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Hey, good morning. President Trump's lawyers say they have a deal with Rupert Murdoch, Rachel Maddow says the US has a "consolidating dictatorship," and John Herrman says we're entering the era of "generative-engine optimization." Plus, the latest on "Squawk Box," The California Post, Meta's community notes, and more. But first...

VOA's slow-motion retreat 

At the start of Trump's second term, Voice of America was broadcasting and streaming to the world in 49 languages. Now it's down to four languages, with a skeleton staff, and barely producing any content at all.

While court battles over VOA's fate continue to make news, the shut-it-down effort has succeeded. The latest development: Michael Abramowitz, the sidelined director of VOA, "has been fired after refusing to accept what he called an 'illegal' reassignment to run a broadcasting station in North Carolina," WaPo's Scott Nover reported yesterday.

The network's future is riding on litigation, and last week the plaintiffs won another motion; Judge Royce Lamberth "excoriated Trump officials for failing to show that they had been abiding by his ruling" to restore programming, "saying Voice of America was required by law to continue broadcasting news," the NYT's Minho Kim wrote.

The government has to respond to Lamberth by August 13. But the "required by law" reference is really the key. Yes, Congress passed laws establishing VOA and creating a journalistic firewall and funding its operations. But Congress isn't doing anything to defend its creation.

Trump's executive order silencing VOA in March directed Kari Lake and co. to strip it down to its "statutory minimum." That's why there is still a smattering of local language content — for example, Persian news for audiences in Iran. 

But the plan, according to Lake, is to cease broadcasting altogether. She continues to deride VOA during live shots on MAGA media shows. "Foreign influence has infiltrated" the network, she said recently. "Our goal is to shut the entire agency down as per the instructions of President Trump."

The courts have slowed her down — for instance, Lamberth ordered the government to pay Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty through the rest of the fiscal year. But whether sped up or in slow motion, the result is the same: a retreat from US-funded broadcasting around the world.

Maddow says 'dictatorship' is here

While Fox's Sean Hannity celebrated the latest examples of Trump-aligned agencies investigating Trump opponents last night, over on MSNBC, the country's most-watched progressive host delivered a distressing monologue. "We do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge. We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country," Rachel Maddow said.

She cited "secret police," "black site prison camps," and "shows of force," among other examples. "The question is no longer how to prepare for this risk or how to try to avert it, but rather how to fight it now that it is here and in effect," Maddow said. She ended the segment, as she often has since January, by highlighting protests and other democratic tools. 

What a contrast between MSNBC and CNBC 👇

Trump calls into 'Squawk Box' 

Trump continued to justify his abrupt firing of the BLS boss over "phony" jobs numbers, telling Joe Kernen on CNBC a few minutes ago, "it's a highly political situation. It's totally rigged. Smart people know it. People with common sense know it. And a lot of people like to keep their head under the covers and just not believe it."

Kernen gingerly tried to correct some of Trump's misstatements but mostly encouraged him to keep talking. The president spent more than 30 minutes on the phone, and at the end, Kernen lobbied him to start calling in on a weekly basis again...

 >> The editors of National Review say "Trump is shooting the messenger of bad economic news, not unlike when China discontinues inconvenient data series that make the Communist Party look bad."

 >> Big picture: Information is power, and Trump wants to control more of it. His power moves have been evident all throughout his second term — and the individual headlines should be analyzed as part of a pattern rather than one-offs. Here's my CNN.com column about that...

Fox's outrage-industrial complex

Andrew Kirell writes: Fox News mentioned Sydney Sweeney more times on Monday than any other day since the "outrage" over her jeans ads began. Why? Because Trump weighed in and gave the nontroversy a fresh news hook.

"The woke mob continues to lose their minds over Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad, President Trump weighs in," Sean Hannity said last night. "Democrats tried to cancel her because she said she had good jeans," Jesse Watters added on his show. But no prominent Democratic leaders or officials have even commented on the ad. 

This is a crystal clear illustration of how right-wing media's outrage-industrial complex works. It all begins with a viral, often audacious post, typically from an obscure social media account, which then gets amplified by MAGA media influencers who dishonestly declare that it represents the entirety of the "left." From there, it reaches critical mass at Fox News — the final boss of conservative media — until Trump personally weighs in, generating more coverage and breathing new life into the outrage cycle. Rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, stories like Trump's BLS chief firing or ongoing questions about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein go relatively ignored by Trump's media allies. 

 >> Last Thursday, we reported that over the course of four days, Fox had mentioned Sweeney and her ad 181 times versus Epstein 18 times. Update those tallies for a full week and you get: Sweeney 766, Epstein 53.

📚 Today's new nonfiction releases

I'm heading to Barnes & Noble right after hitting send because I want a first-day copy of old friend Garrett Graff's newest oral history, "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky." I might pick up "Summer of Our Discontent" by Thomas Chatterton Williams while I'm there. 

Also new in stores today: Scott Anderson's "King of Kings," about the Iranian revolution, which this NYT review calls "exceptional and important;" Alex Marlow's latest Trump-boosting book "Breaking the Law;" Robert Reich's "Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America," and Meg Josephson's "Are You Mad at Me?" (Great title for a book; the answer is almost always no!)

Trump and Murdoch's deal?

Trump and Rupert Murdoch "struck an agreement late Monday delaying Murdoch's deposition in the president's billion-dollar libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owners," CNN's Hannah Rabinowitz reports, citing a court filing.

Perhaps for Team Trump, it's appealing to say that Murdoch played ball. (Now the lawyers can tell their client that they "won" something; see below.) But their proposal to depose Murdoch immediately was always a stunt, one meant to publicly embarrass the 94-year-old mogul by speculating about his health and claiming he could die at any time.

The WSJ hasn't even filed its motion to dismiss the suit yet! That's typically step one. So, under the terms of last night's joint stipulation, everything is on hold until the judge rules on that motion. 

Murdoch will file a health report card

According to the court filing, once the judge approves the agreement, Murdoch will give Trump's legal team a "sworn declaration describing his current health condition" within three days. "Murdoch has further agreed to provide regularly scheduled updates to the plaintiff regarding his health," the filing says. 

Devin Nunes' NBC lawsuit is no more

A federal judge has "dismissed a defamation lawsuit by Devin Nunes, the former California congressman and now chief executive of Trump Media and Technology Group, against NBCUniversal over a comment by Rachel Maddow about his dealings with a suspected Russian agent," Jonathan Stempel reports for Reuters.

It's pretty simple: A judge found that "no reasonable jury could find Maddow demonstrated actual malice toward Nunes..."

NEW POST FINDS NEW HOST ON WEST COAST

Is a West Coast newspaper war brewing? No, it's more like a political tug-of-war via the tabloids. The New York Post's parent is launching a sister publication, The California Post, early next year, promising Angelenos "an antidote to the jaundiced, jaded journalism that has sadly proliferated" there.

Editor in chief Keith Poole says the California edition is "the next manifestation of our national brand." Some of the overlaps are obvious: "The @NYPost is expanding to the other bastion of liberal coastal craziness," columnist Miranda Devine wrote on X last night. Liam Reilly has details here. Plus, check out how the Post is pitching the new outlet to job applicants here...

We need a new word for 'exodus'

"Wanted on the media beat: synonyms for 'exodus.' I've already used it a half-dozen times when talking about the Post," The Press Box co-host Bryan Curtis remarked Monday. The latest WaPo departure is Carol Leonnig, a 25-year veteran and a mentor to many at the paper, who is jumping to MSNBC as senior investigative correspondent.

Briefly...

 >> Another rising star at NBC and MSNBC has chosen MSNBC in the corporate divorce: This time it's Jacob Soboroff. (LAT)

 >> "Tom Llamas' early success as anchor is a boost for NBC News," Garrett Searight writes. (Barrett Media)

 >> Fox Corp quarterly earnings are out this morning. The company notably posted 7% ad revenue growth, "driven by its Tubi free ad-supported streaming service, as well as Fox News." (THR)

>> "Ziff Davis-owned IGN Entertainment has laid off staff... the latest shift in the turbulent gaming media landscape." (The Verge)

Time for 'generative-engine optimization'

The era of SEO, search engine optimization, is over, John Herrman says. His newest must-read for Intelligencer is about GEO, generative-engine optimization, a/k/a "trying to trick AI chatbots" into mentioning your brand in an answer. 

Here's the good news: "Publishing quality content that someone might actually find useful" is still important. But there's a lot more to this emerging industry, as Herrman explains..

Do Meta's community notes work?

WaPo tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler decided to test out Meta's new X-style "crowdsourced system to fight falsehoods" by drafting his own community notes... about 65 of them in total. "Only three of them got published, all related to July's Texas floods," he wrote, "an overall success rate of less than 5 percent."

Meta says the system is still in the "test-and-learn phase," so give it time. But Fowler's conclusion is that "randomly selected volunteers just can't do this work alone," so he's left hoping that "the teams inside Meta who care about the truth can evolve community notes to make them more effective."

More tech talk

 >> This week OpenAI "is set to hit 700 million weekly active users for ChatGPT," marking "a more than fourfold year-over-year surge in growth." (CNBC)

 >> Perplexity "is crawling and scraping content from websites that have explicitly indicated they don’t want to be scraped," Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports. (TechCrunch)

 >> Sylvia Varnham O'Regan breaks down "the White House’s mixed messages on AI copyright." (The Information)

 >> According to a new study, "paper mills" are "churning out fraudulent scientific studies faster than journals and publishers can retract them." (WSJ)

 >> Drew Harwell's latest is about "the rise of AI tools that write about you when you die." (WaPo)

'The Daily Show' is on summer vacation — really

There was no new episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" last night because the show is on summer vacation. While "the timing is sure to raise eyebrows," this month's recess "has been planned for months and has nothing to do with the current drama" at Paramount,Jed Rosenzweig reports for Late Nighter.

 >> On last Thursday's show, Desi Lydic told viewers not to "freak out" about the vacation. "Have a great summer," she said, "and we'll see you in September when we can all freak out together."

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.