What happened
CBS News yesterday abruptly pulled a “60 Minutes” investigation into President Donald Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. The network had promoted the segment for days, saying several of the migrants described to “60 Minutes” the “brutal and torturous conditions they endured” inside the megaprison. In a memo to colleagues yesterday, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said CBS News editor- in- chief Bari Weiss (pictured above) “spiked our story” because the Trump administration had declined to comment.

Who said what
“Inside CECOT” was “screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi said in the widely leaked email. “It is factually correct,” and “in my view, pulling it now” is “not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” The administration’s refusal to participate “is a statement, not a VETO,” she added, and if that’s now a “valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.” Weiss had “asked for a significant amount of new material to be added,” The New York Times said, including an interview with Trump immigration czar Stephen Miller, for whom she “provided contact information.”

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison hired Weiss, a conservative opinion entrepreneur, after the Trump administration approved his purchase of CBS’s parent company. Ellison is now “courting” Trump’s support for his hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the Times said, “but the president has used recent episodes of ‘60 Minutes’ to suggest he is displeased” with Ellison’s “stewardship of CBS.”

What next?
Alfonsi referred “all questions to Bari Weiss.” In a statement, Weiss said it was normal for newsrooms to hold stories that “lack sufficient context” or “are missing critical voices,” and she looked forward to “airing this important piece when it’s ready.” 

What happened
Israel’s Cabinet has approved 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (pictured above) said yesterday. The decision — approved Dec. 11 but classified until now, according to Smotrich’s office — brings the number of Jewish West Bank settlements approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government to 69, a nearly 50% increase since 2022. 

Who said what
The settlements are “widely considered illegal under international law,” The Associated Press said, and Israel’s “construction binge” in the West Bank “further threatens the possibility” of a two-state solution. Smotrich’s stated goal is “blocking the establishment of a Palestinian state,” the BBC said, and surging violence in the West Bank is “heightening fears that settlement expansion could entrench Israel’s occupation.” 

The “unrelenting violent campaign” by Israeli settlers includes “brutal harassment, beatings, even killings,” The New York Times said, while the Israeli military “forces Palestinians to evacuate or orders the destruction of their homes once settlers drive them to flee.” Israel’s military said yesterday it is reviewing the shooting death Saturday of a 16-year-old boy “suspected of hurling a block” at soldiers in the West Bank town of Qabatiya. Video of the incident showed an Israeli soldier shooting the youth at “point blank range,” CNN said, and “nothing appears to be thrown from the alley the Palestinian teenager comes from.”

What next?
The “Israeli onslaught has all but vanquished a free Palestinian existence in the West Bank,” the Times said, and the “desperation among Palestinian villagers and farmers as they watch the takeover of their lands at a pace never seen before” is exacerbated by “fear that the changes are already becoming irreversible.”