Ironically, I had posted this cartoon on Facebook yesterday:

The CNN headline is a wonderful example of the Axis deliberately blurring correlation with causation. Apparently, it was too deceitful even for CNN. Later, the now totally untrustworthy “Most Trusted Name In News” network pulled the headline, explaining via tweet,

Full tweet: “In January 2025, the Trump administration cut off funding for a long-running natural hazards program that aimed to identify and monitor landslide hotspots in Nepal. While the program the administration cut would not have been able to prevent the disaster that happened this past week, it represented a first step towards making those kinds of protections possible in a future where they are going to be needed more.

“CLARIFICATION: This headline and story have been updated to better reflect the extent of the Project SERVIR-Hindu Kush Himalaya program.”

That tweet is deceitful and unethical too:

1. CNN uses “long-running” to imply that the program was valid, necessary, and a good use of funds. The fact that it has been going on so long—I’d love to see the total expenditures from the beginning—doesn’t prove the program was something the U.S. should have spent taxpayer funds on. This is a variation on Rationalization Numero Uno: “Everybody Does it“: “We’ve done it for a long time, so it must be good.”

2. “While the program the administration cut would not have been able to prevent the disaster that happened this past week..” Full stop. Then the Trump Administration shouldn’t have been mentioned in the story at all, much less in the headline.

3. “…in a future where they are going to be needed more.” Of course: more climate change fearmongering and propaganda! Oh, are they? Prove it. Then tell us when “they are going to be needed more,” and why Nepal should get such speculative funds from the U.S. rather than have them spent on our hypothetical climate change apocalypse needs.

4. And the revised headline still connects the Nepal disaster to the Trump Administration.

5.”This headline and story have been updated to better reflect…” Utter equivocation. The new headline isn’t that much better than the first one, either.

Commenter JDkazoo, a relatively open-minded George Mason prof, abandoned EA in January because I wouldn’t swallow the Left’s attempts to demonize I.C.E., so I don’t feel bad about chiding him. He actually wrote once that he didn’t think the news media is biased, back before I concluded that I would ban anyone who asserted that on the grounds that it was gaslighting. If JD is still out there, I’d challenge him to explain CNN’s coverage of the flooding in Nepal as anything but flagrant bias.

Oh, I know what he’d say, because I get the same answer whenever I confront a Trump Derangement sufferer with similar Axis misconduct: “Okay, that may have been bad, but…“

There are no buts about it. CNN and its Axis fellow travelers are working hard to rig this national election as they tried to rig every national election since 2008.