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      The Future of News Looks Niche

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      The media entrepreneur Jessica Lessin chats with DealBook about the news landscape and her latest media bet.In 2013, Jessica Lessin, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, left the paper to start a competing publication, The Information.A few years later, her fledgling newsroom had grown to nearly two dozen reporters and editors and booked more than $20 million in sales, as she revealed in a profile I wrote for The Times’s Sunday Business. She says she has since doubled her editorial staff and continued to stay profitable, with revenue growing 30 percent in 2024 over the previous year.But it’s her investments outside of The Information that are gaining attention these days.Her company Lessin Media has put money into Semafor, The Ankler, the former Business Insider editor Nicholas Carlson’s Dynamo, Kevin Delaney’s Charter Works and other titles at a time when the news business appears bleaker than before. Lessin, however, is optimistic.I caught up with the entrepreneur about her latest media bet, the tennis publication Racquet magazine, and what she thinks about the changing news landscape. This interview has been edited and condensed.This investment seems different from your others. How did you come to it?I actually got introduced to Racquet by a number of fans of the magazine. And it was like the weirdest experience, because I was reading the magazine, and then I wanted to buy, like, all the clothes in the magazine. I went to the website, and I wanted to buy all the merch. And they’re hosting an event at the U.S. Open. And I was like I want to go to that. And I want to read this great profile about the mental coach behind the world No. 1 tennis player.This sounds like it was something that just struck you personally. I assumed you’d be more focused on sales and market size and margin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Musk? He’s horrendous’: Martha Lane Fox on diversity, tech bros and International Women’s Day

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      As Elon Musk grinned in the Oval Office, one of Britain’s most influential tech investors looked on in horror. “He is absolutely horrendous. I have said it multiple times: I think it is horrifying what is happening,” says Martha Lane Fox.For the British peer and ex-Twitter board member, the sight of Musk holding forth from the bully pulpit of Donald Trump’s White House shows the Silicon Valley dream has gone sour.“The richest man in the world, who can stand there alongside the president, and kind of carte blanche make jokes about how he’s carving up people’s jobs in the government. Then he can be there with a chainsaw laughing on stage…“It is really, really alarming, and I find it extremely unpleasant at a values-based level – but also, just how can we be watching this in plain sight? It makes me feel very anxious. I think it is gross.”In an interview with the Observer to mark International Women’s Day, the president of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) warned the diversity pushback orchestrated by Trump and his tech bro acolytes will not only damage society, but also the economy at large.Since his return to the White House, the US president has shut down all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, while Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is ripping up funding schemes.Some of the world’s biggest companies are following suit. Amid a wider pushback against everything from environmental targets to sustainable development, among the most prominent taking part are US finance and tech companies, including Goldman Sachs, Accenture and Amazon, while UK businesses such as GSK have also fallen in line.“He needs to be contained,” Lady Lane Fox says of Musk’s role in the rollback. “I find it extraordinary that the richest man in the world is trampling all over these things and that we still have kind of fanboying from the tech sector. It’s already been corrosive for society, and I would argue it is going to continue to be.”For businesses, she says the bottom line is that companies that take diversity seriously appeal to the widest possible employee talent pool and are better placed to target a broad range of customers. This, she adds, is about profit as much as social justice. However, she has a broader concern about the future.“The first thing, it’s financial. But the second thing, it’s about power and money – like everything, right?“If you’re looking at a sector like the digital sector, where there’s the growth in jobs, growth in opportunity – it is the growth sector in the economy. Yet you are not including a whole bunch of people in that. Then you are going to be creating inequality. Full stop. So it’s financial and it’s a question of social justice.”Given the close ties between Britain and the US, there is a view that where corporate America treads, the UK naturally follows. But there are signs that some UK businesses – and even the British operations of some US companies – are prepared to stand apart.The accountancy firm Deloitte instructed staff working on contracts for the US government to remove pronouns from their emails, while also announcing the end of its DEI programme. But its UK boss told staff its British operations remained “committed to [its] diversity goals”.“It feels as though global companies rooted in the US are making a politically motivated slight shift in emphasis and tilt, through to rowing back everything. And it does feel a bit more tempered here,” says Lane Fox.UK businesses have an opportunity to do something different, she says, which could bring financial benefits. “I think we’ll build more robust companies, attract talent and have a much better shot at building the most resilient companies of the future.”For almost three decades, Lane Fox has built a career – and multimillion-pound fortune – in tech. She made her first big money floating Lastminute.com, the online travel site co-founded alongside fellow Oxford graduate Brent Hoberman in 1998.View image in fullscreenShe joined the board of Twitter – now X – in 2016, landing herself a huge payday in Musk’s $44bn hostile takeover in 2022, before he dissolved the board and appointed himself the sole director.Seeing Musk in the Oval Office, parading his son X on his shoulders, made her question the gender divide. “Can you imagine if that was a woman? Can you imagine what that would look like? I mean, I just think the whole thing is really gross.”But while railing against Musk in a personal capacity, the BCC president does not suggest this approach is for everyone. “It is really tricky to navigate. You have a responsibility to your customers and your employees that might be different to our personal view sometimes.”Government regulation to enshrine diversity targets is also a bad idea, she says, preferring instead that companies report their progress. “Keeping it in the light, keeping up the reporting, is important – keeping up good investors, looking at the right metrics and investing in the right companies all helps.”However, not enough progress is being made. Analysis this week showed that worsening unemployment and workforce participation for women has pushed the UK behind Canada to its lowest global ranking for workplace equality among large economies in a decade.The gender pay gap has been declining slowly over time, but average pay is still 7% less for women than for men. It is a challenge Lane Fox is all too aware of. “Look at the data and it is really freaking depressing – and it is not moving,” she says.“What worries me is that it’s far too easy to find numbers that I thought we were moving on from.“In this week of International Women’s Day, we see representation at the executive level has gone back. I see progress on boards is still good at the FTSE 100 level, but bad at FTSE 250 and 350 level.“I know there will be people in the sector thinking: ‘Oh, here she goes again.’ That’s true of many women [that people think that]. But it is so important to keep making these arguments.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump is turning the media into a mouthpiece of the regime | Lawrence Douglas

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      You know we’re in trouble when Fox News emerges as the great defender of freedom of the press. But such was the case when Jacqui Heinrich, a senior political correspondent at Fox, responded to the news that Trump’s White House would now handpick the reporters who get to cover the president in small settings, with the post: “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House.” Heinrich was specifically responding to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s Orwellian claim that letting Donald Trump choose who would cover him was designed to restore power “back to the American people”.The fruits of the new policy were richly on display during the sickening scene that unfolded in the Oval Office last week. If the president and JD Vance’s disgraceful treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t bad enough, there was the unprecedented role that the “press” played in the unseemly drama.Here I’m not simply referring to Brian Glenn’s pugnacious demand that the leader of a war-torn nation justify his sartorial decisions – less a question than a provocation that served as a prelude to the pile-on that followed. Trump appeared to wink at Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a far-right cable channel freshly included in the press pool, leading to speculation that Glenn’s question had been scripted in advance, a speculation that is both plausible – I mean, why not? – and irrelevant.For whether scripted or not, these are the kinds of questions we should expect when serious journalists are replaced with mouthpieces of the regime, puppets who perform the role of state propagandists in the guise of reportage. Glenn, who dates Majorie Taylor Greene and describes himself as “100% behind President Trump”, claims not to truck in far-right conspiracy theories – while insisting that January 6t was an antifa-instigated inside job and that a vast mechanism of fraud cost Trump the 2020 election.But before Glenn turned on the Ukrainian president, he had directed an earlier question to Trump: “Mr President, [do] you think ultimately your legacy will be the peacemaker and not the president that led this country into another war … ?” This puffball in the guise of a query gave Trump the opportunity to wax poetic: “I hope I’m going to be remembered as a peacemaker … I’m doing this to save lives more than anything else … Thank you, Brian, for that question. It was a nice question.”But we weren’t done with paeans to the great peacemaker. No sooner had Zelenskyy tersely assured Glenn that he would wear a suit once the war had ended, we were greeted with this question: “Keir Starmer … praised your courage and conviction to lead … What gave you the moral courage and conviction to step forward and lead?”In a properly functioning press corps, we might have expected that the question was directed to Zelenskyy, who, with exceptional fortitude and resolve, has led his countryin a war against a ruthless aggressor. But no. The question was directed to Trump, who responded: “Boy, I love this guy. Who are you with?” The answer was One America News, another network that operates to the far right of Fox, trafficking in conspiracy theories and committed to an unwavering support of Maga politics – and also a beneficiary of the White House’s commandeering of its own press pool.Once again, Trump grew almost wistful – “I like the question … it’s a very good question” – before blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel on Joe Biden. From there, as we witnessed, things grew more acrimonious, but lost in the belligerent and belittling treatment of Zelenskyy, particularly at the hands of Vance (“Have you said thank you once, this entire meeting?”) was the Pyongyang-esque quality of Trump’s hand-picked pool reporters using their questions not to challenge or examine, but to burnish and bolster the Great Leader with ever fluffier valentines of adoration.Meanwhile, the Associated Press remained barred from the historic meeting, because it continues to call a body of water that lies almost entirely outside of US jurisdiction by the name it has carried since the 16th century.

      Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts More

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      in US Politics

      AP files amended complaint against White House over press pool ban

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      The Associated Press amended its complaint against the Trump administration on Monday, including in its epigraph a punchy quote from an anonymous White House adviser: “The AP and the White House Correspondents Association wanted to f–k around. Now it’s finding out time.”The unnamed White House adviser’s quote came about during an exchange on 25 February 2025 and was first reported by Axios last week.The Associated Press filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration on 21 February, after the White House restricted its journalists from attending presidential events.The decision by the White House came in response to the news agency’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” following an executive order issued by Donald Trump that renamed the body of water in the US.The AP claims that the actions of the Trump administration violate both the first and fifth amendments of the US constitution and is an unconstitutional effort by the White House to control speech.The lawsuit names three White House officials as defendants: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, and chief of staff Susan Wiles.Last week, the federal judge overseeing the case, who was appointed by Trump, denied a request from AP to immediately restore full access to presidential events for its journalists.The judge acknowledged that existing case law “is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”, described the White House’s ban on AP journalists as “problematic” and indicated that the issue needed more exploration before a ruling can be made.Trump administration lawyers have argued in court filings that the AP does not have a constitutional right to what they called “special media access to the president”.On Monday, the AP amended its complaint, nearly doubling the size of the document from 18 pages to 32, and once again asked the federal judge to reinstate its access to the press pool during specific presidential events.“As the DC Circuit has made clear, journalists’ ‘first amendment interest’ in access to the White House, at events both large and small, ‘undoubtedly qualifies as liberty which may not be denied without due process of law under the fifth amendment,’” the amended complaint states.“The AP’s liberty interest in access is rooted in the First Amendment’s free speech and press guarantees and its related protections for news gathering.”The AP also highlighted and cited recent and ongoing instances of AP journalists being denied access and pointed out the recent decision from the White House to take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Trump.The complaint states that “rather than heed this Court’s warning that precedent ‘is uniformly unhelpful’ to the government”, the White House has “instead retaliated against the AP further” by abandoning the press pool system and “again barring the AP from the very same spaces – both small and large – that are at issue in this lawsuit.”“The AP’s journalists are also banned from larger events – including press conferences with the President and other world leaders” it adds. “The AP’s journalists, despite signing up in advance, are turned away”, and the result is that “the AP’s press credentials now provide its journalists less access to the White House than the same press credentials provide to all other members of the White House press corps.”The next hearing in this case is scheduled for 20 March. More

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      in US Politics

      UN human rights chief ‘deeply worried by fundamental shift’ in US

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      The UN human rights chief has warned of a “fundamental shift” in the US and sounded the alarm over the growing power of “unelected tech oligarchs”, in a stinging rebuke of Washington weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency.Volker Türk said there had been bipartisan support for human rights in the US for decades but said he was “now deeply worried by the fundamental shift in direction that is taking place domestically and internationally”.Without referring to Trump by name, Türk, an Austrian lawyer who heads the UN’s rights body, criticised the Republican president’s measures to overturn longstanding equity and anti-discrimination policies, as well as repeated threats against the media and politicians.“In a paradoxical mirror image, policies intended to protect people from discrimination are now labelled as discriminatory. Progress is being rolled back on gender equality,” Türk said in comments to the UN human rights council in Geneva.“Disinformation, intimidation and threats, notably against journalists and public officials, risk undermining the work of independent media and the functioning of institutions,” he added. “Divisive rhetoric is being used to distort, deceive and polarise. This is generating fear and anxiety among many.”Since returning to power, Trump has continued to attack the press. Last month, he barred the Associated Press news agency – on which local and international media have traditionally relied for US government reporting – from the White House.His administration has launched a purge of anti-discrimination policies under the umbrella term of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and moved to slash rights for transgender people. At the same time, the administration has sent panic through communities with its widespread and muddled immigration crackdown.Internationally, the US has moved to withdraw funding for international organisations that promote health and human rights, such as the World Health Organization, and imposed economic sanctions on the international criminal court, which is investigating war crimes in Gaza.Washington’s traditional allies, including Canada, France and Germany, are feeling increasingly alarmed as Trump lashes out at democratic leaders while expressing a fondness for autocrats, including the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.In his speech on Monday, Türk presented a concerned overview of the global rights situation, saying the world was “going through a period of turbulence and unpredictability”.“[What] we are experiencing goes to the very core of the international order – an order that has brought us an unprecedented level of global stability. We cannot allow the fundamental global consensus around international norms and institutions, built painstakingly over decades, to crumble before our eyes.”He called out the growing influence wielded by “a handful of unelected tech oligarchs” who “have our data: they know where we live, what we do, our genes and our health conditions, our thoughts, our habits, our desires and our fears”.Türk added: “They know how to manipulate us.”While his comments were not directed at the US, they come at a time of rising and consolidated power among American tech and social media billionaires who have fallen in line behind Trump.They include Elon Musk, who owns X and has been the 78-year-old president’s most prominent backer, but also Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has ended factchecking programmes on Facebook and Instagram – a move the UN chief, António Guterres, has warned will open the “floodgates to more hate, more threats, and more violence”.Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest man and owner of the Washington Post, which in the last US presidential election declined to endorse a candidate for the first time in decades, recently banned opinion articles that did not support his views on “personal liberties and free markets”.Türk, whose comments were not limited to the situation in the US but could also apply to tech leaders in China and India, said that “any form of unregulated power can lead to oppression, subjugation, and even tyranny – the playbook of the autocrat”. More

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      in US Politics

      Shake-up for Trump era gives liberal MSNBC a whiter, more centrist look

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      The brutal shake-up at MSNBC, the liberal news channel that has been been at the forefront of scrutinizing Donald Trump and his politics, could lead to the loss of progressive voices and stories affecting people of color, media experts said.All of this arrives at a time when the Trump administration is actively attacking the media.MSNBC announced on Monday that the progressive host Joy Reid was being fired from her weeknight show, with Alex Wagner also losing her prime-time nightly broadcast. Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart also lost their solo weekend shows, along with Ayman Mohyeldin, who has been a fierce critic of Israel’s bombing of Gaza. A “bloodbath of non-white anchors”, as the Daily Beast termed it, as the move was widely criticized, including on MSNBC.“Indefensible,” was the verdict of Rachel Maddow, the channel’s highest-profile host, as she lambasted the network live on her show on Monday. “I think it is a bad mistake to let [Reid] walk out the door. It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two non-white hosts in prime time, both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.”Other criticism was even more strident. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at the Nation, wrote on Twitter/X: “I owe the television part of my career to Joy Reid, as do so many other Black voices y’all never would have heard of if not for her. And *that’s* why she’s gone. They can treat black folks as interchangeable, but everybody Black knows that Joy was indispensable.”Mehdi Hasan, a progressive journalist and Guardian columnist whose MSNBC show was canceled in 2023, wrote: “It’s a big loss for MSNBC viewers as [Reid] did talk about issues – racism, fascism, Gaza – that other hosts have avoided. And I’m also sad to see my brilliant friend Ayman lose his unique show, too.”Phang and Wagner will remain with the network, Phang becom​ing a legal correspondent and Wagner a political analyst, and​ Capehart and Mohyeldin will become co-hosts on other programs. But with non-white journalists underrepresented in the media, the loss of those voices from prime-time shows and at the helm of their own programs represents a blow for those concerned about diversity.“Joy Reid represents another loss of amplifying Black and brown voices who will report news on stories that oftentimes go under the radar or underreported by mainstream journalists,” said Emmitt Riley, a professor of politics and African and African American studies at the University of the South and the president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.“When we think about what diversity truly means, it means that we bring a wide variety of perspectives to the table. And certainly a person’s life experiences with discrimination, their life experiences in terms of where they occupy certain positions of power or lack thereof, informs what stories they decide to amplify. And so we saw Joy covering a number of different stories that I think will go under the radar now.”Along with losing the perspectives that journalists from a range of backgrounds and life experiences can bring, there is also concern that MSNBC is losing progressive voices and sidelining some of its most prominent critics of Israel, including Reid and Mohyeldin.At a time when Trump has made it clear that he will offer little support to Gaza – last week the president shared an AI video showing the US turning it into a cross between Dubai and Las Vegas – the loss of those voices is a concern.Reid’s show will be replaced by Symone Sanders Townsend and Michael Steele, who are Black, and Alicia Menendez, who is of Cuban descent. Although Sanders has progressive bona fides as a former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, Steele is a former chair of the Republican national committee who describes himself as “an American, a conservative and a Republican, in that order”.Menendez also has deep connections to the center of US politics – her father is Bob Menendez, the former Democratic senator who in January was sentenced to 11 years in prison for taking bribes. Her brother, Robert Menendez, is a Democratic congressman.Wagner, who in 2022 MSNBC described as the only Asian American to host a prime-time cable news program, platformed critics of Joe Biden as he declined in mid-2024. She will be replaced by Jen Psaki, who served as Biden’s White House press secretary and previously had roles in communications for centrist Democrats including Barack Obama and John Kerry.“It is going to change the discourse,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of communication studies and journalism at Northwestern University.“It’s still going to be in keeping with the MSNBC brand, it will still be liberal. But they’re moving a little bit away from the left with these recent changes.”The moves came two weeks after the Federal Communications Commission, led by the Donald Trump appointee and Project 2025 co-author Brendan Carr, launched an investigation into Comcast, MSNBC’s parent company over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, part of a broader policy which has seen Trump order an end to all DEI programs in federal government and also target the programs in schools and universities.“At a time when the very value of diversity in American institutions is in question, implementing changes which result in firing and demotions of the channel’s highest-profile non-white anchors seems a bizarrely off-brand action for a news channel that is supposedly liberal-oriented,” Eric Deggans, an NPR TV critic and media analyst, wrote on his Switching Codes Substack.It is a delicate time for Comcast, which is seeking approval to spin out MSNBC and other cable shows into a new company, called SpinCo, later this year. The shake-up also comes as other media organizations have been targeted by the Trump administration.The FCC is investigating NPR and PBS to assess whether they should be continued to be allowed access to public funding, while Trump is suing CBS, alleging that they selectively edited an interview with Kamala Harris – something CBS denies – and has threatened legal action against the New York Times, among others.There are signs some news organizations are already acquiescing to Trump. This week Jeff Bezos, who pulled an endorsement of Harris in the run-up to the 2024 election and later attended Trump’s inauguration, announced that the Washington Post editorial pages would in the future only publish pieces “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”.The Post’s former editor, Marty Baron, described the move as a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” that had left him “appalled”, and the Post’s opinions editor quit in the wake of the move, which could further hit the Post’s number of subscribers – 250,000 people previously canceled their subscriptions after Bezos blocked the Harris endorsement.At MSNBC, Mark Lazarus, who is set to be CEO of SpinCo, told staff at a meeting: “The only thing I’ll say is the worst thing any leader can do is change something that’s working just because they can. So, if this is working, then there’s no reason to change it.”However, Oliver Darcy reported for Status that Lazarus had suggested he would like the network to be on better terms with Republicans.“The SpinCo boss, who now oversees the progressive network, has privately indicated to people that he would like the outlet incorporate more GOP voices on its air,” Darcy reported.Apart from the need to have media that stand up to the Trump administration, left-leaning organizations were missing an opportunity by not standing their ground, Hendershot said.“Part of the bigger picture of MSNBC is that now is the time for these stations or newspapers or magazines that lean left, to lean into what they do best. Anything that slants left does the best in terms of ratings when the right is the White House. And likewise, when the other party is in the White House, publications who are on the right do best,” she said.“If you lean toward objective coverage of the authoritarian situation we find ourselves in right now, your numbers could go up, whether you’re MSNBC or the New York Times or whatever entity. So it’s hard not to read it as bowing to the authority of the White House. I don’t see any other interpretation. That’s certainly how Trump sees it.” More

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      in US Politics

      Even rightwingers are mocking the ‘Epstein files’ as a lot of redacted nothing

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      The Epstein files fiascoDrum roll, please: the “most transparent administration in American history” is declassifying shocking new information about Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. After years of speculation that powerful people have been concealing information related to the late financier and convicted sex offender, the Trump administration said earlier this week that it would release unseen details about the case.“Breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, told Fox News on Wednesday night. “This will make you sick.”Apparently intent on treating this “new” Epstein information like an album drop rather than a horrific sex-trafficking case involving the abuse of young girls, the White House gave a bunch of influencers a first look at the information. On Thursday, Bondi’s team handed out big white binders labelled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “The Most Transparent Administration in History” to a group of 15 rightwing activists and self-styled “citizen journalists” visiting the White House. Grinning gleefully, these influencers proceeded to pose for the press with the binders like they were trophies from a school sports day.So what was in those binders? A whole lot of heavily redacted nothing, basically. A bunch of people at Bondi’s office appear to have hastily printed out Epstein’s contact book, which was published by the (now shuttered) website Gawker a decade ago, along with other information that has been in the public domain for years. They then shoved 200 pages of printouts into binders and gave them to a handpicked collection of useful idiots. Being as they’re the most transparent administration in American history, the justice department also made the information available on its website later that day – along with a note acknowledging that there wasn’t actually much to see. “The first phase of declassified files largely contains documents that have been previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the U.S. Government,” the note said.“This isn’t a news story, it’s a publicity stunt,” the Palm Beach lawyer Spencer Kuvin, who has worked on the case since 2005, representing nine victims, told the Miami Herald. He added that he feared that the Trump administration was using Epstein’s victims for political purposes. But then what do you expect from Trump – a guy who, in 2002 said of Epstein: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side.”In short, this whole big “reveal” was an embarrassing flop – so much so that it was mocked by people on the right. Even Laura Loomer, a white nationalist conspiracy theorist, thought the stunt was distasteful.“I hate to say it, but the American people can’t trust the validity of the Epstein files released today. It was released in an unprofessional manner with paid, partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us,” Loomer tweeted on Thursday. She later added: “Sorry I won’t celebrate dancing like a school girl with a binder full of pedophile names.” When even Loomer thinks you’ve gone low, you’ve gone very low indeed.Ultimately, however, while nothing new may have been revealed in Bondi’s “Epstein files”, this grotesque stunt was very revealing. It was yet another reminder that there is nothing – not even the sex trafficking of minors – that Donald Trump and his associates won’t cynically turn into a self-serving photo opportunity. Or, I should add, an opportunity to “Rickroll” people: midday Thursday, while people were waiting for the documents to be published online, the House judiciary GOP account on X posted in all-caps: “#BREAKING: EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED.” This then redirected users to the YouTube music video for Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. Classy.Also revealing was who the White House thought should get a first look at documents involving sex trafficking. Among the influencers assembled was Mike Cernovich. Who is he? Just a rightwing manosphere influencer who has said things like “rape via an alpha male is different from other forms of rape” and told men that women exist “for your sexual pleasure”.The reaction to the backlash over the Epstein files fiasco also shows how, when anything goes wrong, people in Trump’s orbit are quick to point fingers and turn on each other rather than take responsibility. Bondi, for example, responded to all the criticism by accusing the FBI of withholding information from her. Meanwhile, some of the conservative influencers who got the binders full of nothing accused the southern district of New York of hiding information.“These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Kash, and YOU,” the conservative media personality Liz Wheeler tweeted. “Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be. Because the evil deep state LIED TO YOUR FACE.”Perhaps what is most revealing about this fiasco, however, is that it is a stark reminder of how justice still hasn’t been served when it comes to Epstein’s many victims. Apart from Ghislaine Maxwell, none of Epstein’s many enablers and associates have faced any real consequences. A lot of rich and powerful people have got away with disgraceful things. And that’s not a conspiracy theory; that’s just our legal system.Andrew Tate and brother land in US from Romania after travel ban liftedSpeaking of predators evading accountability, the Tate brothers, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, landed in the US on Thursday. This comes after it was reported last week that the Trump administration had asked Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the pair.View image in fullscreen‘Pro-lifers’ are demanding women face the death penaltySelf-described “abortion abolitionists” – who oppose all abortions without any exceptions and want to criminalize the procedure and ban IVF – used to be at the fringes of the anti-abortion movement. Now, people who believe that the death penalty should be considered for women who have abortions are slowly moving into the US mainstream. Mother Jones looks at how some of these abolitionist men have turned on women in the anti-abortion movement. “We need Christian men leading the fight against abortion, not feminist women,” one of those “TheoBros” recently wrote.At least six children die of hypothermia amid freezing conditions in GazaI haven’t heard any pro-lifers get upset about this.Jeff Bezos is sending Katy Perry to spaceLast year, Perry came out with Woman’s World, her first solo single in three years and, she said, “the first contribution I have given since becoming a mother and since feeling really connected to my feminine divine”. Unfortunately, her contribution was panned so mercilessly that Perry is now taking her feminine divine as far away from the world as possible: the singer will fly to space during Blue Origin’s next (all-female) crewed mission, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company has announced. Rumour has it that if you work at the Washington Post and have any opinions that have the temerity to clash with Bezos’s, then you’ll get shot into space, too.The pill hasn’t been improved in years – no wonder women are giving up on itMisinformation from wellness influencers along with a conservative backlash against birth control is causing more people to stop taking the pill. “But there’s another, underlying problem when it comes to contraception,” writes Martha Gill. “It needs to improve … It’s common for women to be using the same methods as their mothers – or even their grandmothers. Why aren’t contraceptives getting better?”The week in porktriarchyBig news for anyone with a small child: Peppa Pig’s mother (Mummy Pig) is having a new little piglet. Not sure how they can afford three children in this day and age but maybe Mummy Pig has been trading meme coins. While I’m sure Elon “have more babies” Musk is thrilled by the baby announcement, it is not clear how Cardi B feels. The rapper has been in a feud with Peppa since 2020, ever since her daughter started ruining her Uggs by jumping in muddy puddles. More

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      in Elections

      Paramount’s Shari Redstone Wants a Resolution on President Trump Lawsuit Ahead of Skydance Merger

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      Redstone, who controls Paramount, has been trying to close a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance. President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News is complicating matters.Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of the entertainment giant Paramount, delivered a crucial message to her board a few weeks ago.For months, Paramount’s lawyers had been jousting with representatives for President Trump, who had sued the company’s CBS News network over its segment on former Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump accused the network of deceptively editing the interview; CBS said Trump’s lawsuit was without merit.But when the board gathered this month, Ms. Redstone was clear: She was in favor of resolving the issue, two people familiar with the matter told DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The New York Times’s Ben Mullin.As Paramount executives weighed the best course of action, Ms. Redstone said she was in favor of moving forward in a way that would lead to some form of conclusion, including mediation.It was the first time that Ms. Redstone made her wishes known to the full board. Many at CBS News and “60 Minutes,” where Ms. Harris’s interview aired, strongly opposed a settlement.Further complicating the matter: The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing Paramount’s pending deal with Skydance. Some executives said that a settlement would smooth the way to closing the merger, even as others worried that a settlement could be interpreted as bribery for the F.C.C. to clear the Skydance deal. Mr. Trump, for his part, told reporters on Wednesday that the two were not linked.National Amusements, Paramount’s parent company, declined to comment, and Paramount has said that its legal battle with Mr. Trump is unrelated to its deal with Skydance.Ms. Redstone’s carefully written statement did not mention Paramount’s deal with Skydance — but it did underscore the fact that a pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the president made it difficult for Paramount to do business. She also said that she was removing herself from day-to-day discussions about the lawsuit.This week, The Times reported that Paramount had agreed to bring in a mediator.Any settlement could be perceived as the latest corporate concession to the White House, including Disney’s $15 million settlement in December and Meta’s $25 million settlement last month. The possibility of a settlement, which is likely to further embolden Mr. Trump’s crusade against the media, has been met with a strong backlash within the CBS ranks and outside the company.Though Ms. Redstone didn’t mention the Skydance deal in her remarks, people familiar with her thinking believe she’s focused on closing the deal.Paramount is also navigating the consequences of doing business under a retributive president. Beyond the Skydance deal, Mr. Trump has made clear his willingness to exact revenge when it comes to companies.“Corporations — particularly these days are often in the cross hairs of policymakers — and they have to navigate that,” Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, told DealBook. “And that’s not easy.” More