Politics
'Politics is bad for business.' Why Disney's Bob Iger is trying to avoid hot buttons
Bob Iger wants out of the culture wars.
Walt Disney Co. and its chief executive have made a sharp pivot since doubling down on diversity and inclusion efforts in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis four and a half years ago. At the time, Disney’s top executives, including then-Chairman Iger, vowed in a message to employees: “We intend to keep the conversation going … for as long as it takes to bring about real change.”
The Magic Kingdom dropped its pomp greeting to fans for its nightly fireworks display. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” became a gender-neutral salutation to “dreamers of all ages.” Pixar’s animated movie, “Lightyear,” included a brief kiss between two women characters; and Disney’s animated film, “Strange World,” featured the company’s first biracial queer teen hero.
But in the past week, Disney acknowledged that a transgender athlete storyline had been removed from an upcoming Pixar animated series, “Win or Lose,” about a middle-school softball team. In a statement, Disney said it recognized “many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”
And Iger signed off on the settlement of a high-profile defamation lawsuit brought last spring by President-elect Donald Trump, amid howls from journalists that the owner of ABC News had caved to political pressure.
Disney agreed to pay $1 million for Trump’s legal fees and donate another $15 million for Trump’s future presidential library.
Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos last spring after the journalist asserted during an on-air interview that a civil court jury had found Trump “liable for rape” in a case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. Instead, New York jurors determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse.”
Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger.
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
Some First Amendment experts believed ABC had a winning case, in part, because of a high hurdle for public officials to prove defamation.
The network “might well have prevailed if they had hung in there,” prominent journalist Margaret Sullivan wrote in a Substack opinion piece. “Instead, this outcome encourages Trump in his attacks on the press — and he needs no encouragement.”
Disney declined to comment for this story or make Iger available for an interview.
People close to the company, who were not authorized to comment, said Disney’s general counsel had recommended the settlement with Trump and that the decision to remove the transgender storyline from “Win or Lose” had been made months earlier.
A bruising fight with DeSantis
Disney’s retrenchment comes nearly three years after it found itself sinking in political quicksand.
In early 2022, Disney became a target for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after then-Chief Executive Bob Chapek waffled on a response to a Florida law aimed at preventing classroom discussions about sexual identity. Chapek’s instinct was to stay out of the fray and he initially defended the company’s initial silence, saying in a letter to Disney employees that corporate statements “do very little to change outcomes or minds.”
Such proclamations are “often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame,” Chapek wrote.
But after loud protests from employees and activists — and a Twitter post from then-retired Iger, who warned the Florida legislation “will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy” — Chapek reversed course.
DeSantis seized on Disney’s shifting stance and branded the company as “woke.”
In conservative circles, the pejorative label stuck.
“When you assign a private entity to a political team, then very quickly people will begin to view things in that light,” said Michael Binder, a University of North Florida political science professor who studied the Disney-DeSantis dispute.
Iger, who returned as chief executive two years ago to replace Chapek, recognized the existential threat.
“Our primary mission needs to be to entertain,” Iger said during the company’s 2023 investor meeting. “It should not be agenda-driven.”
Iger increasingly has stressed the importance of steering the company away from overt political messaging.
“The stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach but that audience, because they are so diverse … can be turned off by certain things,” Iger said during an April appearance on CNBC. “We just have to be more sensitive to the interests of a broad audience. It’s not easy.”
Disney’s nearly two-year fight with DeSantis was bruising.
“DeSantis was using Disney as a political foil to make a case for his run for presidency,” said Binder, the director of University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab. “That was not something that we had seen before: Governors and elected officials outwardly attacking private companies, particularly a Republican going after a company.”
University researchers found DeSantis’ “woke” campaign against Disney had gained traction, at least among conservatives — despite the fact that Disney has long been one of Florida’s largest employers and a pillar of its tourism economy.
In a public opinion poll in early 2023 of Florida registered voters, the Public Opinion Research Lab found that only about 27% of Republicans in the state had a “favorable” view of Disney. Meanwhile, 76% of the Democrats polled were fans of the Mouse House.
“There was a huge split, and that’s not great for a company that’s trying to market to everybody,” Binder said.
Republican lawmakers closed ranks with DeSantis and Disney lost its unique land-use authority in Central Florida. Disney filed a First Amendment lawsuit the following year, arguing that DeSantis and state Republicans had waged a concerted campaign to punish Disney for exercising its speech rights to criticize Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Earlier this year, a federal judge threw out Disney’s First Amendment lawsuit.
Disney settled with Florida, but the DeSantis episode brought into stark relief the hazards of promoting the company’s values to a global audience during polarizing times.
“Disney provides a product: entertainment,” said Charles Elson, a former director at the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “It shouldn’t be about politics.”
Besides, Elson said, it becomes messy and costly for companies to extricate themselves after taking a political stand.
“When you get into politics, you are making a statement,” Elson said. “And when you get out, that also becomes a statement.”
Iger has long championed Disney’s efforts to diversify its casts and storylines.
The 101-year-old company introduced its first Black princess in 2009. Nearly a decade later, it released the movie “Coco,” which was rich in Latino culture. Its 2018 Marvel film, “Black Panther,” became a juggernaut, earning $1.3 billion in global ticket sales.
The original “Moana,” which was inspired by Polynesian mythology, earned the mantle of most streamed movie on Disney+. The sequel, released over Thanksgiving weekend, has shattered box office records and has already raked in $750 million internationally.
“Our businesses create entertainment, travel and consumer products whose success depends substantially on consumer tastes and preferences that change in often unpredictable ways,” the company said in its most recent annual report.
“Consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brand,” the report added.
A cloudy defamation case
Disney has since joined a growing list of businesses that have opted to stand down rather than antagonize the president-elect — to the dismay of some First Amendment experts who believed Disney could have defeated Trump‘s defamation claims in the ABC News case.
Last year, a federal judge in Florida tossed out a lawsuit Trump filed against CNN, which sought $475 million in punitive damages. Trump claimed his reputation had been sullied by the network’s references to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election as “the Big Lie.”
But defending Stephanopoulos’ statements may have been more fraught, according to people familiar with Disney’s internal deliberations.
Disney’s General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez and other high-level executives grew concerned after the judge in the case last July denied Disney’s motion to dismiss the case, according to one knowledgeable insider. In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga wrote that “a reasonable jury could interpret Stephanopoulos’s statements as defamatory.”
Altonaga was appointed by former President George W. Bush.
Disney also figured it risky to present the case to a jury in South Florida, where Trump is particularly popular, the knowledgeable people said. Polls also have found a growing lack of trust in the news media.
An ‘entertainment-first’ company
Disney lawyers recognized that some legal conservatives might champion the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where three Trump appointments sit. What’s more, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed a desire to overturn the landmark New York Times vs. Sullivan court decision, which would have been at the heart of the ABC News case.
Disney didn’t want to jeopardize 60 years of press freedoms bestowed through that decision. Not to mention the harm to Disney’s and ABC’s image by trying to withstand Trump broadsides during his second term. CNN, in particular, sustained reputational damage after dueling with Trump, who labeled the cable news channel “fake news.”
“You don’t want to get in a fight with the head of a government that regulates you,” Elson said. “Politics is bad for business.”
Disney is trying to walk — but not cross — the line. During its meeting with shareholders earlier this year, Iger said he believes Disney has “a responsibility to do good in the world.”
“The Disney company can have a positive impact on the world … fostering acceptance and understanding of … people of all different types,” Iger told CNBC last spring. “But we need to be an entertainment-first company.”
Politics
Trump-aligned House holdouts accused of holding ‘life-saving’ veterans bill ‘hostage’ over SAVE America Act
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A sweeping veterans package supporters describe as the largest expansion of veterans’ health care and benefits in more than a decade is expected to return to the House floor when lawmakers come back from the July recess, but backers warn the legislation could once again become collateral damage in the Republican standoff over the SAVE America Act.
The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act rolls roughly 60 veterans bills into a package that would dramatically expand veterans’ health care and benefits. At its core, the legislation would cement veterans’ access to community care outside the VA while increasing benefits for combat-wounded veterans, caregivers and Gold Star families, expanding mental health services and enacting dozens of additional reforms.
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., told Fox News Digital he intends to bring the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act back for a vote as soon as the House reconvenes next week.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – MARCH 17: Eugene Simpson, 29, from Dale City, Virginia goes through physical therapy at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. with Michael Minor, a kinesiotherapist with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs on March 17, 2006 in Washington, D.C., USA. (Photo by Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images) (Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN
The legislation was held up last month after a group of House Republicans joined Democrats to defeat a procedural vote, stopping the House from taking up the bill.
“I’m feeling good as long as my members stay with us on the rule,” Bost said. “Right now, there’s some politics being played, not about this bill, but just in general.”
The bill became entangled in a broader House Republican fight over the SAVE America Act, legislation championed by President Donald Trump that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
On June 30, the House voted on H. Res. 1398, the procedural rule governing floor consideration of several bills, including the National Defense Authorization Act and the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act. The rule failed after 14 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition, preventing the House from taking up the veterans package and bringing floor business to a standstill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., claimed to have voted against the rules vote in protest against House leadership’s handling of the SAVE America Act. As a result, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent the members home early.
Bost accused the holdouts of effectively putting veterans legislation on hold.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs building is seen in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2019. (Photo by Alastair Pike / AFP) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Images) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Image)
‘IT’S A MESS’: GOP TURNS ON HOUSE CONSERVATIVES AS VOTER ID BLOCKADE STALLS TRUMP’S AGENDA
“They’re holding all bills hostage,” Bost said. “They’re not voting for any rule. Any bill that has to pass a rule before it comes to the floor—which this bill does because of its size—can’t move.”
Although Bost said he supports the SAVE America Act and has voted for it three times, he argued the Senate’s failure to act should not stop the House from advancing unrelated legislation.
“I agree with that bill,” Bost said. “But the Senate still has to do their work. We don’t stop our work because the Senate isn’t doing it.”
With 23 legislative days left in the Congressional session, Concerned Veterans for America Strategic Director John Byrnes, a supporter of the bill, said time is of the essence.
“There are lots and lots of things that have to get done,” Byrnes told Fox News Digital. “There’s also the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a must pass every year, so these things eat up time. There’s requirements to have debate on these, which eat up session time.”
Byrnes argued that every procedural delay pushes other legislation further down the calendar.
“This bill will save lives in 2027,” Byrnes said. “If we lose veterans because they could have had faster, better access to health care, we’re never going to get those veterans back.”
Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. ( )
TRUMP’S SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWS SIGNS OF LIFE IN THE SENATE DESPITE REPUBLICAN REVOLT
But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who also voted no on the procedural vote, told Fox News Digital that he has concerns about how the bill is financed.
“I appreciate what the chairman’s trying to do in some respects, but there’s a few issues,” Roy said.
Among them, Roy pointed to provisions offsetting new spending through changes affecting other veterans.
“You’re taxing certain veterans to provide some sort of benefits and changes to other veterans,” Roy said. “There are concerns about some of the pay-fors.”
Veterans of Foreign Wars has also taken issue with Section 108 of the bill, warning that it would codify changes to future disability ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea to help finance other veterans priorities.
But Bost said this is inaccurate.
“No veteran is going to have their benefits reduced,” Bost said. “If you’re receiving a benefit right now, that’s not going to be reduced at all.”
Roy, who previously served two years on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he supported a lot of what the bill was seeking to accomplish; but said other pieces of legislation are priorities, too.
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“There is a block of us for whom border security, the SAVE Act and demonstrating our leadership on major issues is critical,” Roy said. “Some of these other bills may or may not get hung up based on a desire of many in the conference to see movement on other things.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Luna’s office and the White House for comment.
Politics
Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame
WASHINGTON — Shortly before President Trump ended a ceasefire with Iran this week, Israeli officials presented his team with intelligence indicating Tehran was hatching new plots to kill him.
It was not the first such warning. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have tracked evidence for years of Iranian efforts to target the president, with signals only increasing since the start of the war.
Their desire to target Trump and his top aides began six years ago, just outside Baghdad International Airport, when the president ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful general. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani brought the two countries to the brink of war.
Yet even as full-scale war was averted, top Iranian officials vowed revenge for the strike, authorizing attempts on the lives not just of the president, but of his secretary of State and national security advisor, among others, even after they had left office.
Now, calls for revenge have reached a sharper pitch in Tehran, after a joint U.S.-Israeli operation killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war in February.
At Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies this week, red flags of vengeance flew throughout the capital as protesters explicitly called on their government to “kill Trump.” His son, Mojtaba, the new supreme leader, was absent from the commemorations, fearing assassination himself.
Mourners hold an anti-President Trump banner at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque during mass funeral prayers for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family in Tehran on Sunday.
(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The prospect of foreign assassination plots targeting U.S. leaders puts the United States in dangerous new territory, where its embrace of political killings could ultimately place its own officials at unprecedented risk. And experts fear the existential threat of assassination has pushed peace further out of reach: When both sides believe their survival is at stake, the trust required for diplomacy becomes far harder to achieve.
Israeli news organizations have reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cited Iranian attempts to kill Trump in recent years as part of his case to go to war in the first place.
A U.S. official told The Times that a range of serious threats exist against the president, including from Iran, but that Israel’s intelligence pointed to a more specific plot. The official did not provide further details. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said in recent months that the government sees vengeance against U.S. officials as “its legitimate duty and right,” and “will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its might.”
“The Suleimani killing accelerated a lifting of restraints on foreign assassinations — and the taboo on targeting and killing foreign leaders, with U.S. military assets, has been more or less lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political professor at George Washington University.
“If the United States sets the example of how to conduct international relations, and it is using assassination of foreign leaders as a political weapon, it’s only logical that other countries will be more inclined to also engage in assassinations,” Dallek added. “It does seem likely that Trump will have a bigger target on his back.”
Returning from a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, Trump was forced to switch back to an old model of Air Force One — equipped with specialized defensive technologies — from a new plane given as a gift by Qatar, after the Secret Service warned of potential threats to the aircraft from Iran.
“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” Trump told reporters aboard the plane. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long.”
The threat has remained on his mind in the days since. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump told the reporter, “I hope you’ll miss me,” adding that he has “been on their list for a long time.” And in a subsequent social media post Friday night, he warned of a catastrophic response he instructed the administration to pursue in the event Tehran succeeds.
“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, “with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!”
The United States had a decades-old prohibition against assassinating foreign leaders before Trump’s presidency, codified in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 over concerns of a CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.
The policy was only strengthened further by subsequent administrations, fearing a new international standard for targeted killings could result in unintended consequences in the halls of Washington.
Other administrations have been accused of targeting foreign leaders before. Under the Obama administration, an international coalition targeting the Libyan regime of Moammar Kadafi during the country’s 2011 civil war struck his fleeing convoy, leading to his capture and killing by rebel fighters.
But experts say Trump’s explicit targeting of Suleimani and Khamenei — and his public celebration of their deaths — marks a new paradigm.
“Through words and actions, President Trump has done more to normalize political violence than any other U.S. president, certainly in modern times,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of “Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism.”
“On the international front alone, the president routinely brags about killing Iranian leaders and seizing the leader of Venezuela, among others,” he added, “to the point that assassination is becoming the new normal in international politics.”
Politics
Trump takes unusual step, lets bipartisan housing bill become law unsigned amid SAVE pressure campaign
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A bipartisan housing bill became law Saturday at midnight after President Donald Trump declined to sign it, capping a weeks-long saga over whether the president would veto the measure amid frustrations with Congress over his stalled agenda.
Trump refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — legislation aimed at expanding the nation’s housing stock and lowering costs — in an attempt to pressure Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, despite the housing bill clearing both chambers with overwhelming majorities.
“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” he declared on Truth Social Friday morning.
The Trump-backed election measure, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and impose voter ID requirements, has struggled to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
Meanwhile, the House has not passed a version of the bill that includes the president’s proposed crackdown on mail-in voting and banning men from women’s sports.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN
Under the U.S. Constitution, Trump had 10 days, not including Sundays, to sign or veto the housing measure after the House formally transmitted the legislation to the White House in late June. The president ultimately chose neither option, allowing the measure to become law without his signature.
Though Trump declined to veto the legislation, he sharply criticized elements of the bill and argued it should not have been a legislative priority in recent weeks.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in late June. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
Trump went on to call the housing bill “a yawn,” adding, “compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
It would have taken a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto — a margin the House and Senate exceeded when they passed the legislation. However, it remains unclear whether so many Republicans would have defied the president had he vetoed the bill.
Trump also appeared to criticize the bill over a provision restricting Wall Street investors from purchasing single-family homes — a policy he first proposed during his January State of the Union address and later urged Congress to pass. Trump previously argued the investor ban would give individual homebuyers a leg up against private equity firms in the housing market.
“I don’t want to hurt people that own houses, too,” Trump later told reporters, appearing to reference the provision. “These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They’ve become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either. What you want to do is what’s good for everyone, get the interest rates down.”
The law also aims to boost housing supply by streamlining federal environmental reviews, loosening rules around the construction of factory-built homes, and incentivizing local governments to modify their zoning laws to allow more housing, among roughly 60 provisions.
Trump’s souring on the legislation created headaches for Republicans, who touted the bill as an affordability win as voters grapple with high housing costs.
“It’s irresponsible to postpone signing the Housing bill due to the SAVE Act,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a retiring lawmaker who lost re-election to a Trump-backed challenger, wrote on social media. “We need to start delivering relief to people for the high cost of housing ASAP!!”
Construction workers stand on the roof of homes under construction at a new housing development on June 24, 2026, in Valencia, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the legislation at the U.S. Capitol in June with GOP leaders. The stage had already been set, with at least one senior Republican arriving unaware the president had called off the event shortly before it was scheduled to begin.
The president then declared he would not sign the legislation until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, despite Senate GOP leaders insisting the votes do not exist to advance the measure.
Trump has also expressed frustration with the Republican-controlled Senate for declining to weaken the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the upper chamber.
“GET SMART REPUBLICANS, IF YOU DON’T, YOU WON’T BE IN OFFICE FOR LONG!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
Before Trump came out against the bill, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history” and said it included an array of policies “long championed” by Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15, 2025. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Trump political operative James Blair touted the legislation for including the president’s Wall Street investor ban, which he referred to as a “signature commitment.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has argued that Republicans will still promote the landmark housing bill ahead of November.
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“We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively,” the speaker recently told reporters, referring to Trump. “And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
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