Fox

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is suing Fox News for defamation, alleging that the news outlet intentionally manipulated its coverage to give the appearance that the governor lied about a phone call with President Trump.

The governor’s demand for $787 million in punitive damages escalates his aggressive effort to challenge misinformation. The lawsuit, announced Friday, places Newsom at the forefront of the political proxy war between Democrats and Republicans over the press by calling out an outlet that many in his party despise.

“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the suit states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”

Newsom, a potential presidential candidate, said he decided to sue in part because Fox failed to change after admitting in a legal settlement two years ago to spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.

In response to Newsom’s lawsuit, Fox criticized the California governor, accusing him of undercutting the 1st Amendment.

“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” Fox News said in a statement Friday morning.

The case stems from comments Trump made about a phone call with Newsom as tensions heated up between the two leaders over immigration raids and the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles.

Trump told reporters on June 10 that he spoke with Newsom “a day ago.”

“Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job,” Trump said. “Causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.”

Newsom immediately rejected Trump’s timeline on social media.

The governor had already spoken publicly about talking to Trump on the phone late in the night on June 6 in California, which was early June 7 for Trump on the East Coast. Newsom said the National Guard was never discussed during that call. They didn’t talk again, he said.

“There was no call,” Newsom posted on X. “Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

Trump attempted to fire back at Newsom through Fox and shared a screenshot of his call log with anchor John Roberts. The log showed that a phone call occurred on June 7 and provided no evidence of a call on June 9 as Trump claimed.

“It is impossible to know for certain whether President Trump’s distortion was intentionally deceptive or merely a result of his poor cognitive state, but Fox’s decision to cover up for the President’s false statement cannot be so easily dismissed,” the complaint states.

Newsom’s legal team said Roberts initially misrepresented the situation to viewers “to obscure President Trump’s false statement of fact.”

Then during an evening broadcast on June 10, Fox News host Jesse Watters showed a video of Trump’s comments about the phone call but omitted the president saying that it happened “a day ago.” The edit made it appear that Newsom alleged the two never spoke at all.

“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” Watters then asked.

A banner at the bottom of the screen during the segment claimed “Gavin lied about Trump’s call.”

Newsom’s lawyers said Fox “willfully distorted the facts” and defamed Newsom to tens of millions of people.

“Fox advanced this lie about Governor Newsom out of a desire to harm him politically,” the complaint states.

Newsom is particularly attuned to his critics on Fox, a conservative-leaning television network that he describes as the epicenter of a right-wing media ecosystem that misleads the public to benefit Trump and his allies. Similar to reports of Trump watching CNN, the governor regularly follows Fox political coverage. He pays close attention to the outlet’s assessment of his leadership.

Fox commentators and opinion hosts, such as Watters, are given a wide berth to express their views, even when they contradict the reporting of its nonpartisan correspondents. They aggressively defend Trump and his policies, while often casting California as a failed state with incompetent leadership.

But Newsom has also benefited from Fox and used his appearances on the network to brandish his image as a brawler for Democrats and his standing as a potential future presidential candidate.

Fox hosted a much talked about debate between Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023. The California governor also participated in a sit-down interview with Sean Hannity, which drew praise from within and outside of his party.

During a talk on the social media website Substack on Friday, Newsom said he started going on Fox to disrupt propaganda and the network’s narrative about Democrats.

“I have a high threshold for the bulls— on Fox, is the point,” Newsom said. “I wouldn’t do this unless I felt they really did cross the line.”

The amount of the governor’s request for damages was a subtle dig at the outlet.

Fox agreed two years ago to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to drop a lawsuit related to the network’s false claims that voting machines were manipulated to help President Biden win the 2020 election. The news organization settled the case rather than put its executives and on-air talent on the witness stand in a high-profile trial.

Fox faces a similar lawsuit from Smartmatic, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based voting machine company that claims its business had been hurt because of the network’s reporting.

The news outlet has maintained that reporting on Trump’s fraud claims was newsworthy and protected by the 1st Amendment. Barring a settlement, the case could go to trial next year.

In a letter to Fox, Newsom’s lawyers said they will voluntarily dismiss the governor’s suit if the outlet retracts its claims that he lied about speaking to Trump.

“We expect that you will give the same airtime in retracting these falsehoods as you spent presenting and amplifying them,” his lawyers stated. “Further, Mr. Watters and Fox News must issue a formal on-air apology for the lie you have spread about Governor Newsom.”

The governor said any damages he might receive from the lawsuit, punitive or otherwise, would go to charity.

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has filed a $787m defamation lawsuit against Fox News, accusing the network of misrepresenting a phone call between him and US President Donald Trump earlier this month amid immigration arrests and the subsequent protests in Los Angeles.

The complaint was filed on Friday in Delaware Superior Court, the state in which Fox Corp is incorporated.

Newsom spoke by phone with Trump late on June 6 – early June 7 on the East Coast, soon after protests broke out in Los Angeles following federal immigration raids.

Less than 24 hours later, the president sent National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the state, bypassing the governor’s office.

In an interview with NBC News on June 8, Newsom said that he had a civil conversation with the president, but he never brought up sending the National Guard.

“I tried to talk about LA, he wanted to talk about all these other issues,” Newsom said.

“He never once brought up the National Guard,” he added.

Newsom said he did not speak with Trump again, and confirmed this after Trump falsely told reporters on June 10 that he had spoken with the governor “a day ago”.

The suit alleged that the network had a “willingness to protect President Trump from his own false statements by smearing his political opponent Governor Newsom in a dispute over when the two last spoke during a period of national strife”.

The complaint said Fox nonetheless made a misleading video clip and multiple false statements about the timing of the last call, acting with actual malice in an effort to brand Newsom a liar and curry favour with Trump.

“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” Watters said on June 10 on his show, Jesse Watters Primetime, according to the complaint.

Watters’s report was accompanied by a chyron, a banner caption along the bottom of a TV screen, that said “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call,” the complaint added.

According to the complaint, Fox’s claim that Newsom lied was “calculated to provoke outrage and cause Governor Newsom significant harm” by making people less likely to support his causes, donate to his campaigns, or vote for him in elections.

“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” a spokesperson for Fox News told Al Jazeera in an email.

In a follow-up, Al Jazeera asked Fox if Watters and his production team fact-checked claims about the phone call before speaking about it – which is industry standard – but the network did not provide clarification.

Newsom’s punitive damages request is nearly identical to the $787.5m that Fox paid in 2023 to settle Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit over alleged vote-rigging in the 2020 US presidential election.

To prevail in his lawsuit, Newsom would have to show Fox acted with actual malice, meaning it knew its statements were false or had reckless disregard for their truth.

According to the New York Times, Newsom would drop the lawsuit if Fox issued a retraction and host Jesse Watters apologised on-air for saying the governor lied about his call with Trump.

The governor’s office told Al Jazeera that it would not comment because Newsom is pursuing the lawsuit in a personal capacity and not through the office.

In an emailed statement, Newsom said, “If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences – just like it did in the Dominion case. I believe the American people should be able to trust the information they receive from a major news outlet. Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”

Out of Trump’s playbook

Newsom’s lawsuit comes as Trump has gone after news organisations that have been critical of him. He reached a $15m settlement with ABC News after the network made in an inaccurate claim that a jury found Trump liable for rape in the civil case involving E Jean Carroll, rather than sexual assault.

The White House also recently went after the network when former White House correspondent Terry Moran called White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a “world-class hater”. Moran was later suspended and subsequently dismissed from the network.

Trump also sued CBS News for $20bn for the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, which was reportedly mediated into a settlement agreement of $20m with parent company Paramount Global, causing concern in the news division. Paramount has a pending merger with Skydance.

Trump has also slashed funding for public media, which the White House alleged was “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’”.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday to block a migrant detention center being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades.

The lawsuit seeks to halt the project until it undergoes a stringent environmental review as required by federal law. There is also supposed to be a chance for public comment, according to the lawsuit filed in Miami federal court.

The center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to begin processing people who entered the U.S. illegally as soon as next week, the governor said Friday on “Fox and Friends.”

The state is plowing ahead with building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings at the Miami-Dade County-owned airfield in the Big Cypress National Preserve, about 45 miles west of downtown Miami.

The lawsuit names several federal and state agencies as defendants.

Payne and Anderson write for the Associated Press.

Italian Matteo Manassero and New Zealand’s Ryan Fox were tied for the lead after the third round at a closely contested Canadian Open.

Manassero and Fox both carded rounds of 64, each including seven birdies and one bogey as they moved to 14 under.

“It was a really good round,” said Manassero, whose bogey came at the 17th hole before he recovered the stroke with a birdie at the last.

“I missed the short one on 17, and I did miss a couple more short ones. I try to think of them just like a shot really, like a driver, like a six-iron, whatever. It’s just a shot.

“It wasn’t that hard for me to stay focused into what I was doing and not ruining [it] at the end.”

Manassero will be chasing his first PGA Tour title, while Fox is seeking a second just a month after his first triumph on the tour at the Myrtle Beach Classic.

“Obviously there’s a lot of good players behind me,” said Fox. “I feel like it’s going to take a pretty low [score] to get the job done.”

Lee Hodges and Kevin Yu both shot seven under par rounds of 63 and sit one back along with Matt McCarty.

A 65 from England’s David Skinns moved him on to 11 under along with seven other players, including overnight leader Cameron Champ.

Champ could only manage a one over-par 71 at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley.

England’s Danny Willett (67) and Ireland’s Shane Lowry (68) are a shot further back on 10 under.

PALM DESERT — They came to the baking desert to honor one of their own, a political professional, a legend and a throwback to a time when gatherings like this one — a companionable assembly of Republicans, Democrats and the odd newspaper columnist — weren’t such a rare and noteworthy thing.

They came to bid a last farewell to Stuart Spencer, who died in January at age 97.

They came to Palm Desert on a 98-degree spring day to do the things that political pros do when they gather: drink and laugh and swap stories of campaigns and elections past.

And they showed, with their affection and goodwill and mutual regard, how much the world, and the world of politics, have changed.

“This is how politics used to be,” Democrat Harvey Englander said after sidling up to Republican Joel Fox. The two met through their work with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., a spawn of the Proposition 13 taxpayer revolt, circa 1978.

“We had different views of how government should work,” Englander said as Fox nodded his assent. “But we agreed government should work.”

Spencer was a campaign strategist and master tactician who helped usher into office generations of GOP leaders, foremost among them Ronald Reagan. The former president and California governor was a Hollywood has-been until Spencer came along and turned him into something compelling and new, something they called a “citizen-politician.”

Hanging, inevitably, over the weekend’s celebration was the current occupant of the Oval Office, a boiling black cloud compared to the radiant and sunshiny Reagan. Spencer was no fan of Donald Trump, and he let it be known.

“A demagogue and opportunist,” he called him, chafing, in particular, at Trump’s comparisons of himself to Reagan.

“He would be sick,” Spencer said, guessing the recoil the nation’s 40th president would have had if he’d witnessed the crass and corrupt behavior of the 45th and 47th one.

Many of those at the weekend event are similarly out of step with today’s Republican Party and, especially, Trump’s bomb-the-opposition-to-rubble approach to politics. But most preferred not to express those sentiments for the record.

George Steffes, who served as Reagan’s legislative director in Sacramento, allowed as how the loudly and proudly uncouth Trump was “180 degrees” from the politely mannered Reagan. In five years, Steffes said, he never once heard the governor raise his voice, belittle a person or “treat a human being with anything but respect.”

Fox, with a seeming touch of wounded pride, suggested Trump could use “some pushback from some of the ‘old thinking’ of the Stu Spencer/Ronald Reagan era.”

A flag flown over the U.S. Capitol in Spencer’s honor was displayed at his memorial celebration, along with White House schedules from the 1984 campaign.

(H.D. Palmer)

Behind them, playing on a big-screen TV, were images from Spencer’s filled-to-the-bursting life.

Old black-and-white snapshots — an apple-cheeked Navy sailor, a little boy — alternated with photographs of Spencer smiling alongside Reagan and President Ford, standing with Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush, appearing next to Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Wilson, a spry 91, was among the 150 or so who turned out to remember Spencer. He was given a place of honor, seated with his wife, Gayle, directly in front of the podium.)

In a brief presentation, Spencer’s son, Steve, remembered his father as someone who emphasized caring and compassion, as well as hard work and the importance of holding fast to one’s principles. “Pop’s word,” he said, “was gold.”

Spencer’s grandson, Sam, a Republican political consultant in Washington, choked up as he recounted how “Papa Stu” not only helped make history but never stinted on his family, driving four hours to attend Sam’s 45-minute soccer games and staying up well past bedtime to get after-action reports on his grandson’s campaigns.

Stu Spencer, he said, was a voracious reader and owned “one of the greatest political minds in history.”

Outside the golf resort, a stiff wind kicked up, ruffling the palm trees and sending small waves across a water hazard on the 18th green — an obvious metaphor for these blustery and unsettled times.

Fred Karger first met Spencer in 1976 when his partner, Bill Roberts, hired Karger to work on an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign. (In 2012, Karger made history as the first out gay major-party candidate to run for president.)

He no longer recognizes the political party he dedicated his life to. “It’s the Trump-publican Party,” Karger said. “It’s no longer the Republican Party.”

But politics are cyclical, he went on, and surely Trump and his MAGA movement will run their course and the GOP will return to the days when Reagan’s optimism and Spencer’s less-hateful campaign style return to fashion.

His gripped his white wine like a potion, delivering hope. “Don’t you think?”

Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox is gearing up to be part of the cast of a TV show for the first time since 2020, after his health condition deteriorated

Michael J. Fox has announced his exciting return to television as he prepares for a guest role in the popular Apple+ comedy show Shrinking. The series revolves around the lives of three psychiatrists, played by Harrison Ford, Jason Segel, and Jessica Williams.

The main characters, Dr Paul, Jimmy, and Gaby, all support each other through their own personal struggles as they work to help their patients in sometimes unconventional ways. Fox’s role in the third season of the series has not been revealed yet, but there is a possibility that it will be linked to Dr Paul’s ongoing Parkinson’s storyline.

Fox himself stepped away from acting as his Parkinson’s symptoms worsened in 2020, and he started to experience issues with his speech. He was diagnosed with the neurological disease three decades ago, and fans have theorised that his character will address what it is like to live with Parkinson’s on-screen, given Dr Paul’s season two character arc focused on his health struggles and fears that he would have to walk away from psychiatry.

This stint on Shrinking will also mean the Hollywood A-lister gets to collaborate with the show’s co-creator Bill Lawrence again, after they previously both worked on Spin City.

Lawrence previously admitted that Fox influenced his portrayal of Dr Paul’s battle with Parkinson’s on Shrinking, saying: “It’s cool to get to write about things you care about now. And Michael J Fox is my first mentor. So we wanted to represent it in hopefully an inspiring and not sad or tragic way.

“I found the first mentor in my life and career, Michael J Fox, to be so inspiring. The way he took it in stride and continues to work harder than anybody I know. And we want to kind of carry that spirit if we can into the show.”

The last TV show Fox starred in was American legal drama The Good Fight, which is about a lawyer who loses her life savings after being scammed and is forced to start again.

His last big film role was in the 2019 sci-fi blockbuster See You Yesterday as Mr Lockhart, the science teacher of the two teen leads who attempt to crack time travel.

The Back to the Future star has reportedly been managing his Parkinson’s symptoms with the drug carbidopa/levodopa, and he is also said to have had a thalamotomy in 1998.

He previously spoke about how “tough” it is to live with the disease, telling The Guardian : “It didn’t defeat me. I wish it was a heroic thing. I’m not saying: ‘Yeah! Bring it, bring it!’

“I hate it. It sucks. It’s a piece of s**t. It’s tough to get up in the morning and keep going. But I have a beautiful family and this office with trophies.”

He also shared that being unable to act was “a struggle”, adding: “It’s very difficult. I get sick of talking about me. I know me too well.”

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YouTube is getting another piece of the NFL by landing its first exclusive live pro football broadcast in the first week of the season.

The streaming platform will have worldwide rights to the Sept. 5 meeting between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs from São Paulo, Brazil. The teams will face off at Corinthians Arena, home to Brazilian soccer team SC Corinthians.

YouTube is already the home for the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package, which for an annual fee gives fans access to network TV game telecasts outside of their home markets. The Brazil game will be available free to all YouTube users.

Although the NFL has a multiyear media rights deal with Fox, NBCUniversal, CBS, ESPN and Amazon, the league has managed to peel off games for streaming. Netflix landed two Christmas games last season and will be back in the 2025-26 season.

While the NFL values the reach that its traditional TV partners continue to provide, the league is aware that the younger viewers are turning to streaming platforms — especially YouTube — for video content. Executives have made it clear that they need to reach those consumers to replenish its fan base going forward into the future.

YouTube will team up with the NFL for a multiyear deal for the annual Super Bowl Flag Football Game. The event scored more than 6 million live views when YouTube first presented it in February. The game’s teams were led by YouTube stars IShowSpeed and Kai Cenat.

New Zealander Ryan Fox clinched a place at this week’s PGA Championship in dramatic style with a 50-foot chip-in from the fringe of the green to win the Myrtle Beach Classic in a three-way play-off.

It was a first US PGA Tour title in 68 starts for the 38-year-old after he finished on 15 under alongside Canada’s Mackenzie Hughes and American Harry Higgs.

Fox earned his spot in the play-off when Hughes let a one-stroke lead slip with a bogey at the 18th and Higgs was only able to par the last at the tournament, which was played at the same time as the Truist Championship in Philadelphia, won by Austrian Sepp Straka.

He will now line up in the second major of the year which begins at Quail Hollow, North Carolina on Thursday.

Fox, whose father Grant played 46 times for the All Blacks and won the inaugural World Cup in 1987, previously played on the DP World Tour, winning three times including at the BMW PGA Championship in 2023 before trying his luck in the United States.

On the day when Mother’s Day was celebrated in America, he celebrated his win in South Carolina with his wife Anneke Ryff and two young daughters.

“So my wife sort of joked on Friday when I said, ‘What can I get you for Mother’s Day?’ And she goes, ‘Well, a trophy would be nice’. So I guess I lived up to my end of the bargain there,” said Fox, who also earns a two-year PGA Tour exemption.

“To have the wife and kids here is amazing.

“I haven’t transitioned probably as well as I would have liked over the PGA Tour. It was tough last year, I managed to just keep my card, and it’s been a scratchy start this year as well.

“In this game, you don’t get to win very often. You don’t get job security very often either.

“So it’s certainly nice to have that. And at the back of my mind, can feel like for the rest of the year, I can freewheel it a little bit. Hopefully that takes some pressure off.

“We’ll see how it goes in the next few weeks. But yeah, it’s feels like a monkey off my back, that’s for sure.”