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Rescue personnel walk near a building that collapsed after a strong earthquake struck central Myanmar on Friday, March 28, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Major earthquake strikes Southeast Asia, Israel passes judicial reform, Fox News wins advertisers, Pollution kills, HHS sees massive job cuts, Suspected US strikes hit Houthis
7.7: Two disastrous earthquakes, the first of 7.7 magnitude, struck Myanmar on Friday, destroying vital infrastructure across Southeast Asia. Videos of a collapsed bridge in Mandalay, Myanmar, and a fallen building in Bangkok, Thailand, have emerged. The number of casualties isn’t yet known, although several are feared trapped under a fallen skyscraper in the Thai capital. At least 144 people have been confirmed dead.
71,000: Israel’s right-wing government on Thursday passed a contentious law to allow politicians greater sway in judicial appointments, despite some 71,000 opposition amendments. The move is a part of the judicial overhaul that protesters have been fighting for over a year and comes amid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
125: Since the US election, Fox News has gained 125 new high-profile advertisers as Rupert Murdoch’s cable network continues to draw soaring viewership during President Donald Trump’s second term. Businesses such as Amazon, GE Vernova, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, and UBS have recently run ads on Fox News for the first time in over two years.
5.7 million: According to a new World Bank study, 5.7 million people are killed annually by air pollution. The global institution is calling on countries to take an integrated approach to halve the number of people breathing unhealthy air by 2040 and points to places like Mexico City, which has successfully curbed pollution, and Egypt and Turkey, which have put financing mechanisms in place to support emission reduction.
20,000: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will cut 20,000 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services – 10,000 from job cuts and 10,000 from voluntary departures – as part of a major restructuring that its chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., says “will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.” RFK says the reorganization is intended to help the department prioritize the fight against chronic diseases, but critics fear it could hinder the critical agency, which includes Medicare and the Federal Drug Administration. And throughout the federal government, officials are planning for between 8% and 50% staff cuts, according to an internal White House document obtained by the Washington Post.
19: Two weeks after the Trump administration dropped its first bombs on Houthi rebels in Yemen — details of which were revealed over the now-infamous Signal chat — the United States is believed to have attacked again early Friday, firing at least 19 strikes. The extent of the damage is unclear, although the intensity of the bombardment has increased since the Biden administration first started pounding the Houthis.
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump speaks with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait during an appearance with the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago.
Harris and Trump get combative in key interviews
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris had a combative interview with Fox News on Wednesday evening in a play to shake off GOP votes from Donald Trump as the US presidential campaign enters its tense final two weeks.
Harris repeatedly clashed with host Bret Baier, with the two often talking over one another. The Trump campaign said Harris was “angry and defensive,” while her campaign said she “got to show her toughness.”
Trump has declined to hold a second debate with Harris, but the exchange with Baier often resembled a debate.
On Wednesday, Trump held a town hall, hosted by Univision, to court the Latino vote — a demographic that is expected to make up as much as 15% of eligible voters. Trump touted his record on the economy, said that Jan. 6 was a “day of love,” and refused to back off false claims that Haitian migrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.
The town hall followed an interview with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. Micklethwait posed tough questions about Trump’s age and love of tariffs, which economists warn would boost inflation.
Whether either interview will move votes is anyone’s guess. The race remains nearly a dead heat, with poll aggregators showing Harris with a two-point lead nationally, well within the margin of error and not nearly a big enough gap to allow Democrats to relax. Neither candidate has more than a two-point lead in any of the swing-state polls, which are the ones that are likely to decide the election.
In the final days of a razor-close race, both candidates are using the media to cast as wide of a net as possible to reach voters. But with polls this tight, what is likely to matter most is how the campaigns are mobilizing supporters on the ground in key swing states to get to the polls.
Rupert Murdoch and Lochlan Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch resigns from media empire
Rupert Murdoch announced he is stepping down as chairman of his Fox News and News Corp global media empire, and relinquishing control to his son, Lachlan Murdoch, in a succession that raises questions about the influence of the Murdoch dynasty in the 2024 US elections and beyond.
Over his 70 year career, Murdoch dominated conservative media baron in the US, UK and Australia, using his outlets to sway the political pendulum to the right and act as a kingmaker within the Republican Party. Fox News was instrumental in bringing Donald Trump to power in 2016.
The transition comes at a difficult time for the conglomerate, which paid out a $787.5 million settlement and faces multiple shareholder lawsuits over spreading misinformation during the 2020 elections. It is also seeing ratings stagnate as viewers move towards extreme outlets like Newsmax and individual creators like Tucker Carlson– whom Fox ousted earlier this year.
Ahead of the 2024 election, whether Fox News will be able to maintain its power without Murdoch and amidst a more competitive and decentralized political media landscape remains to be seen.
When did people stop trusting the media?
There was a time, not so long ago, when people trusted the media, and not just their specific corners of it. Walter Cronkite. Edward R. Murrow. Dan Rather. These were people all Americans relied on to understand the world, and they did so without suspicion. Today, we live in a different reality (or multiple realities, in fact). But according to media historian Nicole Hemmer, the war on trust began decades ago.
Starting back in the 1970s, Hemmer says, "...it was advantageous to the Republican Party to try to create an alternative to the mainstream media, an alternative to the Walter Cronkites...We see that with Fox News in the '90s, but also with the rise of talk radio, and then to some extent, the rise of alternative social networks that's happening now."
Hemmer joined media journalist and former CNN host Brian Stelter on a special panel interview for GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. The two discussed how the hyper-fragmented media landscape in which we find ourself has actually been decades in the making. And they look ahead to the 2024 election and consider how media companies can rebuild trust with Americans during such a crucial time for democracy.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: "Politics, trust & the media in the age of misinformation"
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Tucker Carlson chats with people backstage before speaking during the FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa.
Tucker, the Twitter phoenix
Just a week ago, Tucker Carlson was in the wilderness after being fired from Fox News. This week, in a move that could upend the media and social media landscapes ahead of 2024, America’s most popular TV news host announced that he is bringing his show to Twitter.
In a video post on Tuesday, Tucker said he will launch a news show on Twitter, a first for the social media platform. Carlson, whom Fox ousted unexpectedly in the wake of its $790 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, said that because “there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech, the only one is Twitter.”
By any measure, this is a big catch for Elon Musk. Carlson is one of the most influential voices in the growing populist movement within the Republican Party and the single most-watched nighttime TV host, with a regular nightly audience averaging about 3.5 million people.
What might this mean for Twitter? Musk wants Carlson to be the first megastar of his Twitter 2.0 — and to showcase the money and influence his subscription revenue-sharing model could offer content creators. For Twitter, giving Carlson a show marks a transition towards more traditional TV-style broadcasting that could completely transform the platform.
Making this work is crucial for Musk, whose erratic management and drastic changes have put a dent in Twitter’s ad revenue since he took over last year. On Thursday, Musk announced that he had hired a new CEO; he's reportedly in talks with NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino for the role.
Carlson, of course, has his own history of alienating advertisers at Fox. But Musk is betting that Carlson is the key to getting a new subscription revenue model off the ground, and he’s willing to take more risks with his ad revenue to get there. While the specifics haven’t been announced, under Twitter Blue’s new model followers will pay a low fee to subscribe and gain access to Carlson’s content.
But … will Carlson’s audience follow him? It’s unclear how many of his regular viewers are already on Twitter, or how many will meet him there. Carlson’s cable audience was engaged and receptive to his narrative, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into tweets. Carlson is popular with boomers, who do not make up a large portion of Twitter users. What’s more, the experience of scrolling through Twitter is very different from planting yourself in front of the TV for 30 minutes.
Another big question: Call the lawyers!
There are a few legal wildcards. For one thing, Carlson is still trying to get out of his Fox News contract, which continues to pay him $20 million a year but also includes strict non-compete clauses.
But there is a bigger legal issue looming for Musk if he really wants to transform Twitter into a social media broadcaster. Twitter could be subject to FCC fairness rules, which require that it gives voice to both political parties' views on controversial issues — especially if Carlson lands any right-wing 2024 presidential candidates as guests. Musk seems to be trying to get out ahead of this by saying that he is open to liberal content creators, too. On Wednesday, he invited the freshly fired CNN host Don Lemon to join Twitter’s ranks.
Carrying content like Carlson’s could also end up weakening Twitter’s claim to Section 230 protections, internet laws from the 1990s that shield social media platforms from legal liability for content posted on their sites. (Dominion, for example, could not sue Twitter for libel in the same way that it did Fox.)
Musk’s announcement that he is treating Carlson as a “content creator” rather than a news broadcaster may be a feint to avoid liability for Carlson’s content. YouTube, which this future version of Twitter may resemble, is not liable for users’ content. If Twitter was seen as a producer and a publisher of news, however, it might not be able to make the same argument.
What might all of this mean for 2024?
Carlson has a prominent media perch again, and that will matter for the US presidential race. The Fox v. Dominion case unearthed private communications of Carlson bad-mouthing former President Donald Trump, who remains the odds-on favorite to get the GOP nomination (despite, or because of, his outrageous performance on CNN this week.)
On his Fox News show, Carlson was careful not to challenge Trump. It’s unclear whether that was because of the network’s tight leash or because of other strategic calculations he made. But this much is certain: If Carlson on this new Twitter show voices sentiments similar to what he’s texted, we could be in for a showdown between the populist right’s most prominent politician and its most popular media figure.
Why Trump chose CNN for his Town Hall
Does former president Donald Trump’s CNN Town Hall have anything to do with Fox News? Rumored 2024 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie thinks the answer is a resounding yes.
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the former governor of New Jersey theorized that Trump is holding his first televised discussion with 2024 voters on CNN to give a ratings boost to Fox’s principal competitor and punish the network for settling the recent lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems.
In settling the lawsuit, Fox News recognized that “certain claims” about Dominion’s voting machines that it repeated during news broadcasts weren’t true, contradicting the lies Trump has been repeating about the 2020 election being rigged.
The town hall will also be a test for moderator Kaitlan Collins, who covered the Trump White House as CNN’s chief White House correspondent in 2021. Democrats worry about Trump repeating misinformation on air, Republicans wonder if it’s even possible he’ll be given a fair shake on CNN.
“There's no question that this is Donald Trump's response to Fox having settled the Dominion Voting Systems case,” Chris Christie tells Ian Bremmer, “In the end I hope that what Fox has learned from this is that authenticity matters and that people should be on the air saying what they really believe.”
Watch the full interview on the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, airing on US public television nationwide. Check local listings.
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People pass by a promo of Tucker Carlson on the Fox Corp. building in New York.
What We’re Not Watching: Tucker’s ‘O, Canada’
Chances of an American invasion of Canada fell this week when Fox News dropped Tucker Carlson from its lineup, a move that appears to be part of the fallout from the network’s massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.
Tucker’s departure means that a host of far-right Canadians will not be getting the moment in the sun they expected from a special – that was set to air on May 1 – exploring whether the US should launch a military campaign to overthrow Canada’s “authoritarian” government.
In this space last week, we pondered the implications of that broadcast, since Carlson’s millions of viewers could be influenced to think bad and inane things about their northern neighbors. It turns out that we needn’t have worried.
Fox Senior Media Relations Manager Ali Coscia confirmed by email on April 26 that the show will not be aired: “Confirmed — this episode will not run on Fox Nation. There are no further new episodes of Tucker Carlson Originals running on the platform.”
This is bad news, no doubt, for Lauren Southern and the other marginal personalities from the Canadian far right, but it’s good news for the cross-border relationship. Now, millions of Fox viewers will never be told that Justin Trudeau is a dictator who should be overthrown by force.
As for the broader meaning of the Carlson exit, check out this thoughtful New Yorker article, which argues that it doesn’t matter that much. The network, not the talking head, is the real star. Ian Bremmer, meanwhile, believes Fox made the right move, but he also thinks Carlson will simply take his brand elsewhere and still find a way to have a huge impact in 2024.
Tucker Carlson out at Fox News
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hey everybody. Ian Bremmer here, a Quick Take to kick off your week and well, you know what the hell? I'll respond to the Tucker Carlson news since it's pretty significant. He's out all of a sudden, a very sudden and very terse statement being made by Fox. They have agreed to part ways. Kind of statement that usually makes you think that there is more news that is going to be coming out relatively soon that they wanted to get ahead of. But let's leave that aside. This is the guy that was driving an extraordinary amount of revenue, most popular show on cable, and also now is driving a lot of losses because of the Dominion settlement, which Tucker Carlson played a significant role in being responsible for promoting a lot of fake news while also being caught in text messages saying that the election grievances and being stolen, "Stop the Steal" was all a lot of BS.
So what do we think about that? Well, I mean, first Fox going forward is likely to set some pretty clear limits so they don't get themselves vulnerable to these kinds of lawsuits going forward. They settled, but that settlement is expensive. It's about 20% of the cash on hand that Fox actually had, and nobody wants to be cutting those sorts of checks. And to the extent that Tucker is an relatively uncontrolled and uncontrollable actor on Fox, getting rid of him no matter how much advertising revenue and eyeballs he drives, as well as Dan Bongino, much smaller, but same sort of actor is a pretty sensible move for Fox to make. It's kind of funny because I remember when the Murdochs wanted to have Tucker in that position, and he was seen at the time as actually very intelligent, very credible, and a bomb thrower and a polemicist, but not about fake news.
Someone who actually was going to be great for Fox, for the Fox family. And of course, when Carlson started seeing just how much he could drive algorithmically by giving the base exactly what it wants and not mattering whether it was provable or not, and playing to some of the worst instincts of fear and anger that his population and the Trump population has, then he was willing to go with it 100%. And some of that has been deeply damaging. He's been the guy that's most clearly publicly aligned with Putin, for example, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine with Viktor Orbán, a clear authoritarian inside the EU, and also the idea that that Canada is increasingly becoming an authoritarian regime and needs support from the US. That's going to be a fun special that a lot of people will be forced to watch.
I will say that I never would go on Tucker Carlson. I refuse. In my view, it's not real information. I make a point when there's major international news on screen, I want to make sure that I appear on CNN, on MSNBC and on Fox. And that is not hard to do, even though very few people do it, if you stick to trying to help people understand what's happening in the world. But you can't do it on a show like Tucker. There's no problem doing it during the day at Fox. The morning show, the midday, afternoon. I mean, whether it's Bret Baier or Dana Perino or a whole bunch of other... I mean, I can think of 10 anchors that I've been on. They're all fine. They may be quite conservative. They may be pro-Trump, even some of them, though very few actually, certainly privately, but they're happy to have you talk about what you think.
Just as most of the vast majority of anchors I work with on CNN and MSNBC are, but Tucker is not. And in that regard, I'm glad he's gone, but I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters for two reasons. First, because his brand is going to go with him. He is a business. He will get that advertising revenue. He will continue to drive massive amounts of support, including through social media. In that regard he'll be one of the most effective in the United States, and I think he'll play a very significant role in 2024. In some ways, he may be more effective in doing that than he is at Fox. Certainly, I don't believe Trump gets elected if it isn't for Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. I don't think that Bolsonaro is elected without those mechanisms and many others populous on the right and on the left anti-establishment voices and forces that we see in Democratic elections around the world.
By the way, I also saw that Don Lemon was just ousted from CNN this morning, very different kind of ouster. I have appeared with Don Lemon a bunch on his show, and then more recently, I think a week or two ago on the morning show, but they clearly wanted to shake that up. It wasn't working internally in terms of bookings and rebookings and the orientation of the different anchors there being very different. And also the blowback he got when he was talking in an insensitive manner about age, which is something that you can get away with if you're Tucker, but you can't get away with if you're Don. And well, we'll see where he ends up next. But having said that, the funny thing is Chris Cuomo, who of course was canceled from CNN because of the inappropriateness of his links to his brother, the former governor who has done lots of bad things.
I actually think Chris Cuomo's a very strong newsman, and I enjoy going on his show and on his podcast. Think he asks tough questions across the political spectrum. And I'm glad he's back and I'm glad he's still there and doing it. I don't know how many people actually watch it, but I'll tell you that if he calls and I'm around, I'll certainly give him the time. So that's how I think about this stuff. And of course on my own GZERO show, which I hope a lot of you watch, I do my damnedest to reach out to everybody, whether it's Dem, Republican, or Independent in the US and there's increasingly a large number of those as well as around the world.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.