The Media's Lawfare Enabling
Proverbs 18:17 warned us: the first side to speak sounds right — until someone examines it. The press is betting you won't.
8/28/20262 min read
The Supreme Court keeps handing the Trump administration wins — the White House ballroom, the mail-in voting order, immigration enforcement, personnel firings, DEI. And every time, the press corps runs the same play: shock. Pearls clutched. As if the law itself just got mugged in broad daylight.
Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal says the shock is the act — and it's covering for something.
Here's the machine. The administration does something that offends liberal sensibilities. Interest groups file a lawsuit, sometimes prepackaged. A friendly judge issues an injunction the law doesn't actually support. The press then reports that injunction as if a signature made it true — quoting the litigators and their favorite law professors, and skipping the boring stuff: standing, jurisdiction, merits, precedent. Then a higher court corrects the overreach, and instead of admitting the original ruling was hollow, the reporters decide the higher court must be in the tank for Trump.
The ballroom case is the tell. When the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to halt construction, coverage led with the suit's own claim as settled fact — "no president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House." What the ace legal reporters somehow never mentioned: Judge Neomi Rao's dissent, which noted the Trust likely has no standing at all (its "injury" is one member who walks past and expects to dislike the new building), and that federal law already authorizes the president to fund the "alteration" and "improvement" of the residence. Rao called the Trust's core claim "essentially a Hail Mary pass."
Strassel's kicker: these same reporters do sharp, honest legal analysis when Trump is actually poised to lose — see the emergency tariffs, see birthright citizenship. So the silence isn't ignorance. It's a choice.
FAITH CHECK
"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." — Proverbs 18:17
That verse is the whole con in one line. Lawfare runs on getting you to render a verdict after hearing exactly one side — with a judge's signature slapped on top to make it feel final.
Which is why "test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21) is the entire Faith Check discipline. Notice what it does not say: trust the expert, trust the robe, trust the byline. It says test the claim.
Because here's what's actually happening, and it cuts deeper than "media bias." A judge can bear false witness in a robe. A reporter can bear false witness with a byline. The Ninth Commandment — "You shall not bear false witness" (Exodus 20:16) — doesn't come with a bar card or a press pass exemption. An injunction the law can't hold up is still a false witness; it just has better handwriting.
And don't overcorrect into the opposite ditch — deciding every judge is crooked and every headline is a lie. That's not discernment, that's just switching jerseys. "Test everything" means you weigh the actual thing: the standing, the statute, the precedent, the part they left out. "Hold fast what is good" means once the truth survives examination, you plant your flag there — not on your team, on the truth.
A lie in a robe is still a lie. A lie in a byline is still a lie. Examine every case that walks in the door — then hold the ground where the truth actually stands.
Based on reporting by Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27, 2026.
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