Mediaite ONE SHEET: The Dem-pire Strikes Back, Scalise Dodges Johnson Questions, and More!

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TOP STORY

“NORMIE AMERICA” ISN’T SOLD ON THE DSA

DSA candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s Democratic Senatorial primary this month, and Francesca Hong, who lost her bid to become Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial challenger this week, have been at the forefront of political coverage from both the right and the left this election cycle. That’s been true whether they’re being celebrated or berated — but, per the stack today, it’s not indicative of a true shift toward the progressive end of the Party, despite what some might think.

THREE TAKES

The Free Press, Will Rahn — The Democratic establishment “has some fight left in it,” Rahn wrote today, and is apparently growing tired of “being consistently humiliated in primary elections by their socialist rivals.” Rahn pointed to the success of Wisconsin’s gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, who bested the DSA’s Francesca Hong (“a socialist and an inept campaigner”) this week to take the Dems’ nomination. Hong appeared to be a “runaway front-runner for the Democratic nomination” even though both Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “kept their distance from her.” For Rahn, that’s more proof “socialists are having trouble replicating their success beyond deep-blue enclaves like New York City.”

Hong isn’t the only example of Rahn’s belief that the DSA is crumbling. Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed has built a campaign that’s “pure fantasy, the kind of thing you have to have attended grad school to be stupid enough to believe. Rahn concluded, “Cancel culture doesn’t apply to politicians, and you do not need to automatically vote for your party’s candidate. If they’re gross, and believe things that you find abhorrent, stay home. Or write in your spouse or whatever. Or vote for your local third-party whackjob.”

To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes, Charlie Sykes — “Normie America” would agree with The Free Press, Sykes essentially wrote this morning, but now that Wisconsin has successfully “dodged” a Hong-shaped “electoral bullet,” a new “counter-narrative to the notion that the Democratic Party as a whole is eager to Corbynize itself” is being born. To prove his point, Sykes pointed to Arizona, where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs just launched a unity ticket with former Republican John Giles, and to Florida, where former GOP Congressman “stalwart Never Trumper” David Jolly “is poised to win the Democratic nomination for governor.” Dems are also seeing an “embrace of innovative Big Tents” in states like Idaho, South Dakota, and Nebraska.

Sykes added that centrist Democrats should not “ignore the challenge from the far left,” but should be “careful to learn the lessons of mainstream Republicans who have been rendered irrelevant by the unexpected triumph of the MAGA movement.”

Punchbowl News AM, Max Cohen — The fact that “the rise of the progressive left is dominating coverage of the 2026 cycle” is a thorn in the side of Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ), Cohen wrote today. Stanton, who heads the New Dem Action Fund, insists that “the strength of moderates running in the toss-up districts that will decide control of the House” is the story that should be getting more attention. Stanton is also “rumored to be interested in the chairmanship of the DCCC,” something that “makes his prognosticating more interesting.” He told Cohen he “totally respects” the interest in “the far left end of the caucus,” but those guys aren’t winners and won’t “deliver the majority” the Dems need. Ouch! If the party really wants to win back the House and Senate this fall, Stanton believes they’ll do so thanks to “New Dem-endorsed challengers.” Trump may be busy “painting Democrats as communists and socialists who are out of touch with the American electorate,” but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

TAKEAWAY: Today’s newsletter authors are correct that this year’s DSA candidates have certainly garnered a lot of attention this election cycle, partly because Democrats are hungry for someone, or something, new to beat Trump and MAGA candidates this fall. The “Democratic social war” has been a topic of interest for many months now, from both our authors and political watchers across the spectrum, and it doesn’t seem like that reality is changing anytime soon. Though today’s authors are cautioning that Dems need to elevate the establishment candidates, establishment leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both recently emphasized the need to embrace the progressive wing of the party if they want to win.

Dems often find themselves debating this very topic — nominating “change” candidates vs. sticking with establishment figures who feel safe — each election cycle, which is what keeps them stuck in this ideological battle. Sooner or later, a decision will have to be made. At this point, it feels like absolutely no one agrees, whether they’re on the right, the left, or in between.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP 🍨 Punchbowl News AM, Jake Sherman — Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) has no plans to challenge Mike Johnson’s role as Speaker of the House if Republicans hang on to Congress this fall, Sherman revealed. But the team at Punchbowl also asked Scalise “three times” if he would run against Johnson for minority leader should Dems prove successful — and he didn’t really give a straightforward answer. Scalise first said the GOP is “not going to be in the minority,” before adding he’s “honored to be the majority leader” and “want[s] to be running for majority leader the week after the elections” and, finally, “I’m not focused on any other seat.” That “non-answer” is bound to “get noticed in GOP leadership suites and around Washington just 81 days out from Election Day.”

SCOOP 🍨 POLITICO Playbook, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Adam Wren — Replacing outgoing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will be harder than some might suspect, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who remains Trump’s longest-serving press secretary to date, told POLITICO on Thursday night. “Ninety percent of the job is responding to calls at midnight and 5 a.m., and you’re on the road together. You get to know each other,” she said. “You spend more time with members of the press than you do your own family, and so having those relationships makes a huge difference.” Sanders isn’t the only one who spoke to Playbook. “She knew him better than any of the four preceding press secretaries, and she understood the job,” Sean Spicer also said. “There’s no one that had that relationship like she did. That longevity, that familiarity.”

SCOOP 🍨  Status, Oliver Darcy— Former Good Morning America anchor Janai Norman isn’t staying quiet about what went down with ABC, Darcy reported this morning. In July, she “torched the Disney-owned network for how GMA host Michael Strahan interviewed the parents of Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old who was found dead in Mississippi after a boating trip with his friends.” That was “a weighty and sharp criticism to direct toward Strahan and ABC News” but had “hardly been the only time that Norman has gone after her former employer in such blistering terms.” Insiders told Darcy that Norman’s missives “have raised eyebrows among many at ABC News” and she is “arguably part of a new trend” that’s seen departing and ousted anchors “speaking openly about their time in corporate media.”

ANALYSIS 👀 Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens— There’s a “growing tension” at The New York Times, and it’s between the outlet’s opinion and news desks, Owens wrote today. He cited reporting from CJR “on how the NYT Opinion section has expanded into more original reporting.” That’s something that is “rankling news reporters who cover many of the same beats.” He also expressed “surprise” that “executive editor Joe Kahn has no sway over the opinion desk,” a discovery that prompted a series of questions, such as: “[W]hat happens if the Opinion section eventually overtakes the newsroom in influence?” As Owens put it, “it’s kind of interesting to consider that a news organization can grow so large that it develops its own shadow newsroom, one that operates almost like a completely separate news outlet.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Poynter Report, Angela Fu— Flock announced Thursday that the company will “implement new safety measures to deter police abuse of its surveillance cameras,” something that’s likely a response to criticism that the company is helping foster something of a surveillance state. It also comes one week after The Washington Post launched an investigation that found “dozens of examples of police officers using Flock’s cameras to stalk women without their knowledge or consent.” Beginning in January 2027, authorities “using Flock’s database will be required to label every search they conduct with a criminal case number,” and the service will begin to identify “abnormal activity” like when “a police chief searched his ex-girlfriend’s license plate more than 500 times.”

ANALYSIS 👀 The Free Press, Will Rahn— Trump may believe the United States “has total control over the Strait of Hormuz,” but Rahn isn’t so sure. Of both the president’s claim and that of Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which said in part that “the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted,” Rahn commented: “Let’s acknowledge here that both Trump and the Iranian government aren’t the world’s two most reliable narrators.” He also cited the words of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who “insisted this week that there’s a lot more oil flowing through the strait than people think.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Netflix has transitioned from a buzzy, compulsively watchable hitmaker into a provider of “ambient” background content, taking fewer creative risks as it descends into a basic cable-like service. Millions of people watch the platform’s current offerings, but they are increasingly seen as forgettable compared to its earlier eras — and Owens shares analysis from Sharp Text to back that up.  QUOTE 📣  “But lately, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to latch onto any Netflix show. I keep a Google spreadsheet of interesting-looking TV shows I might want to watch, and when I checked it today, I realized there were very few recent Netflix shows I’d even managed to finish, let alone enjoy.”

Status, Oliver Darcy — Two of the more high-profile national Edward R. Murrow Awards were won by journalists who recently departed CBS News: Scott Pelley won for “excellence in writing” for his 60 Minutes piece on a Russian missile attack in Ukraine, while CBS News won “feature reporting” for Anderson Cooper‘s piece on school shootings. Regular media observers (or One Sheet readers) don’t need to be reminded why those departures happened, but the post-exit awards hammer home the point that this exodus has disrupted a real powerhouse.

Morning Brew, Sam Klebanov — Anthropic investors anticipate the AI giant will hit a valuation of $2 trillion or more during its public debut planned for the fall, which would surpass SpaceX’s recent $1.77 trillion IPO. Backers think that explosive sales — projected to put Anthropic on track for up to $120 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2026 — justify the steep valuation. Still, the company is fighting the federal government in court over Pentagon supply chain risk designations and June export controls. QUOTE 📣 “But there’s some reason for caution. Despite Anthropic’s top models outperforming products from rivals OpenAI and Alphabet, they’re vulnerable to businesses scaling back their AI use due to the hefty price tag. Its top model, Fable, is 2.5x more expensive than a comparable tool from OpenAI.”

Awful Announcing, Drew Lerner — Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced that his network will not be reengaging the NFL in media rights negotiations early, but will be waiting closer to the league’s opt-out option following the 2029-30 season. While CBS Sports president David Berson didn’t deny that CBS’s talks are currently “on hold” until Paramount resolves its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, broadcast networks remain confident that the NFL wants to stay in linear television.  QUOTE 📣 “Broadcast networks feel confident the NFL will still want to be in the linear television business a few years from now.”

Digiday Daily, Alyssa Mercante — The traditional, high-luxury influencer brand trip is facing a “midlife crisis” as companies look to move away from overly curated events that risk sparking online backlash. Industry vets suggest the market is transitioning toward more authentic and human-centric creator activations to connect with skeptical audiences. QUOTE 📣 The evolution of influencer marketing — Per Digiday Daily, “The brand trip as we know it may be dead, but a newer, more genuine and engaging format is rising from its ashes.”

OTHER COOL STUFF

Poynter — Fast-food giant McDonald’s built an incredibly detailed 515-page tracking dossier on a Wired reporter — at his request, of course — because he wanted to know just how much the fast food restaurant’s app was tracking him. The extensive file ultimately concluded that he will never stop eating there. Well, who among us would have a different result?

Awful Announcing — A meticulous data-tracking project compiled spreadsheets of “pointless stats” to rank how sports personalities performed on the latest season of ESPN Jeopardy! Television host Jeremy Schaap was the runaway champion with 134 correct answers, while SportsCenter anchor Hannah Storm posted a rough 44.8% accuracy rate.

Morning Brew — A New York Times chart tracking global emoji usage reveals that the crying emoji is currently the most popular symbol in the world — as in the top three spots were occupied by various expressions of tears. Meanwhile, the deadpan stone face emoji is rapidly rising as Gen Z’s go-to reaction.

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

POLITICO Playbook, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, Adam Wren — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) has had quite the journey. She first “rose to the heart of the Democratic Party,” took a tumble “as DNC chair,” and has since enjoyed “resurrection to become a key Hill player.” She’s also the leading candidate “to win a new, gerrymandered, majority-Black district against fragmented primary competition” in Florida this year. This is true despite all the people who “have predicted my demise over all the years.”

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

The Poynter Report’s 50 Tabs, Ren LaForme — LaForme is all about journalism in today’s 50 Tabs. He began by recalling the moment when “President-elect Donald Trump stood in front of the press and refused to take a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta” and said, “Your organization is terrible. … I’m not gonna give you a question. You are fake news.” LaForme said of the response in Poynter’s library that night, “This is both not all that surprising and the wildest thing we’ve ever seen.” Trump has engaged in a “combative relationship with the press” ever since, something that’s been covered extensively.

Poynter’s Angela Fu has been studying this closely by “tracking federal moves that affect the press” in Press Freedom Watch. Fu also alerted LaForme to other stories of note this week, including USA Today’s new partnership with Palantir. Elsewhere, LaForme takes a look at a list of 20 of the most iconic journalists in fiction, which is a pretty fun way to close out the week.

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.