"Americans' confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a 'great deal' or 'fair amount' of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago.

"Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have 'not very much' confidence (36%) or 'none at all' (34%).

"When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting. However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%. Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign.

"The latest 28% confidence reading, from a Sept. 2-16 poll, marks the first time the measure has fallen below 30%."

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"Democrats have decided to enter their fight era.

"As they try to refurbish their reputation and lagging poll numbers, party leaders have decided that causing a government shutdown is the way to go.

"Good luck with that.

"House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have refused to back down on costly demands they want included in a continuing resolution backed by Republicans to keep the government funded for the next few weeks. Democrats want to extend Obamacare subsidies, among other unlikely wishes.

"Democrats may think their tough talk will earn them points come the 2026 midterm elections, but I don't think it's going to work out the way they envision."

Read the entire article here.

"The intense partisan politics that drove Washington into a shutdown are making the path out of it hard to see.

"It's a stare-down, and one side has to blink -- with Republicans and Democrats each vowing it won't be them."

Read the entire article here.

"On Thursday, James Comey became the first former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be indicted for a federal crime.

"That is likely the only fact upon which you will receive anything close to agreement in the country.

"For some, the two-count indictment is long-overdue accountability for a man who pushed through the now-debunked Russia collusion investigation.

"For others, it is another abuse on President Trump's revenge tour.

"There are legitimate concerns about the targeting of a political critic of the president, who publicly complained just days ago that Attorney General Pam Bondi was not indicting Comey and others.

"However, Comey is hardly the pristine model of 'ethical leadership' that he described in his book. Putting aside his critical role in the Russia collusion investigation, Comey tossed aside even the pretense of ethics after Trump fired him."

Read the entire article here.

"Last week, Google admitted to Congress that it served as the Biden administration's censorship enforcer. Which is bad enough. But then it followed up this admission with a lie.

"In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, the tech colossus said that under pressure from the administration, it silenced voices that were challenging Joe Biden's COVID-19 policies.

"'Senior Biden administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,' it said in a letter to Jordan.

"And, as a supposed sign of good faith, Google said it would 'provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.'

"That this admission comes amid the left's screaming fits about President Donald Trump's supposed efforts to silence dissent is interesting. But what's more curious, and more troubling, is the fact that Google continues to violate what it claims to be its 'unwavering' commitment to free speech."

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"Chuck Schumer is losing support among a key constituency: The Democrats who want to join his caucus.

"In Maine, four of the Democrats running to unseat the GOP's most vulnerable senator have already pledged not to support Schumer as leader. Three other candidates refused to commit.

"In Illinois, the three leading Democrats vying to succeed Schumer's retiring No. 2 say they're keeping their options open.

"And in ruby-red Iowa, where Democrats are eyeing a longer-shot flip, two of the party's Senate candidates aren't mincing words in their objections to Schumer's leadership.

"'Hell no,' Nathan Sage, one of the handful of Iowa Democrats vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, told POLITICO when asked if he'd back Schumer for leader."

Read the entire article here.

"Watching President Trump slice and dice the United Nations Tuesday morning, I couldn't help but think that the gods have a sense of humor -- and excellent timing.

"The fact that neither the building's escalator nor its teleprompter was working gave Trump fresh ammunition for his broad onslaught, which was well designed and extremely effective.

"He saw the malfunctions as a metaphor for a blob of bureaucrats failing at their core reason for being.

"He didn't skimp on offering abundant evidence that the world body is a bust at making peace and keeping it.

"Indeed, he argued that, beyond being useless, its weakness is actually making some big problems worse.

"'What is the purpose of the United Nations?' he asked before answering his own question: 'For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words, and empty words don't solve wars.'"

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"Al Jazeera, the virulently anti-Israel news outlet controlled by Qatar, is one of the two top sources used by leading artificial intelligence chatbots -- OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI -- to answer questions and write news summaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Washington Free Beacon analysis has found.

"ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity -- as well as X's Grok -- list Al Jazeera as one of their most reliable sources on the topic. In response to queries from the Free Beacon, the chatbots praised Al Jazeera for its reliability, 'on-the-ground detail,' 'academic credibility,' and 'global visibility.' ...

"The ubiquity of Al Jazeera as a primary source for AI-generated news searches raises questions about the capacity (or willingness) of American AI giants to deliver accurate news about Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. This comes as AI-generated summaries are increasingly replacing traditional news publications as a primary source for news. ...

"The reliance of the AI tools on Al Jazeera is already raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill. 'Al Jazeera is not a news organization, it is a mouthpiece for terrorists like Hamas,' Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who had a recent run-in with an Al Jazeera correspondent, told the Free Beacon. 'American AI companies should not rely on terrorist-sympathizing networks for anything, much less news about the Middle East.'"

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"If Kamala Harris ever does want to run for public office again, her ambush of fellow Democrats will add to her complications.

Typically buttoned up, Harris used her new memoir to speak her mind. Now, leaders of her own party are baffled and angry.

Not even officially released, Harris' account '107 Days' was immediately met with pushback from several likely 2028 contenders, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

And that was just the start. From Washington to Los Angeles, according to interviews with more than 15 Democratic operatives across the country, the tome landed with a thud among a political class struggling to make sense of the former vice president's account, which is peppered with digs at fellow party members and frustrations with how her warp-speed campaign played out.

'If there's a political strategy here, it's a bad one. There's an awful lot of grievances and finger-pointing that really doesn't serve a political agenda,' said David Axelrod, the longtime senior adviser to former President Barack Obama."

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"Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid seems to be playing dumb about her district's directive to destroy student identification records. As I previously reported in IW Features, Fairfax County Public Schools issued new guidance to school registrars this summer, telling them to purge copies and digital uploads of students' personal identification documents from school records.

On July 1, Dave Anderson, Fairfax County Public Schools' senior district manager for student registration, sent an email to school-based registrars -- labeled as confidential -- that states: 'Based on recent Division Counsel guidance reflective of FCPS Policy and the Code of Virginia, FCPS will no longer retain copies of identification documents, including the student birth certificate, in the student's cumulative file... For clarification purposes, identification documents refer to copies of a parent's photo ID, such as a driver's license, passport, etc.'"

Read the entire article here.