Politics
How a former factory worker rose to South Korea’s presidency
SEONGNAM, South Korea — South Korean President-elect Lee Jae-myung has always described his politics as deeply personal, born of the “wretchedness” of his youth.
In his last presidential run three years ago, when his conservative opponent Yoon Suk Yeol, a former prosecutor, appealed to the rule of law, Lee told a story from his childhood: how his family’s poverty pushed him into factory assembly lines while his peers were entering middle school — and how his mother would walk him to work every morning, holding his hand.
“Behind every policy that I implemented was my own impoverished and abject life, the everyday struggles of ordinary South Koreans,” he said in March 2022. “The reason I am in politics today is because I want to create … a world of hope for those who are still suffering in the same puddle of poverty and despair that I managed to escape.”
Lee Jae-myung, foreground center, joins a rally against then-President Yoon Suk Yeol at the National Assembly in Seoul in December 2024.
(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)
Although Lee lost that race by 0.73 of a percentage point — or 247,077 votes — it was Yoon who set the stage for Lee’s comeback. Impeached halfway into his term for his declaration of martial law in December, the former president is now on trial for insurrection.
In the snap presidential election that took place Tuesday, the liberal Lee emerged the winner, with South Korea’s three major television broadcasters calling the race just before midnight here.
On the campaign trail, Lee framed his run as a mission to restore the country’s democratic norms. But he also returned to the theme that has, over the years, evolved from childhood yearning into his signature political brand: the promise of a society that offers its most vulnerable a “thick safety mat” — a way out of the puddle.
Born in December 1963, the fifth of seven siblings, Lee grew up in Seongnam, a city near the southeastern edge of Seoul that, by the time his family settled there in 1976, was known as a neighborhood for those who had been evicted from the capital’s shantytowns.
The family rented a single semi-basement room by a local market, where his father made a living as a cleaner. At times his family lived on discarded fruit he picked up along his route. Lee’s mother worked as a bathroom attendant just around the corner.
Lee spent his teenage years hopping from one factory to another to help. His first job, at 13, was soldering lead at a jewelry maker for 12 hours a day, breathing in the acrid fumes. At another job, the owner skipped out without paying Lee three months’ worth of wages.
A few years later, while operating a press machine at a baseball glove factory, Lee suffered an accident that permanently disfigured his left arm. In despair, Lee attempted to end his own life. He survived only because the pharmacist he went to for sleeping pills had caught wind of his intentions, giving him digestive medication instead.
Banners featuring ruling and opposition presidential candidates hang over a street in Seoul days before an election in March 2022.
(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)
Lee then began studying for middle school and high school at night after getting off work. He proved to be a gifted student, earning himself a full ride to Chung-Ang University to study law.
After passing South Korea’s bar exam in 1986, he was moved by a lecture given by Roh Moo-hyun, a human rights lawyer who went on to become president in 2003, and the 26-year-old Lee opened up his own legal practice to do the same.
Seongnam by then was rapidly developing, becoming the site of several projects, and Lee threw himself into local watchdog activism.
Ha Dong-geun, 73, who spent a decade organizing in the city with Lee, recalled the day they met: The latter wore an expression of great urgency — “like something bad would happen if he didn’t immediately hit the ground running.”
He added: “He wasn’t afraid of what others thought of him.”
Ha remembered Lee as a keen strategic mind, with a knack for “finding out his opponent’s weaknesses.” Yet despite the noise they made, substantive change proved harder to achieve, leading to Lee’s political awakening in 2004.
A year earlier, two of the city’s major hospitals had shut down, threatening the accessibility of emergency care in its poorest neighborhoods. But though Lee’s campaign had gathered nearly 20,000 signatures from residents to build a public hospital in their place, the proposal was struck down almost immediately by the city council.
“Those in power do not care about the health and lives of people unless there are profits to be made,” Lee wrote in 2021 of his reaction then. “If they won’t do it, let’s do it ourselves. Instead of asking for it from someone else, I will become mayor and do it with my own hands.”
Lee Jae-myung was attacked and injured during a January 2024 visit to the city of Busan in South Korea.
(Sohn Hyung-joo / Yonhap / AP)
Lee was mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018. During that time, he repaid over $400 million in municipal debt left behind by his predecessor. He moved his office down from the ninth to the second floor, frequently appearing in person to field questions or complaints from citizens.
But he was best known for his welfare policies, which he rolled out despite intense opposition from the then-conservative central government: free school lunches, free school uniforms for middle-schoolers and financial support for new mothers seeking postpartum care. For all 24-year-old citizens, the city also provided an annual basic income of around $720 in the form of cash vouchers that could be used at local businesses.
In 2016, when the plight of a high school student who couldn’t afford sanitary pads using a shoe insole instead made national headlines, the city also added a program that gave underprivileged teenage girls cash for female hygiene products. A few years later, Lee also made good on his campaign promise to build the public hospital that had first propelled him into politics.
“My personal experiences made me aware of how cruel this world can be to those who have nothing,” he said in 2021.
Though it has been years since Lee left the city to become the governor of Gyeonggi province and to stage three presidential runs, his track record still inspires fierce loyalty in Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, where Lee is remembered as a doer who looked after even the little things.
“His openness and willingness to communicate resonated with a lot of people,” said Kim Seung-man, 67, a shop owner in Sangdaewon Market, where Lee’s family eked out a living in the 1970s. “Working-class people identify with him because he had such a difficult childhood.”
People shout slogans during a rally on April 4, 2025, to celebrate impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal from office by the Constitutional Court.
(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)
And while the Seongnam Citizens Medical Center — which opened in 2020 — is deep in the red and has become a target for Lee’s critics who dismiss his welfare policies as cheap populism, Kim says it is a lifeline to this working-class neighborhood.
“It was a treatment hub for COVID patients during the pandemic,” he said. “Serving the public good means doing so regardless of whether it is profitable or not.”
Beyond Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, Lee has provoked in many an equally intense dislike — a fact that cannot be explained by his policies alone.
Some have attributed this to his brusque, sometimes confrontational demeanor, others to classist prejudice. Lee has pointed to his status as an “outsider” in the world of South Korean establishment politics, where the paths of most ambitious young politicians follow a script he has eschewed: getting in line behind a party heavyweight who will open doors to favorable legislative seats.
“I have never become indebted to anyone during my time in politics,” Lee said at a news conference last month.
He has faced attacks from within his own party, and conservatives have cast him as a tyrant and a criminal, noting allegations against him in legal cases. Former President Yoon cited the “legislative tyranny” of the Lee-led liberal opposition as justification for declaring martial law in December.
“There are still controversies over character or ethics trailing Lee,” said Cho Jin-man, a political scientist at Duksung Women’s University. “He doesn’t have a squeaky clean image.”
Since losing the 2022 election, Lee has faced trial on numerous charges, including election law violations and the mishandling of a real estate development project as mayor of Seongnam — indictments which Lee has decried as politically motivated attacks by Yoon and his allies.
Lee Jae-myung speaks during a Dec. 15 news conference about the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)
Few of the allegations against Lee have stuck. Others, like an election law clause that prohibits candidates from lying during their campaigns, is an oft-abused technicality that would leave few politicians standing were it consistently enforced.
“On the contrary, these have only led to perceptions that there are problems with the prosecution service,” Cho said.
In recent months, Lee has tried to smooth the rougher edges of his public persona, vowing to mend the country’s increasingly combustible partisan rifts.
Last year, after he survived an assassination attempt in which the assailant’s blade nicked a major vein in his neck, Lee denounced the “politics of hate” that had taken root in the country, calling for a new era of mutual respect and coexistence.
In his recent campaign, Lee has billed his welfare agenda, which includes pledges for better labor protections as well as more public housing and public healthcare, not as class warfare but as commonsense pragmatism, reflecting his efforts to win over moderate conservatives.
But there are still questions whether Lee, whose party now controls both the executive and legislative branches, will be successful.
”He now has a clear path to push through what he wants very efficiently,” Cho said. “But the nature of power is such that those who hold it don’t necessarily exercise restraint.”
Although Lee has promised to not seek retribution against his political enemies as president, he has also made it clear that those who collaborated with former President Yoon’s illegal power grab will be held accountable — a move that will inevitably inflame partisan discord.
His working-class background has not staved off criticisms from labor activists, who say his proposal to boost the domestic semiconductor industry would walk back the rights of its workers.
That background will also do little for Lee’s first and most pressing agenda item: dealing with President Trump, whose tariffs on South Korean cars, steel and aluminum are set to fully go into effect in July.
“I don’t think Lee and Trump will have good chemistry,” Cho said.
“They both have such strong personalities, but they are so different in terms of political ideology and personal upbringing.”
Politics
Anxiety grows among California Democrats as gubernatorial candidates rebuff calls to drop out
SACRAMENTO — Despite a plea from the head of the California Democratic Party for underperforming candidates to drop out of the governor’s race, all but one of the party’s top hopefuls spurned the request.
Party leaders fear the growing possibility that the crowded field will split the Democratic electorate in the state’s June top-two primary election and result in two Republicans advancing to the November ballot, ensuring a Republican governor being elected for the first time since 2006.
His advice largely unheeded, state party Chairman Rusty Hicks on Thursday said the fate of a Democratic victory now rests squarely on the gubernatorial candidates who flouted him.
“The candidates for Governor now have a chance to showcase a viable path to win,” Hicks said in a statement Thursday.
Eight top Democratic candidates filed the official paperwork to appear on the June ballot after Hicks released a letter on Tuesday urging those “who cannot show meaningful progress towards winning” to drop out. Friday is the deadline to file to appear on the primary election ballot. On March 21, the secretary of state’s office will formally announce who will appear on the June ballot.
“It sounded like someone who has his head in the sand,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said of Hicks’ open letter. “[Most] of us filed within 24 hours of getting that letter. It created some press but not much else. It didn’t impact [most] of the candidates and it certainly didn’t impact my candidacy.”
Democratic strategist Elizabeth Ashford said it was appropriate for Hicks and other Democratic leaders to make a public plea as opposed to keeping such discussions solely behind closed doors.
But the response showed the limited power of the modern-day party bosses.
“It’s definitely not Tammany Hall,” said Ashford, referring to the storied Democratic political machine that had a grip on New York City politics for nearly a century. “The party and Rusty are influential and they are helpful and that is their role. I don’t think anyone would be comfortable with outright public strong-arming of specific candidates.”
Ashford, who worked for former Govs. Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with former Vice President Kamala Harris when she served as state attorney general, added that the minimal power of the state GOP is likely a factor in the dynamics of Democrats’ decision to stay in the race. Democratic registered voters outnumber Republicans by almost a 2-to-1 margin in the state, and Democrats control every statewide elected office and hold supermajorities in both chambers of the California Legislature.
“If there were a strong viable opposition that existed, if the Republican Party was actually relevant in California, I think that would sort of force greater unity amongst Democrats,” she said.
Just one of the nine major Democrats did heed the party chair’s message. Ian Calderon, a former Los Angeles-area Assemblyman who consistently polled near the bottom of the field, withdrew from the race and endorsed Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) on Thursday.
Candidates cannot withdraw their name from the ballot once they officially file to run for office, leading to some fears that even if other candidates drop out of the race, a crowded primary ballot could still split California’s liberal votes.
“I’m disappointed most of them will be on the ballot,” said Lorena Gonzalez, the head of the California Federation of Labor Unions, which will announce whether it endorses in the governor’s race on March 16. But “I do still think you can have people drop out of the race or become viable. I think that there are candidates who know viability is a real thing they have to show in coming weeks” before ballots start being mailed to voters.
Jodi Hicks, chief executive and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said she is “still worried” about the prospect of two Republicans winning the top two spots in the June primary, shutting Democrats out of any chance of winning the governor’s office in November.
“I didn’t have any specifics of who I wanted to do what,” she said. “I’m just very, very concerned and the stakes are really high right now and seem to be getting worse by the day.”
Republican candidate Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, said he is “confident that I’ll be in the top two” along with a Democratic candidate. “I find it very difficult to believe that the Democratic Party will just surrender California and allow two Republicans to be in the top two.”
Hilton made the comments Thursday after a gubernatorial forum in Sacramento hosted by the California Assn. of Realtors focused on housing and homeownership. Villaraigosa, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Rep. Katie Porter also attended. Swalwell, who is currently in Washington, joined the panel virtually.
During the panel, candidates were in broad agreement about the need to reduce barriers and costs in order to build more housing in California, where the median single-family home costs more than $820,000. Many also endorsed proposals to disincentivize private investment firms from buying up homes as well as a $25-billion bond proposed by former Sen. Bob Hertzberg to help first-time homebuyers afford a down payment.
“This really isn’t a debate because we’re agreeing so much with each other,” Hilton said at one point during the event.
That political alignment on one of the most pressing issues facing California may explain why voters are having such a difficult time deciding who to support.
A recent poll of the Public Policy Institute of California found that the five candidates topping the crowded field were within 4 percentage points of one another: Porter, Swalwell, Hilton, Democratic hedge fund founder Tom Steyer and Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Earlier polls had Hilton and Bianco leading the field, though many voters remained undecided.
Some candidates took issue with Hicks’ push to cull the field, noting that most of the lower-polling candidates he asked to drop out are people of color.
“Our political system is rigged, corrupted by the political elites, the wealthy and well connected,” state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who is Black and Latino, said in a video posted on social media in response to the open letter. “The California Democratic Party is essentially telling every person of color in the race for Governor to drop out.”
Villaraigosa argued that enough voters remain undecided that it was too early for quality candidates to call it quits.
“Most people don’t even know who’s in the race,” said Villaraigosa. “It’s premature to be thinking about getting out of the race. I certainly am not considering it and I feel no pressure.”
Aside from the opinion polls, other indicators on who may emerge from the pack a candidates are slowly emerging.
Though it wasn’t enough to win the party’s endorsement, Swalwell won support from 24% of delegates at the state Democratic convention last month, the most of any party candidate.
While spending is no guarantee of success, Steyer has donated $47.4 million of his own wealth to his campaign. Mahan, who recently entered the race and is supported by Silicon Valley leaders, has quickly raised millions of dollars, as have two independent expenditures committees backing his bid.
Ashford said part of candidates’ decisions to remain in the race could have been driven by their lengthy political careers, as well as Democrats’ crushing November redistricting victory.
“In several cases, these are people who have won statewide office,” she said. “It’s tough to feel like there may not be a sequel to that.”
Nixon reported from Sacramento and Mehta from Los Angeles.
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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
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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!”
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