Sarah Huckabee Sanders Easily Wrecks the Media's Pearl-Clutching Over CNN's White House Ban

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Easily Wrecks the Media's Pearl-Clutching Over CNN's White House Ban

Matt VespaFollow @mVespa1

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Trump faced questions yesterday about banning MSNBC, CNN, and Politico from the White House grounds. He doubled down, saying they’re fake news and intentionally peddle false stories. He’s not wrong, and for now, they’re done. Starting tomorrow, they’re no longer invited on campus. Yet calling this a muzzling of the press is a gross overreaction. Obama tried it with Fox News; Biden did it to The New York Post. No doubt they’ll be invited back, but for now, the process is the punishment until the inevitable lawsuit is filed.

Not being unfamiliar with the media’s antics, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was visiting the White House Friday, couldn’t help but notice the glaring issue with the media’s pearl-clutching:

I think it’s hard for you to argue against a free press when you’re literally standing in the Oval Office asking questions of the president of the United States. He’s been more accessible and easier to talk to than any president in history. Think about the previous administration, where you could barely get through a press conference. And yet you have the opportunity to stand here in the Oval Office and ask questions to the leader of the free world.

Have a drink, shut the hell up for a second, and enjoy the weekend, CNN and company. You know you’ll get access back, but if this administration can give you the belt every now and then, deal with it. 

https://townhall.com/news/mattvespa/2026/09/19/sarah-huckabee-sanders-exposed-why-the-medias-pearl-clutching-over-cnns-white-house-ban-was-absurd-n2683232?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-N4SwK22tmU&utm_term=&_nlid=N4SwK22tmU&_nhids=ncM71FPrSEqbls

A Quiet Summer

A Quiet Summer

by hollyfrostgoldportpress

By Holly the Assistant

A Quiet Summer

No, really. In spite of all the crazy wildfires, I haven’t heard any news of riots. Not like 2020. Even the cities deliberately hit by arson attacks stayed calm.

Maybe the rioters couldn’t afford gas to get to the preferred rioting locations?

Maybe the rioters were working for pay in previous years, and the funding spigot dried up with the crackdown on government spending through NGOs? (Now there’s a misnomer: if your funding comes from government grants you are NOT a non-governmental organization.)

Certainly there were attempts with the anti-ICE activities to gin up a few riots, but those fizzled pretty early on. Turned out that there was no natural rioting support for illegals. I think some of the anti-Flock efforts are also aimed at gathering angry crowds together, from the social media posts, and that doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction, either. People don’t love surveillance cameras, but they do love criminals getting arrested, so it’s a mixed bag, and no one seems to be really interested in having themselves a riot over it.

The hysterias du jour seem to be getting shorter and shorter, and the people flipping out over renaming one of the great lakes seem to have gone on to other topics now.

There’s some interesting stuff over on the White House website about hunting and fishing, and I urge our sportsmen to go read those. I think it might get considerably easier to get access to federal lands for hunting. The fishing one is for saltwater fishing, and I’m a creek fisher by . . . sheer laziness I suppose, it’s my backyard, after all. Everyone in the Chesapeake Bay watershed should look over that EO and see if they need to beat on their local municipalities for charging no longer justifiable fees.

I haven’t heard anything in the media about the tit for tat with Canada over trade, particularly federal procurement. That’s very interesting, especially here in the run-up to Alberta’s secession vote. Has anyone seen that anywhere? How about those of you on the other side of the boarder, is that hitting your news at all?

Gas prices seem to be what’s left for midterm drama, unless they can get some excitement going for other stuff between now and then, and I don’t know about you all, but we haven’t-quite-reached Obama level highs here yet. It’s pretty hard to get a bunch of excitement up about that for anyone who was an adult back then. (That’s before inflation adjustment, by the way, in my mind, but after per the official records. I distinctly remember prices higher than what’s reported, but I didn’t take pictures of the pumps back then.)

I think I’m more concerned about bad candidates depressing the turnout than anything else other than fraud at this point. Some of us have some real stinkers on the ballot. However, a lot of us have rather nasty propositions on the ballot, so maybe that will help get people out. Do encourage your friends to exercise their franchise, as much as is reasonably in your power to do so.

https://accordingtohoyt.com/2026/09/18/a-quiet-summer/

UC Berkeley Law hosts symposium promoting resistance to federal action after DOJ sues Washington

UC Berkeley Law hosts symposium promoting resistance to federal action after DOJ sues Washington

The Justice Department sued Washington one day before the symposium, arguing the state unlawfully gives illegal aliens college benefits unavailable to some U.S. citizens.

Berkeley Law’s event featured Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and panels on how states can 'fight back' against federal actions organizers characterized as 'authoritarian.'

The Justice Department sued Washington state over tuition and financial-aid benefits for illegal aliens one day before UC Berkeley Law hosted a symposium promoting ways states can resist federal action.

DOJ filed its Aug. 27 lawsuit against Washington alongside similar challenges to Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon. The department argues that state policies violate federal law by providing residency-based postsecondary benefits to illegal aliens that are unavailable on the same terms to U.S. citizens living in other states.

The next day, Berkeley Law’s Edley Center on Law and Democracy hosted Washington Attorney General Nick Brown as a keynote speaker at its “Fight Back: How States Can Counter Authoritarianism” symposium.

The public university described the event as a discussion of how states and local governments can use their authority to challenge what organizers called “repressive federal actions.” Panels included “State Authorities to Fight Back” and “State Strategies to Fight Back.”

The symposium also promoted Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s forthcoming book, Fight Back: How States Can Counter Authoritarianism.

[RELATED: Illinois Governor signs a bill that gives in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens]

The federal lawsuit relies on 8 U.S.C. § 1623, which bars states from providing certain postsecondary education benefits to illegal aliens based on residence unless U.S. citizens are eligible for the same benefits regardless of where they live.

DOJ argues that Washington’s policies conflict with that requirement and asked a federal court to block the state from enforcing provisions providing in-state tuition, scholarships, loans, and other financial assistance to illegal aliens.

“Congress made clear that states cannot put illegal aliens before our nation’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said when announcing the lawsuits.

In a statement to Campus Reform, Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for Brown, said the DOJ lawsuit “was not discussed beforehand or placed on the agenda given it was filed the day before the event.”

Brown nevertheless used the symposium to discuss Washington’s broader litigation against the Trump administration. Brown acknowledged that the state’s lawsuits are “costly and time-consuming,” according to The Daily Californian. 

[RELATED: Trump DOJ intensifies push to stop tuition discounts for illegal aliens, keep Harvard accountable for campus anti-Semitism]

Faulk told Campus Reform that Washington has provided in-state tuition to certain illegal aliens for 12 years. He said the policy “recognizes the potential of all Washingtonians regardless of where they were born.”

The timing placed Brown at a public-university symposium devoted to resisting federal action one day after the Justice Department challenged his state’s tuition policies in federal court.

Berkeley’s event did not merely discuss federalism generally. Its published program explicitly framed the symposium around how states could “fight back” and counter federal actions that organizers characterized as authoritarian.

Campus Reform has reported on officials in other states defending in-state tuition benefits for illegal aliens, including Connecticut lawmakers Derek Slap and Gregg Haddad.

Campus Reform reached out to UC Berkeley Law to ask whether symposium organizers invited speakers who disagreed with their characterization of federal actions as “authoritarian.” The law school did not respond before publication.

https://www.campusreform.org/article/uc-berkeley-law-hosts-symposium-promoting-resistance-federal-action-doj-sues-washington/30606

Ahead of the CA Gubernatorial Debate, Hilton Drops the Latest Becerra Whistleblower Tape

Ahead of the CA Gubernatorial Debate, Hilton Drops the Latest Becerra Whistleblower Tape

Jennifer Oliver O'ConnellFollow @asthegirlturns

12:45 PM on September 18, 2026

Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton (Credit: Damian Dovarganes/AP Feed))

We are a little less than two weeks away from the September 30 California Governor's debate between Republican candidate and former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Democrat candidate and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. This leaves plenty of time to remind the people of California and the world about Becerra's horrific record of corruption and his failure to protect children, and Hilton is on top of it.

The latest whistleblower video dropped on Thursday, exposing how Becerra's HHS tenure saw children handed over to unvetted sponsors and trafficked into illegal labor, sexual abuse, or both.

In the Summer of 2021, MVM's Tarek Kadourah detailed his role and observations as a site supervisor responsible for transporting the children from the unaccompanied minor centers, like the Pomona Fairplex, to their purported sponsors. When asked by the video host whether he thought the children had been pushed into trafficking, Kadourah said, "Yes, I believe that did happen. I 100 percent believe it happened, and possibly worse, honestly."

MVM contracted with the Department of Health and Human Services, and Kadourah was "on-site, every day from morning 'til night directly, the liaison between Health and Human Services and the White House. I was the middleman, so I oversaw everything."

What Kadourah saw was indeed disturbing.

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"The children always seemed to look like they were scared, and uncomfortable, and vulnerable, when they were supposed to be safe," Kadourah said. "To me, those kids looked like... there's no other way to say it, they were still being trafficked."

The video host asked whether he had conversations with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents responsible for getting the children transported, and what those conversations were like. Kadourah said:

"They were worried, because, I mean, they felt like they were accomplices in a human trafficking operation. He was telling me every time he was dropping off some of those kids, they would immediately cry and refuse to get in the van or the vehicle of that sponsor at the dropoff site.

"So, I asked him, 'Why? Did you ask the children why?' And they said, '[The kids] didn't know who those people were.' 

"When I said, well, the agents had paperwork from HHS saying that, 'Hey, this person was somehow related to that child: Uncle, Aunt, sister, whatever, right?'

"None of it was verified."

This gives a window into how, after four years of the Biden administration, 25 percent of CBP agents had resigned or opted to retire.

Kadourah issued this damning indictment.

"So, Health and Human Services was giving us paperwork that was not frickin' verified. And all we were doing was picking up phone calls and saying, 'Oh, okay, you're so and so's uncle?' Whatever, and stamping it and moving it forward. They were treating it just like Becerra said: 'Like an assembly line.' That's exactly how it ran."

Kadourah said that he noticed the number of children refusing to go with the unvetted sponsors was becoming quite large, presenting a problem.

"At this point, they were noticing a pattern. Where there was not just one or two children crying, refusing to get into a vehicle with strangers, but it's like 20-30 crying, saying, 'We don't know who these people are. That's not my Aunt and Uncle.' That raised a lot of red flags, and that's when they completely shut me out."

WATCH:

NEW BECERRA WHISTLEBLOWER: We were “accomplices in a human trafficking operation.”

Migrant children “cried and refused to get in the vehicle” after Becerra sent them to FAKE relatives. “HHS was giving us paperwork that was not frickin’ verified.”

Xavier Becerra turned HHS into the largest child trafficking operation in history. He CANNOT get away with this.

The website, "The Becerra Record," lays out the numbers of the children trafficked through Becerra's HHS. 

• As HHS Secretary, 479,000 Children were placed under Becerra's care. All unaccompanied minors who had crossed the Southern border and were placed under HHS custody. At least 100,000 were under the age of 13.
  
  
• Becerra LOST 319,000 of those minors. And HHS had no idea where they ended up after the department released them.
  
  
• The Trump administration has located 146,000 of the children, leaving 140,000 still missing today.

As the site further states, Xavier Becerra "ran these camps. Now he wants to run California." 

That's not a red flag; it's a warning bell.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2026/09/18/cas-gubernatorial-debate-is-coming-and-hilton-drops-the-latest-becerra-whistleblower-its-insane-n2207086?utm_source=rsafternoonbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

It Appears the Accusation of 'R#cist' Is Dying a Death It Should've Died Long Ago

It Appears the Accusation of 'R#cist' Is Dying a Death It Should've Died Long Ago

Brandon MorseFollow @TheBrandonMorse

RoschetzkyIstockPhoto/iStock/Getty Images Plus

I always thought the accusation of "racism" was overblown, and I'm pretty sure the majority of people would agree. The word's been used to convince people that the Ku Klux Klan was hiding behind every corner, and that all it took was one person slighting a black person once to start a series of violent and horrific events that would have them put back in chains. 

Joe Biden's words, not mine. 

For me, the accusation was annoying. Any conversation that pertained to race was immediately dismissed, and fingers were plugged into ears if the subject wasn't approached with either extreme caution or reverence. Skin color was a holy subject one must never discuss without the proper measure of obeisance. 

I don't know when the accusation truly started to lose steam, but I can be sure that it became pretty obvious it didn't have the effect it once did after Elon Musk bought Twitter and freed it from gatekeepers. Suddenly, the people screaming racist things at everyone weren't so loud. The media's "everyone who isn't in agreement with us is racist" schtick started to lose steam, now that they were being mocked at every turn for their hyperbolic race-baiting. 

From there, it's all been downhill for the accusation. People had clearly had enough of the word being used to destroy and manipulate. Black Lives Matter had definitely beaten the term to death. Nowadays, it seems that accusation is a fast way to lose credibility, not empower you, and make your opponents into automatic bad guys like it once did. 

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But now I'm seeing the term reach a real breaking point. 

As I commented on Monday, a massive online war broke out about race, and this time, it wasn't just between the left and the right; it was between Republicans and conservatives. As I reported, a video from the University of Texas showed the end of its game against Ohio. When the camera spun around, it showed a crowd almost entirely composed of Indian males. 

Now, clearly, this was just one section, and the majority of the University of Texas is not composed of Indian migrants, but the number of them was vast and deep enough that it caused many who were already concerned about the H-1B visa problem to lose it. The comments started pouring in, especially from Texans, and these Texans were greeted with accusations of racism, not just from the left, but from fellow conservatives and even Republican elected officials. 

As a Texan who lives in one of the areas being affected by the massive influx of Indians and Middle Easterners, I couldn't help but find myself siding with the people speaking out against this immigration issue, only to find the accusations of racism being lobbed against them for it, making me angry personally. I wrote this post to hopefully explain that this concern wasn't racism; it was more about an unwanted, unlooked-for cultural shift. 

And, you guessed it. I was called racist. There was no racism involved, but I was still greeted with the accusation. 

To be honest, I expected it, but it did prove something: that the word has no meaning anymore. When the accusation hit me, I honestly didn't care. I didn't feel the need to defend myself or point out why my position has nothing to do with racism. I was perfectly content with having the accusation lobbed at me because, in my mind, the person doing the accusing seemed automatically stupid to me. 

Stupid because they didn't give any critical thought to the concepts I laid out. They just saw I was saying something about why this kind of immigration is bad, and immediately associated it with a hatred for a skin color. 

And if the accusation is coming from inside the Republican House, then how much less seriously are we going to take it? If even our elected officials who said they're listening to us have proven they aren't listening to us, and even accusing us of something the left usually does when it's trying to pull a fast one, then how is that going to make us care about the accusation at all?

I think racism exists. Spend 24 hours on X, and you'll see it does, and in various forms. But I think we've reached a point where our greater society just doesn't care, because the accusation has been used on innocent people so much that it means absolutely nothing.

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2026/09/18/it-appears-the-accusation-of-racist-is-dying-a-death-it-shouldve-died-long-ago-n2206962?utm_source=rsafternoonbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl