Commentary Culture Investigations

Chain of command matters in the military (and it matters in life, too, albeit less so). John Phelan, secretary of the navy until his Wednesday firing, learned this the hard way.
“Multiple sources told CNN there was tension for months between Phelan and [Secretary of War Pete] Hegseth, who believed Phelan was moving too slowly on implementing shipbuilding reforms and was also irked by Phelan’s direct communication with Trump, which Hegseth viewed as an attempt to bypass him,” CNN reported.
Possibly the secretary of the navy viewed his position as a cabinet-level position as past secretaries of the navy have viewed it (that changed after the Second World War).
When Hegseth fired Phelan, Phelan unwittingly affirmed Hegseth’s reasoning. He apparently called the White House in disbelief for confirmation. Still, that was not enough. He then went to the White House, and in a brief, in-person meeting with the president, according to CNN, the president affirmed that Phelan was indeed fired.

There’s no place like home, and Leo XIV must be happy to have returned safe and sound after a long African journey. The fond memories he brings back to his modest residence — several high-ceilinged rooms in the Papal Palace, a jewel of preservationist interior decorating in Vatican City (an independent state in the middle of Rome) — will stay with him; more important, in his estimation, is knowing the joy and strengthened faith he brought to the tens of thousands of faithful who attended the masses he celebrated, plus the millions who paid attention and heard or read about them.
Leo’s African journey was a triumph and an essential step — a turning point — in the long-running basic competition of modern times: free societies versus tyranny. In this instance, the pope was batting well over .300, across more than a thousand miles of Africa, from the coast of Barbary into the steaming jungles of Cameroon, to the arid flatlands of Angola, to the sun-drenched waters of Equatorial Guinea.
The message was clear: the gospel will set you free, and the freedom of Africa is one of the great challenges of the century. Despite centuries of plunder by rapacious outsiders, the Africans still have one of the richest continents, with abundant resources, oil, minerals, rare and precious stones, and above all: people. It is the youngest continent, with the average age around 20. Its people are eager, open-hearted, open-minded, eager to work, and yet plagued by wasteful and horrible tribal conflicts abetted by wicked old men called Big Men. In plain English: tyrants.
Leo went there to reassure them in their faith — Africa is largely Christian, and apart from Algeria, the countries he visited have Catholic pluralities — and encourage them in their quest for freedom. He made it quite clear that there is no reason for a nonegenarian to be in power in Yaoundé. It’s ridiculous and has no place on a continent so young and vital.
The question is who will maintain the peace and prevent the intertribal wars that invite interventions by rapacious outsiders. That is the question; what Leo knows, however, is that the answer must be some combination of sword and spirit, distinct but complementary forces for good if and only if wielded by good men.
Which is why the taunts President Donald Trump addressed to Leo XIV during his travels were inopportune. Leo is neither, as Trump insinuated (in fact said explicitly), weak on crime, favorable to open borders, or soft on the preventive war against Shiite aggression.
Saying people, including immigrants, merit charity and welcome is not the same as inviting illegal border jumping. Saying wars must be fought by the rules of honor is not to say they should not be fought to be won decisively. Proposing interfaith dialogue with Islam is not to encourage Islamic war against the Judeo-Christian West.
African Islam is a barrier against the conquering, fanatical Islam of the Tehran regime and its proxies, and the jihadist bandit bands that plague North Africa and the Sahel. Rather than insist on the bad advice Chicago Democrats may be giving Leo in order to use him in their efforts to undermine the Trump administration, the president would be well advised to see the complementary consequences of his and Leo’s initiatives.
The reality is that we cannot prevail — we cannot endure — without both sword and spirit; nor can Trump’s foreign policy, which objectively contains potentially liberating and lasting elements of peace-making, succeed if it stops midway. The threat of the Trump-hating and isolationist factions in both U.S. political parties is that they turn fair criticism (essential to a free regime like ours) into a sapping of our own confidence in ourselves, even when we are winning.
Pope Leo’s young friend, Italian tennis star and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, is currently in Madrid aiming for his fourth Masters win in a row and will be in Rome in about a week to aim for the next one. Maybe they can find time to work out together, extend an invitation to the president, and talk things over.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to tax properties worth $5 million or more — otherwise known as the “pied-à-terre” tax — is a ploy to throw out Americans out of the Big Apple and replace them with foreign investors. (READ MORE: New York’s Envy Tax) 
The Spectacle Podcast hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay criticize Mamdani’s communist rule in New York, pointing out his incompetence to bring the city back to its former glory. Melissa and Scott call out his aggressive housing inspections and expand on the “tax the rich” scheme that Mamdani wants to push on landowners. They also discuss the current standings of Mamdani amongst his constituents and the implications of his communist policies in the long term. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: A Quite Cranky 5QT) 
Tune in to hear their discussion!

Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify.
Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.

Days ago, Sen. Cory Booker held a hearing to attack the recently announced merger between entertainment companies Warner Bros. and Paramount-Skydance. Booker warned that the impacts of the merger would be “damaging and far-reaching.”
Left out of Booker’s broadside was that before Paramount stepped in, Netflix had tried to buy Warner Bros. That deal truly would have been damaging.
Why? Today’s streaming market is defined by one simple reality: Netflix sits at the top.
Netflix earned its position, but dominance has consequences. Over the past few years, Netflix has repeatedly raised prices and tightened account-sharing rules, testing how much consumers are willing to pay.
This is what market leaders do when competitive pressure is limited. And combining Netflix with Warner Bros.’ vast content library only would have made it worse.
The question for regulators reviewing the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal is therefore straightforward: would this transaction increase or decrease the competitive pressure within the entertainment industry?
The answer is clear. Unlike the Netflix purchase, it would increase it.
Paramount on its own is a relatively small player in a market where size determines who can compete. Content is expensive. Distribution is expensive. Reaching global audiences requires sustained investment: without scale, even well-known brands struggle to keep up.
Combining Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery changes that equation. It creates a company with the content library, reach, and financial capacity to genuinely compete with other major platforms like Netflix.
Critics often treat consolidation as inherently suspect, and sometimes it’s a problem. But context matters. In a fragmented market, mergers can reduce competition, while in a market already shaped by a dominant player, they can create it.
Given Netflix’s dominant status in the streaming market — it has 300 million subscribers, more than double that of its closest competitor — Paramount needs to be bigger if it’s going to compete.
Hence why axing this deal wouldn’t protect consumers. It would protect the status quo.
Some of the opposition to the merger doesn’t focus on prices or consumer choice, but discomfort with the outcome itself. That is a problem.
Antitrust enforcement only works if it remains grounded in consistent standards. Once decisions start to hinge on which companies are viewed as more acceptable — politically or culturally — the rules become harder to predict. Firms hesitate. Investment slows. And the very competition regulators aim to protect becomes harder to sustain.
The risk is not just inconsistency, but a gradual shift toward the government picking winners. Consumers do not benefit from that; they benefit when companies are forced to compete — on price, on quality, and on innovation.
In streaming, that means more than just a collection of smaller platforms struggling to keep up with Netflix. It means viable challengers with the scale to invest and the reach to matter. A combined Paramount-Warner company would be exactly that.
None of this means the deal should receive a free pass. Large transactions deserve scrutiny. Regulators should ask whether the merger would lead to higher prices, reduced output, or new barriers to entry.
But these concerns need to be demonstrated, not assumed. If critics believe prices will rise, they need to explain how that would happen in a market where multiple platforms compete for subscribers. If they worry about less content, they need to show that a larger, better-capitalized company would invest less rather than more.
So far, these arguments remain thin.
What is clear is the competitive dynamic. Netflix has scale. Others are trying to catch up. This deal helps one of them do so. That is not a threat to competition. It is how competition is built.
Antitrust policy is at its strongest when it focuses on outcomes rather than optics. When it asks whether consumers will benefit, not whether the result aligns with shifting political preferences. The Paramount deal should be judged on that basis.
A stronger competitor in a concentrated market means more pressure on prices, more investment in content, and more choice for consumers.
In the end, that is the standard that should matter.
Ashley Clapper Bennett is an attorney with Corbin & Clapper, PC. She is a member of the Central Texas Republican Women and the Texas Federation of Republican Women and a former candidate for the 146th Judicial District Court.

The most important nation you’ve never thought about is standing at a crossroads.
One road leads to America’s greatest natural ally — a Christian-majority, English-speaking, entrepreneurial giant with a quarter of Africa’s population, on track to be the third-largest nation on earth by 2050, sitting on a trillion dollars in strategic minerals, bursting with the same grit and faith and fire that built the United States.
The other road leads to the world’s most prolific exporter of jihad — a nation where a 200-year-old caliphate has never loosened its grip, where 125,000 Christians have been slaughtered since 2009, where 10 to 12 million people have been driven from their homes, and where five to six million displaced children are being radicalized right now into the next generation of holy warriors.
Nigeria is on that crossroads today. The wrong road is winning. And it is already reaching us here.
Let me tell you what Nigeria actually is. I’ve been there 16 times. On my first trip, in 2010, the first thing I saw walking up the jetway was a bank poster: “Welcome to Nigeria. Home of a people with passion!” My mentor, the late Professor John Ofoegbu, explained it plainly: if a Nigerian loves you, he’ll die for you. If he hates you, he’ll kill you. Whatever they do, they do with all their strength. They are not lukewarm people.
And it shows. Nigeria has the highest entrepreneurial rate in Africa. Eighty percent literacy. Nigerian Americans are among the most educated and wealthiest immigrant groups in the United States — with nearly double the national average for college degrees. Nigeria produces more films per year than Hollywood. Wherever Nigerians are set free, they soar.
Now here’s what’s killing them — and why it matters to you. To understand Nigeria, you need to understand three things: the Caliphate, the British, and Biafra.
In 1804, Usman dan Fodio launched a holy war across northern Nigeria, building the Sokoto Caliphate — Africa’s largest pre-colonial empire, founded on bloody jihad, sharia, and industrialized slavery. The current Sultan of Sokoto is his direct heir. The caliphate never ended. It adapted.
When the British arrived, they co-opted it through “indirect rule” — making emirs their colonial enforcers. The Christian South was educated and modernized. The Islamic North was kept feudal and brutal. In 1914, Britain merged both into “Nigeria” — a name invented by a colonial administrator’s girlfriend — and structured it for permanent northern dominance. At independence in 1960, the North’s leading figure declared: “Nigeria should be an estate of our great-grandfather, Usman dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power.” This was not a campaign speech. It was a mission statement.
Then they found massive oil reserves in the South — and nationalized them, so the North controls the money while the South gets the pollution and corruption.
When the Christian South tried to break free — forming the Republic of Biafra in 1967, then the fastest-growing economic region on earth for 10 years running — Britain armed the Muslim North and enforced a total blockade. As many as three to five million Biafrans starved to death, mostly children, concurrent with our Vietnam War, hidden from the world. Survivors had all wealth confiscated and were granted 20 pounds each. Message received: Submit or die.
Nigeria’s current constitution was written by an Islamic military dictator and mentions sharia and Islamic terms 165 times. Christianity is mentioned zero times. Twelve northern states run full criminal sharia. The presidential palace was built with two mosques and no chapel. Genocide and brutal blasphemy killings in the North coexist alongside smiles and campaign slogans in the South — and it’s all part of the same regime.
Now here is the part that should keep you up at night. Since 2009, more than 125,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed — more than any other country on earth. To understand the killing, follow the money.
At least $9 billion in minerals flows out of Nigeria illegally every year. Gold, lithium, tin — the stuff inside your phone, your electric car, your solar panels. Where does it go? Mostly to China. Up to 150,000 Chinese nationals operate in Nigeria’s mining sector outside any formal oversight. They pay terrorists for access and bribe officials for protection. I walked through Bokkos four months after the Christmas 2023 massacre. Christian farmland where families were slaughtered is now strip mines. There are mountains of dirt where homes once stood. The pattern is deliberate: violence clears the land, fear drives out the community, then the digging begins. This is not a resource curse. It is a business model. Every lithium battery flowing through Chinese markets carries the fingerprints of this genocide.
Beyond blood minerals, the jihad runs on Afghan heroin money. Russian propaganda covers it. American lobbyists pocket $10 million this year to call the survivors who speak up political props. When Christian president Goodluck Jonathan was defeating Boko Haram — retaking territory larger than Belgium in a single month — the Obama administration cut off his weapons, blocked his allies, and sent David Axelrod to replace him with a radical Muslim. Boko Haram thrived. The genocide resumed under state protection.
Between 10 and 12 million people have now been driven from their homes. Six to seven million are children — growing up in camp with no school and no future and surrounded by the ideology that murdered their families. International watchdogs estimate 50 to 60 percent are being radicalized, and that there will be five to six million new jihadists by 2030. Some will stay in Nigeria. Some will spread across Africa. Some will board planes.
One already did. On March 12, 2026, Mohamed Jalloh walked into an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, shouted “Allahu akbar,” and shot Army Lt. Col. Brandon Shah to death — a decorated combat veteran, Apache pilot, Bronze Star recipient, husband, and father. Court documents confirmed Jalloh was radicalized in Nigeria, where he met with Islamic State members in 2015.
Nigeria reached into Virginia and killed an American soldier. It will reach again.
But here is what I also know. I have sat with children who watched their parents slaughtered and came to our schools with murder in their hearts. After education, after someone loved them, they want to go back and rebuild. That is the difference love makes. And it is the whole game.
My organization, Africa Arise International, runs four campuses serving more than 600 displaced students every day — doing exactly this work. The cycle of death is not genetic. It can be broken forever with just a little love and attention.
If we reach this displaced generation — with schools, with hope, with truth — they will become the generation that breaks the stranglehold and rebuilds a great nation. An ally. A shining example of the best of humanity. If we abandon them, they become the generation that exports jihad around the world — fueled by a trillion dollars in minerals.
Blessing or curse. The choice is ours — whether we know it or not.
Mike Arnold has traveled to Nigeria 16 times. He is the founder of Africa Arise International, author of the #1 bestseller EPICENTER: Nigeria, Radical Islam, and the War for Global Order, and executive producer of Me & Ms. Hanatu, and can be found at MikeArnold.org.

I was worried and irritable. I’m so used to the press announcing the end of the world every day that when I open the newspapers and don’t see any apocalyptic predictions, I feel uneasy. We’ve learned to live with death at our heels, and now they can’t just tell us everything is fine. It’s like reading the major international media — almost all of them progressive — and suddenly coming across an article saying Trump has done something right. That throws you off and makes you uncomfortable. It feels like a secret warning that something terrible is about to happen.
Luckily, after three or four days of inexplicable calm, today I found in the New York Post the scare-you-to-death story of the day, one to calm my anxiety: one-third of all life on Earth will be endangered by fires, floods, and extreme weather events in the next 60 years. As for the remaining two-thirds, they’ll live a miserable existence, constantly thinking they could fall victim to fires, floods, and extreme weather events. I love it. I already feel much better.
The source is a new report in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, with predictions for the year 2085. The study’s author says we are underestimating the consequences of climate change, and I applaud her originality. Writing an apocalyptic report to scare politicians — now there’s something no one had thought of before. It occurs to me that the next step could be to multiply green taxes across the West, force people to drink coffee through soggy cardboard straws, and buy more electric grinders and cars from the Chinese communists. That usually lowers the planet’s temperature immediately.
The EU is discussing a novel formula to mitigate climate change and, at the same time, solve the problems caused by its own energy incompetence: forcing everyone to work from home one day a week. The EU is like that idiot surgeon who makes a mistake, cuts off your perfectly healthy arm, then replaces it with a tennis racket to fix his blunder, and then asks you to congratulate him on his brilliant performance.
Another quite effective option for averting the 2085 climate cataclysm would be to commission a new documentary from Al Gore and ask him to try to sink three or four polar bears into the sea. And if what we want is for the Earth to cool down in 15 minutes, we should talk to Greta Thunberg about organizing a Climate Flotilla. A route from any poor African country to luxurious New York could go viral and immediately stop the threat. In New York, Greta could be received by Mamdani for a few photos and to spout some nonsense to the press, and the mayor would present her with the city’s new official emblem: the highly coveted Gold-and-Diamond Burka.
If none of this works, my proposal is to organize a World Climate Summit somewhere remote, most likely in Germany. All the important Western leaders should gather there to contribute money, and all the important leaders from India, China, and suitably communist Third World countries should come to take it. That has never failed. There are scientific studies, I imagine some have been published in Nature, that show that every time 20 or more of the world’s most polluting private jets land at a climate summit, the planet’s temperature hits record lows.
On another note, I’ve been doing my own calculations about my situation in 2085. If my math is correct, I’ll be 104 years old, I’ll have forgotten even my mother’s name, I’ll be hauling what’s left of my liver around in a wheelbarrow, absolutely no one will be interested in anything I write, I’ll still be taxed like a pig, and I reckon I’ll have racked up 30 consecutive years of sexual impotence. So the best thing that could happen to me is to burn in a fire, drown in a flood, and be struck by lightning. But all at the same time. And quickly. Thanks for the hope.
READ MORE by Itxu Diaz:
The New York Times’s Resident Catastrophist Delivers Another Subscription to the End of the World
The Adventure of Suddenly Pulling the Handbrake
Why We Should Give to God What Is God’s, and to Caesar What Is Caesar’s

On Friday’s Morning Joe, the hosts of the program discussed the prospects of Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Co-host Jonathan Lemire took issue with the attendance of President Trump, as he called the event “very problematic” and “incongruous” during a discussion with MS NOW’s reporter Fallon Gallagher and analyst Eugene Robinson on the dynamics of the event amid the press’s battles with the president.

The program’s main stars, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist, also made a slight mention of the dinner at the very start of the show as Scarborough compared Trump’s attendance at the dinner to the ending scene of It’s a Wonderful Life and called the event a “hoot”:

I kind of look at it as the same kind of like the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, where everybody – he gets Zuzu’s petals and they get around the Christmas tree, and they’re singing all the things. I mean, this is going to be a hoot, though. The president getting together with a group of people that he loves and admires as much as he loves and admires the press.

But in the 9 a.m. hour, the show started to really take issue with the dinner. The segment was introduced with Gallagher, who wrote a piece on MS NOW’s website titled “Guess who’s coming to dinner? The guy you’ll see in court.” 

 

Friday’s Morning Joe took issue with Trump’s attendance at the WHCA Dinner, as Jonathan Lemire called the dinner “very problematic,” and Eugene Robinson pledged not to attend.
Lemire also said there should be no more WHCA dinners, as he called this year’s event “deeply fraught.” pic.twitter.com/MwfETt7MvP
— Nick (@nspin310) April 24, 2026
 

Gallagher wondered if Trump would “roast” the press or himself, but made sure to call the dinner awkward as “the president is battling with the press corps in courtrooms, not spending time with them in dining rooms.” 

Gallagher went through some Trump words and lawsuits against the press. She decided to cite the case of Don Lemon and his alleged role in the storming of a Minnesota church amid the winter unrest as the “biggest attack”:

But then, most notably, the biggest attack that we’ve seen legally from the president and this administration towards the press was, of course, the indictment of journalist Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for their role in covering an anti-ICE protest in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

After she called the dinner a possible “detente,” the panel laughed at her as Lemire took it to a serious level, and seemed visibly upset at the Trump attendance and took some issue with the WHCA:

I’m going to go the other way on that. Fallon. I think that, first of all, it’s a really important list. I’m glad you raised it. I think far more likely that President Trump is going to take some sort of victory lap at this dinner, which I would argue is a very problematic dinner.

(…)

And Eugene Robinson, look, I’m a proud member of the White House Correspondents Association, which does incredible work. And the dinner does raise money for scholarships for journalists. We can do that another way. I think that this dinner, the time for this dinner expired, I would argue long ago, and particularly this year. It is deeply fraught.

Robinson said he would skip the dinner events of the weekend because it seems too awkward amid a “war” on the press:

There is this actual war going on between the free press, which is enshrined in the First Amendment, and this president. And it just strikes me as inappropriate, awkward, and I don’t see what good is going to come from this. We’ll see, you know.

After Robinson asked Gallagher with worry about potential comments and jokes by the president at the dinner, as Gallagher wondered if “the roast is more on the attack end of the spectrum,” Lemire ended with some more pretentious comments: 

But it does seem to be sort of an incongruous celebration of the First Amendment with someone who is restricting press access repeatedly.

Lemire and some others in the press seemed a little too upset and impacted by the attendance of the elected President of the United States, someone whom they are paid to cover, at a dinner.

The transcript is below. Click “expand”:

MS NOW’s Morning Joe

April 24, 2026

6:01:35 AM Eastern

(…)

JOE SCARBOROUGH: “Wow. I tell you, tomorrow night’s White House Correspondents Dinner, Willie, I kind of look at it as the same kind of like the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, where everybody – he gets Zuzu’s petals and they get around the Christmas tree, and they’re singing all the things. I mean, this is going to be a hoot, though. The president getting together with a group of people that he loves and admires as much as he loves and admires the press.

WILLIE GEIST: Deep respect, and so many members of his cabinet who share his respect for the press, will be seated at the table in the room that night.

(…)

9:24:32 AM Eastern

JONATHAN LEMIRE: So, President Trump has dinner plans tomorrow night with an unlikely group of tablemates. For the first time in either of his two terms, Trump will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. It’s a tradition that dates back to 1921 that is intended to champion the First Amendment and press freedom. Let’s bring in MS NOW Legal Affairs Reporter Fallon Gallagher, who has new analysis for ms.now, now titled “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? The guy you’ll see in court.” Fallon, take it away.

FALLON GALLAGHER: Yeah. Jonathan, it’s really significant that the president’s coming. We know that he’s planning remarks. He’s working with a comedian. We don’t know what that’s going to look like, whether he’ll roast the press, whether he’ll roast himself. But what we can expect is that this is probably going to be a pretty awkward dinner arrangement. And that is because the president is battling with the press corps in courtrooms, not spending time with them in dining rooms. 

And so, of course, there’s always been tension between the president and the press corps. We saw that during Trump One, we’ve been using the phrase ‘fake news’ for over a decade now. But this is different because I’m looking at a lot of the litigation that’s happening in Trump 2.0. I cover all of these cases very closely, and a big chunk of them can really be boiled down to the president versus the press. And so I looked at all of these cases, and they really fall into two categories. And the first is actions, often legal actions, that the president is taking to target journalists. 

Now, of course, a couple of weeks ago in the briefing room, when he was talking about that Iranian downed fighter jet or, I’m sorry, the American downed fighter jet in Iran, he threatened to jail the journalist who first reported on that to find the leaker there. That was a clear escalation in a fight that we’ve seen in recent weeks. Now, of course, there’s also been lawsuits. He filed a defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal for its reporting that the president had penned a note in the Jeffrey Epstein birthday book that was coupled with a naked drawing of a woman. We later saw that birthday book, and there was a note that fit that description with the president’s signature on it. So he sued them for defamation. A judge threw out that suit last week, saying that the president hadn’t met the actual malice standard that you need for defamation against public officials. 

But then, most notably, the biggest attack that we’ve seen legally from the president and this administration towards the press was, of course, the indictment of journalist Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for their role in covering an anti-ICE protest in Saint Paul, Minnesota. So that’s one big chunk. And we’re seeing a lot of cases like that. That’s just a few of them. 

But then the other chunk is series where the press is fighting back for systematic restrictions that this administration is taking against the press. Now, of course, there were those executive orders that defunded NPR and PBS. You saw both of those organizations fight back in court and get a judge to block that action, calling it unconstitutional. But you also saw the president’s systematic dismantling of Voice of America, which has been around since World War II, to combat propaganda global globally, and so a judge last month blocked that action. Of course, the administration is appealing that and that will go for arguments soon. 

The other big one here, though, that we’ve been covering pretty extensively here at MS NOW is the Pentagon press case. The administration over at the Pentagon instituted that new restrictive press policy, basically limiting the way that the press can actually operate, where they can go, whether or not they need an escort, but also what they can report. Of course, you’ll remember that that first restrictive policy had limits on whether or not the press could publish information that was coming from anonymous sources. So, that was really notable. The New York Times, of course, sued there, and a judge in a really scathing ruling, blocked that action, ordered that the Pentagon needed to reinstate those press passes to all of those reporters who opted to turn in their press pass instead of sign on to that restrictive policy that the judge said violated the First Amendment. 

But all of these are the backdrop, and these cases are still ongoing as this president is set to go to dinner, which makes us wonder, maybe he’s trying to view this as a sort of detente. Jonathan.

LEMIRE: I’m going to go the other way on that. Fallon. I think that, first of all, it’s a really important list. I’m glad you raised it. I think far more likely President Trump is going to take some sort of victory lap at this dinner, which I would argue is a very problematic dinner. 

You just outlined part of the reasons why, indeed, he’s filing a lawsuit against multiple news organizations. We should not forget that his administration conducted a raid of a Washington reporter –  Washington Post reporter’s home. And this week, we learned, investigated a New York Times reporter. We know this president likes to insult and demean reporters all the time. We know that he has cut press access. You mentioned the Pentagon, also at the White House, you know, kicked, you know, reshaped the pool, kicked reporters out to portions of the West Wing. 

He has put attacks on the press at the center of his second campaign here. And Eugene Robinson, look, I’m a proud member of the White House Correspondents Association, which does incredible work. And the dinner does raise money for scholarships for journalists. We can do that another way. I think that this dinner, the time for this dinner expired, I would argue long ago, and particularly this year. It is deeply fraught.

EUGENE ROBINSON: Yeah, I – look, I’m skipping all the events this weekend and I would happily write a check to support the scholarship efforts. And I think a lot of members of the Washington press corps would also do the same. This just seems beyond awkward. 

There is this actual war going on between the free press, which is enshrined in the First Amendment, and this president. And it just strikes me as inappropriate, awkward, and I don’t see what good is going to come from this. We’ll see, you know.

Fallon, do we expect him to stick to the script? He’s having a comedian write jokes for him. I cannot remember a time when the president has stuck to the script. Do we think he’ll do so tomorrow night?

GALLAGHER: I mean, like you said, this is a president who never sticks to the script. He always ad-libs. But this is also a speech that he’s writing with jokes that he’s working with a comedian on. I think what I’ll be most looking for is whether or not these jokes are lighthearted, or whether the roast is more on the attack end of the spectrum.

LEMIRE: All right. Well, the new piece online now at ms.now. MS NOW legal affairs reporter Fallon Gallagher, thank you so much. And Ashley, final word to you on this. But it does seem to be sort of an incongruous celebration of the First Amendment with someone who is restricting press access repeatedly.

(…)