World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
US-Iran conflict hands China’s Xi upper hand ahead of Trump meeting: Experts abcnews.com
from news.google.com
FISA Fearmongering and Disinformation: Presidential Edition Cato Institute
from news.google.com
Monday’s edition of Amanpour & Co., airing on PBS (and CNN International) showcased eponymous host Christiane Amanpour assenting to the radical view of her guest, Yale University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Also ahead, “White Supremacy in Donald Trump’s White House.” Princeton Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor speaks to Michel Martin about Trump’s war on DEI.
The above shows the host quoting a featured article by her guest. But Amanpour was also comfortable straight-up saying Trump’s White House was a “white supremacist” house.
AMANPOUR: Since the start of his second term, President Trump has signed a number of executive orders targeting DEI policies, uttered rhetoric deemed racist at immigrants and is generally eroding the, quote, “melting pot identity” the U.S. once prided itself on. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a Princeton professor of African American studies and she’s the co-founder of the black politics and culture magazine Hammer & Hope. In her recent piece, she describes a white supremacy in Donald Trump’s White House and joins Michel Martin to discuss the rollback of civil rights.
Before the U.S. and Israel launched their joint attacks on Iran 25 days ago, many Iranians said they would welcome foreign intervention if it meant the end of the Islamic Republic. The regime, in power for 47 years, had just crushed a huge wave of anti-government demonstrations, with President Trump claiming more than 30,000 were killed and vowing to come to the rescue of the protesters.
Now, two Iranians — one inside and one outside the country — tell CBS News the feeling of optimism has shifted markedly after more than three weeks of war.
The U.S. media instinctively trust Iran, instead of their own country’s president, Co-Host Jesse Watters said on Fox News Channel’s “The Five” on Monday.
Watters said he saw the reports earlier in the day after returning from “a news blackout”:
“And, I get back and I see that Trump’s announced he’s negotiating with the Iranians and the Iranians say, ‘No, we’re not.’”
“And, the U.S. media believes the Iranians. Just like that,” Watters said.
A Georgia woman is facing murder and drug charges after her born-alive baby died shortly after she used illegally obtained drugs in an attempt to end her pregnancy.
Corporate media want Americans to believe that the charges levied against Alexia Zantail Moore are unprecedented, unfair, and all about abortion, since Moore allegedly tried to abort her baby with mail-order misoprostol, a drug often used in combination with mifepristone to initiate chemical abortions.
CNN host Kasie Hunt asked Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen Monday whether he believes Iranian officials over President Donald Trump.
Trump said talks had started between the United States and Iran. Iran, however, denied any such negotiations have taken place. During a discussion on “The Arena,” Hunt asked Van Hollen whether he trusts Iranian officials over the president.
“So you believe the Iranian officials over the president of the United States?” Hunt asked.
Trump casts a mail-in ballot in Florida special election as he tries to sharply limit absentee voting AppleValleyNewsNow.com
from news.google.com
MS NOW, formerly known as MSNBC, is backing off the charade of presenting ‘straight news’ and is doubling down on the anti-Trump programming that brings them eyeballs and ratings.
Morning Joe is being cut by an hour, and other supposed ‘news’ shows are being ditched to make room for what they are hoping will increase their market share.
CNN hasn’t exactly had a banner month. It started with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spanking CNN’s Kaitlin Collins about the dignified transfer of our brave service members who died in Operation Epic Fury, and only went downhill from there.
Just a few days later, the network repeatedly shared the false news that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was the target of homemade IEDs that were thrown into a crowd of anti-Islam protesters near Gracie Mansion. They started by portraying the alleged bombers, Ibrahim Kayumi and Emir Balat, as “two Pennsylvania teenagers” who “crossed into New York City … for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.” The post went on to say the pair’s lives “would drastically change” after they were “arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest.” CNN later deleted that post, claiming it “failed to reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards” of the network. That post implied Mamdani was the target of the attacks, too.
Election experts from around the country are sounding alarms that the SAVE Act (full name: SAVE Trump’s Ass From The Epstein Files Act) would cause mayhem and set up the elections and the country for failure. In large part, this is because many of the act’s requirements are unfunded.
The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.
“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”
Nearly three weeks into a war against a crazed theocracy, the political and media focus has been, like a complaining child in the back seat of a car on a long trip, “When will it be over?”
This ridiculous impatience is a product of a Democrat opposition to Operation Epic Fury that will exploit every misstep, whether occurring out of strategy, operations, rhetoric, or unintended consequences. It is akin to getting a work assignment that the employer and employee both know will only reasonably produce results after weeks of long hours, at minimum, but nonetheless getting harangued by the boss every day: “You’re not done yet!?”
Now, the boss may be just an intolerable micro-manager, or he may be trying to get you to quit out of frustration. But it’s fairly certain, given the Democrat decades-long foreign policy record, that productive oversight of the conflict is not their goal.
Between the now ascendant neo-Marxist left and the “river-to-the-sea” crowd, the Democrat war objectives are clear: sabotage.
The concept of freedom of the press isn’t ruined by criticism of the press. But when liberal TV hosts roll out their lectures, they sound a little like the president they routinely attack. Any criticism of their work must be Fake News.
MS NOW host Ana Cabrera expressed indignation on March 16 after FCC chairman Brendan Carr tweeted that broadcast stations should watch what they’re airing on the war in Iran: “Freedom of the press has been such a huge, huge underpinning of the democracy in this country, right? In order to hold people in power accountable to be that government watchdog.” But Carr is “squashing” press freedom with a simple tweet.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik lamented Carr wanted to “get in the weeds of what’s said,” but allowed that “you can argue there are good principles involved about wanting to make sure certain kinds of coverage is fair to all sides” – yet the government shouldn’t interfere.
MS NOW host Ana Cabrera freaked out at Brendan Carr tweets, arguing press freedom is a huge underpinning of democracy. He’s quashing it! NPR’s David Folkenflik says Carr’s FCC wants to “get in the weeds of what’s said.” Yes! Much of what they say would fit the weeds metaphor. pic.twitter.com/7GATuVWf8X
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) March 17, 2026
How the Supreme Court’s Tariff Ruling Could Save the Civil Service Washington Monthly
from news.google.com
During Tuesday morning’s cable news morning shows on MS NOW and CNN, blame was placed on Republicans for the lasting DHS shutdown caused by Democrat protests of immigration enforcement and ICE funding. The hosts of CNN This Morning, CNN News Central, and, of course, MS NOW’s Morning Joe ignored the Democrats’ impact on the shutdown, a growing media trend.
In a tease for the News Central segment, CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish teed up the story as a Republican attack on Democrats:
Okay, you guys, we want to talk a little bit more about the partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security enters another week and as we mentioned earlier, very long lines at the airport as a result. So, Republicans want voters to blame Democrats. We’re going to talk about how this is going to play out.
In a tease for CNN News Central, CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish minimized the Democrats impact on the DHS shutdown and impacts to the TSA.
Instead, she stated “Republicans want voters to blame Democrats” for the shutdown. pic.twitter.com/UWdcdOu6s9
— Nick (@nspin310) March 17, 2026
Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday that the country would escalate its war against Iran, and its parallel assault on the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, clearly signaling an escalation of the conflict in the heart of the Middle East.
“The intensity of attacks in Iran is increasing. We are in the midst of achieving a decisive outcome,” Katz said in his video message, shared on social media.
“Israel’s policy is clear and unequivocal: no one in Iran has immunity, and all are targeted. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorized the IDF to neutralize any senior Iranian official for whom an intelligence and operational opportunity arises, without the need for additional approval. We will continue to intercept and hunt them all,” he said.
“Significant surprises are also expected throughout today across all arenas, which will escalate the war we are conducting against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
The human cost of Israel and America’s air campaign on Iran is mounting, nowhere more painfully felt than in the children’s wards of its hospitals.
In the intensive care unit of one, four-year-old Anita lies in a coma with severe head injuries a few days after being pulled out of the rubble of her home when it was destroyed in an air strike.
Her mother Zeiba was in torment, clutching her tiny hand and begging her to wake up. Doctors say she almost certainly never will.
Joe Kent, who led the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned Tuesday, saying he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter to Mr. Trump.
Kent accused high-ranking Israeli officials and some in the media of waging a “misinformation campaign” that was “used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.”
“This was a lie,” he said, urging Mr. Trump to “reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”
In a post on X, Gabbard appeared to respond to Kent’s letter, saying the president “is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.”
ABC News’ Wednesday report on an alleged Iranian drone threat to California did not initially include that the information was “unverified.”
“We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran,” ABC News reported the late February alert stated.
However, the outlet noted in an updated version of the article on Thursday — which included an editor’s note — that the full alert reportedly included the word “unverified” between “acquired” and “information.”
On the left is the way ABC (or their source) reported the FBI alert.
On the right is the actual FBI alert that went to JTFF partners.
You will notice the word left out —“Unverified.” https://t.co/zSBHObisAI pic.twitter.com/XEZPeNKmDA
— Ben Williamson (@_WilliamsonBen) March 12, 2026
NBC Nightly News deserves a measure of credit for being the only Elitist Media broadcast network newscast to report on the Cuban regime’s proposed economic opening: a “Cubastroika”, if you will. However, the report is plagued with so many essential omissions that one wonders why NBC even bothered.
Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Monday, March 16th, 2026:
This weird NBC report on the proposed “Cubastroika’ is remarkable for its many omissions. Nowhere to be found within are the following words: Castro, communism, socialism, regime, protests, Communist Party, dictator, dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/4d9SSfDimx
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 17, 2026
HALLIE JACKSON: To Cuba, tonight, now descending into a blackout as conditions deteriorate. But in a rare and exclusive interview, one official says the country’s now hoping to open up more of a relationship with the U.S., even with some critics skeptical. Our George Solís has made his way to Havana, and has more.
GEORGE SOLÍS: Tonight, Cuba is in the dark. The entire electrical grid collapsing today as the country struggles with an energy crisis, leaving millions on the island without power. During this latest blackout, people have been spilling out to the streets here for hours. Fortunately, some cloud cover to keep them from this blistering heat.
It’s been three months since a drop of oil has reached the country. Highways are empty because there’s no gas. Women are delivering babies in dark hospitals with no electricity. Conditions are deteriorating. I sat down exclusively with Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez Oliva Fraga, considered by many to be Cuba’s economic czar. His plan- to attract more foreign investors, including large companies from the United States.
OSCAR PEREZ OLIVA FRAGA (In Spanish): Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship…
China is helping Cuba race to capture renewable solar energy as the United States imposes an effective oil blockade on the Caribbean island, creating its worst energy crisis in decades.
As the Trump administration steps back from U.S. climate commitments and reinvests in fossil fuels, China is flexing its dominance in renewable energy, using offers of equipment, expertise and financing as geopolitical levers.
European Union ministers and leaders pushed back on ideas to protect the strait, including expanding a maritime operation already in place in the Red Sea.
from www.nytimes.com
Trump Administration Presses Back on Media Determination to Propagate a Defeatist Narrative
Or at least a quagmire narrative.
Axios: FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over Iran war coverage, a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth singled out CNN and rooted for a friendlier owner (Axios).
Abortion polling is notoriously deceptive and known to strategically skew and misrepresent public opinion to favor abortion activists’ radical agendas. Pew Research Center’s latest survey appears to be no different.
In its 2026 American Trends Panel analysis, Pew uses its January 2026 survey of more than 8,500 U.S. adults to assert that a majority of Americans, 60 percent, “continue to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.”
Pew suggests that number means states’ attempts to use the post-Dobbs v. Jackson era to outlaw or limit abortion are unpopular and out of touch. The research center’s write-up of its newly retrieved data even notes, in bold, that “In recent years, the public has become more likely to say obtaining an abortion in their area would be difficult.”
National Public Radio is still in hot pursuit of the supposed sins of GOP Islamophobia, while anti-semitism from Muslim Democrats is never news. NPR made not just one but two stories out of Barbara Sprunt’s reporting, which consisted of her acting horrified about Republicans saying mean things about Islam without being punished.
The first story aired March 13 on All Things Considered: “Unlike past eras, anti-Muslim GOP rhetoric draws little pushback from party leaders.” Yes, the good old days when Republican leadership called out offensive comments by Republicans – and got no credit for it from the elitist media, which still called every Republican presidential candidate a racist.
AILSA CHANG, HOST: In recent days, several Republican lawmakers have drawn condemnation for using anti-Muslim rhetoric. It’s not the first time that the party has had to confront hateful language from within its own ranks, but unlike in past political eras, these comments have faced little pushback from Republican leaders. NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt joins us now….let’s start with this tweet from Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles. This was from earlier this week, right? He posted, quote, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”
NPR doesn’t care if antisemitic comments from Democrats like Rep. Ilhan Omar receive “little pushback from Democrat leaders.” Being Muslim means you’re “marginalized,” so you’re in a different rule book. Sprunt went on to say:
SPRUNT: ….There’s been a lot of posts about Sharia Law. There’s a Sharia-free America Caucus that now has 50 Republican members. Sharia refers to rules devout Muslims follow in life, like praying five times a day, avoiding pork. It’s a religious framework, not a plan to replace the Constitution. And if you listen to the rest of what Johnson said, he added that this isn’t about Muslims as people. But critics say by framing this answer around Sharia law, it gives cover for bigoted language.
On March 7, a throng of left-wing counter protestors met with a small right-wing protest outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D). From within the crowd, 18-year-old Emir Balat threw a homemade bomb and yelled “Allahu akbar.” Balat and his friend Ibrahim Kayumi were arrested for the attack, and law enforcement later determined that the two were ISIS sympathizers.
All of the above information was publicly available by the afternoon of March 7. By 2:00 p.m. ET, several videos of Balat throwing the bomb were already circulating on social media, in which he could clearly be heard yelling the well-known Islamist slogan.
Despite all of that information being readily available, The New York Times’s first headline about the incident read: “Homemade Bomb Thrown at Protest Near N.Y.C. Mayor’s House, Police Say” — a summary so vague that it almost seemed to pin the bomb-throwing on the right-wing protestors.
Since February 14, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been largely shut down after funding lapsed because Democrats demanded changes to President Trump’s deportation policies, leaving government workers such as TSA agents to work without pay and turn to food banks.
A Media Research Center study found that, since the start of the DHS shutdown, only eight percent – or 125 seconds – of the 26 minutes and 22 seconds on the shutdown across the flagship evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC have brought up the fact that the long lines at airports are because of the left’s obstructionism.
MRC analysts examined every mention of the DHS shutdowns and its effects (mainly at America’s airports) by journalists, starting on February 14 on ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News and tallied both the total coverage and allusions to Democratic demands to reopen DHS.
For decades, my colleagues and I have been up against an immense machine— a wildy rich, axis of media, entertainment, and cultural power that made dissent a form of professional suicide. A form of murder – the systematic killing of a person’s good name, reputation, and livelihood.
And when we pointed out the sharia-compliant media ecosystem that enabled it, the punishment only intensified. We were smeared, deplatformed, shadow-banned, and algorithmically buried—until many of us were effectively disappeared from the public square, leaving the megaphone almost entirely in the hands of far-left demons.
Liel Leibovitz of Tablet looked at the New York Times’ piece on the terror attack outside of Mamdani’s residence titled “At 13, He Was Selling Sneakers. At 18, He’s Facing Terror Charges.” Leibovitz: This is not a bug. It’s a feature. We can mock it all we want, writing cutesy headlines like “at 20, he was an aspiring Viennese painter; at 56, he was facing the Allies in a bunker in Berlin.” But the truth is deeper and more troubling. What we’re seeing here is the result of the left’s near-total command of everything we’re allowed to know, say, and think…. When a perfect machine that includes the Democrat party, mainstream media, intelligence agencies, Big Tech, and corporate America comes together and runs an intel operation on you, this is what reality starts to look like. And it’s not something to be merely laughed at; it’s something to be crushed, which means making very significant changes to how you live your life, who you trust, and what you value (Liebovitz).
The New York Times has caught a lot of justified flak the last few days for how softly it has framed its profiles of the Islamic perpetrator of an anti-Jewish attack on a Michigan synagogue. “The Michigan Synagogue Attacker Was a Quiet Restaurant Worker.” At least Sunday’s print headline was better: “Recalling Attacker’s Last Days Before Driving Into Synagogue.”
Critics faulted the terrorist-sympathetic framing of the story, like another headline: “Family Members of Michigan Synagogue Attacker Died in Airstrike in Lebanon.” The story initially included insistence from sources that members of the man’s family killed in an Israeli air strike there were not members of Hezbollah.
As confirmation of the man’s Hezbollah links emerged, that denial was quietly excised.