The Media’s Credibility Crisis After NPR Mess, Caitlin Clark Controversy & SCOTUS Ruling Explained

Summary

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Podcast Summary: After Party with Emily Jashinsky

Episode Title: The Media’s Credibility Crisis After NPR Mess, Caitlin Clark Controversy & SCOTUS Ruling Explained
Date: July 2, 2026
Host: Emily Jashinsky
Guest: Mark Hemingway (Senior Writer, RealClear Investigations)

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Episode Overview

Emily Jashinsky welcomes Mark Hemingway to analyze a series of cultural and media events shaping the American conversation, with a focus on media credibility, ideological clashes, culture war flashpoints in sports and pride celebrations, and implications of recent Supreme Court and political developments. The tone is conversational yet critical, blending reporting with personal commentary. The episode is a deep dive into how institutions—especially media—are facing a credibility crisis, and how progressive cultural tenets are meeting public and political backlash.

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Major Segments and Discussion Points

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1. NPR & Nina Totenberg's Supreme Court Blunder

Timestamps: 07:47 – 29:01

Key Points:

• NPR and legendary correspondent Nina Totenberg falsely reported that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring, then swiftly retracted with a confusing and unconvincing explanation.
• Broad media confusion over how such a critical error occurred, with Totenberg’s claims of having “misheard” an offhand statement failing to explain the discrepancy.
• Media congratulates itself for “handling the mistake,” drawing scathing critiques from Emily and Mark about a lack of transparency and accountability in contemporary journalism.
• Frequent reference to Totenberg’s past mistakes, bias, and controversial closeness to Supreme Court justices (notably Ruth Bader Ginsburg), plus her previous history with plagiarism.
• Discussion about the Supreme Court as an institution resistant to leaks, making such scoops rare and valuable—and all the more damaging when false.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark Hemingway (11:20): "One of the interesting things about this story, it's very emblematic of the media. There's this colossal screw up, right? And then immediately they move on to patting themselves publicly on the back about how well they handled their own screw up."
• Emily (14:55): "She is losing her marbles. But Chuck Ross over at the Free Beacon points out that she was fired by the National Observer Back in 1972 for plagiarism... Maybe it's a pattern with Totenberg."

Memorable Moments:

• Emily and Mark trade incredulity over the lack of editorial oversight ("The inmates are running the asylum over at NPR..." - Mark, 23:47).
• Emily notes the media’s tendency to "congratulate" itself rather than engage in serious self-reflection or reform, calling it "insanely backwards" (20:15).

Media Criticism Highlights:

• General consensus that media’s defensiveness, lack of curiosity, and insider privilege are fostering public distrust.
• Commentary on how anonymous sourcing and lack of confirmation have eroded foundational journalistic standards, citing the infamous "WikiLeaks/Trump Jr." CNN reporting error (25:36–29:01).

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2. SCOTUS, Transgender Athletics, and Media Framing

Timestamps: 31:31 – 41:46

Key Points:

• Discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding state bans on biological males in female athletics (West Virginia and Idaho).
• Analysis of broadcast media’s “trigger warnings” and tortured language use ("biological male/female" in air quotes), revealing media discomfort with straightforward reporting.
• J.K. Rowling’s scathing rebuke of BBC’s headline—cited as evidence of mainstream media’s perceived ideological capture.
• Deep dive into disconnect between Democratic Party elites, their progressive base, and the overwhelming public opposition to men in women’s sports (with polling referenced).
• Broader exploration of how highly energized activist minorities can “run roughshod” over the majority in policy and media language (referring to Manfred Olson's "Logic of Collective Action").
• Reflections on the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) increasing political clout, pushing these flashpoint issues further into the public sphere—and possibly into voter backlash.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark Hemingway (33:34): "This is literally like an 80-20 issue... and the fact that institutions like the media play along with this, again, it goes back to this question... Who do the media serve?”
• Emily (36:16): "67% was the latest poll I saw [of Democrats opposing men in women's sports]."

Memorable Moments:

• Emily highlights J.K. Rowling’s tweet rebuking BBC: “You are a national broadcaster that consistently obfuscates facts around sex because you’ve taken an ideological position the public overwhelmingly rejects. This isn’t news. It’s propaganda.” (paraphrased, 32:28).

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3. Pride Parade Excesses and Backlash

Timestamps: 41:46 – 52:55

Key Points:

• Examination of explicit nudity at Seattle’s Pride parade and similar events, particularly where children are present.
• Cites growing public unease, declining polling support for LGBTQ-related issues, even among Democrats.
• Discusses the risk to achievements like same-sex marriage and mainstream gay acceptance due to “overreach” at pride events.
• Analysis of how progressive politics sometimes blind activists to self-destructive optics.
• Mark reflects on how cultural history has been spun ("propaganda") to serve narratives and how uncomfortable truths about the AIDS crisis and gay culture were suppressed in the name of solidarity.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark Hemingway (45:41): "One of [The Onion’s] more notorious headlines was 'Great Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years.' And it was all a joke about how you go to a gay pride parade and you see a bunch of men riding a paper mache phallus... that was the joke 25 years ago. And yet look at how gay rights have moved on in the 25 years since then."
• Emily (50:36): "The Matthew Shepard case... is another example of history that we've imbibed en masse, like this is mainstream historical fact that is also just clearly propaganda the more that you poke holes into it."

Memorable Moments:

• Mark’s candid riff on public health and social norms: “If your culture is to have sex with someone you don't know... there is something horribly wrong with your culture" (45:41–47:00).

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4. Caitlin Clark, WNBA, and the Racial/Cultural Moment

Timestamps: 52:55 – 63:36

Key Points:

• Media coverage of Caitlin Clark being aggressively fouled by Alyssa Thomas focuses largely on alleged backlash and hate against Thomas, diverting attention from Clark’s repeated targeting.
• WNBA coach and Good Morning America frame the incident as an excuse to decry hate, racism, and homophobia—arguably sidestepping the core sports story.
• Sophie Cunningham’s viral defense of Clark highlighted as genuine, in contrast to what’s seen as performative media coverage.
• Discussion about how Clark’s popularity and identity as a white athlete in a predominantly Black league is “the third rail” no legacy outlet wants to address, despite evident racial undertones in some of the backlash and fan debate.
• Comparison between stylistic trends in NBA/WNBA and the appeal of skill-centric women’s basketball.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark Hemingway (56:49): "Caitlin Clark is the WNBA's golden goose... and in fairness to Caitlin Clark, I think it's pretty obvious she is the greatest female basketball player of all time."
• Mark Hemingway (60:04): "Racism sometimes runs in the other direction, even if historically it has been much worse in the other direction. But it is something I do think we have to acknowledge."

Memorable Moments:

• Mark: "I'm not sure encouraging women to be gladiators is good for anybody... I'd like to see them, you know, do the sport more elegantly than men because I think they can do that." (62:04)

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5. Immigration, Media Coverage, and Sanctuary Policy Victims

Timestamps: 63:36 – 72:33

Key Points:

• Emily spotlights Jessica Gorman, mother of murder victim Sheridan Gorman, whose testimony before Congress (“I’m going to buy Congress the bench, and they can come and sit and hold my hand and look me in the eye and explain to me why illegal immigrants are more important than my daughter”) receives negligible media attention.
• Reflection on media’s selective elevation of victims and how the narrative flip-flops when the facts challenge progressive views (e.g., sanctuary cities, criminal immigrant acts).
• Frustration at both partisan motivations—importing voters vs. "bleeding heart" ideologues—but consensus that open borders and lack of vetting have led to preventable tragedies.
• Discussion extends to current prominence of #AbolishICE among DSA candidates and what that means for the Democratic Party statewide.

Notable Quotes:

• Jessica Gorman (clip at 66:33): “I’m going to buy Congress the bench, and they can come and sit and hold my hand and look me in the eye and explain to me why illegal immigrants are more important than my daughter.”
• Mark Hemingway (67:50): "There are dozens and dozens of people in this woman’s situation... even if [immigrants are] less likely to be a criminal than the average American, that’s no excuse for letting any sort of criminal into the United States unvetted."

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6. Music and the Political "Countryfication"

Timestamps: 72:33 – 78:45

Key Points:

• Viral leftist country music singer Brian Andrews discussed as a symbolic favorite of progressive media who otherwise hold rural, working-class culture in contempt.
• Mark critiques overtly partisan music as generally inauthentic and unsustainable artistically ("a rich person's idea of a poor person").
• A brief history of Nashville’s changing culture as the locus of American music industries and politics.
• Observations that country and rock have become more ascendant as pop and hip-hop recede, with authenticity a key driver.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark Hemingway (75:11): "Art should not be explicitly partisan or political in this way... ever since Democrats realized they have completely alienated rural America, they’ve been obsessed with this white whale of, like, well, what do we got to do to appeal to these people?"
• Emily (78:29): "I'm not a total hater on the hicklibs. I think some of them make good music like Sturgill and Tyler Childers..."

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7. Closing Rant: Housing, Trump-era Self-Dealing, and the DSA’s Rise

Timestamps: 81:11 – End

Key Points:

• Emily analyzes a rare bipartisan housing bill poised to pass unless Trump vetoes, noting it has real potential to help young, first-time homebuyers.
• Critique of Trump’s indifference (“a yawn”) toward the bill, contrasting with his massive personal enrichment from crypto ventures as revealed in recent financial disclosures.
• Laments the hypocrisy of both parties—Republicans deferring to big business, Democrats running on more radical DSA platforms.
• Warns that the behavior of capitalists (including Trump family self-dealing) drives voters, especially the disaffected young, toward democratic socialism—echoing Adam Smith, Teddy Roosevelt, and Friedman.
• Concludes that both the media and the political class are failing the average American, and unless the right offers a moral, credible response, the DSA’s popularity will grow.

Notable Quotes:

• Emily (82:50): "The psychology of the American dream really does involve homeownership... this is probably the biggest possible deal issue, housing. And to give Republicans an easy win... and Donald Trump calls the housing bill, 'a yawn.'"
• Emily (83:50): "Often it's the capitalists who undermine capitalism... that's not a quote from Lenin, but that sentiment was popular around that time period as well."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (Chronological, Select List)

• Mark (11:20): "It's very emblematic of the media. There's this colossal screw up and then immediately they move on to patting themselves publicly on the back about how well they handled their own screw up."
• Emily (14:55): Reflects on Totenberg’s plagiarism scandal and pattern of questionable reporting.
• Mark (33:34): "This is literally like an 80-20 issue in the country... and the fact that institutions like the media play along with this..."
• J.K. Rowling (quoted at 32:28): "You are a national broadcaster that consistently obfuscates facts around sex because you've taken an ideological position the public overwhelmingly rejects."
• Jessica Gorman (66:33): “I’m going to buy Congress the bench, and they can come and sit and hold my hand and look me in the eye and explain to me why illegal immigrants are more important than my daughter.”
• Emily (82:50): "The psychology of the American dream really does involve homeownership... and Donald Trump calls the housing bill, 'a yawn.'"
• Emily (83:50): "Often it's the capitalists who undermine capitalism... that is the exact type of thing that pushes people closer and closer towards democratic socialism."

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Episode Themes & Takeaways

1. Institutional Rot & Crisis of Credibility:
From NPR to major newsrooms to the halls of Congress, a recurring theme is the perception that once-trusted institutions are serving ideology or their own insiders, not the public.

2. Media Self-Congratulation vs. Transparency:
Repeated insularity and lack of accountability in large media organizations have corroded public trust—errors are spun as occasions for self-praise rather than reformation.

3. Cultural Clash & Majoritarian Backlash:
On transgender sports, pride parade excesses, and Sanctuary City repercussions, the majority’s norms are depicted as out of step with the priorities of elite activists, the Democratic base, or the media.

4. Political Realignment & The Left’s Millenarianism:
DSA’s success and the embrace of radical ideas by young and urban Democrats is both a warning sign and, in Emily’s view, a response to elite hypocrisy and self-dealing—especially by Republicans who double-down on business interests.

5. Sports, Race, and Media Narratives:
The Caitlin Clark saga encapsulates how media and institutional framing can obscure rather than clarify expressions of bias or unfairness, often at the expense of new audiences and cultural goodwill.

6. Economic Anxiety & Systemic Distrust:
Whether about housing, border policy, or corporate malfeasance, the late-night tone is one of both warning (for conservatives) and challenge (“offer moral clarity, or lose the debate entirely”).

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This episode exemplifies After Party’s mission: dissecting the biggest cultural and political stories with irreverence, skepticism toward institutional narratives, and an eye for the undercurrents missed by mainstream discourse.

Transcript

[Emily]

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[Mark Hemingway]

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[Emily]

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[Mark Hemingway]

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[Emily]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network. Welcome to After Party everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Our guest is the one and only Mark Hemingway, senior writer at Real Clear Investigations. He'll be joining us in just one moment. So excited to have Mark back on the show and with so much in the news. There's so much just I'm like tongue tied. Obviously right now USA is playing soccer against what? Bosnia? Herzegonia. Herzegonia. I never get it right. Although I do think that Embassy has a really clutch parking spot. Or at least it used to when I went to George Washington University. If you pro tip come to DC and you get those Embassy parking lot spots like right at 6pm you can stay there all weekend. These are the types of facts I can offer you all. But anyway, that's what's happening as we talk here. We're up by one goal, so we'll see what happens. But no spoilers of course. If you're watching us and going to watch the game afterwards. I respect your decision. In fact, I think it is your patriotic duty to tune into after party. Of course. No, I'm kidding. It's really your patriotic duty to tune into the World cup right now as we are trouncing almost everybody that comes in our path. Lots to get to today, though, because as I was saying or trying to say before, I got totally tongue tied there. There's a lot of cultural news that I think is a good indication of what people may have thought past. I don't know, around 2024 is very much still with us. It's muted to some extent, but it's still with us. A lot of media stories tonight, too. I mean, we're looking at maybe the biggest single story media f up in years coming from NPR and Nina Totenberg. Their explanation makes absolutely no sense. It has very consequential implications for the Supreme Court, for the future of the country because it seems to imply there's a Supreme Court vacancy in the near future. We will see. But here you have NPR and one of the most fam reporters and all of American media claiming a story that makes absolutely no sense. So we're going to start by breaking that story down. We're going to look in, look into the way the media covered the Supreme Court case on athletes, males playing in female sports in the state laws that were upheld by the Supreme Court. There's some more Pride footage this time from Seattle where you see kids in the vicinity of naked adults celebrating pride. Caitlyn Clark's fans are now somehow getting blamed for hate. I'm in a way being a bit cheeky with that description, but the fingers is being pointed after that awful incident on the court. What was that last week now where she basically got punched in the throat? You should see the media coverage of this as well. We're going to get into it. I'm gonna ask Mark about a viral liberal country singer sensation and get into some other stories as well. So as always, thank you for being here. Please do subscribe. If if you hadn't yet, haven't yet, it's really the most helpful thing that you can do for the show. Subscribe on YouTube totally free. Turn the notifications on like comment. That helps us a ton in the algorithm. We really, really appreciate your support. Now that we're in year two of afterparty, it is so, so appreciated. We're very grateful for it. And you can email [e-mail] we are going to be taping our weekly happy hour edition of the show that's just for podcast listeners. It comes out on Friday, so make sure you are subscribed on the podcast feed. I'm biased. I kind of think those are some of my fav favorite episodes because it's so buttoned down and relaxed. I'm really just going through your questions that you send in to [e-mail] that's my real email address, as many of you know. So if you want to get those questions in for this week, the episode drops on Friday, but I tape them on Thursday evenings so you can shoot me a message before then. Otherwise I'll just include it in next week's batch. So without further ado, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to be back with the great Mark Hemingway. This episode is sponsored by USAFax, a nonpartisan organization making Government data easier to access and understand. Now that's a mission that I can get behind. I'm partnering with them on a campaign called the Data We Depend On. The idea is simple. If the government is going to spend all of our taxpayer money and make massive decisions, maybe it should have to show its work. How about that? And this starts with reliable public data. Government data helps track the economy, spending and education. You've probably heard me citing sources like the bls, the irs, or the dhs. But when that data data is slow, incomplete, or hard to access, which it often is, lawmakers have less to work with and journalists have less to check. And you and the public have a harder time finding the truth. So if you care about accountability, you can't measure if programs are working or call out failure if the basic facts are buried. USA Facts is asking Americans to sign an open letter to lawmakers in Congress. The ask is straightforward. Use data to legislate and fix the data when it falls short. This is not a partisan issue. Whether you want more government, less government, or just a government that has to show its math, you need reliable facts. Read and sign the [e-mail] supportdata hot

[Mark Hemingway]

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[Emily]

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[Mark Hemingway]

Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give MintMobile.com switch upfront payment of $45

[Emily]

for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms. All right, as promised, we're back with the one and one and only Mark Hemingway. He's a senior writer at RealClear Investigations. Mark, thanks for being back.

[Mark Hemingway]

Hey, glad to be back.

[Emily]

Yeah. So glad to have you here for the Nina Totenberg fallout. Actually, really the lack thereof fallout when it comes to Nina Totenber, as I mentioned in the show's introduction, really one of the most famous and well regarded journalists in Washington media, really, in American media. That of course, to most people sounds like an insult. But here in Washington, it's a great honor to be highly regarded by your peers. And Nina Totenberg is up there. She's, I think, in her early 80s and published now infamously, a scoop that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. Her explanation for this. I'm going to put this up on the screen. Matthew Keys has been paying attention to this and Keys points out some interesting discrepancies. Keys isn't the only one doing this. Everyone's kind of puzzled by what Nina Totenberg says happened. But Keys points out that Kelly McBride of NPR, she's the senior, she's their public editor, wrote that Totenberg, quote, misheard John Roberts statement about Supreme Court related retirements. This is what N herself said on air on NPR on All Things Considered after NPR quickly retracted the story that Alito had announced his retirement. And then the correction story was amended with a correction. Just incredible stuff. To clarify, as the correction says, this is up on the screen right now. This story was updated to include Totenberg's description of her error as broadcast on All Things Considered. She did not personally hear the announcement from the chief chief justice. Now, this is actually important because what we now know is that Nina Totenberg claims she heard someone say John Roberts was making retirement announcements, but what she heard was retirement announcement. So it wasn't plural. It was singular. Calls up her editors, says publish the story. And she's being cagey about whether or not it was pre written. It was very obviously pre written. The Wayback Machine shows that it said he had announced a retirement on Friday, meaning she pre wrote a story, assuming that he was making this announcement on Friday and obviously then thinks, oh, John Roberts is making announcements. We better figure this out. We better now send it back to. We better now put the story up. Because it's, you know, Megyn Kelly was saying this on her show today. Basically the holy grail of Supreme Court reporting, which is a scoop light field of journalism, given that there's very few leaks from the Supreme Court. This is really the scoop of a lifetime if you're Nina Totenberg even at the age of 82. So Mark, this excuse makes literally no sense whatsoever. And it sounds like potentially someone leaked to Nina Totenberg that Samuel Alito will retire. It sounds like we might be staring down the barrel of a Supreme Court vacancy just as there's all of this backlash to Amy Coney Barrett and really then more broadly to the conservative of legal movement that recommended Amy Coney Barrett to the Trump administration. Your lovely wife was on the show not long ago talking about her book on Alito. He's the focus of a lot of conservative. Well, what's the right way to put it? Conservative wagon circling maybe. I mean, he's a conservative champion with Justice Thomas, the conservative stalwart on the court, not a Roberts seen very much as somebody who was in opposition to John Roberts. So you, this is a subject you know intimately. Well, what on earth is going on at npr?

[Mark Hemingway]

I don't think anybody knows. I mean, one of the interesting things about this story, it's very emblematic of the media. There's this colossal screw up, right? And then immediately they move on to patting themselves publicly on the back about how well they handled their own screw up. It's just absolutely astonishing. I mean, look, I don't know, like, I'm still trying to parse this and make sense of it. I think it would be fair to say that if nothing else comes out of this story is that Nina Totenberg, who I believe is 82 years old, needs to hang up her spurs. I mean, like, she's been covering, you know, the Supreme Court my entire life. And look at me. Can you see how much gray is in my beard? All right, this is not, I mean, this, this has been going on for far too long. And on top of that, like you said, you know, she has this reputation of, you know, being the grand dom of Supreme Court reporters or whatever. But like, I mean, along with the

[Emily]

other champion Here, Jane Mayer, don't forget. Jane, don't. Right.

[Mark Hemingway]

Well, and there's, there's another woman of the New York Times as well that was also really well known for covering the Supreme Court. But having said that, Totenberg has quite a checkered reputation. I mean, she was famously like, you know, very, very close to Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a way that colored her reporting and, you know, frankly, should have been disclosed at every turn, if not, if it shouldn't have disqualified her to begin with. I don't know. My favorite theory about all this, although my wife was an expert in all things Alito is, tried to dissuade me away from this, is that Alito is trying to, you know, out a leaker. You know, there have been some problems with leaks at the Supreme Court. But, you know, it is, it is possible that Alito would want to retire. I mean, he's been on the court for 20 years and he's not a young man. And the other thing is, is that increasingly being a conservative Supreme Court justice is incredibly difficult, and people don't talk about this and.

[Emily]

Dangerous.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yeah, it's incredibly dangerous. You know, you can't really have dinner in public like, you know, a normal person. And at the same time, you have Ketanji Brown Jackson, you know, going to the, what was it, the Emmys and, you know, appearing on Broadway and all this other stuff. I mean, like, if that doesn't tell you about the situation with violence in America, you know, it should be revealing. So it's possible Alito will retire. It's also possible that. I mean, I think people just don't understand who Alito and Thomas in particular are. I mean, the two, you know, longest serving just. Well, actually, I think I forget Roberts might be slightly longer on the court than Alito, but, you know, they, you know, but, you know, Alito's been there for 20 years and they've been serving for a very long time. And I, and I think these are men of real integrity. Thomas has been quite clear that he, he's going to be going out of the court supreme feet first. We'll see whether or no he sticks to that or whatever. But he's, as much as that might be something that gives Republicans heartburn. You know, he's certainly earned the right in terms of his jurisprudence. But again, I still, I don't even know what to make of this. I mean, it's been so contradictory. It's been so confusing. You know, running corrections to their, their retraction. I mean, like, it's, it is a complete and utter disaster. And at the same time, you know, I don't think you can really draw any clear inferences from this. Yes, it could mean that there's a source telling her that there's going to be a retirement, or it could mean nothing. It could mean that nina Totenberg is 82 years old and out of her freaking mind.

[Emily]

Well, that's a good point. And actually, this is speaking of your wife, I was also going to put this up on the screen. She posted that in response to Lulu Garcia Navarro, who posted the New York I'm sorry, the the NPR story and the correction. Lulu from New York Times writes, one of the many reasons I love NPR is this duo fighting to take the blame instead of pointing the finger. A lesson to us all when we f up Molly replies, yes, they invented completely fake news and then published fake news. And their explanation for why makes literally no sense. And we love them because they're not pointing fingers. Do you realize how bad the entire press corps is that it is def this indefensible thing? And that the Lulu Garcia Navarro post is one of many, many from people in the quote, unquote, mainstream media who were again congratulating, patting on the back, Nina Totenberg and NPR for owning the mistake as though they had any other option. But to be clear, it's a smokescreen. They're not owning anything. She's not even telling you exactly what happened because she's not actually explaining how that story written in the first place and why it was that without double checking, the story just went up. It could be, Mark. I mean, I think your explanation might be the one that makes the most sense. Sadly, she's 82 years old. They trust her way too much. They trust that she hasn't lost her marbles way too much. And she is losing her marbles. But Chuck Ross over at the Free Beacon points out that she was fired by the National Observer Back in 1972 for plagiarism. Later said, quote, I was in a hurry. I used terrible judgment. And here's a quote that just crawls under your skin. A young reporter is entitled to one mistake and to have the holy bejesus scared out of her, to never do it again. Never do it again. That's back in 1972. So maybe, I guess it's a pattern with Totenberg, who also falsely reported that mask story that Neil Gorsuch wouldn't wear a mask and Sonia Sotomayor wasn't attending meetings or oral arguments because of it. And both Gorsuch and Sotomayor came out and rebuked the story. So it's a pattern. It seems like maybe she's losing it. Maybe it's a pattern. Maybe it's both.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes. In fact, thank you for mentioning. I was gonna mention that the Mass story is featured prominently in my wife's book and there's a lot of discussion about that. Look, I don't wanna, like, go into it because, you know, I'm not one, you know, I don't wanna respond to this sort of, you know, bad conduct by the media by reporting rumors and innuendo. But it is true that I have heard lots of things about Nina Totenberg over the years, things I wouldn't say publicly because I can't ve them. And you would say this about a lot of different things that happen in the media right now. And like, to some extent, yes, reporters are human. Maybe reporters when they're young do make one mistake with plagiarism or whatever. But her career has been marked by one of extreme sort of bias and partisanship on a beat that is incredibly sensitive. And she's gotten away with it because she was smart enough to get into a beat and develop good sources in an area that is very difficult to cover. So people just sort of talk, tolerate this. And I, I don't think that that has at all been the right approach. And further, you make a really excellent point, but I mean, and this applies to so many stories in recent years about how they're not being transparent at all about how they came about making the mistake. I mean, you look at so many things that have happened in the last 10 years, the media has just gotten like, you know, wrong back to front, reversing cause and effect, you know, mistakes that made people die and mistakes that completely ruined people's reputations. And the, the response to this is the media right now is being attacked. You know, we, we're the, the thin line between civilization and chaos, you know, and if, if the media, you know, is, isn't allowed to, you know, do its job fearlessly, then democracy will fall. And so the response to that has not been, oh, well, increasing in transparency will increase trust, which will in turn fix these problems. It's been to dig in and, and, and, well, maybe no one will notice that we're getting a lot of stuff wrong and it is so toxic that they continue to act this way. You know, you know, the New York Times never, you know, New York Times and Washington Post never returned their Pulitzers for reporting stories on Trump's involvement with Russia where, like, Every word, including and. And the. Was wrong. You know, it's just astonishing to me that, you know, we have this situation where the media has gotten so utterly defensive. Well, I mean, the problem is, is they're getting a lot of stuff wrong in the first place and getting stuff, big picture stuff wrong in a level that I never anticipated, you know, and I, I never had a lot of faith in the media complex to begin with. But the fact that they're not just getting all the big picture stuff wrong, but the fact they have no desire to engage in behavior that would show transparency and rebuild the trust is what's really shocking to me. And it seems so obvious to me, like, that's their only option here, and yet they keep, you know, turning it away at every available opportunity.

[Emily]

Right? Yes. So Barry Weiss, who has made decisions that I've plainly disagreed with and who has owners whose decisions I plainly disagreed with over at CBS News, comes in, and it's not even that they're upset about the owners. They will be upset about editorial decisions that are perfectly defensible. And then everyone else in the media is giving their peers a tongue bath for pushing back on Barry Weiss. And meanwhile, they're championing somebody like Scott Pelley when he asks Lulu Garcia Navarro, well, what polls, what, what evidence? You know, I asked what evidence is there that CBS News is less trusted? And it's like you people are 10 years into the Trump phenomenon where the host of Celebrity Apprentice beat the former Secretary of state. When all of you said it wouldn't happen, it couldn't happen. Here it is. It happened. You botched Russia, you botched Kavanaugh. So many. I mean, just story after story, the Hunter Biden laptop story, just completely flagrantly incorrect. And then not only are you lacking in fury over somebody making such a significant mistake, it's exactly the kind of mistake that makes people say, what the hell is going on in these newsrooms? Why do I trust anything that comes out of them? But then again, continuing to obfuscate in their excuse that you are championing. I mean, it is so insanely backwards.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes. And it has become, you know, the media is supposed to be a conduit, right? We're supposed to be the conduit between, you know, the institutions of power and the American, the general public. Right. And the problem is, is that the media itself has started to think of itself as an institution of power. And in that regard, like, they can't fail. They can only be failed. Like you mentioned Barry Weiss. I can't remember. It was a New York Times story or whatever. But like, I read a story from a major news outlet where people, you know, some. Some unsourced, you know, people at 60 Minutes were complaining that Barry Weiss was engaging in editorial interference.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Mark Hemingway]

How do you engage in editorial interference when you are the freaking editor? Yeah, like that's her job.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Mark Hemingway]

I mean, like, it's just absolutely astonishing, the ego of these people. And they.

[Emily]

Who said that. What did they. They were mad that she injected into a CBS package that. That Renee Goode moved. Moved the vehicle toward the officer who ultimately shot and killed Renee Good. That she had accelerated toward. Which, by the way, if you saw the video, I mean, it's actually not a red, gold, blue, gold dress story. You can see that in the video.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes, but I mean, but look, you know, I, I don't care whether she did, you know, go in and tell these people to change what they were reporting. That's her job. Like, she is in the position of authority in that organization where, you know, she gets to edit and she gets to say these things. I mean, that's always been the way it. And I'm sorry that your established institution doesn't get to toe a certain ideological line anymore, you know, and the end, you know, and again, it's not like Barry Weiss is towing a particular, you know, particularly dramatic ideological line either. I mean, you know, she is a center left, you know, lesbian who I don't think trucks with, you know, hard. Right. MAGA people.

[Emily]

But the fact that maybe on foreign policy, but otherwise. No.

[Mark Hemingway]

Right, but. But the fact of the matter is, is. Is the, the not being able to say exactly what they want to say all the time and present it to the American people as gospel truth. Having someone look over their shoulder and say, you know, and question their assumptions is too much for them. And then like. And that's fundamentally the problem here. And this is fundamentally the problem. That's Nina Totenberg story. Everyone's like, well, if Nina Totenberg says it, I guess so I guess we don't have to check this.

[Emily]

Run it.

[Mark Hemingway]

You know, run it. And you know, again, if you know anything about Nina Totenberg, her past, her history of partisanship, you know, and all these other things, she's exactly the kind I'm not. She hasn't broken major stories over the years. I mean, she has, but she's also gotten a lot of stuff wrong. She's been very partisan and other things like that. I mean, you know, this is a huge story. Literally no one else was reporting it. You know, so this is exactly the kind of thing where you go back to the reporter and you say, hey, what's the story here? You know, what are your sources? Whatever, you know, give me a good reason why we should rush this out. And it doesn't appear that happened at all. In fact, the editors themselves don't appear to understand what's happening. It's like they're going back to Totenberg after the fact act, being like, oh, what we said about how you got the story wrong is wrong. I mean, like, what on earth is happening there? I mean, you know, the inmates are running the asylum over at npr, but that's been the case for a long time, I think.

[Emily]

Yeah, and actually this is a great point. The lack of curiosity among people who are now taking Totenberg's apology sincerely and just accepting it and congratulating NPR for handling this major misstep with class, as the implication is from some of these posts, that tells you, if you're just a regular American, that really tells you everything you need to know about the failures of media and whether or not you should trust these quote unquote, mainstream media outlets because they are not even curious enough to poke holes. Some of them are. Brian Stelter has, as I mentioned, Matthew Keys has. But if you're just uncritically accepting Totenberg's story and then congratulating her for issuing it and her outlet for issuing it without any pause and saying none of this adds up, it doesn't make sense. That's the lack of curiosity that has basically destroyed the industry over the last ten plus years, particularly.

[Mark Hemingway]

Right. And it's not just a lack of curiosity. And we need to get right down to him. And it's, it's a lack of, like, standards. I mean, there used to be, there was a certain way that things were done in the media and especially in the post Trump world, like these things have all just been completely abandoned. You know, when I was in journalism school way back in the 90s, anonymous sourcing was incredibly rare. And there was a lot of discussion about where and when it was appropriate stuff. And now it's just the order of the day and no one questions anything about it. There was a major story in Trump's first term where there was, I think, a leaked email to CNN where it was purportedly a WikiLeaks email released, oh yes, the Mani Raj, the Manu Raju report. Right. Where basically it showed that, you know, WikiLeaks had released a bunch of information that were of hacked Democratic emails. And there was an email purporting that WikiLeaks had sent this to Donald Trump Jr. Before it was public. Right. And this is a big to do in the Russia era because WikiLeaks has ties to Russian intelligence, yada yada yada, and all that stuff was, you know, questionable. Well, as it turned out, CNN ran with the story story. They ran with the story without seeing the email that purportedly said so it's literally like, trust me bro, it was, it was, it appeared to come directly from the staff of Adam California, Adam Schiff's staff. And then what was crazy about the CNN story is that two other media outlets immediately confirmed the story, including NBC News and someone else. And, and no one, Kendallanian, I think

[Emily]

Kendelanian confirmed the Manu Raju story.

[Mark Hemingway]

No one had seen the email. It turned out that the email had like the, the people that leaked the, the quote unquote email or, or rather didn't leak the email and just gave CNN the information, misread the date on the email. So he, Donald Trump Jr. Got the thing when this is all public or whatever and like the whole thing was insane. You have people, you can't confirm anonymous sources and like, you know, this is Journalism 101 and this is exactly what was going on. And then on top of that they're reporting the contents of an email they had never seen. I remember talking to, oh my gosh, my 50 year old brain here is really kicking in here. Press officer for George W. Bush, who's now in Fox.

[Emily]

Ari Fleischer.

[Mark Hemingway]

Ari Fleischer, yes. Great guy. Sorry Ari, I know who you are. Anyway, Ari Fleischer was telling me about like he worked for some congressional committee in the 90s, the 90s, and they wanted to leak something to the press and they tried to leak in the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal was, we're not touching that until you actually give us the document. And like that's how it should be done. And Ari Fleischer was telling that story out of respect, like, you know, you're dealing with the media or whatever, like if they're, you know, you're going to leak something, like they better, you know, know what they're doing. And we're in this situation here where the idea that one 82 year old woman can just report something this dramatic and there's no apparent editorial oversight or you know, demands for, you know, repertorial proof of any of this is just absolutely crazy. It's nuts. That should never ever, ever, ever happen in a newsroom. And yet this kind of thing happens with absolute regularity in the last 10 or 15 years. It's, it's absolutely appalling. And as you know, citizens and consumers of media, we should be really upset and demand more, right?

[Emily]

Yep. But no, of course, it's always the the reader, the viewer, the public's fault for not trusting media, which is trusted. Mass media is at a record low, tied at a record low. Scallops annual statistics. We're going to take a quick break. There's much more where this comes from. We'll be back with Mark Hemingway in one moment. Well, what does it feel like when your clothes actually feel good this summer? Cozy Earth makes a strong case that what you wear at home matters just as much as what you wear out and maybe even more. The outfit that I live in, and I'm not exaggerating, is the brushed bamboo jogger set. It's made from viscose from bamboo. It's lightweight, it's breathable, and, and it's unbelievably soft. I even bought my mom one as soon as I got mine. The fit is spot on. It's tapered, yet relaxed with enough structure to feel put together even at home. And then there are the lakehouse clogs, which I've also been living in. Designed for everyday home life, they feature a cushioned footbed, ultra soft interior and easy slip on design. They're super supportive and supportive enough to stand in all day, yet also cozy enough to forget that you're wearing them. You and I'd easily wear them out. I have to the grocery store to grab coffee or to hit the farmer's market. With easy returns and a lifetime warranty, it is comfort worth upgrading to. So this summer, give yourself the kind of comfort that lives with you all day, not just the moment you get home. Head to cozyearth.com and use my code, EMILY for an exclusive 20% off. That's called EMILY for an exclusive 20% OFF. And if you see a post purchase survey mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here, comfort lives here. We're back with Mark Hemingway, senior investigative writer at Real Clear Investigations. And let's continue this conversation about media malfeasance. Mark, because I was listening to NPR today and they're reporting on the decision rendered yesterday by the Supreme Court on whether or not the laws in West Virginia and Idaho in particular regarding whether or not boys can play in girls sports was upheld. Their reporting on it was outrageous, like just completely as though you were listening to Ms. Now, I know that sounds like naive criticism of npr, but it is sometimes stunning to imbibe their content. As you realize, they're out there continuing to lecture everybody on their own lack of neutrality and their reckless journalism and the like. We have sound bites here from NBC and ABC as well with their reaction as the reports of the decision were coming out yesterday. Let's roll SOT1, this is NBC.

[Mark Hemingway]

Just a quick note here. The terms that we're using here during our reporting. Biological male, biological female. The high court put those terms in quotations in their decision and their dissent. But just so you know, we're using those terms from the decision itself. Biological male, biological female.

[Emily]

Just hearing that makes me want to go through the roof. But before we do that, Mark, let's roll abc. There is not a speech that goes by where the President does not talk about transgender athletes. This is clearly a big win for him today. Yeah, Kira, Rarely does a day go by here at the White House when the President doesn't rail against the participation of transgendered female athletes in girls and women's sports. The President really leaning in to this national debate. He feels this is a winning issue for him politically, and this is a win for him. The White House, in fact, has already taken to social media, posting in their words, quote, from now on, women's sports will only be for women. All right, and finally, control room, can we put actually the J.K. rowling post up in this block, BBC reported, with the headline, U.S. supreme Court upholds bans on Transgender women in Female School and College Sports. Words. J.K. rowling replied. You mean men? Men who claim to be women. You are a national broadcaster that consistently obfuscates facts around sex because you've taken an ideological position the public overwhelmingly rejects. This isn't news. It's propaganda. Again, it's like, quaint to make that criticism of BBC at this point in 2026. But, Mark, we've seen the public polling on this go increasingly in one direction and in the correct direction in these cases. And to hear Craig. Mel Melvin. To hear Craig Melvin come out and say we are using these terms, it was basically a trigger warning. We're using the terms that the Supreme Court use when actually the words that everybody should just be using is men and women. We don't even really need to say biological men and biological women because the majority of the country knows what the hell you're talking about.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes. No, this is. Yeah, it's absolutely infuriating. And as you point out, I mean, this is literally like an 8020 issue in the country. And, you know, in particularly in certain parts of the country. It's, you know, absolutely overwhelming. You know, and I, at the same time, you know, it's not like there's this epidemic of transgender violence and all these other things that they. They use as an excuse to hide behind. I mean, like, just the facts don't bear out that this is doing any sort of harm to people, to use the correct terminology that we all used up until about, you know, five seconds ago, in historical terms. There's a. There was a libertarian economist named Menker Olson who wrote a book called the Logic of Collective Action. It's like subtitles like Public Goods and the Theory of groups in the 1960s, basically. And the book is really interesting. And one of the interesting things about it is that basically, it. It makes the point that, you know, when it comes to issues of public policy, you have a situation here where highly energized minorities tend to run roughshod over even large majorities often. And, like, this is sort of the knee plus ultra of this. I mean, this is just weaponized fanatical mental illness at this point in time. And the fact that institutions like the media play along with this, you know, again, it goes back to this question that we were getting at a little bit before. I'm like, who do the media serve? Serve? Right. You know, are they the conduit between, you know, institutions of power and the public? You know, and then. And are they meant to serve the public, or are they meant to uphold basically what are basically, in this case, bourgeois values that only apply to a select group of people and, in fact, do harm to a very large group of people, which, in this case is the women of America. And yet at every turn, they're protecting this, you know, highly, you know, energized minority that is actively doing harm to a large majority. And it's just astonishing to me. Like, it's a complete inversion of their responsibility as journalists. And I don't see them, you know, changing anytime soon. It's just like, I don't know what it is possibly going to take, you know, and. And the other thing about it is, it's also an extremely part of partisan line. The fact of the matter is, is that the Democratic Party, regardless of whether their own voters, are invested in this, and polls show that the vast majority of Democratic voters don't want men in women's sports.

[Emily]

67% was the latest poll I saw.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes, that's among Democrats. And yet, you know, I see a tweet from Elizabeth Warren recently saying, this is disgusting. The Trump administration is, quote, Targeting, you know, transgender people. It's like, again, complete inversion of reality. At every point in time, we have the transgender people that are the aggressors. They're the ones demanding admission into female spaces, bathrooms, sports teams, whatever, you know, rape shelters. I mean, whatever it is, it's just absolute insanity. Prisons. And, you know, they're the aggressors here. They're the ones that are demanding accommodation. They're the ones that are doing harm by doing harm this. And somehow they're being targeted in this vision and the media plays along with it, and it is completely the wrong frame. And J.K. rowling is absolutely right. It is pure propaganda, and they refuse to see it as such. Meanwhile, every criticism of transgender people, valid or not, is considered propaganda by the media. It's. It's, again, an inversion of reality.

[Emily]

Well, it's also just amazing this far into the, like, grand gender experiment that was run on children for years to see what you may remember this book, Coulter. Coulter dropped a book, it's like 2007 or eight called Guilty. And I think the subheading was Liberal Victims and Their Assaults on America, something like that. And her point was that the left selects victims that then the media will borrow the framing of. And when you look at the trans issue, it's probably the most clear example of how that fails. Like, choosing one victim over other victims can often fail. Democrats fails politically, although Milat Kiros, who was just elected, will probably be the seventh DSA aligned member in Congress. Just won the. The nomination in Colorado's first district on Tuesday has put forward a Trans Bill of Rights. Some of these DSA candidates, ascended candidates who have won in recent weeks, have reacted to this, the dis. This decision with opprobrium. No real surprise there. Probably Peggy Flanagan is going to win the race in Minnesota to replace Tim Walls. So the. The party actually is continuing to kind of cling to this. Seth Molton famously walked back what he said. Gavin Newsome famously walked back with he said what he said, all in the face of the public rejecting it because they have a really hard time letting go of the original narrative they set.

[Mark Hemingway]

Well, again, you know, it goes back to this situation here where you have, you know, organized minorities, you know, that are running counter to the majority here. You know, at the same time, yes, you see people doing this in Minneapolis, and you see DSA candidates in heavily urban areas doing this, but how is this going to play out nationally? For instance, Kamala Harris got absolutely slaughtered on this issue when she ran for president. Like, everyone admits that Those, you know, Kamala's for they, them, Trump is for you ads or whatever just destroyed her. Like, I don't see this being an issue that plays out nationally. And you have this situation here where Democrats are constantly caught between a rock and a hard place, where they are beholden to all of these, you know, radical minorities and radical issues right up until the point that, you know, that they aren't. I mean, you know, remember how I just saw a thing today where climate change groups are going after Democrat, progressive Democrats now because all they talk about is Palestine or they talk about affordability, but they're not talking about how climate change is making things more expensive. Like the Democrats just discarded kind of climate change because it seems to be a losing issue. I don't know if this is going to happen with the transgender thing, but it takes a while to sort of get to that point. And the point is going to be whether or not this proves to be a liability in international national political environment. And the DSA thing is really interesting because it's really testing that hypothesis. Like right now, for instance, you know, the two latest polls have Graham Plattner either barely leading above Susan Collins in Maine in the New York Times poll or the Fox poll where Susan Collins is slightly ahead. And mind you, if you've looked at Susan Collins's last couple of Senate elections, she's notorious, notorious for over polling. Like, you know, I think it was like, you know, she was like, she pulled eight point. She was like her actual victory was eight points ahead of what her polling average was under polling.

[Emily]

Right.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yeah, yeah, sorry. She overperforms her, her polling averages and things like that. So, you know. Right. I mean, this, this radical DSA stuff might work well, you know, in a New York City congressional primary. It might even work well in the Denver suburbs where, you know, everybody is, you know, more liberal. But when it comes to having to win a large electorate, it might well be toxic. And if I were a Democrat right now trying to figure out where to land on this stuff, it's. I mean, I'm not saying the DSA folks can't pull this out. You know, you know, maybe over time, whatever, they will drag the whole base left. But for now, it just seems like the party has been drifting steadily left. I mean, there was another poll that came out today, I think, on the Senate battlegrounds, like the eight Senate battleground states or whatever it is, and something like only 8% of Kimber, some overwhelming majority thinks the Democratic Party is too radical. And like, this is going to be a problem. For them. And the transgender issue is like just ground zero for this.

[Emily]

Yeah, it's.

[Mark Hemingway]

And it's what are they doing right.

[Emily]

And it's a lesser than two evil. A lesser of two evils election. So Republicans are also perfectly capable of botching racist and super radical candidates. Platner is. He tries to talk about it as a distraction. He actually tries to downplay it. Probably one of the better Dem responses on the issue. It's a big issue in Maine, but Mamdani also barely talks about it. Also kind of muted on the issue relative to where people were in 2020 and relative where the new crop is on this too. Actually, let's continue with this theme and I want to show show a little bit from Seattle Pride on Sunday. We can't even show you this full thing. I think it. Yeah, here. Here you go. We can't even show the full thing on air because it's so explicit. But please take note of the children around the area. We don't want to show is the up close nudity because there was plenty of that. But I'm reading a little here from Fox News is reporting. Seattle's LGBT Pride parade on Sunday descended into bedlock as attendees stripped off their clothes and marched the streets naked while children looked on. One video filmed by Chloe Cole, who is a very brave D transitioner posted by Front Lines of Turning Point USA shows people from a group called Friends of Denny Blaine marching in the nude. Some onlookers clapped and cheered while the video panned to young children watching the spectacle. Another video shows naked people prancing around an outdoor fountain near children who are playing in the wash water. One thing we've covered here over the course of June is Andrew Sullivan and some others reacting to polling declines for basically the entire LGBT issues or the spectrum of LGBT ideology. Meaning we've seen polls on the morality of same sex relationships and same sex marriage, two of the most critical issues if you are an LGBT activists like Andrew Sullivan, who who fought for marriage equality, as he would put it, and for people to believe in the morality of same sex relationships. That's declining among everyone. Slight decline among Democrats, decent decline among independents, decently significant and decently significant decline among Republicans. A huge decline among Republicans actually. And just wanted to also read from Julie Bendell, who is also gay like Sullivan, reacting to some of this in Comment Unpacked magazine today, Bendell wrote New York City Pride, June 2026. A sea of men wearing Call Me Daddy T shirts, pushing strollers, carrying babies in gay subcultures. A daddy describes a dominant authoritative figure who's often paired with a twink, a much younger, slight boy like male as a sexual partner. Over in Seattle, fully nude male bicyclists road past children with their genitalia on full display. Pride in Salt Lake City was teeming with men dressed as slutty women, while others dressed up in animal costumes costumes flaunted their pup fetishes. Minneapolis, just listed, lifted its 1988 ban on Bath houses to commemorate the holy season of pride. The ban had been put in place in the early 1980s. Bendel writes, during the AIDS crisis to reduce high risk. Anonymous sex and Mark. This is basically, you're a Pacific Northwesterner, so you've seen the excesses of like granola progressivism for many years, especially on the cultural front. Like the socialism question is different when it's extricated economics from the cultural stuff. We could get into that too. But basically this is just to say it's on a silver platter for Democrats now to realize they have a problem because when the public is seeing children around nudity in the name of pride, the public is going to reject that. And that rejection is going to start trickling into the movement more broadly. Sullivan has pointed out that most people, people who look at this polling or who are included in this polling also believe in protections for adults who believe they're transgender and want different rights based on being transgender. But this stuff is destroying their own cause and they're so blinded and dug in they can't see it.

[Mark Hemingway]

Is it though? I mean.

[Emily]

Oh, interesting.

[Mark Hemingway]

I mean, the Onion, back when it was funny and people cared about it, ran one of the more. One of their more, more notorious headlines was great Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of gays back 50 years. And it was all a joke about how you go to a gay pride parade and you see a bunch of men writing a paper mache phallus and, you know, wearing leather fetish gear or whatever, and this is supposedly celebrating their culture. And isn't that, you know, ridiculous and horrifying? Which, that was the joke 25 years ago. And yet look at how gay rights have moved on, you know, in the 25 years years since then. You know, that was, you know, probably right around the era of will and grace or whatever. And then the next thing you know, we've got a burger fell and all these other things. I. I just don't know. Like, it is really insane to me that we have this situation here where like, as I've gotten older, I've gotten sort of borderline conspiratorial about this in the sense that, you know, the last thing that the government can control, basically, is what you say to your children when you tuck them in to bed at night. And it is, I, I, you know, there's a long body of literature on the left and, you know, storied history in communist countries about, you know, doing what you can to break up the nuclear family. Because that is the last bulwark of authority that, you know, is between, you know, you know, the state and the ultimate control over someone. Right. It's the family unit. And again, I don't want to sound, like, paranoid about this. You know, I know plenty of gay guys that reject all this stuff outright, you know, and, and certainly don't behave this way and, and, and will tell you they find this behavior among gay people appalling. But it is also true that there is an effort being put forward by, like, very progressive politicians, like, what happened in Minnesota, where, like, let's open bathrooms, houses. Never mind that, like, we all know that, like, these are public, anonymous sex areas, which is a public health threat, and it always has been. I remember, like, there was a debate some years back in D.C. about this because there's a big problem with cruising in, in the parks in D.C. men having anonymous sex at night in public parks. And they were like, well, we don't want to condemn this because it's part of gay people's culture. I'm sorry if your culture is to have a sex with someone you don't know. No, there is something horribly wrong with your culture. And we have every right as a society to stop this from becoming a public health threat, never mind all the other problems that are downstream from that in terms of, you know, social cohesion and things like that. Yeah. You know, you know, and, and doing that is not at odds with, you know, basic freedoms, you know, in terms of, like, I don't think the government should be necessarily kicking down people's, you know, doors to ask who they're having sex with. But at the same time, you know, when you engage in risky behavior that, you know, does things like, lead to outbreaks of things like monkeypox, which was this inherently gay thing. And, like, we're just now learning, like, I was raised in the 80s and 90s or whatever, and like, basically, like, we're just now learning that everything I was told about AIDS growing up was complete propaganda. Like, it's very hard to get AIDS from unprotected sex if you're heterosexual, sexual, and, you know, engaged in typical male Female sexual acts. It's like really hard anal sex. On the other hand, different story. But they weren't saying that because they didn't want you to demonize gay people or whatever. But the fact of the matter is, is, you know, how much did that help to not tell the truth about these sorts of things? How much does it help the gay population to say, go have anonymous sex in bath houses even though you might get a disease that can ruin your life? Like, at what point point do we, you know, actually, you know, tell these people no. And I think this is part of the thing where to the extent we are seeing a rollback of people post a burger fell looking at this and going, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe this is moving too far too fast. It's because we've been propagandized on these issues. We're not having open and honest conversations about, you know, what being gay in society means. Like, look, probably 2 to 3% of the population, population has been gay since time immemorial. All right? Whatever reason. It seems to be unlike, say, transgenderism, which, by the way, is a very novel mimetic ideology from what I can tell being spread by the Internet, being gay is something that is kind of endemic to the human condition. You know, we can have all kinds of conversations about why that is or whether it's biological this, but it's been with us for a very long time. So I think that we can accept that, you know, and accept that there's going to be gay people, people in society and then have honest conversations about what that means and how gay people can, you know, flourish, you know, while still not causing active harm to themselves and the rest of broader society. And that needs to be a conversation that we need to have, honestly, and we haven't been having it my entire life.

[Emily]

Yeah. Your point about the, the broad history or the bad history, I should say say reminded me of the Matthew Shepard case. The, the bad history that often gets pulled in the propaganda. Billy Binion did a great story on this at Reason a couple of years ago. Headline here is Matthew Shepard's murder was almost certainly not an anti gay hate crime. But that is another example of history that we've imbibed. And mass like this is mainstream historical fact that is also just clearly propaganda the more that you poke holes into it. So Mark, I think, I think that's, you know, they. Last year DC hosted World Pride and so they tried to close the Dupont Circle fountain because there'd been violence and pandemonium at the fountain in years past. Gay Activists fought to get it reopened. That is a place that had a history of cruising. They said it was very important to the gay community. Well, they reopened the fountain and people got hurt. There was a shooting like, a block away. It was a. A gathering space. So it's just so sad. It's often so sad. Sad to see this.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yeah, no, I think so. And like, again, you can be gay without participating in this kind of gay culture. I mean, like, there's nothing that says that you have to, you know, be having lots of anonymous sex with men, you know, in a way that is dangerous. And, you know, I think we have an obligation to be honest about, you know, when people are engaged in cultural habits that are unhealthy. And, like, the thing is, is, again, this isn't even a gay thing. I mean, if you look at what's happening in terms of the cultural attitudes in certain parts of the country with homeless people, for instance, oh, it's totally fine to be on the straight, on the streets and, you know, do injectable drugs. You know, that's their life.

[Emily]

Anonymous, safe, straight sex having culture. Yeah, correct.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes. You know, and like, we're. We as a society have become very afraid to tell people this is safe. This is not safe. This is moral. This is not moral moral. And we need to be doing that, you know, a lot more often. You know, and there's a whole bunch of forces that are pushing to do this less and less, and it's just clearly not good for us. It's not good for, you know, any number of things. And most of all, it. It harms the people that are supposedly the beneficiaries of this. Like, I don't think this is helping gay people, to be honest, to be dishonest about this stuff and open bath houses, that's. That's not helping the gay community.

[Emily]

I want to get to this Caitlyn Clark story because Curtis Hook over at the Media Research center flagged Good Morning America's report on the fallout from that Alyssa Thomas suspension. If people haven't seen this video yet, it is just a clear punch to the throat, basically. While Caitlin Clark is spine on the court, down on the ground, on her back, Alyssa Thomas seems to very intentionally punch. Punch Caitlin Clark in the throat. Well, actually, it's. Punch might not be the word, the best way to put it. Tries to basically help herself up from the ground by pushing into Caitlin Clark's throat in a way that looks like a punch. But this was Good Morning America's report on the backlash that Alyssa Thomas is getting. Some of which, of course, by the way, is ugly and bigoted and racist. Most people. People who are reacting to this Alyssa Thomas penalty are saying, what the f. Why does this keep happening? Why are people not protecting Caitlin Clark? This is egregious. This is flagrant. This is disgusting. Here's how Good Morning America covered it. There's a difference between trolling and there's a difference between hatred. And that's a list of hatred that we're experiencing over a play that honestly was a complete accident. Just a complete accident. Robin Roberts basically uncritically accepted the. That framing. Now let's turn to Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White, Caitlyn Clark's coach, also reacting to the hate against Alyssa Thomas. Before we start with questions, you know, I just want to address, you know, what's going on with at. You know, I think first and foremost, it's absolutely unacceptable. You know, I think as a league as a whole, there's been so much more toxicity, racism, homophobia, straight out, like, nonsense, hate, nonsense. And it is absolutely unacceptable. Most of this coming from the online community. Most of this, you know, in my heart of hearts, I believe, not coming from WNBA fans, Indiana Fever fans. You know, I believe that this is people who are using our league, using our players to further divisive agendas. Um, it's not acceptable. Yes. Okay. Now, on the other hand, Sophie Cunningham, famously Caitlin Clark's teammate slash protector, has a podcast where she reacted as well. She's been going massively viral for her finger point. I think she was pointing at Alyssa Thomas for, like, 20 seconds. It was poetic in a way. Here's how Sophie Cunningham responded. Well, so during real time last night, I did not see that happen. And I. And like, I. I don't. None of our team saw it happen, because I promise you, if that. If we would have seen that happen, we would have had her back. Unfortunately, this type of shit happens every single game to her and the league, and the refs do absolutely nothing about it. Yeah. Yes. Because it keeps happening over and over again. Thomas was originally suspended, I think, for just one game, and then that was brought in out. I'm reading here for. From CBS News, who. CBS News reports that it was. This is the. This is a coach, Stephanie White. You heard this. Absolutely unacceptable. White wasn't even asked that question, by the way. White decided. You saw this in the video. Just to address it before getting questions, like just leaning into making this very sanctimonious stand on behalf of Alyssa Thomas to call out, quote, toxicity, racism, homophobia, Phobia from the online community. People who are not WNBA fans, which includes the vast majority of Americans, Mark. But most people did see this story and said, why is that? How could you possibly allow that to happen and just go with a one game suspension? This is insane. And something even worse is going to happen to Caitlin Clark.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yeah, it's really. I mean, I don't even know what to say. Which is also truly bizarre because,

[Emily]

you

[Mark Hemingway]

know, Caitlin Clark is the WNBA's golden goose. It's been around forever, it's been hemorrhaging money, no one cared about it. And then all of a sudden she comes along. And in fairness to Caitlin Clark, I think it's pretty obvious she is the greatest female basketball player of all time. I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, her college record and everything was just, you know, unbelievable. I mean, just in terms of pure stats, you know, I know that she struggled winning championship, but in terms of pure stats is just unbelievable. It is. She's the golden goose for the wnba in terms of like, I get what insane percentage of WNBA jerseys are either Caitlin Clark or, or Sophie Cunningham? It's like 70 some percent or something. Clearly she's the only reason why anyone really cares about the league. So when they say, I don't think this is WNBA fans, are they referring to like the 5% of people currently watching WNBA games that were watching them before Caitlin Clark?

[Emily]

Right.

[Mark Hemingway]

I mean, like, because the vast majority of fans that are watching the, the WNBA in the last couple years are there because they're tuning in for Caitlin Clark. And again, I don't understand this and I don't understand how it's happening. You know, again, just for like the financial incentives for the league, let's say Caitlin Clark gets seriously injured and like, you know, has to hang it up or whatever. Like, what is that going to do to the league and its finances, for instance?

[Emily]

Yeah, well, but this also goes with what we've been talking about all night, Mark, which is these institutions that have come to be dominated by what used to be called like wokeness, and that's sort of been subliminated, whatever we want to call it, or muted. But these institutions are still clinging to it, including obviously the wnba. That's no surprise to anybody. But I think also Good Morning America, which framed this entire incident with really a heavy emphasis on the pushback Alyssa Thomas was getting. They referred, as did multiple media outlets to. Oh, it was such funny Orwellian phrasing. I wish I had it in front of me. But something to the Extent of like, oh yeah, here it is. This is from CBS News. Thomas recently served a one game suspension because quote, her hand made contact with Clark's throat during the first half of their game on June 24th. That's from CBS. ABC did a very similar turn of phrase. They are clinging to this incessantly.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yes. And I think part of, there's a lot of, there's a lot happening here and it is a very loaded issue. I mean, like, I do think race has something to do with this and it's race in a way that people don't want to talk about. I think that there's a lot of people in this league that have trouble dealing with the fact that the greatest female basketball player to date is a white girl. You know, and this is a league that has been dominated by black women and you know, has had a lot of great black women play players or whatever. Yeah, you know, this, this shouldn't be an issue. But I mean, I do think that there is an element of, of race that is coming in here and I don't think people are crazy to, you know, talk about that. I mean, I've seen racism against Caitlin Clark online myself. I mean this is a thing that people are out there saying, but that

[Emily]

doesn't get covered on Good Morning America.

[Mark Hemingway]

Of course that does not get covered on Good Morning America because that is a very difficult and awkward way to, you know, very difficult and awkward, awkward thing to have a conversation about. But it is nonetheless real. I mean, you know, racism sometimes runs in the other direction, even if historically it has been much worse in the other direction. But it is something that I do think we have to acknowledge. I also think that there's just something about basketball in this sense. I, I, I played basketball when I was younger and I like basketball a lot. I have not been able to watch the NBA for a long time, time now just because it has become a dis. A basically a lot of preening and just sheer athleticism has taken precedence over the game itself. People don't run plays anymore and other things like that. And one of the reasons why I used to love watching girls college ball was because girls didn't weren't, you know, 6 foot 10 and couldn't dunk from the free throw line. So that meant they had to be much more artful about passing and running plays and things like that. And it made the sport very sort of interesting to watch. And the wnba, in a weird way, it's, their branding has all been like, we're going to be the NBA, but female. And I think that's kind of the wrong approach to things. I mean, Caitlin Clark's great strengths as a player. She's a passer, and she's an excellent shooter. And a lot of what's gone on in the NBA with wnba, with like, Angel, Reese and other things like that is there's a lot of. A lot of, like, brawling in the paint like they're men, or there's a lot of, like, trying to meekly dunk because there are some tall women and stuff, and it just doesn't come off very well. And that same sort of, like, you know, male, you know, you know, pushing each other around and getting in their faces and, you know, doesn't translate well to female spaces. Like, men learn from a very early age playing sports, there's kind of a. A ritual to certain kinds of. Of violence, right? If you. If you're ever on a football team or whatever, like, you're allowed to do certain things in certain circumstances that are, you know, maybe not the greatest thing or maybe the most like, you know, sportsmanlike thing, but it's understood that that guy had it coming or whatever. But you. There are rules and all these things that you're built up surrounding this because men kind of instinctively know that they can really hurt each other if they're not careful about how they engage in this ritualization violence. I don't know if women quite have these same sense of rituals in terms of how violence could and should be approached in these situations. And it just tends to, like when. When women actually get to the point of physical violence, there's not a lot of breaks, you know what I'm saying? Mentally, like, women typically don't get as violent as men, but when you put them in a situation, when you encourage them to be physically violent, but they don't have the. The. The. The ability to dial it down swiftly when. When they. It's very personal and they don't need. They don't know to only go this far, but, you know, maybe pull your punch a little and. And I think that's partly what's going on. If I can just add another horribly politically incorrect and possibly sexist take to this. But I think that that's. You know, I've got two daughters and like, this is kind of my observation about how these things are handled among women. And I'm not sure encouraging women to be gladiators is good for. Good for anybody. You know, I'd like to see them run plays. I'd like to see them, you know, be, you know, good shooters and I'd like to see them, you know, do the sport more elegantly than men because I think they can do that.

[Emily]

I had a terrible temper on the basketball court, but I'd never thought about it this way. Mark. So now you're just like chained, changing the way that I see my childhood. Before you run, I did want to get your reaction to this again. The theme of the show is how so many of our institutions are are clinging to unpopular cultural progressivism despite public backlash, despite the experiments failing. The Biden border experiment failed in front of everyone's face as Mark Kelly is now admitting in 2026 and some Democrats are now admitting 20 in 2020 26. Meanwhile, you do have people like Malat Kiros, Valdez, Chevalier, Al said running on DSA aligned hashtag abolish ICE platforms. And on top of that, it's really not clear what they would change about the Trump policy from the Biden policy. Right. If a Democrat gets in office, you have Democrat congressional control. What is their plan? Because, because this was similar with Biden who was saying we need border control. And then basically maybe because he was senile or maybe because he was really being controlled by ideologues, had so little border control because the magnet policies were just wildly abundant, were not being reined in for years. We had the largest immigration surge in American history, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, real people are suffering because of this and the media is still giving it so little attention. I actually just searched the name of Jackson Jessica Gorman in Google News to see how much coverage Jessica Gorman had got after testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday about her daughter Sheridan Gorman, 18 years old, who was walking with friends, quote, this is according to CBS News, near the pier at Toby Prince beach at Pratt boulevard shortly after 1am Thursday, May 19, when Gorman told her friends she saw someone hiding behind the lighthouse. Medina Jose Medina was a Venezuelan national who was in the US Elite legally. During a hearing before a U S House Judiciary Committee on sanctuary policies, Jessica Gorman described her daughter as the girl who always waited for others on her grade school's buddy bench. She asked lawmakers to sit together on a bench to work this out. She said, I challenge you all to sit down with me, take my hand, look me in the eye and then explain to me because I just don't understand. Explain why people here illegally matter more than your American citizens. Explain why sanctuary policies matter more than my Sheridan's life. We have a clip of it. Let's take a listen if you have the courage, please come talk to me. Come sit on that bench. I'll buy Congress a bench. Talk to each other. Talk to each other. We shouldn't be screaming across the room. I mean, we also shouldn't say, but. Because I have to just say. And I understand that you're here for a reason. I don't understand why it's only the Republican side that cares about our American children. And I know that you're a mother. I know that you're a father. I. I deeply value that. But basically, what you just did, what you said was, I'm so sorry for your loss. I have a daughter, too. I have a son. I. I feel your pain.

[Mark Hemingway]

You don't.

[Emily]

You don't feel my pain because the next words out of your mouth were, but. There's no but. When your child is in the coffin, there's no but. And I need you to understand that. And if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here. I'm going to buy you a bench. I. I'm going to buy. I can put that on the record. I'm going to buy Congress the bench, and they can come and sit and hold my hand and look me in the eye and explain to me why illegal immigrants are more important than my daughter. I really want to know, because I don't understand. Please. I welcome you. I will listen. I will listen. I care. I care. I just need you to explain it to me, because I don't. And nor. And nor. And I feel like I will never understand. I don't think she will. She also said, we're in Chicago getting ready to claim my daughter's body, and the mayor there is naming a truck abolish ice. Standing and laughing and joking while my daughter was just murdered there. Mark. No. Basically no coverage of this. Unbelievable. It's. If. If this were just getting back to our, like, liberal victim conversation, it's a. It's really a perfect victim for the media to latch on to. Right. It's a cynical and awful thing to say, but we see them do it in the other direction all of the time, and yet with this, they won't touch it.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what to say. And the thing is, is there are dozens and dozens of. Of people that are in this woman's situation. I mean, there are. You know, a big part of the problem of having an open border is it wasn't just that we were letting it. Illegal immigrants. I mean, we're letting in people without any vetting whatsoever. And we're letting in people that were criminals, you know, part of transnational gangs, you know, terrorists, you know, people that were, you know, came here explicitly to do harm, in addition to, you know, the guy that came here just to, you know, do, you know, mo lawns or whatever. And everyone likes to pretend that, you know, well, you know, you see these stats thrown out about, oh, you know, the Cato Institute will try and tell you constantly that, you know, the average immigrant or whatever has, you know, is less likely to be a criminal than the average, you know, American citizen. Well, I don't know if I trust their methodology, given how motivated they have been on this issue to begin with. But even if that were true, that's no excuse for letting any sort of criminal into the United States unvetted. And we've seen this happen again and again and again and again. And this is the thing where it's like, I don't know how you don't get conspiratorial about this. Like, you know, the rational explanation for why they're doing this is that they're trying to import Democratic voters. The irrational explanation is that they have some sort of, like, weird complex where they truly believe that every. Every downtrodden person in the world is entitled to arrive on US Soil and make a life here, regardless of what it does to the existing people and whether or not they suffer as a result. And neither of those explanations are particularly acceptable. It's just absolutely horrifying to contemplate that this is what's been happening. But it's what's been happening.

[Emily]

Yeah. And it's amazing to see the Abolish ICE platforms. I mean, Abolish ICE is actually more popular post Minneapolis than it has been even since it was in the first Trump administration. So they feel like they've got some juice and some momentum, and in some ways, they do have an advantage because the media basically will ignore Jessica Gorman. But at the same time, when you have to sell that if Abdul El Sayed wins the. The Democratic primary in Michigan, he's got to take that message statewide. And I think that's actually not going to be as easy as some of them think it is.

[Mark Hemingway]

No, I don't think so either. I mean, I think that it's not quite as bad as, you know, different Fund the Police, but it's. It's. It's pretty, Pretty bad. I mean, part of the problem here, though, is it's to what extent the people that are in favor of Abolish ICE want to Abolish ICE because they are under the impression that it has become a uniquely bad law enforcement organization that acts poorly, and they're acting as sort of Trump's personal, you know, jackboots versus the number of people that want to actually abolish all, you know, immigration controls and think we should have open borders. Like the latter is obviously, I think, going to be very unpopular. But the thing is, I have bad news. I mean, this is the exact position of. Was it Chevalier, whatever her name is, the woman who just won the Democratic primary in New York and she literally wants to abolish borders. So you can't, if you're a voter, trust that abolish ICE means, oh, we're just going to reform the agency and. Or create a new agency that handles border control control that isn't, as, you know, trumpy and violent as I think, what's going on right now. But at the same time, the other issue here is that, you know, Joe Biden let in, you know, at least 10 million illegal immigrants here in the span of a few years. I mean, it was just absolute insanity or whatever. And again, a lot of these people are very bad people. A lot of, you know, are criminals, you know, and, you know, ICE has been prioritized, the criminals and the very bad people. And what did people think it was going to be like when we let a whole bunch of, you know, criminals and bad people into the country and we had to send law enforcement in to arrest these people? Did they think that this was going to be a very polite and orderly thing to do? This is why you don't let it out of control in the first place. I don't like the idea that ICE is running around en masse and whatever, having to do this either. But I think it's, you know, very necessary because of situations like this woman, woman, you know, this poor, you know, mother, you know, highlights. But, you know, if you didn't want to see ICE going around, you know, violently arresting people, well, you shouldn't have let a lot of violent people into the country unvetted. And that's exactly what the last Democratic administration did. I mean, it was always going to be this way. And I'm sorry that people are having to deal with the reality now, but unfortunately, ICE has a very difficult and ugly job to do. But it's got to be done, or else more people are going to die.

[Emily]

Before I let you run, Mark, I lied. I do have one more story. People might not know this. If you read the Federalist, you know, this. Mark is a wonderful music critic, and I wanted to get your take on viral like TikTok sensation is probably a good way to describe him. Brian Andrews, whose shtick is being a leftist country music singer. I went to Andrew's website. He's been, he's gone viral just like over the last year a couple of times. But he's got a new single coming out his website. On his website he's described as, quote, part of a new generation of country artists bringing authenticity back to the forefront. Rooted in traditional storytelling, yet driven by a modern edge. He believes history will be written through art. Goes on to say before stepping fully into music, he spent four and a half years working as a pipe welder, living the blue collar life. He now sings about the early morning, long hours and calloused hand Shakespeare. Both his work ethic and his perspective. That foundation shows up in every lyric and every stage he steps onto. His voice and perspective had landed him across major media platforms from Rolling Stone to Don Lemon. Let's take a listen here.

[Mark Hemingway]

The same color as my collar Cuz

[Emily]

I know it ain't the immigrant stealing my dollar Billionaire profits on the bombs going overseas Words in red said love thy neighbor.

[Mark Hemingway]

Unless I guess you're on your deathbed

[Emily]

in labor Cause your life ain't important as the one that you can see. Okay, I think that's the song that's coming out on Friday. Do we have another clip, guys? We can get out of it. The same thing, but just to show he's making a point of fishing. And by the way, it is the. What does he say? I know it's not the immigrants stealing my dollar. Well, of course there's a lot of pressure put on low income earners by immigration. You don't need to be a genius. That Bernie Sanders believed that for a long, long time. And it's true. It's just true. Supply and demand. So anyway, Mark, I do want to get your take on it because it's funny to see folks like Don Lemon rally around a dude he was on Ms. Now, I saw recently, recently rally around a dude who you know, they have nothing but contempt for. They're like, you are dirty, you are probably dumb. Everyone around you is probably gross. But because you are anti maga, we're giving you a platform and you're going to be our little plaything. Like he's being used by them. So obviously because he's undermining the elite narratives, by the way, that hurt blue collar workers.

[Mark Hemingway]

Yeah, well. Well, I mean, look, as a general rule, art should not be explicitly partisan or political in this way. And generally, the more it goes in that direction, sort of the worse it becomes. You know, this isn't particularly great, you know, on a musical level. Never mind. You know, we get into the problems with the lyrics. It's kind of low rent stuff. But, hey, this guy is getting attention. He'll probably book some gigs or whatever, may even get record contract out of it. So, you know, look, more power to him, I. I guess. But I don't know, it's like ever since Democrats realized that they just have, like, completely alienated rural America, they've been obsessed with this sort of like, white whale of. Of like, well, what do we got to do to appeal to these people? Or whatever? And it's, you know, stop being, you know, elitist, you know, crazy people that think that men can become women. Women, you know, is. Is not an acceptable answer. I mean, this is what Talarico.

[Emily]

This is what's driving the musical Talarico.

[Mark Hemingway]

Exactly. This is what's driving the Grand Platner phenomenon as well. I mean, like, Graham Platner is a rich person's idea of a poor person, which is to say that he's actually a rich person. You know, I mean, it's. It's just such cosplay and I. And the thing is, to say what you want about the country music audience, the audience itself is still, I think, invested two, to some degree in authenticity. There's been a very interesting thing that's been going on in recent years where country music has exploded in popularity and rock music, which had been moribund for a long time, has been not at the level of country as you know, but. But it's been rising in popularity at the same time. I think for the first time ever, just in the last couple weeks, there wasn't a single hip hop song in the entire Hot 100, which is just, you know, crazy to think about. I think, you know, music listeners in general are looking for more authenticity at this particular moment. And that manifests itself in weird ways. You know, I'm not sure Olivia Rodrigo is the mother, Sabrina Carpenter, the most authentic artists or whatever, but, you know, things that are explicitly designed to capture an audience this way, I don't think are destined to succeed. Although I will say that there's a whole other subtext here, which is if you pay really attention, close attention, what's happened, the music industry and Nashville in particular, what happened is like the music industry in both LA and New York just has died off to a large extent in the last few decades or whatever. And it's all collapsed on Nashville. So it's interesting. So, like, you know, a lot of the rock star, the rock music scene is in Nashville now. You know, a lot of the songwriting stuff that was in New York or whatever. It's all in Nashville. And so you've had people from the traditional music industry, which were much more liberal, all descending on Nashville in the last few decades, which had historically been a much more conservative place politically in terms of people in the industry. And there's definitely a lot of angst in the music industry about liberal music industry people that have descended on national in the last 20 years and having to deal with the fact there are still elements of that industry that are very politically conservative, even if they don't necessarily always go out and advertise it. And there's a lot of wailing and gnashing in teeth about that. New York Times did a big profile of. Of. I forget some gay country singer songwriter a couple of years ago that, that, you know, really delved into a lot of these issues.

[Emily]

Yeah, I mean, I actually like. I'm not a total hater on the hicklibs. I think some of them make good music like Sturgill and Tyler Childers. Like they can. They're capable when they veer into.

[Mark Hemingway]

Jason Isbell has got to stop appearing on msnow or whatever. It's. It's.

[Emily]

Yeah, you're not right.

[Mark Hemingway]

It's all awful.

[Emily]

Yeah. But it's just like so obvious that they're using him as a little play thing. They don't really know people who fish. And man, it's just like, it's another thing that's kind of sad to see. Mark Hemingway, you have been so generous with your time tonight. I kept you extra long because I was having extra fun. Thanks so much, Mark.

[Mark Hemingway]

Glad to be here. Anytime.

[Emily]

Oh, really appreciate it. All right, well, we will take Mark up on that and we will have him back anytime. You just wait. Wait and see. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and I'm gonna go rogue with a segment on the other side of this break because there's something on my mind I want to get off my mind. So stick around this summer if you want real results. So think better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair and steady energy. Start with colostrum. When your gut is balanced, everything else improves. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers premium bovine colostrum sourced entirely from American grass fed cattle cows and made in the usa. Unlike many brands, it uses true first day whole colostrum packed with bioactives like immunoglobulins and growth factors. And don't worry, only surplus colostrum is collected after calves are fully nourished. I love that part. Cowboy colostrum is unprocessed, full fat and protein rich for maximum nutrient density. Supporting your gut can boost immunity, reduce bloating and improve skin, hair, nails and energy levels levels. Those are results that you can actually see and feel. It's also easy to enjoy with natural flavors like chocolate, Madagascar vanilla matcha and my personal favorite, strawberry, all made from real ingredients. You just add a scoop to your coffee or your smoothie and you feel the difference all day long. So for a limited time, our listeners get up to 25 off their entire order. Just head to cowboycolostrum.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code [e-mail] afterparty so good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores. Now get ready to save big with up to 60% off brands like Rag

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[Emily]

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[Mark Hemingway]

That's why you rack.

[Emily]

All right, as promised, I'm going to go rogue as we wrap up this, this Evening's pre America 250 edition of Happy of After Party Happy Hours on Friday. Stay tuned for that. But this article from Fox News was on my mind. I was reading it right before we went to air earlier this evening. And and it talks about there are a couple things happening simultaneously in the news cycle right now that I don't think are getting enough attention, but especially if you can combine them all together. We've been ragging on Dems a lot this episode, actually a lot the last couple of episodes because I happen to be very interested in some of these significant cultural problems. But I think there's a lot, obviously, I mean, it's not just me thinking this. I think there's a lot going on the country would agree on that's that's troubling or many people in the country would agree on is troubling with the Trump administration as well. Maybe you disagree totally fine. I understand. I'm going to try to keep everything in complete perspective here. But the headline on this Fox News article from this would have been Monday is Congress eyes Rare Bipartisan Housing win with or without Trump's help. Now, this is about the 21st century road to Housing Act. It will, just to be clear, pass automatically if Trump doesn't do anything for the next 10 days. He could veto it, he could sign it, but it has been passed by the House, it's been passed by the Senate, and it is bipartisan. It's not like super wishy washy bipartisan either. That's usually what bipartisan signature legislation is. This was really written by Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, a very interesting pair to say the least. It is far from a perfect bill. It does ban large institutional investors from owning certain number of homes. There's all kinds of numbers that go along with it in particulars that go along with it. The industry did fight and probably successfully watered it down to some extent. They were like congratulating Maxine Waters for helping water down the bill on the House side. And again, like I said, it's not a perfect build. It's a complicated problem with complicated solutions, obviously, but helps to handle some of those supply side concerns about housing construction and the like. And then also, like, listen, it's true that institutional homeownership, you know, some from these, from some of these big financial firms is relatively small overall. But the problem that's much more worth focusing on is that in certain pockets like the Atlanta area, it is concentrated enough to make a really big deal for people who are in their 20s and 30s and trying to buy a home, maybe to propose, maybe to then start having children once they've proposed proposed. It's sort of part of the American psychology of the dream.

[Mark Hemingway]

Right?

[Emily]

The American, the psychology of the American dream really does involve homeownership. And then we see that rightfully or wrongfully, just as a stepping stone to the rest. And for obvious reasons, by the way, too, that like, it's hard to have families and apartments. It's even hard to have two people living in apartments and especially affordably so, especially when people are saddled with so much student loans debt because of all the subsidies we've poured into higher education for a long time. But the president has now decided he's not going to sign the bill unless the Save America act is passed. Now, what Senate Republicans have done when it comes to the Save America act is frankly shameful. It is inexcusable and stupid. The president is perfectly within reason to be very frustrated. By the way, Senate Republicans, some of whom are from red states, are, are obstructing passage of the Save America Act. The Daily Caller reported recently. John Thune said there are just some Senators who hate Trump so much they're not going to vote for the Save America Act. So it's not as though Thune is in the easiest position, but even the fact that he's not in an easy position on a piece of, of legislation like save, yes, Republicans have thin margins and in both bodies, but it's really like from a political perspective, slam dunk legislation. The President wants it. And so, again, the president is totally right to be frustrated. Senate Republicans are disgracing themselves. Trump, though, called the housing bill, quote, a yawn. He says, some people say it's wonderful to me, cared to the same compared to the Save America act, just about everything is a big yawn. And so where I'm going with this, you could probably tell is from the President of the United States, this particular bill, I mean, he made inroads with young voters for a reason, and that's because he was talking about really taking on some of these issues and he was like, kind of leaning into the idea that his administration would tackle some of these issues. And, and there is no, like, arguably, there is no bigger concern for people in their 20s and 30s who obviously vote at lower rates than people in different stages of their lives, older stages of their lives, especially in midterm elections, to be clear. I get that. I hear that. But this is probably the biggest possible deal issue, housing. And to give Republicans an easy win to say, well, we worked in. The president signed this bill. Yes, it's bipartisan. The president signed this bill. Donald Trump, his signature is on this bill that is starting to change the housing market in Atlanta or Charlotte or wherever it may be. It's a, it's a powerful political weapon. And honestly, again, it's not a perfect bill, but it is a good bill. It's a worthwhile bill. And I spent a lot of time studying the bill. It's in kind of obtuse bill, like, it's, it's, what's the best word for it? It's, it's, you know, it's a very heavy, dense bill, but, and it takes a long time to digest, but it's a worthwhile bill. No question about it. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's financial disclosure dropped last night. Here's the NBC News headline. Trump's financial disclosure lists $1.4 billion in crypto earnings powered largely by meme coins. And the reason I'm doing the kind of one, two punch here is that that this is how a lot of, I think Americans are going to be ingesting the second Trump presidency when you have a bad economy. So as Trump is fighting against Joan Biden in 2020, it wasn't. Biden wasn't technically the nominee yet, but the economy was pretty good and Trump's approval was not a disaster. Gas prices were pretty good. The economy was in a decent place and a lot of the self dealing and personal enrichment that's happening. And by the way, I just want to say also, so if you think that I'm overstating this, I cared a lot about the Hunter Biden story. What's happened with the Trump family is on another level, totally on another level. There are some differences. It's apples and oranges, yes, but what we've seen from Jared Kushner in particular, what we have seen from the the meme coins with World Liberty Financial. Isaac Saul did a great breakdown of this over at Retangle that I've referenced a a number of times and I would just recommend you give that a read because I don't even think the media is doing a good job contextualizing everything. It's hard to do. But this financial disclosure shows $80 million in income from settlement tied to Trump's lawsuits like against companies like ABC, CBS, Meta and YouTube. I don't know that that bother bothers the average American all that much, but his net worth worth has jumped significantly since he was re elected in 2024. And NBC News reports on this 930 page disclosure document that he his his crypto holdings have been pushed past a billion dollars. Trump's mean coin coin earnings came on top of more than $236 million worth from additional crypto token sales and an additional sale of equity worth More than than 65 million associated with the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial. There's also more than $200 million classified as income from cryptocurrency wallets associated with World Liberty. And if you were watching the UFC fight, you probably saw the World Liberty Financial branding actually on the octagon. Now this is what the White House said. Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest. President Trump proudly made the US the crypto capital of the world through executive action, supporting legislation like the Genius act and other common sense policies to drive innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans. Now it's entirely possible Trump was genuinely sincerely convinced on crypto. He was very skeptical of crypto and very negative about crypto until he started talking to crypto folks that poured money into the Trump apparatus. That looks like Trump was bought. When it comes to crypto, it looks like it was very obviously transactional. Lots of people have fluid opinions on crypto. The more they talk to people about it, the more they learn about crypto, the more they have a different opinion. Whatever, I have no idea. But obviously when your net worth is increasing and you know you have holdings in crypto, you know your sons are overseeing companies that have holdings in crypto, you know that your sons are building via the Trump Organization in places like the uae, or that Steve Wyckoff, who is negotiating this, these deals, has family ties to projects happening, massive projects happening in various countries that's in your head. And it's obviously impossible to extricate as a conflict of interest. Obviously impossible to extricate as a conflict of interest. So all this is to say when we look at the rise of Democratic Socialists of America candidates, whether it's Maylat Kiros, Claire Valdez, Darieliza Avila Chevalier in New York City, Abdul Syed, who's succeeding, looking like he may win that Michigan Democrat, Democratic primary, Senate primary, when we look at that and we have a moral panic over the rise of democratic socialism, but only point our fingers at the young people and actually just regular people, whether they're in Colorado or the commie corridor in the New York area, point the finger at them and say, how could you be so stupid? How could you be so evil? Don't you know what communism and socialism hath wrought, taught? And it's true, we don't do a good job teaching about communism. Plainly in public schools. There's a big difference between the way that we teach about communism and fascism in public schools and in pop culture and world history. But at the same time, even in the first Gilded Age, I'm referring to the first because I think we're in the second. Even in the first Gilded Age, there's a recognition among Teddy Roosevelt, who Donald Trump celebrated at the Teddy Roosevelt Library today, among Teddy Roosevelt, ultimately Franklin Roosevelt, arguably, I think you could say Andrew Carnegie, Milton Friedman talked about this a lot. Adam Smith talked about this a lot. That often it's the capitalists who undermine capitalism. Often is capitalists who push people towards socialism. This is not to quote Lenin, what did he say? That capitalists will give us the rope to hang them by. But that sentiment was popular around that time period as well because is it's obviously in some cases a situation that just engenders such distrust and hatred. And when it is immoral, like in the case of this insane egg price setting settlement that the Justice Department just reached. Have you seen this I mean, it's also not getting much attention. Matt Stoller wrote about it and I was reading a Wall Street Journal story about it also before we went to air. But. But it's insane. The evidence that there was open price fixing happening among the biggest egg companies. I'm trying to pull this up on the screen. Truly insane. Solar writes, the egg bandits made a thousand times the fine they just paid for price fixing. They're paying like a $3 million fine and they're being forced to donate eggs. They're not being forced to admit that they did anything wrong, which means that it protects them from other possible lawsuits. Here, look at this. You can see this is from BLS data that when the antitrust investigation became public, the prices started going down, meaning the companies realized that people were onto them essentially and stopped the price fixing. But as Stoler points out, $3 million is nothing based on the amount of money the company that were conspiring made during the course of this process. And again, all this is to say people I think are correct to be concerned about the rise of democratic socialism. I am a conservative. I obviously do not agree with democratic socialist policy prescriptions. But there's so much blame to be placed on big business itself and to be placed on Republicans. Republicans who are supportive of big business, deferential often to big business especially crawling back into this relationship, deferential relationship with big business after they felt peak woke had ended, which we saw the Trump administration certainly do with big tech in some ways that are good for conservatives. There's no question about it. Right? Like it's been good to have speech codes relaxed and to be more fair. So yes, that's all true. But. But to allow what's happening with the AI boom for the Trump administration to be so powerfully implicated in these grifts, it is the exact type of thing that pushes people closer and closer towards democratic socialism. So Republicans need a good answer, a moral answer, a clear answer. They do need moral clarity party to respond to the DSA rise. Otherwise more and more people are going to go to them and it's going to be a serious problem for Republicans to answer for. If the subpoenas start flying, Democrats retake the House. This time it's not about some BS Russia collusion investigation, but it's about much more serious self dealing where you have like financial disclosures and bills all in the public domain. You can put the dots together on your own. For a long time, the public has not genuinely has not cared about Trump doing this stuff because he made it part of his first campaign. He said, I know the system. I alone can fix it. And the economy in his first term was making people feel more comfortable with Donald Trump. But if the economy is not good, that becomes a lot more difficult politically for him to pull off. So a little bit of rant here to end the show and head into America to 50 weekend, but appreciate you all tuning in. Thank you so much. As a reminder, you can hit me [e-mail] we'll have a new happy hour episode of the show out on Podcast Feeds Friday. And so we will, of course, see you back here on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts on Monday. Thanks so much everyone. Have a wonderful and safe America 250 God bless.