Indicted ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon’s actions belie his claim he was acting as a Constitutionally-protected “journalist” when he disrupted a church service last month – but, even if he was, he still doesn’t have the right to violate the religious freedom rights of others – legal experts say. On January 29, federal authorities arrested Lemon for his role in the January 18 storming of a St. Paul, Minnesota-area church by an organized mob of far-left rioters under the guise of protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to detail illegal aliens. He has been charged with violating laws protecting the right to freedom of religious worship. Despite his claim to be a journalist covering, instead of a participant in, the church invasion, actions speak louder than words, legal analysts note. “Don Lemon was part of an organized mob that stormed into a church service and prevented the parishioners from practicing their faith,” Constitutional lawyer, commentator and Author Mark Levin wrote in a X.com post explaining that Lemon was acting as a participant, not a journalist, in the church invasion. “He can claim he was merely reporting, but he was not. Even if he was, he still intentionally joined in the disruption of the church service,” Levin notes. “And he obviously knew beforehand what was going to take place.” “In footage that Lemon posted online, it appears that he was not merely an observer recording the illegal protest inside the church, which would be a typical role of a reporter, Fox News Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett wrote in an analysis. “Instead, he seemed to be an active participant who embedded himself with the mob and joined their cause in harassing and tormenting the parishioners,” Jarrett wrote, detailing how Lemon: “Confronted the pastor with contentious questions, the same way that the agitators accosted stunned —and perhaps fearful — congregates.” Knew of the protesters' plan to barge into and disrupt the church service. Admitted that he had done "reconnaissance." Accompanied members of Minnesota Black Lives Matter.  Handed out donuts and coffee to the demonstrators. Vowed to accompany them on their invasion. “Calling yourself a ‘journalist’ or claiming that you are simply ‘committing journalism,’ as Lemon has done, is not a defense. It is your behavior that the law examines. Both words and actions can reveal your intent,” Jarrett explains: “This is why Lemon has found himself in criminal jeopardy.” “Courts have had to work through this by looking at their conduct – not how they define themselves, but what did they do,” George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who has represented legal observers in protest cases, concurred in an interview with Fox News Channel. “Don Lemon really stretches that meaning of a ‘journalist,’” Turley said. What’s more, “Neither journalists nor protesters enjoy any constitutional right to invade someone else’s private space to report on the news or proclaim their message,” according to analysis by Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty Senior Counsel Eric Rassbach quoted in The Wall Street Journal: “By Lemon’s logic, the KKK could claim a First Amendment right to storm a black church during services and stage a protest. That gets the First Amendment completely backwards.” …. “Don Lemon has exactly the same First Amendment right to barge into a church and disrupt a worship service as I would have to walk into his home and start reporting on his private dinner party—namely, none at all.”

Is it possible just to enjoy a long-cherished international sports tradition without injecting climate scareporn into the mix? Apparently not so for the Gaia-worshipping sub-optimal intellects at The Washington Post. Post reporters Janice Kai Chen, Nick Kirkpatrick and Júlia Ledur apparently forgot it was winter when they collectively blurted out the following headline February 2, “Climate change is making the Winter Olympics harder to host.” Kicking the doom-mongering into high gear, the authors cried that “Even with the intervention of machine-made snow, climate change will substantially shrink the number of locations able to host the Games.” The 2026 games, which are being held in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, are being threatened by warmer temperatures, kvetched the Post reporters. “With the weather too warm to make snow during the day, the machines had to run at night to create enough snow for the upcoming competitions,” in the weeks leading up to the games, they exclaimed.  But — and this may be news to The Post fanatics — climate and weather have a tendency to be very unpredictable. On Tuesday, KSL-TV reported the snow-makers got some natural help: A long‑awaited round of snowfall has arrived in Cortina just as the city races to prepare for the upcoming Olympic opening ceremonies. The snow brought both relief and new challenges as workers push to finish construction. Some regular visitors, like Elena Belagia of Milan, said the fresh snow brought a welcome improvement. “All the trees are full of snow, and so it’s amazing,” Belagia said. “They are very lucky. I’ve never seen so much snow in this period.” This winter in Italy hasn't always fit the climate-ragebait model. Leading Italian news organization Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) just reported January 8 that Italy was being “gripped by cold, temperatures drop as low as 23.1° in Veneto,” a region south of Cortina. “After being hit by violent winds, heavy snow and torrential rain over the last few days, Italy was in the grip of intense cold on Thursday,” the outlet summarized. But Chen, Kirkpatrick and Ledur made it seem like this was the beginning of the end of the Winter Games:  By the middle of this century there could be fewer than 20 countries with the right conditions and infrastructure to host the Games, according to a study from 2024. A study published last month from the same authors examines how to make the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games more climate-resilient. The reporters also cherry-picked the Rocky Mountains in the American West having a particularly warm winter as being another harbinger of the Winter Games’s death knell. But as USA Today conceded about the blisteringly cold winter season in the American Northeast and Midwest going into February, “Greetings from Ice Planet Hoth … Indeed, much of the eastern United States resembles the fictional frozen Star Wars world, and now folks there are now enduring some of the worst cold on Earth.” What does all this mean? Predictions about future climate developments and conditions — particularly for something as niche as Winter Sports — is about as reliable as buying a lottery ticket for the $80 million Powerball jackpot, just refer back to former Vice President Al Gore’s conspicuously named climate Armageddon documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which was mocked on its 20th anniversary for much of its doom prophecies never coming to pass.   But leave it to The Post to turn anything and everything it can into a springboard for nutty climate politics. 

Joe Scarborough perpetually acts like a former congressman who thinks everyone who came after him isn't as great as he was.  On Wednesday, he mocked Speaker Mike Johnson's stature, calling him "Little Mike Johnson, Mikey."  We love Southern accents, but [not for the first time] Scarborough misleadingly imitated Johson as having a Southern drawl. Yes, the Speaker's from Louisiana, but his accent evokes polished newsreader, not James Carville.  Scarborough even managed to work in a boast about his own electoral prowess, claiming that even when he was behind in the early counting of some of his elections, he assured others that he was going to win since he knew where the uncounted votes were coming from. He thought "Mikey" shouldn't go along with conspiracy theories about initial voting results on Election Night turning into defeats. That's interesting, since Scarborough & Co. spent years on Team Mueller suggesting there was more "onion to unpeel" on Russian collusion with Trump to steal the 2016 election. Then there's Joe's favorite conspiracy....that Trump is a fascist, a Nazi. Scarborough's Wednesday shtick came in the context of criticizing Speaker Johnson's support for Trump's advocacy of the SAVE Act and its voter ID requirements, and expounding his view that Trump's notions of "federalizing" elections are unconstitutional. Funny, they didn't hate "federalizing" elections when Democrats were proposing it. But now, Scarborough cartoons it as Trump "trying to overthrow elections in the fall by shredding the Constitution."   Scarborough's mocking of Mike Johnson's stature was utterly hypocritical. Over the years, Trump and Mika have often hammered Donald Trump for his mocking of the physical attributes or disabilities of others. Most notably, of course, was in response to Trump's allegation about the alleged after-effects of a facelift he asserted Mika that had undergone.  But even if Joe and Mika's condemnation of that was understandable, the possible sins of the President shall not be visited upon the Speaker. Mike Johnson is a mannerly man, with no history of disparaging the looks of others. And in contrast with Scarborough, Johnson doesn't litter his lexicon with assorted f-bombs and other vulgarities.  In sum, there's no excuse for Scarborough's middle-school mocking of Johnson. Does calling Speaker Johnson "Little Mike" and "Mikey" make Joe feel like a big man? Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 2/4/26 6:00 am ET KAROLINE LEAVITT: What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge, common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported, that President Trump is committed to signing into law.  REPORTER: Just to be clear, he does believe the states should oversee [it all?] LEAVITT: The president believes in the United States Constitution. However, he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections. And again, voter ID is a highly popular and common-sense policy that the president wants to pursue, and he wants to pass legislation to make that happen for all states across the country.  MIKA BRZEZINSKI: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, trying to explain what President Trump meant when he said on Monday that the federal government should take over elections in several states. But the president would undercut all of that a few hours later, ranting in the Oval Office about false claims of election fraud and telling reporters that the federal government should get involved.  JOE SCARBOROUGH: Uh, can't do that. So there's this. There's this little piece of paper called the United States Constitution. And somebody there should read it. Little Mike Johnson should read it as well, because Mikey now is starting to kind of feed into this brewing sort of scheme the White House is getting engaged in and talking about trying to overthrow elections in the fall by shredding the Constitution. Details, details. We'll get into it in a little bit.  MIKA: Yes.  SCARBOROUGH: Just to clarify for our friends on Capitol Hill and on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Constitution, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1. That one. The Constitution, just in case there are any questions with Mike Johnson or Donald Trump or anybody in the Senate, and I don't think there is in the Senate. Locals, the state governments, they run elections. It's black and white. It's in the United States Constitution. This has been the way it has always been in the United States.  Oh, there we go. Clause 1. I'm going to read it slowly for our friends on Capitol Hill. Clause 1. Elections Clause. The times places and manner of holding elections where senators and representatives shall be prescribed by each state, by the legislature thereof. But the Congress may, at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except for places of choosing senators.  So if Congress wants to get involved and pass something, they can pass something. But it is the states who, at the end of the day, run this, not the President of the United States.  And you have Steve Bannon saying they're going to swarm. You know, ICE is going to swarm polling locations. No, they're not. No court's going to allow that to happen.  And you have Mike Johnson actually playing into it. Mike Johnson: I mean, how low can he go? I actually am very disappointed. Mike Johnson now playing into these conspiracy theories, going, [imitates Johnson speaking with Southern accent] Well, you know, you know, one candidate was ahead, and then he fell behind, and that seemed to happen.  That's elections!  Ask everybody. I've been behind on, you know, early in elections. And they're saying, how you doing? Well, doing really well. We're going to win.  I mean, when we project sometimes, you'll look and it'll say a candidate may be behind by a percentage point or two. And NBC or ABC or CBS will project the other candidate the winner because they know where the votes are all coming in from. I mean, this is such garbage and nonsense, but they keep doing it. 

Apple News continued its defiant stance against offering news from right-leaning outlets through the end of January 2026.  Apple News stubbornly refrained from using any right-leaning outlets in the top 20 articles of its morning editions between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, 2026. Of the 620 top stories featured by the news app in the first month of the year, not a single one was from a right-leaning media outlet.  Rather than promoting news stories from notable right-leaning media sources such as Fox News, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Breitbart or The Gateway Pundit, Apple News has relentlessly pushed articles from elitist media outlets that amplify the left’s narrative, like: The Washington Post, The Associated Press and NBC News as well as center outlets like The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. For the month of January, Apple News published 440 stories from left-leaning outlets. Its favorite leftist outlets were: The Washington Post (72) The Associated Press (54) NBC News (50) The Guardian (34) The New York Times (30) Apple (27) NPR (25) Politico (19) USA Today (16) Bloomberg News (15) Apple News featured headlines in January that broadly focused on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy and immigration policy in negative ways. For example, the news app used a headline from NBC News that read, “Unnerved by Trump, U.S. allies are making nice with China.  Apple News editors turned to The Washington Post more than any other news source, selecting provocative headlines that raised doubts about Trump’s actions. On Trump’s foreign policy, a Washington Post story Apple News promoted had the following headline and subheadline: “Trump weighs imminent Iran strikes, but what’s the mission? The president has sent an ‘armada’ to threaten Iran, but the rationale for a possible military strike keeps changing.” On Trump’s immigration policy, Apple News pushed another piece from The Post, which framed it as, “The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protestors.” Another headline addressed Trump’s response to ICE protests, with Apple News choosing a Post piece explaining the cost of ICE enforcement by proclaiming: “National Guard deployments cost taxpayers almost half a billion dollars.” While other news aggregators rely on algorithms to compile news from various sources into a single news feed, Apple News editors select stories to compile each day. While a Reuters Institute report noted that the use of online aggregators like the Big Four News Apps (Apple News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News),  is growing, an Enders Analysis report underscored the potential growth for Apple News in particular as the use of artificial intelligence continues to surge.  Methodology: During the time period Jan. 1 - Jan. 11, 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 AllSides-rated news stories featured on Apple News each day at approximately 10:00 AM ET and the top 20 AllSides-rated news stories between Jan. 12 - Jan. 31, 2026 at approximately 8:30 AM ET. MRC researchers used the AllSides media bias ratings, which categorize an outlet as “left,” “lean left,” “center,” “lean right” or “right” to determine the overall bias presented by Apple News and analyzed the results. Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.  

In a chart obtained Wednesday by NewsBusters (see image right), the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) will unveil a new seating chart for the Brady Briefing Room that awards seats to conservative media outlets such as the Daily Wire and new media outlets like Axios, moves up the New York Post, and preserves liberal media outlets holding a grip on the front rows. An email to members of the WHCA informed them of the changes, emphasizing “changes were made to 33 or the 49 seats,” “7 [outlets] are receiving their first ever [assigned seat],” and “any outlet that consistently fails to fill its seat could face suspension or total loss.” The email adds the chart “will take effect on Monday, February 9, 2026,” replacing the previous one that had been in place since late 2021. To see that seating arrangement, click here. The new chart shows that, for the first time, the Daily Wire will share an assigned seat in the back row with fellow first-timers The Telegraph and Black Press USA. Three of the other first-timers — Axios, NOTUS, and Semafor — will also split a seventh-row seat. iHeartMedia is the remaining debutante and will slot in the back row as well, sharing with The Boston Globe. The U.K.’s Independent — currently represented by Andrew Feinberg — will move out of the rotating seat for foreign press and join the Los Angeles Times in sharing an aisle on row four. By NewsBusters’s count, those dropping out are the defunded Voice of America (VOA), McClatchy newspapers (which shuttered its D.C. bureau), Cheddar News (RIP) Dallas Morning News, and Yahoo! News. Notable omissions include a slew of conservative media outlets that have risen to higher prominence in both the Briefing Room and press pool: Daily Signal, One America News, Real America’s Voice, and Turning Point USA’s Frontlines. The first row will remain the same as, going right to left facing the podium, will be NBC, Fox News, CBS, AP, ABC News, Reuters, and CNN. The second row will remain the same except for one change with CBS News Radio dropping back to the third row and the wire service Agence French-Presse (AFP) moving up a row. As such, row two will now read, going the same direction: AFP, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, NPR, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today. By row three is when the real deck shuffling begins as it will now read: Politico, Fox News Radio, CBS News Radio, New York Post, ABC News Radio, Daily Mail, and White House Foreign Press Group. Also in the letter to members, the WHCA said “[t]he seating review committee” was led by WHCA board member Jacqui Heinrich and “spent several months combing through the hundreds of applications” and “weighed a variety of factors including an outlet's reach, long-term commitment to White House coverage, service to colleagues through WHCA pooling, and ability to dependably fill a seat as assigned.” Stay tuned for more analysis as this post will be updated. To see the full letter sent to WHCA members, click here.