Latest news with #CNNMax
CNN
18-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Analysis: What is a constitutional crisis and are we in one right now?
The issue du jour is deportations, but the question has been a constant of Donald Trump's presidencies: Is the president acting within the Constitution? In his first term, it came up repeatedly: when he tried to quash an FBI investigation; when his administration ignored subpoenas; and when he tried to stay in office after losing an election. Now, Trump's administration has invoked wartime powers to deport mostly Venezuelan alleged gang members to a controversial prison in El Salvador. When a federal judge ordered planes carrying the deportees to turn around, the message was, 'Oopsie… Too late' along with a crying-laughing emoji. That, at least, was the snarky post from El Salvador's strongman President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally, on Elon Musk's X. Bukele and the White House account have now posted video of the deportees, who will be housed in El Salvador for a year, apparently being paraded into the prison, their faces and heads forcibly shaved. Trump's attorneys have been more serious, arguing in court that the people in question had already been deported when US District Judge James Boasberg issued his ruling. CNN has tried to re-create the exact timeline. But the fact remains that a judge made an order and Trump's administration did not follow it, which would seem to open a new era in the question of whether the US is, in fact, in a constitutional crisis. There is no set definition and no clear agreement about when the US actually enters a constitutional crisis. Generally speaking, the US system of government is built around the idea that three coequal branches of government place checks and balances on each other. 'People generally use the term 'constitutional crisis' to describe periods when institutions of government are clearly in conflict,' law professors Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas and Jack Balkin of Yale wrote in 2009. But they argued there has been 'promiscuous use of the term.' 'The mere existence of conflict, even profound conflict, cannot be the definition of crisis,' they wrote. 'Government institutions are always in conflict.' If one branch stops honoring checks completely, the system gets out of whack. 'To me, where we get into real trouble is if there is open, willing defiance of a court order,' said CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig, appearing Monday on CNN Max. 'People use this phrase constitutional crisis. I hesitate to use that phrase. But if we get into open defiance, then we are there.' The Trump administration is not currently saying it has the authority to simply defy the court, but it seems to be flirting with the idea. 'A district court judge can no more enjoin the expulsion of foreign terrorists to foreign soil than he can direct the movement of Air Force One,' White House adviser Stephen Miller told CNN's Kasie Hunt in a contentious interview on her show 'The Arena' on Monday. Look for more debate over the details of when the order was issued and whether the administration could have or should have turned the planes around. If the administration disagrees with a court, it has recourse, said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. 'The president's remedy is to appeal, perhaps file an emergency appeal with the appellate court, but not to defy the order,' she said, also on CNN Max. 'That's what checks and balances mean. It means that the president cannot sit as the judge of his own actions.' The Berkeley Law professor John Yoo, who worked in the George W. Bush administration and has taken an expansive view of executive authority, wrote Monday that he does not think the US is currently in a constitutional crisis. Presidents are bound to come into conflict with courts and Congress, Yoo argued. I followed up by email asking Yoo what the term means to him. 'I confess that I have no clear definition of a constitutional crisis,' he said, adding that he does have clear ideas about what is not a constitutional crisis: 'It cannot just be a disagreement over the meaning of the constitution. It cannot be just a fight between the branches of government. … Not only do we have these conflicts all the time, but the Framers designed the separation of powers — according to James Madison — to encourage the three branches to fight.' Yoo, currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, sees it differently, and told me claims of a constitutional crisis today 'are examples of the hyper-partisan policies of our time than any real assault on the Constitution.' Levinson, who co-authored a 2009 paper trying to define a constitutional crisis, told me during Trump's first administration that crisis is built into the Constitution. 'It's the Constitution itself that constitutes a crisis, because it sets up this byzantine system of separation of powers we often refer to as checks and balances that turns into a ping pong game without a definite end to it,' Levinson told me in 2019. I reached out to Levinson to ask how things have changed in the past six years. Even if the US is not in the midst of a constitutional crisis, it is stuck in an era of 'constitutional hardball, which is the willingness to take advantage of every last legal possibility or legal technicality you try to score points for your political party,' Levinson said. That's certainly a culture we're living in. A major shift, however, has occurred in Congress at the outset of Trump 2.0, Levinson argued, pointing to the 'total and complete collapse of Congress as a genuine institution of governance.' Even Republicans who might six years ago have opposed Trump on some issues, he said, 'have turned into what I think really is a cult of personality.' How those Republicans act if or when Trump actively ignores courts will be key. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the New York Times that the question of whether Trump defies courts is what wakes him up at '2, 3 in the morning.' 'I believe Republican senators, on this issue, will stand up,' Schumer said of a handful of his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. 'About five or six have said publicly they will work to uphold the courts, and to uphold the law if Trump tries to break it. And we can do that legislatively if we have to.' That would be an example of lawmakers reasserting equilibrium.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What is a constitutional crisis and are we in one right now?
A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. The issue du jour is deportations, but the question has been a constant of Donald Trump's presidencies: Is the president acting within the Constitution? In his first term, it came up repeatedly: when he tried to quash an FBI investigation; when his administration ignored subpoenas; and when he tried to stay in office after losing an election. Now, Trump's administration has invoked wartime powers to deport mostly Venezuelan alleged gang members to a controversial prison in El Salvador. When a federal judge ordered planes carrying the deportees to turn around, the message was, 'Oopsie… Too late' along with a crying-laughing emoji. That, at least, was the snarky post from El Salvador's strongman President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally, on Elon Musk's X. Bukele and the White House account have now posted video of the deportees, who will be housed in El Salvador for a year, apparently being paraded into the prison, their faces and heads forcibly shaved. Trump's attorneys have been more serious, arguing in court that the people in question had already been deported when US District Judge James Boasberg issued his ruling. CNN has tried to re-create the exact timeline. But the fact remains that a judge made an order and Trump's administration did not follow it, which would seem to open a new era in the question of whether the US is, in fact, in a constitutional crisis. There is no set definition and no clear agreement about when the US actually enters a constitutional crisis. Generally speaking, the US system of government is built around the idea that three coequal branches of government place checks and balances on each other. 'People generally use the term 'constitutional crisis' to describe periods when institutions of government are clearly in conflict,' law professors Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas and Jack Balkin of Yale wrote in 2009. But they argued there has been 'promiscuous use of the term.' 'The mere existence of conflict, even profound conflict, cannot be the definition of crisis,' they wrote. 'Government institutions are always in conflict.' If one branch stops honoring checks completely, the system gets out of whack. 'To me, where we get into real trouble is if there is open, willing defiance of a court order,' said CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig, appearing Monday on CNN Max. 'People use this phrase constitutional crisis. I hesitate to use that phrase. But if we get into open defiance, then we are there.' The Trump administration is not currently saying it has the authority to simply defy the court, but it seems to be flirting with the idea. 'A district court judge can no more enjoin the expulsion of foreign terrorists to foreign soil than he can direct the movement of Air Force One,' White House adviser Stephen Miller told CNN's Kaise Hunt in a contentious interview on her show 'The Arena' on Monday. Look for more debate over the details of when the order was issued and whether the administration could have or should have turned the planes around. If the administration disagrees with a court, it has recourse, said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. 'The president's remedy is to appeal, perhaps file an emergency appeal with the appellate court, but not to defy the order,' she said, also on CNN Max. 'That's what checks and balances mean. It means that the president cannot sit as the judge of his own actions.' The Berkeley Law professor John Yoo, who worked in the George W. Bush administration and has taken an expansive view of executive authority, wrote Monday that he does not think the US is currently in a constitutional crisis. Presidents are bound to come into conflict with courts and Congress, Yoo argued. I followed up by email asking Yoo what the term means to him. 'I confess that I have no clear definition of a constitutional crisis,' he said, adding that he does have clear ideas about what is not a constitutional crisis: 'It cannot just be a disagreement over the meaning of the constitution. It cannot be just a fight between the branches of government. … Not only do we have these conflicts all the time, but the Framers designed the separation of powers — according to James Madison — to encourage the three branches to fight.' Yoo, currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, sees it differently, and told me claims of a constitutional crisis today 'are examples of the hyper-partisan policies of our time than any real assault on the Constitution.' Levinson, who co-authored a 2009 paper trying to define a constitutional crisis, told me during Trump's first administration that crisis is built into the Constitution. 'It's the Constitution itself that constitutes a crisis, because it sets up this byzantine system of separation of powers we often refer to as checks and balances that turns into a ping pong game without a definite end to it,' Levinson told me in 2019. I reached out to Levinson to ask how things have changed in the past six years. Even if the US is not in the midst of a constitutional crisis, it is stuck in an era of 'constitutional hardball, which is the willingness to take advantage of every last legal possibility or legal technicality you try to score points for your political party,' Levinson said. That's certainly a culture we're living in. A major shift, however, has occurred in Congress at the outset of Trump 2.0, Levinson argued, pointing to the 'total and complete collapse of Congress as a genuine institution of governance.' Even Republicans who might six years ago have opposed Trump on some issues, he said, 'have turned into what I think really is a cult of personality.' How those Republicans act if or when Trump actively ignores courts will be key. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the New York Times that the question of whether Trump defies courts is what wakes him up at '2, 3 in the morning.' 'I believe Republican senators, on this issue, will stand up,' Schumer said of a handful of his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. 'About five or six have said publicly they will work to uphold the courts, and to uphold the law if Trump tries to break it. And we can do that legislatively if we have to.' That would be an example of lawmakers reasserting equilibrium.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Max reverses course, won't charge extra for live sports and news
Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products. In an utterly shocking, consumer-friendly move, Max won't charge for something previously offered for free. Warner Bros. Discovery said on Wednesday that it's shelving its previously announced plan to charge an extra $10 monthly for sports and news content. Instead, it's cutting the content from the ad-supported tier next month, which sounds reasonable enough. In 2023, Max said its Bleacher Report (B/R) Sports Add-On tier would only be free until February 2024, when it would become a $10 add-on for all tiers. But that date came and went (and then went some more) without news of the extra fees. Viewers waited silently like students who hoped their teacher would forget their homework assignment. Then, last September, Bloomberg reported that the $10 fee was still in the works — and could arrive as soon as that month. Uh oh. But today's news puts those concerns to rest, at least for paying subscribers. Ad-supported members will lose access to B/R Sports and CNN Max (the news network's streaming redo) on March 30. Warner says those on that tier who want to retain access to sports and news can visit the Max Help Center for more info. So far, that page says nothing about it, so you'll probably want to check back closer to the cutoff date. B/R Sports streams more than 1,700 live games and events annually across leagues like the NBA (although it loses those rights after this season), MLB, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR and more. Meanwhile, CNN Max is Warner CEO David Zaslav's latest attempt to turn a CNN streaming service into a revenue stream — something the debt-ridden company direly needs. This month alone, it made sweeping cuts to its games division and began offering some of its movies on YouTube. Although Max subscribers will welcome today's announcement, there's reason to question whether the free integration will be permanent. In its press release, where you have to assume words were chosen carefully and pored over by layers of management, Max only said it won't pursue that path… "for now."
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Warner Bros. Discovery's Max Scraps Plan to Launch Separate Sports Tier
Say farewell to new streaming concepts like 'B/R Sports' and 'CNN Max.' They will vanish before we ever really got to know them. Warner Bros. Discovery reversed plans announced in September of 2023 to launch a premium tier for sports programming on Max, and said it also would end an experiment called 'CNN Max' that attempted to create a new CNN tier for subscribers to the streaming service. More from Variety Streaming-Era Commercials Invade Forbidden TV Territory: Presidential Debates, HBO Shows and Other Content Once Deemed Off-Limits Puppy Bowl Ratings: 12.8 Million Viewers for Animal Planet's 2025 Dog Adoption Event Rooster Teeth Lives! Co-Founder Burnie Burns Buys Company Assets From Warner Bros. Discovery 'Over the last year plus, we had the opportunity to assess how users engage with sports and news on Max, and we've been actively involved in exploring ways to evolve the sports distribution ecosystem in the U.S. We believe that the best place for that content for now is within the Standard and Premium tiers,' said JB Perrette, CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games, WBD. 'This update ensures that subscribers can continue to enjoy that coveted access within Max, while also enabling ongoing investment in our premium sports and news portfolio.' More to come… Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
CNN Anchor and Correspondent Amara Walker to Exit
'CNN This Morning Weekend' co-anchor Amara Walker is leaving the news network after more than a decade. In a Thursday statement, Walker said she decided to 'seize on this moment of change in our industry and take a hiatus from TV news.' 'I'm a journalist at heart, but I have other professional passions as well. The timing couldn't be better to embark on the next chapter,' she added. 'I have other professional goals that I haven't been able to pursue given my full-time commitment to a breaking news TV schedule. I'm excited about all that is to come and the opportunities that lie ahead.' 'In my 10 years with CNN, I've had the privilege of working on nearly all of its platforms, as an anchor for CNN, CNN International and CNN Max, and also as a correspondent,' Walker continued. 'Winning an Emmy Award recently was the icing on the cake. I felt this is the right time to take this step.' Walker first joined CNN in 2013 as an as anchor for CNN International, where she distinguished herself as one of the lead breaking news anchors having covered a number of live major international news events. She anchored the network's coverage of the ongoing humanitarian and political crisis in Venezuela and the large-scale demonstrations against a controversial extradition bill in Hong Kong in June 2019. She also was live on the air as a fire ripped through Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in April 2019 and led the network's initial coverage of the Ottawa shootings in 2014 at the Canadian Parliament, which was simulcast on CNN and CNN International. Other major live events Walker has covered include the truck terrorist attacks in Nice, France, and the Berlin Christmas market in 2016, the 2017 Las Ramblas van attack in Barcelona, the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, the 2015 deaths of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, the death of Ariel Sharon, the South Korea Sewol ferry disaster, the historic double canonization of John XXIII and John Paul II, the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the referendum in Crimea, which led to Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian region. She was also live on the air as security forces stormed Kiev's Independence Square, which ultimately led to the crisis in Ukraine. As a correspondent, Walker reported on the 2021 Atlanta spa massacre and subsequent outcry from the Asian-American community against the increasing hate and racist incidents due to misplaced blame for the COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump's rhetoric. She also co-hosted the primetime special 'Afraid: Fear in America's Communities of Color' with Anderson Cooper, Victor Blackwell and Ana Cabrera. Walker was also part of the the 2020 presidential election night team covering Trump's repeated attacks against the Georgia Secretary of State baselessly claiming fraud. Her subsequent reports focused on the investigations into Trump's phone call pressuring the Secretary to 'find' more votes after his loss to Joe Biden. She also reported on the presidential vote recount in Georgia. She was nominated for an Emmy award for her breaking news coverage of the Manchester Arena bombing attack during an Ariana Grande concert in 2017. In 2024, she was awarded an Emmy for her breaking news coverage of the Israel-Hamas War, after Oct. 7, 2023. 'In Amara's more than 10-year distinguished and award-winning career at CNN, she has helmed numerous breaking news stories from the anchor desk and reported from the field on major events across the U.S.,' a CNN spokesperson told TheWrap. 'She's been a wonderful and deeply respected colleague at CNN. We know she will continue to find success in her new pursuits.' In addition to 'CNN This Morning Weekend,' Walker also anchors 'CNN Newsroom' on CNN Max and CNN International, which airs Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8 a.m. ET. A successor for Walker's slot on CNN's weekend morning program, which is co-anchored by Blackwell, has not been announced. The post CNN Anchor and Correspondent Amara Walker to Exit appeared first on TheWrap.
