Domestic

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson stepped down as the network’s highest paid prime-time host last Monday. Carlson’s final show was last Friday and the network now relies on a rotation of multiple hosts until Fox decides on their permanent anchor. The announcement comes just after Fox Corp. settled their defamation lawsuit against Dominion Voting Systems by paying them $787.5 million. Dominion had accused Fox’s news networks of spreading false claims that their voting systems helped rig the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.

Longtime host Don Lemon left CNN last Monday unexpectedly. He expressed shock in a statement saying, “At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.” No explanation of his termination was given by CNN, but Lemon was criticized in February for sexist and ageist comments he made about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on “CNN This Morning.” Lemon apologized soon after. Variety also published a report this month detailing allegations of misogyny aimed at female coworkers but Lemon denied these allegations. 

The College Board made an announcement last Monday that it will revise the African American AP History Course again. Revisions that took place in February were meant to eliminate the requirement that students learn modern Black history tenants. February’s revisions were a response to conservative outrage over the material. The College Board was accused of watering down the new version of course requirements, which did teach critical race theory and other politically divisive subjects like Black feminism, queer theory and the Black Lives Matter movement. The College Board development committee and experts will work over the next few months to make changes, but added that demand for the course is growing – from 60 schools in the first pilot year to 800 schools collectively enrolling 16,000 students in the upcoming school year.

International

Last Monday the Chinese government reassured its respect for former Soviet Union republics’ sovereignty. This comes after Beijing’s ambassador to France stated the opposite to a French broadcaster while answering a question about the status of Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. Ambassador Lu Shaye stated that there was no agreement to “solidify their status as a sovereign country.” The governments of former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were quick to reject Lu’s statement. French President Emmanuel Macron offered “full solidarity to countries which were attacked in the reading of their histories and their borders.” Beijing did not state that Lu’s comment was incorrect. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis tweeted, “If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic states don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine,’ here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis.”

The Biden administration announced the “Washington Declaration” last Wednesday to deter North Korea from launching a nuclear attack on South Korea. That same day, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited Washington, D.C. for a bilateral meeting and a state dinner with U.S. President Joe Biden. The new declaration calls for a visit by a U.S. nuclear ballistic submarine to South Korea for the first time in four decades, the strengthening of joint U.S.-South Korean military training and simulations and creating a “Nuclear Consultative Group,” meant to focus on nuclear and strategic planning issues. The meeting highlighted United States and South Korea security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and the need for diplomacy to address North Korea’s “profoundly destabilizing” behavior. South Korea also pledged not to go nuclear amid public outcry that they should have this capability.