There was once upon a time when the news media pretended to care about congressional ethics, and made an effort to cover alleged violations of the public trust. Nowadays, the Elitist Media appear to deploy an obvious double standard when covering these. Consider the case of Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-Mccormick (D-FL). McCormick has been indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple charges related to the alleged theft of FEMA funds. The sole evening newscast item on her charges came last fall, a quick brief on the NBC Nightly News: IT'S (D)IFFERENT: Rep. Sheila Cherfilus McCormick is set to face a public Ethics Committee hearing, and yet the sole network newscast report on her charges aired last November. Compare the lack of coverage viz nature of the charges to that of George Santos. A clear double… pic.twitter.com/RJOjshVjcK — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 26, 2026 TOM LLAMAS: Also tonight, a congressman is facing calls to resign after she was charged with stealing FEMA funds. Democratic Florida Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges she stole more than $5 million dollars of taxpayer money meant for disaster relief. She denied the charges, calling them intimidation tactics, and said she won’t resign. There has been no coverage on the evening news or anywhere else since, and the House Ethics Committee is set to hold a public hearing tomorrow. Per Axios: House Democrats say privately that they may be unable to maintain their silence much longer on the explosive allegations of misuse of taxpayer funds against Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.). Why it matters: Cherfilus-McCormick, who has denied any wrongdoing, may face calls for resignation or even expulsion from her own party if the Ethics Committee process goes as many of her colleagues expect it to. The reason that Democrats have been able to seethe quietly about Cherfilus-McCormick is because the media have given them the space to do so by not incessantly covering the charges in exacting detail. What exacting detail? Per the Department of Justice: According to the indictment, Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and her brother Edwin Cherfilus, 51, both of Miramar, worked through their family health-care company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021. In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds. The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to steal that $5 million and routed it through multiple accounts to disguise its source. Prosecutors allege that a substantial portion of the misappropriated funds was used as candidate contributions to Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2021 congressional campaign and for the personal benefit of the defendants. The indictment further alleges that Cherfilus-McCormick and Nadege Leblanc, 46, of Miramar, arranged additional contributions using straw donors, funneling other monies from the FEMA-funded Covid-19 contract to friends and relatives who then donated to the campaign as if using their own money. This, of course, was NOT the standard at play when it was George Santos coming under federal scrutiny for funneling campaign donations into several luxury purchases. The media pounded the drums until Santos, a Republican, was expelled from Congress. Cherfilus-McCormick warrants at least as much coverage as Santos got for (allegedly) turning federal Covid funds into campaign donations. With Santos, who eventually pled guilty to his charges, we got a drumbeat of coverage until he was run out of Congress. With Cherfilus-McCormick? Silence. This case reminds us, as is often the case with the Elitist Media, that if it weren't for double standards there would be none at all. It’s (D)ifferent like that.  

Politicians say they can “make the economy work better.” I once believed they could. But years of reporting taught me that politicians’ attempts to “fix” the economy usually make things worse. Twenty years ago, Republicans and Democrats helped create the Great Recession by telling government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more peoples’ mortgages because, as President George W. Bush put it, “Owning a home is a part of (the American) dream.” But that guarantee inspired lenders to approve dubious mortgages, given to riskier borrowers. Housing prices shot up in a government-created bubble. When many people stopped making mortgage payments and the housing bubble burst, we got the Great Recession. It’s just one example of what Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises wrote about years ago. In “The Fatal Conceit,” Hayek writes, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Mises’ “Human Action” points out that all economics start with individuals making purposeful choices. That “human action” determines prices, and markets coordinate the most efficient use of resources. But the media believed the socialists. The New Republic wrote: “the major task of our civilization is ... to organize our great economic organs.” On the contrary, wrote Hayek: “To follow socialist morality would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.” He was right. Every socialist government, everywhere, has failed. They fail because no political leader can ever know as much as millions of individuals doing our own thing. “That’s the idea that Mises’ introduced to the world,” says Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute. “Central planning doesn’t work because everybody has different ideas for themselves, wants to do different things with their property. If you take away their ability to do what they want, it eventually causes great impoverishment.”      I assumed belief in socialism would die when the Soviet Union did -- but bizarrely, it hasn’t. Recently, young people helped elect socialist mayors in Seattle and New York City. They promise rent control and government-run grocery stores. “We don’t have to look any further than Mises to find an excellent explanation of why that doesn’t work,” says McMaken in my new video. Unfortunately, Mises and Hayek were never as popular as economists pushing central planning and government spending. “There’s a big advantage that the people who are in favor of inflation and more government regulation have. Everyone in government wants that same thing,” says McMaken. “‘Like to spend? Like to regulate the economy? Boy, have we got an economic theory for you.’ (That) of course became instantly popular with people in government.” And popular with the public. “Because the public wants government to spend on them as well!” says McMaken. “Here was an economic theory telling them the government can give you boatloads of welfare nonstop forever and there’s no downside. ... The reality is that there is a downside: recessions, unemployment, inflation and falling real wages.” We got that in the 1970s, after years of spending on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs. In total, American taxpayers have spent $30 trillion in the name of reducing poverty. Politicians said government agencies would spend the money efficiently. They rarely did, and the deficit spending contributed to 15% inflation. “People then saw, ‘Everything we’ve been told for the last 30 years about managing the economy isn’t really true,’” says McMaken. “When you start to inflate the money supply, it sows the seeds for a future economic collapse. That is the cause of everything we’ve seen over the last century. It is Mises’ work that explains why the Great Depression happened ... We have to study the economic side of things because if we don’t ... we can’t see the ways that the state is ripping us off.” Hayek and Mises were right. The socialist planners are wrong. Books like “The Fatal Conceit”, “The Road to Serfdom” and “Human Action,” although I couldn’t get through all of it, are well worth reading today. 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.”

A transgender illegal alien – who was previously released by a sanctuary city - has pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old boy, but won’t spend any additional time in prison after he is sentenced to “time served” on April 27. Nicol Alexandra Contreras-Suarez, a biological male and illegal alien from Colombia, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday in exchange for a sentence of the six months he has already served in prison. Before the plea deal, Contreras-Suarez was facing charges for first-degree rape of a child less than 17 and stalking, according to a July 2025 news release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). On February 11 of last year, Suarez followed a 14-year-old into the bathroom of a Harlem bodega, where he raped the minor. He was caught on camera leaving the bodega and was arrested the next day. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a detainer request to Manhattan Central Booking on February 13, in hopes taking custody of Suarez for deportation. New York City, where Suarez is being detained, is an illegal alien “sanctuary,” however, meaning it has a policy of denying ICE detainer requests and refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Suarez has been imprisoned at Rikers Island (part of New York City) since legal proceedings began in July 2025. He was previously arrested in Massachusetts on robbery, weapons and prostitution charges, but was released due to local sanctuary city policies, according to (DHS) officials.  In March of 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) arrested Suarez for illegally entering the United States at San Ysidro, California, but he was later released. Suarez’s freedom might be short-lived once the judge approves his plea deal on April 27, however. “We expect the defendant to remain detained and be deported following sentencing, due to the felony conviction,” a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said in a statement, suggesting potential cooperation with ICE, in Suarez’s case.

What do tariffs, covert military operations, and criticizing journalists have in common? They’re all things that the press have accused President Trump of using to distract them, and the public, from the Jeffrey Epstein saga. Since the release of the first batch of Epstein-related files in late 2025, hardly a thing has happened in American politics that some member of the press hasn’t deemed a Trump-engineered “distraction” from Epstein. Below are just some examples of this increasingly absurd trend: TRUMP: *Does a thing he campaigned on since 2016* MEDIA: Ha! A feeble attempt to distract from Epstein.pic.twitter.com/pao98DF1Qt — Bill D'Agostino (@Banned_Bill) March 25, 2026 In addition to the examples shown above, here are some other stupid things journalists have dubbed “distractions” from Epstein: In July of 2025, CNN anchor Laura Coates narrated a wild, conspiratorial segment about Trump’s recent social media posts. Her theory was that everything the President had said online about non-Epstein-related topics in the previous 48 hours was meant to be an elaborate distraction, including: Weighing in on the plea deal for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students. An AI-generated video poking fun at former President Obama (a routine hobby of Trump’s). Sharing a video of witness testimony at a recent Senate hearing. Posting an amateurish video compilation of people doing stunts and tricks. Perhaps nothing Coates mentioned seems out of the ordinary to anyone familiar with the president’s Truth Social habits. But maybe that’s why none of us are being paid big money by CNN to find the secret patterns in the Trump’s boomerposting. In August of 2025, then-MSNBC (and current MS NOW) host Chris Hayes asserted that the Department of Justice had launched an investigation into John Bolton to sidetrack the public. Months later, Hayes would complain that the myriad photos of Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island that were included in a subsequent document dump were meant to be a distraction from discredited allegations against Trump.  That complaint about the Clinton photos inadvertently revealed something about the media’s rationale with regards to the Epstein files. To rabidly anti-Trump journalists like Chris Hayes, the only imaginable reason to treat Epstein as a story was to damage Trump. Thus, all other evidence implicating anyone who wasn’t Donald Trump was worthless. It wasn’t newsworthy. It was a “distraction.” Hayes’s colleague, Ali Velshi, had a similar mask-off moment in August of 2025 while guest hosting The Last Word. In addition to echoing Hayes’s suspicion about the Bolton investigation, Velshi he sneered that the newly-released audio interview of convicted Epstein conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was the second of two distractions created by the Trump administration. The worst of the bunch was daytime MS NOW host Chris Jansing, who ran this thought by her panel hours before the 2026 State of the Union Address: The headline in The Times today is that the President would like to use this address tonight as a “reset.” Is that his focus, if he’s resetting, is that his focus, and an acknowledgement that he needs a reset given the polls — or might it be something that he wants to say to distract from these Epstein questions? Jansing was starting from the premise that if Trump wasted time talking about anything other than Epstein during the State of the Union address (such as, for example, the state of the union), then the whole address would be deemed a “distraction.”  There’s no fixing this. If Trump broke the media’s brains, clearly the Epstein files melted whatever was left.

The two cast members of ABC’s The View old enough have protested American veterans returning from Vietnam, moderator Whoopi Goldberg (70) and Joy Behar (83) tapped into that anti-military hatred during Wednesday’s episode. While the later was adamant that the U.S. military had “accomplished” nothing in Iran, the former suggested all they were doing was dying and lectured Secretary of War Pete Hegseth about what it meant to be a soldier, without ever serving herself. “What have they accomplished over there? Explain to me,” Behar bitterly demanded of fake Republican guest co-host Abby Huntsman, who was filling in for Alyssa Farah Griffin while she was on maternity leave. Unfortunately, as a weak Republican, Huntsman was unable to actually articulate the achievements of America’s military over the IRGC and flailed around: HUNTSMAN: Our military? BEHAR: In Iran. HUNTSMAN: I think we've got the best military in the world. I think they do what they're told - SUNNY HOSTIN: What have they accomplished so far in Iran? BEHAR: What have they accomplished in Iran? HUNTSMAN: What have they accomplished? BEHAR: In Iran. HUNTSMAN: I think any time we can deter Iran whether it's for another year for another 10 years, I think that it's win for this country. BEHAR: Obama had a deal in place with them though . Obama had a deal and he tore it up. Trump.  “Don't make it sound like I'm against the military. I'm not,” Behar whined as she proceeded to hide behind the military service of her relatives, since she had none of her own. “My uncles, my father, they all fought. So don't make it sound like that. I'm talking about this particular -- as he calls it excursion into Iran, what have they accomplished?!”   Joy Behar suggests the U.S. military hasn't "accomplished" anything in Iran, but insists she's not against the military: HUNTSMAN: Like, I don't want to take away from what our men and women have been doing over there because what they've accomplished is incredible and if we can… pic.twitter.com/8pFFaMhnHY — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 25, 2026   It’s worth noting that Behar once raged about how a school girl got her fired from being a teacher after she “snitched” to school officials that she was delivering anti-military screeds about Vietnam to students. Since Huntsman floundered, here’s just some of the military’s achievements thus far: Completely decapitated their leadership, and the new ayatollah was reportedly in a coma and didn’t know he was the leader. Shattered Iran’s ability to launch missiles, they’ve gone from firing hundreds during the first days of the conflict to less than a dozen a day. Boosted the local marine ecology by deploying a number of artificial reefs, a.k.a. the former Iranian Navy. Complete air dominance over the country, our planes can fly anywhere and strike anything they want. Took control of their propaganda apps to deliver messages to the Iranian people. Speaking of co-hosts of The View with no military experience, Goldberg attacked Hegseth with suggestions that he didn’t care about the lives of the soldiers serving under him, and was sending them to die because he didn’t have a plan. She even lectured him about what it meant to be a soldier. “At this point, at this point, I want them to stop what they're doing. They are sending people in to die. They are sending people in to die and I'm surprised because Hegseth served,” Goldberg sneered. “He should know more than anybody what it takes to be a soldier in our Army. What it means when you send people in. When you send them in with a plan, it's horrific. You send them in without a plan, you willy-nilly and you're not explaining what's going on.”   Whoopi claims the administration is just "sending people in to die" "without a plan" and nothing else. Despite never serving herself, she lectures Secretary Hegseth (who did serve) about what it means "to be a solider in our Army" and claims he doesn't care about the lives of… pic.twitter.com/nUun9OJxd3 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 25, 2026   Goldberg disgustingly declared that Hegseth didn’t care about their lives: “Damnit, I rather this were in the hands of people who actually cared about them enough to say, 'I going to do everything I can for you to be not in a place where you could be killed.'” Goldberg also baselessly suggested that the United States was just like Iran and was hiding casualty figures, essentially claiming more service members were than that what have been released: SARA HAINES: I don't trust the feedback of President Trump, I really don't trust Iran either. Because the kind of regimes over there, they send out propaganda, they manipulate numbers of what's happening. GOLDBERG: Kind of like we've been doing. SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah. Kind of. GOLDBERG: Yeah.   Flaunting her profound ignorance of how casualty numbers are reported, Whoopi claims the U.S. is like Iran and his hiding and manipulating casualty numbers, suggesting there are more dead than has been reported. Haines falsely claims there's already mass troops on the ground:… pic.twitter.com/y4MAtppm0U — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 25, 2026   Again, the only thing Goldberg had ever served was herself at a buffet. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s The View March 25, 2026 11:04:45 a.m. Eastern (…) ABBY HUNTSMAN: Like, I don't want to take away from what our men and women have been doing over there because what they've accomplished is incredible and if we can deter Iran at all, whether it be -- JOY BEHAR: What have they accomplished over there? Explain to me. HUNTSMAN: Our military? BEHAR: In Iran. HUNTSMAN: I think we've got the best military in the world. I think they do what they're told - SUNNY HOSTIN: What have they accomplished so far in Iran? BEHAR: What have they accomplished in Iran? HUNTSMAN: What have they accomplished? BEHAR: In Iran. HUNTSMAN: I think any time we can deter Iran whether it's for another year for another 10 years, I think that it's win for this country. BEHAR: Obama had a deal in place with them though . Obama had a deal and he tore it up. Trump. [Applause] He did. HOSTIN: I mean, it just seems to me - BEHAR: What's to give except herpes? HUNTSMAN: I think it's -- look, I think it's really easy to sit here and say what has our military accomplished? It's because of our military that we're able to sit here and have these conversations and do a show like that so whenever our military is out there -- BEHAR: Don't make it sound like I'm against the military. I'm not. My uncles, my father, they all fought. So don't make it sound like that. I'm talking about this particular -- as he calls it excursion into Iran, what have they accomplished?! So far. HUNTSMAN: We don't know what the intelligence he got was, that's the problem. They haven't communicated that. BEHAR: The word intelligence and him in the same sentence do not go together. [Cheers and applause] HUNTSMAN: Joy, what about -- okay, what about wiping out their entire leadership? BEHAR: What, they got rid of one ayatollah. They have another one that's just as bad. HUNTSMAN: We don't know his whereabouts. We don't know where that one is. (…) 11:08:43 a.m. Eastern SARA HAINES: Regardless of what Iran is saying about whether the president has spoken to them or not, I don't trust the feedback of President Trump, I really don't trust Iran either. Because the kind of regimes over there, they send out propaganda, they manipulate numbers of what's happening. GOLDBERG: Kind of like we've been doing. HOSTIN: Yeah. Kind of. GOLDBERG: Yeah. HAINES: You exaggerate success instead of failure. So, I actually don't have a lot of faith. It makes me nervous right now that now we have troops on the ground. Because when it was first, this campaign - BEHAR Right. HAINES: And you thought, all right let's see what happens. It's the exit plan for me. (…) 11:09:48 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: At this point, at this point, I want them to stop what they're doing. They are sending people in to die. They are sending people in to die and I'm surprised because Hegseth served. HOSTIN: Yes, he did. GOLDBERG: He served. He should know what it -- HUNTSMAN: He should know better than anybody. GOLDBERG: Yes, better than anybody, but when you listen to  - [Sees a picture of Hegseth on the screen] Stop looking so angry! He should know more than anybody what it takes to be a soldier in our Army. What it means when you send people in. When you send them in with a plan, it's horrific. You send them in without a plan, you willy-nilly and you're not explaining what's going on. Sunny: Correct. GOLDBERG: Fathers, mothers, daughter, sisters, brothers, these are all our American citizens who are being asked to do this. And because, because of the way the military is, they will do what they're asked to do. (...) GOLDBERG: Damnit, I rather this were in the hands of people who actually cared about them enough to say, 'I going to do everything I can for you to be not in a place where you could be killed.' But, we’ll be right back. (…)