On Thursday’s CNN This Morning, the panel reacted with alarm to reports that the Department of Homeland Security is compiling data on anti-ICE activists. Host Audie Cornish played a clip in which an ICE agent, in what she described as a “tossed off” remark, told a protester she was now considered a “domestic terrorist.” Cornish claimed that such language, once written into a report, “becomes a real problem for someone.” Republican panelist Kristen Soltis Anderson urged viewers to "think about what would have happened during the Tea Party era, when the shoe's on the other foot, about how upset conservatives would have been at the idea of the government tracking their speech in any kind of way. And so I always just think it's useful to imagine, like, what if the parties were flipped here? And I think a lot of conservatives would be in, would be unbelievably outraged, and rightly so, if a Democratic administration was trying to track them." But conservatives don’t have to imagine such a scenario. They’ve already experienced it. CNN Panelist: Conservatives Would Be ‘Unbelievably Outraged’ If Dems Tracked Speech — They Did! pic.twitter.com/iSuvKtCQE9 — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) February 19, 2026 In 2009, the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security issued a report titled Rightwing Extremism, sparking backlash from conservatives and veterans’ groups who argued it cast suspicion on broad swaths of right-leaning activists. During that same period, the IRS admitted to subjecting Tea Party-affiliated organizations to heightened scrutiny in reviewing applications for tax-exempt status — a move widely condemned on the right as government overreach targeting political speech. More recently, under the Biden administration, DHS homeland threat assessments described domestic violent extremism as the “most persistent and lethal threat” facing the country. While the language focused on violence, many conservatives argued it blurred lines between criminal actors and broader conservative movements. Then in 2023, an FBI Richmond field office memo referencing “radical-traditionalist Catholics” and potential extremist infiltration into certain Catholic communities ignited national controversy before being withdrawn. Critics saw it as yet another instance of federal authorities casting an overly broad net around constitutionally protected religious expression. When Soltis Anderson invites viewers to picture conservatives reacting to Democratic speech-tracking, she overlooks recent history. The “flipped parties” scenario isn’t theoretical. It already happened. Note: We'll stop short of classifying Soltis Anderson as a tame "CNN Republican," but, as we reported here, this isn't the first time she's taken a "pox on both their houses" approach. Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 2/19/26 6:23 am ET TOM HOMAN: We're going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, assault. We're going to make them famous. We're going to put their face on TV. We're going to let their employers, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, know who these people are. AUDIE CORNISH: Border czar Tom Homan, not trying to hide it. DHS is building a database. And if you publicly criticize ICE, or try to track their movements, you could find yourself in that database. The New York Times reports that Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta have all received hundreds of administrative subpoenas, not judicial ones, administrative subpoenas from DHS demanding data and persona information about what they call anti-ICE accounts. Google, Meta and Reddit have already complied with some of those requests. TIKTOK CLIP OF YOUNG WOMAN: This obviously completely violates our First Amendment right in the Constitution to free speech, as we are 100% allowed to critique any government agency, department, or law enforcement as we please. ANOTHER TIKTOKER: DHS says this is about [air quotes] safety. Okay, but many people are worried that it could be misused or misunderstood. You think? YET ANOTHER TIKTOKER: It's fascinating to me that there are Republicans that would support this type of government overreach. CORNISH: Okay, DHS claims it has broad administrative subpoena authority and needs the information to keep immigration agents in the field safe. So, the Group Chat is back. This has long been a conversation that Tom Homan, in particular, has talked about. And I just want to play one more piece of tape for you about how this is playing out on the ground. Witness this exchange, January 23rd in Maine, between a protester and an ICE official. PROTESTER: It's not illegal to record. ICE AGENT: Exactly. PROTESTER: Yeah. ICE AGENT: That's what we're doing. PROTESTER: Yeah. Why are you taking my information down? ICE AGENT: Because we have a nice little database. PROTESTER: Oh, good. ICE AGENT: And now you're considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun. PROTESTER: [Laughs] For videotaping you. Are you crazy? CORNISH: It was that line. Now you're a domestic terrorist, kind of tossed off. But in a report when you file that, that becomes a real problem for someone. ISAAC DOVERE: Yeah. And I think part of what's going on here is that anybody who uses Gmail or Facebook or any of these things, likes to think this is my personal data. But actually it's the company's data once you put it in there, and the companies can do with it what they want to, for the most part, What's different here is that this is yet another time where we see the government moving into collect data, collect information on people. We don't know for what, to what extent they're going to be using it or how they're going to be using it. But they may not even need to go through the whole subpoena process.  CORNISH: I was going to ask about that. So I was noticing, in L.A., a federal judge rejected the government's argument that protesters tracking federal officials met the bar for interference. In Chicago, a bunch of people who were arrested for this: dismissed, let go.  And somehow the administration, when it finally has to get to court. So is it really the journey? Is it the destination? Is it just about scaring people off of the speech? MEGHAN HAYS: I think so, I think it's about the threats here. I think it just makes -- and it also is something that's going to rile up the left, it's going to rile up the the progressives and the base and make it even more intense. And it'll be more talking points, but they're actually not probably going to be able to do anything with this data. Or I mean, as soon as a new president comes in, they're going to wipe all of this clean. This is just, it's a really un-American thing to do. As we know, it is a violation of their First Amendment. And I just, it's just more scare tactics by the administration. CORNISH: I want to ask you something that I found out, because during the break, you were talking about Europe, sort of this divide between free speech in Europe versus here. As we speak, Reuters reported this morning that the U.S. department is developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content [chuckles] banned by their governments, which include alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda. KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: Well, yeah. And if you if you spend any time on like the conservative internet, you will frequently see stories coming out of places like the UK that get people up in arms. Because they are genuinely insane, where people have the cops come kick in their door because they tweeted something that the government didn't like, or that was considered maybe, possibly, hate speech laws. CORNISH: "Genuinely insane" is not a statutory right.  KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: Right, right, right. But essentially, there are lot of conservatives who will look at things like the very strict rules around speech that exist in other countries and go, that's terrible. It's so great that we don't have that here. We have the First Amendment.  And yet we're also in this era of kind of big government Republicans, where the Rand Pauls in the party, who have been saying pretty consistently, regardless of who's in power, for a long time, civil liberties matter, we shouldn't be invading. You know, think about what would have happened during the Tea Party era, when the shoe's on the other foot, about how upset conservatives would have been at the idea of the government tracking their speech in any kind of way.  And so I always just think it's useful to imagine, like, what if the parties were flipped here? And I think a lot of conservatives would be in, would be unbelievably outraged, and rightly so, if a Democratic administration was trying to track them. 

During Friday’s The Situation Room, CNN co-anchor Pamela Brown continued her crusade against religious Christian schools ahead of the release of her anti-Christian documentary over the weekend. Despite claiming all week that she was supposedly investigating “Christian nationalism,” Friday’s tease was the first time politics was overtly discussed with any of the people she interviewed. Brown’s premise during this particular tease was that these schools were part of a cabal pumping out students to one-day fill government positions. Brown didn’t hide the fact that she was targeting Classical Christian Schools because Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had enrolled his own kids into the program, and she was shocked that a religiously Christian school taught through the prism of their religion: Hegseth is the most high profile member of a church network that doesn't shy away from Christian nationalist ambitions, and education is a key part of its mission. Today, more and more schools in that network are teaching kids everything from a biblical perspective. At various points in the tease, Brown shared chopped up soundbites of an interview she did with David Goodwin, the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, where she pestered him about how their Christian beliefs were suffused throughout their curriculum.   CNN's Pamela Brown continued to bash Christian schools during Friday's The Situation Room. She tried to paint people who went/are attending Christian schools as something akin to Manchurian candidates pumped out by the schools with aims to fill positions of power in the U.S. and… pic.twitter.com/QtDNemUlVR — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) February 20, 2026   It was clear that Brown was fishing for an angle that would allow her to twist, reframe, and present a false depiction of the association’s motives for existing. In a series of questions, Brown slowly painted a picture of a Christian cabal with ties to the Trump administration trying to take over the government: BROWN: So are these classical Christian schools a vehicle to create a more Christian world? GOODWIN: Yes, that's - that's our purpose; is Christian civilization. BROWN: What do you hope the graduates will go out and do in America? GOODWIN: Live faithfully wherever - wherever they are. BROWN: But you would like to see them in positions of power naturally. GOODWIN: [Shrugs] We're glad when they get there. BROWN (Voiceover): And Classical Christian Schools already have some powerful advocates like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Let’s breakdown the ridiculousness of Brown’s questions and how they progressed. Whether a religious school program was Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, it’s obvious they would instill their world view into their students; and of course, they would want them to go out into the world and like their faith. Heck, wokeism was the religious worldview liberal wanted taught in secular schools. Brown’s question regarding if the administrator would be happy seeing a student in a position of power was particularly ridiculous because ‘yes’ was the answer any administrator in any school anywhere would say. It didn’t matter if the school was public, private, charter, religious, or a homeschool program, the administrators and teachers would be happy for their students’ achievements. But she immediately brought up Hegseth because he served as her evidence of a sinister plot. If that wasn’t clear enough, Brown wrapped the segment by proclaiming there was a secret web of connections and teased she would unravel them with the full “documentary”: [W]e talked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has written about how he and his wife actually moved to Tennessee before he took on this role, obviously, to put their children in a Classical Christian School Network. David Goodwin, who you heard there actually wrote a piece with, wrote a book with Pete Hegseth on education. He runs that association. You can start to see all these figures and ideologies are connected something I explore closely in my upcoming documentary, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper. Given how the rest of her teases went, the “documentary” would likely up to just a smear job. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN’s The Situation Room February 20, 2026 11:46:45 a.m. Eastern SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: As long as I have breath, I commit to you that I and we should never allow any group, no matter how large or small, to silence us from speaking the capital-T truth. Christ is king. He died for our sins. We are forgiven. [Cuts to live] PAMELA BROWN: That was part of Defense Secretary Pete speech to religious broadcasters last night. He also railed against what he called the ‘godless left’ and praised western Christian values. Hegseth is the most high profile member of a church network that doesn't shy away from Christian nationalist ambitions, and education is a key part of its mission. Today, more and more schools in that network are teaching kids everything from a biblical perspective. [Cuts to video] (…) 11:52:22 a.m. Eastern BROWN: So are these classical Christian schools a vehicle to create a more Christian world? DAVID GOODWIN (Association of Classical Christian Schools, president): Yes, that's - that's our purpose; is Christian civilization. BROWN: What do you hope the graduates will go out and do in America? GOODWIN: Live faithfully wherever - wherever they are. BROWN: But you would like to see them in positions of power naturally. GOODWIN: [Shrugs] We're glad when they get there. BROWN (Voiceover): And Classical Christian Schools already have some powerful advocates like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. (...) 11:53:00 a.m. Eastern BROWN: Goodwin and Hegseth coauthored a book about what they characterize as the decline of public schools. (...) 11:55:05 a.m. Eastern BROWN: So are you happy with what's happening at the Department of Education being dismantled? GOODWIN: Um. Yes. I mean, moderately happy because I think it was not that consequential of a department to begin with. But it's good - BROWN (interrupting): But this is - But for all intents and purposes, this is what you want to see. The dismantling of the Department of Education and ultimately getting rid of public schools. GOODWIN: Yes. [Cuts back to live] BROWN: And Wolf, you know, we talked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has written about how he and his wife actually moved to Tennessee before he took on this role, obviously, to put their children in a Classical Christian School Network. David Goodwin, who you heard there actually wrote a piece with, wrote a book with Pete Hegseth on education. He runs that association. You can start to see all these figures and ideologies are connected something I explore closely in my upcoming documentary, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.

The Wall Street Journal has promoted itself as the "Daily Diary of the American Dream," as a promoter of national prosperity. But some columnists find the titans of capitalism too unseemly to support any more.  The Journal’s "Heard on the Street" columnist Carol Ryan threw down the gauntlet against the “superwealthy” in her February 18 screed headlined, “Billionaires’ Low Taxes Are Becoming a Problem for the Economy.” Ryan used California — yes, Gavin Newsom’s tax-worshipping California — as an example of a lefty-run state doing the brave thing by sticking it to the affluent, even if the method is flawed. “California’s plan to hit its richest residents with a one-off wealth tax is a long shot, and its design has problems,” Ryan began. “But a look at who picks up the tab when billionaires scrimp on taxes, and how wealth concentration is affecting the wider economy, shows why the issue isn’t going away.” Ah, so California’s addressing the right problem but using a flawed mechanism to do it, eh? So do we just need to find out how to more efficiently raise taxes so the administrative framework is better? Good grief. Somebody want to page Lachlan Murdoch and tell him to go pick up his newspaper? Ryan highlighted how “California has the highest concentration of billionaires in the U.S. with 255 individuals, or slightly more than a fifth of the country’s billionaire population, data from wealth-intelligence firm Altrata shows.” But, of course, she underplayed the fact that billionaires are currently fleeing the state of California for states like Nevada and Florida precisely because the former isn’t satisfied with maintaining its top position as the state with the highest income tax rate (13.3 percent) as of 2025. And this is not even counting California’s outrageous sales and use tax rate range between 7.25 percent on the low end and 11.25 percent on the high end. Ryan selected as an expert Ray Madoff from Boston College, who loathes the wealthy enough to be featured on National Public Radio, talking about how all this unfairness creates an "appetite for change." Technology firm Atom founder Zain Aziz told Business Insider February 8 that “[y]ou don't really want to get punished if you do good and you create more jobs." He continued, praising his new Nevada home: “I believe the Las Vegas Valley has become more and more what's synonymous with what California used to be — which was free-spirited and 'Come and achieve the impossible.’” Apparently this was lost on Ryan, who fear-mongered that the “The risk is that the U.S. economy becomes increasingly dependent on a narrow group of very rich households, whose spending is tied to the performance of the stock market.” The only issues Ryan bothered pointing out with wealth taxes writ large is that they “are hard to administer, and the ultrarich can simply leave if they don’t like where a state’s tax policies are headed.” But she mentioned nothing about the complexities of appropriately evaluating an income-earner's assets (wealth) due to their inherently subjective nature to begin with. It’s not until the 11th paragraph that Ryan concedes that the tax code may have something to do with why billionaires are able to capitalize on the benefits their armies of accountants rifle through on a routine basis. She cited and then dismissed the fact that the top earners in the U.S. pay 40 percent of federal income taxes while another 40 percent of Americans in lower brackets pay nothing. It doesn't matter because “billionaires aren’t captured by this picture because most of their wealth lies outside the income-tax system.”  But if top earners are still paying the vast amount of income taxes anyway with a complicated tax code while the bottom 40 percent are paying nothing, then how is this dramatic tax evasion? She didn’t mention that California alone has a whopping 2,910 pages in its 2025 tax code, separate from the over 6,000 pages that make up the federal tax code. That means Californians are stuck facing around a daunting 8,910 pages of tax code on an annual basis, and Ryan appears to be arguing that complicating it further with a stupid wealth tax is somehow meritorious in its intent if overtly flawed in its “design.” The Tax Foundation released a study in 2024 finding that many “Wealth taxes disincentivize entrepreneurship, leading to less innovation and less long-term growth. A wealth tax reduces wages, destroys jobs, and reduces the stock of capital. All income groups are worse off under a wealth tax due to decreased economic activity.” One would think Ryan would consider that billionaires leaving California because of the risk of complicating an already complex tax code is proof in the pudding of the Tax Foundation’s thesis. But alas, she was rooting for the Left to win with their "populist measures" to tax the rich. But the very fact of the rising concentration of wealth in the hands of the superwealthy means the issue of how to tax it won’t be going away, and pressure could build for ever-more populist measures, including at the national level.    Pathetic. 

February is Black History Month, so it shouldn't be considered unreasonable for one to expect to see media coverage of President Trump's White House event, which took place on Wednesday, in recognition of the contributions of Black Americans. But as we've seen since 2017, the elitist media is allergic to official White House events under Trump, which are automatically dismissed as sickening. The Wednesday evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS all skipped it. PBS preferred to spend eight mournful minutes on ICE-related trauma: "Minnesota schools and students struggle with fallout of immigration crackdown." Fox News's Special Report With Bret Baier did mention the White House event, and Laura Ingraham made it the focus of her opening 'Angle' on Fox's The Ingraham Angle. Baier led off his show by tossing to Senior White House Correspondent Peter Doocy, who first provided updates on the U.S. talks with Iran, the President's upcoming State of The Union Address, and the massive sewage spill in the Potomac, before Baier asked him about the White House event. BAIER:.. Peter, tell us about today's event at the White House celebrating Black History Month, people praising the President and his policies. DOOCY: Yeah, in some way a lot of these guests used the time at the microphone to really defend President Trump against months or years' worth of accusations that some of the things he says are racist. Black attendees praising Trump? Lack of coverage mystery solved? Doocy then included a short montage of some of the speakers praising Trump including Forlesia Cook, a grandmother whose grandson was murdered in Washington DC: "I don't want to hear nothing you got to say about that racist stuff. Don't be looking at me on the news hating on me because I am standing up for somebody. Let off the man's back. Let him do his job." DOOCY: President Trump complained on Truth Social yesterday that he is falsely and consistently called a racist. Many of his guests today really disagree with that. This is what Laura Ingraham picked up on as she discussed the White House event, starting with more clips. First up was Alice Marie Johnson, White House Pardon Czar. JOHNSON: President Donald Trump brought me from the prison pit to the White House... Only in America could there be a story like my story and President Trump is the only president who would have had the courage, the courage to bring someone like me, someone who received a second chance, but who knows more than someone who has sit among the captives than someone who has been in captivity themselves. And then Ingraham hit the nail on the head. INGRAHAM:.. Alice Johnson one of the formerly incarcerated freed under President Trump's First Step Act was one of several invited guests whose words the hate Trump media type prefer to ignore.  She played a few more Black speakers praising Trump and then asked, "How do the Democrats answer this? Who knows? Because all they have is hate." Next came a brief montage of that hate.   Senator Elizabeth Warren: He is a thin-skinned racist bully. Hillary Clinton: He has been racist. Joe Biden: There's never been a president in American history who has been so openly racist. Rep. Ilhan Omar: The President oftentimes resorts to very bigoted, xenophobia, islamophobia, racist rhetoric. Then Ingraham asked the key question, before playing a clip from Brianna Keilar on CNN News Central. INGRAHAM: No one really believes that. I don't think even most of those people believe what they were saying. And, as voice after voice was heard today at the White House, and after President Trump praised the civil rights work of the late Jesse Jackson, what does the media say to this? KEILAR: We are listening to Ben Carson there at the White House during Black History Month as the President had some very warm words for Jesse Jackson. We are going to get in a quick break and we'll be right back. Just as Ingraham had it right on why most of the leftist media would ignore this event, she also had this observation on the brief, in and out coverage of the event, by a competing cable news network, "Oh my G-d. Look, I don't want to be too negative. Let's look at the bright side, at least CNN covered some of the event at the White House today, progress." Airing a few minutes of a live White House event should be standard fare for a 24/7 news channel, not "progress." But it beat the broadcast networks. 

Trigger warning: The following discusses themes of race, gender, “hate” speech ... Author Heather Mac Donald takes a lot of heat. She writes about race, crime, diversity, gender, merit -- and says things that got her shouted down on college campuses. She points out the absurdity of the left’s attack on Western civilization. “For the left to claim that the West is the source of inequity in the world,” she says, “oppression, racism, the crushing of minority voices, of indigenous populations, that is so ignorant! It is so blind to the reality of history ...” Westerners “brought the rule of law, science, brought engineering to cultures that for millennia had lived with devastating disease (and) poverty.” “Progressives” blame white Europeans for slavery and colonialism, but she says it was the West that “began rethinking this entire project. It was England ... trying to end the transatlantic slave trade. They blockaded the coast of West Africa ... They spent 13% of their naval resources to try to stop that trade.” “The ideas that the left uses to discredit the West are uniquely Western ideas. The West came up with ... equal rights, tolerance, of freedom from religious domination. These are all Western ideas that now the left hurls back against us and say, ‘You’re not perfect in them.’ No, we’re not, but no other civilization is as well.” The way she talks, it sounds as if, until recently, leftists prevented people from pointing out the benefits of Western ideas. “They pretty much did! They controlled the elite establishments, dominated universities, dominated the curriculum,” Mac Donald says. It’s telling that the West is so open to criticism, that it empowers those who criticize it. “Western civilization subjects itself to this corrosive acid of unending critique. ... That’s what made us the success we were. ... Do not accept superstition. Do not accept authority.’” But now leftists blindly accept progressive dogma dished out by colleges. “You have these college students acting out little psychodramas of oppression and rebellion, pretending that they’re questioning authority when they’re not. They’re simply parroting the anti-colonial rhetoric that they’re getting from their universities,” Mac Donald says. Of course, that rhetoric is based on truth. Early Americans were racist. “It is understandable that we have a guilty conscience when it comes to all issues related to race because of our centuries-long betrayal of our founding ideals and not being willing to accord black Americans, the same rights as we proclaimed, were inherent in all human beings ...” Mac Donald replies. “But we have way overcorrected.” Another example: trigger warnings. “Trigger warnings were specifically demanded by females who now drive academic culture. They have been the biggest enemies of free speech on college campuses for decades now. ... Females, hilariously, get to claim that they’re marginalized even though they’re about two-thirds of the student body.” She says the left now classifies hate speech as any dissenting speech: “If you disagree with theories about ubiquitous white supremacy or post-colonial hegemony in Israel or endemic sexism, you’re a hater! Your hate speech has to be canceled, and you’re driven off campus.” Mac Donald was screamed at by students at Claremont McKenna College trying to prevent her from giving a talk that included a slide titled “Blue Lives Matter.” She goes out of her way to face her critics because she says Western Ideas are worth defending. “Western civilization gave us the beauty of the scientific method, with this insatiable curiosity members of the West have had. Europeans had to figure out planetary motion, navigate the globe, figure out geology, figure out physiology. ... We’re all ignorant beneficiaries of that. I couldn’t possibly replicate any part of the knowledge that has given me everything that I take for granted. We shouldn’t be ingrates. We should be grateful and know our history.” You can see our full interview at JohnStossel.com. Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.”