Nancy Pelosi may be retiring from Congress, but no one should expect the DNC Media to stop treating her as a most glorious political figure. She draws deep bows wherever she goes. She’s always the Best Ever. On CBS’s Sunday Morning in early 2024, substitute host Tracy Smith announced Pelosi “has a new book out, The Art of Power -- an art which Nancy Pelosi is something of a master.” After Pelosi bizarrely suggested Joe Biden could go on Mount Rushmore, Lesley Stahl just had to follow up with flattery: “If there were a Mount Rushmore for Speakers of the House, Nancy Pelosi would certainly be up there, commemorating her 20 years as a commanding leader in Congress.” In mid-December, USA Today reporter Susan Page put her Pelosi interview on the front page. Page wrote a gushy book in 2022 titled Madam Speaker, touting her as a “master legislator, and an indefatigable political warrior.” Pelosi suggested when (not if) Democrats retake the House next year, they shouldn’t impeach Trump a third time. "We won't be able to get his signature on things, maybe," she said of Trump, "but we'll be able to slow down the terror that he is inflicting on the country." Trump is a terrorist. That gets no pushback.  She calls his administration "corrupt, incoherent, chaotic, cruel" and his political priorities "sick." Then on December 29, the gushy narrator was ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He introduced it this way: “History maker…As Nancy Pelosi prepares to leave office, we sit down for an exclusive conversation about her groundbreaking path, her confrontations with Donald Trump, and the challenges ahead for Democrats.” Karl then insisted “Whether you agree with her or not, there is no real dispute that Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful woman in the history of American politics…. We caught up with her in Georgetown to take a look at her remarkable career and to discuss her advice to Democrats going forward.” Again, Pelosi was allowed to say wacky things without pushback. “The Republicans in the Congress have abolished the Congress. They just do what the president insists that they do.” They “abolished” Congress? Where are the “independent fact checkers”? Do we believe that when Pelosi was Speaker under Presidents Obama and Biden, she didn’t do what the president wanted? Or were they simply doing her bidding? Karl spent most of this interview rehashing Pelosi’s narrative on the January 6 riot. He cited “the remarkable footage her daughter Alexandra captured -- featured in the 2022 HBO documentary, Pelosi in the House." He noted from that afternoon, “Speaker Pelosi pleads with military leaders to send in the National Guard.” But what about the days before the riot? In June 2024, the House Republicans posted previously unseen video from Pelosi’s daughter where the Speaker blames herself for the lack of National Guard troops: “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?....I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” Even as Pelosi retires, ABC and the rest can never wonder out loud why the Democrats, from Pelosi to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, failed to protect the Congress with the National Guard, as they were still reeling from the George Floyd riots and the “defund the police” aftermath on the Left.   The fawning over Pelosi could be Exhibit A in documenting how fervently the elitist media serves the Democratic Party, pushing its narratives and painting its leaders in the brightest hues. Pelosi not just expected, but demanded strict partisan discipline from the national media, and they have obeyed. 

Telemundo found a way to report the massive fraud exposed in Minnesota by independent journalist Nick Shirley. In so doing, they reveal the extent to which Shirley embarrassed the media. Watch as climate propagandist Vanessa Hauc quickly goes to the “far-right YouTuber” card, as a reverse appeal to authority against what she is forced to report: NICK SHIRLEY: That’s just a simple question. Where are the children at? VANESSA HAUC: This all comes after a video by a far-right YouTuber went viral on social media. In the video recorded by Nick Shirley, who identifies as an independent journalist, he says he visited daycare centers that receive federal and state subsidies but found no children inside. NBC News contacted Shirley to find out what time he visited the centers but received no response. The footage was filmed in the area inhabited by Minneapolis' Somali community, and has already garnered over 100 million views. In one paragraph, Hauc got off “far-right YouTuber”, “identifies as an independent journalist”, NBC News getting the silent treatment, and the virality of the report by indicating that it garnered over 100 million views (127M as of this writing). The rest of the report treads lightly over Shirley’s findings. There is no substantive mention of the staggering scope of the fraud that was uncovered, either across agencies or in dollars stolen. There is no apparent interest in holding Minnesota elected officials, mostly Democrats, accountable for years of broken oversight.  And there is a simple explanation for this. The Somali fraud story is, at its core, an immigration story. We are all witnessing in real time what happens when there is no effort to encourage the assimilation of large numbers of immigrants who bring their idiosyncrasies and tribal divides with them to America. Telemundo is a network whose survival depends on unfettered immigration. This story is therefore additionally inconvenient and embarrassing.  Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on Noticias Telemundo Ahora on Tuesday, December 30th, 2025: CLAUDIA DE LA FUENTE: Federal agents launched a massive fraud operation targeting various businesses in Minneapolis. The operation, announced by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, followed the convictions of more than 50 people in Minnesota for diverting funds intended to feed children during the pandemic. Vanessa Hauc has the latest on this case. VANESSA HAUC: The Department of Homeland Security is knocking on the doors of more than 30 businesses in Minneapolis in search of those that may be fraudulently collecting tax money. NICK SHIRLEY: That’s just a simple question. Where are the children at? HAUC: This all comes after a video by a far-right YouTuber went viral on social media. In the video recorded by Nick Shirley, who identifies as an independent journalist, he says he visited daycare centers that receive federal and state subsidies but found no children inside. NBC News contacted Shirley to find out what time he visited the centers but received no response. The footage was filmed in the area inhabited by Minneapolis' Somali community, and has already garnered over 100 million views. SHIRLEY: These buildings should be operating, as they are receiving literally millions of dollars this year. HAUC: The commissioner of the state's Department of Children and Families said that many of those centers had been investigated and no fraud was found. According to the commissioner, eight of the ten daycare centers featured in the video are still operating and receiving government assistance, which is why she confirmed that her teams continue to make unannounced visits to these centers to ensure that the children are in the designated daycare settings. The video sparked outrage among Republicans against Democratic Governor Tim Walz, whom they blame for inaction. The governor's office responded, saying, "The governor has worked for years to crack down on fraud and ask the state legislature for more authority to take aggressive action." The Justice Department, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, has conducted multiple investigations into the alleged fraud in the state. In Washington, FBI Director Kash Patel said he has allocated additional personnel and resources to dismantle the large-scale fraud.  

Overtly sappy interviews like the one PBS just did for the socialist CEO of a wacky, originally foreign-based censorship organization is a perfect reminder why that decrepit network should never get one dime of taxpayer money ever again. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), whose organization first started in the U.K. before branching out to the U.S., took to News Hour December 26 to whine like a triggered MS NOW panelist over the Trump administration’s threats to deport him and other leaders of foreign censorship organizations. Responding to substitute anchor William Brangham’s note that Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to Ahmed and the leaders of other organizations as “foreign censors,” Ahmed tried to play dumb by calling the accusations “terribly confusing.” He continued, obfuscating the pressure campaigns CCDH launched against social media companies that allowed opinions they didn’t like to be platformed: “[w]e're a nonprofit, and we can't therefore be censoring things, which is, of course, something that the government does.” “Something that the government does?” That’s like saying giving the fox the key to the henhouse isn’t wrong because it’s the fox that actually hunts the chickens. The CCDH became notorious for blasting out its “Disinformation Dozen” report in 2021 which name-dropped social media accounts of COVID-19 vaccine skeptics. Former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki wielded that report to push Big Tech platforms to increase censorship of the vaccine critics CCDH identified.  But Ahmed tried to make it seem like the online “hate” they tackle are simply bipartisan issues everyone should agree are terrible, with practically zero pushback from Brangham: The work that the center does, looking into things as diverse as the spread of online hatred against Jews, antisemitism on social media platforms, which we worked on with the first Trump administration in 2020, and we have continued to work on a bipartisan basis globally, including in the United States with both the federal and state governments, and the work that we do protecting children online, looking at the spread of eating disorder and self-harm content, this is, first of all, important work that needs to be done to protect the public. What a load of crapola. The “digital brownshirts” at the CCDH also attacked the Media Research Center and other right-leaning outlets like The Daily Wire, Breitbart News, The Washington Times, Townhall Media and Newsmax for daring to question the left’s religious fundamentalist views on climate change. In its “Toxic Ten” report, CCDH listed three recommendations to censor the organizations the group doesn’t agree with. These include: “Stop monetizing” their content; stop allowing them to buy ads and even cried for social media firms to “comprehensively label” what it subjectively considers to be “climate denial.” When Facebook didn’t follow through sufficiently on censoring MRC and others’ climate-related posts in 2022, Ahmed threw a fit: “Meta keeps claiming it cares about climate change, but they have failed to stop the spread of misinformation about climate change on their platform.” Did Brangham bring any of this up? Of course not! The PBS anchor just teed up Ahmed to further whine that his free speech rights were supposedly being violated, even as his own organization pushed Big Tech platforms operating under federal Section 230 protections to dubiously actively act as publishers and censor content that ran afoul of his leftist dogma. In 2023, Ahmed’s CCDH launched a campaign against Google to coerce the censorial search engine giant into silencing the ads of pro-life centers. All of this is public knowledge, but Brangham didn’t mention any of it. Need any more reasons to see why the PBS  schmoozing of Ahmed is such a nauseating spectacle? Brangham soft-balled: “I mean, you seem to be arguing that your free speech rights are being violated, which is precisely what the administration argues you are doing. Do you have a sense as to why your organization and why you in particular were targeted." Oh, but it gets spicier. CCDH is funded by the Switzerland-based, left-wing Oak Foundation, which the Capital Research Center labeled as “The Left’s Green Giant.” “In 2018, Oak gave $1 million to ClimateWorks Foundation ‘to support the greening of the Belt and Road Initiative,’ a global trade infrastructure project pushed by Chinese President Xi Jinping to link the communist country with the rest of Eurasia,” according to the Capital Research Center. Xi Jinping reportedly saw the “‘One Belt, One Road’” grand strategy “as a lethal weapon that can hopefully help China replace the United States in 20 years’ time as the world’s No. 1 superpower,” according to an article by Hong Kong outlet EJ Insight in 2016. More recently, CCDH received a $250,000 grant in 2024 from censorship financier George Soros, the same year MRC released a report showing how the leftist billionaire poured $80 million into groups pressuring Big Tech to heighten censorship operations ahead of the 2024 elections.  Apart from CCDH, Ahmed himself has a sordid history acting as a socialist agent for Britain’s leftist Labour Party. He also co-authored a book attacking free market economist Friedrich Hayek titled “The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them.” The book says that it “considers the case for creating an empowering state which actively intervenes to improve on market-based outcomes and ensure greater opportunities for all.” Not that any of this apparently mattered enough to PBS or Brangham. He supportively inquired: “How comfortable are you that the U.S. justice system will continue to protect you … Do you have a sense as to how close you were to being deported before this judge [who temporarily blocked his deportation] stepped in?”

Fox News is on the upswing, while MS NOW and CNN are falling off. It would be unsurprising for "news" networks to lose audience after a presidential campaign year, but Fox's success makes the others look worse. Overall, Fox News scored its highest ratings for the year ever for a non-election year, second only to 2020. According to Nielsen Media Research, released on December 15, Fox News averaged 2.72 million primetime viewers and 287,000 viewers in the key adults 25-54 demographic in 2025. This was up 14 per cent in total viewers and 18 per cent in the demo compared to last year. In comparison, MSNBC (now MS NOW) averaged 923,000 total viewers (down 25 per cent on 2024) and 81,000 demo viewers (down 39 per cent), and CNN averaged 580,000 total viewers (down 15 per cent) and 105,000 demo viewers (down 29 per cent). The story was the same in total day numbers. Fox News came out on top with 1.7 million viewers (up 18 per cent on 2024) and 185,000 demo viewers (down 1 per cent). CNN averaged 436,000 viewers (down 9 per cent) and 71,000 demo viewers (down 22 per cent), while MS NOW averaged 552,000 viewers (down 30 per cent) and 49,000 demo viewers (down 42 per cent). The only thing that can be said for MS NOW is that it’s doing better than CNN in overall viewers, but it managed to do worse than CNN in the demo. You can't look at declines of 30 percent and/or 42 percent and think optimistically about the future. MS NOW also posted its worst year in the demo and in primetime ratings since its first full year on the air in 1997. With just 552,000 total day viewers, this was MS NOW’s worst year since 2015. The rebrand is not helping!  The Five made history marking the fourth consecutive year it has topped cable news with viewers, delivering its best year ever with 4.1 million viewers and 382,000 in the 25-54 demo. Fox News is so popular that it also held a higher weekday primetime average than broadcast network NBC, with 3.2 million viewers compared to NBC’s 3.1 million viewers. The cable news channel was only slightly behind CBS (3.208 million viewers) and ABC (3.4 million viewers). This is what happens when broadcast TV is ignored by many younger Americans. 

While all three big three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have covered the widespread cases of social services fraud among Minnesota’s Somali community, the frequency and thoroughness of the coverage has varied widely depending on the network. Before December 29, CBS was the only network to have aired even a single full-length report about the scandal, and as of this study’s publishing, ABC hasn’t touched the story outside of a single offhand mention on December 3. MRC analysts examined every December, 2025 edition of the big three broadcast networks’ flagship evening newscasts for any discussion of the Minnesota social services fraud scandal. As of the morning of December 30, ABC has spent less than half a minute on the story, with all of their coverage limited to a single 25-second mention during a December 3 report.  Before December 29, NBC’s total coverage amounted to 65 seconds across three different broadcasts. This changed dramatically on Monday evening when Nightly News finally aired its first full-length report about the scandal. The network’s hand appears to have been forced by the investigative work of journalist Nick Shirley, whose video about the scandal released in late December has garnered over 100 million views online. NBC’s two-minute December 29 report was almost entirely a recycled summary of Shirley’s own reporting. CBS far outperformed its counterparts, granting more than eight minutes of airtime (496 seconds) to the scandal, including three full-length reports on December 3, December 11, and December 29. CBS remains the only of the three networks to report on the sheer extent of the fraud, which investigators estimated at $9,000,000,000. ABC spent significantly more time attempting to defend the Somali population in Minnesota, including worrying about ICE raids sowing “fear” in that community, and balking at President Trump’s harsh criticism of Minnesota’s Somali population during a cabinet meeting. ABC’s vicarious outrage on behalf of Somali immigrants outpaced their coverage of the widespread fraud by almost five to one (122 seconds vs 25 seconds).  Before December 29, NBC’s sympathetic framing of Somalians in Minnesota got over twice as much airtime as the scandal (148 seconds vs 65 seconds). However, since the Nightly News report about Shirley’s investigation, their coverage of the fraud has since reached 197 seconds. While CBS Evening News co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois routinely adopted this same Somalians-as-the-real-victims framing, the detailed reporting by Jonah Kaplan instead focused primarily on the scandal itself. As a result, CBS was the only network to offer more coverage of the actual fraud allegations than the resulting backlash against the alleged perpetrators (496 seconds vs 103 seconds). While NBC’s sudden interest in this scandal is a positive development, it’s likely they would not have paid it nearly as much attention if not for the work of independent journalists like Nick Shirley.  CBS deserves credit for consistently giving this story its due. In fact, correspondent Jonah Kaplan is the only broadcast reporter who appears to have done real investigative work on this scandal, given he’s uncovered and broken new details about the scandal, rather than simply rehashing the work of others. ABC, meanwhile, remains the most journalistically bankrupt of the three big broadcast networks. As of December 30, anyone who primarily relies on World News Tonight for their news likely has no idea that anything is going on in Minnesota at all – aside from heavy snowfall, which anchor David Muir is always eager to discuss.