Trump’s DOJ Backs Off After Trying to Drag Reporters to Court

The Trump Justice Department planned to subpoena journalists at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, attempting to force them to testify before a grand jury for vague national security concerns. The subpoenas were eventually withdrawn this month without any explanation after news organizations pushed back.

This was an extremely unprecedented decision that follows the all-too-familiar trend of weaponizing the DOJ against whomever President Trump is upset by that day.

Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima—who covers the security and intelligence community, including the war on Iran—was subpoenaed this spring. The Post was in the process of fighting Nakashima’s subpoena before the DOJ suddenly rescinded it.

“The unwarranted subpoena of our reporter Ellen Nakashima — a clear violation of constitutionally guaranteed press freedom — was another sign of the government seeking to compel journalists to become instruments of its investigations,” a Post spokesperson said. “We will continue to stand fully behind the journalism of The Washington Post and fight all efforts by any administration that violate our First Amendment rights.”

Three Wall Street Journal reporters covering national security issues also received grand jury subpoenas from the DOJ, according to the Post. In May, the DOJ also subpoenaed the Journal’s reporters over leaks from the Department of Defense related to the Iran war.

The DOJ has yet to comment on or explain its decisions to file and rescind the grand jury subpoenas.

“The potential of the government intruding into the newsgathering process is even greater when you are in the grand jury than it is for a subpoena for documents,” said Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “The administration has taken a number of extremely aggressive steps in respect to the press.… These are all aggressive attempts to target journalists reporting on the actions of the Trump administration. They are a dangerous intrusion of the independence of the press.”

After watching President Donald Trump nod off during meetings over and over and over again, we may finally have some answer as to why.

In Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a new book by New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump’s bizarre sleep schedule has been exposed, reports The Daily Beast.

According to the new book, the octogenarian reportedly barely sleeps at all. He goes on Truth Social posting sprees at all hours of the night—something we’ve all had the misfortune of witnessing—and stays up late watching TV.

The president has grown even more erratic since his last term in office.

More than just gilding fireplaces and building ballrooms, the authors describe how Trump has fundamentally changed “the rhythms and structures and operations” of the White House. Where the president used to arrive predictably by 10:30 or 11 a.m., now it’s anybody’s guess. Sometimes he’s up in the morning making phone calls, and other times White House staff find him still asleep between 8 and 10 a.m.—a sign that he probably stayed up all night watching TV and scrolling.

Privately, aides told Swan and Haberman that, for the first time, Trump was “beginning to seem old.”

“Those who spent time with him could see the signs—the moments of fatigue, the cupped hand behind the ear.… The repeated bouts of drowsiness during mid-afternoon public events,” the authors write.

Regime Change also revealed that the president and his wife, Melania, sleep (or in Trump’s case, don’t sleep) in different bedrooms.

Donald Trump began his Tuesday morning by melting down over the status of his agreement with Iran.

“Despite their protestations and false statements to the contrary, coupled with the drumbeat of the Fake News, which is doing everything possible to make the U.S. Victory as small and insignificant as possible, Iran has fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!). This will insure ‘Nuclear Honesty,’” he wrote on Truth Social. “If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations!”

Well, Mr. President, I have some bad news …

Speaking at a press briefing Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei denied the Trump administration’s claim that the country would allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit its nuclear bombed sites.

“We have not had a meeting with the director general of the IAEA, nor do we have any plans for the agency to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities damaged by the US and Zionist military aggression,” Baqaei said.

That also contradicts Vice President JD Vance’s claim on Monday that Iran had agreed to allow IAEA inspectors, who could visit Iran “this week, maybe as soon as today.”

The vice president did not offer specifics on what kind of access IAEA inspectors would be granted, or how frequently their inspections would take place. Last week, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly assured U.S. lawmakers that in agreeing to the MOU, Tehran had drafted a letter inviting IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi to bring inspectors into the country.

In the 14-point memorandum of understanding, Iran has only agreed to commit to “down-blending” its enriched nuclear material under the supervision of IAEA inspectors. In return for that commitment, the U.S. has offered Iran unprecedented waivers allowing them to sell their previously sanctioned oil.

Trump also claimed that any “Money and/or Sanctions” released by the Treasury Department would be tightly controlled by the U.S. and used to purchase “food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American Farmers.” But Iran denied that too.

“Regarding Iran’s released assets, previously illegally blocked by the U.S., WE will decide how to utilize them as we deem fit; there are NO restrictions in this regard,” Baqaei said.

This story has been updated.

CBS News is losing heads, both in the newsroom and across America.

Viewership plummeted at CBS News weeks after its chief, Bari Weiss, fired numerous producers and correspondents from 60 Minutes, according to Nielsen ratings data obtained by Status.

Damage was particularly bad at CBS Mornings, hosted by Gayle King, which has long held the third-place ratings spot among network morning shows. But that recently changed: CBS Mornings averaged 1.8 million total viewers earlier this month, then dropped to 1.59 million on June 3, the day after executives fired Scott Pelley, the de facto face of CBS News.

That amounted to an 11 percent slip in audience following what was already the “worst-rated May on record” in CBS Mornings history, according to the ratings data.

The dip was short-lived, but nonetheless “alarmed some officials,” since morning shows typically produce the lion’s share of ad revenue for the major news networks, according to Status reporter Oliver Darcy.

Change at 60 Minutes, the network’s famed investigative weekly program, has been rapid and corrosive. Late last month, Weiss simultaneously fired executive producer Tanya Simon, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi (who criticized Weiss’s decision to delay her report on Trump deportations to the notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador), correspondent Cecilia Vega, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich. That same day, she appointed Nick Bilton—a former Vanity Fair columnist with no broadcast experience—to lead the venerated newsmagazine.

But Weiss may not be running the place for much longer. CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, is pursuing a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, a monumental industry shift that could see Weiss’s brief tenure atop the network come to an end, according to some longtime 60 Minutes staffers.

“I have a feeling that Bari will not be overseeing 60 Minutes for very much longer. I think once the deal gets done with Warner Bros., people will demand that she be let go or move into another position,” Steve Kroft, a 30-year veteran of the show, told Variety earlier this month. “Everything she’s touched has turned to shit. Everything she’s touched has gone colossally wrong. And I don’t think she’s showed any talent for this position. She’s only fulfilling other people’s agendas.”

On the morning of Father’s Day, seven cars of ICE agents barreled through Santa Barbara, California, and detained anywhere from nine to 11 people, including one U.S. citizen.

The Santa Barbara Independent reported that three of the people detained were mariachi musicians, according to a spokesperson for an activist group that had been following the agents. The musicians may have been in the act of serenading fathers as part of a Mexican immigrant Father’s Day tradition, or on their way to do so.

As part of the action, ICE agents reportedly detained a U.S. citizen before releasing him at a nearby hospital. They also bear-sprayed a woman who was part of an ICE-monitoring organization through the rear window of her car.

Activists trailing ICE said that the agents didn’t just arrest people in the city but also sped down the streets in the early morning, and did donuts with their cars under the highway for 15 minutes. When they got on the freeway, the activists reported that the agents were going over 100 miles an hour.

Meanwhile, the Santa Barbara police chief, Kelly Gordon, had no idea ICE was in town. “We didn’t have any calls for service from 1 a.m. that were remotely close to what was being alleged on the Westside,” she said.