces for the Government’ and Corporate Oligarchy: Pollster

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A series of inaccurate polls that consistently favored Kamala Harris and liberal issues in the 2024 election shows that mainstream pollsters are “mouthpieces for the government” and for the corporate behemoths who own their networks, a pollster who accurately predicted the election’s outcome has said.

Polls from the legacy media consistently presented the Harris-Walz campaign as surging and possibly poised to win the White House on Tuesday. In reality, Donald Trump won 31 states and bested Harris in the popular vote — a first for a Republican presidential candidate in two decades. Yet NBC News and ABC News reported a three-point lead for Kamala Harris going into election day, 49% to 46%. CBS News polls showed the 2024 presidential race tied. On the other hand, Rasmussen Reports forecast a 2.4% lead for Donald Trump. What explains such disparate poll results?

“Polling is content. And when your pollsters all report up to organizations that are owned by massive corporations that have vested interests in making sure that the corporate oligarchy status quo in D.C. maintains its control, that’s what happens. They are literally mouthpieces for the government, and I’ve proven that they shill for Democrats,” Mark Mitchell, chief pollster of Rasmussen Reports, told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Wednesday. “We caught them. They absolutely cooked the internals of the polls, because the exit polling is showing that who turned out to vote is nothing like what was in ABC polls, NBC polls, Reuters, Ipsos — not at all.”

ABC News reported that the most important issue to voters in 2024 was protecting democracy from incipient fascism. That was followed by the economy, keeping abortion legal, and granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, the network stated.

“The state of democracy narrowly prevailed as the most important issue to voters out of five tested in the exit polls,” claimed ABC News, citing its own exit polls on election night. “Thirty-five percent of voters ranked it as their top issue, followed by 31% who said the economy, 14% who said abortion, 11% who said immigration and 4% who said foreign policy.”

“Legal abortion wins majority backing in all seven swing states from 60% to 69%,” ABC News asserted. It also claimed 57% of 2024 voters said illegal immigrants should not be deported but instead “should be offered a chance to apply for legal status,” despite polls showing nearly that exact number (54%) of Americans support mass deportations.

That did not ring true with Mitchell. “I’ve never seen that” constellation of issues rise to the top of the 2024 election, Mitchell told Perkins. “The number one issue has always been the economy in our polling, and the exit polling is confirming that. And then number two is the border — but it doesn’t really capture the pain that people are feeling just talking about the border.”

Voters feel that “America is in a much, much worse place after the Biden administration,” said Mitchell. “Only 37% of voters said they’re better off than they were four years ago. Only 27% of voters in the swing states say they’re safer than there were four years ago.” And only about one in five voters said that “today’s children will be better off than their parents.”

“That’s absolutely horrible,” said Mitchell. “So, when they talk about the border and the economy, they’re telling you: Stop the invasion; bring back the middle class. Because the Democrats, in my opinion, killed it.”

ABC News buried news of the voters’ economic anguish. “The economy remains a key irritant. Voters say it’s in bad shape by 67%-32%. And 45% say their own financial situation is worse now than four years ago, versus 30% the same, with just 24% doing better. The ‘worse off’ number exceeds its 2008 level, then 42%, and far outpaces its shares in 2020 (20%) and 2016 (28%),” said its exit polling.

“With a different hand of cards, [Harris] might actually have won this thing,” said Mitchell. “But she is the status quo candidate, and people hate the status quo.”

Yet pollster Ann Seltzer had a last-minute poll supposedly showing Kamala Harris winning the reliably Republican state of Iowa.

That was “probably the most ridiculous thing that ever happened in the industry,” said Mitchell. Selzer “can definitely poll Iowa, because she’s been doing it cycle after cycle. And she even polled it in July and had Trump up 18. Trump finished at 14, but she put up a Harris plus-three result right on the weekend before election day, just to satiate the Democrat need for some kind of good news.”

“She burned her credibility,” said Mitchell.

“The legacy media and their pollsters should not have a shred of credibility,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

Mitchell touted the work of Rasmussen pollsters, with one exception. His firm “underestimated the massive Republican turnout” in Texas. “If you take that one out, our error goes down to 0.2% in the states. Eleven out of the 14 states we hit within the margin of error.”

In all, he agreed the political landscape had realigned in 2024, with a multiracial working-class supporting Trump and suburban social liberals shifting to the Democratic Party.

The 2024 election showed middle-class “people fleeing the Democrat Party,” he noted. “There are some offsets. There are the upper-class suburban women and the Boomer men who watch MSNBC. Those people are breaking more towards Harris.”

Meanwhile, “the Republicans, the Donald Trump movement, are really starting to become the core of the counterculture.”

But the realignment of the United States is “all predicated on the Republican Party reforming around the MAGA agenda. Because voters overwhelmingly think the Republican Party is the party of Trump and the MAGA movement.”

“The MAGA tenets are very popular,” said Mitchell. But since “Trump can’t run again,” the persistence of an America First agenda in the GOP “has yet to be seen.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Truth Breeds Trust, Deceit Breeds Destruction

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Americans’ trust in mass media has stumbled to 31%, the lowest measurement since Gallup first asked the question in 1972, while those with absolutely no trust in the media has climbed to 36%. Trust in the media is higher among Democrats (54%) than Republicans (12%) and among senior citizens (43%) than those aged 18-29 (26%), but the media is now the least trusted of all civic and political institutions included in the survey.

How could this happen? If you’re reading The Washington Stand, you likely already know. Mass media, as an institution, lost Americans’ trust by behaving less like the neutral arbiters of objective information they claimed to be and more like partisan organs dedicated to getting candidates who shared their ideology elected.

In other words, they lied — or at least significantly misrepresented themselves. If the media were open about their biases and allowed consumers to reach they own conclusions, they might enjoy greater public trust than they do today.

In fact, the media’s problem with accurate reporting was “highlighted this week,” noted Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice on “Washington Watch,” in a “CBS news interview with [Vice President] Kamala Harris and … an interview with [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson.” On one hand, CBS News faced accusations of selectively editing Harris’ answers, as well as giving her multiple chances to respond to the same question when her first attempt was unsatisfactory. On the other hand, Johnson accused CBS News of selectively cutting out the most persuasive parts of his interview.

While the media may be the worst offender, Americans’ distrust of institutions is not confined to the evening paper. “Trust in our institutions is eroding” more broadly, warned David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, “whether it’s the courts, whether it’s our school system, even the military.”

“Why is that?” Closson asked. “It’s because of decisions that our leaders have made.”

“Thinking of the military,” he continued, “why are recruitment levels so low? Well, think of the woke ideology that’s been introduced into our service branches.” The military is not supposed to be a partisan or ideological entity. Yet servicemembers were subjected to critical race theory trainings, celebration of transgenderism, and DEI performance objectives. Not only was the military drifting away from its critical mission, it was also becoming unmoored from objective reality and truth.

Or, “think about the thousands of service members that were discharged because they didn’t want to get the COVID-19 shot,” Closson added. In fact, public officials in many arenas squandered trust profligately during the COVID pandemic. “Think of all of us that were told to wear masks, and how none of that was actually based on science,” recalled Closson.

Indeed, the brazen lies and arbitrary orders issuing from public institutions during COVID created a “run” on public trust that went beyond just the issues at hand. Backed by the media and powerful government agencies, public health officials demanded that citizens comply with draconian mandates, including stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, vaccine passports, and social distancing farces. These officials traded on their scientific reputation as public health experts, when in fact few to none of the recommendations they issued were based on science.

As a result, Americans jaded by their COVID-era interactions with government are more willing to question the government on unrelated points. If public health officials were willing to lie about the efficacy of the COVID jabs, for example, then why should they be trusted on the rest of the recommended vaccine regimen? This, combined with a wide-open southern border — another example of gaslighting — has led to the resurgence of diseases once on the verge of eradication. Drug companies are now paying for advertisements that aren’t selling new products, but which are simply begging Americans not to turn their backs on longstanding vaccine recommendations. Building trust takes much longer than destroying it.

The collapse of public trust in America holds lessons for Christians to take to heart. “As Christians, we believe in an objective order, right and wrong,” concluded Closson. “And we believe in speaking the truth in love. And, too often, people in positions of power are abusing their authority, and that is eroding trust we have. And that’s not sustainable for any society in the long term.”

Three thousand years ago, David lamented that “Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak” (Psalms 12:2). But, rather than giving in to despair, David placed his trust in the Lord. “The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times” (Psalm 12:6).

Because God speaks the truth, his children should also be known for their truthfulness. Paul describes how God has given the church pastors and teachers to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” so that we may not be misled “by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:12, 14-15).

The goal is unity and mutual edification (Ephesians 4:16), but the means are truth and love. Truth fosters trust, but deceit leads to destruction. This holds as true for the church as it does for the society at large. So, rather than be discouraged and disillusioned by the maelstrom of brazen lies swirling through our public discourse, Christians should consider in what ways they are walking in the truth, and how that can contribute to building up the body of Christ.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Americans’ Trust in Media Reaches New Record Low

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A newly released Gallup poll has found that the level of trust that Americans place in mainstream media has reached yet another new low.

The survey revealed that just 31% of respondents say they have a “‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of confidence in the mass media [defined as “newspapers, TV and radio”] to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly.’” The number fell slightly from last year’s number of 32%, which was a historic low at that point. Gallup further noted that for the third year in a row, “more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount.”

According to Gallup’s polling, Americans’ trust in the media has been steadily falling since the mid-1970s, taking a particularly precipitous fall in 2016 when it dipped below 40% for the first time, bottoming out at 32%. The number rose slightly over the next two years but has steadily dropped over the past six years, reaching an all-time low this year.

Recent events suggest that Americans’ confidence in the media is unlikely to recover anytime soon. Following the airing of CBS News’s “Face the Nation” interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sunday, Johnson posted on X side-by-side clips of what CBS aired versus the speaker’s full answers, which showed that CBS had selectively edited key parts of Johnson’s answers on FEMA’s lack of funding for hurricane survivors and efforts that states are making to clean up voter rolls to prevent non-citizens from being allowed to vote.

“CBS has been under fire for selectively editing their interviews to PROMOTE Democrats and UNDERMINE Republicans,” Johnson noted. “Yesterday, they chose to cut FIVE important minutes out of my nearly 15 minute interview.”

The controversy comes amidst the continued fallout over CBS News’s “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris this month, which observers say appeared to be heavily edited. As reported by The Daily Wire, the original interview was 45 minutes long, but only 15 minutes of the interview was publicly aired.

Controversy arose when a response from Harris appeared to have been completely excised from the original interview. A promotional clip posted online by CBS showed Harris responding in vague terms to host Bill Whitaker’s question about U.S. financial support for Israel’s war against Islamist terror groups. “The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,” Harris said.

But when the full interview was posted on YouTube, Harris’s answer did not appear in it, nor did it appear in the “Overtime” segment. Instead, a different response to Whitaker’s question appeared, with Harris saying, “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

Public outrage over the apparent deception seems to have reached a head, as a new Harvard Caps Harris poll found that a full 85% of voters — including 88% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats — say that CBS News should release the full, unedited transcript of the interview.

Jared Bridges, editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand, observed that adherence to political ideology within legacy media outlets seems to have surpassed concerns about objectivity.

“I’m sure there’s variance, but I suspect most mainstream media still think that they care about trustworthiness, but many of them have either lost their mooring or they are anchored to an ideology that doesn’t care as much about truth,” he told TWS. “That adherence to worldviews which value outcomes above truth certainly affects how one writes, edits, and presents newsworthy events.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: META Censorship Practices: ‘Pro-Trump’ posts ‘go to a team to take it down”

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Vance Delivers a Master Class in How to Deal With Biased Moderators

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The traditional TV networks continue to offer obvious home-field advantages to Democrats in this year’s election debates, as they have for as long as I’ve observed politics.

But Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, delivered a master class in how to deal with biased moderators in his vice-presidential showdown Tuesday night with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat.

Not only did Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, handle obviously skewed questions. He also refused to allow the moderators—“CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan—to live “fact-check” him without calling them out on it.

More on that in a bit.

There’s no doubt that the CBS News moderators of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate were nearly as biased as the ABC News moderators in the Sept. 10 presidential debate. Their questions were mostly cherry-picked to be of more interest to a left-leaning audience, and they clearly steered the discussion toward topics that benefit Democrats.

Climate change is a bottom-tier issue in poll after poll for the American people, but it’s super important to a narrow band of highly engaged liberals. So, we get a climate question in every single debate, while somehow issues like the threat of Communist China seemingly never come up.

This kind of bias has been a problem for a very long time, though the media is far more shameless than they used to be. In 2012, CNN host Candy Crowley actually apologized for live fact-checking Republican nominee Mitt Romney in his debate with incumbent Democrat Barack Obama. A lot has changed since then.

They don’t just ask biased questions these days; they now actively participate in the debate to help whatever Democrat is on stage.

There was a funny moment, at least to me, when Vance pushed Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, on a Minnesota law that allows babies to be killed after a botched abortion. It was a law that Walz signed.

But Walz didn’t and seemingly couldn’t answer the question.

Instead, Walz just pointed to the moderators and said they “fact-checked” it last time. He clearly wanted the “moderators” to step in and help him.

They didn’t deliver the life preserver this time, but it’s understandable why Walz thought they would.

Presidential and vice presidential debates shouldn’t be like this. The media should be letting politicians speak for themselves. But it appears that the networks can’t help themselves.

To a certain extent, Republicans are in a tough spot. It’s clear that Democrats are simply unwilling to participate in a debate that isn’t on their home field. And having no presidential and vice presidential debates at all—especially given that Walz and Harris so rarely have to answer tough questions—would be bad for the country.

Given this challenging environment, Vance did a remarkable job of staying on message, answering questions seriously—but on his terms—and delivering clear, logical answers to every question.

And when the two moderators became obnoxious about interjecting and live fact-checking (even though CBS News said they wouldn’t), Vance didn’t just let it go.

Trump said after the ABC News debate that he regretted not going after the biased moderators, and Vance seemed to have learned from that.

When Brennen tried to interject with a comment on Haitian illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, before moving on to the next question, Vance stopped her. She tried to cut him off with a “we just don’t have time with all these questions to allow you to respond,” but Vance wasn’t having it.

“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check, and since you are fact-checking me I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance said.

The Ohio Republican went on to explain how illegal aliens can use a government app, CPB One, to apply for legal status, which he said was a part of the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies.

The moderators continued trying to stop Vance, but he kept speaking. They even cut off his microphone. But Vance didn’t look reckless or like a boor. He looked like a guy who took the discussion—and the intelligence of the American people—seriously.

This is how it should be done. The only people who looked bad in the exchange were the CBS moderators.

Vance is clearly quite good at this, but one way or another he provided the model for how to walk into a biased debate and come out looking better at the end of it.

It will certainly be difficult to convince the American people that Vance is “weird” after that.

This article has been corrected to reflect which networks hosted the debates.

AUTHOR

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.” Send an email to Jarrett Jarrett on X: .

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Trump Eyeing Prosecuting Google over ‘Illegal’ Election Interference

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Tech giant Google’s days of election interference may be drawing to a close, pending the outcome of November’s presidential election. Former President Donald Trump pledged on Friday to prosecute Google for manipulating search results to benefit Democratic political candidates, should he retake the White House.

“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump shared in a post on Truth Social. He continued, “This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections.” The 45th president vowed, “If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!”

A report published last week by Media Research Center (MRC) Free Speech America revealed that Google has been manipulating and “padding” search results to promote Vice President Kamala Harris and disparage Trump. Researchers used Google to search for both “Donald Trump Presidential Race 2024” and “Kamala Harris Presidential Race 2024” and found that Google listed Harris’s campaign website higher in search results than Trump’s campaign website. Google also promoted news websites — such as CNN, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and The Economist — which have a left-wing bias and provided negative coverage of Trump’s campaign and policies and favorable coverage of Harris’s campaign and policies.

“This is not neutral, there are snotty headlines and opinion pieces,” MRC NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham commented. He continued, “Writers highlight negatives for both campaigns but suggest Harris is not an ideologue, and that Trump is very divisive. Apparently, Democrats can say the worst things about Trump and his supporters and it’s never viewed as divisive. It’s merely implied that it’s accurate.”

A previous MRC report found that Google has “interfered in elections” over 40 times since 2008. Over the past almost-two-decades, Google has consistently worked to promote news, opinion, and analysis from sources with a left-wing bias; buried stories damaging to Democratic politicians; buried Republican candidates’ campaign websites; and used search result suggestions to liken Republicans to Nazis. Google worked hard to promote then-Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and, in 2012, his reelection efforts. In 2016, Google hid search suggestions related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s criminal indictment and her involvement in the deaths of American citizens and soldiers in Benghazi, Libya.

Google also overrepresented media sources with a left-wing bias. When searching for results related to “abortion,” “campaign finance reform,” “global warming,” “Iraq war,” and others, Google users were 40% more likely to be fed sources with a left-wing bias. In the 2018 midterms, the overrepresentation of left-wing news sources increased, with Google burying Republican candidates’ campaign websites, listing “Nazism” as a “related search” to Republican organizations, and listing the Republican Party under search results for “Nazism.”

In 2020, Google continued its election interference efforts in an attempt to “prevent … the next Trump situation,” as a senior Google official put it. In addition to overrepresenting news sources with a left-wing bias, Google also blocked and blacklisted news sources it deemed too conservative, including MRC’s NewsBusters, the Daily Caller, The Christian Post, and Catholic News Agency. These websites would not appear in search results conducted using Google mobile apps.

Other websites — including Breitbart News and The Federalist — were blocked from appearing in Google search results regardless of the app or platform used to access Google. The tech giant blocked emails from Republican campaigns and organizations — including the Republican National Committee — from being delivered to Gmail accounts. Google also rewrote its campaign ads policies in order to suppress campaigns that executives considered threatening to former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

In the past several months, Google has worked with the Harris campaign to attach campaign ads to news results, altering headlines to make it appear that major news outlets like the Associated Press, USA Today, The Guardian, The Independent, Time Magazine, NPR, PBS, CNN, CBS News, and others are endorsing or promoting Harris’s presidential campaign. One of the news outlets targeted by the Harris campaign — the family-owned, North Dakota-based WDAY Radio — is considering taking legal action against both Google and the Harris campaign.

In the weeks following the first assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, Google censored search suggestion results related to the event. The Washington Stand reported that a Google search for “assassination attempt” yielded autocomplete results such as “on hitler” and “on ronald reagan,” but no mention was made of Trump. Likewise, a search for “assassination attempt on” returned autocomplete results for such figures as Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan, Vladimir Lenin, Bob Marley, Harry Truman, Prince Charles, Gerald Ford, and Pope John Paul II, but not Trump. Searches that did not include the word “assassination” were also censored. A search for “Trump butler,” referring to the site of the attempted assassination, returned no autocomplete results and a search for “Trump shot” was corrected to “Trump Soho,” “Trump shoe,” “Trump shuttle,” or “Trump show.”

In early August, a federal court determined that Google was operating as an illegal monopoly and was controlling the search engine and search engine advertising markets. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote. Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at Family Research Council and election integrity adviser at FRC Action, said at the time, “This is a victory for Americans who want free and fair elections.” He continued, “When Google allegedly manipulates search results to suppress results on issues like the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, including the iconic photo of him after the shooting raising his fist in the air with the American flag in the background, that is election interference, and should not be tolerated.”

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly considering breaking up Google’s illegal monopoly and forcing the tech giant to divest several of its assets, including the Android operating system.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.