60 Minutes Chief Abruptly Quit. Here’s the Reason Why.

Bill Owens’s shocking exit from 60 Minutes was akin to a soldier pulling the pin on their last grenade, according to current employees at the serial magazine show.

The chief producer stepped aside Tuesday after 24 years on the show, amid network turmoil related to a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Donald Trump, who has repeatedly alleged that 60 Minutes’ sit-down interview with Kamala Harris prior to Election Day had “defrauded” the American public.

“The lawsuit was baseless. He wouldn’t apologize, he wouldn’t bend,” one 60 Minutes source anonymously told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “He fought for the broadcast and for independent journalism, and that cost him his job. It’s shameful.”

A second internal source said that Owens had “dedicated his life to CBS and the broadcast.”

“It’s like a guy who has been battling for months against an attack—unable to defend the broadcast from inappropriate corporate influence. He pulled the pin from his last grenade. He sacrificed himself hoping it might make our corporate overlords wake up and realize they risk destroying what makes 60 Minutes great,” the source said.

“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” the source told CNN, referring to the nonexecutive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global.

“60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer,” the source continued.

Trump and his allies have claimed that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answers to a question regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her answer on different days. But a Federal Communications Commission review of the segment found that Harris’s answers had not been sliced and diced together—instead, they had been trimmed from the former vice president’s extended 21-second response.

“Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it,” Owens wrote Tuesday, in a memo to staff obtained by The Washington Post. “To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”

Owens further wrote that he was departing so that the show—which he described as “my life”—could “move forward.”

The wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was forced to move to a safe house with her children, after the government posted their home address to social media.

White House officials have spent weeks trying to justify their deportation of Abrego Garcia, even after admitting in court that sending him to El Salvador was an “administrative error,” claiming with no evidence that he is a violent criminal and gang member.

At one point, the Department of Homeland Security posted online an order of protection that Jennifer Vasquez Sura had sought, but later abandoned, against her husband. That order contained Vasquez Sura’s home address, unredacted.

“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” Vasquez Sura told The Washington Post. “So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I’m scared for my kids.”

Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, is now staying in an undisclosed location with her three children while Abrego Garcia remains thousands of miles away, despite a Supreme Court order requiring the U.S. government to facilitate his return. Both the Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele say that Abrego Garcia will not be coming back to the U.S., and Vasquez Sura has received hateful comments and taunts on social media.

“I didn’t even think it would become this big—it just happened,” Vasquez Sura said. “But if God threw me in this, I know he’s going to take me out of it. So this is God’s battle. And I’m going to fight it—for Kilmar and for everyone.”

The government has not commented on the decision to leave the family’s address in the document it posted online. Even after the Supreme Court ruling, the Trump administration has fought against returning Abrego Garcia and been admonished by several lower courts, most recently on Tuesday. To this White House, neither Abrego Garcia nor Vasquez Sura’s well-being matter at all.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is attempting to pull Donald Trump back from the proverbial cliff by presenting his own interpretation of the president’s “America First” economic policies.

“I wish to be clear: America first does not mean America alone. To the contrary, it is a call for deeper collaboration and mutual respect among trade partners,” Bessent said Wednesday morning during an address at the Institute of International Finance.

Bessent’s careful remarks portray a notably different position than Trump, who has continually insisted that the U.S. doesn’t actually need economic partnerships with some of its largest trading partners. Perhaps that messaging wasn’t attracting the attention of foreign leaders, who Trump is hoping will approach him to cut new economic deals.

Bessent said that instead, the U.S. was hoping to “rebalance” the international financial system.

“America first means we’re doubling down on our engagement with the international financial system,” he said.

Bessent’s blatant attempt to walk back Trump’s trade war came shortly after the president indicated he was considering reducing tariffs on China. “145 percent is very high and it won’t be that high,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday. “It won’t be anywhere near that high. It’ll come down substantially. But it won’t be zero.”

Bessent had told investors Tuesday that Trump’s steep tariffs on China had effectively imposed a trade embargo between the two countries, and that he expected things to deescalate soon.

Bessent’s statements Wednesday were part of meetings between the International Monetary Fund and World Bank taking place in Washington this week.

The IMF said Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs would significantly slow economic growth, both domestically and globally. The IMF’s chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters that the odds of a recession in the U.S. had increased from 25 percent in October 2024 to 40 percent.

Bessent took a moment to hit back at the global lender of last resort during his remarks. “The IMF once focused on global monetary cooperation and financial stability. Now, it spends excessive time and resources on climate change, gender, and social issues, which are not its mission,” Bessent said.

While answering questions, the Treasury secretary also insisted that the dollar would remain the reserve currency, despite the rapid de-dollarization that has resulted from Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy. On Monday, the ICE U.S. dollar index—which measures the dollar against foreign currencies—sank more than one percent to its lowest level since March 2022.

Americans at large disapprove of President Trump’s performance on virtually every key issue, according to recent polling from Reuters/Ipsos.

About 48 percent disapprove of his performance regarding the “rule of law,” 49 percent disapprove of his performance on the environment, 51 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy, 52 percent disapprove of his performance on international trade, and a whopping 57 percent disapprove of his performance on the cost of living.

Trump has overhauled the government, upturned the economy, and completely eroded any sense of security or power that the United States offered as a global trading partner. His wantonly placed tariffs will keep the cost of living high (so much for those grocery prices he campaigned on) while doing nothing to reduce inflation. While it’s unusual for performance ratings to be this paltry this soon in a presidential term, the speed at which Trump has undertaken his chaotic policies certainly explains the numbers. And it’s far from over.

“There’s a big risk for Trump that it’s only going to get worse from here,” said the libertarian CATO Institute’s Scott Lincicome.

Even Donald Trump’s former chief strategist believes that taxing the rich is a good idea.

In an effort to advance the president’s tax bill and defang Democratic attacks on the administration, Steve Bannon is urging Trump to propose a tax hike on multimillionaires, The Washington Post reported Tuesday night.

“One proposal would allow the top tax rate to revert to its level before the 2017 tax law, from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. (This would raise taxes for those with more than $626,350 in earnings),” according to the Post.

The pitch also suggests adopting a new tax bracket for people earning more than $1 million, as well as an additional tax bracket for individuals earning more than $3 million or $5 million.

“This guts the AOC-Bernie ‘oligarchy tour,’” Bannon told the Post, referring to anti-Trump rallies hosted by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders that drew tens of thousands of people.

“Politically, it’s game, set, match—it’s a no-brainer. This would destroy the Democrats,” Bannon said.

Republicans have had a difficult time penciling out Trump’s massive tax plan, which would massively benefit corporations and billionaires and add an estimated $6.8 trillion to the deficit.

But Bannon has been trying to convince conservatives to tax the rich since at least Trump’s first term, and other members of the party are less than convinced that the idea could advance through a Republican-controlled legislature.

“I don’t see it getting through the Senate Finance Committee—there’s not a chance,” Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum research group, told the Post. Holtz-Eakin also predicted that the House would “deflect and say they want to consider all possibilities, but it won’t have the votes.”

“They’ll see this as a punitive tax on rich people for no reason,” Holtz-Eakin said. “They don’t like the politics. They don’t like the economics. They’re not interested.”