Symone Sanders Townsend: Democratic members of Congress should be taking more action
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
10 minutes ago
- CBS News
Paramount, President Trump reach $16 million settlement over "60 Minutes" lawsuit
Paramount will settle President Trump's lawsuit over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris for $16 million, the company announced late Tuesday. CBS News' parent company worked with a mediator to resolve the lawsuit. Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump's future presidential library and the plaintiffs' fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement. The settlement did not include an apology. Paramount also agreed that "60 Minutes" will release transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates in the future, "subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns," the statement said. Mr. Trump's lawsuit, filed last October when he was still a candidate for president, was widely viewed as an attack on the First Amendment. He took issue with CBS News airing two different portions of Harris' response to a question about the Middle East, one in an early excerpt on "Face the Nation" and the other on the full broadcast of "60 Minutes." The lawsuit was filed in Amarillo, Texas, a portion of a federal district court where the sole judge is a 2019 Trump appointee, and it was based on a state consumer protection law that is intended to prevent advertisers from misleading the public about a product being sold. CBS News is not headquartered in Texas, nor did the interview take place there. He initially sought $10 billion in damages when he filed suit last October but upped his demand to $20 billion in February after adding a federal claim alleging false advertising and unfair competition. Jackson, a Texas Republican, joined Mr. Trump as a plaintiff in the amended complaint. Paramount has maintained that the lawsuit was completely without merit and that "60 Minutes" followed a standard editing process. The show's executive producer, Bill Owens, stood behind the show's interview and said he would not apologize. He announced in April that he would depart the network, citing a loss of editorial independence. Weeks later, Wendy McMahon, who served as president and CEO of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, announced she was also departing. "It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on a path forward," she wrote in a note to staffers. First Amendment scholars and constitutional experts largely viewed the lawsuit as a frivolous misapplication of the law. Geoffrey R. Stone, a First Amendment scholar and law professor at the University of Chicago, explained, "That statute is about sales — a salesperson can be held liable for stating that a product has certain positive effects when he knows it doesn't. But CBS is not engaged in advertising here." Constitutional law expert and Harvard professor Noah Feldman called the case an "outrageous violation of First Amendment principles." Politicians had also spoken out about the suit, urging Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone not to settle. The day after McMahon announced her departure, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden sent a letter to Redstone raising concerns that efforts to settle with Mr. Trump would amount to bribery. Redstone had recused herself from settlement talks. In an April Truth Social post, Mr. Trump said he was "honored" to be suing CBS and Paramount. He also urged Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to "impose the maximum fines and punishment" against CBS in connection with a news distortion complaint, which was filed by a conservative group over the same Harris interview. Outgoing FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel dismissed the complaint in January before former President Biden's term ended, but Carr reopened it days after Mr. Trump took office and appointed him to the role. Back in February, CBS complied with an FCC inquiry to hand over the transcript and videos from the Harris interview, simultaneously releasing those files to the public. CBS sought dismissal of the FCC complaint in a March filing, writing, "The Complaint filed against CBS for 'news distortion' envisions a less free world in which the federal government becomes a roving censor — one that second guesses and even punishes specific editorial decisions that are an essential part of producing news programming." The news distortion complaint remains open and under investigation. The FCC's approval is necessary for Paramount's $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media to move ahead, and the agency didn't make a decision on the transaction by the informal 180-day deadline to review mergers, which passed in May. Carr said Thursday that the FCC was still reviewing the transaction. If completed, the Paramount-Skydance merger will cap off a long, turbulent sales process that attracted multiple potential bidders. Talks between Skydance and Paramount's corporate parent, National Amusements, were briefly called off before the sides resumed negotiations and clinched a deal in July 2024.
Fox News
11 minutes ago
- Fox News
Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' clears final hurdle before House-wide vote
The House Rules Committee has teed up President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" for a chamber-wide vote Wednesday after a nearly 12-hour-long session debating the massive piece of legislation. It now heads to the entire chamber for consideration, where several Republicans have already signaled they're concerned with various aspects of the measure. Just two Republicans voted against reporting the bill out of committee – Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, conservatives who had expressed reservations with the bill earlier on Tuesday. No Democrats voted to advance it, while the remaining seven Republicans did. The majority of Republican lawmakers appear poised to advance the bill, however, believing it's the best possible compromise vehicle to make Trump's campaign promises a reality. "This bill is President Trump's agenda, and we are making it law. House Republicans are ready to finish the job and put the One Big Beautiful Bill on President Trump's desk in time for Independence Day," House GOP leaders said in a joint statement after the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday. The House Rules Committee acts as the final gatekeeper before most pieces of legislation get a chamber-wide vote. Democrats attempted to delay the panel's hours-long hearing by offering multiple amendments that were shot down along party lines. They criticized the bill as a bloated tax cut giveaway to wealthy Americans, at the expense of Medicaid coverage for lower-income people. Democrats have also accused Republicans of adding billions of dollars to the national debt, chiefly by extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts. "I don't know what it means to be a fiscal hawk, because if you vote for this bill, you're adding $4 trillion to the debt," Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Calif., said during debate on the measure. "Republicans have gone on TV for months and months and months solemnly insisting to the American people that this bill is going to cut the debt, that this will not hurt anybody on Medicaid, just those lazy bums and, you know, unworthy people." But Republicans have said the bill is targeted relief for middle and working-class Americans, citing provisions temporarily allowing people to deduct taxes from tipped and overtime wages, among others. "If you vote against this bill, you're voting against the child tax credit being at $2,200 per child. At the end of this year, it will drop to $1,000. That makes a huge impact to 40 million hardworking Americans. And it's simply, when they vote no, they're voting against a $2,200 child tax credit, and they're okay with $1,000," House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said. "If you listen to the Democrats here, they say this is all about billionaires and millionaires. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime work. How many millionaires and billionaires, Madam Chair, work by the hour?" The bill numbers more than 900 pages and includes Trump's priorities on taxes, the border, defense, energy and the national debt. An initial version passed the House in May by just one vote, but the Senate has since made multiple key modifications to Medicaid, tax cuts and the debt limit. Moderates are wary of the Senate measures that would shift more Medicaid costs to states that expanded their programs under ObamaCare, while conservatives have said those cuts are not enough to offset the additional spending in other parts of the bill. Several key measures were also removed during the "Byrd Bath," a process in the Senate where legislation is reviewed so that it can be fast-tracked under the budget reconciliation process – which must adhere to a strict set of fiscal rules. Among those conservative critics, Reps. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced resolutions to change the Senate version to varying degrees. Ogles' amendment would have most dramatically changed the bill. If passed, it would have reverted the legislation back to the House version. Perry's amendments were aimed at tightening the rollback of green energy tax credits created by the former Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act. Another amendment by Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., would have restored certain Second Amendment-related provisions stripped out by the Byrd Bath. Any changes to the legislation would have forced it back into the Senate, likely delaying Republicans' self-imposed Fourth of July deadline to get the bill onto Trump's desk. The full House is expected to begin considering the bill at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday. Sometime that morning, House lawmakers will vote on whether to begin debating the bill, a procedural measure known as a "rule vote." If that's cleared, a final vote on the bill itself is expected sometime later Wednesday.
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures rise as Trump's tax bill heads to House
US stock futures rose as President Trump's sweeping spending bill headed to the House after narrowly passing the Senate. Futures attached to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F) ticked up 0.2%. Futures attached to the benchmark S&P 500 (ES=F) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose 0.3%. On Tuesday, stocks were mixed as Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" cleared the Senate, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The bill now heads to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson aims to pass the legislation by Thursday, July 4. Economists estimate the bill's final price tag could top $4 trillion. Meanwhile, Trump's pause on his "reciprocal" tariffs is set to expire on July 9, and the president has said he isn't considering an extension. The administration is now reportedly trying to close smaller trade deals before the deadline, after which the president has said he will send letters to countries assigning tariff rates. "I'll be writing letters to a lot of countries," Trump said on Tuesday. Read more: The latest on Trump's tariffs Finally, Wall Street is looking forward to the release of the June jobs report on Thursday as investors bet a rate cut from the Federal Reserve could land sooner rather than later. Any labor market weakness will be closely watched as it could strengthen the case for a cut. Markets across the Asia-Pacific region saw mixed trading early morning on Wednesday, with investors eyeing the potential of US interest rate cuts and the fast-approaching July 9 tariff deadline for deals to be struck between the US and major trading partners worldwide. Singapore's benchmark, the Straits Times Index (^STI), gained 0.5% to hit a record high of 4009.15 points as of 00:20 (UTC-4). The move saw the index crossing past the 4000 threshold for the second time on record. Australia and Hong Kong led gains as Australia's S&P/ASX 200 (^AXJO) rose 0.4% and the Hang Seng Index (^HSI) popped 0.7%. Japan saw loss in the country's major gauge as the benchmark Nikkei 225 (^N225) slipped 0.7%. Korea's Kospi (^KS11) cratered 1.2% as Trump ratcheted up pressure on the country to finalize a trade deal. Mainland China's CSI 300 ( hovered near the baseline. Reuters reports: Markets across the Asia-Pacific region saw mixed trading early morning on Wednesday, with investors eyeing the potential of US interest rate cuts and the fast-approaching July 9 tariff deadline for deals to be struck between the US and major trading partners worldwide. Singapore's benchmark, the Straits Times Index (^STI), gained 0.5% to hit a record high of 4009.15 points as of 00:20 (UTC-4). The move saw the index crossing past the 4000 threshold for the second time on record. Australia and Hong Kong led gains as Australia's S&P/ASX 200 (^AXJO) rose 0.4% and the Hang Seng Index (^HSI) popped 0.7%. Japan saw loss in the country's major gauge as the benchmark Nikkei 225 (^N225) slipped 0.7%. Korea's Kospi (^KS11) cratered 1.2% as Trump ratcheted up pressure on the country to finalize a trade deal. Mainland China's CSI 300 ( hovered near the baseline. Reuters reports: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
