CBS' '60 Minutes' is unflinching in its White House coverage in the shadow of Trump's $20B lawsuit

NEW YORK (AP) — As CBS corporate leaders ponder settling President Donald Trump's $20 billion lawsuit against the network's “60 Minutes,” America's storied newsmagazine has produced some fast and hard-hitting stories critical of the new administration in every episode since Trump was inaugurated.

The latest was Sunday, when CBS News helped facilitate a performance featuring non-white middle and high school musicians who had won a contest and with it, the right to play with the U.S. Marine Corps Band. The original concert, however, was canceled because of Trump's executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Correspondent Scott Pelley narrated six of the show's seven stories since Trump's inauguration, including Sunday's. He examined the administration’s policies toward Ukraine and tariffs, looked at changes in the Justice Department and reported on firings of government watchdogs. Shortly after his piece on the dismantling of USAID, Elon Musk suggested “long prison sentences” for those working on the show.

All came at a time when television's most popular and influential news broadcast was being watched to see how it would respond to a unique pressure.

“This may be a lawsuit that is designed to intimidate, but they are clearly making a statement that they will not be intimidated,” said Tom Bettag, a longtime television news producer who worked under Mike Wallace and Morley Safer at the CBS show.

Pelley, meanwhile, has quickly become a polarizing figure.

“Another week, another ‘60 Minutes’ story trying to discredit Trump policies,” Brent Baker, editor of the conservative media watchdog NewsBusters, wrote on X on Sunday night.

Trump's lawsuit, coupled with a parallel Federal Communications Commission investigation, accuses “60 Minutes” of election interference for the way it edited Bill Whitaker's interview last fall with Trump's 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris.

Two sound bites, broadcast on “60 Minutes” and CBS' “Face the Nation,” depicted Harris giving different responses to Whitaker in a discussion about Israel. CBS said Harris made both comments in her answer to Whitaker and that the two shows ended up using different parts of a long sound bite. CBS argued the apparent discrepancy was typical of editing and not, as Trump has suggested, that different remarks by Harris were used to make her look better.

CBS parent Paramount Global filed new motions in the past two weeks to get both the lawsuit and the FCC probe dismissed. Still, Shari Redstone, head of Paramount, is reportedly anxious for a settlement, much like Disney agreed to pay $16 million in December to end Trump's lawsuit against ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. Complicating matters is Paramount's proposed merger with Skydance Media, which needs approval from the Trump administration.

Many at CBS News resist a settlement, insisting “60 Minutes” did nothing wrong. The show's executive producer, Bill Owens, told his staff last month that he would not apologize as part of any prospective settlement.

“My precious ‘60 Minutes’ is fighting, quite frankly, for our life,” correspondent Lesley Stahl said earlier this month in accepting a First Amendment award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. “I am so proud of ‘60 Minutes’ that we are standing up and fighting for what is right.”

Neither Owens nor Pelley would comment on whether the show is trying to deliver any sort of message about the lawsuit through its work. Bettag said he believed “60 Minutes” is motivated by the importance of the stories.

What the show has done during the past two months is striking, said Bettag, now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland.

“The ‘60 Minutes’ people are such committed journalists that they’d consider it foolish to be doing these stories because of what is a frivolous lawsuit,” he said. “The lawsuit pales in comparison with the monumental changes Trump is trying to implement. Those correspondents and producers know that this is a moment that requires their very best work."

Some of the segments were unusually urgent for the newsmagazine, which tends to do longer-range stories that could take months to produce. Pelley's March 2 report about Ukraine came only days after the White House confrontation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Musk's angry comment on his X social media platform came after Pelley's Feb. 16 story about the billionaire's role in the quick shutdown of the USAID office. “The world's richest man had cut off assistance to the world's poorest families,” Pelley said, noting that Musk collects “billions of taxpayer dollars” for his SpaceX company.

Hours later, Musk wrote on X: “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.”

Other news organizations have done admirable work under difficult circumstances, said Bill Grueskin, a Columbia University journalism professor. Besides Pelley, he cited the news staff of the Washington Post at a time the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has shown more friendliness to Trump.

Six post-inauguration episodes of “60 Minutes” have averaged 6.32 million live viewers, down 3.7% from the same period in 2024, the Nielsen company said, although CBS says there has been an increase in streaming numbers.

Sunday’s “60 Minutes” story involved some elite high school students — each of them of either Black, Hispanic, Indian or Asian descent — who had earned the right to play with the Marine band before the show was called off.

CBS worked with Equity Arc, an organization devoted to increasing the number of minority students playing classical music, who organized the show for family and friends of the students outside Washington, D.C. Retired members of military bands were brought in to work with the students. CBS News, which wanted to interview the students and hear their music, paid for the travel and lodging of 22 of them.

Pelley called it the “concert that was not meant to be heard.”

“The original Marine Band concert would have been seen by hundreds,” he said. “Here tonight, these musicians are being heard by millions.”

Pelley's March 9 report, “Firing the Watchdogs,” was about Trump's efforts to fire inspectors general and thwart others who protect whistleblowers in government agencies. He quoted Trump as saying the firings were standard for a new administration taking office. “He's wrong,” Pelley said.

His story about the U.S. Justice Department examined the resistance among some prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

“As he continues to step up his attacks on President Donald Trump and the new administration, Pelley is elbowing aside all others to emerge as Trump's loudest TV critic,” wrote Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner.

In his stories, Pelley's deadpan voice and methodical style could not hide the sharpness of some observations. While narrating the story about USAID, Pelley noted that “It's too soon to tell how serious President Trump is in defiance of the Constitution."

David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

FILE - "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl poses for a photo in her office in New York on Sept. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - Elon Musk speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit, Dec. 9, 2024, at the Department of the Interior in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Scott Pelley, anchor of "CBS Evening News," at the CBS Upfront in New York, May 15, 2013. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - The CBS logo at the entrance to its headquarters, in New York Dec. 6, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Monday, March 17, 2025 (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at Australia’s leader on Sunday while nations expressed shock and sympathy over a mass shooting at a Jewish holiday event, saying he had warned Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that “your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.”

Netanyahu during the war in Gaza has repeatedly sought to link widespread calls for a Palestinian state, and criticism of Israel’s military offensive in the territory following Hamas' 2023 attack, to growing incidents of antisemitism worldwide.

While others in Israel’s government on Sunday also urged Australia to do more against a sharp rise in antisemitic attacks, Netanyahu went further in attempting to link the attack in Sydney that killed at least 11 people, including an Israeli, to support for a Palestinian state.

Australia was among several countries formally recognizing a Palestinian state in September during the United Nations gathering of world leaders. According to the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, 159 countries have recognized Palestine. The vast majority of the international community believes that a two-state solution is the only way to end decades of conflict.

Netanyahu's government has said the international push for a Palestinian state rewards Hamas.

Here are some global reactions to the Australia shooting:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that “terrorism and the killing of people, wherever they occur, are unacceptable and must be condemned.” Australia in August cut off diplomatic relations with Iran and accused it of masterminding antisemitic arson attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.

President Donald Trump called the shooting “a purely antisemitic attack,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “antisemitism has no place in this world.”

King Charles III said he was “appalled and saddened.” He also leads the Commonwealth, and the office of Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday said Herzog had reached out to the king in September warning of an “epidemic of antisemitism” in three Commonwealth countries: Britain, Canada and Australia.

Meanwhile, police in London said they would step up security at Jewish sites.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the attack “has left me speechless” and added that “this is an attack on our shared values. We must stop this antisemitism, here in Germany and worldwide.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was horrified and that “My heart is with the Jewish community worldwide on this first day of Hannukah, a festival celebrating the miracle of peace and light vanquishing darkness.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the “ghastly terrorist attack” and said that “we stand in solidarity with the people of Australia in this hour of grief.”

The organization's president, Ronald Lauder, said that “No community should ever fear ​coming together to celebrate its faith, traditions, or identity,” adding: “Make no mistake, this will not break us."

"I’m surrounded by antisemitic graffiti constantly. I think for our community in the east (of Sydney), and as a Christian, I just want to declare I stand with the people of Israel,” Anglican pastor Matt Graham told Australian Broadcasting Corp. He said he had been conducting a service at the nearby Bondi Anglican Church when panicked people began entering to take shelter.

Police cordon off an area at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)