There are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen. This was one of those weeks—but you wouldn’t know that if you tuned into the Sunday cable news shows, where interviews with actor Daniel Craig and Donald Trump dominated the airwaves. That’s hardly a fiber-rich media diet.
With all eyes fixed on Trump, America’s highest-paid news anchors managed to miss some of the most impactful stories of the week. From historic wins by Virginia’s Democratic House of Delegates to Trump’s increasingly unhinged Cabinet of Fox News anchors, we’re taking a deep dive into the stories you missed if you tuned into cable news this weekend.
The Fox News administration
Donald Trump loves Fox News—so much so that the president-elect has now nominated nearly a dozen current or former Fox News contributors to senior roles in government. By now millions of Americans are familiar with Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, whose own mother shamed him as an abuser and a drunk. But that’s just the tip of a truly rotten iceberg.
On Wednesday, Trump tapped Fox News anchor Monica Crowley to serve as assistant secretary of state and chief of protocol, a role for which Crowley is uniquely unqualified. Not only is Crowley a registered foreign agent for Ukrainian oligarchs, she’s also a serial plagiarist who wholesale copied large portions of her Ph.D. dissertation.
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“Doctor” Crowley will fit right in alongside bogus academics including “Doctor” Sebastian Gorka, whose Ph.D. dissertation is widely considered to be incoherent and fraudulent, and prospective Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who has a long history of stealing work from sources as diverse as the Associated Press and … Bill Clinton? It shouldn’t surprise you to discover that most Americans aren’t thrilled at the idea of having Fox News running the government: A recent YouGov poll revealed majorities of voters oppose Trump’s effort to stack his administration with cable news washouts.
Virginia’s Democrats swing for the fences
Virginia’s Democrats currently have a razor-thin, one-seat majority in the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates—but they aren’t letting thin numbers stop them from passing transformative legislation.
This week House Democrats passed three landmark constitutional amendments through the lower house that would enshrine abortion rights into law, codify protections for same-sex marriage and automatically restore voting rights to felons who have served their time. If those amendments become law, they would put to rest three political issues that have roiled the Old Dominion for over 20 years. Recent polling indicates majorities of Virginians support passing all three.
Virginia’s constitution officially bans same-sex marriage, which became a moot issue in 2014 when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions nationwide. But if Trump’s handpicked conservative SCOTUS majority decides to revisit that issue—as some legal experts fear they will—Virginia’s nearly 20,000 same-sex couples could find their rights dissolved at a moment’s notice. Democrats are now in a race against the clock to move all three amendments forward ahead in time to get them in front of voters on the 2026 midterm ballot.
Let this be a lesson to national Democrats who claim to need supermajorities to get anything done: It’s amazing what a little political courage (and a statewide coalition of over a dozen activist groups) can do!
Tick tock, TikTok
Corporate media outlets are among the largest institutional investors in popular social media platform TikTok, which may be why you didn’t see a word about America’s looming TikTok ban on the Sunday shows. That silence is even more noticeable after this week’s federal court ruling that cleared the way for the ban, signed into law in April, to go into effect on January 19.
That doesn’t mean TikTok will suddenly go dark on President Joe Biden’s last day in office. The company could also sell itself to an American buyer, though the Chinese Communist Party has said it would block any effort to sell the company off. Then, of course, there’s the Trump factor.
Donald Trump was once one of the biggest advocates for a TikTok ban — back when kids were using the platform to make fun of him, naturally. But after taking lavish campaign contributions from TikTok investor and tech billionaire Jeffrey Yass, Trump now supports TikTok. Funny how that works! Still, it’s unclear what Trump could actually do to stop the law, given that it will already be in force when he assumes office on January 20. Knowing Trump, any plan to save TikTok will almost certainly involve bending the law to get his way.
RELATED STORY: The clock is ticking on TikTok—unless Trump steps in
Reach out!
Keep the conversation going all week by sharing stories you think the media missed with me at @themaxburns on Bluesky! And remember: If you’re tuned to cable news, you aren’t even getting half of the story.
Until next week, keep your eyes peeled and stay inquisitive, friends.
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