In today’s edition … Something is happening in Iowa … We ask you about extinction scenarios involving artificial intelligence … but first …
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President Donald Trump had a really rough week last week. Crude oil prices kept spiking with no sign of abating. He lost his mail-in ballot case at the Supreme Court. The Fed didn’t listen to him and raised rates. A few Republicans voted against the Iran war. And poll after poll showed his party in a dire political position ahead of the midterms.
So what did the president do to turn things around? He banned three outlets — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — from the White House on Friday. On Saturday, when those outlets showed up to work, they were not allowed in.
The conflict came to a head today when the outlets filed a suit against the Trump administration, and the five major television networks halted video coverage of presidential events in solidarity with CNN.
As we wrote about yesterday, Trump has sparred with the media for years, long before he even ran for office. But both the timing and response have been compelling.
Trump’s administration is in a rough patch. The looming midterms could be a damning indictment of his first two years in office, and he seems unable — or unwilling — to address the war in Iran, the price shocks caused by his tariffs, and other main drivers of that anger.
This attempt to block reporters from the White House could be seen as a distraction — as a way to rally supporters around him as he opens a new front in his long-running war on what he calls “fake news.” The news media certainly isn’t particularly popular or trusted by Americans. But Trump’s ban does nothing to address the issues voters are facing, and it’s highly unlikely any voter will be moved — either way — by this fight with reporters.
That is why the real takeaway is how the TV network’s response to Trump deprives him of what he craves most: attention.
Covering the White House is a unique assignment. Because of space and cost constraints, the five networks create a so-called pool, rotating days where each outlet covers events involving the president for the entire group. This lets the president get his message out to all networks and gives him the platform he needs to push his administration’s message to the American people.
When Trump left the White House yesterday afternoon, no television cameras from the pool aired his departure, starving him of a chance to push his message. The White House attempted to counter this dynamic by live-streaming their own events. “Just the news that matters most — straight from the Trump Administration,” the White House X account said. But their post on his departure, which included him cutting the ribbon on a new White House helipad, was mostly just static helicopter noise, giving viewers no chance to hear what the president was saying.
The blackout mostly continued when he arrived in New York. And the real test of the network’s resolve will come on Tuesday, when Trump is slated to be at the United Nations, and there will be multiple venues where the pool would be one of the few cameras covering the president’s meetings with other world leaders.
Trump has long subscribed to the idea that all press is good press.
“Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all,” Trump wrote in his book, “The Art of the Deal.”
But the coming days will test whether Trump is willing to accept less publicity altogether.
Something is happening in Iowa.
Trump has won the state all three times he has been on the ballot, including by 13 points in 2024. Republicans dominate nearly every elected office in the state, which has shifted right since Barack Obama won it in 2008 and 2012.
So why are so many Republicans there breaking with Trump right now?
Because of the president’s conflict with Iran, which is having an outsize impact on the state’s farm economy. Farmers rely heavily on diesel fuel, which has reached record prices, and shipping issues tied to the Iran war have also raised prices on fertilizer and other farm inputs.
The effect of that is that Republicans in Iowa, all of whom have cheered Trump’s rise for years, are now being tied to his deeply unpopular conflict and its repercussions.
Yesterday, Rep. Ashley Hinson, Republican’s Senate candidate in Iowa, acknowledged that “Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran” and wrote on X that “the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end.” It comes days after she did not appear alongside Vice President JD Vance while he was campaigning in western Iowa.
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Sen. Chuck Grassley, the state’s senior Republican senator, wrote on Saturday that Trump should “put an embargo on diesel exports like presidents in the 70s put embargoes on ag products bc food prices were inflated.”
“High diesel prices ARE KILLING FARMERS INCOME,” he wrote.
And last week both Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, two vulnerable Republican House candidates, broke with their party and voted to end the Iran war. “I will not support another open-ended war,” wrote Nunn, an Air Force veteran.
Hinson, notably, did not join the others and voted to continue the war, which her Democratic opponent, state Rep. Josh Turek, quickly noted.
“It’s easy to send a tweet but when you had the chance to vote to end this war, you chose not to. You voted seven times to continue it, including just last week,” Turek wrote.
So what should you make of all this? It’s worth keeping an eye on Iowa over the next few weeks — it may quickly become the nation’s most politically compelling state.
Los Angeles Times: Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Brothers seems on track now that the David Ellison-backed company and state attorneys general have struck an agreement on the proposed $111 billion purchase.
Alaska Beacon: The Senate race in Alaska, the publication writes, is a “fight over fish.” Fishing is central to many aspects of Alaskan life, from its economy to native culture.
Georgia Recorder: Curbing corporate landlords is the latest target in the affordable housing debate and has earned bipartisan support.
Many of you were happy to see the TV outlets band together to confront Trump’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from covering the White House.
“Trump’s attempted ban on disfavored media outlets can best be summed up in one word: ‘Cowardice,’” wrote Dan Thompson.
Jim Prah labeled Trump’s anger a “Trumpertantrum.”
And Marc Weiss wrote that Trump’s ban “is clearly a violation of the First Amendment.”
“A much more immediate and effective response would be for White House correspondents of dozens of news organizations to stop interviewing Trump and stop showing up at WH news conferences,” Weiss wrote.
Doris B. Mabrey predicted a win for journalists in court. “If not, the country is in deeper trouble than we thought,” wrote Mabrey.
And what should Democrats do if/when they take back control of the White House? Many of you said conservative outlets should not be banned.
“Banning conservative news organizations would be repeating an error of judgment,” wrote Jan Clausen. “Free speech means that no one is excused from criticism, which may or may not be accurate. It is up to the subject of the criticism to respond with their own position. And debate may then ensue. That’s how it works.”
Concerns about AI are running rampant, but some of the most dire center on extinction scenarios involving artificial intelligence. Are you that worried about AI? Do you think the technology could, as some have warned, kill all humans? Or are these fears overblown? Let me and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
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