The RNC chose Fox for first debate but rankled conservatives by entertaining CNN

A line of TV network executives made a pilgrimage to the Republican National Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill in late February to make the case for why they should be awarded the right to host one of the party’s forthcoming primary debates.

The outlets — which ranged from established networks like CNN and NBC, to upstart channels like NewsNation and Newsmax — were allotted an hour to make their pitch. Before a group of party officials that included RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and Maryland RNC member David Bossie, the executives detailed what their plans would be, including prospective moderators and how they would reach the largest possible audience.

On Wednesday, the committee announced that Fox News would host the first event, which is slated to be held in Milwaukee in August. While the announcement was widely expected (Fox News also hosted the party’s first primary debate in 2015 and has long enjoyed a powerful place in the GOP hierarchy) it also provided an early insight into how the RNC is trying to structure the all-important debate process amid heightened tensions between the party and the fourth estate.

Many top Republicans are convinced that the debates — what format they take, who is allowed to participate and how they are designed — will play an outsize role in determining who wins the primary. They may also winnow down the field: Party officials say they are likely to implement thresholds in order for candidates to qualify for the debates; participation in the first debate could include standards like somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 donors and to be averaging at least 1 percent in polls. Those thresholds could increase in subsequent debates, potentially squeezing out lower-performing contenders.

Businessman and author Vivek Ramaswamy, a lower-polling candidate who is heavily self-funding his campaign, expressed confidence during a recent interview with POLITICO that he would make the debate stage, but said he was uncertain whether some others in the race would.

“I think it's going to be hard for some of the other candidates, especially if they didn't have an existing captive base to this race and I think we're not gonna be the ones scraping the edge of the bottom of the criteria,” said Ramaswamy, who is waging his first campaign for elected office.

Another wrinkle is that debate participants will be required to pledge their support for whoever wins the party’s nomination. Trump has refused to do so in the current race, though he did end up saying he would support the eventual nominee during the 2016 contest. It could also prove tricky for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a prospective Trump rival who has said he will never support Trump again, even if he wins the nomination.

“Why would we host a debate stage without every candidate saying, ‘I’m going to support whoever the voters choose’?” McDaniel said during a Wednesday morning appearance on Fox News, where she announced that the network would be hosting the first debate. “It’s about beating Joe Biden, it’s about beating what’s happening with this country right now, and we can only do that united, so we want every candidate to pledge that heading into this process.”

The RNC faces a number of complicated variables as it goes about deciding not just the qualifications for the debate but who should host them and when. And the prospect that mainstream outlets — such as CNN, whose chief executive officer, Chris Licht, has pitched the RNC — could be awarded debates has rankled some in the conservative media world. In recent years, CNN has emerged as a favorite punching bag for Trump and other Republicans, many of whom argue that the network’s coverage has been skewed against them.

Among those weighing in has been Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Scott, who on Wednesday launched a presidential exploratory committee, recently shared an article on Twitter that called for only conservative-leaning outlets to be awarded debates.

“I’m calling for conservatives to hear from our leaders without the media’s biased filter,” Scott wrote.

And Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator and head of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, tweeted after the Fox News debate was announced on Wednesday that he had been “told that CNN and NBC” were “getting multiple RNC debates.”

“Hope that isn’t true!” he added. “But wouldn’t surprise me.”

A person familiar with the debate planning, however, said no decisions about other hosts have yet been made.

Those familiar with the debate process say they expect television outlets to be paired with conservative online platforms as debate co-hosts. For the inaugural debate, viewers will be able to tune in on the conservative streaming platform Rumble. The event will also be co-hosted by Young America’s Foundation, an organization overseen by former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. It is not yet clear which moderators will be chosen.

One other element the committee must grapple with is Trump, who has emerged as the primary’s strong frontrunner. During the Fox News-hosted debate in 2015, the former president famously sparredwith then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. Trump has had a chilly relationship with the network in recent months, believing that it has given him less-than-favorable coverage while taking steps to promote his likely rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Recently, however, Trump has sat down with Fox News’ evening hosts, most recently Tucker Carlson.

A Trump spokesperson declined to comment on the decision to give Fox News the first debate.

But Trump advisers have privately raised concerns about the August date, with some arguing that it’s too far in advance of the first nominating contests, which are expected to take place in Feb. 2024.

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Appeals court rejects Peter Navarro’s bid to retain hundreds of presidential records

A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday rejected a bid by former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro to retain hundreds of government records despite a judge’s order to return them promptly to the National Archives.

“There is no public interest in Navarro’s retention of the records, and Congress has recognized that the public has an interest in the Nation’s possession and retention of Presidential records,” the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in a unanimous two-page order.

The Justice Department sued Navarro last year, seeking to reclaim hundreds of records — contained in Navarro’s personal ProtonMail account — that the government said should have been returned to the National Archives after the Trump administration came to an end in January 2021.

Navarro acknowledged that at least 200 to 250 records in his possession belong to the government, but he contended that no mechanism exists to enforce that requirement — and that doing so might violate his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected that claim, ordering Navarro to promptly return the records he had identified as belonging to the government.

But Navarro appealed the decision, rejecting the notion that the Justice Department had any legitimate mechanism to force him to return the records. And he urged the court to stay Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling while his appeal was pending. But the appeals court panel — which included Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, both appointees of President Barack Obama, and Judge Neomi Rao, an appointee of President Donald Trump — rejected Navarro’s stay request.

Within minutes, Kollar-Kotelly put the squeeze on Navarro, ordering him to turn over the 200 to 250 records “on or before” Friday. She also ordered him to perform additional searches or presidential records that might be in his possession by May 8, with further proceedings scheduled for later in the month.

The flurry of filings is the latest twist in a saga that began when the National Archives discovered that Navarro had relied on a ProtonMail account to do official government business — the result of a congressional investigation into the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Navarro is also trying to fend off criminal charges for defying a different congressional investigation — the probe by the Jan. 6 select committee — into his role in strategizing to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election. He faces charges for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the select committee, a case that has been repeatedly delayed amid battles over executive privilege and immunity for presidential advisers.

In its brief order rejecting Navarro’s stay, the appeals court panel concluded that returning the documents would not violate Navarro’s protection against self-incrimination.

“Navarro has failed to articulate any cognizable Fifth Amendment injury,” the panel wrote. “Because the records were voluntarily created, and he has conceded both that they are in his possession and that they are the property of the United States, the action of physically returning the United States’ records to it will not implicate his [Fifth Amendment right].”

It was not immediately clear whether Navarro would appeal the panel’s ruling.

Justice Department attorneys argued that despite Navarro’s claim, there is a method for the government to enforce its ownership interest in the records Navarro has acknowledged retaining — a provision of the Washington, D.C., code. That statute, known as “replevin,” provides a mechanism for property owners to reclaim stolen materials even while court proceedings are pending.

Navarro has contended that this procedure was not contemplated in federal recordkeeping laws and had never been used to enforce the return of presidential records before. But the appeals court panel said he had “not adequately demonstrated that the United States cannot proceed under the replevin statute.”

However, the panel said it would not “prejudge” any additional arguments about that issue that might be made as the case proceeds.

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Germany aims to 'set the record straight' on China after Macron's Taiwan comments

As Foreign Minister Baerbock heads to China, Berlin is keen to stress that Europe will neither let Taiwan nor the U.S. down.

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Trump seeks delay of defamation trial, citing ‘media frenzy’ caused by Manhattan indictment

Donald Trump argued late Tuesday that his historic indictment by a Manhattan grand jury requires a delay in another legal matter he faces: the defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump defamed her when he denied and derided her claim that he raped her decades ago.

The former president is slated to defend against those allegations in a civil trial on April 25, but his lawyer Joe Tacopina is urging U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan to postpone it for four weeks, contending that the surge in media coverage of Trump’s indictment has tainted potential jurors in the civil case.

“Holding the trial in this case a mere three weeks after these historic events will guarantee that many, if not most, prospective jurors will have the criminal allegations top of mind when judging President Trump against Ms. Carroll’s allegations,” Tacopina argued in a late-night filing, contending that the intensity of media coverage was “remarkable for its volume and incitement of animus towards President Trump” among potential jurors.

Tacopina acknowledged that Trump draws blanket media coverage at nearly all times — but he said Google searches indicated a particularly intense surge of coverage of the charges brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg earlier this month. Those charges include claims that Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an affair. Because those charges relate to Carroll’s claims of “sexual misconduct,” Tacopina said, there’s a particularly acute risk that jurors in the civil trial will conflate the issues.

Kaplan has seemed intent on charging ahead with Trump’s civil case despite the surrounding chaos caused by the indictment. He recently backed a bid to permit jurors in the civil trial anonymity, citing the potential threats to their safety caused by Trump’s rhetoric — particularly toward Bragg and the judge in his criminal case.

But Trump’s effort to delay the civil case until at least May 23 underscores the extraordinary challenge of subjecting a former president — particularly one who garners intense media coverage at all times — to a civil or criminal trial before an impartial jury.

Trump’s tangle of legal threats is only likely to intensify, as several other criminal matters approach the charging stage. That includes an investigation by Atlanta-area DA Fani Willis, who has said charging decisions for Trump and his allies are “imminent” in a case about his bid to subvert Georgia’s election laws in 2020. At the federal level, special counsel Jack Smith appears to be reaching the final stages of his probe into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office, and he’s begun penetrating Trump’s inner circle in a separate probe of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.

Tacopina didn’t mention those other looming matters. Rather he said he expected a “cooling off” period after the Manhattan indictment to arrive by late May, when the immediacy of the Bragg news had faded. The next big milestone in that case, he said, was in August, when Trump is expected to file a motion to dismiss his case.

Carroll responded to Trump's effort Wednesday afternoon, contending that Trump himself is often responsible for driving the media interest and coverage in his legal troubles.

"If anything, it is somewhat perverse for Trump to seek a continuance in these proceedings based on the recent indictment when so much of the publicity he complains about has been driven by his own incendiary statements," wrote Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

Carroll noted that Trump has turned his indictment into a bid for fundraising and selling campaign merchandise, and he appeared on Fox News just hours before seeking a delay in the civil trial and discussed his pending indictment.

"Not surprisingly, Trump’s mounting legal difficulties have given rise to substantial press coverage and will continue to do so; he is not only a former President, but also a declared candidate in the next presidential election," Kaplan wrote. "As a result, each passing week will offer Trump yet another straw to grasp at in his campaign to avoid standing trial for sexually assaulting Carroll."

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Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin announces reelection bid

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced Wednesday that she is running for a third term as Democrats look to hold onto control of their slim Senate majority.

“I'm committed to making sure that working people, not just the big corporations and ultra-wealthy, have a fighter on their side. With so much at stake, from families struggling with rising costs to a ban on reproductive freedom, Wisconsinites need someone who can fight and win,” Baldwin said in a statement.

Baldwin’s reference to reproductive freedom in the state comes as liberals flipped the ideological makeup of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court earlier this month. The new 4-3 majority is much more likely to strike down a controversial 19th-century abortion ban in the state.

Baldwin, 61, became Wisconsin's first woman senator and the country's first openly gay senator with her election in 2012. Baldwin won reelection in 2018. Last year, Baldwin gained national attention for helping spearhead a bill protecting the rights of same-sex marriage, which passed last November.

Democrats face a challenging 2024 Senate map with 20 Democrats and three independents up for reelection.

No Republicans have formally announced plans to run against Baldwin next year.

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NPR leaves Twitter after 'government-funded media' label

NPR announced on Wednesday that it would cease posting to Twitter altogether after the social media company labeled the news outlet “state-affiliated media” last week.

“NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent,” NPR said in a statement. “We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence.”

The move makes NPR the first major media outlet to exit the platform.

NPR paused tweeting from its main account on Friday because of the label but continued to tweet from other accounts that didn’t have the designation. Twitter then revised its label on NPR’s account to “government-funded media,” which remains on NPR’s main account. On Wednesday, NPR tweeted a series of links to its app, newsletters and other social media accounts.

“Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent,” NPR’s chief executive, John Lansing, said in a statement.

According to a breakdown of NPR’s finances, less than 1 percent of the news outlet’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies and departments.

When asked about NPR’s new labeling on Twitter, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last Wednesday that “social media companies make their own independent decisions about content rules.”

However, “there’s no doubt of the independence of NPR’s journalists. … NPR journalists work diligently to hold public officials accountable and inform the American people,” she said. “The hard-hitting independence nature of their coverage speaks for itself.”

The issue of the “state media” label came up with Twitter CEO Elon Musk during a recent interview with BBC, which had also been given the designation “government funded media.”

“I know the BBC is generally not thrilled about being labeled state media,” Musk said in the interview.

The label was changed to “publicly funded media” after BBC reached out to Twitter, but it still links to the social media platform’s page about government and state-affiliated media.

As for next steps, NPR will be instituting a “two-week grace period” so that its staff who run the social media accounts can restrategize. Individuals at NPR can determine for themselves whether or not to stay on Twitter.

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Britain's Truss warns of Western 'weakness' over China in wake of Macron visit

"We need to make sure Taiwan is able to defend itself," according to the former prime minister.

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