FAIR AND BALANCED, AS USUAL

Here's a New York Times story about the reaction in the states to an information request from the Trump administration's vote suppression commission:

Asked for Voters’ Data, States Give Trump Panel a Bipartisan ‘No’

A White House commission’s sweeping request for the personal and public data of the nation’s 200 million voters set off an avalanche of opposition by state leaders in both parties on Friday, as officials from California to Mississippi called the move an overreach and more than 20 states declared they would not comply....

California, Massachusetts, Virginia, New York and Kentucky all quickly rejected the request. Other states, like Connecticut and Tennessee, said state law barred them from turning over some data. Wisconsin pledged to provide what it legally could, if the commission paid the $12,500 fee charged to anyone who copies the voter rolls.

Kentucky’s secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, said that Mr. Trump’s premise for creating the commission in the first place — that voter fraud was pervasive and needed to be reined in — was itself a fraud.

Here's my favorite detail:

The pushback was bipartisan: The Mississippi secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said Friday that he had not received a request from the commission, but colorfully suggested he would not honor one if it came.

“My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” Mr. Hosemann said in a statement. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”

How bipartisan is this? Ari Berman, who's covering the story for The Nation, tells us:

27 states now opposing Kobach: AZ, CA, CT, IN, KY, MA, MN, MS, MT, NC, NM, ND, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 1, 2017

So what's the lead story at Fox News Politics right now?



From the story, which was posted yesterday afternoon:

Democratic state officials already are refusing to cooperate with the voter fraud investigation ordered by President Trump, saying they will not hand over the extensive “voter roll data” the commission is seeking....

Kobach specified in the letter he would only request “publicly-available voter roll data” under each state’s laws.

Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said in a statement that her office would provide such information “in the spirit of transparency.” But, suggesting some of the requested data would not be sharable under state law, she said she would ensure “the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data.” Merrill also voiced concern that state officials “have not been told precisely what the Commission is looking for.”

Virginia and California were more brazen in their response....

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes – a Democratic official in a state with a Republican governor – also said she does “not intend to release Kentuckians' sensitive personal data to the federal government.”

“Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country,” she said in a statement.

That was a reasonably balanced story when it was written -- but it hasn't been updated to reflect the increasingly bipartisan opposition to the commission's data request. And even though a subsequent Fox story acknowledges that "several secretaries of state, Republican and Democrat, have already bucked the request or said they would only provide limited data," the one that's being promoted -- of course -- is the one that treats this as a purely Democratic revolt.

Just another day at the office for Fox.