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** 1. When silence becomes policy at the Philadelphia Inquirer ([link removed])
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By Terry Tracy

At some point, editorial omission stops being incidental. It becomes patterned, predictable, and eventually, it becomes policy.

The modern debate over media bias too often fails to engage this reality.

It focuses on tone — whether coverage leans to the political left or right — while overlooking the more consequential decision: selection. Editors decide what to cover, what to ignore, and what never reaches publication. Those decisions define the boundaries of public attention.

That is where power operates.

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, the exercise of that power reveals a consistent pattern. Scrutiny does not distribute evenly. Omission does the real work.

Why It Matters. Consider the administration of Governor Josh Shapiro.


Other outlets have reported on a taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlement involving former cabinet secretary Mike Vereb. They have also examined litigation over whether the administration preserved a tranche of government emails belonging to the accuser, as required under state law.


The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editors have not once pressed this question. That absence is not neutral. It is a decision.

Instead, the paper has prioritized human-interest features, including recent front page retrospective coverage of the governor’s high school basketball team.

Those stories are not inappropriate in isolation. But the editorial threshold appears unusually flexible — high enough to exclude questions about missing public records, and low enough to accommodate a well-lit memory of a high school basketball game.

That is not an accident.

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 2. ‘Democracy is on the ballot?’ Don’t believe a word of it. ([link removed])
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By Kyle Sammin


As candidate Donald Trump clung to a steady polling lead in 2024, first against doddering old Joe Biden, then against the briefly popular Kamala Harris, we heard a lot of the same slogans Democrats used in 2016 and 2020.

“Democracy is on the ballot.”

“Character counts.”

“Country before party.”

We’re not even halfway through Trump’s second term and the people of Virginia have done us the favor of proving that they never once believed a word of those bumper-sticker phrases.

Why It Matters. If character mattered, if decency made a difference, they would never have elected Jay Jones as Attorney General in 2025.


While less salacious, the Virginia Democrats’ dishonesty this week is just as dangerous for democracy as electing deranged attorneys with sick revenge fantasies. On Tuesday,51 percent of Virginia ([link removed]) voted themselves 91 percent of the congressional seats in a dubiously legal referendum to gerrymander the state as grotesquely as any state at any time in this country’s history.

That’s democracy, I guess — in the sense that democracy is two foxes and a hen voting on what’s for dinner.

Democracy was on the ballot, and it lost.

Politician after Democratic politician who had campaigned against gerrymandering in the past now turned on a dime to do the same thing — and then some — once they held the governor’s office and a bare majority in the legislature. They barely even attempted to explain their hypocrisy. It was a pure power move. “It’s OK when we do it — because of Trump.”

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 3. Lightning Round
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* From the Editors: The Commonwealth Court wants to compel complicity in abortion ([link removed])
* Beth Ann Rosica: Fairness for women — or fairness at women’s expense? ([link removed])
* Linda Stein: Introducing The Elephant in the Room ([link removed])
* Ben Mannes: From SPLC to ActBlue, scrutiny grows over political fundraising networks ([link removed])
* Guy Ciarrocchi: Different goals, different values, and different facts — our deep national divide ([link removed])
* Paul Davis: The Russians are coming to a computer near you ([link removed])
* Thom Nickels: The CAPA controversy and the culture of public dress ([link removed])
* Jeff Hurvitz: NASA and democracy ([link removed])


** 4. What we're reading
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The breadth and depth of the corruption in this country is shocking at times, even to conservatives. From the mass welfare fraud in Minnesota (and here!) to the cost overruns in California (so big and so frequent that they can’t be by accident) it seems like our government keeps spending money without a smidgen of accountability.


This week at UnHerd ([link removed]) , Ryan Zickgraf writes from Harrisburg about how ordinary Americans like him are brushing up against this crookedness all the time – and that many just take it for granted now.


“Sure, it’s nothing novel, politics has always been thick with grifters,” he writes. “What’s new is the pervasiveness of the corruption. Indeed, we are living in a new Gilded Age of greasy palms in America.”



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With gratitude,


— The Editors at Broad + Liberty




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