Rupert Murdoch’s Response to Fox Legal Jeopardy? Retire.

Rupert Murdoch announced Thursday that he is leaving his roles as chairman and CEO of News Corp and chairman of Fox Corp, amid a P.R. firestorm almost entirely of his own making.

Murdoch’s son Lachlan will now take the helm of both companies.

“I am writing to let you all know that I have decided to transition to the role of Chairman Emeritus at Fox and News,” he said in an internal memo. “But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams and a passionate, principled leader in Lachlan who will become sole Chairman of both companies.”

“Neither excessive pride nor false humility are admirable qualities. But I am truly proud of what we have achieved collectively through the decades.”

The 92-year-old media mogul’s resignation comes amid major struggles for both News and Fox Corps. News Corp reported more than a 75 percent drop in profit in August, primarily due to lower print and digital advertising at News Corp Australia, as well as low print advertising in the U.K. Prince Harry is also suing News Corp’s British arm for multiple unlawful acts allegedly committed over several decades, including hacking his phone.

Fox News, meanwhile, is facing down a barrage of lawsuits and scandals, mostly related to the network continuing to spread lies about the 2020 presidential election. Murdoch has admitted in depositions for one of those lawsuits that he knew the stolen election conspiracy theory was false but he continued to let his network give airtime to its biggest proponents.

One lawsuit is from Smartmatic Voting Systems, which accused Fox of defaming it when network hosts said its voting machines contributed to election fraud. A Smartmatic attorney compared Murdoch to a mob boss during a hearing Wednesday.

“The mafia boss doesn’t give the direction of exactly how the henchman carries out that hit,” J. Erik Connolly said. “But, unquestionably, we would all say the mafia boss participated in the hit when the hit happened. Exact same thing happened here.”

Donald Trump supporter Ray Epps has also sued Fox, and its former host Tucker Carlson, for defamation. He alleged Fox spread a bizarre conspiracy that he led an FBI plot to incite the January 6 insurrection. Epps pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds for his participation in the riot.

Earlier this year, Fox reported a $54 million loss after its costly settlement deal with Dominion Voting Systems, which also accused Fox of defamation after network hosts said Dominion voting machines had contributed to election fraud.

Fox also settled with former producer Abby Grossberg, who alleged that company lawyers coerced her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion lawsuit. She accused Fox of having a culture of “poisonous and entrenched patriarchy.”

This story has been updated.

Public schools across the country are banning books at a frightening rate—but no state is infringing on academic freedom quite like Florida.

A new report from PEN America found that the number of public school book bans across the country increased by 33 percent in the 2022–23 school year, compared to the year before. Nearly half of those bans, or 40 percent, happened in Florida.

PEN America recorded 3,362 instances of books banned in the last academic year, with 1,406 of those cases in Florida. This was the first year that Florida bested Texas in this dubious competition, according to the organization, which has been tracking book bans since 2021.

Following Florida, the worst states in this field were Texas (625 bans), Missouri (333 bans), Utah (281 bans), and Pennsylvania (186 bans).

Predictably, an overwhelming number of the bans targeted books on race or racism (30 percent) or featured LGBTQ characters (also 30 percent). But in an equally troubling finding, PEN found that nearly half of all book bans dealt with violence or physical abuse. Many banned books also focused on health and well-being, or featured themes concerning grief or death.

“The toll of the book-banning movement is getting worse. More kids are losing access to books, more libraries are taking authors off the shelves, and opponents of free expression are pushing harder than ever to exert their power over students as a whole,” said Suzanne Nossel, chief executive officer of PEN America. “By depriving a rising generation of the freedom to read, these bans are eating away at the foundations of our democracy.”

PEN America also reported that 86 percent of the book bans happened in school districts near a prominent “parents’ rights” organization. The organization specifically tracked chapters of Moms for Liberty (which initially formed in Florida), Citizens Defending Freedom, and Parents’ Rights in Education.

It’s no surprise that Florida is leading the rest of the country in such draconian book bans. In addition to the heavy influence of Moms for Liberty in the state, Governor Ron DeSantis has made gutting academic liberties part of his personal brand—depriving students of the freedom to read under the guise of waging war on anything he deems “woke.”

This year alone, DeSantis has expanded the state’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning classroom discussion on gender and sexual orientation from kindergarten through high school. He went to war with the College Board and successfully got it to water down its A.P. African American Studies curriculum, stripping entire course sections on Black Lives Matter, queer Black writers, and critical race theory. He defended new Education Department guidelines that require middle school students be taught that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” On the university level, he has banned diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, banned degrees in gender and studies and critical race theory, and limited what teachers can actually teach about race and gender.

Public schools in the state have followed suit. Florida school districts have banned books such as The Kite Runner, the Court of Thorns and Roses series, Little Rock Nine, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Individual schools in Florida have also banned the Ruby Bridges movie, which shares the story of the first Black student to integrate her elementary school in New Orleans, and Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb, the poem read at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Some of these bans have been instigated by a single parental complaint.

Representative Eric Swalwell called out Jim Jordan on Wednesday for continuing to evade a subpoena to testify before the House January 6 investigative committee.

The House Judiciary Committee, which Jordan chairs, held a hearing on the supposed weaponization of the federal government. At one point, Representative Thomas Massie accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of being in contempt of Congress for declining to comment on ongoing investigations into Hunter Biden.

Swalwell was quick to hit back. “That is quite rich, because the guy who’s leaving the hearing room right now, Mr. Jordan, is about 500 days into evading his subpoena,” Swalwell said, displaying a countdown clock on a tablet as he spoke. Jordan had gotten up and was walking out of the room.

“If we’re going to talk about contempt of Congress, let’s get real,” Swalwell continued. “Are you serious that Jim Jordan, a witness to one of the greatest crimes ever committed in America, a crime where more prosecutions have occurred than any crime committed in America, refuses to help his country, and we’re going to get lectured about subpoena compliance and contempt of Congress?”

The January 6 investigative committee subpoenaed Jordan in December 2021 to discuss messages he sent to Donald Trump ahead of the insurrection. Jordan had also sent messages to Trump’s legal team and other people involved in planning the January 6 rally or objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

Despite insisting in November that year he had “nothing to hide,” Jordan refused to cooperate with the subpoena. At the time, he accused the committee of engaging in “partisan witch hunts.” Then, in May 2022, Jordan contested whether the subpoena was valid or even constitutional.

Jordan has remained a solid Trump ally. Since taking the helm of the Judiciary Committee, he has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of weaponizing different federal agencies to target Trump specifically.

Nothing will stop Rudy Giuliani from being a giant creep, not even preparing to lead an insurrection, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has alleged.

Hutchinson worked as the top assistant to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and she eventually became a star witness for the House January 6 investigative committee. In her new book, Enough, Hutchinson accuses Giuliani of groping her just before Trump’s speech on January 6, The Guardian reported Wednesday.

In an excerpt from the book, Hutchinson describes waiting in a marquee tent at the Ellipse, just before Trump addressed the crowd that would eventually turn into a raging mob. She says Giuliani approached her “like a wolf closing in on its prey.”

“Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space that was separating us. I feel his stack of documents press into the small of my back. I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer,” Hutchinson writes.

“‘By the way,’ he says, fingering the fabric, ‘I’m loving this leather jacket on you.’ His hand slips under my blazer, then my skirt.”

“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” she continued. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced.”

When Hutchinson looked to John Eastman, another Trump lawyer, for help, he only “[flashed] a leering grin.”

Giuliani denied Hutchinson’s account and accused her of sharing it now “as part of the marketing campaign for her upcoming book release.”

“This is a disgusting lie against Mayor Rudy Giuliani—a man whose distinguished career in public service includes taking down the Mafia, cleaning up New York City and comforting the nation following September 11th,” Giuliani’s political adviser said in a statement, weirdly linking Giuliani’s behavior to his response to the 9/11 attack.

It would seem that Giuliani is taking a page from the book of his former boss Donald Trump, who accused writer E. Jean Carroll of saying he raped her just to promote her memoir. A judge ruled earlier this month that Trump is liable for defamation over those comments and owes Carroll monetary damages.

Giuliani’s alleged disgusting behavior should come as no surprise. His former associate sued him in May for even more repulsive behavior.

Noelle Dunphy accused Giuliani of promising to pay her a $1 million annual salary but instead raping and sexually abusing her over the course of two years. Her lawsuit alleges that Giuliani was constantly drunk, talked openly about trying to overturn the 2020 election, and even plotted to sell pardons with Donald Trump at the low, low price of $2 million each.

In August, Dunphy’s lawyer filed transcripts of recordings she made in 2019 that show just how disgusting Giuliani was. In multiple different conversations, Giuliani made aggressively lewd and possessive comments to Dunphy, at one point saying, “I want to own you, officially.”

He said he gets “hard” when he thinks about her and how smart she is, even though normally, “I’d never think about a girl being smart. If you told me a girl was smart, I would often think she’s not attractive.”

This article has been updated.

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell thinks that one of the greatest injustices to befall her for trying to overthrow the 2020 election is losing her TSA status, court documents revealed.

Powell was indicted in Georgia alongside Trump and 17 other co-defendants for trying to overturn the state’s presidential election results. Powell was charged with racketeering, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft, trespass and invasion of privacy, and conspiracy to defraud the state.

Her legal team filed a motion on Friday to dismiss the racketeering charges, and in the motion was buried this gem of a footnote: “Ms. Powell’s longstanding trusted traveler status has been revoked by TSA for ‘her criminal history’—in addition to other problems created by this wrongful indictment.”

It’s not clear from the filing if Powell is complaining about losing her status with PreCheck, Global Entry, or Clear—but it is funny that her priority upon facing racketeering charges is her experience with the TSA.

Powell has previously tried to argue that she should not be held accountable for trying to overthrow the Georgia election. Earlier this month, her lawyers requested that her case be severed from Trump’s, instead of being tried alongside him as Willis wants.

Powell’s lawyers argued that she is not connected to the other defendants because she never officially represented Trump in Georgia. They insisted that she could only get a fair trial if she were tried alone. Judge Scott McAfee was unconvinced and rejected Powell’s request.