Politics in the year after a presidential election are typically focused on local and statewide contests.
But the races decided on Tuesday — which include a pivotal mayoral contest in New York and California’s referendum on congressional redistricting — will have national implications. The gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey will be a report card on President Trump’s second term.
As a result, cable news will be paying special attention. The races will also serve as an important test run for a couple of cable news networks in transition.
“This is the first election of the 2026 midterms, and we know what happens 30 seconds after the mid-terms are over — 2028 starts in earnest,” said Chris Stirewalt, political editor for Nexstar Media Group’s NewsNation. “In New Jersey and Virginia, you have two states that look a lot like the country as a whole. President Trump’s approval ratings in those places is about the same as it is nationally.”
MSNBC will be covering its first election night without the resources of NBC News. The progressive-leaning network — which changes its name to MS NOW on Nov. 15 — is being spun off by parent company Comcast into a new entity called Versant.
NBC News no longer shares correspondents or analysts with MSNBC. The channel’s line-up of opinion hosts including Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace, Ari Melber and Lawrence O’Donnell remains intact.
Loyal MSNBC viewers will notice that election data maven Steve Kornacki will not be crunching numbers on his big board. Kornacki signed a new deal last year with NBC, where he works for the news and sports divisions.
Kornacki will be a part of the network’s coverage on NBC News Now, its free streaming channel. “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas is leading the coverage with Hallie Jackson, the network’s senior Washington correspondent; and “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi will take on the voter analysis duties previously held down by Kornacki. The network said it will have 15 correspondents reporting throughout the country, including West Coast-based Jacob Soboroff delivering analysis on TikTok.
While CNN will have its usual array of anchors and experts led by anchor Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett, the network will also offer an alternative streaming feed featuring its analyst Harry Enten alongside conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and “The Breakfast Club” radio host Charlamagne tha God.
“CNN Election Livecast” will be only be available from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Pacific to subscribers of CNN All Access. The program will be a discussion of the results presented as “a more casual option” for viewers, according to a representative for the network.
The feed will mark the first time CNN, owned by Warner Bros. Discover, has produced full-scale live coverage exclusively for a streaming audience.
Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier of Fox News
(Fox News)
Fox News will rely on anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for a special telecast at 10 p.m. Eastern and 7 p.m. Pacific, pre-empting its comedic talk show “Gutfeld!”
The 2025 election night will also mark a change in calling the results. All of the major broadcast networks and cable channels will be using data analysis from the Associated Press, which teamed with Fox News and NORC at the University of Chicago several years ago to create an alternative to the research company used by CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN.
Starting Tuesday, all five networks will get voting results at the same time.
Leland Vittert, Elizabeth Vargas and Chris Cuomo will anchor election night coverage for NewsNation.
(NewsNation)
The exception is Nexstar Media Group’s NewsNation, which will use Decision Desk HQ to call its races during its coverage co-anchored by Stirewalt, Chris Cuomo, Leland Vittert and Elizabeth Vargas. The service was the first to call the results of the 2024 presidential election, beating the competition by 15 minutes.
The ability to call the races sooner means more time for analysis, which is expected to lean heavily into what the results say about the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential campaign.
Stirewalt said the night has the potential to set up the political plot lines of the next two years. He believes the passage of Proposition 50 in California and a victory for New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani would elevate Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as 2028 presidential contenders.
“That’s would be a big feather in the cap for AOC, who can say that she’s leading a movement,” Stirewalt said. “Gavin Newsom gets to ring the bell. He gets to say ‘I won. I did something that was controversial. I took it to Donald Trump. I’m delivering a win.’”
Before the shooting, Susan Lorincz had often complained about AJ’s children, who would play in an open field near her apartment.
She would call them derogatory names and racial slurs, but things came to a head on June 2, 2023, after AJ went to Lorincz’s apartment to confront her following a reported incident involving one of her sons.
When AJ knocked and shouted for Lorincz to open the door, Lorincz fired a single shot through the locked door and it killed the 35-year-old mother. Lorincz claimed it was in self-defence, but she was eventually charged with manslaughter and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
To this day, AJ’s death has had a harrowing impact on her children – Isaac, Israel, Afrika and Titus – and their lives.
Israel was standing next to his mother when she was shot and he was just nine years old at the time.
Isaac, her eldest son, also witnessed the shooting and called 911, running to a neighbour’s house to get help.
Heartbreakingly, Israel and Isaac have both admitted to feeling responsible for their mother’s death.
On the one-year anniversary of her death, AJ’s children recited a poem at a memorial service.
Ever since, the children have been raised by their grandmother, Pamela Dias.
Dias revealed the impact AJ’s death has had on the children, saying Isaac has been in trauma therapy, according to People.com.
She was also researching counselling for Israel, while sharing how Titus, who was just a toddler when his mother died, was “confused, irritable and inconsolable” in the weeks after.
She told CNN in October 2025: “It’s been very hard for the children – they were very young when they lost their mother, and it’s something no child should have to endure.
“At the same time, they’ve shown strength and resilience that continues to amaze me.
“I can see the values my daughter instilled in them – her kindness, her love, her faith – and that means they carry a piece of her wherever they go.”
Dias has since co-founded a non-profit organisation in honour of her daughter called the Standing in the Gap Fund, which aims to support families impacted by gun and racial violence and to fight for legislative change.
CNN is taking another shot at launching a direct-to-consumer streaming service that will make much of the channel’s news programming available without a pay TV subscription.
The unit of Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday it will launch an All Access subscription tier for CNN.com available for $6.99 a month starting Oct. 28. The service will provide what the company describes as “a selection” of live programming on CNN and CNN International.
The service will also have exclusive on-demand programming and a library of titles from CNN Films and CNN Original Series.
The All Access subscription will be be offered at $69.99 annually, but will carry an introductory price of $41.99 for the first year for customers signing up by Jan. 5.
The announcement comes two years after Mark Thompson took over as chief executive of the network with a mandate to guide the channel into a digital post-cable future.
CNN launched a direct-to-consumer service in 2022 called CNN+, made up of original programming featuring its current talent line-up and new additions including Audie Cornish, Chris Wallace and Kasie Hunt. But the service was shut down nine days after launch following WBD’s takeover of the network, as new management was focused on reducing debt.
CNN has seen profits decline significantly over the last five years as cord-cutting has driven down revenues received from cable and satellite companies carrying the channel.
The cable channel also saw a significant decline in ratings after WBD took over ownership of the network and executives pushed for the network to appeal more to conservative viewers.
Thompson has made few changes to the CNN program line-up as his team has focused on its digital properties. Thompson and Alex MacCallum, executive vice president of digital products and services, were both at the New York Times when the company transformed into a successful digital subscription-based news business.
In a statement, MacCallum said the All Access launch is “an essential step in CNN’s evolution as we work to give audiences the complete CNN experience in a format that reflects how audiences engage with the news today.”
CNN introduced a paywall on its website last year, giving users unfettered access to articles and video on the site for $3.99 a month. Response to the preliminary phase was encouraging, according to people inside the network who were not authorized to comment publicly.
Cable subscribers will also get the new streaming service for free.
Fox News is currently the only major cable news channel available without a pay TV subscription. The channel is offered on Fox One, the recently launched streaming service that also offers local Fox broadcast affiliates for $19.99 a month.
WASHINGTON — Republican and Democratic lawmakers at an impasse on reopening the federal government provided few public signs Sunday of meaningful negotiations talking place to end what has so far been a five-day shutdown.
Leaders in both parties are betting that public sentiment has swung their way, putting pressure on the other side to compromise. Democrats are insisting on renewing subsidies to cover health insurance costs for millions of households, while President Trump wants to preserve existing spending levels and is threatening to permanently fire federal workers if the government remains closed.
The squabble comes at a moment of troubling economic uncertainty. While the U.S. economy has continued to grow this year, hiring has slowed and inflation remains elevated as Trump’s import taxes have created a series of disruptions for businesses. At the same time, there is a recognition that the nearly $2-trillion annual budget deficit is financially unsustainable, and reducing it would require a coalition in support of potential tax increases and spending cuts.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, among those appearing on the Sunday news shows, said there have been no talks with Republican leaders since their White House meeting Monday.
“And unfortunately, since that point in time, Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent,” said Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “And what we’ve seen is negotiation through deepfake videos, the House canceling votes, and of course President Trump spending yesterday on the golf course. That’s not responsible behavior.”
Trump was asked via text message by CNN’s Jake Tapper about shutdown talks. The Republican president responded with confidence but no details.
“We are winning and cutting costs big time,” Trump said in a text message, according to CNN.
His administration sees the shutdown as an opening to wield greater power over the budget, with multiple officials saying they will save money as workers are furloughed by imposing permanent job cuts on thousands of government workers, a tactic that has never been used before.
Even though it would be Trump’s decision, he believes he can put the blame on the Democrats for the layoffs because of the shutdown.
“It’s up to them,” Trump told reporters Sunday morning before boarding the presidential helicopter. “Anybody laid off, that’s because of the Democrats.”
Republicans on Sunday argued that the administration would take no pleasure in letting go of federal workers, even though the GOP has put funding on hold for infrastructure and energy projects in Democratic areas.
“We haven’t seen the details yet about what’s happening” with layoffs, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on NBC. “But it is a regrettable situation that the president does not want.”
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said that the administration wants to avoid the layoffs it had indicated might start last week, after a Friday deadline came and went without any decisions being announced.
“We want the Democrats to come forward and to make a deal that’s a clean, continuing resolution that gives us seven more weeks to talk about these things,” Hassett said on CNN. “But the bottom line is that with Republicans in control, the Republicans have a lot more power over the outcome than the Democrats.”
Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California defended his party’s stance on the shutdown, saying on NBC that the possible increase in healthcare costs for “millions of Americans” would make insurance unaffordable in what he called a “crisis.”
But Schiff also noted that the Trump administration has withheld congressionally approved spending from being used, essentially undermining the value of Democrats’ seeking compromises on the budgets as the White House could decline to not honor Congress’ wishes. The Trump administration sent Congress roughly $4.9 billion in “ pocket rescissions” on foreign aid, a process that meant the spending was withheld without time for Congress to weigh in before the previous fiscal year ended last week.
“We need both to address the healthcare crisis and we need some written assurance in the law, I won’t take a promise, that they’re not going to renege on any deal we make,” Schiff said.
The television appearances indicated that Democrats and Republicans are busy talking, deploying internet memes against each other that have raised concerns about whether it’s possible to negotiate in good faith.
Vice President JD Vance said that a video putting Jeffries in a sombrero and thick mustache was simply a joke, even though it came across as racist mocking as Republicans insist that the Democratic demands would lead to healthcare spending on immigrants in the country illegally, a claim that Democrats dispute.
Immigrants in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for any federal healthcare programs, including insurance provided through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. Still, hospitals do receive Medicaid reimbursements for emergency care that they are obligated to provide to people who meet other Medicaid eligibility requirements but do not have an eligible immigration status.
The challenge is that the two parties do not appear to be having productive conversations with each other in private, even as Republicans insist they are in conversation with their Democratic colleagues.
On Friday, a Senate vote to advance a Republican bill that would reopen the government failed to notch the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster. Johnson said the House would close for legislative business this week, a strategy that could obligate the Senate to work with the government funding bill that was passed by House Republicans.
“Johnson’s not serious about this,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on CBS. “He sent his all his congressman home last week and home this week. How are you going to negotiate?”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Sunday that the shutdown on discretionary spending, the furloughing of federal workers and requirements that other federal employees work without pay will go on so long as Democrats vote no.
“They’ll get another chance on Monday to vote again,” said Thune on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“And I’m hoping that some of them have a change of heart,” he said.
A longtime partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly, Barnett was the go-to lawyer for politicians and public officials moving into private life
Robert Barnett, a Washington attorney who represented powerful politicians and many of the biggest stars in TV news business, died Friday after a long, unspecified illness. He was 79.
Barnett’s death in a Washington hospital was confirmed by his wife, retired CBS News correspondent Rita Braver.
A longtime partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly, Barnett was the go-to lawyer for politicians and public officials moving into private life. He helped procure multimillion-dollar book contracts for former Presidents Obama, Clinton and George W. Bush.
Barnett was a Democratic political insider as well. He would play opposing candidates in mock debates to help prepare the presidential tickets of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, Hillary Clinton when she first ran for president in 2008, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
“I baited [Ferraro] a lot and she got so angry with me that she frequently walked over to me and slugged me on the arm,” Barnett told CNN in 2008. “So I left the process black and blue.”
Barnett was also Bill Clinton’s debate sparring partner during the 1992 presidential campaign. He also advised the Clintons when White House aide and family friend Vince Foster killed himself in 1993 and when the world learned that Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Barnett’s TV news client list included former NBC News anchor Brian Williams, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, Chris Wallace, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, and Jesse Watters and Peter Doocy at Fox News. He also represented his wife, whom he married in 1972.
As an attorney, Barnett was known for his ability to come up with deals tailored to the needs of his clients.
“Many of these people who come out of government have an enormous number of offers,” Barnett told the Financial Times in 2008. “The first thing we do is sit down and say: ‘What are your goals? Do you want to live here or there? You wanna make money or have fun?’”
One reason many clients gravitated to Barnett is that, unlike agents, he did not take a commission. They paid a high hourly rate for his services, not the traditional agent fees of 10% to 15% of salaries or book advances.
Barnett’s clients believed he gave them 100% regardless of their stature.
“Bob represented me in my negotiations with ABC and made me feel just as important as his more celebrated clients,” retired correspondent Judy Muller wrote on Facebook. “A really decent, smart man.”
The sentiment was shared by CBS News Executive Editor Susan Zirinsky.
“Every person who worked with Bob knew their secrets were safe,” Zirinsky said in an interview. “He was the ultimate protector.”
Barnett also drew praise from the companies that paid the lucrative contracts for his TV clients.
“His pristine integrity, wise counsel and knowledge of our business were an invaluable resource to me over the course of our 30-year relationship,” Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, said in a statement.
Barnett also represented bestselling authors James Patterson and Mary Higgins Clark.
Barnett was born in Waukegan, Ill., where his father operated the local Social Security office and his mother worked part time in a department store. He majored in political science at the University of Wisconsin and received a law degree from the University of Chicago.
He moved to Washington in the early 1970s. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White and worked as an aide to then-Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota. He joined Williams & Connolly in 1975, and was made a partner three years later.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Meredith Barnett; a sister; and three grandchildren.
Now you can be a cord-cutter and a TV news junkie too.
That’s because consumers who are giving up pay TV are finding a growing array of options outside the cable bundle providing national and local news.
Look up at the screen at the local nail salon or bagel shop, and where you once might have seen CNN, Fox News or CNBC might be a free channel serving up headlines.
For purveyors of TV news, the streaming channels have become a bigger part of their future as the habit of traditional viewing fades and a new generation relies on information from TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms.
More consumers are discovering national and local news content on what the media industry calls free ad-supported streaming television — or FAST — channels. Internet-connected television sets with free streaming TV platforms such as Tubi, Pluto TV, Roku and Samsung TV Plus built into them are making the offerings easier to find.
Ethan Cramer-Flood, a principal forecast writer for the media research firm Emarketer, tracks the growth of FAST channels. But it wasn’t until he recently cut the cord himself that he realized he could get his local news from New York stations such as WABC-TV anytime he wanted streamed through his Roku device.
“After cutting the cord, one of the things I had been missing was news,” Cramer-Flood said. “The channels are all right there. They are showing their news segments and newscasts all day long. You can just go on it and catch a half-hour.”
The news-viewing habit is growing as FAST channel usage steadily increases. Emarketer data put the number of U.S. consumers watching FAST at 116.8 million, and the figure is projected to reach 130 million by the end of the decade.
Cramer-Flood said that internet-connected TV sets are making FAST channels as convenient to watch as cable channels.
“The barrier to entry is zero,” Cramer-Flood said. “They don’t even make you sign up. It doesn’t cost anything. In one click you’re in the same exact experience as cable.”
Broadcast networks including ABC, CBS and NBC and TV station ownership groups such as Fox, Nexstar and Scripps have had streaming news channels for years, enabling them to reach younger viewers who have turned away from traditional television. They carry repeats of TV newscasts, morning shows and newsmagazines, but over time have added original streaming programs as well, where emerging on-air talent can get experience at the anchor desk.
“NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas put in four years at streaming channel NBC News Now before taking over for Lester Holt in June. But he has remained with his nightly streaming newscast, “Top Story,” to maintain a presence with an audience that is about 20 years younger than the one watching traditional TV.
ABC News chose Linsey Davis, the anchor of its signature streaming news program on ABC News Live, to be co-moderator of its 2024 presidential debate alongside David Muir of “World News Tonight.”
As the audience migration to streaming continues, outlets such as CNN and BBC News are joining the FAST channel fray even though they are still dependent on pay TV revenue.
CNN recently launched CNN Headlines, a free streaming channel that provides fast-paced delivery of national and international stories culled from the network’s reporting. There are no live guests, panel discussions or debates that are a trademark of the flagship cable channel. The channel’s lead anchor, Brad Smith, is often seen in a leather jacket rather than a suit and tie, a nod to the notion that the conventions of traditional TV news are less important to younger viewers.
“It’s more informal than it is on cable,” Eric Sherling, executive vice president, U.S. programming for CNN.
The arrival of CNN Headlines comes ahead of the network’s plans to offer a subscription-based direct-to-consumer product that will give consumers the chance to get CNN’s cable feed without a pay TV subscription for the first time.
Sherling said the two services will appeal to different audiences, with CNN Headline viewers looking for brevity while paying customers get the breadth and depth they expect from the cable channel.
CNN Headlines replaced a previous FAST channel that played segments that aired on cable. It was barely curated, but “a ton of people watched it,” Sherling said.
Early response to CNN Headlines has been strong, the network said, reaching 30 million users a month and more than 2 million daily.
Viewers have also quickly discovered a streaming version of BBC News, which is distributed on cable in the U.S. by AMC Networks. The service hit a high of 258.5 million streamed minutes in June, up 153% from the same month in 2024, according to AMC’s data.
AMC Networks has been aggressive in putting its programming on FAST channels, as cord-cutting puts the squeeze on its cable outlets. The company has 20 FAST channels in all, with BBC News being the latest entry.
The stream is identical to the BBC News feed offered to pay TV subscribers. But Amy Leasca, executive vice president of partner management for AMC Networks, said the company hasn’t seen any cannibalization of the cable audience.
BBC News presenters Caitríona Perry, left, and Sumi Somaskanda in Washington, D.C.
(AMC Networks)
Data indicate streaming viewers are showing up for specific scheduled programs on BBC News, mirroring the habits of traditional TV users, Leasca said.
Fox Television Stations takes a different approach with LiveNOW, a channel that delivers raw footage of breaking news coverage, with on-air journalists who are there to guide viewers from one event to the next. The video journalists deliver straightforward introductions of live video without commentary.
President Trump addressing Congress on March 4, 2025.
(Fox Television Stations)
“There are no prompters or scripts,” said Emily Stone, vice president of digital content and LiveNOW at Fox Television Stations.
Most companies release sparse internal data on exactly how many viewers are watching their FAST news channels. But LiveNOW puts its viewing numbers right on the screen in real time. Jeff Zellmer, executive vice president of digital operations for Fox Television, said the figures help the service determine what to cover.
On Friday, LiveNOW showed an empty lectern ahead of the press conference announcing the arrest of the alleged shooter of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The screen showed more than 345,000 were watching, and it surged to 400,000 when law enforcement officials took the microphone.
LiveNOW’s reached its largest audience in February when its coverage of President Trump’s address to Congress in hit 1.95 million viewers
LiveNOW started as an experiment in 2014 when Fox Television Stations President Jack Abernethy challenged his outlets to come up with a low-cost streaming service using their existing resources.
“The Phoenix station decided they were going to start a YouTube channel and put a person in front of a switcher with a bunch of live feeds and see what happens,” Stone said.
The stream showed live coverage of local events and picked up an occasional car chase from California.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic and protests over the police killing of George Floyd hit in 2020, the public was desperate for up-to-date information from officials. LiveNOW gained a following.
“There was a press conference every second from every city,” Zellner said.
LiveNOW’s video journalists are not the high-paid anchors that have long been the staple of network news. The 10 staffers who run the operation toil on minimalist sets in Phoenix and Tampa, Fla., which helps keep the service profitable.
Kate O’Brian, who oversaw Scripps’ streaming news operation until late last year, said the less formal approach of streaming news channels is likely to be the norm going forward.
“I think there’s something viewers appreciate about the unvarnished part of it,” O’Brian said. “It doesn’t look pretty sometimes. But I think post-pandemic — when every reporter was sitting in their basement or their garage — the audience’s patience and adaptability completely changed.”
CNN has hired veteran California political reporter and anchor Elex Michaelson to lead a new late-night newscast based in the Los Angeles area.
The network announced Thursday that Michaelson, who left Fox’s L.A. station KTTV last month, will helm a nightly two-hour live broadcast from CNN’s studios on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank starting in mid-October.
The program will air from 9 to 11 p.m. on the West Coast and midnight to 2 a.m. in the east. It will also be carried on CNN International in Europe and Asia.
Michaelson told The Times in an interview that he first pitched the idea of live program for West Coast prime-time viewers to CNN executives 4½ years ago. They passed.
“Sometimes good things happen to those who wait,” Michaelson said.
The timing may be advantageous this time around as California Gov. Gavin Newsom has become an increasingly prominent national political figure with his direct challenges to and social media mockery of President Trump.
Newsom is seen as a potential leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Eyes will also be on L.A.-based former Vice President Kamala Harris, who could also make another run for the White House.
Fox 11 anchor Elex Michaelson and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eating Michaelson’s mom’s baked good at a prior event.
(Elex Michaelson)
Michaelson believes he has interviewed Newsom more than any other TV journalist in the state. Along with his duties as anchor of KTTV’s evening and late-night newscasts, he hosted “The Issue Is,” a weekly program devoted mostly to California issues that aired on several Fox-owned TV stations in the state.
Michaelson’s CNN program, which does not yet have a title, will be the only live cable news show in the post-midnight time slot. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all currently run repeats in those hours because the number of homes watching television drops off dramatically after 11 p.m. Eastern.
Michaelson’s program will be the first CNN show to be based in Los Angeles since “Larry King Live” ended its run in 2010. “Fox News @ Night,” the nightly newscast anchored by Trace Gallagher that airs at 11 p.m. Eastern and 8 p.m. Pacific, is the only other national cable news show produced in the city.
Earlier this year, CNN offered the after-midnight shift to Washington-based anchor Jim Acosta, who was a high-profile antagonist of President Trump during his tenure as White House correspondent.
Acosta was holding down a midday hour at the time, and the proposed move to midnight was largely viewed as a demotion and a capitulation to Trump in his second term. The plan was presented after Warner Bros. Discovery executives signaled that CNN needed to increase its appeal to Republican viewers.
The appointment of Michaelson gives the late-night CNN program a clearer editorial rationale. A native of Agoura Hills, Michaelson has spent his entire journalism career in Southern California, where he is a well-known figure.
Michaelson said his presence in Los Angeles will enable to him to book “West Coast thought leaders in politics, entertainment, technology, sports and more.”
Michaelson’s program will launch a few weeks before Californians vote on a proposal to redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts.
“The showdown on Nov. 4 over the issue of redistricting could determine who controls the U.S. House next year and whether there is actually a check and balance on the Trump administration,” Michaelson said. “Although it’s a fight in California, the impact will be felt not just around the country but around the world.”
Michaelson is known for thanking guests who appeared on “The Issue Is” with fresh baked goods from his mother’s kitchen.
He acknowledged that the tradition will be difficult to maintain with a nightly two-hour program featuring multiple guests. “We may need to revise that,” he said.
WASHINGTON — The man who oversees the nation’s military reposted a video about a Christian nationalist church that included various pastors saying women should no longer be allowed to vote and should “submit” to their husbands.
The extraordinary repost on X from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, made Thursday night, illustrates his deep and personal connection to a Christian nationalist pastor with extreme views on the role of religion and women.
In the post, Hegseth commented on an almost seven-minute-long report by CNN examining Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC. The report featured various pastors of the denomination advocating the repeal of women’s right to vote from the Constitution and parishioners saying that women should “submit” to their husbands.
Hegseth’s post received more than 12,000 likes and 2,000 shares on X. Some users agreed with the pastors in the video, while others expressed alarm at the Defense secretary promoting Christian nationalist ideas.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday that Hegseth is “a proud member of a church” that is affiliated with CREC and he “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”
In May, Hegseth invited his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger, to the Pentagon to lead the first of several Christian prayer services that Hegseth has held inside the government building during working hours. Defense Department employees and service members said they received invitations to the event in their government emails.
“I’d like to see the nation be a Christian nation, and I’d like to see the world be a Christian world,” Wilson said in the CNN report.
Toropin writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press journalists Mike Pesoli in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
Hunter Biden finally made news outside the MAGA mediasphere for something that’s usually the work of Fox News and other deep state disseminators: He verbally bashed the Democratic Party, CNN’s Jake Tapper, former Obama aides and even Hollywood’s devastatingly handsome ambassador George Clooney.
President Biden’s son, whose very name inspires a Pavlovian response among right-wing conspiracy theorists, appears to have pulled a page from the opposition’s playbook when during two recent interviews he leaned into grievance politics, repeatedly hurled expletives and condemned those who “did not remain loyal” to his father.
Hunter Biden’s first round of interviews since the 2024 election started out tame enough when last week on a new podcast hosted by Jaime Harrison, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he said that Democrats lost to Donald Trump because they abandoned his father. There was no “grand conspiracy” to hide his father’s health issues, he said. “We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party. That’s my position. We had the advantage of incumbency, we had the advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down.”
Fair enough. Then it was on to Clooney, one of the first high-profile figures on the left to call for Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign after a disastrous debate performance. Hunter Biden disparagingly referred to the actor as “a brand” and told Harrison, “Do you think in Middle America, that voter in Green Bay, Wis., gives a s— what George Clooney thinks about who she should vote for?”
Then came the knockout punch. In a separate, three-hour-plus interview released Monday with YouTuber Andrew Callaghan, he said of the star: “George Clooney is not a f— actor. He is a f—, I don’t know what he is. He’s a brand. … F— him and everybody around him.”
George Clooney was among Kennedy Center honorees welcomed by President Biden at the White House on Dec. 4, 2022.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)
Hunter Biden also had some words for senior Biden aide Anita Dunn. “The Anita Dunns of the world, who’s made $40 [million], $50 million off the Democratic Party, they’re all going to insert their judgment over a man who has figured out, unlike anybody else, how to get elected to the United States Senate over seven times, how to pass more legislation than any president in history, how to have a better midterm election than anyone in history and how to garner more votes than any president that has ever run.” Former Obama aide and political analyst David Axelrod was also on the list. He said Axelrod “had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama.”
And if the above sentiments were attributed to the current president’s sons, who’ve characterized the Democratic Party as Nazis and referred to those who were protesting immigration sweeps by the patently offensive term “mongoloids”? Meh, it’s just another Monday. But Hunter Biden, like most public-facing Democrats, is held to a different standard. When they go low, we go high. Remember that sage advice that worked for Democrats back in the late aughts and early 2010s but now sounds like advice pulled from a 1950s guide to etiquette? The younger Biden not only deviated from that lefty code but also mirrored his tormentors, then unleashed his ire onto his own party.
Hunter Biden‘s own reckless actions over the years made him grist for all manner of right-wing helmed investigations. Then there are the stupid conspiracies, whether it’s the missing laptop or that mysterious bag of cocaine found in the White House. Hard to keep track, but the younger Biden went there during his recent interview. “I have been clean and sober since June of 2019. I have not touched a drop of alcohol or a drug, and I’m incredibly proud of that,” he told Callaghan. “And why would I bring cocaine into the White House and stick it into a cubby outside of the Situation Room in the West Wing?”
But he also attributed at least one recent alleged conspiracy to those outside the right-wing cabal or, more specifically, to Jake Tapper. The CNN anchor co-wrote “Original Sin,” a provocative book that claimed President Biden’s confidants worked to conceal his declining health from the public.
Hunter Biden argued that it was nonsense and that the “ability to keep a secret in Washington is zero.” “What sells, Jaime?” he asked Harrison. “What sells is the idea of a conspiracy.” And the public spectacle of flaming your enemy’s enemy.
President Trump on Tuesday accused Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) of committing mortgage fraud by intentionally misleading lenders about his primary residence being in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., rather than California, in order to “get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America.”
Schiff, who led a House impeachment of Trump during the president’s first term and has remained one of his most vocal and forceful political adversaries since joining the Senate, dismissed the president’s claims as a “baseless attempt at political retribution.”
A spokesperson for Schiff said he has always been transparent about owning two homes, in part to be able to raise his children near him in Washington, and has always followed the law — and advice from House counsel — in arranging his mortgages.
In making his claims, Trump cited an investigation by the Fannie Mae “Financial Crimes Division” as his source.
A memorandum reviewed by The Times from Fannie Mae investigators to William J. Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, does not accuse Schiff of mortgage fraud. It noted that investigators had been asked by the FHFA inspector general’s office for loan files and “any related investigative or quality control documentation” for Schiff’s homes.
Investigators said they found that Schiff at various points identified both his home in Potomac, Md., and a Burbank unit he also owns as his primary residence. As a result, they concluded that Schiff and his wife, Eve, “engaged in a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on their home loans between 2009 and 2020.
The investigators did not say they had concluded that a crime had been committed, nor did they mention the word “fraud” in the memo.
The memo was partially redacted to remove Schiff’s addresses and information about his wife. Fannie Mae did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition to denying any wrongdoing, Schiff also suggested that Trump’s accusation was an effort to distract from a growing controversy — important to many in the president’s MAGA base — over the administration’s failure to disclose more investigative records into child sex abuse by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a former acquaintance of Trump’s.
There has long been rumors of a “client list” of Epstein’s that could expose other powerful men as predators. Trump promised to release such a list as a candidate, and at one point Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi appeared to say such a list was on her desk. However, the administration has since said no such list exists, and Trump has begged his followers to move on.
Schiff drew a direct line between that controversy and Trump’s accusations against him Tuesday.
“This is just Donald Trump’s latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies. So it is not a surprise, only how weak this false allegation turns out to be,” Schiff wrote on X. “And much as Trump may hope, this smear will not distract from his Epstein files problem.”
A spokesperson for Schiff echoed the senator’s denial of any wrongdoing.
According to the spokesperson, Schiff made a decision routine for Congress members from states far from Washington to buy a home in Maryland so he could raise his children nearby. He also maintained a home in California, living there when not in Washington.
The spokesperson said all of Schiff’s lenders were aware that he intended to live in both as he traveled back and forth from Washington to his district — making neither a vacation home.
Trump’s own post about Schiff, on his social media platform, was thin on details and heavy on insults, calling Schiff “a scam artist” and “crook.”
Trump alleged that Schiff reported his primary residence being in Maryland, when “he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA” as a congressman from the state.
Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, has for years laid out detailed arguments against the president — and for why his actions violated the law and warranted his permanent removal from office. Those have included Trump’s first presidential campaign’s interactions with Russian assets, his pressuring Ukraine to investigate his rival Joe Biden while U.S. military aid was being withheld from the country, and his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and storming of the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden’s 2020 electoral win over him.
Schiff also has criticized the president — and his businesses, family members and political appointees — for their own financial actions.
He recently sponsored legislation that would restrict the ability of politicians and their family members from getting rich off of digital currencies of their own creation, as Trump and his family have done. He also has repeatedly demanded greater financial transparency from various Trump appointees, accusing them of breaking the law by not filing disclosures of their assets within required time frames.
Others have accused Trump for years of financial fraud. Last year, a judge in New York ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case after finding that the president and others in his business empire inflated his wealth to trick banks and insurers. Trump denied any wrongdoing and has appealed the decision.
All along the way, Trump has attacked Schiff personally, accusing him of peddling hoaxes for political gain and repeatedly suggesting that he should be charged with treason. During a presidential campaign stop in California last year — when Schiff was running for Senate — Trump called Schiff “one of the sleaziest politicians in history.”
Schiff made mention of Trump’s treason claims in his response to the new allegation of mortgage fraud Tuesday, writing, “Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason. So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown.”
Before leaving office, President Biden preemptively pardoned Schiff and the other members of the committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, anticipating that Trump would seek to retaliate against them for their work.
Schiff was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. He now splits his time between a two-story home in Potomac, Md., which he bought in 2003, according to property records, and a one-bedroom condo in a shopping area in downtown Burbank, which he bought in 2009.
In 2023, amid a bruising primary race for his Senate seat, CNN reported on Schiff’s two mortgages, citing experts who said the arrangement did not put Schiff in legal jeopardy — even if it could raise tough political questions.
CNN reported that deed records showed Schiff had designated his Maryland home as his primary residence, including while refinancing his mortgage over the years. In 2020, the outlet reported, Schiff again refinanced his mortgage and indicated that the Maryland home was his second.
CNN also reported that Schiff for years has taken a California homeowner’s tax exemption for his Burbank home, also designating it as his primary address. CNN said that exemption amounted to “roughly $70 in annual savings.” Schiff’s spokesperson confirmed that estimate in annual savings in California, and noted that Schiff did not claim such an exemption in Maryland.
Be glad you’re not Jeff Bezos or Lauren Sánchez. Sure, being that rich would be awesome, but being rich comes with rich-people problems. With their Italian wedding imminent, they have a host of things to worry about that would never cross the imaginations of other, more average couples who don’t have 12 digits representing their net worth.
Most details of the Venice fête are being kept close to the vest. A couple of local companies have confirmed they are contributing handcrafted glassware and local pastries to the wedding-favor goodie bags. Some guests’ names leaked when the invites went out in March (we name-drop below, never fear).
But a few details that might be quite vexing to the bride and groom are playing out in public. Let’s take a look.
Your destination wedding’s destination might hate you
All of Venice may not truly be ticked off, but photos, activists and media coverage make it seem that way.
Venice teacher and activist Marta Sottoriva called the wedding “the symbol of all that is wrong with Venice.”
“There’s a lot of anger in the air because once again the council has enslaved itself to the logic of profit — our city has been sold to the highest bidder,” she told the Guardian. “Every time an event of this kind happens, the city comes to a standstill, certain areas become inaccessible and even more tourists arrive.” (Venice has been really annoyed lately by its number of tourists, kind of like the Louvre is really annoyed.)
“No Space for Bezos” activists speak at a public meeting of residents on June 13 in Venice, Italy.
(Andrea Merola / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But tourism councilor Simone Venturini was shocked that anyone might be upset that such a high-profile event was happening in the city.
“We should all be proud that the Bezos wedding, an event of international importance, is being held in the waters of our lagoon,” he told the Guardian. “Instead, the usual protest professionals have wasted no time. We want to reiterate that Venice is open to everyone.”
Venturini was more colorful in speaking to the Wall Street Journal, saying, “If Bezos’ wedding goes ahead as planned, without these pain-in-the-ass protests, Venetian citizens won’t even notice.”
The couple’s London-based wedding planners, Lanza & Baucina, told CNN in a statement, “Rumors of ‘taking over’ the city are entirely false and diametrically opposed to our goals and to reality.” They and the client, the planners said, wanted to minimize any disruption to the city.
That said, it’s impossible to get a reservation this week at the Aman Venice, the nearly 500-year-old hotel on the Grand Canal where the happy couple are rumored to be staying, at least for part of their wedding week, along with a host of wedding guests. The place is fully booked through Sunday, per TMZ, at a reported $2,000 to $10,000 a night per room.
Protests could really screw things up
Forget throwing soup on the “Mona Lisa” — the Bezos wedding protesters might do something truly offensive: They are threatening to screw up traffic on the big day.
“Bezos will never get to the Misericordia [event space],” activist Federica Toninello told an appreciative crowd last week, according to CNN. “We will block the canals, line the streets with our bodies, block the canals with inflatables, dinghies, boats.”
Having just learned what the Misericordia is, we have no idea what role the location might play in the nuptials, but it looks like a nice enough spot for a reception. Fondazione Giorgio Cini, a cultural center built in 1951, has also been floated as a wedding venue. But let’s get back to the blockades and such.
Another speaker at that same rally said she didn’t want Venice remembered as a beautiful wedding venue but “as the city that did not bend to oligarchs.”
“We can’t miss a chance to disrupt a $10-million wedding,” Na Haby Stella Faye said — because, really, how often does that chance come around? Although her goal stated at the rally was “to stop this wedding,” in her Instagram stories Monday, she was promoting a planned Saturday protest of Bezos, President Trump and, well, war.
A massive banner targeting Jeff Bezos, the world’s second-richest man, is laid out in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, ahead of his wedding to Lauren Sánchez.
(Greenpeace / Associated Press)
Less aggressive protests include a host of banners and “No Space for Bezos” posters that have been hung around the city. A colossal message from Greenpeace to Bezos was laid out Monday in the Piazza San Marco. The square banner, which read “IF YOU CAN RENT VENICE FOR YOUR WEDDING YOU CAN PAY MORE TAX,” was quickly folded up and carried away by local cops, the Associated Press reported.
“It’s absurd to treat this city like it’s Disneyland,” said Grazia Satta, a retired teacher and social worker, per the Wall Street Journal. “The message this wedding sends is that rich people can do whatever they want. We shouldn’t kneel before wealth like this.”
By Monday, Bezos’ security team was making last-minute changes to try to outsmart the activists, according to TMZ. Even the water-taxi companies are being “kept in the dark,” the site said, and if the water taxis don’t know what’s going on, who really does?
Perhaps Bezos could tap that $212-billion bank account and enlist a Prime Delivery person to drop off himself and his bride discreetly at their reception? Though the human-size Amazon box could be a dead giveaway.
Whose yacht is biggest — and where will they park?
Yes, we know yachts don’t “park,” they drop anchor. But no matter what you call it, the biggest yachts can’t drop anchor in all parts of Venice.
One wedding theory has held that Bezos and Sánchez will exchange their vows on his 417-foot yacht, the Koru, where he proposed to her two years ago after five years of dating. But reported plans to dock the yacht in a lagoon might have changed. Apparently the close-to-shore concept is starting to look like a safety hazard due to those threatened protests of the second-richest man in the world.
The Koru is far from the only big boat floating around town, mind you. Venice has nine “yacht ports,” all of which have been booked for the wedding week. Apparently, TMZ reported, noncelebrity billionaire yacht owners are altering their Venice vacation plans to avoid the crush. That has to sting.
Fortunately, although the yacht situation is fluid and the airspace over Venice is closed, CNN reported that private helicopters are being given a pass, in case a head of state decides to chopper in. As one does.
One type of watercraft not involved in the festivities? Gondolas, or at least those piloted by people the WSJ talked to. “We are too slow,” one gondolier lamented.
International events might affect the guest list
President Trump reportedly scored an invitation to the wedding. Unclear if a plus-one for Melania was included. However, the commander in chief is a wee bit busy handling world events these days — hard to tell if he will be able to get away, even for a gala event like this one. Aren’t destination weddings the worst? So inconvenient.
That said, Ivanka Trump and hubby Jared Kushner reportedly got invited too, along with Jared’s brother Joshua Kushner and model wife Karlie Kloss. So the first family might be represented after all. And who knows, POTUS could swing by. Does Marine One count as a “private” helicopter?
Others on the guest list, per TMZ, include Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, Bill Gates, singer Jewel, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Corey Gamble, Barbra Streisand, Eva Longoria, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Brian Grazer, Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg, models Brooks Nader and Camila Morrone, and Queen Rania of Jordan. Perry won’t attend, though, because she’s on tour.
News anchor Anderson Cooper was warned of an upcoming air strike as he broadcast a news segment from Israel to viewers at home in the US in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer
17:39, 23 Jun 2025Updated 17:39, 23 Jun 2025
Anderson Cooper had to flee during a live CNN broadcast after he received a missile strike warning while reporting on the Middle East(Image: CNN)
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was forced to abandon a live broadcast in Israel as air raid sirens announced a sudden Iranian missile strike. The veteran journalist had been covering the escalating Middle East conflict when the alarms began sounding in Tel Aviv, prompting him and his crew to flee to a bomb shelter on live television.
Cooper was joined by CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward and Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond on a hotel balcony in Tel Aviv during the early hours of Monday when the attack unfolded.
Ward suddenly interrupted their conversation to tell viewers: “I should just say that we’re now hearing an alert.” Moments later Cooper received an emergency warning on his phone, confirming an incoming missile strike from Iran.
The news anchor was warned that Iran had launched a missile attack on Israel (Image: CNN)
“So these are the alerts that go out on all of our phones when you’re in Israel,” Cooper explained. “It’s a 10 minute warning of incoming missiles or something incoming from Iran.”
He continued: “So now the location we’re in has a verbal alarm telling people to go down into bomb shelters. So we have about a 10 minute window to get down into a bomb shelter.”
Despite the danger, Cooper calmly asked his team if they could carry on broadcasting during their escape. He added: “And we’ll continue to try to broadcast from that, that bomb shelter. And even if we can, on the way down.”
“I think we’re going to head down to the shelters – Chuck, do we have capabilities as we go down?” he asked, to which a crew member replied: “Just checking your microphones. Be ready in a second.”
As the crew evacuated the hotel balcony, a loudspeaker announcement echoed throughout the building saying: “Dear guests, we expect an alarm in the next 10 minutes.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) later confirmed that a missile had been launched towards the country but was successfully intercepted. No injuries were reported.
The dramatic moment came just hours after US President Donald Trump authorised a surprise military strike targeting key Iranian nuclear facilities called Operation Midnight Hammer. He claims that the US carried out a “successful” bombing attack on three of Iran’s nuclear sites on Sunday.
The assault marked a major escalation in the already volatile relationship between Washington and Tehran, and Iranian leaders have vowed to get revenge.
Trump later took to Truth Social to call for a change of government in Iran, writing: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!”
There are growing fears that Tehran may respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which is a strategic waterway critical to global oil supply. A move to block the strait could trigger conflict with the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is stationed nearby to protect international shipping routes.
What started as a subtle act of protest has become national news.
Three days after singer and social media personality Nezza performed a Spanish version of the national anthem at Dodger Stadium — despite being asked by a team employee to sing it in English — the performer further addressed the situation Tuesday in an interview with CNN.
“With everything that’s been happening, I just felt like I needed to stand with my people and show them that I’m with them,” Nezza (whose full name is Vanessa Hernández) said on CNN’s “The Lead.” “I wanted to represent them that day.”
Nezza’s performance of the Spanish anthem — a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” commissioned by the U.S. State Department in 1945 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt — became a viral story after she posted a video on TikTok of an unidentified Dodgers employee telling her beforehand that “we are going to do the song in English today, so I’m not sure if that wasn’t relayed.”
Nezza proceeded to sing the Spanish version anyway; doing so on the same day thousands gathered downtown to protest President Trump and recent ICE raids around Los Angeles in the last two weeks.
In email communications with the team leading up to her performance, Nezza said she asked if she could sing the anthem in both English and Spanish, but was told no because she would have only a 90-second window for her performance.
Still, she said she arrived at the stadium “fully thinking that I was welcome [to sing in Spanish], because nobody told me in that email thread, ‘No, you can’t.’”
“Had they told me you can’t have any Spanish in there,” she added, “I would have respectfully declined and not shown up on Saturday.”
Instead, Nezza performed the anthem in Spanish prior to the Dodgers-Giants game, before posting two videos on TikTok explaining the situation that quickly went viral.
On Sunday, a Dodgers official told The Times in a statement that she would be welcome back at the stadium.
In Tuesday’s CNN interview, Nezza said she was “very shocked” to learn she was welcome back at the ballpark, noting that “30 seconds after my performance, we actually received a call that said, ‘Don’t ever call us again. Don’t ever email us again. The rest of your clients are never welcome here again.’ So for me, that kind of feels like a ban.”
The Dodgers, however, reaffirmed to CNN that there were “no hard feelings” resulting from the situation. And a team spokesperson confirmed to The Times this week that, “She is certainly welcome back at the stadium. She is not banned from the stadium.”
When “Good Night, and Good Luck” arrived on Broadway this spring, it initially provoked a surprising amount of cynicism. There were complaints that the adaptation by George Clooney and Grant Heslov was basically a reproduction of the 2005 film, which chronicled CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s heroic crusade against Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunts.
The sky-high cost of tickets was another source of criticism. Was Broadway pricing itself beyond the reach of its core audience? Reports of “Good Night, and Good Luck” shattering box office records served to remind those who couldn’t afford a ticket that they were being left behind by a theater culture that was siding with the haves over the have-nots.
In a Broadway season that featured Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in a rudderless “Othello” and Kieran Culkin in a “Glengarry Glen Ross” revival that might have been stronger without him, “Good Night, and Good Luck” was a convenient target for anti-Hollywood sentiment.
When I arrived at the Winter Garden for a Saturday matinee in April, I can’t say my expectations were especially high. I admired the film but hadn’t seen it in nearly 20 years. The broodingly elegant production, sharply directed by David Cromer and starring a quietly committed Clooney in the role of Murrow (played in the film by David Strathairn), was not only one of the most stirring offerings of the Broadway season but also one of the most necessary.
I left the theater wishing I could buy tickets for my friends and family. That won’t be necessary — thankfully for my credit cards — because CNN will be broadcasting a live performance of “Good Night, and Good Luck” from the Winter Garden on Saturday (4 p.m. PDT). It’s apparently the first time a Broadway play will be shown live on television, and the timing could not be better.
As media companies face a campaign of intimidation from the Trump administration, the figure of Murrow, standing tall in the face of demagogic adversity, is the courageous example we need right now.
I don’t know how different the experience will be watching at home, but “Good Night, and Good Luck” made me reflect on what theatergoing might have been like in ancient Greece. Athenian citizens would gather at an open-air theater as a democratic privilege and responsibility. Playwrights addressed the polis not by dramatizing current events but by recasting tales from the mythological and historic past to sharpen critical thinking on contemporary concerns.
Clooney and Heslov aren’t writing dramatic poetry. Their more straightforward approach is closer to documentary drama, but the effect is not so disparate. We are affirmed in the knowledge that we are the body politic.
CNN will broadcast the penultimate performance of “Good Night, and Good Luck” on the eve of the Tony Awards. The production is up for five Tonys, including one for Clooney in the lead performance by an actor in a play category. But however the awards shake out, Clooney is already a winner. Like Murrow, he reminds us that conscience can still be a defining feature of the American character.
Saturday afternoon out west and evening back east, as citizens faced off against ICE agents in the streets of Los Angeles, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” George Clooney’s 2005 dramatic film tribute to CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, became a Major Television Event, broadcast live from Manhattan’s Winter Garden Theater, by CNN and Max. That it was made available free to anyone with an internet connection, via the CNN website, was a nice gesture to theater fans, Clooney stans and anyone interested to see how a movie about television translates into a play about television.
The broadcast is being ballyhooed as historic, the first time a play has been aired live from Broadway. And while there is no arguing with that fact, performances of plays have been recorded onstage before, and are being so now. It’s a great practice; I wish it were done more often. At the moment, PBS.org is streaming recent productions of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate!,” the Bob Dylan-scored “Girl From the North Country,” David Henry Hwang‘s “Yellow Face” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning mental health rock musical “Next to Normal.” Britain’s National Theater at Home subscription service offers a wealth of classical and modern plays, including Andrew Scott’s one-man “Vanya,” as hot a ticket in New York this spring as Clooney’s play. And the archives run deep; that a trip to YouTube can deliver you Richard Burton’s “Hamlet” or “Sunday in the Park With George” with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters is a gift not to be overlooked.
Clooney, with co-star Anthony Edwards, had earlier been behind a live broadcast of “Ambush,” the fourth season opener of “ER” as a throwback to the particular seat-of-your-pants, walking-on-a-wire energy of 1950s television. (It was performed twice, once for the East and once for the West Coast.) That it earned an audience of 42.71 million, breaking a couple of records in the bargain, suggests that, from a commercial perspective, it was not at all a bad idea. (Reviews were mixed, but critics don’t know everything.)
Like that episode, the “live” element of Saturday’s broadcast was essentially a stunt, though one that ensured, at least, that no post-production editing has been applied, and that if anyone blew a line, or the house was invaded by heckling MAGA hats, or simply disrupted by audience members who regarded the enormous price they paid for a ticket as a license to chatter through the show, it would presumably have been part of the broadcast. None of that happened — but, it could have! (Clooney did stumble over “simple,” but that’s all I caught.) And, it offered the groundlings at home the chance to see a much-discussed, well-reviewed production only a relatively few were able to see in person — which I applaud on principal and enjoyed in practice — and which will very probably not come again, not counting the next day’s final performance.
Glenn Fleshler, left, plays Fred Friendly in the stage production, a role that George Clooney performed in the film version of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
(Emilio Madrid)
The film, directed by Clooney and co-written with Grant Heslov (who co-wrote the stage version as well), featured the actor as producer and ally Fred W. Friendly to David Strathairn’s memorable Murrow. Here, a more aggressive Clooney takes the Murrow role, while Glenn Fleshler plays Friendly. Released during the second term of the Bush administration, the movie was a meditation on the state of things through the prism of 1954 (and a famous framing speech from 1958 about the possibilities and potential failures of television), the fear-fueled demagoguery of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Murrow’s determination to take him on. (The 1954 “See It Now” episode, “A Report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” helped bring about his end.) As in the film, McCarthy is represented entirely through projected film clips, echoing the way that Murrow impeached the senator with his own words.
It’s a combination of political and backstage drama — with a soupcon of office romance, represented by the secretly married Wershbas (Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson) — even more hermetically set within the confines of CBS News than was the film. It felt relevant in 2005, before the influence of network news was dissolved in the acid of the internet and an administration began assaulting the legitimate press with threats and lawsuits; but the play’s discussions of habeas corpus, due process, self-censoring media and the both-sides-ism that seems increasingly to afflict modern media feel queasily contemporary. “I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument,” says Clooney’s Murrow to his boss, William F. Paley (an excellent Paul Gross, from the great “Slings & Arrows”). As was shown here, Murrow offered McCarthy equal time on “See It Now” — which he hosted alongside the celebrity-focused “Person to Person,” represented by an interview with Liberace — but it proved largely a rope for the senator to hang himself.
Though modern stage productions, with their computer-controlled modular parts, can replicate the rhythms and scene changes of a film, there are obvious differences between a movie, where camera angles and editing drive the story. It’s an illusion of life, stitched together from bits and pieces. A stage play proceeds in real time and offers a single view (differing, of course, depending on where one sits), within which you direct your attention as you will. What illusions it offers are, as it were, stage magic. It’s choreographed, like a dance, which actors must repeat night after night, putting feeling into lines they may speak to one another, but send out to the farthest corners of the theater.
Clooney, whose furrowed brow is a good match for Murrow’s, did not attempt to imitate him, or perhaps did within the limits of theatrical delivery; he was serious and effective in the role if not achieving the quiet perfection of Strathairn’s performance. Scott Pask‘s set was an ingenious moving modular arrangement of office spaces, backed by a control room, highlighted or darkened as needs be; a raised platform stage left supported the jazz group and vocalist, which, as in the movie, performed songs whose lyrics at times commented slyly on the action. Though television squashed the production into two dimensions, the broadcast nevertheless felt real and exciting; director David Comer let the camera play on the players, rather than trying for a cinematic effect through an excess of close-ups and cutaways.
While the play generally followed the lines of the film, there was some rearrangement of scenes, reassignment of dialogue — it was a streamlined cast — and interpolations to make a point, or more directly pitch to 2025. New York news anchor Don Hollenbeck (Clark Gregg, very moving in the only role with an emotional arc) described feeling “hijacked … as if all the reasonable people went to Europe and left us behind,” getting a big reaction. One character wondered about opening “the door to news with a dash of commentary — what happens when it isn’t Edward R. Murrow minding the store?” A rapid montage of clips tracking the decay of TV news and politics — including Obama’s tan suit kerfuffle and the barring of AP for not bowing to Trump’s Gulf of America edit and ending with Elon Musk’s notorious straight-arm gesture, looking like nothing so much as a Nazi salute — was flown into Clooney’s final speech.
Last but not least, there is the audience, your stand-ins at the Winter Garden Theatre, which laughed at the jokes and applauded the big speeches, transcribed from Murrow’s own. And then, the curtain call, to remind you that whatever came before, the actors are fine, drinking in your appreciation and sending you out happy and exhilarated and perhaps full of hope.
A CNN roundtable followed to bring you back to Earth.
CNN’s chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, whose 2021 story on a military contractor led to a defamation suit loss in court, announced Monday he is leaving the network.
“Tough to say goodbye but it’s been an honor to work among the very best in the business,” Marquardt wrote on X. “Profound thank you to my comrades on the National Security team & the phenomenal teammates I’ve worked with in the US and abroad.”
Earlier this year, a Florida jury awarded $5 million to former CIA operative Zachary Young after a jury found he was defamed in a November 2021 report by Marquardt on how Afghans were being charged thousands of dollars to be evacuated after the U.S. military withdrawal from their country.
After deliberations began on punitive damages, CNN attorneys reached an undisclosed settlement with Young.
A CNN representative declined to comment on Marquardt’s departure, calling it a personnel matter. One network insider who was not authorized to comment publicly said there was a feeling among many people at CNN that Marquardt had to go after the loss in court.
Marquardt has served as CNN’s chief national security correspondent since 2017. He was previously a foreign correspondent for ABC News.
Young lives in Vienna and has his business based in Florida. He was seeking $14,500 for getting people out of Afghanistan after the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal. He claimed his services were limited to corporate sponsors.
The business was described in Marqurdt’s report alongside interviews with Afghans who spoke about desperate efforts by people to escape, but they had no connection to Young.
Young’s suit said his inclusion in the story, which used the term “black market” in an on-screen banner, implied that his activity was criminal, even though Marquardt’s segment made no such charge. “Black market” was also used in the introduction of the report when it first ran on “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” other CNN programs and the network’s website and social media accounts.
CNN lawyers argued that the term “black market” was used to describe an unregulated activity, even though the dictionary definition describes it as illegal.
Young claimed the story destroyed his reputation and ability to earn a living — driving his annual income from $350,000 to zero — and caused severe emotional and psychological distress.
