The news media’s obsession with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting pool has continued apace. Earlier this week, we found that TV news had spent almost seven hours on the story in just the past nine days. As of Friday morning June 25, that total has reached almost ten hours across left-wing cable (CNN and MSNBC) and broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). MRC analysts looked at all reflecting pool coverage on major left-wing cable and broadcast networks from June 14 through the morning of June 26, 2026. In just that 12-day period, the story received 579 minutes and 31 seconds of coverage, or an average of over 48 minutes per day. While our previous totals found that CNN was uniquely obsessed with the condition of the reflecting pool, MS NOW has since overtaken them, with a grand total of 269 minutes and 50 seconds. Incredibly, MS NOW has run an absurd 108 minutes on the reflecting pool in just the last three days.  CNN, meanwhile, is now up to a total of 264 minutes and 41 seconds as of Friday morning, meaning they spent a still-massive 49 minutes on this story over the last three days. Broadcast networks ran a combined 45 minutes of coverage. CBS was by far the most interested in the story, with a total of 19 minutes and nine seconds spent discussing the reflecting pool renovations. NBC crept into second place with a total of 13 minutes and nine seconds of algae coverage, while ABC’s total coverage climbed to 12 minutes and 32 seconds. Despite MS NOW’s ratcheted-up fixation on the reflecting pool, the story does appear to be losing steam on both cable and broadcast television. MS NOW is, in fact, the only network to have dedicated a larger percentage of their airtime to the story in the past three days than they had over the previous nine days. CNN and the broadcast networks, meanwhile, have begun to pull back somewhat. Even the majority of MS NOW’s coverage occurred between June 20 and June 23, and it has since begun to taper. The 108 minutes that the network added to their total were heavily front-loaded; by June 25, the reflecting pool had morphed into more of an anecdotal mention that commentators threw into their analysis, rather than the central focus of full-length reports. Additionally, the tone on the two cable networks in particular has taken on an increasingly begrudging tone. Anchors and commentators alike have begun to ask, in earnest, why anybody is talking so much about the reflecting pool — even as they continue to cover it.

As NewsBusters was first to report last December, Navy veteran Zachary Young, the man who took CNN to court for malicious defamation and won, was set to release a memoir titled American Spy co-written by American Sniper author Scott McEwen. It would heavily describe CNN’s defamation from his perspective. But new information obtained by NewsBusters is that the Central Intelligence Agency, Young’s former employer, was blocking the book. Speaking with someone familiar with the matter, NewsBusters can confirm that the CIA is withholding permission to allow the book to be published; that’s despite the fact that everything in the book pertaining to Young’s time in the Agency was already part of the public record via the trial. NewsBusters has obtained a copy of the letter the CIA’s Publications Review Board received from Young. The letter, which included a copy of his manuscript, explained how all the information about his time in the Agency had already been released publicly and provided the evidence of it being broadcast around the world. In his opening paragraph, Young made it clear that while he no longer worked for the Agency, he was abiding by his obligation to submit his manuscript for review and was doing so in “good faith”: I respectfully submit the enclosed manuscript for prepublication review pursuant to my obligations as a former Agency officer. I understand that the purpose of this review is to identify and prevent the disclosure of classified national security information. I submit the manuscript in good faith to facilitate that process, and I note at the outset that, to the best of my knowledge, the manuscript contains no classified information. “The manuscript references certain details concerning my prior service with the CIA. All such references are drawn from the public record. They were introduced and discussed openly during Young v. Cable News Network, Inc., Case No. 03 2022 CA 000608, a defamation trial held in the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida,” Young wrote. The letter pointed out that the CIA had every opportunity throughout the legal proceedings and the trial to have his affiliation with the Agency sealed and/or kill the case entirely. They punted: It was not conducted under the Classified Information Procedures Act. No party invoked classified information procedures. No government entity intervened, sought to seal any portion of the record, requested a protective order, or asked the court to restrict testimony, exhibits, broadcast coverage, or public access to the record. The proceedings were broadcast nationally by the Law and Crime Network and viewed by a substantial public audience. The testimony and exhibits referenced in this submission, including materials referencing my prior CIA service and my status as a former NOC, were admitted, displayed, or discussed in open court and became part of the public trial record. Following the trial, my prior CIA affiliation was also reported publicly in multiple national and international news articles concerning the verdict and the litigation. The Agency had full advance notice that these matters would be addressed in litigation. On May 24, 2023, counsel for CNN formally contacted the CIA’s Office of General Counsel under 32 C.F.R. § 1905.4, requesting confirmation of my prior employment and advising the Agency that CNN intended to pursue discovery concerning my alleged CIA positions, security clearances, alleged Agency projects, high risk missions, extractions, and evacuations. The Agency responded on June 28, 2023, through Assistant General Counsel Erin M. Alleman. The Agency declined CNN’s Touhy request and refused to produce information. Although the Agency cited sources and methods, the Privacy Act, the CIA Act, and potential classification concerns as reasons for refusing CNN’s request, it did not invoke classification in the litigation itself. It did not intervene. It did not seek sealing. It did not request a protective order. It did not ask the court to restrict deposition testimony, trial testimony, exhibits, broadcast coverage, or public access to the record. The matter then proceeded through discovery, deposition, and a full public trial without Agency intervention. It’s possible that the CIA had blocked the book to hide from the embarrassment. Young points out that it’s part of the public record that  former CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp inappropriately outed him to CNN’s Alex Marquardt, who was fired months after the trial: The trial record also establishes that my prior CIA affiliation was not merely incidentally mentioned by a private individual or inadvertently disclosed by an unauthorized outsider. It was confirmed through the Agency’s official press function. The documentary record, admitted as a trial exhibit and broadcast nationally, shows CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt formally tasking the Agency’s Office of Public Affairs on October 29, 2021, stating: “FYI I asked Tammy if they can look into the other guy’s claim that he’s CIA.” This was not a casual conversation. It was a directed request to the Agency’s official press office to look into whether a named individual was connected to the CIA. Marquardt testified under oath at trial that Tammy Kupperman Thorp, who served as the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs from 2021 to 2025, confirmed my Agency background and described the practice as a “steer,” which he defined on the record as the Agency’s established method of informally confirming information to credentialed journalists. The CIA’s block also puts the future of Young’s possible TV show in jeopardy, since it’s based on the book. A source tells NewsBusters to expect legal action against the CIA.

Because he’s not a cable TV fixture, Washington Post arts and architecture critic Philip Kennicott can fly under the radar as one of the most unhinged sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). But stories like one that ran in Thursday’s print edition illustrated his TDS as he raged about Trump “disturb[ing]” the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, “one of the most serene places” in D.C. serving as “a balance between beauty and function” that now “doesn’t reflect well on democracy.” “At the Reflecting Pool, Trump turns a serene oasis into a police zone; The botched renovation and images of arrests strike at the heart of the president’s supposed reputation for competence,” read the online headline and subhead. Suddenly, the left and Washington denizens have decided the Reflecting Pool is the be all, end all symbol of the National Mall. As such, Kennicott declared that “[n]othing makes the scale of Washington more palpable than walking the length of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.” He further gushed “it doesn’t take much wind for the surface to begin to ripple and wink in the light” and been “one of the most serene places in Washington,” but no longer because of Trump. “It was anything but serene last week. Giant pumps disgorged a torrent of Shrek-green water, while tourists gawked, and authorities patrolled around the edges to prevent vandalism that, as of this writing, seemed to exist only in the mind of the man who made the whole mess, President Donald Trump,” he huffed. Because of all this, Kennicott made himself fit for a straitjacket about how somewhere “meant to amplify the ideals of democracy” was in trouble because of Trump’s desire for “an imaginary enemy.” “This doesn’t reflect well on democracy,” he seethed. The insufferable Postie claimed “there is always a balance between beauty and function” with architecture with “reflecting pools skew[ing] to pure beauty” and providing a “delight” in “the illusion that there are two buildings framed in the picture, the real one built on terra firma, and the watery one that may seem on several glances to be just as substantial.” Try and not have your eyes roll to the back of your head: “The doubling can be scattered with the faintest trace of wind. And in that there is poetic conceit of transience, a reminder that everything we build and make and do is fleeting.” But all that has been sullied with “arresting people for putting their hand in the water” being particularly “grotesque.” Kennicott declared yet another one of America’s “cherished institutions and beloved places” has been “alienat[ed]” from those outside of Trump’s orbit. He even sensed the mockery that’d come from this piece: “All of this might be funny, if it didn’t take up so much of the collective bandwidth.” Invoking the Lincoln Memorial to a veiled shot at Trump, he swooned that still is “full of promise and possibility…that perhaps humanity can rise above tawdry things like greed and cruelty and chaos.” Once again, try and not laugh at this seemingly poetic fluff that a philosophy-majoring stoner conceived at an overpriced Ivy League school (click “expand”): When the air is calm, particularly just after sunrise, and the pool offers its most pristine surface, the pool suggests another kind of power, and one too often dismissed or ignored. It is easy to disturb the surface of the water, which suggests one kind of agency. But we also have the power to leave it alone, to let it reflect back at us this fragile sense of perfect beauty. In that, there is perhaps an even more telling metaphor. So much depends, in life and in government, on the collective agreement to preserve and protect, to leave beautiful things alone if they are self-sufficient in their beauty. He threw one last direct jab: “It only takes one person immune to the magic to disturb the image. And Donald Trump knew a pool guy.” The next day, Kennicott’s Style section colleague Monica Hesse sarcastically wrote “[t]he best show on television or any other screen right now is Reflecting Pool,” name-checking CBS, EarthCam, Fox News, TikTok, YouTube, and “social media” writ large. “Reflecting Pool has everything. It’s a drama. It’s a farce. It’s a whodunit. It’s a murder mystery. The victims are ducks. Reflecting Pool is entertainingly low stakes because it is not, for example, a war,” she quipped. She later added: “To watch Reflecting Pool is to bear witness to both the behaviors of your government and of your fellow citizens. To see what they are willing to believe. Who they are willing to blame.” Exit question: If the press think it’s ludicrous for the President to be fixated on the Reflecting Pool, why is it that they’ve dumped hours of coverage on it and treated its state like a death in the family?

On Friday’s CNN This Morning, after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that allowed for the Trump administration to revoke "temporary protective status," specifically in the cases of Haitians and Syrians in the U.S., host Audie Cornish connected the ruling to the Venezuelan earthquake. After a lead story on the Venezuelan earthquakes and the destruction in the country, Cornish immediately turned to the TPS ruling. She bemoaned, “Now, while the people in Venezuela are desperate for help, we here in the U.S. have seen two rulings from the Supreme Court indicating that the U.S. is not quite the place of refuge it might have been. “   After the Supreme Court's Temporary Legal Status ruling, CNN This Morning's Audie Cornish connected the decision to the Venezuelan Earthquake disaster: "Now, while the people in Venezuela are desperate for help, we here in the U.S. have seen two rulings from the Supreme Court… pic.twitter.com/P1iXMylWNy — Nick (@nspin310) June 26, 2026 The show played a soundbite from a Border Czar Tom Homan press conference where he said, “temporary means temporary.” CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams said Homan “does have a point,” but said “there wasn’t a ton of process” and it was “simply a stroke of a pen.” After Cornish read part of liberal Justice Elena Kagan’s ruling that read, “race entered into the president's resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” Bluey turned to say the ruling is good for the President as it will help fulfill a campaign promise of mass deportations. When asked if he was happy with the ruling, he said, “Absolutely. I think that these rogue judges were out of step. Absolutely, I do.” As @RobertBluey said he was pleased with SCOTUS's TPS ruling, the NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro was not and said conservatives “conflate everything" and asked, “What is this about, if not about racial animus?” https://t.co/ZjYynYbvKl pic.twitter.com/PKTrmjY6ss — Nick (@nspin310) June 26, 2026 Immediately after Bluey’s thought, New York Times podcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro responded in a soft voice and said, “these were not illegal immigrants,” before she complained that conservatives “conflate everything”: “Exactly. And so the idea that the problem that I have always with this argument is made by conservatives is that they conflate everything, right? It's like illegal immigrants, TPS holders. It's basically anyone who's brown, who has been allowed in this country.” She then remarked, “What is this about, if not about racial animus?” Cornish then teamed up with Garcia-Navarro and went to Bluey in continuation of her conservatives' “conflate everything” comment: “But I hear your point that, again, conflating mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Is that the same as haphazard deportation of illegal migrants that you have approved and vetted? And why lump those two together?” Bluey kind of chuckled and argued "I do think that we have a massive problem. What, upwards of 20 million people who entered the country illegally under Joe Biden's watch?" Cornish continued to go after Bluey and wanted him to answer the “legal migrants” point: “I just want to make sure you get a chance to answer that point.” He responded and said Congress gave the authority to the secretary to revoke legal status and “rogue judges were interfering." Cornish responded, “Because -- that's not what they have in their decision here,” before she returned to Garcia-Navarro’s racial animus argument. As Garcia-Navarro made the case about race and Cornish connected the ruling to Venezuelan earthquakes, the decision could also simply be realized as the court ruling the word “temporary” can actually mean “temporary.” The transcript is below. Click "expand" CNN This Morning June 26, 2026 6:05:41 AM Eastern  (...) AUDIE CORNISH: Now, while the people in Venezuela are desperate for help, we here in the U.S. have seen two rulings from the Supreme Court indicating that the U.S. Is not quite the place of refuge it might have been.  The Supreme Court ruled immigration officials at the U.S. Mexico border can turn away asylum seekers before they enter the country. Now, in her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the consequences of today's decision are predictable. More people will die.” Now, the justices also allowed the Trump Administration to strip temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the US. [Cuts to clip] TOM HOMAN: The whole statute exists temporarily to give people protection while the countries in turmoil or after they suffer a hurricane. But the problem is, no administration has had the guts to actually follow that statute. President Trump has the guts to follow the law, so temporary means temporary. When the condition in that country gets better, they need to go home. [Jumpcut] So, temporary means temporary. And I'm grateful for that decision. (...) 6:07:32 AM Eastern CORNISH: Elliot, I got to start with you. The legal of this. Basically, this law from the 1990s gives people a kind of quasi-legal status. You can work a bit, you can stay a bit, but it is by definition limited unless it gets continual extensions. So, does Homan have a point? And is that what the court underscored, or did they point to something else? ELLIOT WILLIAMS: They pointed to something else. He does have a point in that - so the point of temporary protected status is when conditions in a country are such that people cannot return there. Haiti was an excellent example after the earthquake. Certainly it was not feasible for the United States to send people back there.  CORNISH: Or Syria, with the war. WILLIAMS: Or Syria with the war and the deteriorating conditions there. Now, what countless administrations of both parties have done is extend those designations each time and sometimes multiple times up to a period of years. Now, on the flip side, what Kristi Noem, the former secretary of Homeland Security did, was simply just suspend TPS for Haitians and Syrians -  CORNISH: Yeah. And I'm going to put up a map showing all the countries the administration has tried to terminate TPS.  WILLIAMS: Yes. CORNISH: Just so people have a sense of where folks are coming from and where we're trying to stop them. WILLIAMS: Right. And but here, there wasn't a ton of process. It was just simply with the stroke of a pen we're going to suspend this right here. That was part of what animated the lawsuit. But certainly, you know, again, Tom Homan, frankly, who I worked with for years at ICE and whom I know, he's got a little bit of a point in that the sort of temporary nature of all of this.  That said, the manner in which they did it and the potential consequences in light of the Venezuelan earthquake could be profound for the entire hemisphere. And it's just something to think about what comes next after this Supreme Court decision like any other. CORNISH: There was a twist in this conversation, which is that the Haitian plaintiffs said, look, this administration has said such heinous things about Haitians in particular, that there's obviously racial animus in the way they made this decision about TPS for their status. And it was interesting. You had Elena Kagan writing “the statements fairly shout in their racial undertones and overtones alike. That race entered into the president's resolve to remove Haitians from this country.” I'm not sure if we have some clips of that. We might, but needless to say, we have been hearing over the years, especially during campaign time, when Vance accused Haitians of all manner of thing, and that the court rejected that. ROB BLUEY: Well, Audie, I'm glad you brought up the campaign, because I think going back to this conversation, just more broadly on immigration, Donald Trump promised to carry out the largest mass deportation in our country's history. The fact of the matter is, if you look at the first year of the Trump administration, they did not hit the mark on the president's own promise. And now the mass deportation coalition is saying that they need to deport up to a million illegal immigrants this year. CORNISH: Are you bringing this up because you're saying this was a win they needed? BLUEY: Yes. I'm saying that Donald Trump if that's the promise that he was going to deliver on. And that was a central theme of his 2024 campaign. These victories at the Supreme Court certainly put him on the pathway to getting back on track when it comes to carrying out that. Now, we may disagree on whether or not that's the policy the United States should carry out. I just happen to say, as a conservative and as somebody who was animated CORNISH: You're happy about this ruling? BLUEY: Absolutely. I think that these rogue judges were out of step. Absolutely, I do. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Um, well, the first thing is these were not illegal immigrants. These were people who were here and were given legal status. They did all the things that they needed to do. Specifically, they got vetted. They have jobs. They are nurses. They are doctors. They are journalists. CORNISH: I’m going to put up, while you're talking, an example of the kinds of jobs Haitian TPS holders were doing in this country, 200,000 of them in the U.S. Workforce. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Exactly. And so the idea that the problem that I have always with this argument is made by conservatives is that they conflate everything, right? It's like illegal immigrants, TPS holders. It's basically anyone who's brown, who has been allowed in this country. Um, we have seen under this administration, basically refugees - the entire refugee program being suspended and being now handed over to white South Africans. What is this about, if not about racial animus?  And I think what Elena Kagan was pointing to was the president's very own statements. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats, talking about Haitians who were working. And that was completely fabricated. And so I think at the end of the day, when you look specifically at a place like Haiti, how can you argue that that is safe for people to go back to? CORNISH: But I hear your point that, again, conflating mass deportation of illegal immigrants, is that the same as haphazard deportation of illegal migrants that you have approved and vetted? And why lump those two together? BLUEY: Well [laughs] I do think that we have a massive problem. What, upwards of 20 million people who entered the country illegally under Joe Biden's watch? So there's that issue CORNISH: No, I want to repeat. Legal migrants. Why put those together? I just want to make sure you get a chance to answer that point. BLUEY: Well, if we're going to go back to the Supreme Court decision, ultimately, it comes down to the fact that it's up to the Secretary of Homeland Security to make this decision and it's not a matter for the courts to review that’s ultimately what the court - CORNISH: Well, I think they said it was Congress. But let me just add one more thing. BLUEY: Congress gave the authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security - CORNISH: Yes. Let me follow Lulu’s point. BLUEY: And these rogue judges were interfering.  CORNISH: Because - that's not what they have in their decision here. But, Lulu, I do want to answer something you said about the racial animus. Alito spoke to this directly, and he said, look, “political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago.” And he talks about Haitian the commentary around Haitians in particular. But he says, whatever one may think of the kinds of statements that the state's lawyers couldn't even repeat in court, he says they're insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti's TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.

The Washington Post provided the latest update on a foiled transgender assassin on Tuesday. The headline: “She got eight years for plotting to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Prosecutors want more.” Reporter Dan Morse led off the story: The plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was as bizarre as it was terrifying. From her home in California, 26-year-old Sophie Roske figured out Kavanaugh’s address in suburban Maryland. She bought a gun, practiced shooting and acquired lock-picking tools, black face paint and a laser sight. After packing her gear into a suitcase she checked at the airport, Roske flew cross-country and took a cab to the justice’s home, arriving just after 1 a.m. The only problem: “she” was a dude during her violent plotting and then pleading guilty. Throughout the story, there are 18 uses of “she” and 27 of “her” for Roske. You have to read down to paragraph 26 for reality to kick in (sort of): “Roske was named Nicholas Roske at birth and raised as a boy in a Southern California family active in a large Evangelical church.” Is the church part supposed to make you feel sympathy for the guy? The Post story noted Roske wrote on Discord about his anger over the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and he wanted to use violence to “Remove some people from the supreme court…I could get at least one, which would change the votes for decades to come, and I am shooting for 3.” Federal prosecutors sought a 30-year sentence for Roske, complete with a “terrorism enhancement.” District Judge Deborah Boardman only gave him eight years, and the Post never mentioned this fact: Boardman was appointed by President Biden in 2021. The light sentence is why federal prosecutors appealed it. Roske's "mental health challenges" clearly were a factor, as the Post noted:  Boardman said that in weighing how long to sentence Roske, she factored in that Roske could face additional hardships in federal custody owing to assignment to a male prison and uncertainty about access to hormone treatment....   On the night Roske approached Kavanaugh’s home, the judge said, Roske “was in the throes of a mental health crisis.” The judge emphasized that since her arrest that night and subsequent detention, Roske has shown a strong commitment to mental health treatment. Morse also didn't Boardman's made other liberal decisions, as you would expect, like denying an injunction for parents demanding a right to remove their children from LGBTQ lessons in Montgomery County (Md.) schools. This raises an obvious question: If Nicholas never decided to become Sophie, would he have received a harsher sentence? Would that be a reason nudging Nicholas into becoming Sophie three years after his arrest, and shortly before sentencing? The Post is never going to suggest there's anything but complete sincerity in Transgender Land.