On Friday morning, in the wake of USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour getting her screechy op-ed on Caitlin Clark and WNBA referees revised for bizarre comparisons to the Emmitt Till lynching, "McPaper" released an article by Heather Burns about Clark missing the WNBA Orange Carpet event for this year's All-Star Game. The publication's initial social media post read: "Caitlin Clark skipped the WNBA Orange Carpet on Thursday, opting to get her hair done in her hometown of Des Moines."Caitlin Clark skipped the WNBA Orange Carpet on Thursday, opting to get her hair done in her hometown of Des Moines. https://t.co/9z3qjCS7EU— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) July 24, 2026 Fierce replies came quickly. "How in the world is USA TODAY still existing with SEXIST headlines like this only aimed at Caitlin Clark?! They just keep doubling down on their ignorance and stupidity," newly retired ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor Linda Cohn replied.Several hours later, USA Today issued a correction for this story on Clark. Oooops, she wasn't getting her hair done! "Clarification: Caitlin Clark was attending an event for the Caitlin Clark Foundation, which is why she missed the WNBA All-Star Weekend Orange Carpet," they wrote in a follow-up post. That's not a "clarification." Why must they do that when they were WRONG? It's a Correction. On X, Jarvis Best joked: "Did Caitlin Clark sleep with USA Today's boyfriend of what's going on here?"On Saturday, Clark and her fellow All-Stars played before a record crowd of 19,783 at the United Center, but USA Today seems more interested in ripping Clark than in noticing the league's recent success.  

MS NOW The Weekend 7-26-26 Sunday's edition of MS NOW's The Weekend staged a kvetchathon over President Trump ordering the installation of signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History warning visitors that the museum does not accurately reflect American history.The panel repeatedly asked: Who gets to tell America's history?They never answered that question, other than to make clear they don't want Trump doing it.The real answer is that at the Smithsonian, America's history is told by a cabal of leftist historians. Cases in point:In 2020 the National Museum of African American History and Culture posted (and later removed after criticism) a graphic listing traits such as individualism, the nuclear family, hard work, punctuality, and politeness as “aspects and assumptions of whiteness.” At the time, the head of that Museum was Lonnie Bunch. He has since become overall head of the entire Smithsonian.More recently, materials associated with the National Museum of American History have framed “politeness” and “objectivity” as characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” Rep. Brandon Gill [R-TX] confronted the museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, with those documents in a July 2026 hearing. She unartfully tried to dodge his questions—but the facts remain the facts. Hartig herself has said that she sees history as “a prime tool of social justice.” Co-host Jackie Alemany cited "a great op-ed" in the New York Times going to the question of who gets to write American history. The column was written by Yale historian David W. Blight, a past president of the Organization of American Historians. Blight hilariously described the administration’s criticism as “nothing less than a hyper-ideological group attacking a nonideological institution.”The Smithsonian: a nonideological institution. Right.  Who Gets To Tell America's Story? MS NOW Fights to Keep the Left in Charge pic.twitter.com/tIlQ1PZzXH— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) July 26, 2026 The OAH is the main professional organization for U.S. historians. Influence Watch classifies it as left-of-center, and its public statements over the years consistently align with leftist positions on race, identity, “inclusive history,” and opposition to efforts to curb DEI-oriented approaches in education and museums. It issued a statement condemning the White House’s July 4 “Saving America’s Story” report on the Smithsonian.This is the professional world that staffs and validates the museums.The same institutional world that produced the “politeness is white supremacy culture” materials, and the earlier NMAAHC “aspects of whiteness” graphic, is presented as the neutral, non-ideological baseline.The MS NOW panel presented the leftist status quo as simply “history” and any effort to change it as dangerous politicization. Try not to giggle at the concept of MS NOW urging less politicization. The record indicates the opposite: a long-running ideological capture by the left that the panel is now defending as the natural order of things. Anyone who dares to challenge their dominance is "politicizing."Here's the transcript. MS NOWThe Weekend7/26/267:23 am EDTEUGENE DANIELS: Eugene and Miles are sticking around. We're gonna get into who gets to tell the story of America, who gets to belong, because your president wants to put a warning sign on your museum, guys. Don't go anywhere. You're watching The Weekend.. . . EUGENE ROBINSON: Yeah, no, I think that's very important. I mean, you know, who gets to tell the story, is important to what happens in the future, right? You have to, you have to know your past in order to know where you're going. And so, the Trump administration clearly would like to rewrite American history in their fashion.But I wondered if this announcement about signs outside wasn't in fact almost an admission of defeat? He's been, he's been trying to get inside, right? He's been trying to change the exhibits. He wants it to, he wants everything different. DANIELS: And he's been taken off of that. ROBINSON: And he has not done that. He has not been able to do that. And so, to put a sign outside seems, frankly, kinda weak.MILES TAYLOR: I mean, he might as well have a sign that says, "Please read." This, this is what autocrats don't understand, and that they never understand, those efforts to control and censor only drive attention to the thing you're trying to distract from. It's an extraordinary sign of weakness. ROBINSON: Exactly. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That's right. . . . JACKIE ALEMANY: [After conversation had digressed to Michigan Dem senatorial primary[ I, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm not sticking with the flow of the conversation because I, I was trying to, sort of, think a little bit more about the framing of your question, Eugene, about the Smithsonian.But I do think we, we should spend a little bit more time talking about this because, Trump is trying to bend history to his will. There's a great op-ed in, in the Times, this weekend about just that, Miles. And I'm wondering how corrosive you think everything that he is doing in its totality is, is going to ultimately be, and whether that's going to actually hold. I mean, his, we talk about it, you know, basically every weekend about the culture war that he's simultaneously waging, in an explicit and an implicit way.Explicitly, obviously, through his immigration policies, and then through, a little bit more of these more subtle ways, such as these signs that are going up at the Smithsonian, and constant attacks on Lonnie Bunch.And actually this, this July fourth report, that actually makes several points that a lot of historians agree with, like the futility of land acknowledgments in the words of, of some mainstream historians.MILES TAYLOR: You go back through history, and I think you see a pretty consistent theme is that would-be dictators, and Donald Trump, self-styles as a dictator. Trust me, I sat there in those meetings with the Oval Office, he talked about his, his envy of the Chinese and the Russians. Would-be dictators and dictators do not get defeated, they defeat themselves. Most of the time, they defeat themselves. And what you're seeing with Donald Trump from the little episodes like the Smithsonian to the efforts to rig elections is a remarkable sign of weakness, of self consciousness, of knowingness that he is defeating himself. And he somehow can't get out of his way. Now, that's not super encouraging to anyone who's watching the foundations of democracy corrode from this man. But in exercising his powers beyond their limitations, he is building his own opposition . . . You look at the arc of history, and you see he is laying the foundations for the demise of the movement he built.ROBINSON: And one, one quick thing, the last column I wrote for the Washington Post was about a, a document that my late wife collected as part of her collection of African American historical documents. It, it, and it recorded the sale of a black woman and her child, in Rhode Island in 1776. So you had these two things happening in 1776, you know, you had, you had slavery legal in all thirteen colonies in practice, and you had the Declaration of Independence.This, this, this, this history happened, and there are receipts all over the place. There is, the, you know, the historians have done, a, a really good job over the last, thirty, forty years in, in telling that story much more fully, and, and, and, and it has penetrated, I think, the national consciousness. So, so it's hard to rewrite history when to that extent, it just, it can't be done. We won't, I won't let it be done. ALEMANY: I'm gonna,I'm gonna go back and reread that column. Thanks for flagging it.

Image YouTube On the heels of liberal artist Bruce Springsteen’s TDS-laden political rants during his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour earlier this year, two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legends have spoken out against pushing political propaganda during shows. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger said fans should be entertained, not lectured, while Journey’s iconic pianist/keyboardist and songwriter Jonathan Cain was more blunt, insisting “The Boss” needs to “shut up” and sing. In a New York Times podcast interview, Jagger was asked what his audience means to him. The question was disingenuous as the interviewer qualified it with an inaccurate description, claiming Springsteen “engages in in a meaningful back-and-forth with his audience.” We all know there’s no “back-and-forth” with the Born to Run singer when he’s ranting about politics. It’s strictly a one-sided, self-righteous lecture. Still, Jagger answered politely:Jagger: My job in the live music world is for those people that come to have the best time they possibly can and for two hours to forget all their problems and the problems of the world and their mortgages. I know you’re still on the phone like, “Oh, little Danny hurt his tooth.” In the old days, you never had that, really. But my job is to make them have the best time possible. They’re going completely ape-[expletive]. Your job is to make them more ape-[expletive]. The 82-year-old Beast of Burden singer also compared concerts to sporting events where he said fans should be able to forget about everything else. “You don’t want to lecture them,” he said.Cain’s comments were far more impassioned. He shared his thoughts on The Tom Barnard Podcast back in May, but they recently went viral after Variety covered it in a July article. (Not surprisingly, the piece was clearly slanted against Cain.)Known for his iconic piano/keyboard bangers in hit songs like Don’t Stop Believin’, Cain is also a Catholic conservative who is married to Paula White-Cain, senior advisor to the White House Faith Office. During the interview, the 76-year-old artist spoke about America and politics while calling Springsteen, “an annoying, bitter, old man.”Jonathan: …we are blessed to live where we live, and I'm obviously a conservative and I used to be a Democrat back in the old days, but I just couldn't I couldn't go there anymore. I thought Obama, maybe, but then I saw where he was going and I'm like, “Okay, we can't have this anymore.” So. I'm a diehard conservative, and I try to…Kathryn: You’re a unicorn in the music industry.Jonathan: Yeah, that's right, and guys like Bruce Springsteen should shut up. You know, honestly shut up, Bruce. You know him and who's the other one…Kathryn: It keeps him relevant.Jonathan: Yeah. Robert De Niro. I mean who cares, guys? You know, really?Andy: Yep.Jonathan: Do your art. I try to keep politics out of my music. Now I'm releasing this patriotic song because I'm a diehard patriot like Kid Rock who's my friend. We're a couple of patriots so, we don't care about (inaudible) America because we love our flag, and we love our nation, and we grew up that way. So, everybody has their…(connection lost)Kathryn: Oh, that was weird. Andy: I think the Deep State got him,,,Jonathan: So, what was I saying? I think in the end we should do what we do and try to unify. I think our job is unifying people. I mean Paul McCartney said, “Hey, when I sing Hey Jude, Democrats and Republicans all sing together,” and I feel the same way with Journey. And we have our parties out there in the audience, your respective parties, and they're singing Don't Stop Believin’… Kathryn: It’s a great song.Jonathan: So, now people say, “Well you're a Christian and you're conservative,” and I'm like, “So what?” I don't preach it on stage. I don't spend 10 minutes talking about it. That's who I am and that's okay.Kathryn: That is okay.Jonathan: I just don't think it's cool to have celebrities you know going there. It’s just a bad look.Andy: Totally agree.Jonathan: And Bruce, I mean what the heck? I used to like him, and now he's just annoying. He's an annoying, bitter old man. I mean stop it, really. You were born in the USA, weren't you dude? So, act like it. But even that song, if you look at the lyrics, it’s a kind of a diss to  our country. Kathryn: It is, yeah.Jonathan: Yeah, me and Kid Rock, we're probably on an island. There's a few of us and I probably I stand there with my flag on that island, and if anybody's got a problem with me, America, and Jesus, then bring it. Tom Barnard seemed a bit annoyed by his comments, but we’re happy to see celebrities who aren’t afraid to show pride in their country and who push back against turning concerts into Democrat rallies. Is it too much to hope that someone might speak out against our tax dollars being used to glorify liberal activists like Springsteen in a PBS documentary next?

YouTube Screenshot It sounds as if it is hot off the pages of the Babylon Bee yet, amazingly, it is a dead serious Associated Press story. The reason one might think it a Bee satire is the subject matter the AP decided to stress which you can read in the title of their Thursday story by Kristen Gelineau, "Sex work or starve: Aid workers in Nepal left jobless by USAID cuts turn to sex work to survive."The premise of the  AP story is that because USAID funds were drastically cut last year, the result is that transgender people in Nepal that were paid to conduct HIV outreach to the "marginalized communities" of that country are now being forced to work as street sex workers. Gelineau, in her story supplemented by video, gives the full dramatic overtones to the situation lacking only in background sad organ music:HETAUDA, Nepal (AP) — She paces the side of the darkened highway in central Nepal, just enough light from the trucks roaring past to illuminate her painted face to the men rolling in on rickshaws and motorbikes. She knows that every stranger who pays for her body could end her life. But she also knows their money is the only thing preventing her death.This spot, littered in condom wrappers and fringed by jungle, is familiar to her. Rubi Lama once came here not as a sex worker, but as an aid worker who helped sex workers.For nine years, Lama — who is transgender — had devoted her life to conducting HIV outreach in Nepal’s marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ sex workers who wait by this highway each night. But after the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, Lama and more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide found themselves out of a job.Somehow Gelineau believes there is only one possible work option remaining for those of the transgender persuasion who were once funded by USAID:In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers’ lives was particularly crushing. Starving and scared, Lama and around 100 other LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.And guess who is the villain of the AP piece who supposedly caused poor Rubi to hustle on the high altitude streets?This is the headquarters for the formerly USAID-funded non-governmental organization called Friends Hetauda, which offered HIV testing, counseling and prevention services to central Nepal’s LGBTQ+ community. All of that ended in January 2025, when U.S.n President Donald Trump froze funding for USAID, once the world’s leading donor of humanitarian assistance. Trump later dissolved the agency after calling it a waste of money, even though the U.S. spent just 1% of its budget on foreign aid.As if to emphasize their villainous portrayal of Orange Man Bad, AP provides this quote from a director of the umbrella organization of the NGOs receiving USAID money: "The Trump administration’s executive order will cause people to die," she says.This is how the Left always reacts to anyone cutting spending. It's going to kill someone. And the AP is here to spread the Left's message. 

The left-wing consortium of Smithsonian museums in D.C. have been accused by the Trump Administration of ideological capture on issues of race and gender. In NPR’s July 21 online report, culture reporter Anastasia Tsioulcas covered a congressional hearing featuring House Republicans sharply questioning the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Anthea Hartig. Tsioulcas did not delve into the details of the Republican arguments against the Smithsonian, but muddled their points into crude accusations to make the conservative criticism sound buffoonish:In a subcommittee hearing Tuesday, House Republicans sharply questioned the director of the National Museum of American History, Anthea Hartig. The GOP lawmakers' comments closely mirrored the Trump administration's criticisms of the institution she leads as insufficiently patriotic. NPR's article briefly raised a specific criticism, but kept the details out of it. For example, an exhibit at the National Museum of American History featured "transgender advocate Jazz Jennings," a biological male. The hearing itself unspooled on strict partisan lines. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) questioned Hartig about an exhibition called "Girlhood," which included mentions of gender identity and puberty. Mace asked, "When was your gender revealed to you, Dr. Hartig?"At another point, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) asked Hartig, "You intend to use a taxpayer-funded national museum to push a racial narrative that divides Americans by their skin color and guilt?" Hartig, who kept a cool tone throughout the hearing, eventually replied: "So the Smithsonian is a nonpartisan institution we're very proud of."Just like NPR, leftist museum curators pretend to be nonpartisan. Meanwhile, truly vitriolic attacks on the GOP by Democratic pols were blandly relayed:Many of the Democrats who spoke at the hearing linked the July 4 report to what they perceive as broader GOP attacks on museums, the arts and education. Rep Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) spoke about another Smithsonian institution, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, saying: "I'm here as a Black man who grew up in segregation … We will not let you destroy that museum, no matter how long it takes, how many battles are required, how much effort is needed. We will not allow that to happen unless you find a way to kill all of us and walk over our bodies to change history. That history is too sacred, it is too precious, and it will not be erased."There are no "fact checkers" when it's claimed that Republicans want to destroy a museum. Left out: The African American museum’s 2020 online display of a graphic linking positive traits like hard work, punctuality, and rational thought as presumably unfavorable aspects of “white culture,” which managed to be racist all the way around.The two-minute audio version of this story on Morning Edition contained only two congressmen: Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) arguing the Smithsonian suggests "history is just an ongoing power struggle between oppressors and the oppressed," and Mfume's wild charges, again with no pushback. A July 7 interview by Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep was worse, showing a hypocritical respect for Independence Day (to bash Trump), a respect totally absent from NPR, which halted its annual reading of the Declaration of Independence in 2022 and whose past transcripts now carry a prominent trigger warning.Steve Inskeep, Host: President Trump's administration chose Independence Day weekend to attack the Smithsonian Institution again. The administration accuses the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History here in Washington of, quote, "extreme political activism" for its portrayal of history….Sarah Weicksel joins us next. She's executive director of the American Historical Association….OK. So you've seen the latest accusations against the Smithsonian, which didn't strike me as all that major. They disagreed with a few bits of wording on cards and so forth. What do you make of it?With a slanted set-up like this by Inskeep, his guest had no choice but to answer in the negative.Inskeep: You've walked around that museum, I would imagine. Does it distort history, in your view?Weicksel: It does not distort history. And in fact, the report is misrepresenting the museum's collection and especially the exhibition of extraordinary artifacts that tell the history of the American Revolution. They seem to have missed entirely, for instance, one of the exhibits that takes up the greatest floor space, "The Price Of Freedom," which tells the history of American war.Inskeep: Wow. Wow. I want to ask briefly in the seconds we have left about Lonnie Bunch, who we heard at the beginning -- first African-American head of the Smithsonian Institution. He has not been fired. He's not been removed. He's not been pushed aside. Are you -- how would you rate his performance over the last year and a half of pressure?Weicksel: I think that Secretary Bunch has done an extraordinary job….Inskeep returned to his opening Trump-ruining-July 4 theme, concluding, "On this week after Independence Day weekend, Sarah Weicksel, thanks so much."PBS’s brief hearing mention on July 21 also emphasized the rebuttals, and PBS’s live coverage of the House oversight hearing was accompanied by an Associated Press story claiming “Many historians are alarmed by the revisionism.”