Ben Johnson | The Washington Stand
Liberal news bias affects every aspect of our society, including story selection. Every week, the media highlights certain stories while ignoring or limiting the coverage of others. Like all their content, newsrooms filter these decisions through their editors’ liberal bias, distorting the news you receive and polluting the information ecosystem. The Washington Stand highlights the stories you may have missed while desperately straining to hear the news through the cacophony produced by the legacy media.
This week, the media downplayed good news about abortion, the WHO Pandemic Agreement, and radical judicial appointments — as well as bad news about the Biden administration’s fanatical support of the transgender agenda, its indifference to the consequences of blowing up a train of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, and its belief that Mother’s Day is the perfect time to promote abortion.
1. Voters are beginning to see state abortion referenda as a Democratic get-out-the-vote scheme.
The wave of state ballot initiatives seeking to impose unrestricted abortion-on-demand on states from coast to coast has encountered a serious problem: Voters are beginning to see them as a cynical ploy to elect Democrats. The news comes from reading between the lines of a story in Politico titled “National Dem strategy worries state abortion-rights leaders.”
“Democrats’ efforts to ride the coattails of abortion ballot measures put passage at risk,” declares the subheadline.
The abortion lobby apparently fears defeat if voters realize their state’s referendum serves as little more than a Democratic voter-drive scheme. “We haven’t won or beat back a single one of these ballot measures without significant [I]ndependent and Republican support,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL) told Politico. “We spent a lot of last year talking to candidates directly saying, ‘Don’t put things on the ballot just to enhance voter turnout for Dems.” A leader of the Nebraska abortion-expansion referendum, Taylor Givens-Dunn said, “We want to be clear that this is about people, not politicians.”
Their concerns have spread to the professional political class. An anonymous consultant working with multiple state ballot initiatives told Politico that Democratic candidates “don’t need to talk about the specific ballot initiatives all day long,” because if they do, it will “reduce the chances that they win.”
Thus far, Democrats have not only ignored this anonymous individual’s advice; they have openly touted the referenda as their party’s political salvation in November. “[A]bortion has become a key issue that could help drive turnout for Democrats to win up and down the ballot,” said a memo dated May 2 from the Democratic Party’s official campaign arm aimed at winning statewide races, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC). “These measures will cement abortion protections into state constitutions and could boost turnout for competitive races at every level of the ballot.” The DLCC’s president, Heather Williams, apparently provided the memo to Axios along with her own quotation.
Democrats have considered multiplying these initiatives even in self-described “abortion sanctuaries,” such as New York. Although the state has effectively no protections for unborn children, and Governor Kathy Hochul (D) gives millions to abortion facilities, “Democrat lawmakers pushed the effort forward amid hopes that it will bolster turnout,” reported The Hill.
The bad news is that support for abortion-on-demand does, indeed, cut across party lines. That includes a dishearteningly large minority of Bible-believing Christians, according to a study of Ohio’s Issue 1 released by the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV). Based on their numbers, “1 in 3 self-identified weekly church-going Catholics and Evangelicals supported the law, which will rob an estimated 30,000 unborn children of their lives every year,” CCV found. In all, “30 percent of Ohioans who believe life begins at conception voted to pass the radical abortion amendment.”
Even with such odds, the abortion industry apparently frets voters will reject ballot initiatives that are seen as a craven Democratic GOTV effort.
It would be a shame if the word got out.
2. Biden administration admits it will withhold federal funding from hospitals that don’t carry out transgender procedures.
In a move demonstrating its extreme commitment to the transgender agenda, a Biden administration official admitted Democrats would withhold federal funding from health care centers that refuse to administer puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone injections, or transgender surgeries — even if their objection rests on religious grounds.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra made the admission during a Wednesday hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee.
“Can you commit here today that your department will not withhold federal funding from hospitals or doctors who refuse to provide the ‘gender-affirming care’ that you are mandating if it violates their religious beliefs?” asked Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.). “What are you going to do if they refuse to provide this care?”
“Doctors don’t get federal funding, ma’am,” said Becerra, attempting to dodge the question.
“But the hospitals do,” Miller replied.
“Don’t confuse the two,” chided Becerra.
Miller then followed up by asking about hospitals and other health care facilities that presented a faith-based objection to carrying out procedures that deny the reality of Genesis 1-3.
“If a health care facility is violating the law and not providing the service they’re required to, they’re not entitled to the resources,” Becerra (finally) answered.
“We knew that you would withdraw federal funding,” replied Miller.
Posting video of the exchange on social media, Miller stated: “HHS Secretary Becerra says the quiet part out loud. Joe Biden’s government will withhold funds from religious hospitals that refuse to provide sex-change operations for young children.”
Such an action is hardly surprising. In May 2022, Biden’s USDA threatened to deny needy children school lunches. Six years earlier, the Obama-Biden Justice Department threatened to cut off all school funding to any school or university that did not give males access to female showers, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and dorm room housing.
But the video makes it crystal clear that the Biden administration favors the LGBTQ lobby over the survival of your local hospital — and admitted it under oath.
3. Controversial Biden judicial pick doomed?
In an administration stacked with radicals, one appointee stood out: Adeel Mangi, whom Biden nominated to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands. If confirmed, the administration trumpeted, Mangi would be the first Muslim to sit on an appellate court. But it left out critical details about Magni’s autobiography.
During the time Mangi served on the board of Rutgers University Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), it hosted Sami al-Arian, a former professor who admitted he provided material support to the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (Al-Arian was subsequently deported to Turkey.)
Mangi also served as a board member of the Alliance of Families for Justice (AFJ), which was co-founded by Kathy Boudin, a member of the radical 1960s domestic terrorist organization the Weather Underground. Boudin also entered a guilty plea in her case to murdering two police officers during a 1981 Brinks robbery. True to form, AFJ asked authorities to release six cop-killers, who were members of the Black Panthers or the Black Liberation Army, describing the murderers as “freedom fighters.”
These associations proved so toxic that numerous Democratic senators — including Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen (both of Nevada), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.) — publicly opposed his appointment. Since then, his nomination has hung in limbo. But insiders familiar with the process say Senate Democrats have privately agreed his nomination is toast.
“This nominee has lost all hope from the Biden White House of getting a floor vote, given we are months away from the election,” longtime Senate staff leader Ron Bonjean told Fox News on Sunday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his colleagues “are more than likely going to let him twist in the wind hoping he withdraws on his own.”
On the other hand, Democrats could theoretically force a vote on Mangi during the lame duck session of Congress, where a sufficient number of absences could place the radical on the court. The fact that Biden nominated such an extremist — tied to multiple forms of domestic and international terrorism — should serve as an indictment of its own.
4. Biden and allies promote abortion on Mother’s Day.
As it has in past years, the Biden campaign and multiple outlets on the cultural Left decided the perfect time to promote abortion is Mother’s Day.
The Biden-Harris presidential campaign marked Sunday’s holiday by releasing a video titled “Trump Attacks Women.”
“Happy Mother’s Day … but not from Donald Trump,” the video begins. It then features the 45th president boasting about overturning Roe v. Wade. All three Trump appointees to the Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — joined the 6-3 Dobbs ruling that declared the U.S. Constitution does not, and never did, contain an unalienable “right” to abortion.
“What a sad, miserable, cowardly existence Crooked Joe Biden and his campaign must have to make such a disgusting ad on such a joyous day,” replied Trump’s campaign team.
Yet the Left has once again chosen to tie the annual celebration of motherly love and affection with the taking of innocent, unborn life. “Forget the flowers. This Mother’s Day, pledge to support the right to abortion,” proclaimed an op-ed written by Nicole Hensel for the Colorado Newsline. “Give a gift to your mother and pledge to support abortion care for everyone,” she concluded. (Colorado Newsline is a faux, astroturf political website affiliated with the States Newsroom, “an operation created in secret by the Arabella Advisors network with funding from partisan interests under the guise of nonpartisan reporting,” according to Nick Givas of Restoration News.)
Ms. Magazine, whose political bias is less opaque, demeaned Mother’s Day as “all a societal forgery — an empty exercise the majority of us have all inexplicably agreed to engage in,” especially “in the post-Roe world [politicians] created with their anti-abortion policies.” “[F]or millions of people with the capacity to get pregnant in this country it is no longer a choice — it’s a government mandate,” wrote Danielle Campoamor. She did not explain what government law requires women to have sex. “I abhor the politicians championing a potential nationwide abortion ban,” wrote Campoamor. “I despise the Republicans.”
Tying Mother’s Day to abortion, which costs women the opportunity to mother a living child and often inflicts lifelong psychological harm on women, exposes the Left’s cruelty as bordering on the inhuman. Perhaps that explains why so few legacy media outlets reported on it.
5. Toxic fumes still waft in the air over East Palestine, Ohio.
An independent test has found that residents in East Palestine, Ohio, continue to breath harmful chemicals more than 15 months after officials vented and exploded toxic gases after a train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
A test of air in the tiny village, conducted in February by Edelweiss Technology Solutions, uncovered the presence of vinyl chloride, acrolein, benzene, ethanol, ethyl acetate, styrene, and toluene. After a town resident could not get the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to test the area, “Edelweiss found high levels of acrolein inside her home, the report stating the chemical was identified to have the largest potential for health impacts during an independent assessment of the town done in February of 2023,” reported NewsNation on Wednesday.
The EPA had assured residents that vinyl chloride will “degrade rapidly in air by gas phase reaction,” which means some source must be emitting vinyl chloride into East Palestine more than a year after the Norfolk Southern accident.
As it turns out, the explosion was unnecessary and uncalled for, according to the Biden administration. Officials knew that “polymerization was not occurring, and there was no justification to do a vent and burn,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy testified to Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in March. “There was another option: let it cool down.” But the people with the information did not share it with forces on the ground.
Despite the continuing fallout, President Biden has yet to issue a declaration of a public health emergency for the rural area, where President Donald Trump won 70.7% of the vote over Joe Biden in 2020.
The president seems more interested in trucking aid to the Palestinian Authority than in caring for U.S. citizens in East Palestine, Ohio.
6. The Biden administration stands up for AIDS-infected prostitution.
The Biden administration achieved minor success (the only kind it appears to attain) in its bizarre campaign to stop states from punishing HIV-positive prostitutes whose activity could expose others to the deadly virus. As this author reported in TWS:
“The Biden administration’s Justice Department sued the state of Tennessee over a law it adopted to stop the spread of AIDS, on the grounds that it discriminates against the virus. The state’s aggravated prostitution law (§ 39-13-516) charges anyone who knowingly sells sex while HIV-positive with a Class C felony, rather than a misdemeanor for prostitution. The guilty must also register as sex offenders for life, because they may have exposed the other party to AIDS.”
Although the lawsuit remains pending, the Biden administration announced Thursday it had convinced the district attorney of Shelby County, Tennessee to ignore the law and no longer prosecute offenders. He will also alert those who have been convicted under the statute of their ability to vacate the judgment and any remaining sentences or financial penalties.
The lawless move seems in keeping with the record of the district attorney of Shelby County, which includes Memphis. Steve Mulroy is a Democrat who received $616,000 in donations linked to far-left billionaire George Soros, according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. Amy Schumer, Barry Scheck, and executives from Jay Z’s company Roc Nation also donated to Mulroy in 2022.
Laws that prosecute HIV-positive prostitutes “perpetuate bias, stereotypes and ignorance,” said Assistant Attorney Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Clarke, who stands credibly accused of perjuring herself during her confirmation hearings by omitting details over a purported history of domestic violence, may want to attend to her own legal conundrums.
But the lawsuit furthers the designs of the World Health Organization. WHO Secretary-General Tedros Ghebreyesus instructed nations near the first of this year, “Countries must repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, sex work and HIV transmission.” The Biden administration’s legal crusade reveals the dangerous lengths to which liberals will go to carry out the will of the WHO.
Speaking of which ….
7. Opposition to WHO Pandemic Agreement spreading like wildfire in Congress.
The Biden administration remains committed to adopting the WHO Pandemic Agreement without Senate ratification, as constitutionally required for a treaty. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) introduced a measure requiring Biden to submit the accord to the U.S. Senate, so it can carry out its duty to advise and consent to it. But during a January 25 appearance on “Washington Watch,” Johnson observed that his bill is “not getting much traction here in Congress,” because the sovereignty-destroying concordat had become “a partisan issue.”
What a difference three and a half months make.
“Every Republican senator has signed on to this bill,” Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) told Perkins on Wednesday. His Wisconsin colleague, Johnson, rallied the entire Senate Republican caucus to sign a May 1 letter calling the pandemic agreement “unacceptable.”
The same momentum took place in the lower chamber of Congress, where Tiffany introduced the companion legislation. “We started out with 14 co-signers on the bill a couple months ago. We are now up to 51 members of the House of Representatives who have signed on,” said Tiffany.
Internationally, officials in the United Kingdom opposed the treaty, saying it would undermine national sovereignty and force them to divert emergency medical supplies intended for the British people to the global governance body for redistribution. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico also had stern words for the WHO Pandemic Agreement, declaring in November, “I will not support strengthening the powers of the World Health Organization at the expense of sovereign states.” He also derided the accord’s provisions as “nonsense that must have been created by insatiable pharmaceutical companies.” A 71-year-old pro-Ukrainian gunman repeatedly shot Fico on Wednesday. As of this writing, the populist prime minister remains in serious condition.
Please spare a few prayers for Fico, and his assailant. And, if you might, a few prayers that the WHO Pandemic Agreement fails.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
