CBS’s Head of Standards Quits as Bari Weiss Expands Her Influence

CBS News’s head of standards and practices, Claudia Milne, announced her departure from the network Thursday morning, marking the first exit of a major executive since Bari Weiss became editor in chief.

Milne did not specify her reason for leaving, but said in a farewell message to colleagues that her exit came amid “complicated times” for the company, the industry, and the country.

“I believe our role as journalists is to hold the powerful to account,” Milne said in a copy of the note obtained by Variety. “We are here to question and challenge our political leaders on behalf of our audiences, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative … we must interrogate the social media companies that want to control our attention, the businesses that manage our healthcare and the institutions that shape our education system … and So. Much. More.”

Milne joined the company in 2019 as a managing editor of CBS This Morning, but climbed CBS’s ranks by taking on leadership responsibilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, she was tasked with overseeing a unit focused on deepfakes and misinformation.

Weiss’s takeover at the network has been met with widespread criticism. The anti-woke, pro-Israel grifter was announced as the newsroom’s newest chief earlier this month, despite lacking any experience as a news reporter, working in broadcast news, or running a major news operation.

Her appointment is the just the latest in a string of chaos at CBS. Over the past year, the company has undermined itself by settling multimillion dollar lawsuits with Donald Trump over its fair and accurate coverage, in an apparent bid to butter up the administration for its multibillion dollar merger. That resulted in the loss of two storied showrunners, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who rejected Paramount’s approach to handling the groundless lawsuit.

The network climate somehow managed to get even hairier last month when Paramount tapped a former Trump adviser, Kenneth Weinstein, to serve as CBS’s ombudsman.

But Weiss’s whopping promotion—and Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of her blog The Free Press—mark the beginning of a radical new era for the historically middle-of-the-road news conglomerate, which once served as the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, including Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. Weiss is expected to continue the right-wing lurch that’s been ongoing at CBS under the ownership of Trump ally David Ellison.

Senator John Fetterman may be primaried in 2028, and he’s apparently quite butthurt about it.

As Axios reported Thursday, possible contenders are emerging to take on the Pennsylvania Democrat. Elected in 2022, Fetterman flipped a long-held red seat after embracing a progressive image. But while in office, he has turned his back on—and even began lashing out at—the left.

Possible 2028 Democratic challengers, per Axios, include Representative Brendan Boyle and former Representative Conor Lamb, who have both been openly critical of the senator, as well as Representative Chris DeLuzio, who has made a name for himself as a progressive economic populist.

The response from Fetterman, a man known for his volatile temperament, was bitter.

“Enjoy your clickbait!” Fetterman texted Axios. When prompted for a follow-up, he cut off communication, telling the publication, “Please do not contact,” before later sending an article with statistics that he claimed evidenced his anti-Trump bona fides. “ACTUAL NUMBERS,” Fetterman wrote, “less clicks.”

Fetterman’s rightward shift came as he took an increasingly hard-line, almost monomaniacal pro-Israel stance, which, along with an adoption of a more Trump-friendly posture on issues like immigration, seemingly spurred a mass exodus of his staffers.

One ex-staffer is quoted in Mother Jones as calling the senator “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” He has lived up to that label lately in siding with MAGA on the U.S. military’s extrajudicial strikes in the Caribbean sans congressional approval, blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown, and even on whether Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted Thursday that he has absolutely no clue how to end the government shutdown.

During another daily press conference, Johnson pretended that Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, had absolutely no say in the fate of the federal government.

“So, many of you have asked all of us, ‘How does it end?’ We have no idea. It’s up to the Democrats, and they have to decide it,” Johnson said. “And judging by their outrageous behavior, the Democrats appear perfectly happy to keep the political theater going while real people suffer.”

But Johnson seemed all too eager to wash his hands of doing the actual work of governance.

Johnson fumed that Democrats had refused an offer from Senate Majority Leader John Thune to get the chamber to vote on Affordable Care Act subsidies, with some reforms, in exchange for reopening the government. But Thune couldn’t guarantee the vote would pass.

“And [Chuck] Schumer said no,” Johnson said, laughing. “That happened. Ask Leader Thune about it. Because they wanted a guaranteed outcome.”

Johnson raged that Republican leaders couldn’t guarantee an outcome, because it was “not possible” for Republicans to build consensus to pass the ACA subsidies until the government was back in session. It was not immediately clear what would be so difficult about that, except that the speaker had sent all members of his own party back to their districts.

Johnson claimed Democrats were holding the American people “hostage” by continuing the shutdown. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has proceeded to gut essential programs, including projects that would create thousands of jobs, and has executed unprecedented layoffs of federal workers.

The speaker ended his address in a huff. “I don’t like being mad Mike, I wanna be happy Mike, I want to be the happy warrior, But I am so upset about this,” he said. “God bless America, we’re done.”

If the ACA tax credits expire at the end of the year, they could knock an estimated 5.1 million Americans off their insurance by 2034.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune—who said he believed that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would “help restore some of the trust in our public health agencies” when he voted to confirm him—now thinks that women should not trust RFK Jr. for medical advice.

MSNBC host Ali Vitali asked Thune on Thursday about the lack of “dissent” within GOP leadership, as the party simply seems to fall in line with everything President Trump decides.

“Is that a healthy party?” she asked of the GOP.

“No, and I don’t think that’s true. I would argue, and I’ve dissented a number of times, just in the last few weeks,” Thune said.

“For example on what?”

“Tylenol, for example. FCC.… Go back and check the record.”

“Do you feel the way RFK Jr. is talking about that is dangerous?”

“Well, I’ve said that I think that if I were a woman I’d be talking to my doctor, and not taking advice from RFK, or any other government bureaucrat for that matter.”

So for the record, the Senate majority leader does not think that American women should be listening to the highest-ranking health official in the country, even though he voted to confirm him on grounds that he would “Make America Healthy Again.” Now, as RFK Jr. sets backward policy on vaccines, destroys the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and tells pregnant women that taking Tylenol will give their babies autism, all Thune can do is shrug and tell them to look elsewhere.

The White House promised to bail out American farmers, but they’re almost out of time.

Donald Trump’s tariffs have devastated the American farming industry from both ends, hurting both supply and demand by raising costs on equipment and fertilizer while nixing key international markets such as China. And now time is running out on how the government could help.

“Farmers are hurting financially,” Kansas Senator Jerry Moran told Politico Thursday. “They’re very troubled, there’s some expectation for help. Emotionally, it would be great for something to happen soon. But financially, they need to be able to go to their bankers and say that help is on the way.”

Last month, Trump said he intended to use the country’s supposedly surplus tariff money to subsidize American soybean farmers, though his concept of how much cash could be infused to America’s food producers was not coherent. Speaking with reporters, Trump mixed up “billions” and “millions,” apparently confused on the specifics of what government funds could amount to actual aid.

And the picture has not gotten any clearer, despite the fact that agriculture industry experts say that the industry needs a commitment in the next few weeks as they figure out how to afford the next planting season. Administration officials have still not finalized an amount to provide in the first wave of agriculture aid, according to Politico. Officials also don’t know how they’d pay for it, or how to deploy it.

“It’s easier to talk about than it is to do,” one official close to Trump told the publication.

The White House has so far blamed the government shutdown for a lack of action, steadily pointing the finger at Democrats (despite laws preventing the executive branch from disseminating that type of partisan rhetoric). But industry experts say that even if the shutdown ended tomorrow, it would still take months to get aid to the farmers who need it most. Failing to meet the moment could cause serious problems for the rest of America, spiking food prices and even challenging production.

“We’re starting to reach that precarious zone of not allowing farmers the tools, the commitments that they need to plan—it’s upon us already, to be honest,” Oscar Gonzales, a top aide to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during multiple presidential administrations, told Politico. “Farmers are going to need something.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to send $40 billion in aid to Argentina.