Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The White House has begun to notify Congress of its request to eliminate “all” public broadcasting funding and codify foreign aid cuts identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, The Post has learned. Major proposed clawbacks in the so-called “rescissions” plan include $1.1 billion in appropriated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funds to PBS and National Public Radio, and $8.3 billion from USAID. A memo drafted by White House budget director Russ Vought — and requested by GOP congressional leaders — accuses CPB of a “lengthy history of anti-conservative bias” and cites “waste,...

CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, and President Donald Trump are set to begin mediation in his $20 billion election interference lawsuit, Fox News Digital has confirmed. Trump is seeking $20 billion in a lawsuit against CBS, alleging election interference over its handling of a "60 Minutes" interview last year with Vice President Kamala Harris. The president has accused CBS of aiding his 2024 Democratic opponent through deceptive editing one month before they faced off in the presidential election. The saga began when Harris was widely mocked for a "word salad" answer she gave to "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker during...

The ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is perilously close to collapsing as both Israel and Hamas have both balked at entering negotiations over terms of an intended second phase of the deal. Meanwhile, food shortages in the territory have become acute and Palestinians living there are again struggling to feed their families. Mustafa Abu Shaaban, a blacksmith before the war, and his wife Rasha, try to create a semblance of normality for their kids. "Our life is hard – we just want to live like everyone else," Rasha told CBS News. But as the aid freeze starts to bite in...

Tel Aviv — The war is back in Gaza. Since abandoning a ceasefire on March 17, the Israel Defense Forces have pounded the Palestinian territory with waves of deadly strikes it says are targeting Hamas terrorists. Those strikes have brought the overall death toll in Gaza to well over 50,000 since the beginning of the war, according to the enclave's Hamas-run Health Ministry. CBS News spoke recently with an Israeli soldier who has questioned the military's tactics. Tommy — not his real name, as he agreed to speak with CBS News on the condition of anonymity — fought in Gaza...

A former UPMC doctor and assistant professor at Pitt was arrested after police in Hawaii said he tried to push his wife off a hiking trail and hit her in the head with a rock. Honolulu police said they arrested Gerhardt Konig after a short chase on foot near Pali Highway on Monday evening. Earlier in the day, police put out a poster with Konig's photo, saying he was wanted for attempted murder at Pali Lookout. Police said Konig was on Oahu with his wife Monday morning when he tried to push her off a trail and used a rock...

CBS Mornings is moving out of its high-profile Times Square studio, just four years after unveiling the space. CBS reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars building the state-of-the-art studio in Times Square, a prime location. Last week, CBS Mornings hit a new low in viewership since its relaunch in September 2021, drawing just 1.87 million total viewers over seven days. That’s a 6% drop from the same period last year. Notably the shift to a more magazine-style presentation and the decision to bring in Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson as anchors on CBS Evening News, replacing longtime host Norah...

An upcoming 60 Minutes investigation into the drone sightings that took place toward the end of 2024 promises to reveal more about the government's knowledge and response to the still largely-unexplained phenomena. In a preview for the special, CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker speaks with Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, inquiring about the intelligence community's thoughts on the mysterious sightings and whether these could have been an attempt at espionage by a foreign power. "I am privy to classified briefings at the highest level," Wicker said. "I think the Pentagon and the National Security...

Arab nations, led by Egypt, that have strongly rejected President Trump's proposal for the U.S. to "take over" the Gaza Strip and displace its more than 2 million Palestinian residents so the enclave can be turned into a luxury real estate development have offered an alternative plan. Leaders from the 22-nation Arab League attended a summit in Cairo Tuesday and unanimously adopted the Egyptian proposal, which does not foresee any of Gaza's residents being forced to leave during reconstruction. The Trump administration, along with its close allies in Israel, quickly rejected the plan, with the White House reiterating the president's...

CBS News/YouGov survey interviewed a nationally representative sample of speech watchers immediately following Trump’s joint address to Congress, and the numbers will please the poll-mindful president. The poll shows an astounding 76 percent of Americans viewing the speech approved of Trump’s remarks, with only 23 percent — less than a quarter — disapproving.

Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President Donald Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “a dumpster fire of diplomacy.” Partial transcript as follows: MARGARET BRENNAN: You were one of the lawmakers who met with President Zelensky prior to that Oval Office meltdown. Senator Lindsey Graham later told reporters he had warned Zelensky, “don’t take the bait.” Do you think Zelensky took the bait? Is that how you understand what happened?

Singer Katy Perry, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, and Jeff Bezos’ fiancé Lauren Sanchez will blast off into space on a Blue Origin rocket as part of an all-female passenger crew, the company announced this week. Blue Origin’s 11th human spaceflight as part of its New Shepard program, as well as the 31st in its history, is set to launch this spring, the company said in a Thursday announcement. “This is the first all-female flight crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963,” Blue Origin noted. In addition to Perry, King, and Sanchez, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics...

CBS News has hired a well-regarded TV veteran as its No. 2 executive — even as insiders speculate that the broadcast giant’s boss is on the way out. The Tiffany Network appointed former ABC News executive Tom Cibrowski to the role of president and executive editor of CBS News, replacing Adrienne Roark, the former CBS News president of newsgathering, who left for a job at Tegna earlier this month. Cibrowski — a 25-year veteran of ABC News who served as executive producer of “Good Morning America” when it overtook NBC’s “Today” in the ratings — will have a wider purview...

Fired CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge posted photos of the confidential files seized by the network — which “included sensitive reporting about COVID-19 origins and Hunter Biden.” The award-winning investigative journalist — who was dismissed last February .. stirred up a firestorm in her bid to regain the materials before the network gave back the items weeks later. ... Herridge referred to CBS News’ actions as a “journalistic rape” and “an attack on investigative journalism.” “I hope no investigative reporter has to suffer a similar injustice in the future,” she added. ... The incident led to a hearing last April...

The Musk-Deranged and DOGE-Deranged media appear to have stumbled on a new genre of coverage: the horrendous fate that will befall Americans due to DOGE cuts across multiple federal agencies. Reaching a new height of absurdity, CBS’s Ian Lee leads viewers to infer that DOGE cuts will lead people to be eaten by bears. Watch as Lee walks viewers to an empty ranger station at Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming: .. LEE: I spoke with several senior Forest Service officials across the country, and they told me the future leadership of the agency has been wiped out, and it could...

“The job of the president, goes the message from all the insiders, is to PRETEND to be in charge but not actually do anything meaningful." —Jeffrey Tucker. CBS’s 60-Minutes show was at it again Sunday night in the most prime primetime weekend news slot on the old broadcast spectrum — Sunday at 7:00, the power-hour of national mind-f***ery — with blob PR-agent Scott Pelley singing the blues over the systematic disassembly of the rogue bureaucracy. Trouble is, fewer and fewer minds are susceptible to the argument that the blob exists to “save our democracy.”You’re supposed to go boo-hoo because the...

CBS News is already backtracking on a revamp of its “Evening News” program — and the network’s embattled boss risks becoming a casualty, The Post has learned. Just weeks after a drastic overhaul replaced Norah O’Donnell with a “60 Minutes”-style news magazine helmed by a pair of little-known anchors, the Tiffany Network is reverting to a more news-driven broadcast as ratings tumble, sources said. That’s after embarrassments like last week, when the “Evening News” led with “Why can’t Johnny read?” — a six-minute feature package about student literacy — despite a busy news cycle that included Elon Musk appearing at...

Adrienne Roark, CBS News’ president of editorial and newsgathering, is leaving the company for a senior position at Tegna. Her exit comes just seven months after being named president of the operation. Her departure comes at a time when CBS is facing a $20 billion lawsuit from President Trump, who has claimed CBS and “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris leading up to the 2024 election. Roark’s exit also comes as Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, and Skydance Media are moving closer towards a planned merger — a deal that was given the green light...

…When Brennan suggested that free speech had been "weaponized" by Nazi Germany "to conduct a genocide," Rubio quickly pushed back, calling it a misrepresentation of history and countering that the Holocaust was the work of an authoritarian regime that hated Jews and other minorities. "There was no free speech in Nazi Germany," Rubio said. … The fiery moment became a rallying cry on conservative media, with outlets praising Rubio and Vance for "calling out" Brennan. It played directly into an ongoing narrative on the right — that mainstream journalists like Brennan aren't just biased but are actively pushing an agenda....

Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier was released from a Florida prison Tuesday morning after former President Joe Biden commuted his life sentence for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents, a decision that elated Peltier's supporters while angering law enforcement officials who believe in his guilt. "Today I am finally free! They may have imprisoned me but they never took my spirit," Leonard Peltier said Tuesday. "Thank you to all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom. I am finally going home. I look forward to seeing my friends, my family, and my community. It's a good day...

“60 Minutes” is quickly earning the reputation of being the most fake of all the fake news outlets.“60 Minutes” is already in court defending their organization after they were caught cutting and pasting Kamala Harris’s interview together to make he look like a normal thinking person.Now, this past weekend, “60 Minutes” was caught again, this time trying to pass a former speechwriter for USAID chief Samantha Power as a sad and distraught former USAID employee who the Trump administration recently fired.60 Minutes aired a segment about a sad young mother Kristina Drye who was fired from USAID in Washington DC...