60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley confronted new executive producer Nick Bilton and another CBS executive Monday morning in what Guardian US media reporter Jeremy Barr described as a "heated meeting," pushing back forcefully on last week's mass firings at the storied newsmagazine.Pelley didn't mince words about who he held responsible."She's murdering 60 Minutes," Pelley said of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, according to Barr. "She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that."Producers were present and showed support for Pelley during the meeting, Barr said.The firings Pelley pushed back on included veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, fellow correspondent Cecilia Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich — all ousted last Thursday as Weiss installed Bilton, a tech journalist and TV news outsider, to lead the broadcast.Pelley's outrage has been building for months. When Weiss pulled Alfonsi's CECOT segment just hours before its scheduled December broadcast — after it had cleared every internal editorial and legal review — Pelley lashed out in a staff meeting. "She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously," he said at the time, according to The New Yorker.On Wednesday night, just hours before Alfonsi was formally fired, Pelley saluted her from the stage at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards at Lincoln Center.Critics have accused Weiss of spiking the CECOT story to placate the Trump administration, a charge her allies deny. Alfonsi, who has hired a litigator, called her ouster "a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting."
President Trump met with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at the White House on Monday to discuss the Justice Department’s controversial $1.776 billion antiweaponization fund, sources in the Speaker’s office confirmed to The Hill and to NewsNation’s Joe Khalil. The meeting comes as Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have voiced frustration over the fund,…
As the war with Iran enters its fourth month and President Donald Trump struggles to reach a peace deal to end the conflict he started, the Hill reports that Senate Republicans have become deeply divided over how to proceed. This ‘messy debate’ comes as the GOP is already at odds over several key legislative priorities. According to the Hill, several hawkish Senators led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) reject the deal that has been emerging with Iran, urging the president “not to agree to any deal that would allow Iran to continue its nuclear enrichment program or ease sanctions while it continues to support Hezbollah and Hamas.” American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Danielle Pletka typifies this view, “arguing that it would be even weaker than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran in 2015 — a deal Trump abandoned in his first term.”“The reporting on it suggests that it’s a terrible deal, that the president has gotten basically nothing that he said he was getting, and that his negotiators have embarrassed him,” she said. “Anything that ends with Iran believing that it can open and close Hormuz at times of its choosing is a loss for the United States.”For the senators’ part, Wicker has warned that the deal would be a “disaster,” Graham argues that it would make Iran the region’s “dominant force,” and Cruz asserts that giving Iran billions in sanctions relief while allowing the country control over the Strait of Hormuz would be a “disastrous mistake.” According to Republican strategist and ex-Trump National Security Council spokesperson John Ullyot, however, “They will certainly make their feelings clear, and loudly, but it’s hard for the Senate to stand in the way of a deal by any president in an ongoing military operation since it’s not subject to a vote that would block it.”But the views of other GOP lawmakers have the party further divided, as “a growing number of Republican senators are losing patience with the lack of a clear plan for ending the conflict, which has caused gas prices to rise by nearly $1.40 per gallon since late February.” Four Republican senators recently voted to discharge a war powers resolution that would have directed Trump to withdraw U.S. troops from the war. These include Republican senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and the measure advanced because three Republicans were absent. It would have passed if just one more Republican had voted for it, “sending a loud rebuke to Trump over his handling of the conflict.”“The Senate is expected to vote this week on a motion to proceed to the resolution to end the war, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) need to work out a time agreement,” explained the Hill. “The measure is close to having enough support to pass the House as well, though Trump is certain to veto it.”According to the Hill, Republican senators on both sides of the divide will likely extend Trump some latitude as the deal is negotiated, but that once details are revealed, the backlash could be pronounced. Many are watching how Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) votes as he just lost a primary race to a Trump-endorsed opponent. Now that Cornyn knows he’s leaving office, he has little incentive to bend to Trump’s will, who has recently accused the senator of being “very disloyal.”
President Donald Trump is expected to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Monday at the White House to address a major obstacle to a top GOP priority – one created by the president himself, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman revealed.That obstacle is Trump’s taxpayer-funded $1.7 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” designed to award payouts to those who’ve alleged to have been unfairly targeted by the Biden administration’s Justice Department. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has admitted that even those convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would be eligible for compensation from the fund.While the fund has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge from awarding payouts, Trump has continued to support it, creating a headache for GOP lawmakers attempting to pass a reconciliation bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which have remained unfunded since February.“Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump are meeting at the White House this morning on the weaponization fund,” Sherman wrote in a social media post on X. “This fund has completely screwed up passing reconciliation -- ICE/CBP funding.”No other details have been revealed about Trump and Johnson’s meeting, other than its focus being on the threat it poses to Republican efforts to fund ICE and CBP.SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON and President DONALD TRUMP are meeting at the White House this morning on the weaponization fund.This fund has completely screwed up passing reconciliation -- ICE/CBP funding.Confirming the great abc team @lauren_peller and @KFaulders— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 1, 2026
Former first lady Jill Biden joins TODAY's Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones to share stories and memories from iconic photos taken throughout her life, including her 49-year marriage with Joe Biden, her connection to the White House's East Wing, and bidding for a cameo in Season 2 of “Heated Rivalry.”
A former senior Trump administration official issued President Donald Trump and those around him an ominous warning on Monday about what they said were “historic consequences” they’ve yet to face, but undoubtedly will – and soon.That former official was Miles Taylor, a security expert who served as a Homeland Security senior advisor in the first Trump administration, and his warning was about the Trump administration’s ongoing operation in the Caribbean targeting suspected drug traffickers, an operation that critics have called illegal and as of Monday has killed 205 people.“More than 200 people have now been killed in Trump’s campaign against ‘drug boats’ since it began in early September,” Taylor wrote in an analysis published on his Substack Monday. “I can tell you from firsthand experience that all of them could have been arrested instead. In other words, the murders are a choice – and one that will have historic consequences.”As Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran continues to dominate news headlines, the administration has simultaneously begun ramping up its attacks on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean, and without providing evidence to the public proving that those killed were drug traffickers.And, while the Trump administration has yet to face any legal consequences for what even Republican lawmakers have described as “extrajudicial killings,” Taylor warned that consequences were, in fact, coming, and soon enough that “the people who carried this out should be calling their lawyers.”“First, Democrats are very likely to retake at least one chamber of Congress. The day they do, they get subpoena power, and the first thing a serious oversight committee will do is start pulling the thread on the obvious crimes committed by the Trump administration. This boat-strike campaign is top of the list,” Taylor wrote.“Second, congressional investigators will ask the only questions that matter in any abuse-of-power inquiry: who knew, and when did they know it? They will go looking for the paper trail, and they will undoubtedly find it.”
A federal jury last week convicted three people on felony conspiracy charges over their involvement in an anti-ICE protest in Spokane, Washington, last June. The “Spokane Three” are awaiting sentencing and face up to six years in prison for conspiracy to impede or injure ICE officers. They had attempted to block the transfer of a group of detained immigrants by sitting in front of a bus. Six of the nine protesters originally charged took plea deals, but the Spokane Three decided to fight the charges. “If I had taken a plea deal, it would have essentially been me lying and saying that I did something that I didn’t do. I didn’t assault anybody,” says Bajun Mavalwalla, a U.S. military veteran and one of the Spokane Three. “What we have here is a really large reach of the conspiracy statute,” adds journalist and author Aaron Glantz, highlighting that no officers were hurt in the June protest. “What happened was a relatively minor demonstration.”
MS NOW's Jonathan Lemire struggled to make sense of President Donald Trump's latest weekend social media posting spree.The 79-year-old president posted dozens of times across more than 12 hours Saturday, including a lengthy tirade against a federal judge and numerous AI-generated memes celebrating himself in fantastical scenarios, and the "Morning Joe" host attempted to describe the posts to viewers."Right now, we want to turn to President Trump, who spent most of his Saturday posting on his Truth Social platform," Lemire said. "Again, the president's first post at 11:50 a.m. was a more than 700-word rant about a federal judge who on Friday ruled that the Kennedy Center must remove Trump's name from the building. Over the next 14 hours, Trump posted more than 60 times, finally ending at just after 1 a.m. Sunday morning.""His social media spree included political memes attacking his perceived political rivals, memes about crime under his administration compared to former President Biden, multiple AI-generated pictures, including two separate posts of Trump on Mount Rushmore and at least three posts with George Washington, one of which was the two men on horses near a Trump-branded NASCAR vehicle with the Washington Monument and the White House in the background, and, for good measure, a space shuttle flying over them," Lemire added. "You know, this is not going to help the accusations that President Trump is focused solely on himself and his own priorities."The posts offer a window into the president's thinking, agreed co-host Katty Kay, and she said the view wasn't particularly appealing. "It's pretty clear where the president's head is at at the moment," she said. "He's had this long-running war with Iran, long by his standards, not long, of course, by international standards, that is not going well. He's deeply frustrated by that. When he hits a roadblock in the pet things that he is really focused on, and that he feels a part of his legacy, like the Kennedy Center then and like the reflecting pool, then he gets peeved, and when he gets peeved, he reaches for his phone, and no matter how many people around him say it would be better to take the president's phone away from him during the course of particularly weekend nights, he doesn't want to do that." - YouTube youtu.be
Platner campaign claims MS NOW's account is 'flat out inaccurate.'