Transcript of Evening Wire: Cuba’s Puppet Master Charged With Murder & Maids Making Six Figures? | 5.20.26

James Murdoch acquires Vox. Raul Castro has been indicted, and a new hit book about truth in the age of AI was found to contain misquotes made up by AI. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Wednesday, May 20th, and this is Evening Wire.

Fox Zion is buying up several media entities in a $300 million deal. Daily Wire contributor Tim Pearce has the story.

James Murdoch is buying New York Magazine, Vox Media's podcast network, and the Vox website for over a quarter billion dollars, a dramatic expansion in US media for the younger son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The purchase returns New York Magazine to the Murdoch family 3 decades after Rupert offloaded it. The acquisition follows the growing trend in media consolidation as companies navigate a sharp decline in search-driven clicks many of which have been replaced by AI summaries, social media aggregation, and shifting audience preferences. The younger Murdoch is framing the deal as a bet on podcasting, arguing that audiences who are burned out on what he calls, quote, content slop will gravitate toward more authentic, higher-quality programming. Fox's podcast division pulled in roughly $80 million in revenue last year.

Once again, Graham Plattner's bid to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine has run into trouble. And again, the latest controversy stems from posts made on Plattner's since-deleted Reddit account. According to Fox News, Plattner had made graphic jokes on a military subreddit involving portable toilets and explicit graffiti found inside them. He also appeared to mock an American soldier wounded in a firefight with the Taliban, writing that the soldier, quote, didn't deserve to live. Plattner has not responded to the latest discovery from his internet past. He's already faced scrutiny for posts he made about rape and homosexuality, which he's blamed on immaturity and crude humor.

The Senate has advanced a resolution to limit President Trump's ability to wage war on Iran without congressional approval. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham has the details.

The legislative step was made possible only after GOP Senator Bill Cassidy agreed to back the measure. The resolution cleared a Senate procedural hurdle with a vote of 50 to 47. Cassidy had refused to support the measure in 7 prior votes, which Democrats pushed in the wake of Trump's interventions in Venezuela and Iran. The flip in Cassidy coincides with his failed reelection campaign, losing his primary race over the weekend to a Trump-backed opponent, Congresswoman Julia Letlow. Cassidy said, quote, until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.

The Justice Department charged former Cuban dictator Raúl Castro today in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes that killed three Americans. Daily Wire Foreign Affairs reporter Kassia Kiva reports.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch announced today that 94-year-old Raúl Castro is facing several charges, including conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft, and murder, for his central role in the 1996 incident where Cuba shot down two planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. The organization attempted to search for Cubans fleeing the communist country by boat. 4 people were killed in the incident, including 3 American citizens. The Trump administration hopes to bring Castro to trial on U.S. soil.

A highly acclaimed new book on truth in the age of AI contains quotes made up by AI. Daily Wire reporter Brecka Stoll has more.

Author Steven Rosenbaum recently released The Future of Truth. The book explores how AI has blurred the lines between fact and fiction and how to combat it. It's been praised by journalists and activists around the world, including Taylor Lorenz and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa. A new investigation, however, found a problem. The book is riddled with fake and misattributed quotes thanks to AI. Rosenbaum acknowledged that he used AI tools for research, apparently resulting in numerous misattributions and outright fabrications. When reached for comment, Rosenbaum said he was launching his own investigation and that he is working with the editors to thoroughly review and quickly correct any affected passages.

In the latest from the war over talent being waged by AI companies, Anthropic has hired OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy. Daily Wire homepage managing editor Jordan Schroeder has the story.

Karpathy helped launch OpenAI before he became Tesla's director of AI. He left Tesla in 2022 and grew a large following on social media by creating educational content on AI and engineering. Landing Karpathy is a huge coup for Anthropic, one of OpenAI's chief rivals in the AI space. According to Anthropic, Karpathy will head a team focused on using its AI Claude to boost pre-training research to improve the AI's functionality and learning.

Hundreds of workers at LinkedIn will reportedly be permanently laid off in the coming months. Daily Wire reporter Zach Jewell has more.

Over 600 employees, or about 3% of the workforce at the professional networking site, have been served a 60-day warning. The layoffs are expected to go into effect on July 13th. The mass cuts come after LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapiro, who took over the company in April, wrote a memo that stressed the company would be, quote, "shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term." Speaking of layoffs, NPR is saying goodbye to roughly 300 employees as the public broadcaster scrambles to close an $8 million budget gap.

The layoffs are primarily from the news desk, and the company is also offering voluntary buyouts. Though it expects only about 30 takers. The funding shortfall traces back to Congress's vote last summer to cut $1.1 billion in public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a significant revenue hit for NPR radio stations.

What would you say if you found out that some of America's biggest companies, ones you use and support, are paying for gender transition drugs and surgeries for kids? This is really happening. So our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are doing something about it. Companies like American Express and Home Depot appear to cover irreversible experimental gender transition procedures for minors in their employee healthcare plans. That means kids can get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and life-altering surgeries, and the companies you support foot the bill. This has to stop, and you can do something about it. Sign Alliance Defending Freedom's petition telling corporate America to stop covering these procedures. Your voice will be heard by leaders at these major companies whose decision to end coverage for these procedures could impact other companies across the country. Visit joinadf.com/wire or text WIRE to 83848 to sign the petition today.

An agreement between President Trump and the federal government protects Trump from scrutiny of his past tax filings. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch signed a document on Tuesday that ends ongoing audits into Trump's taxes as well as sets boundaries on actions taken against him in the future. That same agreement also created the DOJ's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund to provide payouts to those targeted unfairly by the government. That could include the president. In exchange, Trump withdrew a lawsuit over the IRS leak of his tax returns.

Democrats in Texas are condemning one of their own after one congressional candidate promised to put, quote, American Zionists in an internment camp. Daily Wire assistant editor Nathan Gay has the story.

Maureen Galindo is a sex therapist who won Democrats' March primary to represent Texas's 35th District. Last week, her campaign Instagram account posted that she will turn an ICE facility south of San Antonio into, quote, a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers. The post added that the facility, quote, will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists. Top Democrats have condemned the rhetoric, while others such as Senate candidate James Talarico have pledged to not campaign with Galindo.

Popular software developer platform GitHub announced a security breach late last night. Hackers have apparently gained access to thousands of internal repositories on the Microsoft-owned site, which is used by millions of developers worldwide. The hackers reportedly released a statement saying they're not interested in ransom. Instead, they want a buyer for the information. Their sum: $50,000 US.

A California woman has pleaded guilty to paying homeless people on LA's Skid Row to register to vote. Daily Wire assistant editor Andy Valdez has the story.

For roughly 20 years, Brenda Lee Brown was employed as a paid petition circulator, gathering signatures on behalf of various ballot initiatives and candidates. Starting around 2025, she began offering small amounts of cash, cigarettes, and other items in exchange for filling out voter registration forms. In some cases, she provided her own former Marina Del Rey address, which resulted in their ballots being sent to her home. Undercover journalists associated with James O'Keefe Media Group dressed up as homeless people and caught over 28 incidents of the scheme on video. She now faces up to 5 years in prison.

A new union contract will have New York City's hotel housekeepers raking in six-figure salaries. Daily Wire reporter Drew Berkmeier has more.

An industry group made of the owners of nearly 250 hotels across New York City agreed to deal on Monday The raise was negotiated by the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and is a more than 50% increase in pay for the average hotel housekeeper in the city. Hotel owners agreed to an 8-year contract that union officials say will result in hourly wages rising from just under $40 an hour to over $60 by 2034. With the agreement, hotel owners dodged a summer strike threatened by the union that would have thrown the city's tourist industry into chaos, especially with major events planned for the World Cup and America's 250th birthday.

And our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee just got some good news. The Super Bowl is coming in 2030. The NFL made the announcement yesterday during a spring league meeting in Orlando with Commissioner Roger Goodell confirming Super Bowl 64 will be held at the brand new Nissan Stadium. This marks the first time Nashville will host the legendary event and preparations have already begun.

But now the question, will the Tennessee Titans be in it? We can hope. All right, those are your drive home updates. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And in case you missed it, earlier today we covered some major stories, including the Trump political machine taking down Thomas Massie, alleged Chinese birth tourism centers popping up in Texas, and the escalating legal fight over tapes of Joe Biden. Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire.