Megyn Kelly’s One-Sided Beef With Taylor Swift: A Timeline

Megyn Kelly’s One-Sided Beef With Taylor Swift: A Timeline

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The commentator has called the star a bad sport, an “elite snob” and much more over the years.

Taylor Swift and Megyn Kelly

Gilbert Flores/Golden Globes 2024; Ivan Apfel/Getty Images

Taylor Swift has never publicly addressed Megyn Kelly, but that hasn’t prevented the pop superstar from pushing the conservative commentator’s buttons.

As Swift has become more politically involved in the latter years of her career, frequently aligning herself with liberal politicians and the Democratic party, Kelly — whose own political views are diametrically opposed to the “Anti-Hero” singer’s — has made her disapproval clear on more than one occasion. The Fox News alum has also taken issue in the past with Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s relationship, be it the frequency with which news networks cover their romance or the couple’s actions that led Kelly to deem them “elite snobs.”

But while Swift is one of Kelly’s go-to topics of discussion in the music world, she isn’t the only artist who’s grabbed the Megyn Kelly Show host’s attention. Kelly has also come after everyone from Katy Perry — for posting an edited version of Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s controversial commencement speech at Benedictine College — to Usher over his 2024 Super Bowl Halftime Show performance and Zach Bryan for, ironically, walking back on his claim that Ye (formerly Kanye West) is better than Swift in a since-deleted tweet.

Even so, Swift is one artist in particular about whom Kelly has had a lot to say. Whether you’re looking to reminisce on a chronological history of the anchor’s issues with the pop star or checking back for updates as they unfold, keep reading to see Billboard‘s timeline of their one-sided beef below.


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Tina Peters, wearing a blue double breasted blazer with a white shirt, walks down a white hallway outside a courtroom flanked by a supporter wearing a blue shirt.

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years behind bars

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CPR covered each day of the Peters’ trial. You can read our explainer of the case here, and catch up on individual days here.

Updated on Oct. 3, 2024, at 2:30 p.m.

Tina Peters is headed to prison. 

The former Mesa County Clerk was sentenced to nine years of incarceration, most of which will be served in the Colorado Department of Corrections. 

Peters’ attorneys indicated they plan to appeal.

21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett preceded his sentence with a blistering critique of her actions and attitude, calling Peters an attention-seeking former official who only thinks about herself. 

“You are no hero,” Barrett told Peters. “You’re a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.” 

Barrett handed down the sentence in front of a packed courtroom that included supporters of Peters, several uniformed sheriff’s deputies and local elected officials. An overflow crowd gathered just outside the courtroom, streaming the proceedings on their phones from feet away. 

In August, Peters was found guilty by a jury of Mesa County residents on seven counts, including four felonies, after she helped facilitate unauthorized access to county voting equipment that she was supposed to safeguard in search of voter fraud. Her supporters have never shown that the machines were involved in any sort of election manipulation.

During Thursday’s hearing, the prosecution argued that Peters should face the maximum penalty for most, if not all, of the charges. 

“I don’t think anybody in this room would make a straight-faced argument that Mrs. Peters has demonstrated any respect for the law,” 21st Judicial District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said. He noted that she continues to argue she never did anything wrong.

“Ms. Peters has made this community a joke. She’s made respecting law enforcement a joke, made respecting court orders a joke. She’s not accepted any responsibility and considers this a badge of honor,” said Rubinstein.

Courtesy of Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Tina Peters walks down the hallway at the Mesa County Justice Center Monday after closing arguments on the final day of her criminal trial. The former Mesa County clerk was found guilty on 7 of 10 charges.

Ahead of sentencing, Peters asked for probation. She said she recognized the jury’s decision to find her guilty on most of the counts, but that the jury wasn’t allowed to hear other evidence she wanted to present. That evidence was largely tied to conspiracies about the county’s Dominion Voting Machines, which were ruled inadmissible. 

“I’m not a criminal and I don’t deserve to go into a prison where other people have committed heinous crimes,” Peters told the judge tearfully. She showed the judge pictures of her deceased husband and her son, a Navy Seal who died in the line of duty. She asked for probation in part to be able to keep visiting her 95-year-old mother in Virginia. 

“I’m remorseful. Yes sir, I really am,” said Peters. “I never expected that just doing an image which was completely legal, before and after the trusted build would’ve landed me here. I thought it was going to come out quietly.”

But Barrett said his sentence was not just about punishment and the acceptance of responsibility but also deterrence. A stiff sentence, Barrett said, would ensure other elected officials respect the responsibilities of their office. 

“I’m convinced you would do it all over again if you could,” Barrett said. “You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”  

Impact statements present dueling views of Peters

The prosecution and defense were each given an hour to make their case ahead of Barrett’s sentencing decision. 

Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis said the estimated cost of Peters’ actions to Mesa County taxpayers was $1.4 million. That includes Peters’s salary while she was barred from the elections office, as well as numerous recounts the county paid for to prove their elections were accurate. 

While Davis explained the efforts to convince the public that Peters’ claims were untrue, Barrett interjected to ask what the hand count and other recounts showed. 

“I want to know, what was the difference?” Barrett asked. 

“They were identical,” Davis said, of the votes,  noting that a hand count as well as a tabulation by a different voting machine company confirmed the election tallies were accurate. “No material difference.” 

“No material difference whatsoever,” Barrett echoed. 

Davis also said Peters’ damage to the county went beyond the budget, to its broader reputation.

“People from across Colorado and other states now associate Mesa County, not with our natural beauty or agriculture, but with the infamous actions of Ms. Peters. Her behavior has made this county a national laughing stock, overshadowing our accomplishments and our values,” Davis concluded.

An exterior shot of a courthouse with the Colorado and USA flags in front.

Tom Hesse/CPR News

The Mesa County Justice Center at 125 N. Spruce Street in Grand Junction is the site of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ criminal trial.

Former Republican Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis called for Peters to face the consequences of her actions; he referred to her as a disgrace and said all of her allegations of fraudulent votes amount to nothing. 

“They have never produced not one fraudulent vote, your Honor, not one fraudulent vote in Mesa County. Despite all these allegations, despite all these studies,” said McInnis.

Peters’ defense presented character witnesses from her life, one who spoke tearfully about her as a friend and a gold-star mother who lost her son in a military accident.

“She is not a threat to the community, she’s not a threat to the state,” said California pastor Dave Bryan, who asked Barrett not to sentence Peters to prison time, but instead to order her to serve probation at his church in California. “She’s never been a threat to any other human being and (a prison sentence) could only smack of political vindication.” 

Former Republican Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder also testified in support of Peters; he implored the judge not to incarcerate her for “searching for the truth.” 

“That is tyranny at its worst when people are afraid to be able to stand up and say what they truly believe and to investigate things,” said Shroeder. Schroeder was sued by the state over copies he made of Elbert County’s election machine hard drives around the same time as Peters.

A man named Dallas Schroeder in a gray suit, white dress shirt and triangle-patterned tie sits at a wooden table with a microphone in front of him waiting to testify in a courtroom in Grand Junction.

Screenshot from KREX livestream

Former Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder testifies Friday, Aug. 9, in Grand Junction. It was the eighth day of the trial of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.

Barrett questioned Schroeder on why Peters needed to do more than audit and count the ballots.

“You want to evaluate it in a clearer way than actually going back and looking at what the machine told you the results were and then counting the ballots yourself?” Barrett asked. 

Schroeder said it still makes sense for clerks to have the opportunity to see everything that’s going on within the elections system. 

The sentence is the culmination of a multi-year investigation and legal fight

Peters was found guilty of three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. She was also convicted of first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with an order from the Secretary of State, all misdemeanors.

The investigation began a little more than three years ago when images taken during a secure update of Mesa County’s voting equipment surfaced online. At the same time, a copy of Mesa County’s hard drive was displayed and discussed at a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has been at the center of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks to the press during a rally for Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on the Colorado Capitol steps. April 5, 2022.

Over the course of a lengthy trial, prosecutors laid out a timeline demonstrating that Peters had begun meeting with election conspiracy theorists in early 2021 about assumed “irregularities” in voting totals. In response, Peters and others hatched a plan to bring in an unauthorized person to observe a software update of Dominion Voting Machines. The plot involved creating security credentials for a local man named Gerald Wood and using those credentials to help another man gain access to voting equipment. 

That man was retired surfer Conan Hayes, who clandestinely joined the software update and made copies of sensitive information that ended up online. That deceit was what the jury found Peters guilty of. 

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Scott McInnis as a former Mesa County Clerk. He’s a former county commissioner who was in office at the time the election security breach came to light.


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Learning to Love Patriotism Again, as Jimmy Carter Turns 100

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In 2017, I traveled with my two teenage children to Plains, Ga., from Jacksonville, Fla., to hear Jimmy Carter teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church.

My son Gibson asked for this trip to celebrate his 17th birthday. A fierce and unusual admirer of the Carter presidency, he’d recently written a high school history paper on Jimmy Carter’s Administration and the rise of arch-conservatism, and we had all been rattled by Donald Trump’s “carnage” inauguration address that month.

The three of us spent a pastoral Saturday roaming around Plains, visiting Carter’s childhood home and peanut farm, his brother Billy’s gas station and the train depot that became the presidential campaign headquarters in 1975. We stood as a southern family in the Carter visitor’s center, housed in the high school where the future President and First Lady were students. We admired Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize and took pictures of sitting at a replica of his Oval Office desk. As we wandered from exhibit to exhibit, it was easy to fall back to 1976.

I was a 10-year-old in Jacksonville that year when the American Bicentennial permeated everything—television, magazines, clothing, commemorative this and that. Not just coins, spoons and the like, but our Avon lady could sell us perfume in a bottle shaped like Betsy Ross sewing the flag or soaps with George and Martha Washington’s likeness molded onto them. I could dig around in the Cheerios box to get first dibs on the Stars and Stripes stickers or send away for a Bicentennial scratch-and-sniff coloring book with my Applejacks.

It felt like a patriotic party that the whole country was invited to. I was all in. As my mama used to say about me, you aren’t happy unless every day is a parade, and for once it felt like it was.

Read more: Former President Jimmy Carter Is Still Building His Legacy, One Home at a Time

And I was a very earnest child—as evidenced by my own ways of celebrating the Bicentennial, which included learning military hymns, memorizing the Gettysburg Address, and staging a variety show on the carport attached to our cinderblock home. My best friend played Thomas Jefferson and I was Ben Franklin, our pant legs shoved awkwardly into our knee socks, trying to make it look like we were wearing breeches. The most remarkable part of the whole thing was not that the neighborhood kids actually showed up, but that not a one made fun of us, at least not to our faces.

What I was most proud of though, were the four poems I wrote honoring our country’s birthday, with which I won the northeast Florida Girl Scouts regional talent show at Camp Kateri. This was no mean feat, since among my competition was a girl who played “One Tin Soldier” on her flute and another who performed a karate routine to the song, “Kung Fu Fighting.”

But it wasn’t just the Bicentennial that had me aflutter with patriotism.

A southern peanut farmer, hailing from the same state as my daddy’s side of the family going back to the 17th century, was running for President.

And his appeal ran deeper than his familiar drawl. Despite being deeply religious, Jimmy Carter didn’t come across as judgey. When he spoke, it was with a steady calm and a good-natured intelligence. I felt inexplicably proud, as though he and his family were our better-off relations.

I’d lie in bed that year and dream up scenarios in which our paths would cross, say, like the Carter campaign was coming to Jacksonville and we’d be chosen as the average American family for them to spend an evening with. Because we both wore glasses and loved to read, I knew his daughter Amy and I would hit it off, maybe over a game of Parcheesi, and before you knew it, I’d be flying off to the White House for sleepovers.

I found it disappointing that despite all my perceived commonalities, my daddy still didn’t vote for him. But in our fifth-grade class election, I did—probably my first act of rebellion against my father. That said, I do remember daddy announcing that he was glad to finally see a Southern man on TV who wasn’t depicted as a halfwit all the time.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when my understanding of what it meant to be patriotic came to mean something different entirely.

I felt it in 1979, when conservative Christians organized into voting constituencies. I felt it too in the “Republican Revolution” of ’94 when Newt Gingrich presented his Contract for America, and definitely in 2009, when the Tea Party was up in arms about Obama. By 2016, when Trump became President, it was as though the Republican Party had absconded with patriotism completely, and a large part of Christianity to boot.

Read more: Jimmy Carter’s Secret to Living to 99, According to His Grandson

By the time Jan. 6 happened, I figured the idea of patriotism could never, ever again mean what it used to. Instead of a sense of shared pride, it seethed with anger and coveted control.

But on that day in Plains in 2017, it was impossible to not feel patriotic in the nostalgic sense, not to find “fresh faith in an old dream,” to quote President Carter himself.

The next day, sitting in the pew with my children while Jimmy taught us Sunday school, then having our picture taken with him and Rosalyn after church, made the 10-year-old girl in me grin as though it were 1976 all over again. I couldn’t help but wonder, as Plains disappeared in the rear-view mirror, if it were still possible that someone like him could ever be President again.

It’s been eight or so years since that pilgrimage. I’m remembering it now because, in the speeches Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have delivered in Minnesota, Arizona, and Nebraska, I hear echoes of the same aims Carter spoke of—that “the test of government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few, but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who depend on it.” And also, of course, because Uncle Jimmy (as I respectfully and longingly call him) is turning 100 on Tuesday, and is proof positive that the good can live to see the impact of their endeavors spread throughout the world.

Even more than I did in the town of Plains that day, I have fresh faith in that old dream that suddenly feels new again.


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Teamsters decide not to make 2024 presidential endorsement

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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse in the 2024 presidential race, becoming the only one of the nation’s major 10 unions not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a statement, the union said it had “few commitments on top Teamsters issues from either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris—and found no definitive support among members for either party’s nominee.”

The Teamsters is one of the largest unions in the U.S., with 1.3 million members, including large numbers of transportation and public works employees.

After the Teamsters general executive board announced it would not endorse, several joint councils representing most active and retired Teamsters in the battleground states of Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin came out in support of Harris.

“As Vice President of the most pro-union administration ever, Kamala Harris worked with the Teamsters and other union workers to pass the historic Butch Lewis Act which has saved the pensions of over a million retirees to date,” said Bill Carroll, President of Teamsters Joint Council 39, in Wisconsin. “This November we will work with millions of union workers across the country to defeat Donald Trump once again.”

Although the national Teamsters union has endorsed Democrats since 1996, when it did not endorse a candidate, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July. The last time the Teamsters endorsed the GOP candidate in a presidential election was in 1988 for then-candidate George H.W. Bush. They also endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and Richard Nixon in 1972. 

In the announcement of its decision Wednesday, the labor union cited a lack of commitment from both Trump and Harris to “not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike.” The union said neither candidate pledged to avoid government intervention in railroad or airline strikes. In 2022, Mr. Biden signed legislation that imposed a labor agreement on rail workers to avert a strike during the holidays. 

Marathon Oil Union Workers Strike In Detroit
Teamsters Union members picket at the Marathon Petroleum Detroit refinery on September 4, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. 

Bill Pugliano / Getty Images


The Teamsters noted that Harris did pledge to sign the PRO Act, which would strengthen the right to unionize, and Trump would not commit to vetoing “right to work” legislation in a second term. 

O’Brien forced the union’s first-ever roundtable interview process for the 2024 endorsement at the end of last year, inviting all major-party candidates to make their case for the union’s support. Union leadership met with former President Donald Trump, as well President Biden earlier this year. In July, Harris replaced Mr. Biden as the Democratic nominee and met with the Teamsters on Monday.

O’Brien said the Monday meeting with Harris focused on the same questions as the previous roundtables with Trump and Mr. Biden. O’Brien said the rank-and-file members advocated for the passage of the PRO Act and the veto of any “Right to Work” laws. He added that Harris acknowledged the diversity of political opinion among the Teamsters, while also criticizing her Republican opponent during the conversation.

“The roundtable went really well,” O’Brien said. “One thing that’s important, we have the same roundtable that we’ve had for all the presidential candidates that have come in. We’ve asked the same question to each candidate, mostly Teamsters specific issues. We also ask questions regarding legislation such as the PRO Act, bankruptcy reform and antitrust.”

O’Brien said earlier this month on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” he hadn’t endorsed in the 2024 presidential race yet because he had yet to meet Harris, and “you don’t hire someone unless you give them an interview.”

The Teamsters executive board met on Wednesday following its meeting with Harris to discuss the  endorsement decision. 

The union conducted polling before Mr. Biden exited the presidential race, and found a plurality of its members backed him over Trump, 44% to 36%. But in a subsequent poll of Harris and Trump, the former president won far more support, 60% to 34%, and in a second poll that concluded on Sept. 15, members again chose Trump by a large margin, 58% to 31%.  

In a statement, the Trump campaign touted the poll numbers showing support, saying that “while the Executive Board of the Teamsters is making no formal endorsement, the vast majority of rank-and-file working men and women in this important organization want President Donald Trump back in the White House.”

In response to the Teamsters’ decision, Harris spokesperson Lauren Hitt touted Harris’ ties to organized labor, pointing out that she walked with a United Auto Workers picket line in 2019. Hitt also noted Trump’s recent comments during an interview with Elon Musk suggesting that striking workers should be fired. The United Auto Workers filed federal labor charges against Musk and Trump, accusing them of trying to “intimidate and threaten” workers. 

“As the Vice President told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what,” Hitt added.

“I work with a lot of Republicans… and I’m getting a lot of positive push for Trump,” said Brett Ohnstad, a Teamsters member and corrections officer in Minnesota. “However, we’re not looking at who’s going to be the candidate that fills the whole gamut. We’re looking here at just who is going to support labor.” 

“Our members are the union, and their voices and opinions must be at the forefront of everything the Teamsters do,” O’Brien said. “Our final decision around a possible Presidential endorsement will not be made lightly, but you can be sure it will be driven directly by our diverse membership.”

Some factions within the Teamsters, such as the Teamsters’ National Black Caucus, broke with O’Brien earlier this year and endorsed Harris. 

James Curbeam, the head of the Teamsters National Black Caucus, said he was not surprised by the board’s decision but expressed skepticism about how reflective the polling is of the rank-and-file, claiming only a fraction of the total Teamsters membership participated in the online polling. CBS News has reached out to the Teamsters for further details on the polling.

“It’s a disappointment that our overall international [board] didn’t do it, but locals and joint councils know the right thing to do,” Curbeam added.

The decision could influence certain battleground states in the Nov. 5 election where union membership is strong, including Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. 

O’Brien made waves at this year’s Republican National Convention after delivering one of the most anti-big business speeches in recent RNC memory and becoming the first boss in the organization’s 121-year history to address the convention. He was not invited to speak at the Democratic National Committee.

“Today, the Teamsters are here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party,” O’Brien said during the July speech. “We will create an agenda and work with a bipartisan coalition, ready to accomplish something real for the American worker. And I don’t care about getting criticized.”


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Trump Media shares plunge after Harris debate

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Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks away during a commercial break as US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris take notes during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. 

Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

The share price of Trump Media plunged more than 10% on Wednesday, a day after majority shareholder Donald Trump gave a widely panned presidential debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris.

The company’s stock price closed at its lowest level since the Truth Social app owner began publicly trading as DJT on the Nasdaq in late March.

Investing in Trump Media stock is often seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee.

Trump Media has said its business hinges at least partly on Trump’s popularity, and analysts say the company’s value will rise or fall based on his electoral prospects.

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Trump Media (DJT) Share Price

The stock drop Wednesday could signal that some Trump’s supporters were not pleased with what they saw at Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia.

Liberal and conservative political commentators said Harris appeared more prepared, articulate and even-keeled than Trump, who repeatedly bit on bait that she tossed to throw him off topic.

Harris’ team, projecting confidence, challenged Trump to another debate right after the first one ended.

Trump said he may not agree to that. In a Truth Social post Wednesday, he repeated his claim that Harris only wanted another debate because she was “beaten badly.”

“Why would I do a Rematch?” he wrote in the post.

Trump Media had surged as much as 10% during trading Tuesday, possibly indicating optimism about how Trump would fare in the debate.

The company’s gains on Monday and Tuesday were a respite from a weekslong rout that saw the stock price sink as much as 75% from its intraday high in late March, when then-privately held Trump Media merged with a blank-check firm.

Read more CNBC politics coverage

The slump coincided with President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.

It also came in the run-up to the date when Trump and other company insiders can start selling their shares.

Trump owns nearly 57% of the company’s stock. That stake at Wednesday’s closing price was worth about $1.9 billion.

It is unclear if Trump plans to start selling off his stake when a lock-up agreement lifts on Sept. 19.

Correction: Donald Trump owns nearly 57% of Trump Media’s stock. An earlier version misstated the percentage.

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Zuckerberg alleges White House ‘pressured’ Meta to ‘censor’ Covid-19 content

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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” in Dirksen building on Wednesday, January 31, 2024.

Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

The Biden Administration “pressured” Facebook-parent Meta to “censor” content related to Covid-19, the social media giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg alleged, adding that he regrets some of the decisions taken in relation to the U.S. government’s requests.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee.

The letter was posted on the Committee’s Facebook page and on its account on the X social media platform on Monday.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the letter’s authenticity to CNBC.

Zuckerberg said it was ultimately Meta’s decision to take down any content, but he noted he believes that the so-called “government pressure was wrong.”

“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said.

NBC News has reached out to the White House for comment Tuesday morning, but did not immediately receive a response.

In a statement to Politico, the White House said: “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” it added.

Zuckerberg said Meta made some choices that, “with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” the tech giant would not make again.

“Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg said.

In August 2021, Facebook said it had removed more than 20 million posts related to Covid-19 for violating its content rules across the main social networking site and Instagram.

That year, the White House criticized social media firms, including Facebook, for allowing misinformation related to the Coronavirus to spread across their platforms.

Zuckerberg’s letter underscores the ongoing debate about the extent to which social media firms should moderate content.

The House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has alleged that big technology firms colluded with the government to censor speech.

Zuckerberg also discussed his position on the upcoming U.S. presidential vote, noting that he made contributions via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative toward electoral infrastructure during the previous round at the polls. He said he will not be doing that for the upcoming election.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” Zuckerberg said.


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Breaking: Tulsi Gabbard endorses Donald Trump

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Former Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has just endorsed Donald Trump for president, saying he will keep America out of endless wars.

“I am committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House,” Gabbard said.

Gabbard ran for president in 2019 and is known for her brilliant take-down of Kamala Harris during a debate in which she criticized Harris for jailing hundreds of people for marijuana violations while she was attorney general of California, but bragged about her own use of pot. Harris went on to win not a single delegate vote that year and quickly dropped.

“She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said of Harris during that debate.

Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022, declaring it an “elitist cabal of warmongers.”

Watch her endorsement at a in Michigan on Monday at the National Guard Association rally:

Her endorsement comes on the heels of an endorsement by another Democrat free-thinker, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who left the Democratic Party last year.

RFK Jr endorses Trump


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Sen. Bernie Sanders: We need an economy that works for all of us, not just billionaires

Bernie Sanders DNC speech contrast to Harris on liberal policies

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., spent his primetime appearance at Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention laying out his own policy priorities — even ones that he knows diverge from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign platform.

“We need to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a human right, not a privilege,” Sanders said, doubling down on his longstanding support for a Medicare for All program.

The Independent senator running for reelection in Vermont was well aware that Harris does not share his position on universal healthcare.

“We need Medicare for All,” he said in a Monday interview with Politico. “That’s not her view, nor is it President Biden’s point of view. And you know what, I think I’m right and they’re wrong.”

During his DNC speech, Sanders also railed against the influence of big money in politics, in spite of all the billionaire megadonors helping to fund Harris’ campaign.

“Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections—including primary elections,” Sanders said.

Harris has a well-documented Rolodex of billionaire megadonors helping fund her campaign, along with millions more in small-dollar donations.

“We must take on big pharma big oil, big ag, big tech and all the other corporate monopolists whose greed is denying progress for working people,” Sanders said.

By making universal healthcare, money in politics and class warfare all key planks of his DNC speech — and by never extolling Harris’ virtues, Sanders knowingly bucked an unspoken rule of presidential conventions: Speakers are expected to sing the praises of the party’s nominee.

Read more CNBC politics coverage

And while he offered a quick note of support for Harris’ election fight against former President Donald Trump, Sanders’ positions effectively drew a contrast with the vice president.

Sanders’ speech on Tuesday was not the first time he expressed noticeably tepid support for Harris.

“She’s a great campaigner,” Sanders said of Harris in the Monday Politico interview. “We’re not best friends, but I’ve known her for many years.”

Sanders said Monday that while he supports Harris, he stands by his belief that President Joe Biden could have carried out a second term, a view that is not shared by most of his party’s leaders.

Sanders remained fervently loyal to Biden even after his disastrous debate that led Democratic party members to voice concerns about his reelection bid.

Not so radical?

But Sanders’ decision to highlight some of the distance between himself and Harris, though unconventional, could ultimately be an asset to the vice president, as she works to appeal to moderate, undecided voters.

An August poll from the New York Times and Siena College found that 45% of likely voters felt Harris was too liberal or too progressive in the battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

That sentiment is in part a result of Trump’s effort to paint Harris as a radical progressive, an attempt to scare off Democrat-curious undecided voters who may lean more moderate.

“Comrade Kamala Harris is terrible for our Country. She is a Communist, has always been a Communist, and will always be a Communist,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday.

But Sanders’ half-hearted enthusiasm for Harris offers a direct rebuttal to those Republican attacks.

A Democratic Socialist and one of the farthest left lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Sanders is a reminder for center-leaning voters that there are plenty of Democrats who are far more radical than the vice president.

That message might already have begun to take hold with the electorate.

Austin Davis, a 29-year old self-declared communist from Chicago, told NBC News on Tuesday that he does not consider Harris a communist.

“Kamala is not a communist,” he said. “Any person who can understand even the basic definition knows that she’s not a communist.”


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The Chicks National Anthem at 2024 DNC: Watch

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The Chicks hit the stage at the 2024 Democratic National Convention on Thursday night (Aug. 22) to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” on the fourth and final night of the DNC at Chicago’s United Center before a crowd fired up and waiting for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to speak.

Introduced as the winners of 13 Grammy Awards and the “biggest-selling U.S. female group of all time,” the trio — Natalie Maines and sisters Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire — walked out, clad in muted gray and black outfits, and said not a word before delivered a stunning a cappella version of the anthem filled with intricate, layered harmonies. With beaming grins and waves, they left the stage.

The trio plugged their performance on their X account a few hours before, reminding followers to “Use your voice. Use your vote.”

This wasn’t The Chicks’ first DNC appearance: The country trio also performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at 2020’s virtual Democratic National Convention in support of President Biden’s nomination. For that livestream performance, The Chicks could be seen in a three-way split screen, beautifully harmonizing on the national anthem.

It was more than 20 years ago, in 2003, when The Chicks — then known as the Dixie Chicks — were blasted by conservatives after Maines said from a London stage that the band was ashamed to be from the same state as then-President George W. Bush for his role in the U.S. war with Iraq. The backlash was fast and furious, with some radio stations pulling their music and the group retreating from the country music community. The group released the pointed “Not Ready to Make Nice” in 2006, with the song taking home the Grammy for song and record of the year in 2007. While they toured fairly regularly, the band did not release a new album until 2020’s Gaslighter.

The country and Americana genres were well-represented throughout the week, with Mickey Guyton and Jason Isbell both performing on Monday night’s day 1 and Maren Morris playing on Wednesday’s day 3.


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Colin Allred

Colin Allred to speak at Democratic National Convention before Kamala Harris – Houston Public Media

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Andrew Schneider/Houston Public Media

Congressman Colin Allred (D-Dallas), January 24, 2024

CHICAGO — U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, will speak from the main stage of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday to express his support for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, his campaign said.

Allred is challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, this year in one of the Senate Democrats’ top flip targets this year. He has so far run his race largely independent of Democrats outside the state, focusing on Texas issues rather than yoking his candidacy to the presidential ticket. During an address to the Texas delegation on Thursday morning, Allred leaned heavily into attacking Cruz without mentioning Harris.

“I want to both run for this office the way I plan on serving in it, which is that I’m focused on Texas,” Allred said in an interview Thursday morning. “We have a very singular choice, which is who’s going to serve us for the next six years. It’s going to be until 2030, past the … term of the next president.”

Allred will share the stage with other House Democrats in competitive Senate races, including Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin and Arizona’s Ruben Gallego. Michigan and Arizona are both considered more competitive than Texas. He will speak shortly before Harris takes the stage to close out the convention.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, will chair the convention on Thursday. Kim Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting, will also speak. Mata-Rubio ran unsuccessfully for Uvalde mayor last year.

Harris’s campaign has proven to be something of a doubled-edged sword for Allred. On the one hand, her historic candidacy appears to be boosting Democratic enthusiasm that could help down-ballot candidates like him. But he’s also been reluctant to show too much enthusiasm for the Democrat, as he tries to court independent voters in a red state.

As a result, he’s kept her at an arm’s length. He did not join her for any of her half dozen appearances in Texas in July. And his initial endorsement of her was murky. He has not officially posted a campaign statement endorsing her, but his campaign has told reporters that he is backing the vice president.

In an interview Thursday, Allred acknowledged that voters he is trying to court may not be as supportive of Harris, who was a much more progressive lawmaker during her time in the U.S. Senate. Allred has voted against his party on recent messaging bills, including on the administration’s handling of the border.

“What I’m trying to do in this campaign is make sure that the Texas I know gets the representation that it deserves, and so yes that, of course, will mean that we’re going to try to be reaching out to folks who maybe won’t be the same targets as some other campaigns,” Allred said.

A poll released Thursday by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs showed Allred 2 points behind Cruz. It’s a closer margin than Cruz’s 2018 reelection against Beto O’Rourke, where Cruz won by just under 3 points.

The Harris campaign does not consider Texas a battleground and does not plan to invest in the state. The short runway for the campaign, which launched after President Joe Biden stepped down from the ticket last month, has forced the campaign to be laser focused on its most attainable states.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility as a presidential campaign is to ensure we get to 270 [electoral votes],” Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said at a DNC event on Tuesday. “I would love to get to a bigger number than that, but that is all we care about.”

Allred wasn’t concerned Harris’ campaign wasn’t focusing more on Texas. His Senate campaign — like all Democratic statewide campaigns in Texas — largely planned its strategy without expecting an influx of resources from the top of the ticket. Texas Democrats launched last month the first coordinated campaign led by a Senate candidate in decades, bundling resources for candidates across the ballot.

“There are important things that will be happening up and down the ballot, especially at the presidential level, I understand that. But for us, we have a very singular choice, which is who’s going to serve us for the next six years,” Allred said.

Disclosure: University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.


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