The Daily Brief - Feb. 27, 2026

The latest on the bidding war for CNN, Anthropic’s clash with the Pentagon, and more

These are today’s top stories, delivered straight to your inbox. Read below to catch up on all the news you might’ve missed.

Israeli Embassy — Iran Strike

Fears of a US attack on Iran seem to be growing, and the US embassy in Israel told workers that they are free to leave. If they do want to leave, workers have been told, they should leave quickly.

Ambassador Mike Huckabee sent the directive in an email to embassy staff, which has been reviewed by news outlets like The New York Times. Those wishing to leave “should do so TODAY,” he wrote, urging them to find flights out to any available destination. “There is no need to panic,” he added, “but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later.” The email did not directly reference Iran.

The embassy shifted to “authorized departure” status, meaning nonessential personnel and their families can leave at government expense. The airline KLM has already suspended service to Israel.

Yesterday, the US and Iran wrapped up six hours of indirect talks in Geneva without reaching a deal. Iranian officials and Omani mediators said both sides agreed to keep talking next week, but notably, the two American negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — stayed silent, with the White House declining to comment.

Just hours ago, President Trump told reporters he was “not happy” with how talks with Iran are going, and said he’d love to not attack Iran, but “sometimes you have to.” He also acknowledged the risk of a protracted war in the Middle East if the US moves forward with strikes.

Other countries are taking similar precautions. The US embassy in Lebanon ordered nonemergency personnel out earlier in the week. Australia told diplomats’ dependents to leave Israel and Lebanon. The UK pulled its diplomats out of Iran entirely, and France advised against travel to Israel. It is expected that any US attack on Iran will be carried out with the help of Israel.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to travel to Israel early next week to discuss Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza.

Voting Executive Order

Pro-Trump activists say they are working with the White House on a draft executive order that would declare a national emergency, and then they would use that emergency to give the president sweeping power over how Americans vote. The potential emergency is related to claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election.

The 17-page draft, obtained by The Washington Post, would require hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots, force all voters to re-register with proof of citizenship ahead of the 2026 midterms, and sharply restrict mail-in voting.

The Constitution gives power over elections to state legislatures, not the president. A presidential emergency over elections has never been tested in court.

The activists pushing the draft include Jerome Corsi, who helped spread the false “birtherism” claim against Barack Obama, and Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who represents Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk imprisoned for breaking into voting equipment. Ticktin acknowledged the president has no constitutional authority over elections but argued that foreign interference creates a national emergency that changes that.

The draft builds on a 2018 executive order imposing sanctions on foreign entities targeting elections, which Biden himself extended multiple times. Trump has said he will issue his own executive order if Congress does not pass the Save America Act, a bill requiring voter ID and restricting mail voting that passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the effort “a plot to interfere with the will of voters.”

DOJ Sues States over Voter Rolls

The Justice Department says it’s suing five additional states for failing to provide “full voter registration lists upon request.” The new states — Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey — bring the total number of states being sued to 29 plus DC.

The DOJ wants access to unredacted voting records that include driver’s license numbers, addresses, emails, social security numbers and full birthdates.

Even states that voted for Donald Trump say they aren’t going to comply.

West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner

West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, a Republican, said, “West Virginians entrust me with their sensitive personal information. State law is clear: voter lists are available in a redacted format from my office, but I’ll not be turning over any West Virginian’s protected information.”

And Utah’s Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, also a Republican, said, “Utahns can be assured that my office will always follow the Constitution and the law, protect voters’ rights, and administer free and fair elections.”

Kentucky’s Secretary of State said he also wouldn’t voluntarily provide personal data.

Attorney General Pam Bondi says Title III of The Civil Rights Act of 1960 allows her to access this data. It states the AG can request records “relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting” but must provide “the basis and purpose” for the request.

Three federal judges have said the DOJ has not proven there’s a legitimate basis for the federal government to have this data.

Clinton Epstein Testimony

Former president Bill Clinton was interviewed in a closed-door session with the House Oversight Committee today as part of its investigation into sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Clinton appeared in several photos in recently released Epstein files, and took several trips with Epstein decades ago, but he has not been accused of any crime in connection with their relationship.

Both former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially resisted subpoenas to testify before the committee, indicating that they had already provided any information they had regarding Epstein and offering instead to speak at a public hearing. They eventually relented after being threatened with contempt of Congress.

According to a copy of Clinton’s opening statement shared with the press, he told the committee, “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong… I saw nothing that ever gave me pause,” and emphasized that his “brief acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein ended years before his crimes came to light.” He added that “as someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse,” he would not have traveled on Epstein’s plane if he “had any inkling of what he was doing.” Had he been aware of his crimes, “I would have turned him in myself,” Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton testified yesterday, and reiterated repeatedly that she did not know Epstein personally and had no knowledge of his criminal acts. “I don’t know how many times I had to say I didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein,” she told the press after the hours-long deposition concluded, though she acknowledged being acquaintances with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Clinton also said that her interview took a strange turn toward the end, when she was asked questions about UFOs and the widely debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory that accused Democratic party members of operating a child sex trafficking ring.

Democrats on the committee are now pushing for the deposition videos to be made public.

Federal Government Ditches Anthropic AI

Anthropic has refused to provide the Pentagon with unrestricted access to its AI model, Claude, rejecting an ultimatum from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with a deadline that had been set for today. In response, President Trump announced in a post on Truth Social that he was ordering all government departments to immediately stop using Anthropic technology, although was allowing a six month phase out for the Department of War.

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump wrote. Anthropic has placed guardrails around its technology to prevent it from being used for mass surveillance, creating AI-controlled weapons, or other potentially unethical uses.

Earlier this week, Hegseth reportedly told Anthropic that if the company refused to remove the safeguards and allow the US military to use Claude however it sees fit, Anthropic would effectively be blacklisted from working with any company that has contracts with the US military. Hegseth also suggested he would invoke the Defense Production Act against the company, which would give the Pentagon the authority to use Claude any way it wants to, with or without Anthropic’s permission.

But Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to cave to Hegseth’s demands, saying that the company “cannot in good conscience” remove the restrictions, and that he hoped Hegseth would “reconsider” his position. “Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters – with our two requested safeguards in place,” he said. “We remain ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States.”

But President Trump wrote that unless Anthropic changes course, he would “use the Full Power of the presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”

Pentagon Shoots Down CBP Drone

The Pentagon accidentally shot down a drone being used by Customs and Border Protection on the Texas-Mexico border on Thursday using an unmanned laser-based anti-drone system. The FAA closed down airspace because of it.

Democrats on the House Transportation committee said, “Our heads are exploding over the news… We said MONTHS ago that the White House’s decision to sidestep a bipartisan, tri-committee bill to appropriately train C-UAS operators and address the lack of coordination between the Pentagon, DHS and the FAA was a short-sighted idea. Now, we’re seeing the result of its incompetence.”

The FAA, CBP, and the Pentagon released a joint statement saying “The Trump Administration is doing more to secure the border and crack down on cartels than any administration in history.” It also said they are working in an “unprecedented fashion to mitigate drone threats by Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist organizations.”

A Trump administration official told Axios the incident happened because CBP didn’t coordinate with the Pentagon, and neither agency coordinated with the FAA. The statement said the incident happened “far away from populated areas and there were no commercial aircraft in the vicinity.”

The Ellisons’ Media Takeover

Paramount came out victorious yesterday in the bidding war with Netflix over Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount offered $111 billion to take over the media company, and Netflix bowed out saying the price was too steep.

Warner Bros. Discovery owns Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO, CNN, Discovery Channel, and TNT Sports, along with several other cable channels.

David Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is the CEO of Paramount. The Ellison family owns a controlling stake in Paramount Skydance, after merging their small production company Skydance Media with Paramount in August 2025.

Paramount owns Paramount Pictures, CBS, and cable channels like Nickelodeon, Showtime, Comedy Central, and BET.

And then there’s TikTok. Earlier this year, Oracle finalized a deal to take over a 15% stake in TikTok, which now houses US user data in the Oracle Cloud.

Larry Ellison is a longtime friend of Donald Trump’s, and was an early supporter of him in 2016. He’s become even closer this term, with one of the president’s advisers referring to Ellison as a “shadow president.”

David Ellison supported Biden in the last election, but has since become close to Trump, and in December told Trump he would make “sweeping changes to CNN” if he bought WBD, according to The Wall Street Journal. He made similar promises about CBS when he was looking to get government approval for Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount.

For the deal to go through, shareholders will first have to approve it, but that’s not likely to be a problem. Then it will need regulatory approval in the US and Europe, which could take months, and California’s attorney general has said his office would investigate. States can sue to block the deal. Europe has blocked a couple deals in the past, though it’s unusual.

Since taking over CBS, David Ellison has canceled Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s show, ended DEI practices, and appointed right-leaning, “anti-woke” newsletter publisher Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief. TikTok has also prevented certain videos from being uploaded, including those related to ICE activities, since Oracle took over partial ownership.

Birth Rates

The US birth rate has dropped 25% since 2007. Much of the decrease is due to a decline in the number of births to teenagers and women in their early 20s, reflecting both the success of campaigns to lower teen pregnancy rates and a growing tendency for women to delay having children. Researchers also point to the increased availability of reliable birth control, such as IUDs.

Several women told The New York Times that they delayed plans to have children to ensure they completed their education and were better established in their careers. Perhaps as a result, the group with the highest birth rate is now women in their early 30s.

A falling birth rate may create some risks as the population ages, older people retire, and there aren’t enough workers to replace them. However, the US population is still growing overall, meaning there are more births than deaths annually.