Media Matters weekly newsletter, June 28

Welcome back to Media Matters’ weekly newsletter. This week:

  • Inside Project 2025’s attack on reproductive rights.
  • A Hitler-promoting antisemite spoke twice alongside Eric and Lara Trump.

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Newsmax: "Newsmax accepts the 2020 election results as legal and final"

This week in stupid

  • Without evidence, Fox’s Jesse Watters accused CNN of “giving Biden the questions” before the presidential debate.
  • Newsmax host Corey Lewandowski: “Does the Democratic Party hate men and is full of bossy women?”

This week in scary

  • Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: Project 2025 framework will carry on for the next 10 years.
  • Fox’s Jeanine Pirro said all undocumented immigrants should be presumed to be violent criminals.
  • Fox contributor Paul Mauro, while discussing migrants: “This has now morphed into biowarfare. These guys are smart weapons, they are bioweapons deployed against America.”
  • War Room host Steve Bannon to Attorney General Merrick Garland: “You’re going to be a target of a massive investigation. You’re going to go from the Supreme Court to prison.”

Excuse me?

  • The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles: “The Trump movement has engaged in virtually no political violence ever.”
  • Trump ally Laura Loomer lobbed racist slurs at Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).
  • The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh told a drag queen afraid to go out in public, “You could just not look like that.”
Project 2025 with an image of congress

Citation Andrea Austria / Media Matters

Monday marked two years since the Supreme Court announced its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, reversing Roe v. Wade and thus stripping women of the federal right to an abortion. That day, Media Matters released a brand new report detailing Project 2025’s assault on reproductive rights, showing how the organizations involved in Project 2025 have advocated for extreme restrictions on reproductive rights and access to health care. This is the most comprehensive deep dive on Project 2025’s partner’s positions on reproductive health in their own words.

Media Matters reviewed the work of Project 2025’s more than 100 partner organizations and found an expansive effort to restrict access to reproductive care. In blogs, public statements, amicus briefs, policy papers, and a broad array of other publications, these groups are united in an extreme effort to roll back reproductive freedom. These partners have collectively called for massive restrictions on access to contraception, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and abortion drugs.

I invite you to read the full report here to see the specifics on how Project 2025 plans to roll back our cherished freedoms in the event of convicted felon Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in November.

We will continue to keep you informed about the threats posed by Project 2025.

Extremist commentator Christiane Northrup promoted a pro-Nazi film that denies the Holocaust, encouraged people to check out the infamous antisemitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory that a secretive mafia is hiding behind Jewish identity to control world events. Nonetheless, she has spoken twice at Trump’s Miami resort alongside Eric and Lara Trump.

Northrup is listed as a “featured” speaker on the pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour. She, along with Eric and Lara Trump — now the co-chair of the Republican National Committee — appeared on the tour’s stops at Trump Doral in Miami, Florida, in May and October 2023. A post for the tour’s next stop in Selma, North Carolina, in October lists Northrup, Eric Trump, and Lara Trump as scheduled speakers.

The tour has become a magnet for Hitler-promoting antisemites. Including Northrup, Media Matters has now identified at least five speakers who have shared antisemitic and pro-Hitler material.

In case you missed it 

  • A Project 2025 partner calls “to stop at nothing until abortion is eradicated.”
  • A Project 2025 partner makes a list of “anti-American bad actors,” echoing MAGA media’s celebration of disgraced Sen. Joe McCarthy.
  • Fox News is airing soft-focus interviews on Fox & Friends with the apparent finalists for the Republican vice presidential nomination and their partners. The interviews demonstrate Fox’s preeminent position in the GOP — and serve as final auditions before an audience of one, Donald Trump.
  • Right-wing media are obsessed with “transvestigations,” a series of contrived accusations that various celebrities and public figures are trans.
  • Fox News misrepresented a Today show segment on electric vehicles to falsely suggest the cars are unreliable in heat.
  • Right-wing media had a meltdown after President Joe Biden issued an executive order to protect undocumented family members of American citizens while they apply for legal status.
  • Fox News is returning to its “migrant crime” fixation as migrant crossings and crime plummet.
  • Eric Trump praised the host of a show affiliated with the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory for providing an “honest voice” for America.
  • A New York Times article about the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s 2022 standards of care draws on emails released by a psychologist who has compared homosexuality to pedophilia and reportedly worked on behalf of an extreme anti-LGBTQ group.