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Tucker Carlson exits Fox News amid the aftermath of the Dominion lawsuit and internal tensions over his conduct and lies about the January 6 insurrection
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Washington Post: Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News after Dominion lawsuit disclosures: In a surprise announcement, Fox News on Monday cut ties with its controversial yet top-rated prime-time host Tucker Carlson. The apparently hasty parting — Carlson gave no indication he was leaving in his last nightly appearance Friday, and the network was still running promos for his show Monday morning — came less than a week after Fox settled a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which had sued the network for false claims about the 2020 election. Carlson was among several on-air personalities expected to testify.
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Los AngelesTimes: Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch: People familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, with input from board members and other executives at Fox Corp. Murdoch elevated Carlson from contributor to daily host status in 2016. He moved into prime time in 2017 following the ouster of Bill O’Reilly, the successful longtime host who left over sexual harassment allegations. Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, the producer fired by the network last month, the sources said. Carlson’s senior executive producer Justin Wells has also been terminated, according to insiders.
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Washington Post: Now what for Tucker Carlson? Now what for Fox News?: The announcement was staggering: Fox News host Tucker Carlson was leaving the channel. And not just leaving it but doing so retroactively, with his last show airing Friday, three days before Monday’s announcement. There will be no further episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” for Fox News viewers. The last thing his Fox News fans saw, then, was Friday’s interview with a pizza-delivery guy who helped stop a thief. And the last thing they heard him say, besides Fox News promos, was: “The entire episode of ‘Let Them Eat Bugs’ — not quite as good as pizza — streaming now on Fox Nation.” Followed by: “We’ll be back on Monday.” He would not be.
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New York Times: What Tucker Carlson Leaves Behind as He Is Shown the Door: In the days after the 2020 election, the Fox host Tucker Carlson sent an anxious text message to one of his producers. Fox viewers were furious about the network’s decision to call Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. The defeated president, Donald J. Trump, was eagerly stoking their anger. As Mr. Carlson and his producer batted around ideas for a new Carlson podcast — one that might help win back the audience most angry about Mr. Trump’s defeat — they saw both opportunity and peril in the moment. “He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong,” Mr. Carlson warned, in a text released during Fox’s now-settled litigation with the voting software company Dominion.
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CBS (60 Minutes): Ray Epps, a Jan. 6 protester now at the center of a far-right conspiracy, says he relives the Capitol riot every day: Tucker Carlson: Ray Epps? He is on video several times encouraging crimes, riots, breaches of the Capitol…Carlson has focused on Epps more than 20 times on his top-rated show … a half-dozen times so far this year. Ray Epps: He’s obsessed with me. He’s going to any means possible to destroy my life and our lives.
Drip, drip, drip of new revelations on how Trump and his operatives tried to subvert 2020 and 2021 elections, as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ probe escalates
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: EXCLUSIVE: DA says indictment announcement coming this summer in Trump probe: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday said she would announce this summer whether former President Donald Trump and his allies would be charged with crimes related to alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election. Willis revealed the timetable in a letter to local law enforcement in which she asked them to be ready for “heightened security and preparedness” because she predicted her announcement “may provoke a significant public reaction.” In the letters, Willis said she will announce possible criminal indictments between July 11 and Sept. 1, sending one of the strongest signals yet that she’s on the verge of trying to obtain an indictment against Trump and his supporters.
- CNN: Text messages reveal Trump operatives considered using breached voting data to decertify Georgia’s Senate runoff in 2021: In mid-January 2021, two men hired by former President Donald Trump’s legal team discussed over text message what to do with data obtained from a breached voting machine in a rural county in Georgia, including whether to use it as part of an attempt to decertify the state’s pending Senate runoff results. The texts, sent two weeks after operatives breached a voting machine in Coffee County, Georgia, reveal for the first time that Trump allies considered using voting data not only to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, but also in an effort to keep a Republican hold on the US Senate. “Here’s the plan. Let’s keep this close hold,” Jim Penrose, a former NSA official working with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to access voting machines in Georgia, wrote in a January 19 text to Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a firm that purports to run audits of voting systems.
- New York Times: Testimony Suggests Trump Was at Meeting About Accessing Voting Software: Former President Donald J. Trump took part in a discussion about plans to access voting system software in Michigan and Georgia as part of the effort to challenge his 2020 election loss, according to testimony from former Trump advisers. The testimony, delivered to the House Jan. 6 committee, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to federal officials from a liberal-leaning legal advocacy group. Allies of Mr. Trump ultimately succeeded in copying the elections software in those two states, and the breach of voting data in Georgia is being examined by prosecutors as part of a broader criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his allies interfered in the presidential election there. The former president’s participation in the discussion of the Georgia plan could increase his risk of possible legal exposure there.
- PBS: Trump faces more disapproval around Georgia election case, AP-NORC poll says: Former President Donald Trump has emerged largely unscathed politically from his New York indictment. But a new poll suggests that investigations in Georgia and Washington could prove more problematic. About half of respondents believe he broke the law in Georgia, where he is under investigation for interfering in the 2020 election vote count. The findings suggest potential future charges in those cases against Trump may resonate more deeply with the American public than his alleged cover-up of payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels and other women at the height of the 2016 campaign — charges that nearly 6 in 10 adults believe were politically motivated.
In The States
FLORIDA: State central to the growing effort to ban books in schools, seen in the FL legislature and in 67 school districts statewide, and is now ranked second in the number of book bans in the U.S.
- New York Times: Florida at Center of Debate as School Book Bans Surge Nationally: Two years into a surge of book bans across the United States, Florida is a hot spot in the clash over what reading material is appropriate for children, with laws that have greatly expanded the state’s ability to restrict books. Historically, books were challenged one at a time. As bans in schools and libraries began increasing nationally in 2021, efforts were largely local, led by a parent or a group. But over the past year, access to books, particularly those touching on race, gender or sexual orientation, became increasingly politicized. With that came an increase in legislation and regulations in some states and school districts that affected which books libraries could offer. The shift is particularly evident in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican-controlled Legislature and a rapidly growing network of conservative groups aligned to pass three state laws last year aimed, at least in part, at reading or educational materials. Among the books removed from circulation in one of the state’s school districts are Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
- Wall Street Journal: There Were 1,269 Efforts to Ban Books in 2022. These Were the Most Targeted.: A graphic-novel memoir about gender identity. A collection of personal essays by a queer Black activist. Toni Morrison’s first novel. These books were among the most-challenged titles in U.S. libraries in 2022, according to a new report from the American Library Association. The attempts to ban “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson and “The Bluest Eye” by Morrison were part of a growing trend across the U.S. There were 1,269 efforts to censor books and other resources in libraries in 2022, according to the libraries group. That figure is nearly double the year before and marks a record for a single year. The association has been tracking these trends for more than two decades. More than 2,500 individual titles fell under scrutiny in 2022, the majority of which focused on or were written by LGBT individuals and people of color. The efforts have reached communities across the U.S. Voters in a rural western Michigan town defunded a library over a dispute related to LGBT content. A Texas county considered closing its public libraries after a federal judge ordered more than a dozen recently removed books to be returned to shelves.
TEXAS: Nine more bills passed by the state Senate interfere with election administration and make it harder to vote or register
- NBC News: Texas Senate passes bill to end countywide voting on Election Day: The Texas Senate on Thursday approved a bill to ban countywide voting on Election Day, part of a pattern of legislation aimed at tightening election laws in red-leaning states. Senate Bill 990, which passed on a party-line vote, would require people to vote at their assigned precinct on Election Day rather than at countywide voting centers. The county polling sites would remain open throughout the early voting period. The bill now moves to the House, where an identical bill was referred to the Elections Committee. State Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican who introduced the legislation, said the bill would boost election security and prevent people from voting at multiple locations. Opponents argued, however, that the secretary of state had debunked all claims of voter fraud. They said the bill would make it more difficult for people in sprawling counties to find a place to vote.
- Spectrum News: Texas House panel debates quitting election cross-check program ERIC: In the Texas House, the elections committee heard a bill on Thursday that would withdraw the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia are members of ERIC. It allows them to compare voter data to ensure individuals aren’t registered in multiple states. “It’s been helpful and necessary in making sure that our administration of elections is more safe and secure,” said Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas. But some Republicans say Texas should no longer be a member of this group. A bill by Houston-area Rep. Jacey Jetton would put an expiration date on the state’s participation in ERIC. Texas would need to create its own alternative cross-check program. Ehresman said other states, such as Kansas and Florida, that have left ERIC have seen worse voter list maintenance and data integrity with their own interstate verification system. “We haven’t seen any defense of these alternatives and how they would be secure, or safe or better for our lists,” Ehresman said. “Texans should not be looking at this bill as an answer to a problem, but instead as a problem in and of itself.” She worries that elections will be less secure if Texas withdraws from ERIC.
MICHIGAN: Ottawa County offers a glimpse of what happens when one of the building blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles
- Washington Post: In a thriving Michigan county, a community goes to war with itself: The eight new members of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had run for office promising to “thwart tyranny” in their lakeside Michigan community of 300,000 people. In this case the oppressive force they aimed to thwart was the county government they now ran. It was early January, their first day in charge. An American flag held down a spot at the front of the board’s windowless meeting room. Sea-foam green carpet covered the floor. The new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of office on family Bibles. And then the firings began. Gone was the lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a staff of 1,800. To run the health department, they voted to install a service manager from a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates.
OHIO: Voter ID law that went into effect this month would make it harder for people with disabilities, college students, among others to vote
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WDTN: Ohio election law changes impact residents with disabilities: The election laws in Ohio are changing and someone you know could be impacted when they show up to the polls in a matter of days. Ohio is changing its election laws, making it the strictest state in the country for voters when it comes to rules people have to follow. In years past, residents with disabilities who did not have a driver’s license or state issued ID could vote using bank statements and other government issued documents. When people go to the polls for this upcoming election and all future times to make their voice heard, bank statements and government documents will no longer be accepted. Disability Rights Ohio is focused on making sure Ohioans with disabilities know these new changes so they can cast their votes with no problem. Kerstin Sjoberg is the Executive Director at Disability Rights Ohio. She says people with disabilities need to be aware and plan ahead to take steps to make sure they will be allowed to vote.
What Experts Are Saying
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of Anti-Defamation League: “It’s about time. For far too long, Tucker Carlson has used his primetime show to spew antisemitic, racist, xenophobic and anti-LGBTQ hate to millions.@ADL has long called for his firing for this and many other offenses, including spreading the Great Replacement Theory.” Tweet
Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America: “Tucker Carlson is a dangerous misinformer. Tucker served as the bridge between Fox News and the most extreme parts of the right-wing base — laundering anti-trans paranoia, Infowars nonsense, election lies, and venomous rhetoric including the great replacement conspiracy theory nightly. But even without Tucker Carlson, Fox News is still Fox News. It was Fox News that empowered Carlson to grow — they gave him the invaluable 8 o’clock prime-time slot and paid for him to throw red meat to his audience even as advertisers abandoned his show. When Trump lost in 2020, Fox News centered Carlson’s election lies and spread them into network-wide talking points…Bottom line: Tucker’s departure from Fox is mostly remarkable for what he was able to get away with and how long he was able to get away with it. If anything, that reign illustrates how committed Fox is to lies and extremism.” Statement
Harry Litman, former US attorney: “There’s an important sub text to Willis is announcement that she is deciding in the summer. It tells would be cooperators – and we know she has reached out at least to some GA officials—that the train is leaving the station and if they want to be on it, they have to move now.” Tweet
Barb McQuade, former US attorney: “At long last, jury will hear closing arguments in Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case. Another important case for Jan 6 accountability and deterrence for domestic terrorists.” Tweet
Norman Eisen, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute, Josh Stanton, of counsel at Perry Guha LLP, and Siven Watt, legal fellow at Just Security: “One of the many unusual features of Donald Trump’s endless head-on collisions with the rule of law is the collateral damage done to lawyers. The latest example is Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ motion to disqualify one of the attorneys representing 10 of the Georgia fake electors tied up in the investigation into efforts to subvert the will of voters. The motion’s claims appear ominous for the defense lawyers involved — and signal accelerating accountability for fake elector ringleaders.” MSNBC Op-Ed: A new clue in the Fani Willis investigation
Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “Incredibly, the GOP tapped Cleta Mitchell, Trump lawyer and purveyor of the Big Lie in 2020, to speak to a room full of donors last weekend in Nashville, Tennessee. Mitchell worked with Ginni Thomas on the Council for National Policy to organize efforts to keep Trump in the White House after he lost the election…Mitchell told donors it was important to “combat” voting on college campuses, citing North Carolina and Wisconsin (two states where students turned out, and turned out to vote for Democratic candidates). She also said that “when” Republicans win the state senate in Virginia, they can eliminate 45 days of early voting and same-day voter registration—because, seriously, why should we make it easy for people to vote? Forget about the working moms, the people who don’t get paid if they’re not at work, the people who struggle to find transportation. Perish the thought that early voting can shorten the outrageous lines at the polls we’ve seen in some parts of the country. Let’s punish all of them to keep them from voting. As for students, let’s make it more difficult for them to vote too. But seriously, why should legitimate voters be prevented from voting? What possible rationale could there be? The answer is easy. There isn’t one. Mitchell and the GOP say, as they always do, that restrictive measures are necessary to prevent election fraud. But there is no evidence that supports that claim. Fraud is not responsible when Republicans lose at the polls, and, after 2020, they know it.” Civil Discourse
Heather Cox Richardson, American historian, re: recent election denier, “fake electors”, and Fox News settlement news: “It hit me as I read through all this news that a key theme seems to be a new shift toward transparency and accountability…Whether it comes from disgust at the excesses of those who are attacking our democracy or from fear of the law, that transparency reminds me of the pivotal importance of McClure’s Magazine in the early twentieth century. Reformers had expressed philosophical concerns about the concentration of wealth and power at the top of American society for decades, but those concerns could be ignored until the investigative journalists working for McClure’s began to explore the specifics of political corruption and its cost to ordinary Americans. Dismissed as “muckrakers” by politicians, those journalists nonetheless helped to shift the weight of social value from keeping secrets to spilling them. When that shift happened, the walls protecting the country’s entrenched leaders crumbled fast.” Letters from an American
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Washington Post: Trump’s message to young men: American democracy is all but gone
Politico: The Threat of Civil Breakdown Is Real
Washington Post: Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC
Business Insider: Right-wing pundits, politicians, and influencers (and Glenn Greenwald) rage against Fox News after it parts ways with Tucker Carlson
Washington Post: Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: ‘I am your justice’
Trump Investigations
The Hill: GOP senators warn Trump’s legal problems a ‘bad look’ for the party in 2024
New York Times: Amid a Legal Onslaught, Trump Faces Writer’s Suit Accusing Him of Rape
Daily Beast: Michael Cohen Is Getting Dragged Into Yet Another Trump Case
New York Times: Bragg Agrees to Let Ex-Prosecutor Testify About Trump Case in Congress
January 6 And The 2020 Election
The Hill: Pence says he’ll ‘tell the truth’ before Jan. 6 grand jury
Detroit News: Secret Grand Jury has probed post-2020 examination of voting machines in Michigan
Reuters: US says Proud Boys were ‘thirsting for violence’ as Jan. 6 trial wraps up
New York Times: Jan. 6 Defendant Opens Fire on Deputies Before Surrender to the F.B.I.
CBS: Jan. 6 committee staffer: “Zero evidence that Ray Epps was a federal agent”
NBC 6 South Florida: Proud Boys Leaders’ Trial Jurors to Hear Closing Arguments
Opinion
Washington Post: The Fox News settlement signals the end of an era for loose-cannon hosts
The Hill: Why is everyone trashing Alvin Bragg?
Washington Post: Tucker Carlson’s ouster is another sign that MAGA is shrinking
Washington Post: Republicans follow their new leader, Marjorie Taylor Greene
New York Times: Dominion’s C.E.O.: We Settled the Lawsuit Against Fox News, but We’re Not Done Yet
In the States
The Week: The next voting rights battle could be on a campus near you
Alaska Daily News: Alaska Supreme Court, in landmark ruling, says partisan gerrymandering violates state constitution
Alabama Political Reporter: Voting rights advocates are organizing against new voter suppression bill
American Independent: Voting rights are at risk in the 2023 Virginia legislative elections
