During an interview with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Bartiromo complained that House Republicans are getting "stonewalled" in their investigations of President Joe Biden, and suggested that there was something nefarious about the fact that Republicans' purported "whistleblower" had been indicted as an unauthorized agent of the Chinese government.
"Gal Luft was just indicted!" Bartiromo said. "This was one of your key whistleblowers. I want to get your take on what you're going to do about it, because how many more whistleblowers are going to come forward after this guy, who tried telling the FBI and DOJ what he knew the transactions and business deals of the Biden family, now he had to go on the run and now he's getting indicted!"
In fact, Gal Luft was indicted back in November, before Republicans officially took control of Congress and launched their Biden probes.
Of course, this egg on his face will not slow Comer down one tiny bit. As he understands all too well, what makes conspiracy theories such excellent propaganda for the right is that they are, by their very nature, impervious to debunking. Conspiracy theories are closed loop systems. When conflicting facts are presented, the conspiracist immediately declares not only are the facts fake, but the fakery is further "proof" of the conspiracy.
The complexity guards against people being able to point out the contradictions or implausibilities, allowing the devotees of the conspiracy theory to keep at it, without fear of being called out.
One could see this happening in real time the second the federal authorities announced the charges against Luft on Twitter. Underneath the tweet was a sea of MAGA diehards, easily identifiable by the $8-a-month blue checkmarks, declaring with confidence that Luft is an innocent man being framed by the deep state. Some augmented this with racist jokes, but mostly it was a knee-jerk assumption that this is a railroading job. Not one of these people could pick Luft out of a lineup or could say anything about his life prior to this moment. Yet the invention of a new conspiracy theory about Luft's arrest was not just automatic, it seemed as mindless as breathing.
Is a crying shame, while I bear the blame as he laughs my name
Again, Comer asserted the credibility of Luft after it was known that Luft had been arrested and after the New York Post reported on elements of the charges that Luft had described. “We want to know why the FBI has never made public this interview” with Luft in 2019, Comer said. “Our sources in the FBI, the ones that Senator Grassley has worked closely with, say they did nothing. They never investigated any of this. They turned a complete blind eye.”
Hunter Biden agreed to a plea deal with the federal government last month for failing to report millions in dollars of income. In the video obtained by the New York Post, Luft compared his facing charges for failing to register as a foreign agent with what he alleges Hunter and James Biden did on behalf of foreign companies. Comer and Mace made the same argument in their Fox News interviews after his indictment. Incidentally, speaking to Fox News in late 2019, Luft suggested that Hunter Biden’s engagement with Chinese companies was par for the course.
The pattern here is not that government investigators are seeking to throw roadblocks in Comer’s path. Instead, it is that Comer and others on the right keep building paths into quicksand, and then have to pretend they are not sinking. You might recall the allegation raised two months ago that Joe and Hunter Biden had received a bribe from a Ukrainian executive.
That allegation stems from an interview the FBI conducted with an informant who spoke to the executive. The person believed to be that executive, however, previously denied to others that he had any contact with the Bidens. There is no other evidence of any bribe, including in the financial records obtained by House Oversight. Yet the idea that this bribe occurred is treated as a matter of fact by many on the right.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
The Iraqi Ministry of Planning said the country's population has reached 43.32 million, with an annual growth rate of 2.5 per cent.
A Ministry statement said that about 50.5 per cent of the total Iraqi population are men and about 49.5 per cent women, reports Xinhua news agency.
It showed that the working-age group between 15 and 64 constitutes the highest percentage, reaching 57 per cent of the total population, followed by the youth group under 15 years at 40 per cent.
The Article specifies three phases for implementation that includes normalization, a census, and a referendum on Kirkuk and other disputed areas. The government was to start by taking appropriate steps for the normalization phase, including rejoining detached districts and sub-districts to Kirkuk governorate, and completing this phase no later than 29 March 2007. The census phase was to be completed by 31 July 2007, and the referendum phase by 15 November 2007. The overall question is, thus, why hasn't the Iraqi federal government met its commitments? Since 2003, successive Iraqi governments have failed to implement this constitutional article.
More than 180 contributors to the New York Times wrote a letter to Times leadership earlier this year (2/15/23), raising “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.” LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD (2/15/23) made similar arguments in a separate letter.
Both letters highlighted a few particular articles and writers, but described an overall pattern of, in the GLAAD letter’s words, “repeatedly platform[ing] cisgender (non-transgender) people spreading inaccurate and harmful misinformation.”
Many critics, including FAIR (e.g., 6/23/22, 12/16/22), have offered detailed critiques of many of these pieces and writers. This study seeks to document the Times‘ bias in numbers by comparing it to its closest competitor: the Washington Post.
Both elite papers have a national audience and closely cover national political stories—which puts the right’s campaign to criminalize transness very much in their line. And both have a recent history of ceding the framework of their trans coverage to the right wing, as a political football rather than an attack on trans people’s right to bodily autonomy and self-determination (FAIR.org, 5/6/21).
But looking at a full year of front-page coverage from the two papers reveals that, while both papers still need to do a much better job of including trans and nonbinary sources, the Post has given trans issues significantly more attention than the Times, and with an approach largely focused on the right-wing political campaign against trans people. The Times, meanwhile, used its front-page coverage primarily to wonder whether trans people’s rights and access to healthcare have gone too far.
FAIR examined all front-page stories at the New York Times and Washington Post that centered on transgender and nonbinary people, and the politics and events engulfing them, from April 2022 through March 2023. While not capturing the entirety of a paper’s coverage of an issue, front-page coverage reveals both how important editors believe an issue to be and which angles of that story they believe to be most newsworthy. The Post put trans-centered stories on its front page 22 times during that year-long period; at the Times, trans issues were deemed front-page news only nine times.
Likewise, the Post ran more front-page stories that were primarily about other issues but mentioned the word “transgender,” with 54 to the Times‘ 30. This suggests that not only did the Post take trans-focused stories to be more newsworthy than the Times, it also is paying closer attention to the way trans rights weave into other stories, such as the larger web of right-wing strategies of scapegoating and censorship.
(The Times did finally publish an article on its front page analyzing the increasing centrality of trans issues to the GOP, after the study period—4/16/23.)
Quantity of coverage doesn’t necessarily translate to quality of coverage; after all, a previous FAIR study (5/5/22) found right-wing Breitbart covering trans issues more than either centrist paper, but in a way that didn’t even pretend to treat its subjects with respect.
However, the distinction between the Post and the Times on front-page trans coverage is also one of quality, with the Post—while still problematic at times—clearly coming out on top.
Republicans have introduced more than 500 anti-trans bills in 49 states, 63 of which have passed to date this year. They target such rights as trans people’s right to healthcare, to use the bathroom appropriate to their gender identity, to compete in school sports, to be free from discrimination, and to protect their privacy if they are not out to their parents.
These relentless attacks, dressed up in the language of “grooming,” “parents’ rights” and “protecting girls,” demonize and directly harm trans people, particularly trans youth, who already face staggeringly high rates of attempted suicide and homelessness. According to 2022 surveys by the Trevor Project, nearly one in five trans and nonbinary youth have attempted suicide, and 35–39% of trans and nonbinary youth have experienced homelessness and housing instability.
The New York Times, though, has decided that the news about trans issues that’s worthy of the front page is not, primarily, the massive right-wing anti-trans political push and its impact on those it targets, but whether trans people are receiving too many rights, and accessing too much medical care, too quickly.
The Times‘ headlines tell much of the story:
- “Much Debate but Little Dialogue on Transgender Female Athletes” (5/29/22)
- “Number of Youths Who Identify as Transgender Doubles in US” (6/11/22)
- “Pressing Pause on Puberty” (11/22/22)
- “Parents and Schools Clash on Gender Identity” (1/23/23)
Only two of the paper’s nine front-page headlines (“Swimming Body Bars Most Transgender Women,” 6/20/22; “Roe’s Reversal Stokes Attacks on Gay Rights,” 7/23/22) even began to hint at the dire situation faced by trans people today as a result of the war waged against them by the far right. Even these fell woefully short, with the second of the two not even naming trans people. Neither headlined the perspectives of trans people in the United States or those fighting alongside them.
In contrast, the Post‘s front page abounded with such stories—fourteen of the 22 headlines referenced political or physical anti-trans attacks, and ten centered the personal experiences or perspectives of trans people and their allies. “She Just Wants to Play” (9/1/22, about a trans athlete), “Virginia Restricts Rights of Transgender Students” (9/18/22) and “For Trans CPS Worker, Texas Order Was a Test of the Soul” (9/25/22) all appeared on the paper’s prime real estate in a single month.
The third story explained how Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents of trans children for potential “child abuse.” Defending its order in court, the state offered a prominent New York Times article by Emily Bazelon (6/15/22; see FAIR.org, 6/23/22) as evidence that gender-affirming care for trans youth is controversial among medical providers. (It is not.)
That same month, the Times‘ only front-page trans-focused story, “Breast Removal Surgery on Rise for Trans Teens” (9/26/22), worried whether too many trans youth were able to access gender-affirming care. Not once has the Times put the Texas directive story on its front page—or mentioned its own role in the story anywhere in the paper.
We compliment Iraq and Total Energies on the signing of a $27-billion energy deal that will accelerate Iraq’s path to energy self-sufficiency and advance Iraq’s collective climate change objectives. Years in the making, the Gas Growth Integrated Project aims to capture flared gas and deploy renewable energy sources. The United States strongly supports Iraq’s efforts to become more energy secure and minimize harmful emissions. Minimizing the current practice of gas flaring by capturing the massive amounts of methane being burned away will significantly reduce emissions, improve public health for Iraqis, and utilize captured gas to power Iraq’s electrical grid. Likewise, this project’s water desalination facility will enhance oil recovery while reducing the burden on Iraq’s fragile fresh water sources.
In addition, a one-gigawatt solar farm will launch Iraq’s transition to renewable energy production. One of the primary goals of the U.S.-Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee (HCC), which met in February, was accelerating Iraq’s path to energy self-sufficiency and improved service delivery. The agreement today between Iraq and Total Energies, and the projects laid out during the HCC, will ultimately allow Iraq to end its dependence on unreliable energy sources and strengthen essential services for the Iraqi people. Concluding this deal also signals a fast-improving business climate that will help attract the foreign investments needed to generate economic opportunity for all Iraqis.
