We often accuse the Elitist Media, with a decades-long body of evidence here at the Media Research Center, of conducting themselves in a manner similar to that of progressive activists. On rare occasions, they also act as policy advisors. It isn’t often that the media will try to steer liberal politicians away from a 20% position on an 80% issue. On matters pertaining to transgender treatments for minors, for example, they joined Democrats in going right off the cliff. But on voter ID, it appears that they appear to be finding religion. Watch as CNN’s Dana Bash and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries discuss the SAVE Act: WATCH: CNN's Dana Bash very gently points to Hakeem Jeffries that Voter ID is an 80%+ issue, Hakeen Jeffries vomits all over the SAVE Act nonetheless pic.twitter.com/rnJ3GMSeLF — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 8, 2026 DANA BASH: I want to turn to a big debate about elections. The president said this week -this past week, that he wanted to nationalize elections at The White House and on Capitol Hill. They say that what they mean legislatively is pushing what they call the SAVE Act, which would mandate Americans show proof of citizenship like a birth certificate and also potentially more information about the registration to vote. Now, I understand you don't support things like a passport, for example, but requiring basic ID in order to vote is really popular. A Pew poll from a few months ago showed 83% of Americans, including 71% of your fellow Democrats, support requiring an ID to vote. Why are they wrong? HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, I haven't said that they're wrong. We know that states are the ones who are empowered to conduct elections, and every state should be allowed to decide the best way to proceed to ensure that there's a free and fair election. Here in New York there are, in fact, voter identification requirements. The question is that what Republicans are trying to do is to engage in clear and blatant voter suppression. They know that if there's a free and fair election in November, they're going to lose. In fact, Republicans have been losing every single election since Donald Trump was sworn in in January of last year, including most recently, decisively in Texas. And of course, losing all across the country up and down the ballot in the November off year elections in places like New Jersey or Virginia, New York. BASH: Yeah. And they've been losing. I mean, Virginia is a good example. They have a requirement to show your ID and Democrats won very, very handily across- across the way. So why not maybe even just take that off the table and say, okay, maybe not a passport or a birth certificate, but show ID? JEFFRIES: Well, first of all, every state is empowered to be able to make the decision on their own, and we completely and totally support that. What Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election. Translation: steal it. And we're not going to let it happen. We stopped them in terms of their gerrymandering efforts where they were going to try to redraw congressional maps in red states throughout the nation, not expect Democrats to respond forcefully, and try to rig the midterms. They failed. We've stopped Donald Trump from being able to federalize the National Guard, which we believe was probably part of some toxic attempt to unleash troops on American cities all across the nation and intimidate people from voting. And we're going to stop him from nationalizing the election. This is going to be a free and fair election. It's going to be conducted like every other election, where states and localities have the ability to administer the laws. It is not surprising that an elected Democrat would oppose requiring proof of citizenship and/or picture identification prior to voting. It is surprising to see Elitist Media try to lead the elected Democrat off the ledge and into the realm of common sense. TWICE, in this instance. But Jeffries refused both of Bash’s attempts at coming into some sort of gentle triangulation. Instead, Jeffries expounded on his Strange New Respect for Article I, Section II, Article II, Section I, and the 10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This is all opportunistic, of course, and directly antithetical to his previous support for the “For the People Act”, which of course “federalized” elections in all the ways the Democrats wanted. Bash did not call him out on these hypocrisies. ABC’s Jon Karl had a similar exchange with California Senator Adam Schiff. Schiff’s oppositions, though, rested upon a different predicate than those of Jeffries: WATCH: ABC's Jon Karl tries to get Adam Schiff to move off of SAVE Act objections by isolating Voter ID and demonstrating it is an 80%+ issue, Schiff bitterly clings to the Helpless Minorities Hoax pic.twitter.com/YLK3paqs5T — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 8, 2026 JON KARL: So Republicans are making a big push for the so-called SAVE Act, at least some Republicans are. It would require proof of citizenship to be able to vote. I understand you and other Democrats oppose that. There are roughly 20 or so million voting age Americans who don't actually have the requisite- the papers that would be required to- to- to show readily available. But given there's Republicans have undermined confidence in elections and the integrity of elections: what about the- what about the idea of voter ID, a photo ID being required to vote? Are you in favor of that? Can- can there be a compromise where Democrats and Republicans put forward photo ID as a requirement for voting? ADAM SCHIFF: So, Jonathan, what- what you've just asked is essentially, Republicans have created distrust of the elections by making nonexistent- by making claims of nonexistent fraud in the elections. And shouldn't we use the distrust they've created in order to enact a voter suppression law, which is the SAVE Act, which would require people to have a birth certificate or passport documents that millions of Americans don't have. Almost half the country doesn't have a passport, and I don't know where many millions of people would even find a birth certificate, so… (CROSSTALK) KARL: I was…No, no, no, but- but…I asked you… SCHIFF: …phony fraud claims… KARL: But I was asking you a different question. Photo ID. Because, as you know, let's show up…there was a recent poll. There's been a lot of polls on this, but in one recent Pew poll, 83% of adults support requiring photo ID to vote, 71% of Democrats favor requiring photo ID. Is that something that you can support? And if not, why not? SCHIFF: It's still going to be something, John. It's- it's still going to be something that disenfranchises people that don't have the proper Real ID, driver's license ID that, that don't have the ID necessary to vote even though they are citizens. This is another way to simply try to suppress the vote. And the last thing I think we want to do is discourage more people, more citizens, from voting while they're attacking those same elections, while they're trying to do away with absentee ballot voting, while they're trying to do away with being able to register to vote… KARL: All right… SCHIFF: …through the DMV or by the mail. So it's part of the broader disenfranchisement effort. And no, I don't think that's the right direction. KARL: All right, Senator Schiff, thank you for joining us this morning.  Karl tried to soft-pitch the idea of Voter ID to Schiff as a way to maybe get Republicans off of election integrity. But Schiff refused. Like Jeffries, he called it "voter suppression.”  Karl then took another pass, citing overwhelming support this time. Schiff was unfazed, and went to one of the most bigoted tropes that has been historically deployed in opposition to voter ID: the Helpless Minorities Hoax- that is, the idea that persons of ethnic minority origins are somehow incapable of securing the proper documents required to satisfy proof of identity or citizenship. Karl did not push back on this, choosing instead to wrap the segment. It says something that even the Elitist Media recognize where the country is on such an issue as voter ID, in a way that they didn’t about other 80/20 issues. But after immolating themselves on other issues such as Covid and transgender treatments for kids, this appears to be a matter of basic self-preservation.

We could have predicted that a Super Bowl played in the home stadium of the San Francisco 49ers was going to lead some woke sports section to turn to their revolutionary hero Colin Kaepernick, the one who wore pigs-with-police hat socks because all cops are apparently pigs. It came from The Washington Post. The online headline:  What do we make of Colin Kaepernick now? The Super Bowl is being played in his former home stadium, at a societal moment that echoes the issues he forced football fans to confront. So why is he out of mind? As @AGHamilton tweeted for all of us: "Beyond parody to publish this take after a week of arguing that WaPo’s sports section provides irreplaceable and critical insights to readers." Former fans of the Post Sports section were annoyed at the paper's crusading against the "Redskins" name. We reported in 2014 that in a crusade led by sports columnist Mike Wise, the Post printed 31,562 words on the self-created controversy in just one year. The Super Bowl is being played in Colin Kaepernick's former home stadium, at a societal moment that echoes the issues he forced football fans to confront nearly 10 years ago, after he kneeled during the national anthem before a 49ers game. https://t.co/TX2l7r7msx — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 8, 2026 Sports reporter Adam Kilgore offered the typical opinion piece:  SAN FRANCISCO — The most relevant figure to Super Bowl LX is absent from it. The game will be played in his former home stadium, in the place where his protest made him a national lightning rod and a global symbol. The social issues swirling around America’s largest sporting spectacle carry distinct echoes of what prompted his actions and what led to his exile. And yet he remains outside the conversation and invisible within the confines of the NFL. Colin Kaepernick might as well be a ghost. “Colin Kaepernick?” Seattle Seahawks safety Julian Love said this week, as if hearing a name he had not considered in a long time. “Oh, wow.” Yes, wow. Kaepernick hasn't played in the NFL since 2016. The quarterback drafted just above him in the second round in 2011 is Andy Dalton, who's still a backup for the Carolina Panthers, but few notice. Most players who played during Kaepernick's years are retired and  barely remembered now. For his part, Love later praised Kaepernick's activism in the article.  As usual, leftist activism makes you a “worldwide emblem of outrage,” a woke hero: The image of Kaepernick on a knee became a worldwide emblem of outrage over police violence and racial injustice — and a tempest that led to unwanted political entanglement for the NFL, fierce ire from the political right and Kaepernick’s ostracism from professional football. The current moment and the Super Bowl’s location provide a platform to examine the legacies of Kaepernick’s protest. He served as a flash point, and even as he semi-receded from public life, his influence hovers over the league as an example of both courage and consequences.... His boldness and prescience did not ensure triumph. Donald Trump, the president who referred to players who knelt as “that son of a b----,” won reelection. Most of this article is a pile of leftist athletes, union reps, and professors, complaining the the current ICE agitators in Minneapolis near more celebrity hype:  “The silence there is very, very loud from athletes both in and outside of Minneapolis,” said Ayesha Bell Hardaway, director of Case Western Reserve University’s Social Justice Institute. “That, too, is Colin’s legacy. The impact of him paying that consequence, we should all wonder if what he had to endure has made others feel as if they cannot speak out and therefore not speak out.” To The Washington Post, there can always be more revolutionary leftist protesting -- so they can amplify and celebrate it. 

Meet Politico's Supervillains of the TDS Universe. Artist Natalia Delgado provided us with a rendering of the sheer villainy of a howling mad J.D. Vance, whose angry piercing gaze seems about to burn the hearts out of sensitive Georgetown liberals whose world has been turned upside down in the wake of the 2024 election. Behind Vance, staring ominously out at the world, is the spooky Big Brother hypnotic glare of the unholiest of all unholy supervillains, none other than Orange Man Bad.  Who, oh who, can combat the overwhelming power of the MAGA supervillains? Fortunately, Politico reporter Gregory Svirnovskiy on Thursday has shined a light on a possible path to salvation. Olympic athletes. Yes, according to Svirnovkiy, the MAGA supervillains can be heroically stifled by athletes from other countries defeating Team USA on the snowy (and ICE-y) playing fields of the Winter Olympics as you can see in "Trump’s geopolitical tensions spill into the Winter Olympics." The president’s repeated jabs at longtime partners, his inconsistent tariff policy and repeated plays for Greenland have shown just how much he’s shifted the traditional world order. The resulting international “rupture,” as described by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Davos last month, has turned beating the Americans in Italy from a crowning sporting achievement to an even greater moral imperative for the president’s rivals. “This is life and death,” said Charlie Angus, a former member of Parliament in Canada with the New Democratic Party and prominent Trump critic. “If it’s the semifinals and we’re playing against the United States, it’s no longer a game. And that’s profound.” Life and death?? Yes, Donald Trump keeps winning, but can we hope that Team MAGA can finally be stopped at the Winter Olympics? Svirnovskiy certainly seems to be holding out the possible hope that all liberals can desperately grasp onto:  Trump has also clashed with many of the countries vying to top the leaderboards in Milan. Since returning to the White House in January, he’s antagonized Norway, which took home the most medals in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, over a perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub and clashed repeatedly with Canada, which finished fourth. “We’re looking at the world in a very different light,” Angus said. “And we’re looking at a next-door neighbor who makes increasingly unhinged threats towards us. So to go to international games and pretend that we’re all one happy family, well, that’s gone.” Trump has also sparred with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France (the 13th-place finisher in Beijing), and threatened a military incursion in pushing Denmark (a Scandinavian country which curiously hasn’t medaled in the Winter Olympics since 1998) to cede Greenland. Is Mr. Angus vying for an employment at Politico with his TDS displays? The position of labor reporter has been vacant since the departure of the legendary Mike Elk. Here's how you know he's a hard-core leftist: "In September 2025, Angus started a YouTube channel in partnership with the MeidasTouch Network under the name Meidas Canada." Then came the "legendary" athletes: “With the current American president, no one knows what he will do or say tomorrow,” said legendary goaltender Dominik Hasek, a gold medalist with Czechia in the 1998 Nagano Games and a one-time rumored presidential candidate in his home nation. “If he doesn’t make negative comments about athletes from other countries in the coming weeks, everything will be fine. But that could change very quickly after one of his frequent hateful attacks.” Does Svirnovkiy have an axe to grind? He explains on his LinkedIn page:  My parents left the Soviet Union as religious refugees in 1993, fleeing a country that censored truths that didn’t conform to its ideological narratives. They spent much of their lives in the dark....I know what it's like to come from a place where press freedoms are nonexistent, where the public has no window into the decisions and policies at the top. It's why I believe in political journalism, in attempts at educating the public, at empowering them to decide how to act and lead.

Meet Politico's Supervillains of the TDS Universe. Artist Natalia Delgado provided us with a rendering of the sheer villainy of a howling mad J.D. Vance, whose angry piercing gaze seems about to burn the hearts out of sensitive Georgetown liberals whose world has been turned upside down in the wake of the 2024 election. Behind Vance, staring ominously out at the world, is the spooky Big Brother hypnotic glare of the unholiest of all unholy supervillains, none other than Orange Man Bad.  Who, oh who, can combat the overwhelming power of the MAGA supervillains? Fortunately, Politico reporter Gregory Svirnovskiy on Thursday has shined a light on a possible path to salvation. Olympic athletes. Yes, according to Svirnovkiy, the MAGA supervillains can be heroically stifled by athletes from other countries defeating Team USA on the snowy (and ICE-y) playing fields of the Winter Olympics as you can see in "Trump’s geopolitical tensions spill into the Winter Olympics." The president’s repeated jabs at longtime partners, his inconsistent tariff policy and repeated plays for Greenland have shown just how much he’s shifted the traditional world order. The resulting international “rupture,” as described by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Davos last month, has turned beating the Americans in Italy from a crowning sporting achievement to an even greater moral imperative for the president’s rivals. “This is life and death,” said Charlie Angus, a former member of Parliament in Canada with the New Democratic Party and prominent Trump critic. “If it’s the semifinals and we’re playing against the United States, it’s no longer a game. And that’s profound.” Life and death?? Yes, Donald Trump keeps winning, but can we hope that Team MAGA can finally be stopped at the Winter Olympics? Svirnovskiy certainly seems to be holding out the possible hope that all liberals can desperately grasp onto:  Trump has also clashed with many of the countries vying to top the leaderboards in Milan. Since returning to the White House in January, he’s antagonized Norway, which took home the most medals in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, over a perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub and clashed repeatedly with Canada, which finished fourth. “We’re looking at the world in a very different light,” Angus said. “And we’re looking at a next-door neighbor who makes increasingly unhinged threats towards us. So to go to international games and pretend that we’re all one happy family, well, that’s gone.” Trump has also sparred with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France (the 13th-place finisher in Beijing), and threatened a military incursion in pushing Denmark (a Scandinavian country which curiously hasn’t medaled in the Winter Olympics since 1998) to cede Greenland. Is Mr. Angus vying for an employment at Politico with his TDS displays? The position of labor reporter has been vacant since the departure of the legendary Mike Elk. Here's how you know he's a hard-core leftist: "In September 2025, Angus started a YouTube channel in partnership with the MeidasTouch Network under the name Meidas Canada." Then came the "legendary" athletes: “With the current American president, no one knows what he will do or say tomorrow,” said legendary goaltender Dominik Hasek, a gold medalist with Czechia in the 1998 Nagano Games and a one-time rumored presidential candidate in his home nation. “If he doesn’t make negative comments about athletes from other countries in the coming weeks, everything will be fine. But that could change very quickly after one of his frequent hateful attacks.” Does Svirnovkiy have an axe to grind? He explains on his LinkedIn page:  My parents left the Soviet Union as religious refugees in 1993, fleeing a country that censored truths that didn’t conform to its ideological narratives. They spent much of their lives in the dark....I know what it's like to come from a place where press freedoms are nonexistent, where the public has no window into the decisions and policies at the top. It's why I believe in political journalism, in attempts at educating the public, at empowering them to decide how to act and lead.

One of the most perennially annoying forms of reverse racism in the media is criticizing the Winter Olympics because they’re too white. Every four years, we at NewsBusters remember Bryant Gumbel on his HBO program Real Sports speaking out against….allegedly White Sports. Finally tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t like ’em and won’t watch ’em….Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. He mocked the sports, and he mocked the athletes. It would sound like he shouldn’t have been hosting a sports show. Can you imagine how long someone would last at HBO or ESPN if they suggested basketball was a ridiculous sport because it doesn't have enough white people? The racial scolds of the Associated Press broke this one out before the games began, with a Europe-based sports reporter named Steve Douglas. It wasn't someone assigned to a "race and culture" beat. Let the bean-counting games begin! The headline: Europe’s rising diversity is not reflected at the Winter Olympics. Culture plays a big role Douglas begins with the story of Maryam Hashi, a Somalian immigrant to Sweden who's now an Olympian in snowboarding. That's an aspirational story of overcoming a dramatic change in the climate you live in to thrive in athletics. But of course, "What she’d love now is to see other migrants experiencing the same joy." That's a fine goal, but for the Left, it feels like an ideological crusade. Immigration from Africa and the Middle East has transformed the demographics of Europe in recent decades. And while the growing diversity is reflected in many sports such as soccer — Sweden’s men’s national team has several Black players including Liverpool striker Alexander Isak — it hasn’t made a dent in winter sports. At the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Sweden is sending a team made up almost exclusively of ethnically Swedish athletes, with NHL player Mika Zibanejad, whose father is from Iran, a rare exception. That hardly reflects the diversity of the Nordic country: About 2 million of its 10 million residents were born abroad, about half of them in Asia or Africa, according to national statistics agency SCB. The lack of athletes of color at the Winter Olympics — and in winter sports in general — has been a recurring theme in the U.S., which is sending one of its most diverse teams to the Games. It hasn’t gotten the same attention in Europe. The Olympic rosters of France, Germany, Switzerland and other European winter sports nations look a lot like Sweden’s: overwhelmingly white and lacking the immigrant representation seen in their soccer or basketball teams. Douglas lamented that immigrant parents aren't familiar with the winter sports and are often in "less-privileged economic positions," the equipment in the winter sports can be expensive. The agenda is made plain:  Improving access for immigrants Academics believe more needs to be done by winter sports to improve accessibility for immigrants and underserved communities. “It’s a fact that the best integrative force in society is team sports and sports clubs, where kids can go to do useful things together with others,” said Stefan Jonsson, a professor in Ethnicity and Migration Studies at Linköping University. “There is so much research saying if we want social and ethnic integration, this would be the primary thing.” Most Americans and Europeans are supportive of Olympic athletes of all kinds, with an emphasis on hard work and excellence. But you have to laugh when you read stories like this and then there's a pop-up message asking for donations on the AP website under the slogan "News without an agenda."