Good morning! ESPN is previewing its flagship streaming app, Hollywood leaders are lobbying the White House for tax code changes, and MAGA media heavyweights are blasting the Qatar jet "gift." Plus, the first snippets from "Original Sin" are out... |
Public media power struggle |
Last month the White House said President Trump had fired three of the five people on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board of directors.
But this is not "The Apprentice," where the words "you're fired" have magical power. And the corporation — which doles out taxpayer dollars for PBS and NPR stations — is not a federal agency. It's a private nonprofit entity.
So those three directors are still on the job. Later today CPB will hold its second board meeting since Trump took aim at the group and demanded it defund public media. This standoff is a fascinating showcase of what happens when Trump runs up against the limits of his power.
"It is CPB's position" that the targeted board members are still serving, according to a new court filing. The corporation is suing over Trump's attempt to blow up its board, and a key hearing is scheduled for this Wednesday. But the board will convene again first, which actually plays right into the legal arguments CPB is making.
Allow me to nerd out for a paragraph: The CPB board can't meet or conduct business without a quorum, a/k/a a majority of members present, which in this case is three. Further, under D.C. law, every nonprofit group must have three board members. So by claiming he was firing three directors, leaving only two left, Trump was trying to pull the plug on the whole thing.
Ironically, as NPR's Stephen Fowler notes here, "without a quorum, the board would also be unable to enact Trump's executive order allegedly seeking to defund PBS and NPR."
But nevermind all that. The law is crystal clear that CPB is independent. Trump's actions are "precisely the type of governmental interference" that Congress "sought to prevent," the corporation's chief counsel says.
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Right after Trump tried to fire those board members, DOGE staffers tried to assign a team to CPB. Fowler reports that the nonprofit "denied that request," citing its independent status.
There was another example of this dynamic in the news yesterday: Two senior Justice Department officials appointed by Trump to run the Library of Congress "were denied access on Monday" because the library is a legislative-branch agency, and it "has not received direction from Congress on how to move forward." CNN's Paula Reid, Casey Gannon and Michael Williams have the full story here...
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"Indefensible." "It’s a bribe." "Such a stain" on the administration.
Some of Trump's staunchest supporters are among the loudest critics of his plan to accept a jet from Qatar for use as Air Force One. I don't think I've seen this much MAGA media pushback since Trump retook power. Figures like Ben Shapiro are urging Trump voters to consider how they’d react if a Democratic president hatched the same plan. "I think if we switched the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right," he said yesterday. Here's my full story with more examples...
>> Less principled MAGA personalities and platforms have defaulted to lazy media criticism, highlighting how Trump complained when ABC's Rachel Scott confronted him about the jet.
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Per CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who is anchoring from Riyadh, Trump attended a lunch upon his arrival in Saudi Arabia with "quite the guest list," including Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.
>> The White House Correspondents' Association leveled an objection yesterday because "for the first time since the White House press corps started traveling with American presidents abroad, no wire service reporter [was] aboard Air Force One."
>> But Sean Hannity was aboard, and he interviewed Trump during the flight.
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Hollywood leaders write to Trump |
In a letter to Trump yesterday, his own "special ambassadors" Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone joined with "a lengthy list of industry players including the Motion Picture Association, producers' groups and top industry labor organizations" in asking the president "to support their efforts to include Hollywood-friendly tax measures in a reconciliation package being put together in Congress," THR's Katie Kilkenny reports. "The letter notably did not mention tariffs." Instead, the letter focuses on "three requests for changes to the tax code," the NYT's Nicole Sperling writes...
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'Original Sin' rollout begins |
Joe Biden's "physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election," Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson report in "Original Sin," which comes out one week from today. Axios AM published snippets from the book this morning. "They did not want images of Biden in a wheelchair out there," Tapper says in this CNN video.
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Today's new nonfiction releases |
There are so many intriguing new titles to mention this week. Ron Chernow's latest biography, "Mark Twain," is already in the top 10 on Amazon. Leah Litman's "Lawless," a cri de coeur against the conservative Supreme Court, and "Class Clown," a memoir by Dave Barry, are also getting lots of attention.
Also newly on sale today: "On Character: Choices That Define a Life" by General Stanley McChrystal; "Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution" by Peniel E. Joseph; "Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight" by David A. Kessler M.D.; "How to Be Well" by Amy Larocca; and "I Hope You Remember: Poems on Loving, Longing, and Living" by "viral TikTok poet" Josie Balka. Doesn't that sound like fun, being a "viral TikTok poet"?
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>> "Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs," the WSJ editorial board opines. (WSJ)
>> "Hasan Piker, the biggest progressive political streamer in America, was detained by Customs and Border Protection for hours of questioning upon returning to the U.S. from a trip to France this weekend," Taylor Lorenz writes. (User Mag)
>> "Cannes you return?" Increased scrutiny at the U.S. border is prompting "worry in Hollywood as summer fest season starts," Mia Galuppo writes. (THR)
>> Greg Gutfeld says "the crazy stuff sounds real and the real stuff sounds crazy" on his new Fox Nation game show about the first 100 days of Trump 2.0. (Mediaite)
>> Yesterday we led with the talent exodus from The Washington Post. Later in the day came another example: Alexandra Petri is leaving to join The Atlantic. (X)
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TelevisaUnivision and Disney are up next at the TV upfronts. ESPN is expected to announce the name and price of its direct-to-consumer flagship streaming app at a press event this morning. Per CNBC's Alex Sherman, it will simply be called ESPN.
At yesterday's stage shows, NBCU hyped primetime NBA games and "leaned heavily on Peacock programming," Fox "flaunted its skinniness," and Amazon "touted ad opportunities across ecommerce, sports, podcasts, Prime Video, and Twitch."
Amazon also promoted new ad formats, including "contextually relevant pause ads" that match what's happening in the middle of a show, and shared a new reach # for Prime Video's ad tier: More than 130 million U.S. customers.
NBC announced Michael Jordan will be a "special contributor" to its NBA coverage, and the network will fête its 100th year with a big special in 2026. Versant pitched advertisers on 16 new originals, and yes, we counted at least three different pronunciations of Versant throughout the show. Oh, and Seth Meyers made a Matt Lauer joke that elicited a Radio City full of groans.
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First look at 'The Paper' |
Set "in the same universe" as NBC's Emmy-winning hit series "The Office," and produced by some of the same writers, "The Paper" is Peacock's forthcoming mockumentary set at The Truth Teller, a once-storied Toledo newspaper now facing familiar problems in the post-digital age. Upfront attendees were treated to a teaser trailer, which showed Oscar Nuñez reprising his role as "The Office" accountant Oscar (thus making "The Paper" a spinoff of sorts). While some of the jokes made at the news industry's expense were predictable, the show looks promising. It debuts in September.
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>> Happy first day of Cannes! "The event is packed with high-profile English-language movies" this year. (NYT)
>> Brent Lang listed 16 projects at Cannes that "have buyers buzzing." (Variety)
>> "Lachlan Murdoch said the new Fox streaming service he’s been teasing for months will be called Fox One and will launch before the start of football season this fall." (Deadline)
>> "Ticketmaster will now show how much you’ll pay for tickets — fees included — before checkout." (The Verge)
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>> "Apple is weighing price increases for its fall iPhone lineup, a step it is seeking to couple with new features and design changes." (WSJ)
>> An AI-powered Coca-Cola ad "celebrating authors" got some very basic facts wrong. (404 Media)
>> "Perplexity is in advanced talks for a new funding round that would value it at $14 billion, a more than 50% increase from late last year." (WSJ)
>> Gannett is "using AI to churn out a nationwide torrent of automated articles about lottery results that often pointedly direct readers toward a gambling site with which Gannett has a financial relationship." (Futurism)
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