One easy way to prove that PBS and NPR are like taxpayer-funded MSNBC is their promotion of radical ranter Elie Mystal of The Nation magazine. On Amanpour & Co. on Friday, Hari Sreenivasan tossed softballs at Mystal for 17 minutes over his new book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America.

On March 24, NPR’s Fresh Air platformed his rage for 36 minutes. Tonya Mosley facilitated the rage: “So your feelings that everything before 1965 is kind of in direct opposition to what America is most proud of. Can you explain that argument a little bit more?”

On PBS (as well as CNN International), Sreenivasan began with his overall thesis that all laws passed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be considered null and void since they were passed under American “apartheid.” On PBS, they also championed his view that the concept of illegal immigration is racist. 

PBS IS MSNBC (and CNN): ‘Amanpour & Co.’ platformed radical crank Elie Mystal for 17 minutes, including his thesis that the concept of illegal immigration has racist and eugenicist roots. pic.twitter.com/Ab9tceUyld
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 4, 2025

SREENIVASAN: You have a whole chapter called, “How Did Immigrants Become Illegal?” You say it was invented basically with the stated intentional goal of keeping America white and Protestant. How do you think we should be approaching it?

MYSTAL: Yes. So, again, throughout my book, I don’t ask people take my word for it, I go back and I look at the actual language from the people who passed the law. In the case of the 1921 Immigration and Nationalization Act, which is what is our foundational immigration law in this country.

This law was — this law heavily relied on the science of America’s leaning eugenicist, Harry Laughlin. So, you know, that’s kind of a problem. And the congressman at the time, as they were passing the law, said that this law was necessary to stop the mongrelization of the white race by the inferior races. I don’t think a law that is based on such obvious and stated bigotry and racism should be allowed to exist today in modern America.

On NPR, Mystal was more energetic about America and Laughlin: “Laughlin would later go on to receive a medal from the then-Nazi-controlled University of Heidelberg for his important scientific contributions to the theory of eugenics. When I say that America exported Nazi eugenics to the Nazis, I’m not being hyperbolic.”

Like many on the Left who argue no person is “illegal,” he wants illegal immigration to be merely a civil offense, like a speeding ticket:

But throwing people in jail, taking them away from their children, throwing their children in jails, or holding pens or concentration camps, or whatever euphemism we’re calling it today, that’s immoral, that’s wrong, and that doesn’t need to happen. And the only reason why that does happen is because the 1921 Immigration and Nationalization Act supported by people with the very most racist intentions possible made it so. Before the 1921 Act, all immigration offenses were civil penalties, not criminal, and they could be again if we repealed that section of that law.

Nobody opposed to Mystal will appear to debate his radical rantings, and his PBS and NPR interviewers are like servants. That’s why these networks shouldn’t be funded by the half of America that votes Republican.