MARK HEMINGWAY: The Downfall Of 60 Minutes And The Biggest Media Scandal You’ve Never Heard Of.

According to the Times, “Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison.”

Supposedly, Redstone has also expressed a desire to settle Donald Trump’s case against 60 Minutes over allegations they deceptively edited their interview with Kamala Harris last fall. Though the Times is loathe to discuss it, there’s also lots of speculation that Redstone, an observant Jew, was less than thrilled when 60 Minutes recently ran an offensively stupid segment where veteran reporter Leslie Stahl asked a freed Israeli hostage if his Hamas captors starved him unintentionally because Hamas ran out of food. It’s well established that Hamas steals and hoards all the food and aid coming into Gaza, and it beggars belief that anyone, let alone someone who gets paid millions by a news network, would think a terrorist organization deserves the benefit of the doubt. And further, that layers of producers and editors would put this on the air.

There may be some truth to any or all of these accusations about what’s motivating Paramount and Redstone, but if Paramount is attempting to politicize 60 Minutes‘ reporting, at least they’re trying to make a buck out of it. Bill Owens spent 26 years at 60 Minutes, eventually presiding over a news operation that has willfully corrupted itself to the point where its bias has turned the show into a laughingstock. In at least one instance that I am familiar with, Owens played a pivotal role in a gross journalistic failing at 60 Minutes that ultimately helped a Democratic presidential candidate evade responsibility for an international incident that got Americans killed.

Read the whole thing.

DEMOCRACY IS WHEN THE ELITES DENY THE PEOPLE THE REPRESENTATION THEY VOTED FOR: German Government Looking for an Excuse to Ban ‘Extremist’ Alternative for Germany Party.

DELICIOUS: Eating Harvard’s Lunch.

NOW THIS IS WHAT I VOTED FOR: Trump unveils 2026 budget blueprint that includes deep cuts to non-defense spending.

Donald Trump unveiled his budget proposal blueprint – or “skinny budget” – for the 2026 fiscal year, which would include a $163bn cut to federal spending, eliminating more than a fifth of the non-military spending excluding mandatory programs, according to a release by the Office of Management and Budget.

The proposed budget would raise defense spending by 13% and homeland security spending by nearly 65% compared to 2025 enacted levels, according to the office. Non-defense spending would be reduced by roughly 23%, the lowest level since 2017. It is thus very much in line with the second Trump administration’s efforts to drastically shrink the size of the federal government through staffing cuts and office closures, and its aggressive anti-immigration agenda.

C’mon, Congress.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Progressives Warn That John Fetterman Suffers from Acute Pro-Israel-itis.

New York Magazine’s Ben Terris saved the most important part of his extensive profile of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman for last: “I didn’t find any indication that the stroke had left him cognitively impaired,” he wrote in its concluding paragraphs.

That is not the impression that a reader would have gathered from the worried former Fetterman staffers, jilted progressive activists, and anecdotes detailing the senator’s declining mental health that preceded this observation.

The piece paints a portrait of a broken man, a shadow of his former self, plagued by depression and demented episodes. None of that was especially apparent to Terris’s sources in the immediate aftermath of Fetterman’s 2022 stroke, a period when only his political opponents acknowledged the extent of the senator’s injuries. Rather, it seems that his impairment only became impossible for the left to ignore after Fetterman made himself into a stalwart Israel supporter.

The piece observes that Fetterman “surprised” and alienated his progressive “base” beginning on October 18, 2023 — eleven days after the worst one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and nine days prior to the start of major IDF ground operations in Israel — when he rejected the notion that Israel should decline to respond to the October 7 massacre. It describes the “gutting betrayal” his erstwhile staffers felt when Fetterman declined to blame Israel for the slaughter of its own citizens by Hamas terrorists. It reveals the extent of the internal revolt that was kicked off when Fetterman objected to a progressive boycott of Israeli hummus by noting how nonplussed those same activists were to the “rape of Israeli women + girls.” After all, the truth hurts.

In accordance with the prophecy:

“DEMOCRACY:” German Intelligence Officially Designates AfD an ‘Extremist Organization’ That Threatens Democracy. In Germany and elsewhere, the grifters in charge are pulling out all the stops to retain power.

Europe needs some revolutions. Hopefully not bloody, but revolutions one way or another.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Busting lightning myths: What’s true, what’s dangerous and what could save your life.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: RFK’s HHS Critiques Damaging Gender Dysphoria ‘Treatments’ for Kids.

WATCH THE LEGACY MEDIA COLLECTIVE PUT HANDS OVER EYES: April Jobs Report Belies Democrats’ Doom-and-Gloom Narrative on Economy, Tariffs, and Recession.

A couple of interesting points that I have heard but weren’t emphasized: first, there was a big increase in imports trying to get ahead of the tariffs, which drives computed GDP down; and, this increase in jobs is in spite of a whole lots of government jobs lost.

WELL, GOOD: Ozempic shows promise in treating fatty liver disease.

“AS SOON AS” IS THE HARDEST-WORKING PHRASE IN HIGH-SPEED RAIL:

The new CEO of California's High Speed Rail Authority unveils an ambitious plan to have trains running from Palmdale to Gilroy as soon as 2045.https://t.co/pprBnVDk4e pic.twitter.com/bldxe6VVyo

— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) April 30, 2025

Palmdale to Gilroy, eh?

To be fair, “high-speed” is not the same as “high traffic.”

RIP: Ruth Buzzi, the Lady With the Handbag on Laugh-In, Dies at 88.

FINALLY: Trump makes first judicial nomination since returning to White House. “The nomination was the first of what is expected to be more than 100 nominations Trump could make over the next four years to the federal courts, helping further put his conservative stamp on a judiciary that to his frustration has stymied key parts of his immigration and cost-cutting agenda.”

Congress needs to increase the size of the judiciary, and the Supreme Court, as soon as possible. It’s a nonpartisan project with bipartisan support!

The National Judicial Council just recommended adding 66 District Judges and two Court of Appeals judges to remedy the “crisis of undermanned federal courts.” Republicans should do at least that, though I would add at least two new Court of Appeals judges to each circuit. And I might increase the number of district judges appointed to the District for the District of Columbia, and perhaps the Southern District of New York, beyond the Council’s recommendations on the ground that those districts seem to be getting busier.

This wouldn’t be court-packing, since it’s simply following the recommendations of a non-partisan commission. (And in truth, it’s been widely agreed for many years that the federal courts are understaffed).

Now for the Supreme Court. Again, no partisan court-packing. Instead, in a spirit of bipartisanship, the GOP should enact the Democrats’ bill from 2021, which would have expanded the Supreme Court from 9 to 13. Although perhaps, in a spirit of generosity, they might increase the number to 15.

Yes. We must be generous.

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Top FBI Biden Laptop and COVID Censor, Elvis Chan, Has Left the Building.

LIFE AS AN INFLUENCER: “Was everything a lie? Was I secretly insecure this whole time, and just using body positivity to make money so I could finally afford a boob job? No.”

CHANGE: ‘No Participation Trophies’: Trump Revamps Performance Reviews for Top Bureaucrats.

Performance reviews are about to become much more difficult for the upper echelon of federal government employees.

The Trump administration will soon introduce rules to end what the Office of Personnel Management describes as an “everyone gets a trophy” culture permeating the federal workforce, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

The ranks of the Senior Executive Service, top bureaucrats serving throughout the government and across administrations, swelled to around 8,000 under President Biden. Most live in Washington, D.C. They typically earn an annual salary between $183,000 and $250,000. An overwhelming majority, 96%, according to an OPM memo, receive above-average performance ratings even as public trust in government continues to crater.

“Above average” doesn’t mean what it used to.

BOOM:

🚨 #BREAKING: U.S. SMASHES job expectations for April, +177,000 vs +138,000 expected

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 2, 2025

Below the headline: “Federal government employment declined.“

A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Typical Leftist Calls on Secret Service to Murder Trump — Oh, and She’s Teaching Your Kids.

MADE IN THE USA: Grass Fed Colostrum Powder, Unflavored Bovine Colostrum for Humans. #CommissionEarned

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:

The question isn’t “who is the audience”. We all know who reads the Atlantic.

The question is “what is the purpose”.

The purpose is to legitimize violence against Trump supporters. https://t.co/qXzyLtiTIe

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) May 2, 2025

UPDATE (From Ed): Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

By the way, if “Hitler’s terrible tariffs” implies that Trump’s tariffs are bad, then going full Godwin means it’s time for the Atlantic to go full libertarian as well: Hitler’s Handouts — Inside the Nazis’ welfare state.

—Michael Moynihan, Reason magazine, August/September, 2007.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S FRIDAY AGAIN [VIP]: Sky Candy Close and Distant Earth.

This is a little bit different approach this time, sort of a travelogue.

As always, if you’re not already a VIP member, you can subscribe here. Use promo code FIGHT for 60 percent off.

DECOUPLING: Apple Says Most of Its Devices Shipped Into U.S. Will Be From India, Vietnam.

The company was among the hardest-hit of the tech giants last month because of its exposure to China, a primary target of the Trump administration’s global tariff pressure. Most of Apple’s devices are assembled in the country, and investors are closely watching its efforts to shift final assembly to India and other countries.
…
Apple expects that a majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the June quarter will come from India, Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said in an interview. A majority of the company’s other devices sold in the U.S. from April to June—including iPads, Macs, the Apple Watch and AirPods—will come from Vietnam, he said.

The company’s shares have recovered much of the value they lost after President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs sent them spiraling, thanks to a pause on so-called reciprocal tariffs for smartphones. The administration continues to weigh other actions that could affect tech companies, and the company faces 20% duties on imports from China and 10% from those sent via India.

China is a good place to get out of and not just because of tariffs.

THE HITS KEEP ON COMING: Bombshell Body Cam Footage Destroys Everything Democrats Said About Abrego Garcia.

TRANSPARENCY: Iowa may require professors to publish class materials online for public review.

CATHERINE SALGADO: May Is Military Appreciation Month, and There’s Much to Celebrate.