For the latest edition of the left’s “Everything is Racist” campaign, emergency room physician Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey stopped by ABC’s Saturday edition of Good Morning America for its segment on what the chyron labeled “Black History Month & Your Health.” According to Smalls-Mantey, “the very real fact of racism and bias” in healthcare and America at large is one reason for any racial disparities in the healthcare system. Alluding to disparities in the prevalence of certain diseases, co-host Whit Johnson wondered, “We have been reporting on this more and more recently, but why the continued disparity?” Smalls-Mantey began her reply with possible explanations that have nothing to do with race, “So, some of the reasons for those disparities are you might live in an area that doesn't have as many doctors in their hospital, you might live far away from the hospital, but there's also the economic cost of healthcare.”   In the latest edition of Everything Is Racist, ABC brings on Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey to claim "And then the very real fact of racism and bias in healthcare, and just in this country, we've seen many examples of people having—going to the doctor, having their concerns ignored, and… pic.twitter.com/esNG3uawCB — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 21, 2026   Things then got racial when she added, “Black people tend to be in jobs that may not offer healthcare benefits, or you might not have health insurance. And so if you don't have health insurance, you're less likely to have a primary care doctor that you're following up with, and then even if you do have a regular doctor that you're following up with, the cost of the actual treatment can be very high for people. There's also the anxiety of knowing what you have, so people might have symptoms and not want to see a doctor, but it's important to go find out. It could be nothing, but also, if you have something, there's treatment.” Smalls-Mantey then sought to include "the very real fact of racism and bias in healthcare, and just in this country, we've seen many examples of people having—going to the doctor, having their concerns ignored, and it's important to remember that you're entitled to healthcare. So, go and get a second opinion.” According to a 2022 MITRE-Harris poll, 52 percent of all Americans claimed to have had their concerns “ignored, dismissed, or not believed.” The Kaiser Family Foundation, which endorses the basic belief that Smalls-Mantey espoused, nevertheless also found that 19 percent of black patients and 15 percent of white patients claimed a doctor “ignored a direct request you made or a question you asked.” Similarly, they found 15 percent of blacks claimed a doctor “refused to prescribe pain medication you thought you needed” compared to 9 percent of whites. Those aren’t massive gaps. They certainly aren’t big enough to claim that the country, as a whole, is racist. Here is a transcript for the February 21 show: ABC Good Morning America 2/21/2026 9:13 PM ET WHIT JOHNSON: And we have been reporting on this more and more recently, but why the continued disparity? ADJOA SMALLS-MANTEY: So, some of the reasons for those disparities are you might live in an area that doesn't have as many doctors in their hospital, you might live far away from the hospital, but there's also the economic cost of healthcare. Black people tend to be in jobs that may not offer healthcare benefits or you might not have health insurance. And so if you don't have health insurance, you're less likely to have a primary care doctor that you're following up with, and then even if you do have a regular doctor that you're following up with, the cost of the actual treatment can be very high for people. There's also the anxiety of knowing what you have, so people might have symptoms and not want to see a doctor, but it's important to go find out. It could be nothing, but also, if you have something, there's treatment. And then the very real fact of racism and bias in healthcare, and just in this country, we've seen many examples of people having—going to the doctor, having their concerns ignored, and it's important to remember that you're entitled to healthcare. So, go and get a second opinion.

The splenetic Democrats at The Atlantic magazine love to paint themselves as Team Truth, while Trump "is an enemy of fact-based discourse," and "The guiding principle of Trumpism is 'Feelings don't care about your facts.'” So why on Earth would they publish Elizabeth Bruenig's made-up story of a mother learning her child would die of measles? Twitchy pointed out The Washington Post softened the fakery that "some feel deceived." Feel deceived? It was literally Fake News.  The Atlantic’s essay about measles was gut-wrenching. Some readers feel deceived. Some critics and physicians said Elizabeth Bruenig’s second-person account of a mother confronting a child’s death from measles felt misleading once they learned the story was reported fiction. Post media reporter Scott Nover began with Kelly McBride of the liberal Poynter Institute (who moonlights as a "Public Editor" at National Public Radio) was the one feeling deceived:  When Kelly McBride read Elizabeth Bruenig’s essay in The Atlantic about a child’s death from measles complications, she was moved and quickly shared the story on her Facebook account. She hadn’t realized that Bruenig’s family had been ravaged by the virus and the well-known journalist had lost a child. McBride, a media ethicist and senior vice president at the Poynter Institute, also didn’t realize the story was a hypothetical scenario — and the child a composite character based on the author’s research — until a friend alerted her to an editor’s note at the bottom of the story. Then, McBride felt duped. “I feel deceived,” McBride said. “I spent all weekend talking about this story to my friends as if the reporter had experienced it.” That was the extent of McBride's ethical evaluation in this article. Nover made the criticism very general: "Readers and media experts have condemned the story as breaching journalistic ethics by informing the reader that the story is fictionalized through a short editor’s note at the end of the 3,000-word essay." Nover then balanced it with The Atlantic defending its "reported fiction" as a "writerly device"! Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor at The Atlantic, told The Washington Post in a statement that the magazine was “pleased that so many people are reading and praising Liz’s remarkable essay.” “We trust our readers to understand all different kinds of writing and writerly devices,” she said. “And while we included a note about Liz’s methods for transparency’s sake, we’re finding that most readers already understand the second-person well enough to know that the ‘you’ referenced throughout the piece is not literally ‘you,’ the reader.” Notice the lecture: we trust you to understand our crafty devices...if you're smart enough. Nover instructed the reader that "Reported hypotheticals have been used in other grim chronicles," and then came the praise for the fakery! Many readers, including physicians, praised the Atlantic essay, writing that its evocative writing and storytelling forced readers to grapple with the impact of vaccine hesitancy. “Read this while holding my almost-one-month-old, and it absolutely wrecked me. What a powerful and important piece,” one commenter wrote. “Tragically realistic story exquisitely described by Ms. Breunig,” wrote another. No. It was tragically fictional. Nover also brought in the Fake News writer to defend herself.  Bruenig, in an interview with the website Nieman Lab, defended the structure of her essay. “It is a hypothetical account of a very real phenomenon based on careful reporting,” she said. “I would place it somewhere on the creative nonfiction spectrum.” She said that she interviewed doctors for her piece, and based the character of the mother on herself. “I have no doubt that there are a lot of people out there who are unhappy with the story or reject its premises, and they are entitled to their interpretations. I get it,” she said. "Entitled to their interpretations" that I made up a story. Feelings trumped facts. 

The Atlantic podcaster and end-of-democracy doomsday prophet David Brooks had the temerity to claim on Friday’s PBS News Hour that he and people like him represent the “forces of humanization” in America while people like President Trump fight a “constant battle of forcing dehumanization.” Brooks lamented, “Well, Donald Trump has never had an honest disagreement with somebody and where you say, 'Oh, I disagree with you' and without him going ad hominem and that is just his nature.”   David Brooks, noted "democracy is dying" doomsday prophet, laments, "We meet people trying to heal America, trying to build conversations. And it's just frustrating that all these people are doing this work around the country at the same time, day by day, there's a shredding from… pic.twitter.com/SwqPAG5tEY — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 21, 2026   He also claimed, “It is the nature of somebody with a narcissistic personality disorder to think, I am the center, and everything that's an assault on me cannot be anything but a shameful attack on all that is right and good.” Presumably referring to liberal co-panelist MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart, Brooks went on, “And so it's very hard. We travel around the country. We meet people trying to heal America, trying to build conversations. And it's just frustrating that all these people are doing this work around the country at the same time, day by day, there's a shredding from the top. And so there's these forces of humanization that are trying to have a decent country, and then the shredding from the top is just a constant battle of forcing dehumanization.” David Brooks may speak in a calm, quiet tone of voice, but the actual content of his words can be just as radical as Capehart’s. He has warned that Trump’s policies equate to death, similarly compared DOGE to several mass-murdering communist dictators, and has several times decried various Trump actions as grave threats to democracy. None of that is new for Brooks. Ten years ago he claimed Sen. Ted Cruz spoke in “dark and satanic tones.” Back when Trump was just a simple NBC reality show host, Brooks had his own ad hominem, “It doesn’t help that he [Cruz] has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy actually.” But, at least PBS’s resident conservative appreciated Barack Obama’s pants. Here is a transcript for the February 20 show: PBS News Hour 2/20/2026 7:45 PM ET DAVID BROOKS: Well, Donald Trump has never had an honest disagreement with somebody and where you say, “Oh, I disagree with you” and without him going ad hominem and that is just his nature. It is the nature of somebody with a narcissistic personality disorder to think, I am the center, and everything that's an assault on me cannot be anything but a shameful attack on all that is right and good. And so it's very hard. We travel around the country. We meet people trying to heal America, trying to build conversations. And it's just frustrating that all these people are doing this work around the country at the same time, day by day, there's a shredding from the top. And so there's these forces of humanization that are trying to have a decent country, and then the shredding from the top is just a constant battle of forcing dehumanization.

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.