As part of ongoing efforts to salvage the reputation of CBS News and start building back the trust of viewers, the network’s new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has made some much-needed cuts pertaining to the ’60 Minutes’ program. As you probably recall, this show has repeatedly come under fire for its bias against conservatives. Most notably, it cost CBS News $16 million after President Trump sued them for maliciously editing an interview with Kamala Harris. So, Weiss is attempting to overhaul the whole thing — starting with firing longtime ’60 Minutes’ executive producer Tanya Simon, who has been at the network for 30 years. She is replacing Simon with tech journalist and former New York Times columnist Nick Bilton. Bari Weiss responded to Nick Bilton’s lengthy statement on X here: Nick Bilton is one of the most entrepreneurial and ambitious journalists working today. I am thrilled that he is the next executive producer of 60 Minutes. His note here: https://t.co/Af9yf55pIc — Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) May 28, 2026 And, if you want to read it, here’s Nick Bilton’s full note written to the staff at ’60 Minutes’: Hi everyone, I’m Nick. Some of you I’ve met. Most of you I haven’t. Walking into this building and putting my name on this job is the honor of my career. Though I don’t need to tell you, 60 Minutes is, without exaggeration, the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. The fact that it has held that position for almost six decades is not an accident. It’s the result of generations of producers, correspondents, editors, researchers, and crews who decided that the work mattered more than the noise. You are those people. I’m grateful to be working alongside you. I am here because the world outside this building has changed a lot since this show was conceived—and we have to talk honestly about what that means. Think back to September 1968, when the first episode of 60 aired. A gallon of gas was thirty two cents. The first pocket calculator wouldn’t go on sale for another two-and-a-half years. If you needed money, you went to the bank, stood in line, and asked a human being for it. Long distance calls were billed by the minute and you thought twice before making one. There were three networks. Most people watched the first episode of 60 Minutes in black and white. If you missed it, you missed it. Every part of how we lived back then has been transformed since then. The cars, the phones, the music, the movies, the medicine, the money, the way news gets made and the way news gets consumed. The phone you are reading this on is more powerful than every computer that existed on the planet in 1968 combined. The audience that watched that first episode is not the same audience watching us now. They have unlimited channels to choose from, not three. They are stalked by algorithms that they wake up to and go to sleep to. Algorithms that have figured out that anger is the only way to make sure they come back day after day after day. They have lost faith in almost every institution that used to hold the country together. And yet here we still are. Same stopwatch. Same tick. Same Sunday night. Same form. The trusted correspondents are our guides through all of it. There is something genuinely incredible about that. The fact that this show has remained a fixed point in a culture is part of why this show still matters as much as it does. I don’t want to lose that. But the world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved. And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years. I want to do everything humanly possible to ensure that we are. How? I’ve spent most of my career writing about exactly this kind of moment. I started as a technology reporter at The New York Times, then an investigative journalist at Vanity Fair, covering industry after industry that got obliterated by these technological changes. I was a regular voice on CNBC, ABC, and CNN trying to make sense of it as it happened. I wrote books about it. I made documentaries about it for Netflix and HBO. And I watched (as we all did) newspapers and magazines and taxi companies and travel agencies and video stores and entire industries go under. Only a few survived. The ones that did all had one thing in common: They saw it coming, and they adapted before it was too late. Over my time covering these disruptions, nothing compares to this one. Between AI rewriting how information is made and everyone with a phone calling themselves a media company, this is the most precarious moment for journalism (and society) I have ever seen. There was a time I would have written the story about what happens to television news next. Instead, I am here to make sure that story doesn’t get written about us. That is why Bari hired me. Evolving or dying isn’t a threat. It’s simple math. My responsibility is not just technological transformation. It is also our trust with the public. On the very first episode of 60 Minutes Mike Wallace said: “If this broadcast does what we hope it will do it will report reality.” I can’t think of a better north star for 60 Minutes than that. Above all, that means a commitment to fairness—in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast. Now, what happens next? I’m here to lead this show, not preserve it under glass. That means honoring what works and being honest about what doesn’t. I have a notebook full of ideas. Some are about the show itself. Some are about the next generation of correspondents. Some are about the strange fact that we produce one extraordinary hour for one night a week in a world that consumes content around the clock. I’m excited to share them, and I’m confident you’ll be excited by them, too. But not yet. The first thing I want to do is meet you. Hear what you’re working on. Hear what isn’t working. Hear what you’ve been waiting to do and haven’t been able to. In about thirty days I’ll come back to all of you with where we go from here. It will be a conversation that we have together. This is the best job in journalism. I can’t wait to introduce myself and meet each of you. See you tomorrow. Nick In addition to giving the show’s executive producer the axe, Bari Weiss also fired two ’60 Minutes’ correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Both of these correspondents who were fired are notorious Trump critics. On the night that President Trump won the 2024 election, Cecilia Vega predicted “violence in the streets.” For reference, here’s that clip: On Election Night 2024, Cecilia Vega went on CBS and predicted "violence in the streets" of Pennsylvania if the vote isn't counted fast enough. Today, CBS canned her from '60 Minutes' pic.twitter.com/vmT9PmAwfR — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 28, 2026 As for Sharon Alfonsi, she was reportedly fired after clashing with Bari Weiss for postponing her segment criticizing the Trump administration’s deportations of illegal gang members to El Salvador. NBC News reported further on the huge shake-up at CBS News: CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss on Thursday replaced Tanya Simon, the executive producer of the network’s flagship newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” with a technology journalist who has never worked in television news. Nick Bilton, a documentarian and former New York Times technology columnist, will take over for Simon when the show returns for a 59th season in the fall, CBS News leaders announced. The moves are part of Weiss’ sweeping shake-up of the storied program, created by the legendary producer Don Hewitt. CBS News has also cut ties with “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega, who joined the show in 2023, according to a source familiar with the matter. Sharyn Alfonsi, another “60 Minutes” correspondent, told the Times this week that CBS News had not renewed her contract. CBS News and Alfonsi did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the status of her deal. Alfonsi clashed with Weiss late last year over the last-minute postponement of her segment about the Trump administration deporting Venezuelan men to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Alfonsi said the delay was “not an editorial decision” but a “political one.” Weiss said she held the story “because it was not ready.” It ultimately aired in January. Hopefully, these two will be replaced with real journalists — who are so rare these days (except at WLT Report!) What do you think? Will the ’60 Minutes’ reforms pay off? This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

Although the nation’s capital is undergoing a transformation to usher in a major celebration for America’s 250th anniversary, many Americans seemed determined to do whatever they can to spoil the fun. President Donald Trump’s critics in politics and entertainment have been disparaging the idea for months … and as a star-studded concert series lineup began to emerge, some of the president’s haters apparently decided to harass and threaten those who agreed to perform. As a result, several of those artists have announced they’ll be dropping out of the show, including Poison singer Bret Michaels. As The Hill reported, he cited threats against himself, his fans, and his family as a primary reason for his decision: “When this opportunity was originally presented to my team, it was described as a celebration of our country through music and a chance to honor our veterans, active military, first responders, teachers and hardworking Americans from all walks of life,” the rocker wrote in a statement posted on Instagram early Friday. “Unfortunately, what was presented to us as a celebration of our country has evolved into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part of. Concerns have also been raised regarding the safety of my fans, band, crew, family and myself, including threats that are completely unfounded and unforgivable. Because of that, I have made the difficult decision to step away from this performance.” Michaels is one of a growing list of performers scheduled to perform who have dropped out from the 16-day event scheduled to run between June 25 and July 10. News of Michaels’ exit soon began to spread via social media: He mentions threats twice. Anyone going to ask about that? — MaryLouWestin (@LouWestin) May 29, 2026 Some prominent conservative commentators have used the latest developments to criticize the right’s approach to booking entertainers: What a mess. They invited a bunch of washed up has-beens, and now even the washed up has-beens are bailing on them. Yet another reason why the right wing "get literally any famous person we can" approach is retarded. https://t.co/PSbQI3Qoux — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 29, 2026 Michaels is just the latest to make such an announcement. Country singer Martina McBride posted this: pic.twitter.com/Ono3zPi54Z — Martina McBride (@martinamcbride) May 29, 2026 Here’s some additional reporting from Variety on which artists, as of this writing, are still expected to perform: With his departure, Michaels joins Morris Day, Young MC, the Commodores and Martina McBride on the list of those doing quick pullouts over the last two days. Only two out of nine acts have publicly declared an intent to go through with the gigs: Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan. C&C Music Factory frontman Freedom Williams said he was still uncertain whether he’d go through with thier appearance or not. That leaves only Flo Rida out of the nine who has still not addressed the issue at all. The divisiveness that Michaels spoke of was fully evident in comments left on his social media posts about the pull-out, with different fans reading different things into the musician’s message, which was nebulous on where he stands on Trump or whether the festival was initially a good idea. A majority of messages on his posts congratulated Michaels for making the move he did, with many saying they would have had a hard time continuing to listen to his music if he had gone on at a festival that many identify with the president and the MAGA movement. But some disappointed conservative fans pointed out that Michaels’ comments about “threats” were the clearest part of his post, and that his exit might have more to do with that than any disavowal of Trump or his initiatives. Meanwhile, here’s what leftist organizers are preparing to protest the Great American Fair: This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

A Virginia court already declared the state’s universal background check law unconstitutional and handed down a permanent injunction last fall. Virginia State Police started enforcing it again anyway. So gun-rights groups went back to court. On May 28, 2026, Gun Owners Foundation and the Virginia Citizens Defense League asked a Virginia court to hold the state in contempt. Their argument is simple. A new statute does not get to overrule a standing court order just because the legislature wishes it so. BREAKING GOA along with @VCDL_ORG and @GunFoundation filed a motion against Virginia for violating a court order which previously halted universal background checks in the state. Gov. Spanberger and AG Jay Jones think they're above the law. They're not. See you in court! pic.twitter.com/ElfktKUFHA — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) May 28, 2026 The Daily Caller laid out the timeline that got Virginia here, including the attorney general’s office confirmation and State Police explanation. Gun Owners Foundation and the Virginia Citizens Defense League asked a Virginia court Thursday to hold the state in contempt after Virginia State Police resumed enforcement of universal background checks for private gun sales despite a permanent injunction. Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed HB 1525 into law on April 22, 2026 after amendments directed Virginia State Police to enforce the law blocked by the injunction and added an emergency provision. The Circuit Court for the City of Lynchburg had issued a permanent injunction in October 2025 after declaring the universal background check unconstitutional. Attorney General Jay Jones’ office confirmed to attorneys for the gun-rights groups that Virginia State Police had resumed conducting background checks under the newly enacted statute. A State Police spokesperson said the agency reinstated private sale background checks after receiving word from the attorney general’s office that the new law superseded the injunction. That is the collision at the center of the case. Gun-rights groups say the state was already under a clear court order, while Virginia officials appear to be treating a newly signed statute as permission to turn enforcement back on. That is the whole crux of the fight. The state’s position is that a fresh bill cancels out a judge’s ruling. The gun-rights groups say that is not how any of this works. The motion for rule to show cause spells out the legal problem for Richmond. The motion argues the General Assembly, the governor, the defendant, and the attorney general cannot enforce Section 18.2-308.2:5 in the face of a permanent injunction simply because a new law says they can. It also argues the emergency effective date is a nullity because HB 1525 did not pass by the required four-fifths majority. The filing asks the court to order officials to show cause why they should not be held in contempt for ignoring the injunction. The filing frames the dispute as bigger than one background-check statute. If state officials can sidestep an injunction by passing a new law that says enforcement may continue, then court orders become suggestions whenever the political branches dislike the result. That is why the requested remedy matters. The motion asks the court to force an explanation from the officials involved and to address whether Virginia’s renewed enforcement violated the permanent injunction already on the books. The vote math backs up that point. Daily Caller reported the amended bill passed 21-18 in the Senate and 63-36 in the House. Both numbers fall well short of the four-fifths emergency threshold cited by VCDL President Phillip Van Cleave. No 80 percent supermajority, no valid emergency clause. The contempt fight is only half the story unfolding in Virginia right now. VCDL says local prosecutors are increasingly unwilling to enforce the state’s new gun restrictions. Van Cleave has been keeping count. His latest tally points to Appomattox County, where he says Commonwealth Attorney Leslie M. Fleet has now made eight. And now there are EIGHT! Appomattox County Commonwealth Attorney, Leslie M. Fleet, has issued this statement (be sure to read the top part):https://t.co/qexBkvI7Aw — Philip Van Cleave VCDL (@VCDL_ORG) May 28, 2026 That resistance matters because state mandates only go so far without the local officials who actually file charges. When commonwealth attorneys decline, the law on paper becomes a lot quieter on the ground. Virginia Democrats wrote a new statute and flipped enforcement back on. Now they have to answer to a court that already told them the policy was unconstitutional, and to a growing list of prosecutors who want no part of it. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

President Trump is putting a hard number on what his anti-fraud crackdown has already turned up, and he is tying it directly to two things every American cares about: Social Security and the federal budget. At the May 27 Cabinet meeting, Trump credited Vice President JD Vance and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud with exposing tens of billions of dollars in defrauded taxpayer money in just two months. He said the task force has prosecuted fraudsters and stopped billions of dollars in suspicious payments. Then he made the point that matters most to seniors and taxpayers: this effort could help save Social Security and, if it works, help balance the budget. Trump says Vance's fraud task force could save Social Security President Trump claimed during Wednesday's Cabinet meeting that the anti-fraud task force (@WHFraudTF) led by JD Vance (@JDVance) has uncovered enough waste to potentially balance the budget and shore up Social… pic.twitter.com/QaMpnSmzj3 — BSCN (@BSCNews) May 28, 2026 The framing here is simple and refreshing. Instead of talking about cutting benefits, the administration is talking about cutting off the fraud that drains the system. Fox Business reported on President Trump’s comments and laid out the stakes. President Trump used the Cabinet meeting to connect the Vance-led anti-fraud push to Social Security, the federal budget, and the broader fight over where taxpayer money is really going. The key claim was not that Washington should take anything from seniors. It was that fraud inside federal benefit systems has become so large that the first move should be to stop the theft. The report tied Trump’s remarks to the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Vice President JD Vance leads. Trump said the administration has already found huge amounts of fraud, and he argued that rooting it out could strengthen Social Security while also helping the government move toward a balanced budget. Vance credited the progress to direct presidential leadership, saying agencies often do not know how to work together until the White House forces coordination. That is the practical heart of the story: the administration is trying to make fraud prevention an interagency mission instead of a scattered set of agency silos. Vance was put in charge of this operation in March, and the structure is not informal. It is built into an executive order with a clear mission. The Federal Register published the order that created it. Executive Order 14395 established the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud inside the Executive Office of the President and put the Vice President in the chairman role. It also brought in major federal departments and agencies, including Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, the Small Business Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget. The order directs the task force to coordinate a national strategy to stop fraud, waste, and abuse inside federal benefit programs. That includes eligibility verification, pre-payment controls, fraud-indicator reviews, data sharing between governments and agencies, disruption of fraud networks, and enforcement against providers, contractors, intermediaries, and repeat offenders. It also tells agencies that administer federal benefit programs to identify the transactions and processes most vulnerable to fraud schemes. The order specifically points to new enrollments, redeterminations, provider enrollments, self-attestation procedures, payment destination changes, and transactions involving third-party intermediaries as areas that need stronger controls. That last part is the engine. Eligibility checks, pre-payment controls, and data sharing are the unglamorous tools that stop bad money before it goes out the door. For years, the bureaucracy let those controls rot, and plenty of officials defended a system where benefits could be gamed. The task force is treating that tolerance as the problem, not a feature. On May 28, the operation got bigger. GSA announced it was joining the task force. GSA said it is joining the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud and bringing the full force of its procurement, technology, operational, acquisition, shared-services, modernization, and federal real-estate expertise into the effort. The agency said the move is meant to help one of the administration’s most aggressive accountability initiatives detect irregularities and safeguard taxpayer dollars. The agency said its role at the center of the federal contracting ecosystem makes it a critical force in the fraud fight. GSA said it can help identify vulnerabilities, strengthen oversight, accelerate investigations, and expose high-risk fraud patterns across procurement and taxpayer-funded systems. The announcement also emphasized that the task force is chaired by Vice President JD Vance and was created under President Trump’s executive order. That makes the GSA move a fresh expansion of the same White House operation Trump was praising at the Cabinet table. GSA touches contracts, real estate, technology, and shared services across the government. Bringing that reach into the fight means more eyes on where taxpayer money actually flows. The message to anyone living off federal grants without delivering anything is blunt. Your hard-earned tax dollars should never go to fraudsters. Federal grant recipients must deliver for the American people or be CUT OFF. https://t.co/lfNKcaOBym — White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud (@WHFraudTF) May 28, 2026 Trump is not promising that Social Security’s long-term math is fixed, and he should not. What he is promising is that the people stealing from taxpayers are now the target instead of the seniors who paid in. That is the right order of operations, and it is one Washington avoided for decades. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin had a very bad night at Cape Canaveral. The company’s New Glenn rocket exploded during a hotfire test at Launch Complex 36 on Thursday night, May 28, 2026. Blue Origin posted on X that it experienced an anomaly during the test. The company said all personnel were accounted for and that it would provide updates as it learned more. That is the kind of statement nobody at a rocket company ever wants to write. Blue Origin's New Glenn just blew up at LC-36 while attempting to Static Fire ahead of NG-4.https://t.co/tANS0dWyIH pic.twitter.com/PztxFoBqIw — NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 29, 2026 The test was meant to clear the way for the fourth New Glenn flight, a launch expected to carry Amazon Leo internet satellites. Instead, the program now faces a setback right when Blue Origin was trying to ramp up. TechCrunch laid out why the failure hit at a bad moment for Blue Origin: New Glenn was going through a static fire test at Cape Canaveral ahead of an expected fourth launch in the coming weeks. That mission was supposed to carry Amazon Leo internet satellites, so the rocket program now faces a pause right as Blue Origin was trying to move from development into a higher launch cadence. Blue Origin had targeted as many as 12 New Glenn launches in 2026 after spending roughly a decade developing the heavy-lift rocket. The company built New Glenn to challenge SpaceX in the large-launch market, but an investigation after a pad explosion can slow that schedule quickly. The stakes extend beyond Amazon’s satellite network. New Glenn is also tied to NASA’s Artemis and lunar-lander work, which means a test-stand failure can ripple into commercial, civil-space, and national launch plans at the same time. The company had also just come through another New Glenn problem in April, when a flight failed to put a satellite into the right orbit. That makes this latest failure more than one bad test. It puts fresh pressure on Blue Origin to prove the rocket, the pad, and the launch schedule can recover without handing even more ground to SpaceX. That pause is the real cost here. An investigation can stretch for weeks or months, and every week off the pad is a week SpaceX keeps flying. Blue Origin’s own public statement kept the details narrow while the company works through what failed: We experienced an anomaly during today's hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more. — Blue Origin (@blueorigin) May 29, 2026 Bezos addressed the failure publicly early on Friday, May 29. He said all personnel were accounted for and safe, that it was too early to know the root cause, and that Blue Origin would rebuild and get back to flying. That is the right tone. No spin, no excuses, no premature blame. The stakes go well beyond Amazon’s satellite plans. New Glenn also carries NASA and Artemis ambitions, which makes a clean recovery from this test failure more than a corporate problem. Bezos put the rebuild message in his own words: All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it. — Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 29, 2026 Rockets blow up. That is part of the brutal math of building hardware that has to survive its own engines. The question now is how fast Blue Origin can find the cause, fix it, and put New Glenn back on the stand. SpaceX is not waiting. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.