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Fox News Reporter Just Can’t Figure Out Facts In Anti-Gay Bakers Story

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Is Fox News’ religion reporter having a hard time separating facts, or is he just defaulting to incorrect information?

It’s no secret Fox News religion reporter Todd Starnes is anti-gay and a fan of anti-gay hate groups. It’s also no secret that his reporting is biased and all-too-often inaccurate.

Starnes has been taken to task by those he has wrongly reported on several times. For instance, during the War on Christmas of 2013, Starnes reported that “as long as anyone can remember, teachers at Brooklet Elementary School have posted Christmas cards in the hallways outside their classrooms – until Monday. When boys and girls returned from Thanksgiving break, they discovered that their teachers’ Christmas cards had been removed – under orders from the Georgia school’s administration. … The Christmas card censorship comes as the Bulloch County Board of Education cracks down on religious expression in their schools.”

Starnes’ piece, titled, “Georgia School Confiscates Christmas Cards,” was of course false – there was no secret war on Christmas cards or religious expression.

A local news channel did Starnes work for him, and some actual reporting.

“This year, due to a legitimate, personal privacy concern raised by one of the school’s staff members, [Principal] Baker moved the display to the opposite wall inside the office work room so that the staff member could still participate in the tradition,” the school district, attacked by Starnes fans, said in a statement to WSAV. “Baker wanted to respect the staff member’s privacy and that of his/her children depicted in the Christmas card.”

That statement also read, “Unfortunately, today the school was terrorized by an intentional and vicious dissemination of untrue information that disrupted the good work going on inside. Fox News Radio Commentary Host Todd Starnes, acting on misinformation that neither he, nor his media outlet corroborated with the school system or Baker, misreported a story about student Christmas Cards being removed from the school.” [Bolding ours]

That’s just one example. 

Media Matters today refers to Starnes as a serial misinformer, points to “Starnes’ consistently inaccurate ‘culture war’ reporting,” and offers as more evidence Starnes’ reporting on the now infamous case against Oregon baker Melissa Klein of Sweet Cakes By Melissa.

In his Fox News piece yesterday, “Christian bakers face government wrath for refusing to make cake for gay wedding,” Starnes writes, “Aaron and Melissa Klein refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, and now they must pay for their crime.”

The judge’s ruling paves the way for a March 10 hearing at which the Christian business owners could be ordered to pay $200,000 in fines and damages.

Wrong.

In the real world, the Kleins, through their lawyers, tried but failed to get a judgment in their favor and $200,000 in court costs and fees out of the same-sex couple they refused to serve.

Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) Communications Director Charlie Burr gave Media Matters a statement denying Starnes’ reporting.

Todd Starnes is writing that the bakery owners face fines of up to $200,000 in damages. That’s false. In fact, it’s the Kleins who have asked for $200,000 in damages from our agency for our enforcement of the Equality Act. We rejected the request due to jurisdictional issues.

The agency’s prosecution unit is seeking up to $75,000 per person in damages, but no ruling on amounts has been made. [emphasis original]

Starnes also “asks” if the deciding official in the case, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, “wants to ship the Christians off to a government-sanctioned re-education camp?”

And he concludes, the “evidence seems to indicate that Christian business owners are being intentionally singled out for persecution. And it appears the courts are consistently ruling that gay rights trump everyone else’s rights.”

Anyone care to weigh the truth of that statement? 

 

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‘Heads on Pikes’: Trump White House Accused of ‘Vaguely Fascist’ Display

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The Trump White House is under fire after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a video showing lawn signs lining the White House driveway, bearing the photos of allegedly undocumented immigrants, the charges against them, and the word “ARRESTED” in bold, capital letters.

The posters do not indicate the immigrants were convicted, only arrested, for various major crimes.

ABC News described them as “100 posters of alleged criminal migrants.” Axios, which first reported on the posters, called it “a provocative, sure-to-be-controversial move.”

“This morning,” the White House said in a statement, “images of the worst of the worst criminal illegal immigrants arrested since President Donald J. Trump took office were placed on the lawn of the White House for the world to see — highlighting the Trump Administration’s unprecedented effort to secure our homeland and send these vicious criminals back where they belong.”

READ MORE: ‘Authoritarian Takeover’: Legal Scholars Warn of Trump’s ‘100 Days of Lawlessness’

Leavitt posted the video gleefully declaring, “Good Morning from The White House!”

Critics blasted her and the administration.

“These are fake charges with out due process you are lying karoline! 99% of immigrants are law abiding, loving, family oriented members of society! Stop spreading hate!” wrote actor and activist John Leguizamo.

Immigration attorney Allen Orr, Jr. added, “Arrests are not convictions. In addition, how much does this cost, and for what purpose does it serve?”

Alexander Aviña, an associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University commented, “historically not a good sign when governments start doing this.”

Former U.S. Ambassador Luis Moreno observed, “The Romans, and others throughout history, used to mount their enemies heads on pikes. This is the 2025 version.”

READ MORE: Trump Calls to ‘Immediately’ Eject ‘Disruptors’ as GOP Congressman Faces Boos, Backlash

“The Trump Administration’s response to deporting a 4 year old American with cancer? Put up yard signs!” commented Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov.

“Well this is vaguely fascist,” remarked MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen.

“And here comes the 100 lawsuits based on the liberty clause. This is disgusting behavior by our chief executive,” wrote Washburn University School of Law Professor Joseph Mastrosimone.

“Reminder that 90% of those supposed criminal deportees to El Salvador had no criminal record at all and the rest were mostly for immigration violations,” noted Virginia Commonwealth University Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Paarlberg.

Legal reporter Amy Miller wrote, “fear mongering works, and they know it.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘What Fascism Looks Like’: Bondi’s War on Judiciary Is ‘Red Line’ for Democrats

 

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‘Authoritarian Takeover’: Legal Scholars Warn of Trump’s ‘100 Days of Lawlessness’

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The New York Times Opinion editors have gathered responses from nearly three dozen top legal scholars assessing what the paper calls President Donald Trump’s “first 100 days of lawlessness,” with many warning—one bluntly—that “no U.S. citizen is safe” if Trump can act “in violation of the law.”

These top legal minds—and the Times’ editors—use phrases about Trump and his administration’s actions such as “disregard for law,” “flagrantly lawless,” “anti-constitutional,” “quasi-authoritarian,” and “unconstrained by the Constitution.”

Columbia University Professor David Pozen warned: “More important than any specific example of unconstitutional conduct is the overall pattern. The depth and breadth of this administration’s disregard for civil liberties, political pluralism, the separation of powers and legal constraints of all kinds mark it as an authoritarian regime. That is the crucial thing to see.”

“The disregard for law is itself part of the agenda,” offered Harvard Law School Professor Jody Freeman. “They do not seem to care whether they violate the Constitution and statutes, make mistakes, do irreparable harm. That recklessness itself sends a message.”

READ MORE: Trump Calls to ‘Immediately’ Eject ‘Disruptors’ as GOP Congressman Faces Boos, Backlash

The Times editors noted that many of the scholars first flagged the Trump administration’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, calling the move, “a direct assault on the Constitution,” and “an extraordinary thing” done in “his first hours back as president.”

“From there,” the editors noted, “it’s a straight shot to deporting people without due process.”

“Due process dates back to Magna Carta,” wrote one expert, Professor Kim Wehle of the University of Baltimore School of Law, “it is the essence of liberty. Without it, America is not a democracy as freedom itself is at the arbitrary whims of a malevolent ruler.”

Stanford University Law School Professor Shirin Sinnar added, “If the administration can simply spirit people outside the United States in violation of the law and then disclaim any power to bring them back, then no U.S. citizen is safe from similar actions.”

Experts also sounded alarms over Trump and his administration attacking law firms, universities, and the Associated Press, and the firings at independent agencies. Also, the “defiance of our judiciary and constitutional system; the undermining of First Amendment freedoms,” and, “the impoundment of federal funds authorized by Congress; the erosion of immigrant rights; and the drive to consolidate power.”

The Times notes also that there are “concerns about whether court orders will be ignored by the Trump administration or the courts will be undercut by Congress, which controls their budgets and can, under the Constitution, largely dictate which cases federal courts can hear — and can’t.”

The Times, and the experts, suggested Trump’s use of tariffs is suspect.

READ MORE: ‘What Fascism Looks Like’: Bondi’s War on Judiciary Is ‘Red Line’ for Democrats

“Most important is the coming showdown over the president’s asserted power to impose, rescind, raise and delay tariffs on imports,” wrote Stanford Law School Professor Michael McConnell. “The administration can point to broad statutory language authorizing specific import restrictions under emergency circumstances, but the president has no inherent constitutional authority to tax imports. No statute expressly authorizes the president to impose tariffs for the nonemergency purposes of raising revenue, improving our long-term balance of trade or winning unrelated concessions on miscellaneous issues.”

And on the “Big Picture,” Rutgers Law School Professor Katie Eyer added: “The use of the levers of government to exact retaliation for private vendettas — sending people to foreign prisons without due process, dismantling agencies and refusing to spend appropriated funds, and pervasive retaliation for the exercise of First Amendment rights … are the actions of an authoritarian government, not a liberal democracy.”

Professor David Pozen concluded “that the U.S. constitutional system is on the verge of an authoritarian takeover. ‘Authoritarian constitutionalism’ is not an oxymoron; unless the Trump takeover is repelled, our system will retain the familiar constitutional forms while becoming ever more illiberal, undemocratic and corrupt.”

READ MORE: ‘Pure, Unadulterated, Evil’: Trump Envoy’s Putin Meeting Triggers Outrage

 

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Trump Calls to ‘Immediately’ Eject ‘Disruptors’ as GOP Congressman Faces Boos, Backlash

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As U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler’s town hall at a local high school unraveled Sunday night—despite strict rules that some critics suggested could risk violating First Amendment protections—President Donald Trump urged Republican lawmakers to “immediately eject” constituents he called “disruptors and troublemakers.”

Congressman Lawler, a New York Republican elected during the 2022 midterms that flipped several key Democratic-held seats, presents himself as a moderate—despite voting with his party 99% of the time.

Other critics mocked Lawler for having “more rules for a town hall than a strict boarding school,” and a list “longer than the Bill of Rights.”

Some of the rules included:

Attendees must live in Lawler’s district and be prepared to show proof.
Questions, limited to 30 seconds, could only be asked when a moderator called on an attendee.
No taking of photographs or video, a questionable “rule” given the public nature of the event and First Amendment rights.
Also: No shouting, screaming, yelling, standing, bags, signs, or face coverings, and “No outside noisemakers, bullhorns, or megaphones.”

READ MORE: ‘What Fascism Looks Like’: Bondi’s War on Judiciary Is ‘Red Line’ for Democrats

Any violations would subject attendees—Lawler’s own constituents—to removal.

Despite the rules, Lawler’s town hall still descended into chaos. ABC7 called it a “heated town hall” that was “drowned out by boos from dissatisfied voters.” The Bloomberg News headline at local New York radio station 1010WINS read: “NYers boo and jeer GOP’s Mike Lawler at circus-like town hall.”

The 38-year old New York Republican who previously worked in state GOP politics kicked off the chaos by asking attendees to recite the pledge of allegiance, to which at least one man responded, “Authoritarian!”

He also “urged his questioners to disregard a budget blueprint he recently voted for that called for slashing $2 trillion in federal spending, potentially including to cuts to Medicaid,” The New York Times reported.

“That is as good as the paper it’s written on,” he said.

“So it went for nearly two hours as Mr. Lawler, one of the House’s most vulnerable Republicans and a potential candidate for governor of New York, faced a torrent of criticism from liberal constituents over almost everything, from Republicans’ multitrillion-dollar tax cut plan to how brightly the room was lit,” according to the Times.

One attendee asked Congressman Lawler, “What are you doing to stand in opposition to this administration, and what specifically are you doing that warrants the label ‘moderate’?”

After whoops and cheers, Lawler replied, “my record speaks for itself,” a claim that elicited loud and “mixed emotions,” according to City & State New York’s Austin Jefferson (video below).

Jefferson also reported that the event included “law enforcement attempting to get hecklers to exit the auditorium.”

READ MORE: ‘Pure, Unadulterated, Evil’: Trump Envoy’s Putin Meeting Triggers Outrage

Many, including pollster turned market researcher Adam Carlson, noted that no one could claim these were “paid operatives,” given the residency rules posted days before the event: these had to be Lawler’s own constituents.

No one, that is, except President Donald Trump, who 42 minutes after Lawler’s town hall start time unleashed an angry missive.

“The Radical Left Democrats are paying a fortune to have people infiltrate the Town Halls of Republican Congressmen/women and Senators,” Trump baselessly claimed. “These Great Patriot Politicians should not treat them nicely. Have them immediately ejected from the room – They are disruptors and troublemakers.”

Implying only GOP voters are supposed to attend GOP lawmakers’ town halls, Trump appeared to not know that members of Congress represent all voters, regardless of party.

“You must allow your audience to know what you are up against, or else they will think they are Republicans, and that there is dissension in the Party. There is not, there is only LOVE and UNITY. Republicans are happy with what is taking place in our Country. We all love America!” Trump claimed.

It was not the first time Lawler’s town halls have sparked claims of “oppressive” rules. In 2023, Lawler barred reporters from attending a town hall, also at a public high school.

“Attendees were threatened with expulsion if they recorded Lawler’s exchanges with his constituents or took pictures during the event,” one attendee, a reporter who stated he was “allowed to attend as a constituent in Lawler’s 17th Congressional District, but not as a member of the press.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons

 

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