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  • Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

    Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

    Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

    The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

    The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

    The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

    “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

    When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

    When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

    Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

    “It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

    Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

    Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

    “I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

    When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

    Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

    Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

    Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

    The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

    Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

    The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

    “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

    When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

    “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

    Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

    That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

    “If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

    While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

    Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

    There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

    But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

    “If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

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  • The invention that changed music forever | CNN Business

    The invention that changed music forever | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    “Do you believe in life after love?” Cher used to sing. And if you’ve ever heard that song, you might now have an earworm in your head.

    The singer’s 1998 comeback track marked the first prominent use of a technology called “Auto-Tune”, a pitch correcting software that has since changed the music industry.

    Auto-Tune alters the pitch of a singing voice to make everyone sound perfectly in tune. When used properly, it’s subtle enough that it can’t be detected.

    But Cher’s producers played with the idea of cranking it up to 11, creating the now-familiar effect that is part human synthesizer, part robotic voice.

    Andy Hildebrand, the inventor of autotune, told CNN: “My thinking was, ok, I’ll put that setting in the software. But I didn’t think anyone in their right mind would ever use it.”

    Thus was born the “Cher effect”, and one of the biggest hits of the 1990s.

    The invention that changed the world of music

    How does one invent Auto-Tune? By analyzing seismic data while looking for oil, of course.

    That’s Hildebrand’s previous job: “Oil companies would detonate charges in the ground or in the water, and then they have sensors analyze the reflections to spot the oil,” he explains.

    That technology was bought by American oil giant Halliburton in 1995 and it’s helped internal production in the U.S. soar from 30 to 60 percent, netting the company about $1 billion a year.

    “It uses the same science of digital signal processing,” says Hildebrand, a long time musician who then applied that science to singing.

    It took him just a month to create it. “Before Auto-Tune, studios would do pitch correction by having the singer repeat a phrase over and over and over. They would do 100 takes and then patch them together to make one piece of music that sounded in tune.”

    Auto-Tune does all that at the push of a button.

    A magic button that makes everyone sing in perfect key was, unsurprisingly, an instant hit with the industry: “Within a year we had sold to every major studio in the world, and that was a year or two after Cher did her song ‘Believe’”, Hildebrand recalls.

    Here are his tasting notes on that song: “I thought it was really cool! Even if they used a bad setting, or what I call bad setting since I didn’t design it to be used like that: it makes this robotic effect because it changes the pitch instantly from note to note.”

    But the jury is still out on whether Auto-Tune was a boon for the music industry, or a disaster: in 2010, Time magazine included it in the list of The 50 Worst Inventions, calling it “a technology that can make bad singers sound good and really bad singers sound like robots.”

    Indie band Death Cab for Cutie showed up at the 2009 Grammys wearing blue ribbons to “raise awareness against Auto-Tune abuse”, and fervent Auto-Tune critic Jay-z released a song in 2009 entitled D.O.A. – Death of autotune.

    Britney Spears notoriously fell into an Auto-Tune controversy in mid-2014, when a vanilla recording of her 2013 song Alien was leaked and compared, rather unfavorably, to the autotuned version on the album Britney Jean.

    But what does its inventor think? “Singers learn about how it works and they kind of like it, but they have a love-hate relationship with it: they don’t want to let others know that they need it.”

    It seems that Auto-Tune might be to music what Photoshop is to photography: everybody uses it, but no one’s too keen to admit it.

    After having sorted singing – “music’s second most popular instrument” – Hildebrand is now going after the first: guitars.

    “It doesn’t sound anything like a vocal correction, but it keeps the guitar perfectly in tune,” he says.

    Next up, your heartbeat: “There’s a new kind of device called the embedded defibrillator: it’s a pacemaker implanted in the chest that monitors heartbeat irregularities and releases energy pulses to correct anomalies. The problem is that sometimes the software fails to detect the heartbeat, and we’re hoping to fix that.”

    The technology, in the form of an algorithm, will soon be embedded into these pacemakers.

    And we have a feeling it might not even stop there.

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  • Blinken speaks to Russian foreign minister about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan | CNN Politics

    Blinken speaks to Russian foreign minister about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and called for the “immediate release” of detained Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, according to the US State Department.

    “Secretary Blinken conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist,” a readout from the department said.

    “Secretary Blinken further urged the Kremlin to immediately release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan,” the readout continued, adding that the secretary and Lavrov “also discussed the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work.”

    Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Russia, was detained last week on charges of espionage – the first time an American journalist has been detained on such accusations by Moscow since the Cold War. US officials in Moscow had not yet been granted consular access to Gershkovich as of Sunday.

    The Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said Sunday that the call between Blinken and Lavrov was “hugely reassuring.”

    “We know that the US government is taking the case very seriously right up to the top,” she told CBS News.

    Whelan, meanwhile, is serving out a 16-year prison sentence for the same charges, which he strongly denies. His brother David Whelan said in an email to the press Thursday that his family was sorry to hear “that another American family will have to experience the same trauma that we have had to endure for the past 1,553 days.”

    Whelan has been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department, and Gershkovich is expected to receive the same designation but had not yet as of Sunday morning. Tucker said she hopes the US government will act swiftly to label Gershkovich as wrongfully detained, saying it will be anofficial recognition that the charges against the reporter are “entirely bogus.”

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Sunday’s phone call was initiated by the US and that Lavrov told Blinken that Gershkovich’s fate would be determined by a Russian court.

    Lavrov also blamed Washington and the Western press for politicizing the arrest.

    “It was emphasized that it is unacceptable for officials in Washington and Western media to hype up [the issue] with the clear intention of giving this case a political coloring,” the statement said.

    Gershkovich is currently being held in the notorious Lefortovo pre-detention center until May 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges.

    Sunday’s call was only the third time that Blinken has spoken with his Russian counterpart since the war in Ukraine began, and all of those conversations have discussed detained US citizens. The two spoke in person for the first time since the war broke out on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in India last month, and Blinken said he raised the issues of the war, Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START nuclear agreement, and Whelan’s ongoing detention.

    The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday expressed support for the Biden administration’s efforts to negotiate with Russia for Gershkovich’s release.

    “Certainly the Biden administration should continue its efforts to negotiate and to try to get the release of this journalist, but overall, people should be very cautious about staying in Russia,” Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Turner noted that the US government “gave people notice that they should get out of Russia” and said he would continued to encourage people to do so. The Biden administration has echoed those assessments. While the Kremlin has asserted that Russia is safe for accredited journalists, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN on Friday, “Russia is not safe for Americans.”

    Turner appeared on “State of the Union” on Sunday from southern Poland, where he said he is “meeting with those who are active in intelligence and meeting with our servicemembers who are active in the support of Ukraine.”

    Pressed by Bash on remarks by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley that the war in Ukraine will likely not be won this year, the Ohio lawmaker appeared to agree.

    “One thing I can tell you is that Russia is not going to win either,” he said. “This is a war that Russia is not winning, and they’re not winning it because Ukraine realizes that they’re standing up for democracy, they’re fighting for their country. And as they continue to do so, the United States’ assistance and certainly the assistance of our NATO allies and partners are making a huge turnout for the battlefield.”

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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  • Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification | CNN Business

    Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter users awoke Friday morning to even more chaos on the platform than they had become accustomed to in recent months under CEO Elon Musk after a wide-ranging rollback of blue check marks from celebrities, journalists and government agencies.

    The end of traditional verification marked the beginning of a radically different information regime on Twitter, one highlighted by almost immediate impersonations of government accounts; the removal of labels previously used to identify Chinese and Russian propaganda; and a scramble by the company to individually re-verify certain high-profile figures such as Pope Francis.

    A broad array of media organizations lost the gold verification badges Musk’s team had developed months earlier as an alternative to traditional brand verification, reflecting those organizations’ apparent refusal to pay for the badges that now cost $1,000 a month.

    Several prominent Twitter users including LeBron James, William Shatner and Stephen King also refused to pay to keep their verification badges, prompting Musk to personally intervene. Appearing to sense the problems that might ensue if those users went unverified, Musk said Thursday he would pay out of his own pocket to ensure James, Shatner and King’s profiles continued to be verified.

    “My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t,” King tweeted.

    “You’re welcome namaste,” Elon replied, adding a prayer emoji.

    Though some of the most visible issues with the rollout could be ironed out in the coming days, the broader impact of the change has been to make it more difficult for users to determine an account’s authenticity and potentially to undermine Twitter’s central role as a hub for news. Twitter verification is no longer an indicator that an account represents who it claims to represent; instead, it reflects that a user – or, apparently, the owner of Twitter – paid for Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.

    Earlier experiments with changes to verification had led to similar chaos, prompting Twitter to postpone the rollout multiple times. Twitter continued to move forward with its paid verification strategy, however, with the hope of bolstering subscription revenue after seeing a sharp decline in its core ad sales business.

    After Thursday’s change removed verification from New York City’s official government account, the account tweeted Thursday evening: “This is an authentic Twitter account representing the New York City Government.”

    Later, another Twitter account bearing the same profile image and a slight variation on the official account’s username replied to that tweet.

    “No, you’re not,” the impostor account said. “THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government.”

    By Friday morning, the city’s verification had been restored with a gray check mark indicating it was a “government or multilateral organization account.” The same had occurred with Pope Francis, who had also lost his blue check mark Thursday.

    In a seemingly unrelated and coincidental change, Twitter also stripped the “government-funded media” label from accounts belonging to Canada’s CBC and NPR, the latter of which had quit Twitter over the labeling because NPR said the label misrepresented the news organization’s editorial independence from the US government.

    Twitter also removed the “state-affiliated media” labels from accounts belonging to China’s Xinhua News and Russia’s RT.

    According to NPR, Musk dropped all media labeling on Twitter following a suggestion from the author Walter Isaacson, who is writing a biography of Musk. Isaacson, who is verified on Twitter as a subscriber to Twitter Blue, tweeted a photo of Musk on Thursday from SpaceX’s Starship launch site. The rocket exploded in midair.

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  • The viral new ‘Drake’ and ‘Weeknd’ song is not what it seems | CNN Business

    The viral new ‘Drake’ and ‘Weeknd’ song is not what it seems | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    One of the buzziest songs recently circulating on TikTok and climbing the Spotify charts featured the familiar voices of best-selling artists Drake and the Weeknd. But there’s a twist: Drake and the Weeknd appear to have had nothing to do with it.

    The viral track, “Heart on my Sleeve,” comes from an anonymous TikTok user named Ghostwriter977, who claims to have used artificial intelligence to generate the voices of Drake and the Weeknd for the track.

    “I was a ghostwriter for years and got paid close to nothing just for major labels to profit,” Ghostwriter977 wrote in the video comments. “The future is here.”

    “Heart on my Sleeve” racked up more than 11 million views across several videos in just a few days and was streamed on Spotify hundreds of thousands of times. The original TikTok video has seemingly been taken down, and the song has since been removed from streaming services including YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. (TikTok, YouTube, Apple and Spotify did not respond to a request for comment.)

    The exact origin of the song remains unclear, and some have suggested it could be a publicity stunt. But the stunning traction for “Heart on my Sleeve” may only add to the anxiety inside the music industry as it goes on offense against the possible threat posed by a new crop of increasingly powerful AI tools on the market.

    Universal Music Group, the music label that represents Drake, The Weeknd and numerous other superstars, sent urgent letters in April to streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, asking them to block AI platforms from training on the melodies and lyrics of their copywritten songs.

    “The training of generative AI using our artists’ music — which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on digital service providers – begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation,” the company said in a statement this week to CNN.

    The record label said platforms have “a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists.”

    But attempting to crack down on AI-generated music may pose a unique challenge. The legal landscape for AI work remains unclear, the tools to create it are widely accessible and social media makes it easier than ever to distribute it.

    AI-generated music is not new. Taryn Southern’s debut song “Break Free,” which was composed and produced with AI, hit the Top 100 radio charts back in 2018, and VAVA, an AI music artist (i.e. not a human), currently has a single out in Thailand.

    But a new crop of AI tools have made it easier than ever to quickly generate convincing images, audio, video and written work. Some services such as Boomy specifically leverage generative AI to make music creation more accessible.

    There’s little known about who is behind the Ghostwriter977 account, or which tools the creator used to make the track. The user did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

    In the bio section of the user’s TikTok account, a link directs users to a page on Laylo, a website where fans can sign up to get notifications from artists when new songs are dropped or merchandise and tickets become available. The company told CNN the account likely registered to build up its fan base and brought in “tens of thousands” of signups in the past few days.

    Laylo CEO Alec Ellin denied that the company was behind the viral track as some have speculated, but Ellin told CNN whoever did make it was “clearly a really savvy creator” and called it “a perfect example of the power of using Laylo to own your audience.”

    Michael Inouye, an analyst at ABI Research, said “Heart on my Sleeve” could have been made in several ways depending on the sophistication of the AI and level of musical talent.

    “If music artists were involved, they could create the background music and the lyrics, and then the AI model could be trained with content from Drake and The Weekend to replicate their voices and singing styles,” he said. “AI could also have generated most of the song, lyrics and replicated the artists again based on the training data set and any prompts given to direct the AI model.”

    He added that part of this fascination and virality of the song comes from “just how good AI has gotten at creating content, which includes replicating famous people.”

    Roberto Nickson, who is building an AI platform to help boost productivity and work flow, recently posted a video on Twitter showing how easy it is to record a verse and train an AI model to replace his vocals. He used the artist formerly known as Kanye West as an example.

    “The results will blow your mind,” he said. “You’re going to be listening to songs by your favorite artist that are completely indistinguishable and you’re not going to know if it’s them or not.”

    Although the entertainment industry has seen these issues coming, regulations are lagging behind the rapid pace of AI development.

    Audrey Benoualid, an entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles, said one could argue “Heart On My Sleeve” does not infringe copyright as it appears to be an “original” composition.

    “Ghostwriter also publicized that Drake and The Weeknd were not involved in the making of the song, which could protect them from a ‘passing off’ claim, where profits are generated as consumers are misled into believing the song is actually a Drake-Weeknd collaboration,” she said in an email to CNN.

    However, Benoualid added, machine learning and generative AI programs may also be found to infringe copyright in existing works, either by making copies of those works to train the AI or by generating outputs that are substantially similar to those existing works. “Major labels would undoubtedly, and have already begun to, argue that their copyrights (and their artists’ intellectual property rights) are being infringed,” she said.

    Michael Nash, an executive VP at Universal Music Group, recently wrote in an op-ed that AI music is “diluting the market, making original creations harder to find, and violating artists’ legal rights to compensation from their work.”

    No regulations exist that dictate on what AI can and cannot train. But last month, in response to individuals looking to seek copyright for AI-generated works, the US Copyright Office released new guidance around how to register literary, musical, and artistic works made with AI.

    The copyright will be determined on a case-by-case basis, the guidance continued, based on how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final piece or work. The US Copyright Office announced it will also be seeking public input on how the law should apply to copywritten works the AI trains on, and how the office should treat those works.

    “AI and copyright law and the rights of musicians and labels have crashed into one another (once again), and it will take time for the dust to settle,” Benoualid said. “The landscape is anything but clear at the moment.”

    Inouye said if AI generated content becomes associated with famous individuals in a negative way that could be grounds for a lawsuit to not only take content down but to cease and desist their operations and potentially seek damage.

    “On the flip side, if the content were to be popular and the creator were to make revenue off of the artists’ image or likeness then again the artists could similarly request the content to be taken down and potentially sue for any monetary gains,” he said.

    But for now, concerned parties may be forced to play whack-a-mole. While services like Spotify pulled “Heart on my Sleeve,” versions of it appeared to continue circulating as of Tuesday on other online platforms.

    Even a song made with artificial intelligence may find real staying power online.

    – CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this report.

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  • End of an era: Netflix DVD subscribers mourn the service’s imminent demise | CNN Business

    End of an era: Netflix DVD subscribers mourn the service’s imminent demise | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    When Colin McEvoy, a father of two from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and a self-described film fanatic, wants to watch a Bollywood film or an obscure independent movie, he often turns to Netflix – but not its popular streaming service.

    McEvoy, 39, said he’s been using Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service since 2001, just three years after it launched.

    “I remember I was in high school when I first signed up for it, and the concept was so novel, I had to really convince my dad that it was a legit service and not some sort of Internet scam,” said McEvoy, who uses an old Xbox 360 to play his Netflix DVDs. “Now I have friends who’ve seen my red Netflix envelopes arrive in the mail, and either didn’t remember what they were or couldn’t believe that I still got the DVDs in the mail.”

    Now, McEvoy is one of the DVD-by-mail holdouts mourning the service’s imminent demise. On Tuesday, Netflix announced it will send out its final red envelope on September 29, 2023. marking an end to 25 years of mailing DVDs to members. The company will continue to accept returns of customers’ remaining DVDs until October 27.

    “I’ll be sad to see the service go,” McEvoy said.

    Introduced in 1998 when Netflix first launched, the service promised an easier rental experience than having to drive to the nearest Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. The red envelopes, which have long been synonymous with Netflix itself, littered homes and dorm rooms across the country. But in 2007, Netflix began streaming content online, and gradually shifted the focus away from its original DVD business.

    Today, the idea of receiving a DVD in the mail may sound almost as outdated as receiving a dial up CD, but some longtime customers told CNN they continued to find value in the DVD option, including for its selection, pricing and added perks.

    Brandon Cordy, a 41-year-old graphic designer from Atlanta, said he stuck with DVDs because many digital rentals don’t come with special features or audio commentaries.

    There are other factors, too. Michael Inouye, an analyst at ABI Research, said some consumers may still not have access to reliable or fast enough broadband connections, or simply prefer physical media to digital, much in the way that some audio enthusiasts still purchase and collect CDs and records. Other households may also own cars that still have DVD players inside.

    For Netflix, however, the offering has made less sense in recent years. “Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members, but as the DVD business continues to shrink, that’s going to become increasingly difficult,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos wrote in a blog post this week.

    Shutting down its DVD business could help Netflix better focus resources as it expands into new markets such as gaming as well as live and interactive content. Its DVD business has also declined significantly in recent years. In 2021, Netflix’s non-streaming revenue – mostly attributable to DVDs – amounted to 0.6% of its revenue, or just over $182 million.

    The cost to operate its DVD business may also be a factor, especially as Netflix rethinks expenses broadly amid heightened streaming competition and broader economic uncertainty. “Moving plastic discs around costs far more money than streaming digital bits,” said Eric Schmitt, senior director analyst at Gartner Research. “Removing and replacing damaged and lost inventory are also cost considerations.”

    Even before Netflix announced the news this week, some longtime subscribers said they could see the writing on the wall.

    “The inventory of available titles, while still vast, had been contracting some over the years with some movies that were once available no longer being so,” Cordy said. “Turnaround times to get a new movie or movies also started to take longer, so I knew it was only a matter of time. But I didn’t want it to end if I could help it.”

    Other DVD subscribers are hoping there may still be a happy ending.

    On Wednesday, Bill Rouhana, the CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment – which owns DVD rental service Redbox – told The Hollywood Reporter he hopes to purchase Netflix’s DVD business. “I’d like to buy it… I wish Netflix would sell me that business instead of shutting it down,” he said. Redbox remains popular despite the shift in streaming, but took a hit during the pandemic because of the lack of new movies and TV shows to fill the boxes.

    A Netflix spokesperson told CNN it has no plans to sell the DVD business and declined to share how it plans to dispose of the discs. But Nick Maggio, a 43-year-old elementary school teacher from Valley Stream, New York, said he hopes the company will sell their individual titles library. “I know there are several titles I’d like to get my hands on,” he said.

    For now, at least, some DVD subscribers plan to focus on watching as many DVDs as they can before the service goes away.

    McEvoy, who also subscribes to Disney+, Hulu, the Criterion channel and Mubi, said he’s determined to finish seeing every film listed in the book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” with the help of Netflix.

    “I absolutely would not have been able to find all of those movies if not for the Netflix DVD service,” he said. “I only have four movies left to go.”

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  • Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

    Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The governor of Oklahoma is calling on four McCurtain County officials to resign after they allegedly participated in a secretly recorded conversation that included racist remarks about lynching Black people and talking about killing journalists.

    The McCurtain Gazette-News over the weekend published the audio it said was recorded following a Board of Commissioners meeting on March 6.

    The paper said the audio of the meeting was legally obtained, but the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it was illegally recorded and is investigating. The sheriff’s office also said it believes the recording had been altered.

    “I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Sunday. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office. I will not stand idly by while this takes place,” the statement said.

    The governor called for the immediate resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix. He also said he would ask the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the case.

    McCurtain County is in southeastern Oklahoma, about 200 miles from Oklahoma City.

    The recording was made hours after Gazette-News reporter Chris Willingham filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners, alleging they had defamed him and violated his civil rights, the newspaper reported.

    In the recording, Manning spoke of needing to go near the newspaper’s office and expressed concern about what would happen if she ran into Willingham, the Oklahoman reported, citing additional reporting from the Gazette-News.

    According to the Oklahoman report, Jennings said, “Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself?” and Manning replied: “Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his a**, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”

    Jennings replied that his father was once upset by something the newspaper published and “started to go down there and just kill him,” according to the Gazette-News.

    “I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said. Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.

    “I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion. “Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.

    In other parts of the recording, officials expressed disappointment that Black people could no longer be lynched, according to the paper.

    CNN has not been able to verify the authenticity of the recording or confirm who said what. CNN has reached out to all four county officials for comment.

    The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association voted Tuesday to suspend the membership of Clardy, Manning and Hendrix, the group’s executive director told CNN.

    Willingham and his father, Bruce Willingham, the paper’s publisher, have been advised to temporarily leave town, CNN affiliate KJRH reported.

    “For nearly a year, they have suffered intimidation, ridicule and harassment based solely on their efforts to report the news for McCurtain County,” Kilpatrick Townsend, the law firm representing the Willingham family, told CNN in a statement.

    The McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple significant violations” of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act, which makes it “illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties.” It also said the recording has yet to be “duly authenticated or validated.”

    “Our preliminary information indicates that the media released audio recording has, in fact, been altered. The motivation for doing so remains unclear at this point. That matter is actively being investigated,” the statement said.

    The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has received an audio recording and is investigating, Communications Director Phil Bacharach said.

    The FBI wouldn’t confirm or deny whether it was involved in the investigation, with spokesperson Kayla McCleery saying it is agency policy not to comment.

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  • Tim Cook and Bob Iger to meet with House China committee members | CNN Business

    Tim Cook and Bob Iger to meet with House China committee members | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Members of a House panel focused on US-China competition are set to meet with leaders from Silicon Valley and Hollywood during a multi-day tour of California beginning today, according to a source close to the committee.

    The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party plan to meet with top execs from Google, Microsoft, Apple and Disney, among others, to discuss topics ranging from China’s investments in artificial intelligence to its cultural and human rights record; its impact on supply chains; and its goals for defense and other emerging technologies, the source said.

    “We’re going to learn and share our concerns and views on the geopolitics at play here, and what we understand the CCP’s broader ambitions to be,” the source said.

    The 10-member bipartisan congressional delegation led by Chairman Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, will kick things off Wednesday in a meeting with Disney CEO Bob Iger, where lawmakers are expected to raise concerns about Disney’s compliance with China’s censorship regime.

    Lawmakers will also dine with entertainment producers and screenwriters who have been critical of the industry’s approach to wooing Chinese viewers, the source said.

    On Thursday, lawmakers will engage with officials from Big Tech and venture capital, the source said. Microsoft President Brad Smith will speak to members about China’s control of rare earth minerals, a key input in many modern computing technologies, while experts from Stanford University are set to discuss innovation in the defense field. The group is expected to lunch with Big Tech executives representing Google, Microsoft, Palantir and Scale AI.

    On Friday, lawmakers will have conversations with former Defense Secretary James Mattis as well as Apple CEO Tim Cook. China is Apple’s third-largest geographic business segment after the Americas and Europe, accounting for more than $74 billion in company revenues last year. Apple’s revenue from China grew by 70% between 2020 and 2021, according to its financial reports.

    The meetings will also include a session on China’s role in the digital currency space and talks with members of the cryptocurrency community based in California, the source added.

    The breadth of subjects covered on the tour highlight the range of challenges the Chinese government poses to US leadership, the source said, adding that lawmakers will seek to deliver the message to business that excessive dependence on China — whether for supplies, or as a base of potential customers — exposes the US to risk.

    “This committee was set up to build out the bipartisan consensus on the CCP and the actions we need to take to defend ourselves,” the source said. “[The goal is to] make them aware of what’s happening so they can equip themselves as appropriate.”

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  • Meta threatens to pull news content in California if bill to pay publishers passes | CNN Business

    Meta threatens to pull news content in California if bill to pay publishers passes | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, threatened to remove news from its social media sites in California if the state passes a bill requiring big tech companies to pay news outlets for their content.

    In a statement posted on Twitter, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, called California’s Journalism Preservation Act “a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers.”

    “The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used,” Stone said.

    The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, requires digital companies such as Google and Facebook to pay local news publishers a “journalism usage fee” whenever their news content is used or posted on those platforms. The bill also requires news publishers to invest 70% of usage fee profits into journalism jobs.

    “This threat from Meta is a scare tactic that they’ve tried to deploy, unsuccessfully, in every country that’s attempted this,” Wicks said in a statement. “It’s egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation.”

    According to a spokesperson for Wicks, the bill is due for a vote in the California State Assembly on Thursday.

    The bill has garnered praise from some of the largest journalism unions in California, including Media Guild of the West and Pacific Media Workers Guild. In a joint letter, the two unions called Meta and Google “powerful landlords overseeing an ever-expanding slum of low-quality information, happy to collect advertising rents from struggling tenants while avoiding paying for upkeep.”

    However, the bill also has its detractors. Free Press Action, a non-profit media advocacy organization, has criticized the bill as doing “nothing to support trustworthy local reporting and would instead pad the profits of massive conglomerates.”

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  • Elon Musk’s weekend antics could only further crumble Twitter’s brand value | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s weekend antics could only further crumble Twitter’s brand value | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Under Elon Musk, Twitter has antagonized multiple major news organizations by labeling them state-funded media, appears to have eased restrictions on Russian government accounts and made crude jokes on the front of its headquarters and on Musk’s own Twitter display name.

    And that’s just this weekend.

    Musk’s antics, which only seem to have escalated this month, threaten to further erode Twitter’s brand value. For months, the company has struggled to retain advertisers and supplement its declining ad business — which previously comprised 90% of its annual revenue — by convincing users to pay up for its Twitter Blue subscription service.

    Musk, who is on the hook for large payments to lenders after buying the company for $44 billion, including with significant debt, must either coax hesitant advertisers back to the platform or boost its subscription business -— or both. But his recent erratic moves may only complicate those turnaround efforts.

    Late last week, Twitter faced backlash for labeling NPR as a “state-affiliated media” organization akin to foreign propaganda outlets such as Russia’s RT and Sputnik, in an apparent violation of its own policies. NPR CEO John Lansing called Twitter’s move “unacceptable,” and said the organization is “supported by millions of listeners.”

    Following the pushback, Twitter changed NPR’s label to “government funded media,” and applied the same designation to British broadcaster BBC over the weekend. Twitter has not given a definition for what it considers “government funded media,” but the BBC pushed back on the label, saying it is independent and “funded by the British public through the license fee.”

    The moves risk alienating some of the best-known media organizations in the world and undermining what has long been a key selling point for the platform: its role as a central hub for news. NPR, in particular, has not tweeted from its main account in nearly a week.

    While Twitter labeled some news accounts as state-funded, it also appears to have removed some restrictions on Russian government accounts that had been put in place following the outset of Russia’s war in Ukraine, again prompting outrage among some users.

    Musk commented on the decision in a tweet Sunday saying: “I’m told Putin called me a war criminal for helping Ukraine, so he’s not exactly my best friend. All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves.”

    Twitter, which laid off much of its media relations team last year, did not respond to a request for comment.

    The controversial moves come as Twitter continues to face significant business challenges. Analysis firm Similarweb last week reported that traffic to Twitter’s ad portal was down nearly 19% year-over-year in March. Many major advertisers have halted spending on Twitter since Musk’s takeover over concerns about increased hate speech on the platform and massive cuts to the company’s workforce.

    Musk has said Twitter is working to improve the platform’s ad targeting to increase value for advertisers. “But all the while there have been distractions,” said Scott Kessler, technology sector lead at research firm Third Bridge, adding that there are “significant questions about the direction that the company is going.” At the same time, online ad spending broadly has contracted over concerns about the economy.

    Against that backdrop, Musk’s Twitter has made several head-scratching announcements this month, some of which might only add to its challenges.

    Musk previously frustrated some of Twitter’s celebrity users, who have long been a key selling point for the platform, with a promise to remove blue checkmarks from accounts who had been verified under Twitter’s previous system. But it didn’t exactly go to plan — instead of removing checks from all previously verified users, Twitter appeared to target a single account belonging to the New York Times.

    Days later, Twitter’s home button was temporarily replaced with doge, the meme representing the cryptocurrency dogecoin, which Musk has promoted. The company also briefly restricted Twitter users from sharing links to a rival platform, upsetting users, including one who had previously reported the so-called Twitter files using documents provided by Musk.

    As if to underscore his unique and questionable impact on the brand, the “Chief Twit” has also apparently been keeping busy with changes to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. Last week, photos began spreading of a piece of plastic covering the “w” in the sign on the front of the company’s office.

    At nearly midnight on Sunday, Musk tweeted that the company’s landlord “says we’re legally required to keep sign as Twitter & cannot remove ‘w,’ so we painted it background color,” alongside a photo of the “w” painted white against a white background, leaving a more asinine word in its place. “Problem solved!” Musk tweeted.

    If only the same could be said for the platform’s business troubles.

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  • US designates Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained by Russia | CNN Politics

    US designates Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained by Russia | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The US State Department on Monday officially designated Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained by Russia.

    “Today, Secretary Blinken made a determination that Evan Gershkovich is wrongfully detained by Russia,” State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a statement.

    The designation gives further backing to the assertions by the US government and the Wall Street Journal that the espionage charges against the reporter are baseless. It will empower the Biden administration to explore avenues such as a prisoner swap to try to secure Gershkovich’s release.

    His case will now be handled at the State Department through the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which has played a key role in the release of US citizens held hostage and wrongfully detained around the world.

    Both of the Americans who have been recently brought home from Russia – Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner – had been designated as wrongfully detained and were freed in prisoner swaps.

    Paul Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia for more than four years on espionage charges that he and the US government deny, has also been declared wrongfully detained.

    In his statement, Patel said the “U.S. government will provide all appropriate support to Mr. Gershkovich and his family.”

    “We call for the Russian Federation to immediately release Mr. Gershkovich,” he said. “We also call on Russia to release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan.”

    The editor in chief and publisher of the Wall Street Journal on Monday said they “are doing everything in our power to support Evan and his family and will continue working with the State Department and other relevant U.S. officials to push for his release.”

    “He is a distinguished journalist and his arrest is an attack on a free press and it should spur outrage in all free people and governments around the world,” the statement from Emma Tucker and Almar Latour said.

    Gershkovich was detained in late March and formally charged with espionage last Friday. As of Monday, officials at the US Embassy in Moscow had not been granted consular access to Gershkovich.

    “It is a violation of Russia’s obligations under our consular convention and a violation against international law,” Patel said at a State Department briefing Monday. “We have stressed the need for the Russian government to provide this access as soon as possible.”

    The official determination that Gershkovich is wrongfully detained comes after a bureaucratic process played out within the US government.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week they were “very deliberately but expeditiously” carrying out that process, but “in (his) own mind, there’s no doubt that he’s being wrongfully detained by Russia.”

    The arrest of the journalist – the first of its kind in Russia since the Cold War – prompted the top US diplomat to make a rare call to his Russian counterpart.

    “Secretary Blinken conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist,” a State Department readout of the April 2 call said.

    That call was only the third time that Blinken has spoken with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov since the war in Ukraine began, and all of those conversations have discussed detained US citizens. The two spoke in person for the first time since the war broke out on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in India last month, and Blinken said he raised the issues of the war, Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START nuclear agreement, and Whelan’s ongoing detention.

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  • Jill Biden to travel to Paris to commemorate US rejoining UNESCO after Trump exit | CNN Politics

    Jill Biden to travel to Paris to commemorate US rejoining UNESCO after Trump exit | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    First lady Dr. Jill Biden will travel to Paris next week to celebrate the US rejoining UNESCO, according to senior administration officials, in a visit that will highlight the national security imperative of American involvement in such coalitions and emphasize the role of US leadership in the world.

    President Joe Biden is deploying the first lady, a top surrogate, to commemorate the occasion that reverses a Trump-era decision as he seeks to reassure allies that “America’s back” and signal the White House’s reaffirmed commitment to the organization.

    The US withdrew from UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – during the Trump administration, with the State Department at the time citing anti-Israel bias and mounting membership dues owed to the international body. The organization promotes cooperation in education, science, culture, and communication, and also designates “world heritage” sites.

    Then-US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, now a GOP presidential candidate, said at the time the organization’s “extreme politicization had become a chronic embarrassment.”

    Dr. Biden, a senior administration official said, will attend and deliver remarks at a UNESCO flag raising ceremony on Tuesday and greet UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay.

    A second senior Biden administration official heralded the decision to rejoin the organization as “a milestone that really signifies the return of our leadership in a vital international space.”

    “When we don’t show up in these organizations, other countries will fill the void. And in an era of increasing geopolitical competition, competitors are working hard at the UN to shape the global agenda,” the second senior official said, adding, “If we aren’t in the room, we can’t push back.”

    The US absence from UNESCO, the official said, was “harming our interests” since the decision to withdraw in 2017, noting that the organization has also “made much-needed reforms.”

    A third senior official noted that having the US at the UNESCO table will give the administration influence on “international standards and shared global understanding on issues like protection of World Heritage, the ethics of emerging technology, press freedom, and … education.” New top US priorities for the group, that official said, include investments on Holocaust education, the preservation of cultural heritage in Ukraine, journalist safety and STEM education focused in Africa for women and girls, and artificial intelligence.

    “The Biden administration is committed to playing a leadership role in multilateral venues where our interests, our security and prosperity can be protected and promoted. UNESCO is precisely one of those venues where we believe the benefits of engagement are well worth the investment,” the third official said.

    President Biden has often sought to communicate to US allies in the aftermath of his predecessor’s “America First” presidency that the US will reassert a leading role in what he casts as the battle between democracy and autocracy. Of course, former President Donald Trump is currently leading in GOP primary polling, with posing serious questions ahead for the future of critical US alliances following the 2024 presidential election.

    The first lady is set to depart Washington for Paris on Sunday evening, arriving Monday morning. She will meet with Mrs. Brigitte Macron, spouse of French President Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday. Dr. Biden will also visit Mont Saint Michel, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and pay her respects to fallen World War II US service members at the Brittany American Cemetery in Normandy during her trip abroad.

    CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the timing of Dr. Jill Biden’s meeting with Brigitte Macron.

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  • Top moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner | CNN Politics

    Top moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden joked about a range of topics at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday but struck a serious tone as he called for the release of wrongfully detained Americans abroad.

    The annual dinner, hosted inside the Washington Hilton, drew thousands of guests in support of freedom of the press, something Biden called “the pillar of a free society, not the enemy.”

    Here are the top moments from this year’s dinner.

    Biden used the opportunity to address a crowd gathered to support freedom of the press to send a clear message: “Journalism is not a crime.”

    He began his remarks on a serious note and immediately addressed the wrongful detentions of American journalists Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice in Syria, reassuring the room full of journalists and the families of the detainees that his administration is committed to bringing them home.

    “I promise you, I’m working like hell to get them home,” Biden said.

    In attendance Saturday evening was Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who was freed from Russia late last year after being wrongfully detained. Biden and First Lady Jill Biden held a pull-aside meeting with Griner and her wife at the event, per the White House pool.

    The president and First Lady also met privately with the family of Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter that the US State Department has deemed “wrongfully detained” in Russia. Several journalists in attendance wore pins to urge his release.

    The daughter of jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navanly, Dasha Navalnaya, told CNN earlier Saturday the White House Correspondents’ dinner represents an especially important event for those who are wrongfully detained because “America as a country represents freedom of speech, freedom of political expression.”

    Comedian Roy Wood Jr., known for his role on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” did not hold back in his roast of Washington politics Saturday evening, saving jabs for both parties.

    He immediately addressed the classified documents found in Biden’s Delaware home, telling the president as he stepped aside from the podium, “Real quick, Mr. President. I think you left some of your classified documents up here.”

    Wood also pointed to protests in France in response to the government raising the retirement age. “Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man begging us for four more years of work,” he quipped, alluding to Biden’s reelection bid.

    But the comedian went on to dub former President Donald Trump the “king of scandals.”

    “Keeping up with Trump scandals is like watching Star Wars movies,” he said. “You got to watch the third one to understand the first one, then you got – you can’t miss the second one because it’s got Easter eggs for the fifth one.”

    Watch: Iconic moments from past White House Correspondents’ dinners

    Biden’s jokes, meanwhile included a number of quips aimed at his predecessor’s recent scandals.

    He joked that he was offered $10 to keep his remarks under ten minutes. “That’s a switch, a president being offered hush money,” he joked in reference to Trump’s indictment in an alleged hush money scheme.

    Biden also poked fun at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is likely to be top candidate for the GOP presidential nomination if he enters the 2024 race.

    “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me, he got there first,” Biden said.

    Disney filed a lawsuit against the governor and his oversight board earlier this week, accusing him of punishing the company for exercising its free speech rights with his political influence.

    The White House Correspondents’ dinner honored several journalists for their impactful work last year, including CNN’s Phil Mattingly for his coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington and Politico’s publishing of the Supreme Court draft opinion that would later overturn Roe v. Wade.

    While Biden also applauded the journalists for their work, he poked fun at their tough questioning.

    “I get that age is a completely reasonable issue, it’s on everybody’s mind,” he said, referring to his reelection bid. “By everyone I mean the New York Times.”

    Biden also joked about how he dodges the media’s questions. “In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office: I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away.”

    In recent weeks, the media industry has taken several hits – from high-profile terminations to layoffs, something Wood addressed head on.

    “The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job,” Wood said, referring to the anchor’s departure from Fox News, which prompted applause.

    “Okay, some people celebrate it,” he responded. “But to Tucker’s staff, I want you to note that I know what you’re feeling. I work at the Daily Show, so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake news program.”

    Saturday’s event saw a number of celebrities in attendance, including model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend.

    Actress Julia Fox posed with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer while actress Rosario Dawson and actors Liev Schreiber and Billy Eichner all took turns on the red carpet.

    During the event, identical twin brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott, who host “Property Brothers” on HGTV, drew big laughs as their sketch-style video showcased how they would renovate the White House.

    “We’ve been doing this a long time and we think we know how to turn the White House into the White Home,” the pair said in video.

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  • Google is building an AI tool for journalists | CNN Business

    Google is building an AI tool for journalists | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Google is developing an artificial intelligence tool for news publishers that can generate article text and headlines, the company said, highlighting how the technology may soon transform the journalism industry.

    The tech giant said in a statement that it is looking to partner with news outlets on the AI tool’s use in newsrooms.

    “Our goal is to give journalists the choice of using these emerging technologies in a way that enhances their work and productivity,” a Google spokesperson said, “just like we’re making assistive tools available for people in Gmail and in Google Docs.”

    The effort was first reported by The New York Times, which said the project is referred to internally as “Genesis” and has been pitched to The Times, The Washington Post and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.

    Google’s statement did not name those media companies but said the company is particularly focusing on “smaller publishers.” It added that the project is not aimed at replacing journalists nor their “essential role … in reporting, creating, and fact-checking their articles.”

    The new tool comes as tech companies, including Google, race to develop and deploy a new crop of generative AI features into applications used in the workplace, with the promise of streamlining tasks and making employees more productive.

    But these tools, which are trained on information online, have also raised concerns because of their potential to get facts wrong or “hallucinate” responses.

    News outlet CNET had to issue “substantial” corrections earlier this year after experimenting with using an AI tool to write stories. And what was supposed to be a simple AI-written story on “Star Wars” published by Gizmodo earlier this month similarly required a correction. But both outlets have said they will still move forward with using the technology.

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  • Blinken says US is ‘engaged with Syria’ in efforts to free missing journalist Austin Tice | CNN Politics

    Blinken says US is ‘engaged with Syria’ in efforts to free missing journalist Austin Tice | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The United States is “engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries” to try to bring detained journalist Austin Tice home, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

    “We are extensively engaged with regard to Austin, engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries, seeking to find a way to get him home. And we’re not going to relent until we do,” Blinken said in remarks at a Washington Post event on World Press Freedom Day.

    Tice was taken hostage in Syria in 2012. President Joe Biden declared last year that the US government knows “with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime” and called on Damascus to cooperate on efforts to release him.

    The government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has not publicly acknowledged they are detaining Tice. The US does not have diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime and has voiced opposition to rapprochement with Assad.

    Blinken did not provide details about the engagements to bring Tice home. White House and State Department officials would not confirm a report from the Wall Street Journal that US officials had held talks with Syrian officials in Oman.

    “We cannot confirm any specific meetings past or present. As you know in general meetings and negotiations to secure the release of wrongfully detained Americans, that is incredibly sensitive,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a White House briefing. “We want to be really, really careful and mindful and don’t want to confirm any specific conversation from the past or in the present.”

    CNN reported last August that the Biden administration had direct engagements with the Syrian government in an effort to secure Tice’s release. In 2020 under the Trump administration, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens secretly traveled to Damascus and met with Assad regime officials.

    Austin Tice’s mother Debra Tice told CNN Monday that she thinks that the administration is committed to bringing her son home but “they stumble over what needs to be done.” She said she had no doubt that her son would walk free.

    Biden paid tribute to Austin Tice and other wrongfully detained Americans, including Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan in Russia, in remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

    A number of family members of wrongfully detained Americans – many of whom have joined forces in an organization called the “Bring Our Families Home” campaign – as well as those who had been freed from detention gathered in Washington, DC, this week to seek a meeting with the president and call on the US government to do more to secure the release of their loved ones.

    “Although our loved ones are wrongfully detained and held hostage abroad, including China, including Russia, including Iran, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, our voices are stronger together,” said Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, who is detained in China.

    “Although each case has its own idiosyncrasies, we all need the same things: for President Biden to meet with us, and to use all tools to bring them home,” he said.

    “We have asked for a meeting with the president for so long now that I frankly don’t know how else to ask or what else to say,” Hannah Sharghi, whose father Emad Shargi is detained in Iran, said at a news conference Wednesday.

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  • Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents | CNN Politics

    Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The federal criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents escalated in stunning fashion this week with Trump’s indictment.

    The indictment hasn’t been unsealed yet, so details of the charges aren’t publicly available. But the investigation – led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith – revolves around sensitive government papers that Trump held onto after his White House term ended in January 2021. The special counsel has also examined whether Trump or his aides obstructed the investigation.

    Federal authorities have recovered more than 325 classified documents from Trump. He has voluntarily given back some materials, his lawyers turned over additional files after a subpoena, and the FBI found dozens of classified records during a court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago home last summer.

    Trump has denied all wrongdoing and claims the investigation is a politically motivated sham, intended to derail his ongoing campaign to win the Republican 2024 nomination and return to the White House.

    Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation.

    An official from the National Archives and Records Administration contacts Trump’s team after realizing that several important documents weren’t handed over before Trump left the White House. In hopes of locating the missing items, NARA lawyer Gary Stern reaches out to someone who served in the White House counsel’s office under Trump, who was the point of contact for recordkeeping matters. The missing documents include some of Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the map of Hurricane Dorian that Trump infamously altered with a sharpie pen.

    In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting. The recording, which was made at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, indicates that Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House. The special counsel later obtained this audiotape, a key piece of evidence in his inquiry.

    NARA grows frustrated with the slow pace of document turnover after several months of conversations with the Trump team. Stern reaches out to another Trump attorney to intervene. The archivist asks about several boxes of records that were apparently taken to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s relocation to Florida. NARA still doesn’t receive the White House documents they are searching for.

    After months of discussions with Trump’s team, NARA retrieves 15 boxes of Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago. The boxes contained some materials that were part of “special access programs,” known as SAP, which is a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information. NARA says in a statement that some of the records it received at the end of Trump’s administration were “torn up by former President Trump,” and that White House officials had to tape them back together. Not all the torn-up documents were reconstructed, NARA says.

    NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information. The Presidential Records Act requires all records created by a sitting president to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administration.

    NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.

    On April 7, NARA publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department is involved, and news outlets report that prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Around this time, FBI agents quietly interview Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records as part of their widening investigation.

    The FBI asks NARA for access to the 15 boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. The request was formally transmitted to NARA by President Joe Biden’s White House Counsel’s office, because the incumbent president controls presidential documents in NARA custody.

    The Justice Department sends a letter to Trump’s lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes. The letter says the FBI and US intelligence agencies need “immediate access” to these materials because of “important national security interests.” Also on this day, Trump lawyers ask NARA to delay its plans to give the FBI access to these materials. Trump’s lawyers say they want time to examine the materials to see if anything is privileged, and that they are making a “protective assertion of executive privilege” over all the documents.

    Trump’s lawyers write again to NARA, and ask again that NARA postpone its plans to give the FBI access to the materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.

    Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States, who runs NARA, informs Trump’s lawyers that she is rejecting their claims of “protective” executive privilege over all the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago and will therefore turn over the materials to the FBI and US intelligence agencies, in a four-page letter.

    The Justice Department subpoenas Trump, demanding all documents with classification markings that are still at Mar-a-Lago. At some point after receiving the subpoena, Trump asks his lawyer Evan Corcoran if there was any way to fight the subpoena, but Corcoran tells him he has to comply, according to notes Cochran took and later gave to investigators. Also after getting the subpoena, Trump aides are captured on surveillance footage moving document boxes into and out of a basement storage room – which has become a major element of the obstruction investigation.

    News outlets report that investigators subpoenaed NARA for access to the classified documents they retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. The subpoena is the first public indication of the Justice Department using a grand jury in its investigation.

    As part of the effort to comply with the subpoena, Corcoran searches a Mar-a-Lago storage room and finds 38 classified documents. According to a lawsuit that the former president later filed, Trump invites FBI officials to come to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed materials.

    Federal investigators, including a top Justice Department counterintelligence official, visit Mar-a-Lago to deal with the subpoena for remaining classified documents. The investigators meet with Trump’s attorneys, including Corcoran, and look around the basement storage room where the documents were stored. Trump briefly stops by the meeting to say hello to the officials, but he does not answer any questions. Corcoran hands over the 38 classified documents that he found. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signs a sworn affidavit inaccurately asserting that there aren’t any more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    Trump’s attorneys receive a letter from federal investigators, asking them to further secure the room where documents are being stored. In response, Trump aides add a padlock to the room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago.

    Federal investigators serve a subpoena to the Trump Organization, demanding surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s company complies with the subpoena and turns over the footage. CNN has reported that this was part of an effort to gather information about who had access to areas at the club where government documents were stored.

    The FBI executes a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago – a major escalation of the investigation. The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located. Federal agents found more than 100 additional classified documents at the property. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.

    Trump sends a message through one his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying he has “been hearing from people all over the country about the raid” who are “angry,” and that “whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know,” according to a lawsuit he later filed. Hours later, after three days of silence, Garland makes a brief public statement about the investigation. He reveals that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and that the Justice Department will continue to apply the law “without fear or favor.” Garland also pushes back against what he called “unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department.”

    Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approves the unsealing of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and its property receipt, at the Justice Department’s request and after Trump’s lawyers agree to the release. The warrant reveals the Justice Department is looking into possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records, as part of its investigation.

    Trump files a federal lawsuit seeking the appointment of a third-party attorney known as a “special master” to independently review the materials that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers argue that the Justice Department can’t be trusted to do its own review for potentially privileged materials that should be siloed off from the criminal probe.

    In a major ruling in Trump’s favor, Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, grants Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized materials from Mar-a-Lago. She says the special master will have the power to look for documents covered under attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.

    The Justice Department appeals Cannon’s decision in the special master case.

    Cannon appoints senior Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as the special master and sets a November 30 deadline for the Brooklyn-based federal judge to finish his review of the seized materials.

    A maintenance worker drains the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago, which ends up flooding a room where there are computer severs that contain surveillance video logs, according to CNN reporting. It’s unclear if the flood was accidental or on purpose, and it’s possible that the IT equipment wasn’t damaged, but federal prosecutors found the incident to be suspicious.

    Former Trump administration official Kash Patel testifies before the federal grand jury in the classified documents investigation. A Trump loyalist, Patel had publicly claimed that Trump declassified all the materials that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, even though there is no evidence to back up those assertions.

    Garland announces that he is appointing special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation.

    A federal appeals court shuts down the special master review of the documents that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. The appeals panel rebuked Cannon’s earlier decisions, writing that she essentially tried to “interfere” with the criminal probe and had created a “special exception” in the law to help Trump.

    Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore testifies before the special counsel’s grand jury, where he described how Trump’s lawyers scoured his properties for classified materials. He later left Trump’s legal team.

    Trump’s legal team searches four of his properties in Florida, New York and New Jersey for additional classified material. They find two more classified files in a Florida storage unit, and give them to the FBI. Around this time, Trump’s team also finds additional papers with classification markings at Mar-a-Lago, and they give those materials to the Justice Department. They also turn over a laptop belonging to a Trump aide who had copied those documents onto the computer, not realizing they were classified.

    A string of key witnesses testify before the special counsel’s grand jury in Washington, DC. This includes Trump administration officials Robert O’Brien and Ric Grenell, who handled national security and intelligence matters; Margo Martin, a communications aide who continued working for Trump after he left the White House; and Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., longtime Trump employees who oversee security for the Trump Organization.

    In response to a new subpoena from the special counsel, Trump’s lawyers turn over some material related to a classified Pentagon document that he discussed at a recorded meeting in 2021. However, Trump’s team wasn’t able to find the specific document – about a potential US attack on Iran – that prosecutors were looking for.

    Corcoran, the lead Trump attorney, testifies before the grand jury in Washington, DC. This occurred after a federal judge ordered him to answer prosecutors’ questions, ruling that attorney-client privilege did not shield his discussion with Trump because Trump might been trying to commit a crime through his attorneys. Corcoran later recused himself from handling the Mar-a-Lago matter.

    The first public indications emerge that the special counsel is using a second grand jury in Miami to gather evidence. Multiple witnesses testify in front of the Miami-based panel, CNN reported.

    Trump lawyers meet with senior Justice Department officials – including special counsel Smith – to discuss the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The sitdown lasted about 90 minutes, and Trump’s team raised concerns about the probe, which they have called an “unlawful” and “outrageous” abuse of the legal system.

    News outlets report that the Justice Department recently sent a “target letter” to Trump, formally notifying him that he’s a target of the investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents.

    News outlets report that Trump has been indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Trump also says in a social media post that the Justice Department informed his attorneys that he was indicted – and called the case a “hoax.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Meta begins blocking news access on its platforms in Canada | CNN Business

    Meta begins blocking news access on its platforms in Canada | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Meta has begun to remove news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada, the social media giant said Tuesday, in response to recently passed legislation in the country that requires tech companies to negotiate payments to news organizations for hosting their content.

    As a result of the move — which Meta had previously said would occur before the law takes effect — Meta’s Canadian users will no longer be able to click on links to news articles posted to Facebook and Instagram.

    The changes began Tuesday and will roll out gradually over the coming weeks, said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone.

    The decision comes amid a global debate over the relationship between news organizations and social media companies about the value of news content, and who gets to benefit from it.

    Google has also announced that it plans to remove news content from its platforms in Canada when the law takes effect, which could happen by December.

    The Canadian legislation, known as Bill C-18, was given final approval in June. It aims to support the sustainability of news organizations by regulating “digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace.”

    It comes after the passage of a 2021 Australian law that the tech platforms initially opposed by warning it would similarly force them to remove news content. Since then, the platforms have reached voluntary agreements with a range of news outlets in that country.

    Like-minded proposals have been introduced around the world amid allegations that the tech industry has decimated local journalism by sucking away billions in online advertising revenues.

    In May, Meta also threatened to remove news content from California if the state moved ahead with a revenue-sharing bill. The legislation was put on hold last month.

    And at the federal level, the US Senate in June advanced a bill that would grant news organizations the ability to jointly negotiate for a greater share of advertising revenues against online platforms, thanks to a proposed antitrust exemption for publishers and broadcasters.

    In a blog post Tuesday, Meta said the Canadian legislation “misrepresents the value news outlets receive when choosing to use our platforms.”

    “The legislation is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true,” the blog post said. “News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line.”

    Canadian users of Meta’s platforms will still be able to access news content online by visiting news outlets’ websites directly or by signing up for their subscriptions and apps.

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  • E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rest their cases in civil rape trial, but Trump could still testify | CNN Politics

    E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rest their cases in civil rape trial, but Trump could still testify | CNN Politics

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Attorneys for E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rested their respective cases in the battery and defamation trial against the former president in Manhattan federal court on Thursday evening.

    Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleges Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

    While resting his case means Trump legally waived his right to testify in his own defense, District Judge Lewis Kaplan left a window for Trump to change his mind over the weekend.

    Kaplan ruled that Trump’s legal team has until 5 p.m. Sunday to petition the court to reopen the defense case for the sole purpose of allowing Trump to testify. The judge said he ordered the precautionary measure in light of Trump’s public comments made earlier Thursday suggesting he would make an appearance in court before the trial ended.

    Trump, who has not appeared in the courtroom at any point during the trial, told reporters in Ireland on Thursday he’ll “probably attend” the trial.

    “I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me, and I have a judge who is extremely hostile,” Trump said in Doonbeg, Ireland, according to Reuters.

    During a sidebar on Thursday afternoon, Trump’s attorney tried repeatedly to reassure Kaplan that his client would not take the stand and implied that the judge has an idea of what it’s like representing the former president.

    “I know you understand what I am dealing with,” Joe Tacopina told the judge, according to a court transcript.

    If Trump does not change his mind, the parties are set to give closing arguments to the jury at 10 a.m. on Monday.

    Carroll’s legal team put on 11 witnesses in her case including the writer herself over seven trial days.

    Republican panelist: Trump’s glorification of accused Jan 6 rioters is “disgusting.”

    Earlier Thursday the jury saw more clips of Trump’s video-recorded deposition taken last October for this case in which Trump vehemently denies Carroll’s rape allegations against him.

    “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is. It came out of the blue. She’s accusing me of rape – of raping her, the worst thing you can do, the worst charge. And you know it’s not true too. You’re a political operative also. You’re a disgrace. But she’s accusing me and so are you of rape, and it never took place,” Trump said on video, addressing Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan.

    Trump stood by his social media posts published in 2019 and 2022 denying Carroll’s accusations and confirmed he personally wrote them.

    At one point during the deposition, Trump held a well-known black and white photo of himself, E Jean Carroll, her former husband news anchor John Johnson, and Trump’s then-wife Ivana.

    Trump recognized Johnson and recalled thinking he was good at his television job, but then mistook Carroll for his other ex-wife Marla Maples.

    “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he said.

    After the attorneys corrected him, Trump said the photo was blurry.

    He acknowledged the photo suggests he met Carroll at least once but said it must have been very brief at an event and he does not remember or know her.

    “I still don’t know this woman. I think she’s a whack job. I have no idea. I don’t know anything about this woman other than what I read in stories and what I hear. I know nothing about her,” the former president said.

    “She’s a liar and she’s a sick person in my opinion, Really sick. Something wrong with her,” Trump said during another point in the deposition.

    screengrab maggine haberman

    Haberman: Trump is personally bothered by the E. Jean Carroll case

    Carroll’s attorney asked Trump about his comments regarding Carroll, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff all not being “his type.”

    He stood by the statements each time he was asked. At one point he said, “the only different between me and other people is I’m honest.”

    He also told Carroll’s attorney she’s not his type. “You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either to be honest,” Trump said.

    He also said he felt like he had a right to insult the women who’ve accused him falsely.

    “I don’t want to be insulting but when people accuse me of something I think I have a right to be insulting because they’re insulting me,” Trump said.

    The jury watched Trump view the “Access Hollywood” tape during his deposition. He didn’t appear to noticeably react as it was played.

    When asked about the tape he said it’s already been “fully litigated” and, “it’s locker room talk, I don’t know, it’s just the way people talk.”

    Former local news anchor Carol Martin testified Thursday that she remembers Carroll confiding in her soon after the alleged assault by Trump in the mid-1990s.

    Martin testified under direct examination that she didn’t remember when exactly it happened, but she knew it was some time while the two were working at the same cable network between 1994 and 1996.

    By Martin’s account the two friends had finished taping their respective shows and Carroll asked if she could come over Martin’s home near the studio. They talked in her kitchen for about an hour, Martin testified, and Carroll was “frenzied.”

    Carroll’s “effect was anxious and excitable, but she can be that way sometimes so that part wasn’t as different but what she was saying didn’t make any sense at first.” The conversation was not linear, Carroll started her account saying, “You won’t believe what happened to me the other night,” Martin recalled.

    “And I didn’t know what to expect,” Martin said she felt at the time. Carroll repeatedly said, “Trump attacked me,” according to Martin.

    “I think she said ‘he pinned me’ and I still didn’t know what she meant,” Martin testified.

    Martin testified that she told Carroll she shouldn’t tell anyone her story. “Because it was Donald Trump and he had a lot of attorneys and I thought he would bury her is what I told her,” Martin said.

    “I have questioned myself more times than not over the years. I am not proud that that’s what I told her in truth but she didn’t contest,” Martin added.

    During cross-examination, Tacopina read through a series of messages Martin has sent friends, many to Carroll, speaking negatively about Trump for years since he first ran for the presidency.

    Martin testified that as “very liberal feminist women,” they frequently discussed politics including their dislike for Trump. “We would often talk about ways to change the climate or work on issues of interest to us,” Martin testified.

    Tacopina also read the jury several messages Martin sent to friends and family about Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump that appeared to criticize Carroll. “She’s gonna sue when adult victims of rape law is passed in New York State or something. WTF that’s the defamation case and DOJ oversight or something. It’s gone to another level and not something I can relate to. For her, sadly, I think this quest has become a lifestyle,” Martin wrote in one text.

    Martin responded in court that at the time she sent the messages she was dealing with serious matters in her own personal life that affected her feelings toward Carroll’s situation. She testified that the texts do not reflect her current feelings.

    A marketing expert commissioned by Carroll testified it would take up to $2.7 million to run an effective marketing campaign to repair her reputation just from the damage of Trump’s October 12, 2022, comments denying her allegations.

    Northwestern University Professor Ashlee Humphreys said that Trump’s statement at issue in this trial reached somewhere between 13.7 and 18 million impressions.

    Humphreys and a team of researchers evaluated the post first published on Truth Social and how it spread across mediums like other social media platforms, websites and cable and network broadcast television.

    In a series of calculations Humphreys said about 21% of the people who viewed the statement in some capacity – about 3.7 to 5.6 million people – likely believed Trump. The analysis did not consider the effects of previous statements Trump made about Carroll.

    On cross examination Humphreys acknowledged that she did not consider damage done to Trump by Carroll’s statements against him.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Senate Judiciary advances journalism bargaining bill targeting Big Tech | CNN Business

    Senate Judiciary advances journalism bargaining bill targeting Big Tech | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced legislation on Thursday that would give news organizations the power to jointly bargain against Meta, Google and other online platforms for a greater share of online advertising revenue.

    The legislation would create an antitrust exemption allowing radio and TV broadcasters, as well as small news outlets with fewer than 1,500 employees, to “band together” and arrest the decline of local journalism in cities and states across the country, said its lead co-sponsors, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy.

    The concept, a version of which became law in Australia in 2021 and since been proposed in numerous countries, has been vigorously opposed by tech giants who in some cases have threatened to pull news content from their platforms over the legislation.

    Meta and Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The measure cleared the committee by a vote of 14-7. But it faces an uncertain future on the Senate floor.

    One member of the committee, California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, voted against the bill Thursday and vowed to block any future floor vote on the legislation until lawmakers make several changes.

    Padilla said the legislation doesn’t do enough to ensure that actual journalists in local newsrooms will benefit from the bargaining, as opposed to hedge funds and publication owners. He also raised concerns that the bill as written could allow online platforms such as Google to charge individual internet users each time they attempt to share or click on a link to a news article, a practice Padilla warned would be harmful to the internet.

    “This bill, as written, does nothing to guarantee the protection or pay of the journalists and media workers that we’re claiming to try to protect,” Padilla said. “For us to ignore them while claiming to be fighting for them is absurd.”

    Several other senators echoed Padilla’s remarks on Thursday, including Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff, Peter Welch and Cory Booker.

    Kennedy and Klobuchar argued that the bill — which had previously passed out of the committee during the last Congress, in 2022 — is urgently necessary in light of the closure of thousands of local newspapers nationwide since the rise of online platforms.

    “We have small towns in all of our states with news organizations that cover everything from what’s happening in the city council to reports of the local high school football and volleyball games to informing citizens that a flood is coming,” Klobuchar said. “That kind of reporting … is being undermined right now because, in a very tough market, these news reporters and news organizations are not getting the share of the revenue that they should get.”

    Kennedy urged colleagues to set aside their other views on tech platforms and news media.

    “This bill is not about whether or not you like social media,” Kennedy said. “This bill is not about whether or not you like what is happening in American news media today. This bill is about creative content. That’s all it’s about. And whether we respect creative content and value it, or whether we do not.”

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  • Ron DeSantis is targeting the free speech protections that might save Fox News | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis is targeting the free speech protections that might save Fox News | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As Fox News faces legal peril over its coverage of Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies, one of its most featured Republicans, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is trying to gut the free speech protections that may ultimately save the network from financial ruin.

    DeSantis and his GOP allies in the state legislature have proposed a sweeping overhaul to defamation laws here that would make it far easier to sue news organizations in Florida. The legislation, fashioned to punish media outlets over their coverage of conservatives, would turn the state into a battleground over the future of the First Amendment.

    But in doing so, DeSantis has sparked warnings from the right that his attempts to target the mainstream media will result in headaches for conservative outlets as well. Among the most vulnerable, opponents have said, could be the media organizations that have done the most to promote DeSantis amid his ascent in the GOP.

    “I understand the emotion behind this bill, but you cannot legislate on emotion and this bill is a sword that will cut both ways,” said Trey Radel, a former Republican colleague of DeSantis in the US House who hosts a weeknight radio show on a Florida Fox News affiliate. “This bill has the potential to stifle, if not shut down, center right media and conservative talk radio.”

    The legislation as introduced takes direct aim at the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, which created a higher barrier for public figures to sue for defamation. The decision has been a bedrock of US media law since the case was decided in 1964, protecting news outlets from expensive lawsuits for mistakes made during the course of reporting by requiring plaintiffs to prove the reporter or outlet demonstrated “actual malice” when publishing erroneous information about a public figure.

    Fox News has leaned heavily on the ruling in defending itself from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit. Dominion in its lawsuit has alleged Fox “recklessly disregarded the truth” during its 2020 presidential election coverage by pushing various pro-Trump conspiracies about the company’s voting technology.

    Fox attorneys cited New York Times v. Sullivan five times in its March 7 court filing asking for a summary judgment. In public statements, the network has repeatedly insisted it is protected by the precedent set in that case.

    “Despite the noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox News Media said in one such recent statement.

    But if Florida Republicans get their way, those protections would be eroded. House Speaker Paul Renner acknowledged last week that the bill his chamber is considering “is designed to challenge current constitutional law” and “tee up a court case.” The push comes as two of the Supreme Court’s more conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have openly expressed a willingness to revisit the high court’s ruling in Sullivan, with Thomas calling the court’s libel precedent “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”

    DeSantis has for years quietly eyed going after the media’s First Amendment protections, first floating legislation targeting libel laws in December 2021, according to emails obtained by CNN. Stephanie Kopelousos, the governor’s director of legislative affairs, sent draft bill language to the office of the state Senate president, though it was not filed for the 2022 legislative session.

    His intentions became public last month at an unusually staged event during which DeSantis, seated behind a studio desk like a news anchor with “TRUTH” emblazoned on a screen behind him, signaled his willingness to turn Florida into a test case to challenge Sullivan.

    “It’s our view in Florida that we want to be standing up for the little guy against some of these massive media conglomerates,” DeSantis said.

    But that was several weeks before Dominion unleashed a trove of embarrassing text messages and testimony from Fox executives and personalities that suggested they knowingly aired Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

    Adding to the intrigue is the lengths to which the conservative network and others owned by Rupert Murdoch, have gone to promote DeSantis ahead of his likely bid for president. In between regular appearances on Fox programming, DeSantis in recent weeks has played catch with “Fox & Friends’” Brian Kilmeade, sat down with TalkTV’s Piers Morgan in the governor’s mansion, toured his hometown with the New York Post’s Salena Zito and granted a rare newspaper interview to David Charter of the Times of London – all reporters who work in Murdoch’s media empire. The New York Post declared the Republican governor “DeFUTURE” after his resounding reelection victory in November.

    Fox News declined to comment. But the Wall Street Journal, another Murdoch-owned outlet, recently published an op-ed by Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr criticizing other media outlets for their “gleeful” coverage of Fox’s “setback” instead of standing up for the protections created by Sullivan. In a plea that seemed aimed at DeSantis’ efforts, Barr urged conservatives with power not to attempt to weaken libel laws.

    “For the foreseeable future, we will likely be on the wrong side of the culture-setting consensus,” he wrote. “There are precious few conservative news outlets as it is. Why make them more vulnerable to the multitude of left-wing plaintiffs’ lawyers?”

    Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, the sponsor of the Florida House bill, said he would “take Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch over Bill Barr every day of the week.” Andrade contended that libel laws have become so one-sided, “If you’ve been egregiously defamed by a media outlet, in 2023 you have almost no opportunity for actual recourse.”

    Andrade said he planned to tweak the bill to address some of the blowback before its next committee stop, but otherwise intended to charge ahead. The bill’s next vote is not yet scheduled.

    “The majority of the concerns are not based in reality,” Andrade said.

    Under the Florida bill, the definition of a public figure is narrowed significantly and it puts more onus on an individual to verify a defamatory allegation before publishing. Editing video in a misleading way could be considered defamation in this bill. It also allows someone to sue wherever the material is accessed – in today’s digital world, that could be anywhere in the state – which opponents say will lead to “venue shopping” for favorable judges. Courts must assume any statement made by an anonymous source is false, the bill says, which free speech advocates say would have a chilling effect on whistleblowers.

    The bill, which was also introduced in the state Senate with some modifications, has attracted an astounding array of opponents that cross the political spectrum. At a House committee hearing last week, the conservative Americans for Prosperity and the more progressive American Civil Liberties Union both testified against it. Brendon Leslie, the founder of the Florida Voice, a DeSantis-friendly conservative media outlet, warned on Twitter that progressive donors would flood conservative media with lawsuits if the bill became law. Bobby Block, executive director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, called the bill a “blunt instrument” that has made commentary-heavy evangelical and conservative broadcast stations “incredibly nervous.” US Rep. Cory Mills, a Republican from Central Florida, wrote in a letter to state GOP legislative leaders that he was “gravely concerned that (the bills) violate free speech rights.”

    Though Sullivan is primarily known for protecting news organizations, the bill could make it easier to sue local bloggers, people who post web comments and other online speakers, opponents have warned.

    “It doesn’t just hurt … what’s been referred to as the legacy media,” said Carol LoCicero, a lawyer who has represented The Villages Daily Sun, a newspaper published by the conservative owners of The Villages retirement community. “It hurts people from all points of view. It hurts individuals. Frankly, it will hurt politicians as they’re campaigning for office and making statements about their opponents.”

    DeSantis, though, is so far undeterred. He told reporters last week that he didn’t think the bill would “cause much of a difference in terms of free speech.”

    “I do think it may cause some people to not want to put out things that are false, that are that are smearing somebody’s reputation,” he said.

    Legal experts are skeptical that the bill will be upheld even if it passes. Other Supreme Court justices have so far not shown the same enthusiasm as Thomas and Gorsuch for reviewing its precedent in Sullivan. Dave Heller, deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center, said the proposed legislation is “breathtaking in its hostility toward a free press” and Mark Lerner, an attorney who represented Newsmax in a libel dispute, called the measure “unconstitutional” and said its proponents “who think they’re championing conservative voices may be surprised that it chills them.”

    Radel, the former congressman and radio host, said conservative outlets might not survive the legal costs they could face while legal challenges move through the court system.

    “That type of scorched earth policy is going to destroy conservative talk in Florida in the meantime,” he said. “I work for a privately owned broadcasting group that will not be able to afford a barrage of lawsuits before we wait for it to go before the Supreme Court.”

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