Hey everyone. Welcome back
Our top story today: CBS just fired one of the most trusted faces on television. Scott Pelley says he was ordered to put falsehoods into his reporting, he refused, and now he is out. This is exactly why I do this show on my own. No executives telling me what I can or cannot say. The only people I answer to are the ones watching, and the ones who subscribe make all of it possible.
We will also get into the voters of Iowa handing Trump’s hand-picked candidate a stunning primary loss, Pete Hegseth giving a convicted January 6th rioter a sensitive counterterrorism job, a sitting congressman’s homophobic tweet, and a sobering new assessment that the war with Iran has left us in more nuclear danger, not less.
Thank you again for being here.
1. CBS Fires News Anchor After Refusing to 'Inject Falsehoods' Into His Reporting
Scott Pelley is a name everyone knows. He anchored the CBS Evening News. He has been a correspondent on 60 Minutes for decades. But yesterday, CBS fired him.
The break came one day after a tense staff meeting where Pelley confronted the show’s new leadership. Pelley released a statement laying out his concerns:
He says new management told him to put falsehoods and unverified claims into a story, and that he refused every time. He says politicians were even being allowed to pick which correspondents interviewed them.
He then turned his fire to the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss. He said she was brought in to kill the most important newsmagazine on American television. His words: “she’s murdering 60 Minutes.”
As Pelley mentioned, CBS has a new corporate owner. Last month its top news leadership and two veteran correspondents were pushed out. A once-trusted newsroom began being bent toward the people in power.
And this is exactly why independent media matters now more than it ever has. When a corporation can fire a reporter for refusing to lie, the only question left is a simple one. Who do you actually trust to tell you the truth?
I built this Substack so that question would have an easy answer. No corporate boss telling me to go easy on the White House. No foreign cash slipped under the table. And no fear. They already tried to take everything from me for telling the truth about what this party has become, and all they managed to do was set me free.
A good man just lost a thirty-seven-year career for refusing to put a lie on the air. The least the rest of us can do is make sure the people still willing to tell the truth never have to make that choice alone. I want to extend an open invitation to Scott to join me for an interview so he can tell his story and we can work toward a better country together.
2. Trump-Endorsed Candidate Loses Primary for Iowa Governor
On Tuesday, Republicans in Iowa picked their nominee for governor. Trump’s choice was Congressman Randy Feenstra, who he endorsed just days before the vote, calling him MAGA all the way.
He lost.
Beaten by a political newcomer, by less than a single point. Republicans have not lost the governor’s office in Iowa in sixteen years.
But Democrats are feeling great about their chances in the state. Their nominee for governor is state auditor Rob Sand, who just happens to be the only Democrat to win statewide office in Iowa in years. And he is sitting on a war chest north of 18 million dollars. The analysts like him too, with several already moving the race from lean Republican to a true toss-up.
It’s not just the governor’s race. Joni Ernst’s Senate seat is wide open, and Iowa Democrats just nominated state lawmaker Josh Turek to go after it.
And he has something to run on. Farm country is hurting. Bankruptcies are climbing, grain prices are down, and Trump’s trade war has Iowa farmers eating the cost while China buys its soybeans somewhere else. Add in rising grocery bills and hospitals closing across rural Iowa, and you have a state where a lot of people are not feeling all that winning Trump promised.
To put a finer point on it: Trump carried Iowa by thirteen points two years ago. If Democrats are within striking distance there, they are within striking distance just about everywhere.
3. 24 Year-Old Jan. 6th Rioter Appointed to Pentagon Counterterrorism Role
The Trump administration just hired a convicted January 6th rioter into one of the most delicate offices in the entire Pentagon.
Elias Irizarry was nineteen years old when he drove from South Carolina to Washington for the Stop the Steal rally and joined the mob that stormed the Capitol. Here he is:
He pleaded guilty in 2022. He is now twenty-four.
This is not a desk job. The office he just joined runs some of the most sensitive work the American military does anywhere, including embassy security, rescuing captured Americans, and hostage operations. It requires a top secret clearance.
Staff inside the building are alarmed. Several would only speak about it anonymously, because they are afraid of retaliation. But leadership isn’t flinching, with a spokesman for the Pentagon defending the hire and describing him as a qualified, patriotic young professional.
We started this show with a journalist fired for refusing to lie. Now we have a Capitol rioter cleared for our most sensitive secrets. The truth-tellers get pushed out. The loyal ones get promoted.
That is the whole pattern, and they have the nerve to call it patriotism. There is nothing patriotic about storming the Capitol to overturn an election. But that is apparently what gets you promoted now.
4. GOP Congressman Posts, Then Quickly Deletes Homophobic Tweet
The congressman is Andy Ogles of Tennessee. Yesterday, from his official account, he posted six words: “Homosexuality has no place in America.”
The backlash was immediate, and it came from all directions, not just the left. Republican Congressman Mike Lawler called the post idiotic.
Even Ted Cruz, who consistently opposes same-sex marriage, had something to say:
Pretty quickly, the post was gone. Ogles claimed he was out working on his farm when a member of his communications team published it, and that the staffer has now been reprimanded.
Classic move, blame the staffer. It is the oldest dodge in Washington.
I was in Congress for twelve years. I had a lot of staffers over that time. And sure, every once in a while one of them would draft something I had to tweak, or maybe word it like I felt a bit stronger about an issue than I really did. That is normal and you deal with the speed bumps along the way.
But here is the thing: your staff knows you. I mean they really know you. They are not sitting around guessing how you feel on issues like this.
So let’s say he is telling the truth, and he never saw it before it was posted. That means the people who work for him, the people who know him best, looked at the words “homosexuality has no place in America“ and figured, yeah, the boss is good with that.
Maybe he should have blamed AI, because something tells me this is not a case of his staff misreading him. This is his staff knowing exactly who they work for.
5. Iran Nuclear Risk Now Higher Than Before the War Began
Experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency weighed in on the conflict today, and the conclusion is grim. American and Israeli strikes did damage to Iran’s facilities. But that is about the extent of it as everything that makes Iran a nuclear threat is still standing.
Before the bombing, Iran had stockpiled enough enriched uranium for several bombs, sitting just a short step from weapons grade. Since the fighting started, inspectors have lost track of it. No monitoring, no inspections, and nobody outside Iran who can say with confidence where that uranium sits tonight.
And inside Iran, the hardliners are winning the argument. Voices near the top are now openly pushing to abandon global nonproliferation and build a weapon, because the lesson they have learned is clear. The countries that get attacked are the ones without the bomb.
Donald Trump sold this war as the thing that would finally put an end to Iran’s nuclear threat and make America safer. Instead, we may have pushed Iran closer to a bomb than it was before we got involved. That is a mess we made, and now we own it.
Okay, that is the show for June 3rd.
If you learned something today, hit the like button, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and please subscribe so you never miss what is coming.
See you tomorrow.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court let Alabama use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s midterms, blocking a lower court that had found the map intentionally discriminated against Black voters. The order was unsigned and came over the dissent of the three liberal justices, even though Alabama had already held some of its primaries. The practical effect is that Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat, will likely lose his seat, shifting the state’s delegation toward 6-1 in favor of Republicans. The majority wrote that the lower court had inserted itself into Alabama’s effort to run its 2026 elections under maps its own elected representatives had chosen. A three-judge panel had ruled back in 2023 that Republican lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black citizens. A special primary for the affected seats is now set for August 11.
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is dropping toward levels not seen in decades as the government drains supplies to steady oil markets shaken by the war with Iran. The latest Energy Information Administration data put the reserve at 365.1 million barrels for the week ending May 22, down from 374.2 million a week earlier and off more than 50 million barrels since the conflict started on February 28. That is already the lowest level since April 2024, and one analyst says the reserve is days away from levels last touched in August 1983. The administration frames the drawdown as part of a coordinated release with other International Energy Agency nations to lower energy prices, structured as an exchange so the oil must be returned later. Trump spent years hammering Biden for “recklessly” draining the reserve, and at his 2025 inauguration he pledged to fill it “right to the top.”
