PBS

"Nearly 3-in-4 Americans say they rely on their public radio stations for alerts and news for their public safety,” National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement after the Senate approved a rescissions package that would, once and for all, take NPR off the federal funding payroll. It was a very NPR way of deploying the usual Democrat policy complaint that “people will die,” which they won’t. In reality, most Americans learn about public emergencies from phone alerts or while watching Wheel of Fortune, or, in the case of non-NPR listening Kerr County, Texas, when the water is at their front door. But these are desperate times at NPR headquarters, so “people will die if they defund us” is their last strategy.

As the Trump administration continues its systematic effort to dismantle and humiliate every institution of liberal America, National Public Radio has issued its man-the-torpedoes command. In the equivalent of a red alert going off on the bridge in Star Trek, according to a New York Times report, NPR has ordered its local affiliates to contact their congressional representatives and beg for their professional lives. “Recission,” or revoking of already-allocated funding, is coming soon. “Engage your board members,” the memo goes, “Community Advisory Board, station volunteers, major supporters, community partners, business leaders, and emergency officials who work with your station and ask them to communicate to Congress your opposition to recission.

Congress has been mulling the future of publicly-funded television and radio. Here’s a spoiler alert: that funding is toast. There is no way a Republican-controlled House and Senate will keep pouring money into networks they believe hate them. They know that hatred is warmly reciprocated. The debate about partisan bias at PBS and NPR is important – the bias itself is obvious – but that’s not the most important point. What matters most is that democratic governments have no business funding or controlling news channels directed at their own citizens. Those channels should be privately owned and operated. Every single one.

What does Anthony Fauci have to do with a starship? The good doctor’s staggering claims and admissions during his Sunday interview with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan recall a classic scene from Star Trek V: The Undiscovered Country. The crew of the Enterprise are taken to a mysterious realm to face a being claiming to be an all-powerful god. To question the being would be to question God himself. The being, of course, turns out not to be a god or the God, but rather an alien entity, trapped and trying to escape. Now, Dr. Fauci seems to be borrowing from the alien’s playbook.

After the country vanquished tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump last November, Jen Psaki, among others, promised that the days of unhinged 2 a.m. tweets from the executive branch were over. Instead, the Biden White House stacked its comms team with former Obama administration millennials more famous for their posturing on the ‘promise of hashtag’ and #UnitedForUkraine than for a cohesive message. Some things don’t change. Trump primarily used his Twitter feed to lash out at media critics and yell at athletes. But the Biden administration is also using Twitter, to guide its policy and messaging decisions by gleaning them from a willing media. Take White House chief of staff Ron Klain.