What we learned from Ted Cruz vs. Tucker Carlson
CNN
When Sen. Ted Cruz went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in 2022, he was there to make amends.
When Sen. Ted Cruz went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in 2022, he was there to make amends. The Texas Republican’s offense was having called the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol a “violent terrorist attack.” This kind of view was quickly falling out of favor as Donald Trump moved to sanitize January 6. So Cruz disowned what he had said the day before to a cable host who had just savaged him for it. It was a stunning scene: a US senator feeling compelled to grovel to a cable TV host who had targeted him for saying January 6 was very bad. But it epitomized the MAGA zeitgeist and shifting power dynamics, in which extreme enforcers like Carlson had to be appeased. Three years later, Cruz this week joined Carlson on Carlson’s own network for a very different purpose – but also one that recognized the former Fox anchor’s heft on the right. This time, Cruz was there to try and marginalize a man who is suddenly a big problem for the Trump administration. Carlson has criticized the Trump-backed Israeli strikes on Iran and strongly opposes the US joining in those strikes, which Trump is increasingly considering. Carlson’s opposition had already earned a sharp comment from the president, who called him “kooky Tucker Carlson.” Cruz was there to argue that maybe this guy that he and other Republicans have been so solicitous of is indeed a crank.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.