My Brain Has No Off Switch

Scott Pelley issues new statement after being fired by CBS for opposing their pro-MAGA bias: “New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

Scott Pelley issues new statement after being fired by CBS for opposing their pro-MAGA bias:

“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.

Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done.

Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

UPDATED NEW STATEMENT: By Scott Pelley

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Bari Weiss brings Trumpism to “60 Minutes”

Sophia Tesfaye

Mon, June 1, 2026 at 9:30 AM MST

Bari Weiss is running the Trump playbook at “60 Minutes.” It goes like this: Take an institution that still commands public trust, install loyalists with no relevant experience in positions of authority, fire the people who push back, dress the whole operation in the language of reform — fairness, innovation, a new direction — and you dare anyone to prove that what you’re really doing is building a protection racket.

For years before she landed at CBS News in October, Weiss built a career criticizing ideological conformity and supposed institutional intolerance. Yet in her brief tenure atop the network’s news division, she has presided over exactly the kind of purge-and-replace operation that has become synonymous with Trumpism.

President Donald Trump erupted Saturday in a 720-plus-word social media post over a judge’s ruling ordering him to remove his name from the Kennedy Center and halt a renovation project, a rant that culminated with the president demanding the judge be criminally charged.

Ownership meant a physical copy. Now you own nothing and can't find what you want across multiple streaming platforms.

The document marks a powerful foray by the leader of the Roman Catholic Church into the debate about the misuse or overuse of artificial intelligence.

The New York Times | Gift🎁Link (no paywall) | By Motoko Rich, Elisabetta Povoledo and Elizabeth Dias | May 25, 2026

As a former Catholic, I've never been prouder of a pope! He's calling out directly or indirectly nearly every issue that plagues the current Trump regime. The NY Times article is very thorough, and the link above has no paywall. Below are some highlights:

Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from A.I.’s most disruptive effects.

Leo’s declaration came in the form of a papal encyclical, an open letter to “all people of good will” that ran to roughly 42,300 words in its English version. It outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic... in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.

While emphasizing that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”

[See more under the cut.]

My Thoughts on the End of CBS News Radio

TN lawmaker Justin Pearson was blocked from a Capitol committee room as Republicans moved to erase the state’s only Black-majority district after Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act by making Black-majority districts easier to challenge as racial gerrymanders.

Black Americans won enforceable voting protections only in 1965.

📸 Nicole Hester / The Tennessean

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Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.

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Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.

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Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.