Politics
Heat, thirst and rosaries: A drive along Arizona's border with Mexico
The men and the boys scanned the Mexican desert from the shade of a tree. They walked down a hill toward the border wall to pick up water, socks and rosaries. The heat hit hard and the men and the boys, who had been on foot for months, blended in with scrub brush and cactus, keeping an eye on the cartel gunmen camped on a ridge beneath a blue sky where vultures circled.
“We came from Guatemala,” said a sturdy man with a gold tooth stopping a few feet from American soil. “I want to work over there at whatever I can.”
“Make sure you wear socks or you’ll get blisters,” Alma Schlor, a volunteer with Tucson Samaritans, told one of the boys, handing him a rosary and a pair of sneakers across a low spot in the wall. The migrants thanked the Samaritans and returned to the shade, passing scattered pieces of identities dropped by those who had come before, passports, licenses and phone numbers from Nepal, Cameroon, Brazil, India and other distant places.
Volunteers from the Tucson Samaritans offer shoes, socks, water and rosaries to migrants seeking to cross into the U.S. along the Arizona-Mexico border.
(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)
They would wait under the tree on a late September day until a smuggler led them to a gap in the wall, where 70 miles of arid terrain stretched between them and Tucson. Crosses marked the land for those who didn’t make it. The men and boys knew this, but they had come this far and there was no stomach for turning back, even as Schlor worried that the kid with the new sneakers, who was only 13, would grow weak and get left behind.
Such scenes play out daily along the border and often go unnoticed, yet the more than 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. are at the volatile center of the November election.
The number of migrant apprehensions and other encounters with Border Patrol agents at the southwestern border has fallen sharply — from nearly 250,000 in December to 58,000 in August — since President Biden’s crackdown on asylum seekers in June. Over that same period, the monthly number of encounters with migrants from Guatemala fell 81% — from 34,693 to 6,420 — and there was a 76% drop — from 18,993 to 4,465 — with those from Honduras, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. But decades of failed policies and Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric against migrants have kept the issue a top priority for voters and forced Vice President Kamala Harris to take a tougher stand on immigration.
A drive with Tucson Samaritans along 21 miles of the rust-colored, slatted border wall in Arizona highlights the economic, political and human complexities in stopping a flow of people at a time when climate change, authoritarianism and economic uncertainty grip much of the globe.
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Immigration animates the American conversation on schools, jobs, crime, housing and the cost of healthcare. It is an unsteady balance of compassion, the nation’s economic needs and bipartisan calls for stricter regulations often distorted by weaponized statistics and divisive politics. For men such as Jim Chilton, whose 50,000-acre cattle ranch runs near the Arizona border, it’s a matter of security: “We need to finish the border wall,” he said. “Our nation is built on immigrants. We need them. But we have to have legally accepted ones, not people coming in and saying, ‘I’m here. Process me.’
At the border west of Nogales, Ariz., rancher Jim Chilton points to the dirt roads that Mexican traffickers use to transport drugs right to the U.S. boundary.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
“There’s some really bad guys coming onto our ranch,” he continued. They’re packing drugs [fentanyl] and guns. I don’t like it. They’re coming to poison our country.”
Chilton’s concerns resound in this critical battleground state. Joe Biden won here by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020. Although border encounters have fallen across the country, they remained persistent here over much of the last year, rising about 40% in the Tucson region to roughly 450,000. Those figures have dropped significantly in recent months but furor over immigration has led to a November referendum, known as Proposition 314, that would allow Arizona officials to arrest and deport undocumented migrants.
“The migrants coming illegally are a slap in the face to those who came the right way,” said Strahan Branower, who runs a tattoo shop in Pinal County, where Trump won 58% of the vote in the last election. “In one breath we’re saying don’t come illegally and in the next we’re giving them money and jobs when they get here. I agree with Trump 100% on this. Cut the money off. Get rid of a lot of them, especially if Venezuela is emptying their prisons and they’re coming here.”
At the height of the migrant influx last year, up to 1,500 asylum seekers a day passed through Tucson, whose network of churches and nonprofits helped provide temporary shelter and supplies. Mayor Regina Romero said the U.S. “immigration system is completely broken. The House and Senate need to fix it.” A Democrat and daughter of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico, Romero said that Trump and Republicans have turned immigration into a “wedge issue” while “spewing lies” about migrants with “cruel and dehumanizing” language.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said that Donald Trump and Republicans have turned immigration into a “wedge issue.” Above, she speaks at the state Capitol in Phoenix in 2023.
(Matt York / Associated Press)
“We’re here on the ground and we see it [immigration] firsthand,” said Romero, adding that the city would probably take legal action to block Proposition 314 if it passed. The measure, she added, would cut into municipal budgets and essentially turn local law enforcement into untrained Border Patrol guards. “I will not allow for our city’s taxpayer funds to go for something the federal government is responsible for.”
Washington’s approach to immigration appears certain to change with this election. Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants, calling many of them rapists, vermin and murderers. Harris has promised to tighten border regulations, hire more federal agents and add restrictions to Biden’s asylum order.
“It’s an unsolvable issue,” said Nicholas Matthews, 24, a Tucson Samaritan who has opened his apartment to asylum seekers. “The U.S. has a 2,000-mile border with Mexico. We need more asylum judges to process cases faster. People are waiting three and four years, and the geography of where they’re coming from is changing. The majority of people we’ve been seeing are Africans. We’re having to speak French instead of Spanish.”
Nicholas Matthews, a Tucson Samaritan who has opened his apartment to asylum seekers, looks over passports and other forms of identification left at the Arizona-Mexico border by migrants who have crossed into the U.S.
(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)
“I’ve met people from 40 countries,” said Gail Kocourek, 73, another Samaritan who has been helping migrants along the border near Sasabe for more than a decade. “The numbers of people crossing are way down. Today, we had only three crossings overnight. The word is spreading about Biden’s policy. But one day in November, I made 528 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for migrants. I never want to see peanut butter again.”
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The road along the U.S. side of the 30-foot border wall here rises and falls like waves in a sea, unspooling past thicket, saguaro and washes left dry with no rain. In the shadow of the tribal lands near the Baboquivari mountains, the Samaritans understand the intricacies of the geography. They keep abreast of the cartel violence on the Mexico side of Sasabe. They have been harassed on the U.S. side by vigilantes carrying cameras and rifles. The Samaritans know the moods of Border Patrol agents and the humor of a welder who fixes breaks in the wall. They leave water, food and supplies, stocking a few tents with blankets for cold nights.
“The people we run into down here are a good reflection of America’s politics,” said Matthews, an environmental scientist, who wore a ball cap as the temperature rose to 105 degrees. He piloted the Samaritans’ battered SUV while Kocourek, who was a hospital candy striper when she was a girl, pointed out rock formations and changes to the landscape.
“The asylum laws are bringing the numbers down, but they’ll go up again,” Matthews continued. “I’ve had three men who lived with me from Chad, Mauritania and Ecuador. The one from Chad was tortured by the government and his father was killed. They face cultural shock when they come here, particularly the role women play in society. It’s hard for them to assimilate.”
Tucson Samaritans, from left, Miranda Haley, Gail Kocourek and Nicholas Matthews look over abandoned documents. One passport told the yearlong journey of a man from Nepal who traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico before ending up at the border.
(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)
“Yes, culturally it’s difficult,” said Kocourek, who was doxxed two years ago by a QAnon follower who chased her in a car and harassed her near the border, claiming she worked for the cartels. “I talked to a guy from Nepal who crossed. It took him two years to get here. He friended me on Facebook. Wouldn’t you do anything you could to make a better life for your family?”
Butterflies lifted in the dust. A lone rope dangled from the border wall.
“It’s hot,” Kocourek said. “Look at the ravens. Their beaks are open.”
Matthews navigated the SUV around a road crew and stopped. Miranda Haley, who wore pigtails and a long-sleeve shirt to protect her from the sun, got out and pushed a jug of water through an opening in the wall. She hasn’t told her parents she volunteers with the Samaritans. Her family has lived in Georgia, she said, since before the American Revolution. “They support Donald Trump. They wouldn’t understand what I do,” Haley, 41, a mother and writer. “My dad would be mad, and he’d be worried.”
“There goes a roadrunner,” said Kocourek, pointing to a flash in the brush. “We saw a badger and a fox the other day.”
The Samaritans occasionally run into Chilton. They are on different sides politically but the 85-year-old rancher has witnessed all variations of America’s immigration story. He said 5,640 migrants crossed his property — much of which is leased from the U.S. Forest Service — in April: “Most of them generally walk west, looking to be apprehended so they can be processed and released into the country. The more troubling are the guys dressed in camouflage. Border Patrol told me 20% are packing drugs and some are MS-13 gang members.”
According to government officials, most of the drugs, including fentanyl, smuggled into the U.S. along the southern border pass through legal ports of entry, and much of the trafficking is done by American citizens. But Republicans have pointed to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showing that there are more than 425,000 noncitizen convicted criminals in the the country who entered illegally over the last four decades and are not in ICE custody. Many are in federal, state and local prisons.
Chilton said armed men once came to his home and asked for a ride to Tucson. His wife was frightened and said no. She made them lunch, and they went on their way. “Yesterday,” he said, “I ran into a group that ran away and another bunch of guys with rifles. It’s dangerous out there. Thirty-five have died on my ranch over the last few years. One of my cowboys was riding along this April and came across a body separated from its head.”
Jim Chilton carries a rifle on his property. He says he has encountered drug smugglers along the border west of Nogales, Ariz., and hopes the wall will be finished and backed up by U.S. Border Patrol agents and electronic monitoring.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
The fifth-generation rancher and his wife, Sue, spoke at the Republican National Convention in July. She wore a skirt and a black top, and he had on a cowboy hat and a blue tie. “It looks like and it feels like an invasion because it is,” he told the crowd to applause. “We know firsthand that Biden’s open border is our greatest national security threat.”
Chilton often patrols his ranch, driving with a gun over skeins of dirt roads. He said he wants Trump elected and the wall finished. But there is a human question too, a reality that a man has to persevere when nature turns harsh and the desperate arrive. He has set up 29 drinking fountains on his land so fewer migrants will die of dehydration. They keep coming, he said, but he has a ranch to run.
“You live day by day,” he said. “We have to take care of our cattle and do our job.”
At a break in the border wall not far from Chilton’s property, the Samaritans called out to the men and the boys waiting in the late morning shade on the Mexico side. They came down the hill and collected supplies the volunteers offered. The sun seared, the water jugs were warm. The men and the boys didn’t talk long. They left and returned to the hillside in a slow ragged line. Matthews and Haley reached into the brush, collecting abandoned documents, including a passport whose stamps told the yearlong journey of a man from Nepal who traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico before he ended up at the wall.
“The whole dynamic is changing,” Matthews said. “From November to February we’d find 100 to 300 people a day in the desert. It was crazy. … I’ve met people from China to Yemen, from all over Africa to Eastern Europe. Now, it’s about an average of below 60 a day.”
Nicholas Matthews speaks with young men and boys from Central America who are seeking to cross the Mexican border into the U.S.
(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)
The Nepali probably crossed into the U.S. He had left his passport in the dirt, as if shedding one life for another. The men and the boys on the hill might do the same when it was time to go. They waited as the cartel gunmen, who control this land, watched from the ridge above. The Samaritans got into the SUV and headed back along the wall toward Sasabe. They tidied up a small camp, spotted ash from a few fires and checked to see whether vigilantes shot holes in water barrels. Kocourek put out food for a cat, but the feline hadn’t been seen in a while and she figured it had disappeared or was dead.
Schlor said she worried about the 13-year-old boy traveling with the men. He looked frail.
“I don’t like to think about it,” Kocourek said.
Since 2000, at least 3,977 undocumented migrants have died attempting to cross the southern Arizona desert, according to the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner.
The Samaritans passed a small shrine to St. Jude — the patron saint of lost causes — on the Mexico side. They drove through Sasabe and headed to a mountaintop. A National Guardsman at an outpost scanned the terrain with electronic surveillance cameras. The border wall stretched out like a snake slithering up and down hills to the horizon. Dusk was not far off.
Kocourek said it was good to come up here, to see from this height the vast expanse, its beauty, cruelty and danger, the way the light moves.
“It gives you perspective,” she said.
Schlor had earlier handed the men and the boys rosaries that glow in the dark, telling them to hide them under their shirts at night so they wouldn’t be seen in the desert. It was a small gesture, but to her an important one, and it kept her coming out here along the wall. The Samaritans drove to Tucson, passing crosses left to remember the migrants who didn’t make it.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is making it clear: he’s staying in the race for the Republican Senate nomination even if President Donald Trump endorses Paxton’s rival, longtime Sen. John Cornyn.
“I’m staying in this race,” Paxton said in an interview Wednesday evening. “I owe it to the people of Texas.”
Trump says he’ll soon take sides in the costly and combustible GOP primary showdown Cornyn and Paxton.
“I will be making my Endorsement soon,” the president wrote in a social media post hours after Cornyn and Paxton advanced to a May 26 runoff election.
The two heated rivals topped a crowded field of contenders in Tuesday’s primary, but since no one cleared the 50% threshold, the nomination race heads into overtime.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, second from left, President Donald Trump, center, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), second from right, and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, right, take part in a briefing on energy at the Port of Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, Texas, Feb, 27, 2026. (Mandel NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump added that he “will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”
A Republican operative in Trump’s political orbit told Fox News Digital it’s expected Cornyn will get the president’s endorsement. However, the president has been known to change his mind on candidates or even reverse endorsements.
A second source in Trump’s political orbit told Fox News that while there’s still jockeying to influence the president’s decision, given Cornyn’s better-than-expected performance in the primary, Trump is expected to back the senator and prevent a messy and expensive runoff.
CONTENTIOUS REPUBLICAN SENATE PRIMARY IN TEXAS HEADED INTO OVERTIME
Asked if he would end his Senate bid if Trump backed Cornyn, Paxton, a MAGA firebrand and longtime Trump supporter and ally, said no in an interview with Real America’s Voice.
“I’ve spent a year of my life campaigning against John Cornyn because John has not represented the people of Texas well,” Paxton argued. “He’s been against Trump in both of his elections, said he shouldn’t run last time. … The people of Texas, at least the Republicans, would like something different.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks during a primary election night watch party March 3, 2026, in Dallas. (Julio Cortez/The Associated Press )
And a source in Paxton’s political orbit emphasized to Fox News Digital that the Texas attorney general isn’t getting out of the race.
Cornyn or Paxton will face off in the general election against rising Democratic Party star state Rep. James Talarico, who topped progressive firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal Trump critic, in the Democrats’ primary. Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in right-leaning Texas.
‘OPEN BORDERS, TRUMP-HATING RADICAL’—REPUBLICANS QUICKLY POUNCE ON TALARICO
The 2026 Senate showdown in Texas is one of a handful across the country that could determine if Republicans hold their majority in the chamber in the midterm elections. The GOP currently controls the chamber 53–47.
The Cornyn campaign and aligned super PACs spent nearly $100 million to run ads attacking Paxton and Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt — who came in third — with the senator charging in the closing weeks of the primary campaign that Democrats would flip the seat in the general election if Paxton was the GOP’s nominee.
Cornyn, his allies and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, repeatedly pointed to the slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered Paxton over the past decade, as well as his ongoing messy divorce.
“Over the next 12 weeks, Texas Republican primary voters will hear more about my record of delivering conservative victories in the United States Senate, and learn more about Ken’s indefensible personal behavior and failures in office,” Cornyn told reporters on Tuesday night.
“Just like the primary, we have a plan to win the runoff, and we are in the process of executing it,” Cornyn said. “Judgment day is coming for Ken Paxton.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign stop in The Woodlands, Texas, Feb. 28, 2026. (Annie Mulligan/AP Photo)
Paxton, a MAGA firebrand and longtime Trump supporter and ally who grabbed significant national attention by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, told supporters on primary night, “As we head into this runoff, we’re going to make the choice even clearer. While John Cornyn was cutting deals on gun control and amnesty, I was suing corrupt Joe Biden over 107 times.”
And he charged, “John Cornyn spent around $100 million trying to buy this seat. We’ve spent around $5 million.”
ROUND TWO OF CORNYN VS. PAXTON GETS UNDER WAY
Trump on Wednesday urged, “for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW!”
And pointing to Talarico, the president argued, “We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively.”
State Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks at a primary election watch party Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (Eric Gay/AP Photo)
“Both John and Ken ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT!” Trump warned.
Trump, whose clout over the GOP remains immense, stayed neutral in the Republican primary race. All three candidates, who sought the president’s endorsement, were in attendance Friday as Trump held an event in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“They’re in a little race together,” Trump said of Cornyn and Paxton. “You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people, too.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the lobbying campaign to clinch the endorsement for Cornyn hasn’t stopped, and if anything, is intensifying in the hours since primary night.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that Cornyn had “a great night” against Paxton. The top Senate Republican has spent the last several months bending Trump’s ear at every opportunity to jump into the race and back the longtime incumbent.
“He’s positioned to win the runoff, and if the president endorses early, it saves everybody a lot of money, and a lot of, you know, just 10 weeks of another spirited campaign on our side that keeps us from spending time focusing on the Democrats,” Thune said.
Thune spoke with Cornyn on Wednesday morning, and believed that Talarico was the more formidable match-up for Republicans in November — one that Cornyn was better suited to win.
“The matchup that’s good for us is John Cornyn at the top of the ticket,” Thune said.
NRSC communications director Joanna Rodriguez told Fox News Digital, “John Cornyn remains the only candidate who guarantees state Rep. Talarico never becomes a United States senator and ensures the fight for President Trump’s Senate majority is waged in true battleground states, not Texas.”
And the Thune-aligned Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the top super PAC backing Senate Republicans, which spent millions on behalf of Cornyn in the primary campaign, made it clear in a statement early Wednesday that it will continue to support the senator in the runoff.
“SLF and its sister organizations were proud to support Senator Cornyn early, and we look forward to him securing the Republican nomination on May 26,” the group’s executive director, Alex Latcham, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, a GOP political operative in Trump’s orbit told Fox News Digital, “Talarico being the nominee makes President Trump’s endorsement of Cornyn more important than ever.”
While Trump stayed neutral, his top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, helped the Cornyn campaign. And veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who served as co-campaign manager of Trump’s 2024 White House bid, consulted for a top Cornyn-aligned super PAC.
LaCivita, in a social media post Tuesday night aimed at Paxton and his top political consultant, wrote, “The second wave is going to be a (bi–h.)”
But on the Paxton side of the playing field, operatives and donors are confident they can unseat the senator.
Dan Eberhart, an oil drilling chief executive officer and prominent Republican donor and bundler who supports Paxton, told Fox News Digital, “This was Cornyn’s shot to fend off his challenger by getting over 50%, and he couldn’t do it. The runoff voters will be even less friendly territory for Cornyn.”
Pointing to former longtime Senate GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has often acted as a Trump foil, Eberhart said, “This race is about MAGA vs. McConnell.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks to supporters at a campaign event on primary eve, in Waco, Texas on March 2, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
Meanwhile, Lone Star Liberty, a pro-Paxton super PAC, circulated a memo ahead of Tuesday’s election that shrugged off threats that Cornyn would succeed in the runoff by continuing to hammer the attorney general over his litany of scandals, arguing there was nothing new to offer.
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“Cornyn’s talk of ‘unleashing’ new attacks in the runoff is bluster,” the memo states. “The truth is that from day one, his forces fired every bullet they had. There are no new attacks left — only more of the same, at ever-greater cost and with ever-diminishing returns.”
Fox News’ Rich Edson contributed to this report
Related Article
Paramount’s $111-billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery will put two of the most storied journalism brands — CNN and CBS News — under one roof.
The combination has been proposed before with the aim of consolidating news-gathering costs. Those plans fell apart largely over who would be in control.
But if the Paramount-WBD transaction is approved by regulators, CNN and CBS News will be forced into potentially rocky marriage where they will have to sort out leadership roles, personnel and editorial direction.
It’s still too early to determine what those moves will be and how widely they will be felt.
Last week CNN Chief Executive Mark Thompson told his troops to avoid “jumping to conclusions about the future.”
But what is certain is that every permutation will be scrutinized closely due to the fraught relationships both CNN and CBS News have with the Trump administration.
“There have been many conversations over the years about combining CBS News and CNN,” said Jon Klein, a digital media entrepreneur who previously held leadership roles at both organizations. “But this time, it’s different. The business case always made sense — but today you’ve got the overlay of the political agenda.”
Before Paramount prevailed in its bid for CNN’s parent, Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison’s father Larry Ellison reportedly discussed changes to the network with Trump. For years, Trump has made CNN the poster child of his “fake news” claims and impugned many of its journalists.
“What has David Ellison and Larry Ellison promised Donald Trump with regard to what they’re going to do with CNN?” said one former executive. “Before you even get through the hurdles of doing this, that’s the overriding question. Are they going to fire anchors Trump doesn’t like?”
There is also apprehension at CBS News, where David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief in October, with a mandate to have network’s coverage appeal to the political center.
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss with Turning Point USA’s Erika Kirk at a town hall that aired Dec. 20.
(CBS Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images)
Weiss — founder of the independent media company The Free Press — came into the role with no experience running a TV news organization, building her reputation as an opinion writer with contrarian views and a disdain for woke ideology.
The former New York Times opinion writer, who is staunchly pro-Israel, drew criticism over the weekend for putting a fire emoji over a comment criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s condemnation of the U.S. military action in Iran — an unusual public reaction for the head of a major news organization.
Weiss wasted no time taking on the prestigious CBS news magazine “60 Minutes,” which has long been a stubbornly independent operation. She delayed a story on the harsh El Salvador prison used by the U.S. to house undocumented migrants saying it needed more reporting. The story’s correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi accused CBS News management of placating the White House, turning the decision into a public relations fiasco for the network.
Significant changes are coming to “60 Minutes” later this spring, with one or more of its correspondents possibly being replaced, according to people familiar with Weiss’ plans who were not authorized to comment. Weiss has also expressed interest in hiring right-leaning on-air talent for CBS News.
Some CBS News leadership is already heading for the exit. Shana Thomas, longtime “CBS Mornings” executive producer, told staff Thursday she is leaving at the end of the month. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while and frankly, I’m tired y’all,” she wrote in a memo.
Weiss arrived after Paramount settled a Trump lawsuit with the dubious claim that a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris was deceptively edited to aid her 2024 presidential election campaign against him.
The willingness to settle the suit was largely seen as Paramount capitulating to Trump in order to get government approval of its merger with Skydance Media. The Ellisons’ tight relationship with Trump was also seen as an asset in their successful pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The stew of issues bubbling through the transactions is why most of the rank and file at CNN rooted for Netflix to prevail in its bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery. The Netflix bid for WBD did not include CNN or the company’s cable networks, which in the words of one insider would have made it “a stay of execution.”
Now CNN staffers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, are bracing for upheaval. When they look at CBS News navigating the changes under Weiss, they are reminded what they went through after Warner Bros. Discovery took over their network and tried to push the coverage to the center.
After a declaration by WBD Chief Executive David Zaslav that the network needed to be more accommodating to conservative voices — and the telecast of a rowdy Trump town hall — CNN experienced an exodus of viewers.
But the biggest fear that the merger brings is consolidation and the loss of jobs. CNN has 3,400 employees while CBS News is at around 1,000. Cost-cutting is expected to be aggressive across the combined Paramount-WBD, which will have a mountain of debt to service.
The parent companies of CBS and CNN have discussed merging or sharing news-gathering operations and on-air talent numerous times over several decades. In 2019, Viacom, the CBS News parent at the time, had a deal in place to pay CNN an annual license fee to provide international coverage.
Under that plan, CBS would have maintained a few of its signature overseas correspondents, while shuttering its bureaus around the world. But Viacom backed out of the deal.
CNN’s international coverage has long been its calling card and its likely the network will handle that reporting for CBS News once Paramount takes ownership.
Combining the news-gathering operation stateside will be trickier, as CBS News has employees and vendors that operate under contracts with the Writers Guild of America East, SAG-AFTRA and other unions. CNN is a non-union shop.
Resolving the union issue has been a snag in every previous discussion to combine CBS News and CNN over the years, according to several former executives at both outlets.
CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper in New York in 2016.
(Associated Press)
Another development worth watching is what role Anderson Cooper will play in the merged operation. Cooper signed a new deal with CNN last year, but turned down an offer to remain as a “60 Minutes” correspondent, a role he’s had since 2007.
CBS News has pursued Cooper several times over the years to be its evening news anchor. There was even a proposal in 2018 for him to helm “CBS Evening News” while keeping his nightly prime time program on CNN. That idea was shot down at CNN, where leadership believed he was unique to the network’s brand.
In a statement, Cooper cited a desire to spend more time with his two children as the reason for passing on another “60 Minutes” deal. However, associates have said his wariness over the direction of CBS News under Weiss made his decision easier.
Now Cooper is likely headed into the CNN-CBS News tent, which may make him feel a bit like Michael Corleone in “Godfather III” when he said “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
new video loaded: Senate Republicans Block Limits to Trump’s War Powers
transcript
transcript
Senate Republicans Block Limits to Trump’s War Powers
Senate Republicans voted against a Democratic bill that would have required President Trump to obtain congressional authorization to continue waging war against Iran.
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“The yeas are 47. The nays are 53. The motion to discharge is not approved.” “President Trump decided to attack Iran. That decision was profound, deliberate and correct. The president understands the weight of war.” “Why is Donald Trump hellbent on making history repeat itself? Why is he plunging America headfirst into a war that Americans do not want, and which he cannot even explain? The American people deserve a say, and that is what our resolution is about.”
By Shawn Paik
March 5, 2026
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