American Citizen Busted Spying for China on U.S. Gets a Deuce

An American citizen has been sentenced to merely two years in prison for acting as an agent of a foreign government within the United States, a development that will surely come as a complete shock to anyone who assumed that was still frowned upon.

Thomas Weir Pauken II, 51, an American citizen who lived and worked in the People’s Republic of China, was sentenced earlier this week to two years in prison and 36 months of supervised release with no overseas travel for acting as an agent of a foreign government within the United States. The no-overseas-travel part is expected to be especially inconvenient for a man whose entire business model depended on flying back and forth like a patriotic courier service for Beijing.

Court documents say that from at least 2019 until February 2026, Pauken, a total scumcrumpet, worked at the direction and control of people he knew worked for the PRC, including a person he met in 2017 identified as “Cathy.” 

Cathy, in the grand tradition of international intrigue, was apparently not just a friendly networking contact who happened to work for Chinese intelligence. 

“Pauken exploited his U.S. citizenship and corresponding ability to travel to the U.S. without restriction in order to support Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operations, recruiting, and gathering of sensitive information from potential assets,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “Pauken betrayed his country for money. The National Security Division is committed to holding accountable anyone who aids or abets Chinese espionage efforts.”

Cathy provided Pauken with taskings, including meeting with potential intelligence assets, providing them with devices such as a laptop and cellphone to communicate with Cathy, providing taskings for the assets on what information was required, and providing Cathy with reports from the assets. In other words, he was the guy who showed up with the complimentary hardware and a list of homework assignments from the Ministry of State Security.

“Thomas Pauken knowingly assisted a foreign adversary in actively subverting the government of the United States for his own financial gain,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Theophani K. Stamos for the Eastern District of Virginia. “This was not an isolated act; Pauken continued his course of conduct to aid China for seven years. It is unconscionable that an American citizen would not only undermine the interests of the United States, but also facilitate others in doing so.”

Pauken received at least $100,000 for his work with Cathy. Cathy also paid for Pauken to travel several times between 2019 and 2025 from China to meet with individuals in the United States who could provide Pauken, and ultimately Cathy and the MSS, with information. 

Seven years of service, multiple recruitment trips, and a six-figure payout: the going rate for selling out the country appears to have been roughly the cost of a nice suburban kitchen remodel. And all he got was two years and some hand-holding when he gets out.

“Thomas Pauken admitted to working at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security to attempt to infiltrate U.S. political circles while also providing new recruitment targets for his Chinese handlers,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. “This case illustrates the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party will go to undermine our democratic institutions, and it also demonstrates the FBI’s resolve to defend the homeland from threats to our national security. 

The sentencing provides a clear warning: anyone operating as an agent of a foreign government against the U.S. will be found by the FBI and held accountable.” At least for a little bit.

Pauken worked for two other people in China whom he met in 2017 and knew as “Richard” and “William.” They told Pauken that reports he wrote for them went to Japan, but Pauken believed they worked for the PRC government. 

Nothing says “plausible deniability” quite like two guys named Richard and William insisting the intel is definitely headed to Tokyo. 

Pauken also sold reports to a group of Chinese individuals from Wuhan who sought information about technology and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Wuhan clients wanted Pauken to find an expert to help them engage in cyber espionage. Because when you already have a guy with a U.S. passport and a side hustle, the natural next step is shopping around for a cyber specialist.

The FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office investigated the case with the assistance of the FBI Washington Field Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gavin R. Tisdale of the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney Eli Ross of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence & Export Control Section are prosecuting the case. 

Currently, Pauken was reportedly reviewing the supervised-release terms and wondering whether “no overseas travel” includes a strongly worded exception for one last debrief with Cathy, who I doubt is a blond.

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House Passes Vote Condemning Socialism

The House passed a resolution condemning socialism on September 1, voting 220–192 with two cowardly members voting as "present."

H.Res.1490, introduced by Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO-5), explicitly condemns socialism in all its forms and names the Democratic Socialists of America as an organization the House opposes. It recommits the House to upholding the U.S. Constitution for some reason that seems to bewilder most Democrats.

The resolution was a key messaging vote for Republicans ahead of November's midterm elections, as the Democratic Socialists of America picked off two House incumbents in Democratic primaries, proving the voters who support this political philosophy actually do get what they deserve, good and hard, but so do the rest of us. 

H.Res.1490 moved through Congress on a compressed timeline. The Rules Committee reported the resolution on August 31 by a 7–4 vote, and it reached the House floor under a closed rule the following day. A closed rule restricts amendments and limits floor debate.

The vote allows the GOP to claim they took action against socialism, a potent talking point in conservative districts and in truth, they did take action against the destructive policies of socialism.

The bill also includes language supporting election integrity measures like the SAVE Act.

The vote was 220-192, with 2 members voting present. All Republicans who voted supported it, joined by 8 Democrats. 192 Democrats voted no.

This was a symbolic, messaging vote ahead of the midterms, following recent primary wins by DSA-aligned candidates. Similar resolutions have passed before (for example, a 2025 concurrent resolution denouncing the “horrors of socialism” passed 285-98).

Unfortunately, although the bill is symbolic, what it denounces is dangerous to living beings, old and young.  

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Calif. coffee shop accused of kicking out Jewish dad, 5-year-old son shutters amid anti-Semitism lawsuits

There is a particular sort of establishment that flatters itself as a sanctuary of conscience. It sells coffee, posts murals, and treats the slaughter of Jews as a branding exercise.

Jerusalem Coffee House in Oakland has now closed its doors, at least for the moment, while its owners prepare for an October federal civil rights trial. The pause is not an act of reflection. It is the consequence of having spent years turning a public café into a checkpoint for Jewish identity.

The Palestinian-owned shop remained shut on Wednesday after announcing it would stop operating after August 23. Three lawsuits allege that it discriminated against Jewish customers, among them a father and his five-year-old son. One of those cases is a Justice Department action under Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, scheduled for trial on October 26. 

A federal judge has already refused to throw it out. The complaint is not complicated. Fathi Abdulrahim Harara and his staff allegedly refused service to Jewish customers wearing Star of David caps and then followed them into the street with insults and threats.

That is the oldest prejudice in the Western world, rehearsed over an espresso machine.The café prefers another story. In an August statement on Substack it blamed its legal troubles on a campaign to silence its politics.

"These lawsuits represent the ongoing efforts of Zionist organizations [read: Jewish organizations] and the federal government to use the courts as a tool to repress free speech and public political commitments to Palestine," it said.

Note the sleight of hand. The Star of David becomes “Zionist harassment.” A father and a child become instruments of the federal government. Israel, the Jewish state that exists because Jews learned what happens when they are left without one, is recast as the aggressor. 

The massacre of October 7, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered more than 1,200 people and dragged children and Americans into Gaza as hostages, is treated as background noise. The Jewish customer who declines to disavow his people is the problem.

Elizabeth Barcohana, the California Republican Party Jewish engagement chair and an attorney, put the inversion with the precision it deserves. "It is ironic that after freely expressing support for terrorism with these beverage names, the café owners appear to now be using the First Amendment as a defense for ejecting two Jewish customers who wore hats with Stars of David on them, in one case calling it a 'violent' hat," she said. "By their own standard, if a hat can be violent, so can an iced tea. The First Amendment protects speech on hats; it does NOT protect businesses open to the public to discriminate against its customers because they're Jews while chasing them in the street shouting 'Jew' at them."

On the one-year anniversary of October 7th, a Palestinian terrorist attack against innocent civilians that killed over 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages including children and Americans, Jerusalem Coffee Shop in Oakland unveiled a new menu celebrating terrorism. Beverage items named 'Iced in Tea Fada' celebrate Intifada (an Arabic call to violence signifying resistance by any means necessary, including terrorism) and 'Sweet Sinwar' honoring the principal architect behind the attack," she added. 

The cowardly shop owner denied that “Sweet Sinwar” referred to the Hamas leader who planned the slaughter, and claimed the October 7 menu launch merely marked its own anniversary. 

One may believe that if one is determined to. The rest of us can read. Intifada is not a flavor. Sinwar was not a pastry chef. Israel’s war in Gaza is the war that any nation would fight after its civilians were hunted in their homes. To name a drink after the architect of that hunt, on the anniversary of the hunt, and then to call a Jewish child’s father a “violent” presence for wearing the symbol of his people, is not speech. It is a confession.

Barcohana hopes the shutdown lasts. "The owners have temporarily closed the coffee shop while they defend this discrimination lawsuit against them," she said. "Hopefully it remains permanently closed."

The Anti-Defamation League and Benesch sued on behalf of Michael Radice, who says he was refused service and subjected to anti-Semitic slurs. The Louis D. Brandeis Center filed a state case for Jonathan Hirsch, ejected with his young son after Harara confronted him over the Star of David. The Justice Department filed in June 2025. When it did, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division stated the law without the usual throat-clearing. "It is illegal, intolerable and reprehensible for any American business open to the public to refuse to serve Jewish customers," she said. "Through our vigorous enforcement of Title II of the Civil Rights Act and other laws prohibiting race and religious discrimination, the Justice Department is committed to combatting anti-Semitism and discrimination and protecting the civil rights of all Americans."

That is the point the café and its chorus refuse to grasp. You may despise Israel. You may chant for Palestine until the cups rattle. You may even, in the moral slum that parts of American progressivism have become, treat Hamas as folklore. What you may not do is open a shop to the public and then decide that Jews, identified by the oldest emblem of their faith and peoplehood, are unfit to sit down. 

Thanks for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee [but not at the Jerusalem Cafe] at any amount if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

Zionism is not a hat crime. It is the name for the Jewish refusal to be murdered again and then lectured about it. Oakland has produced a case study in how anti-Semitism now travels. It arrives as solidarity. It names its drinks after killers. It tells a five-year-old that his father must leave. Then it files the paperwork of martyrdom and calls the courts a Zionist plot. Israel remains the only democracy in its neighborhood and the only state that would have been condemned for surviving October 7. The coffee shop is closed. The argument it made about Jews is not. 

That argument should lose.

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Being a crime junky is not a legal defense

It's one thing to be a crime junky and another thing committing a crime. But it seems like there's a new rule in the world of crime fandom: You can watch as many murder trials as you want, but eventually someone may remind you that the courthouse is not a reality TV set.

Meet Dawn Light, yeah, that's her real name--it isn't a new, improved dishwashing detergent. Light is a retired nurse and self-described “crime junkie” who has allegedly discovered this the hard way after being busted for jury intimidation during the Lindsay Clancy trial.

The charge is aggravated intimidation of a juror, which carries a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years. Apparently, binge-watching murder trials comes with fewer legal protections than Netflix would have you believe.

The “crime junkie” arrested for allegedly filming jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s case was all smiles after she was released Wednesday following a hearing where prosecutors alleged she risked the “sanctity” of the killer mom’s trial.

Light, 56, pleaded not guilty to the charge of aggravated intimidation of a juror in the same courthouse where Clancy’s high-profile triple murder trial has been underway for the past six weeks.

Light, a retired nurse, allegedly pulled her blue Toyota into a “restricted area” of the court premises and filmed and took photos from inside the car as jurors were leaving court Tuesday afternoon, prosecutor Nicole Piacentini claimed.

The prosecutor asked the judge to hold Light on $50,000 bail, keep her away from the court and bar her from posting any video or photos she may have uploaded to the cloud.

Light is a “crime junkie” and supporter of Clancy, an admitted murderer of her three children. Light also attended other high-profile murder trials, including for Alex Murdaugh and Karen Read, she revealed in an interview with CT Insider Wednesday.

Because apparently attending one murder trial is not enough. You need a frequent-flyer program.

When cops approached Light “she was adamant” she wasn’t filming jurors but rather “waiting to see if Lindsay Clancy would come out of the building,” the prosecutor claimed.

Unfortunately, her smartphone apparently had other plans.

But when the cops looked inside her phone, they found a video of jurors walking out in her deleted folder, Piacentini alleged.

Nothing says “I definitely wasn't filming the jurors” quite like allegedly having a video of the jurors sitting in your deleted folder.

Light is a “crime junkie.” Well, congratulations, sweetie. That's a perfectly respectable hobby right up until your hobby apparently turns into a felony.

At that point, you are no longer merely watching the true-crime documentary. You have become part of it.

And this is the problem with turning criminal trials into spectator sports. Some people apparently become so invested in the drama that they forget there are actual laws governing what you can do outside the courtroom.

The jury is supposed to decide the case, the spectators are supposed to spectate, with or without spectacles.

And the person sitting in the blue Toyota is apparently supposed to avoid turning the courthouse parking lot into her own personal episode of Dateline.

How stupid do you have to be to allegedly film jurors during a murder trial, get caught, and then have the evidence sitting in the deleted folder on your phone?

That's not exactly criminal mastermind territory.

That's less Law & Order and more Law & Disorder: Suburban Edition.

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Democrat Senate Nominee Shocked Anyone Would Ban Sharia Before the Camels Arrive

Leave it to a Michigan Democrat running for the U.S. Senate to discover that noticing a legal system with a documented track record of amputations, stonings, and second-class status for women and non-believers is the actual hate crime. 

Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s nominee, took to Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime in late August 2026 to explain that “preemptively” banning Sharia is discriminatory because it singles out a tiny, totally unremarkable community that just happens to be different.

The Visegrad24 graphic [above] making the rounds is a compressed, partisan summary of those comments. The underlying statements are real; the framing and visuals are designed to maximize alarm. 

Sharia itself ranges from personal religious rules (prayer, diet, finance, marriage, property, and punishment) to, in some interpretations and countries, criminal and family law that conflicts with U.S. constitutional rights. U.S. courts already cannot enforce foreign or religious rules that violate the Constitution. 

El-Sayed would like you to stop talking about the second part. 

His exact phrasing from the interview: “When people preemptively go out there and start preemptively passing laws to ban something that’s not happening, what you’re trying to do is target a very small community because they’re different.” Efforts like Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s “seem to me to be deliberately targeting the Muslim community because they’re different.”

He compared personal/religious observance of Sharia to Catholic canon law and said no one is trying to impose Sharia on others, just as no one should impose canon law. 

The Washington Examiner summarized it as El-Sayed saying “‘preemptively’ banning sharia is discriminatory.” This is the same fellow who, in a 2022 speech to CAIR’s Oklahoma chapter, treated a 2010 ballot measure that simply told state courts they could not consider Sharia or foreign law as the moral equivalent of the Trail of Tears, the Tulsa massacre, and the Oklahoma City bombing. He blamed “white supremacy” and “the same exact forces.” 

Fact-checkers (Reuters, PolitiFact) noted he did not call for implementing Sharia as U.S. civil law. They did not note that comparing an anti-Sharia amendment to ethnic cleansing and a fertilizer bomb is the kind of rhetorical flourish that usually gets a man invited back to CAIR events.In 2009, as a young medical student, he told the New York Times he felt a religious “obligation” to live in a Sharia-compliant way (he used a Sharia-compliant mortgage to avoid interest). 

His campaign now insists he supports separation of church and state and opposes writing any religion’s rules into civil law. The rest of us are expected to believe that bull crap and treat the 2009 version and the 2026 version as the same man who has never once noticed that some versions of Sharia do not stay in the prayer rug lane. 

The 1 percent figure gets deployed like a magic shield: How dare you even discuss a legal tradition followed by a sliver of the population? Never mind that slivers have a habit of becoming neighborhoods, then demands for parallel courts, then “sensitivity” training for judges. Catholics have canon law. They have not spent the last twenty years producing headlines about honor violence, polygamy prosecutions, or no-go zones in Western cities. The comparison is doing a lot of work. 

El-Sayed’s position is internally consistent if you accept the premise that any preemptive defense of the Constitution against a specific religious legal code is bigotry by definition. The rest of the country is still allowed to notice that “it’s not happening” is the traditional opening line before it starts happening.

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SCOTUS Gives Trump Ballroom Project a 5-4 Green Light, Roberts Apparently Not Invited to the Grand Opening

WASHINGTON, D.C. | The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to continue construction of the White House ballroom, delivering a 5-4 ruling that apparently means America’s highest court has decided that, yes, presidents are allowed to build things.

In an unsigned 5-4 order, the majority granted an emergency application from the Trump administration, blocking lower court rulings that would have stopped construction on the aboveground portion of the project. At this preliminary stage, the justices concluded that the preservation groups challenging the project had not established that they had standing to sue.

“Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project. We conclude only that, based on the submissions before us, the government is likely to prevail in showing that the Trust lacks Article III standing to challenge the project in federal court and that the remaining stay factors favor relief,” the high court wrote.

In other words, the Supreme Court did not declare Trump’s ballroom legal. It simply decided that the people suing over it had not yet demonstrated that they were legally entitled to stop it.

Four justices disagreed, including Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the court’s liberal wing consisting of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and D.E.I. employee Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Roberts argued that Congress never gave the president permission to undertake the project, an argument that apparently places the White House ballroom somewhere between an unauthorized federal building and an international incident.

“That construction is likely unlawful,” Roberts wrote. “Pursuant to its plenary constitutional authority over the District of Columbia and federal property, Congress has explicitly prohibited the construction of any “building or structure . . . on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.”

Roberts had previously issued an administrative stay on Aug. 21, temporarily blocking the district court’s injunction while the full Supreme Court considered the administration’s request.

Monday’s ruling, however, left Roberts on the losing side of a 5-4 decision, marking another occasion when the Chief Justice found himself standing with the court’s liberal justices while the conservative majority proceeded without him.

“The White House is not just any building, and—when it comes to historic preservation—Hoagland is not just any person. In failing to appreciate as much, the Court misconceives the plaintiff’s injury, allowing the Executive’s likely infringement of the Legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue,” Roberts argued with the liberals.

“Today’s decision is no victory for the separation of powers,” he added.

The administration, meanwhile, considered the ruling a rather substantial victory, particularly since crews are already well into the project and apparently have little interest in waiting around for the judicial system to finish debating whether they are allowed to hold a shovel.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer described the project in a filing as an “integrated military complex” that includes a secure ballroom space that is “vitally required by national security.”

The administration has also argued that the White House needs additional security infrastructure capable of protecting the president and other officials from potential attacks.

Critics, naturally, remain unconvinced.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argued that Trump cannot simply demolish portions of the White House and construct a 90,000-square-foot addition without congressional authorization and the appropriate reviews.

The trust has accused the administration of attempting to “outrun judicial review,” presumably by doing the radical thing known as actually building the building while the lawyers are still arguing about it.

The administration says construction is already approximately 65% complete, with crews working 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

That schedule may explain why the legal battle has become something of a race between construction workers and the federal judiciary.

About $200 million in private donations has reportedly already been spent or committed to the project. Trump initially announced the ballroom after returning to the White House, describing it as a roughly $400 million project financed primarily through private donations.

The administration subsequently demolished the White House’s East Wing last year to make room for the project.

For now, Trump gets to keep building, as will future POTUSs.

And Chief Justice Roberts gets to keep writing dissents.

Somewhere, a ballroom contractor is probably hoping the next Supreme Court order arrives after the drywall goes up.

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JD Vance blasts El-Sayed after he goes after Usha Vance: "Way out of your league"

Vice President JD Vance did not come to metro Detroit to play nice. After Michigan Democratic Anti-Semitic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed decided to take a swipe at the second lady, Vance told him to knock it off and talk about something that actually matters to voters.

Vance implored El-Sayed to focus on policy instead of attacking his wife. 

At a MAGA Inc. rally Monday, JD made it clear he thinks the Democrat’s personal shot is not just cheap. It is strange."I actually think that the people of Michigan think it's kind of weird when you talk about another guy's wife," Vance said. "I think the people of Michigan would like you to talk about the public policy ideas …I think the people of Michigan would like you to talk about how you're going to protect auto workers when you're supporting every single policy that has undercut the wages and jobs of Michigan auto workers your entire life in public service."

Then came the closer. "But whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league," the vice president added.

That was not some random zinger. It was a response to El-Sayed saying "do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no" after Vance suggested that Sharia law would have been an alien concept to his grandfather. 

Critics said the post appeared to take aim at Usha Vance’s Indian heritage. El-Sayed later claimed his point was that Vance seemed to be suggesting some people are "more American" than others because their families have been in the country longer, noting that Vance’s own in-laws are immigrants. Sure. That is the cleanup. 

The original post still read like a cheap ethnic jab at the vice president’s wife. Conservative commentator Ryan Girdusky cut through the spin. "If you’re a rural White American living in Michigan, just remember El-Sayed believes you’re a racist." 

That is the problem with this guy. Instead of explaining why Michigan auto workers should trust a candidate who has spent his public life backing the policies that undercut their jobs, he went after another man’s wife. Vance was happy to bring it back to substance. 

Earlier in his speech, Vance accused El-Sayed of undercutting his support for working people by taking liberal positions on immigration.

"We're here to talk about protecting Michigan truck drivers, but also protecting the safety of every single person who drives on the road with a semi truck, which is all of us," Vance said. "Here's the crazy thing. Just a few years ago, Abdul El-Sayed said that we need to make sure that illegal aliens have driver's licenses in this country. He would love to undercut the wages of American truckers."

In 2018, El-Sayed expressed support for allowing illegal immigrants to obtain standard driver's licenses, though he did not specifically push for those in the country illegally to receive the commercial driver's licenses necessary to operate long-haul trucks. 

Vance still landed the broader point. You do not get to pose as the champion of Michigan truckers while floating licenses for people who should not be here. The two men do overlap on one thing. While Vance and El-Sayed differ in their approaches to immigration, both agree, in principle, that tariffs should be used to benefit American industry. That is about where the common ground ends. 

El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat and will face Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. If Monday was any indication, he would rather talk about Usha Vance than explain how his record helps auto workers. Vance was not having it.The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Monday.

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Nation's Journalists Confirm 98 Percent Win Rate in Trump Administration Qualifies As Mixed Results

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After a tense "Meet the Press" interview that ended about as warmly as a frozen turkey in January, President Donald Trump announced that NBC host Kristen Welker would be reported to the Federal Communications Commission for the grave journalistic crime of describing a 100 percent Senate endorsement record and a 98 percent House endorsement record as "mixed results."

Trump said the remark was not merely sloppy. It was, in his telling, a purposeful assault on the public airwaves themselves.

"Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm," Trump posted on Truth Social.

"How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached," Trump continued. "Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment. Unfortunately, she is not the only one." 

Media mathematicians immediately sprang into action. According to sources inside several newsrooms, a batting average of .980 is now officially categorized as "a little up and down," "kind of a wash," and "not that impressive if you really think about it." One producer explained that if a quarterback completed 98 of 100 passes, the responsible thing would be to lead with the two incompletions and then ask whether the sport of football even works anymore. 

NBC News stood by its host with the kind of institutional loyalty usually reserved for a beloved intern who just set the building on fire. "Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her," an NBC News spokesperson said. 

The remark that triggered the federal complaint did not even occur during Sunday's "Meet the Press" broadcast. Welker offered it earlier that morning on NBC4 Washington, where she predicted Trump would dominate the midterms and then described his endorsement slate as mixed, before citing the Graham win in the next breath. "He’s going to loom large over these midterms. There's no doubt about that. He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries. He's had some mixed results, but most recently, his pick of Senator Darline Graham, of course, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, was successful in her primary battle, so now she takes on Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina," Welker said.

CNN chief media ANALyst Brian Stelter warned that asking a regulator to notice a journalist's wording was a dangerous new chapter in American life, one in which presidents might someday object to being described as losing when they are, inconveniently, winning. 

"Trump is getting more explicit about weaponizing the FCC. This morning he said @kwelkernbc will be ‘reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment’ for saying something he didn’t like about his endorsement record. (By law, the FCC can’t punish Welker.) And that’s not all..." Stelter posted to X.

A Fox News Trump Primary Endorsement Tracker published Thursday found Trump-backed candidates had won all 24 Republican Senate primaries in which he endorsed and 214 of 218 House primaries, producing a 100 percent Senate success rate and a roughly 98 percent House rate. The two victories Trump highlighted came Tuesday. Graham defeated Rep. Ralph Norman in South Carolina’s Senate runoff, while former state Sen. Mike Mazzei defeated Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond by approximately 2,000 votes for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

The same tracker recorded victories for 16 of Trump's 21 gubernatorial picks. His five defeated candidates included Pamela Evette in South Carolina, Mike Lindell in Minnesota and Megan Degenfelder in Wyoming, a combined record that newsrooms treated as proof the era of MAGA dominance was over, hanging by a thread, and also somehow still looming large.

Trump accused news organizations of mining the handful of losses in order to recast a historically lopsided record as a coin flip. "Their new weapon is to say that my 99% SUCCESS Rate on Endorsements, 100% on Senatorial Endorsements (Many of whom were not even given a shot of winning until I Endorsed!), is either a mixed result, or not very good. In actuality, it is, without question, the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics," Trump said.

He closed by appealing directly to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the one man in Washington still expected to treat a 98 percent win rate as something other than a tragedy."The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously," Trump said.

Carr has previously warned broadcasters that news distortion could affect license renewals. The FCC, however, licenses individual stations rather than networks such as NBC, and its published policy requires evidence that a report was deliberately intended to mislead viewers [which it obviously was designed to do], distinguishing deliberate distortion from an inaccuracy or a difference of opinion. 

Newsroom sources said they were already preparing the next day's coverage, in which a 100 percent Senate record would be described as "complicated," a 98 percent House record as "uneven," and the remaining 2 percent as the only number that still counts.

Can anyone seriously believe the media anymore?

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