In Saturday’s episode of MS NOW’s The Weekend: Primetime, Rev. Al Sharpton offered a stark, depressing, expression of a certain strain of modern progressive thinking. Co-host Catherine Rampell nudged: "Rev, I'm wondering if you could lay out what the actual stakes are for black Americans, for other members of racial minorities, if their political views are no longer represented in Congress. What happens?" When asked what is at stake for black Americans and other racial minorities in the current redistricting wars, he warned: SHARPTON: What happens is everything that they fear that she talks about, it gets cemented and gets worse. And what I say to a lot of people, old and young, is that you are not taking for granted things that we naturally got as a result of these laws. Because we could vote, you've got things like Medicaid and Medicare and Obamacare. And this is your life. You got things like public education funding and, and public health funding. All of that goes away! Because if you don't have people in Congress and in the Senate that will vote to protect the lifestyle you have, including looking at what private industry's doing with mortgage rates and rent rate, all of that. Then he brought up racial reparations: “Some young people at a rally three days ago [told me], we want reparations. Who’s gonna give it to you? You gonna pay yourself? The people that are in office are gonna decide that. They need to understand everything you want will be decided by others if your right to vote is not protected and if you don’t exercise it.” Everything you want. Decided by others. Al Sharpton's sad vision for black Americans: reliance on government to provide your "lifestyle." pic.twitter.com/12a0H8wPAp — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) May 17, 2026 There was not a single word in Sharpton’s remarks about personal agency, individual responsibility, family stability, educational excellence, hard work, entrepreneurship, or building strong communities. The message was utterly bleak: your "lifestyle" is something the government has given you in the past, but can snatch away at any moment. Your role is not to create it, but to vote to protect the people who dole it out. This is a profoundly hopeless message. It tells people — especially the young — that they have zero agency. Their wants, their needs, their futures are entirely dependent on what politicians decide to provide. The citizen is reduced to a permanent client whose only power is to keep the right patrons in office. This stands in direct opposition to the American Founding. The Declaration of Independence affirms the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — the freedom to build one’s own life, not the expectation that government will deliver a lifestyle. The irony is brutal. In 2012, Joe Biden warned a largely black audience that Republicans would “put y’all back in chains.” Yet here is a prominent Democratic voice openly preaching a philosophy of dependence that keeps people chained — not by force, but by convincing them their prosperity and desires must forever be granted by others. This vision is tragic. And it lies at the core of much of today’s liberal philosophy: progress is measured by how much the state extracts and redistributes, not by how free, capable, and self-reliant individuals and communities become. A message that tells any group of Americans they have no real power over their own lives — that everything they want will be decided by others — offers no path to genuine dignity. How ineffably sad. Here's the transcript. MS NOW The Weekend: Primetime 5/16/26 6:09 pm EDT CATHERINE RAMPELL: Rev, I'm wondering if you could lay out what the actual stakes are for black Americans, for other members of racial minorities, if their political views are no longer represented in Congress. What happens? AL SHARPTON: What happens is everything that they fear that she talks about, it gets cemented and gets worse. And what I say to a lot of people, old and young, is that you are not taking for granted things that we naturally got as a result of these laws. Because we could vote, you've got things like Medicaid and Medicare and Obamacare. And this is your life. You got things like public education funding and, and public health funding. All of that goes away! Because if you don't have people in Congress and in the Senate that will vote to protect the, the lifestyle you have, including looking at what private industry's doing with mortgage rates and rent rate, all of that. We want affordable life! Well, who do you think's gonna decide that? The people that are elected. They're voting. I was telling some young people at a rally three days ago, Rev: we want reparations. Who's gonna give it to you? You gonna pay yourself? The people that are in office are gonna decide that. They need to understand everything you want will be decided by others if your right to vote is not protected and if you don't exercise it.

MRC Watchdogs churn out breaking news on a daily basis. Don't miss Today's Highlights, where you can keep up with the top MRC content, whether it's the latest study on media bias, a glaring omission from the elitist media, or how the Big Tech companies are serving up the same leftist spin as the media.  Top Stories:   STUDY: SNL Jokes About Conservatives Jump To 91 Percent In Season 51 ABC ‘This Week’ Omits Medicaid Scams, Whines over Trump’s DC Builds Shocking Anti-Fauci Hearing SKIPPED by ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, WashPost, NY Times Eric Trump Threatens to SUE Psaki for Shameless Son-in-China Scandal Talk   STUDY: SNL Jokes About Conservatives Jump To 91 Percent In Season 51 A new NewsBusters study found that 91 percent of Weekend Update political jokes this season targeted conservatives. Donald Trump alone was the target of more than 100 jokes, showing how overwhelmingly one-sided SNL’s political humor has become. The study found conservatives dominated both the cold opens and Weekend Update segments, while liberals received comparatively little scrutiny. SNL’s political comedy no longer reflects broad satire and instead functions as partisan activism aimed almost entirely at the Right.   ABC ‘This Week’ Omits Medicaid Scams, Whines over Trump’s DC Builds ABC’s This Week focused on criticizing Trump’s renovation projects in Washington while ignoring ongoing Medicaid fraud and government service scams. The segment framed beautification and infrastructure projects around the White House as potential controversy instead of reporting on larger government accountability issues. Elite media outlets are working overtime to manufacture scandal narratives around Trump while downplaying stories involving government waste and corruption.   Shocking Anti-Fauci Hearing SKIPPED by ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, WashPost, NY Times A Senate hearing featuring a CIA whistleblower alleging Anthony Fauci influenced COVID intelligence assessments received virtually no coverage from major legacy media outlets. The whistleblower testified that officials worked to downplay evidence supporting the lab leak theory and described a broader COVID-era cover-up. NewsBusters noted that ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all skipped the hearing entirely. The media’s refusal to revisit Fauci-era narratives shows an unwillingness to seriously examine mistakes made during the pandemic response.   Eric Trump Threatens to SUE Psaki for Shameless Son-in-China Scandal Talk Eric Trump announced plans to sue Jen Psaki and MS NOW after accusing them of spreading false claims about his business interests in China. Psaki suggested Eric Trump’s trip to China alongside President Trump raised conflict of interest concerns tied to a company connected to crypto and AI deals. Eric Trump flatly denied serving on the board of ALT5 Sigma and said he has “zero business interests in China.” The controversy highlights a double standard in media coverage because similar concerns surrounding Hunter Biden’s China business dealings received far less aggressive scrutiny from many of the same commentators.    

Proving that no subject is apolitical to the left, National Public Radio used its regular “Word of the Day” segment to indulge in left-wing paranoia of President Trump as authoritarian, in “Is the U.S. slipping into 'Competitive Authoritarianism?'” which aired on All Things Considered May 13. As oxymoronic as this sounds -- like "Pork-Roast Vegetarianism" -- It’s a favorite phrase on leftist channel MSNOW as well as leftist NPR. SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST: What kind of political system do we have in the United States these days? Some experts say the U.S. is no longer a liberal democracy. Instead, it's operating under a system called competitive authoritarianism. NPR's Frank Langfitt has the story behind our latest words of the week. FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Let's start with a definition. Competitive authoritarian countries have democratic rules and hold competitive elections, but the party in charge uses various tactics to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor to maintain power. Steven Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard. He explained competitive authoritarianism last year on WAMU's show 1A. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) STEVEN LEVITSKY: Elected authoritarians, when they come to power, try to convert the state - which is supposed to be a neutral arbiter - into both a weapon and a shield. It's a weapon to be deployed against political rivals, and it is a shield to protect themselves and to protect their allies who engage in authoritarian or illegal behavior. LANGFITT: Levitsky says Trump's pardoning of the January 6 rioters is a classic tactic. Let's put side for the moment the notion that NPR long converted their funding from the state into propaganda for one party. Isn’t it ironic that the very first example NPR comes up with of “competitive authoritarianism” is letting offenders out of prison? Langfitt quoted unlabeled lefty professor Levitsky, seen here embarrassing himself by sucking up to New York Times' leftist columnist Jamelle Bouie at a Freedom From Religion Foundation conference. LANGFITT: Competitive authoritarianism is a new term. Levitsky and Lucan Way, now a professor at the University of Toronto, came up with it in 2002 to apply to systems in countries such as Serbia, Kenya and Peru. LUCAN WAY: We never - when we coined this term 25 years ago - never imagined that we would apply it to the United States. LANGFITT: But Levitsky says Trump is following a familiar playbook. LEVITSKY: When we began to see the Justice Department go after public critics of Trump, when we began to see lawsuits against media or attacks on universities that are viewed as critical of the government, all of these things are raising the cost of opposition. NPR doesn't see the Biden Justice Department going after Trump and thousands of people who support Trump as fitting their conspiracy theory. Those “attacks on universities” include UCLA, Harvard, and Columbia, so-called elite universities that shamefully failed to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian campus protests after the October 7 massacre, and in UCLA’s case, actively facilitating Jew-free zones on campus. Langfitt was thrilled that the term was spreading to other elitist media outlets. LANGFITT: The term is catching on. Since President Trump took office last year, searches on Google trends for competitive authoritarianism have spiked. It's also shown up in scores of publications from the Ventura County Star to The Scotsman in Edinburgh and The Indian Express in Mumbai…. Aren’t you glad you’re not paying for this anymore?

“I believe they're just seeking a public humiliation ritual for the girls,” 12-time NCAA All-American female athlete Riley Gaines said Monday after California high school girls were forced to share the podium and first-place with a biological male at a track and field competition Saturday. Biological male AB Hernandez finished ahead of all girl athletes in the high jump, long jump and triple jump – just as he did last weekend at another California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) track and field competition for high school girls. This time, however, a newly-revived rule placed both the top girl and top biological male (transgender) athletes side-by-side on the podium to receive first-place awards, as Fox News explains: “Then, during podium ceremonies, announcers declared that each event had two co-champions, including Hernandez. This was based on a rule enacted last year.” …. “The parent of a female athlete at Saturday's meet told Fox News Digital that a coach informed them that the same pilot program would be implemented for the remainder of the state postseason, starting with the section final on Saturday.” "At this point, I believe they're just seeking a public humiliation ritual for the girls,” Gaines, now an advocate for female sports, told Fox & Friends on Monday: “It's probably one of the most abusive things that you can do to a young woman. “These are, like, 14, 15, 16 year-old girls. You are minimizing their accomplishments. You are asking them to stand aside, to smile, to applaud the boy, to deny reality and pretend that it is all okay. “What is that? It is psychological abuse on full display.” “It’s heartbreaking that the adults have failed them in the way that they have,” Gaines said. “If you have to create a shared podium for the boy competing in the girls’ event, you’ve already admitted you know he isn’t a girl and that his participation is unfair,” Gaines explained in a X.com post following Saturday’s event. Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s policies allowing biological males to compete against girls, and even change in front of them in locker rooms, is just one reason “why Californians are moving out at record rates and coming to my state of Tennessee,” Gaines told Fox News. "At this point, I believe they're just seeking a public humiliation ritual for the girls... It's probably one of the most abusive things that you can do to a young woman."@Riley_Gaines_ slams the "psychological abuse" of a California track meet where a transgender athlete swept… pic.twitter.com/Dh6b0AgoHl — FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 18, 2026  

Season 51 of NBC’s Saturday Night Live recently came to an end, and it was considerably more liberal than Season 50. A new NewsBusters study has found that 91 percent of the season’s Weekend Update jokes were directed at conservatives, while 81 percent of its cold open political characters were conservatives or Republicans. For this study, NewsBusters analysts examined all 20 shows of the season from October 4, 2025, through May 16, 2026.   Weekend Update MRC analysts found that Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che combined to tell 217 out of 238 jokes (91 percent) about conservatives during Season 52. They also told 18 about liberals and three non-partisan jokes. This included 32 separate conservative, 13 liberal, and three non-partisan targets.  Jost and Che’s top ten targets included only one liberal. The list featured Donald Trump (108), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (15), Kristi Noem (12), Tucker Carlson (11), George Santos (10), Melania Trump (7), JD Vance (7), Andrew Cuomo (5), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (5), and Kash Patel (5). By joking about Cuomo, SNL helped boost the even further-left Zohran Mamdani in New York City's mayoral election. Additionally, in the middle of every Weekend Update, another cast member joins Jost and Che to play an absurd character, with Jost or Che acting as the straight man in the scenario. Occasionally, these are political, such as Jeremy Culhane appearing as Tucker Carlson on two occasions that made it seem as if Carlson is still best known for being a conservative culture warrior, and not someone who is constantly smearing Israel, bashing Trump, and making excuses for America’s enemies. Here are some samples of Jost and Che’s most anti-conservative jokes from the past season. Tom Homan called on local leaders in Minneapolis to work with ICE agents to tone down the dangerous rhetoric, because all that rhetoric just distracts agents from their main aim: anyone filming. – Che Minnesota Governor Tim Walz compared the Trump administration's immigration crackdown to the Nazi occupation described The Diary of Anne Frank, but remember this administration has always ignored the stories told by young girls. – Jost  A federal judge on Friday ordered ICE agents in Minnesota not to retaliate against peaceful protesters. But if ICE agents listened to judges, then their ex-wives would be getting those checks for child support.  – Jost  Argentine President Javier Milei, seen asking if he makes you horny baby, met with President Trump at the White House this week, where Trump announced he's sending $40 billion to Argentina, because if history is any guide, Trump officials will end up fleeing to Argentina. – Jost Islamophobia, Che. How dare you. How dare you, Che. I'm not Islamophobic. Okay? I'm just scared of all Muslim people. – Sarah Sherman playing a paranoid and delusional Mamdani critic Kamala Harris has released a new book that explains how she lost the 2024 Election. It’s called I’m a Black Lady. – Che The point is, Dobby came here to say that women have vaginas and women's bathrooms are for women only and girls and ghosts of girls…But house elves aren’t the victims, Master Rowling is. She gets so much hate mail. Just this morning, she received this T-shirt that says “They. K. Rowling,” but now it’s Dobby’s nicest shirt. – Bowen Yang playing Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter and mocking J.K. Rowling’s criticisms of Emma Watson What the hell are you talking about? Only thing that makes any sense in that entire analogy is that we can all understand JD Vance's wife having the urge to jump. – Jost Yesterday, Kamala Harris said she was thinking about running for president again, and I like her chances as long as she finally grows that penis. – Che There's growing confusion whether Israel being allowed to continue bombing Lebanon was part of the ceasefire with Iran. Ultimately that decision comes down to the man controlling our military: Benjamin Netanyahu. – Che Legal experts are saying that this week's Supreme Court ruling has taken a wrecking ball to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If you ask black people, it felt more like a firehose. Too real. – Che According to a senior official, President Trump keeps a letter in the resolute desk addressed to Vice President JD Vance in the event he dies or is assassinated. The letter reads simply, “I wish it had been you.” – Jost President Trump has rejected Iran's latest demands to end the war, including recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. war reparations. You want reparations from America? Get in line, honey. – Che MRC President David Bozell said in a statement, “Michael Jordan famously said, ‘Republicans buy sneakers, too.’ Entertainment companies once understood that alienating half the country was probably not a great business model. Nobody is asking SNL to become conservative, but when every political punchline is nothing more than all Trump Derangement Syndrome all the time, SNL risks turning itself into a caricature of their own political obsessions.” NewsBusters started counting Jost and Che’s jokes at the end of Season 51. Their two year total now stands at 420 jokes about conservatives, 64 about liberals, and four non-partisan jokes. That is a two-year average of 86 percent for jokes directed against conservatives. Cold Opens MRC analysts also looked at the cold open skits at the beginning of every episode and found that conservative or Republican characters appeared 54 times, or 83 percent of the time. By contrast, liberal characters appeared only 10 times. Finally, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper made an appearance as the only non-partisan character. In addition to Cooper, this included 23 unique conservative and 9 unique liberal characters. The last liberal character to show up was on season’s eighth episode on December 13. Only one liberal character appeared multiple times. Characters that did appear multiple times included James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump (13), Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth (10), Ashley Padilla’s Kristi Noem (5), Padilla’s Karoline Leavitt (4), Jeremy Culhane’s JD Vance (3), Aziz Ansari’s Kash Patel (3), Chloe Fineman’s Kaitlan Collins (2), and Padilla/Amy Poehler’s Pam Bondi (2). The Kaitlan Collins character was not there to be a satirization of Collins or CNN but rather because the Republican characters needed a generic reporter to interact with. Additionally, three Democratic senators—Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, and Dick Durbin—were portrayed in a way that made them look normal compared to former Attorney General Pam Bondi Here is a list of some of the most anti-conservative moments from Season 51’s cold opens. To answer your question, if I was just “playing Army,” would there be 80 dead fishermen— narco-terrorists in Venezuela right now? Next question. – Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) And we’re doing war. War! What is it good for? Distracting from the Epstein files. –Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) Can I join ICE? Well, let me ask you this. Is your neck wider than your head? Are you currently wearing a Punisher T-shirt? Have you ever punched a hole in the wall because your son took a dance class? If the answer is yes, then grab a gun, any gun, and saddle up, big boy. – Kristi Noem (Ashley Padilla) TRUMP (JOHNSON): Yes, we're doing pirate now, arggh.        …         REPORTER (JEREMY CULHANE): Was that Santa?         [Video of Santa Claus being shot down]         TRUMP (JOHNSON): Not anymore. Can you believe I ended abortion? Hey, your body, my choice. – Brett Kavanaugh (Matt Damon) The two-year cold open tally now sits at 70 percent of characters being conservative or Republican with a total of 94 conservatives, 39 liberals, and one non-partisan with 28 Trump appearances on 41 total episodes. *** At the end of every SNL season, there are rumors about which cast members will not be back in the fall. Last year, rumors were everywhere that Jost and Che would not return, but they ultimately did. Already, those rumors are starting again, but any possible change in anchors will probably not lead to a change in partisan agenda.