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Charter rolls out new Spectrum pricing and internet speeds, aims to ‘be a better service operator’

Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey said he wants customers to think of reliability and credibility when they think of their cable and broadband provider.

The cable giant told CNBC it is unveiling a series of changes Monday to bolster that goal, including rolling out new bundles and pricing, increasing internet speeds, offering credits for service outages and promising heightened reliability for customers.

Charter — which provides broadband, cable TV and mobile services and is known to customers under the name of Spectrum — said it is also trying to make the company more approachable and remove the longtime negative connotations around cable companies by announcing Spectrum’s new “first-of-its-kind customer commitment,” branded as “Life Unlimited.”

The rollout comes as Charter and its industry peers contend with several trends: slowing broadband customer growth, continued defections from the cable TV bundle, and a young but speedily expanding mobile business.

“It is hard to be loved when you’re providing a critical service to the household that’s a physical infrastructure that charges over $100 a month,” Winfrey said in an interview with CNBC. “And to the extent there’s a problem, sometimes somebody has to enter your home … in the same vein that it is for an electrician or plumber.”

The first step to changing a less-favorable consumer view is with “pricing and packaging that creates more value than you can replicate anywhere else in the marketplace,” he said.

Spectrum said it will charge as low as $30 a month for its 500Mbps internet plan, or $40 a month for 1GB service, when either are bundled with two mobile lines or cable TV. The company is also increasing the baseline internet speed for current customers at no additional cost.

The company also said it’s planning to be upfront about costs. Under its new plan, taxes and fees are baked in, there are no annual contracts and pricing is guaranteed up to three years, it said. Charter even eliminated the 99 cents it had tacked on to most of Spectrum’s pricing in the past.

In addition, Spectrum pledged to give customers credits when the company’s customer service doesn’t live up to its promises, or for internet outages that are out of the customer’s control but are due to an issue on the company’s part and last more than two hours. Service issues such as those caused by weather, natural disasters or power outages don’t count.

Life Unlimited — a new platform for Spectrum’s internet, mobile and TV services — will roll out across its 41-state footprint this week, the company said.

“We wanted to make a bold statement about our commitment and our capabilities,” Winfrey said. “We also wanted to recognize that we’re not perfect and we’re putting ourselves under pressure, concrete pressure, to make sure that we can be a better service operator every month and every year from here on out.”

The announced changes are some of Charter’s biggest moves since Winfrey took the helm as CEO in December 2022.

He followed Tom Rutledge, who held the post for a decade and turned a relatively small cable operator into the second-largest cable company in the U.S. through the takeovers of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016. Winfrey was CFO at the time and spearheaded the mergers.

Winfrey recalled the various investments and advancements cable companies had made over the years: namely in broadband, but also in the pay TV bundle and the landline and mobile phone businesses.

“For all the value that the industry’s brought over the years, and the service and reliability investments that we’ve made, we haven’t always gotten the full credit that we deserve, and in some cases, we did get the credit we deserve because we could have done things better,” Winfrey said.

He entered the top job at a moment when it was clear growth was unlikely to return to the cable TV bundle.

Winfrey had been a low-key and not widely known executive in the media industry, but he started off swinging.

At an investor day in December 2022, Charter announced an aggressive capital investment plan that included putting $5.5 billion over three years in its broadband infrastructure network. The higher-than-expected spending during a time of growing competition from 5G wireless providers sent alarms through Wall Street, and the stock dropped.

Charter’s stock price has fluctuated greatly in recent years. On Sept. 12, 2021, the stock price was $787.12. It closed at $340.17 on Friday.

Charter’s stock has fluctuated in recent years as there’s been a slowdown in broadband subscriber growth.

That’s in part because broadband customer growth at providers including Charter and Comcast has struggled, according to the companies’ earnings reports. Increased competition from wireless companies such as AT&T and Verizon has also played a role in the stagnation, as has the slowdown in the buying and selling of houses due to high interest rates.

The third quarter was the worst ever for broadband industry subscriber losses, according to MoffettNathanson. Charter lost 149,000 subscribers and had a total of 30.4 million residential and small business broadband customers as of June 30, according to its second-quarter earnings report.

While the losses weren’t as substantial as analysts had feared, Charter’s growth bright spot is now its mobile business, which launched in 2018. Spectrum Mobile has 8.8 million total lines and has grown rapidly due to enticing promotional deals and increased mobile usage on reliable Wi-Fi networks, the company said.

In late 2022, Charter announced its “Spectrum One” plan, the first time it offered broadband, Wi-Fi and mobile in a bundle with promotions that included competitive rates and, in some cases, free mobile lines.

“For wireless, the ‘Spectrum One’ promotion will almost certainly turn out to have been a home run,” analyst Craig Moffett said in a research note in July. “Despite the fact that it was initially viewed as shockingly aggressive, it was, in fact, a rather modest offer.”

Moffett called mobile an “underappreciated growth engine” for Charter, not only because of customer additions but also growth in average revenue per user, or ARPU, which is a metric often used by cable companies.

Winfrey doesn’t expect ARPU to be affected by the new promotions.

“When I think about Wall Street, I think about the customer,” Winfrey said. “If you focus on the customer, provide great customer service, save them money, provide value, then your capital market strategy, your regulatory strategy, all of that just falls into place.”

Customers have been dropping pay TV rapidly across all providers, including Charter. But the company has been vocal about its efforts to preserve the business, especially under Winfrey’s leadership.

The biggest moment came in 2023 when Disney-owned networks went dark for Charter’s customers and Winfrey called the pay TV ecosystem “broken” as he pushed for a revamped deal with Disney.

While these disputes are common — Disney and DirecTV on Saturday ended a roughly two-week blackout fight — this one was different in the age of streaming.

For Charter, the sticking point wasn’t just the fees. The company wanted Disney’s ad-supported streaming options to be part of its TV offering.

Pay TV providers often say the rates that programming companies such as Disney seek from them are too high, especially since the programmers are also funneling much of their content into streaming platforms. Although the cable bundle loses customers, cable providers note it’s still a cash cow while streaming chases profitability.

“Credit to Disney, eventually they were willing to lean in and they understood their role in the industry,” Winfrey said, adding that ESPN is considered the linchpin of the cable TV bundle. “They had to be the leader in the space, and we knew that.”

The deal allowed for ad-supported Disney+ and ESPN+ to be included in “Spectrum TV Select” packages. In addition, when ESPN launches its direct-to-consumer streaming option — which is expected to debut in fall 2025 — these customers will receive access to it, too.

“I give Charter a ton of credit because they walked into the room and they had very specific ideas. They had a vision that they wanted to execute against, and again, it was a hard negotiation,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said on CNBC on Sept. 3 when discussing the blackout fight with DirecTV.

Depending on the tier a customer subscribes to, their package can include the ad-supported versions of streamers Disney+, ESPN+, Max, Discovery+, Paramount+, AMC+, BET+ and/or Televisa Univision’s Vix.

The deals have also given Charter the opportunity to sell and market the streaming services to its broadband-only customers — and includes a revenue share agreement.

The most recent deals with Warner Bros. Discovery and AMC Networks were early renewals. That’s relatively uncommon in an industry where carriage negotiations often come down to the wire.

Charter last year also started offering its own streaming devices, known as Xumo, through a joint venture with Comcast. The device gets rid of the cable box and gives consumers a way to access both their cable TV and streaming apps in one place.

“We still have hurdles to get through,” Winfrey said, noting that Charter’s goal is to offer all ad-supported streaming apps owned by the major programmers it negotiates with on the cable TV bundle in the first half of 2025.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock is still not part of that roster, however. A Charter representative said the company doesn’t discuss renewals and declined to comment.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
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Tennessee hikes 2025 football ticket prices to help pay players

The University of Tennessee will increase football ticket prices and the required donations that accompany them by an average of 14.5% in 2025 with most of the new cost going to a ‘talent fee’ to pay players.

Revenue sharing for athletes is coming to college sports as early as next year.

The richest schools will opt in by funding an estimated $22 million pool to pay athletes directly and about another $5-10 million to fund additional scholarships. The remaining schools could be left in the dust.

Tennessee is opting in, and fans will pay a portion of that cost of competition.

‘We’ve come a long way in the last few years. In this new era, it’s going to get a lot more expensive,’ White told Knox News, part of the USA TODAY Network. ‘But there’s also going to be a closer relationship between resources and competition than there ever has been before. And our biggest asset is our fan base.’

Here’s the breakdown of the average 14.5% price increase of tickets at Neyland Stadium in 2025:

Initial average increase of 4.5% per seat on single-game tickets and season tickets plus donations. Some will be higher, some lower. That increase accounts for Tennessee’s rising costs for construction, food, travel and other athletic department expenses.
An additional 10% increase per seat on all single-game tickets and season tickets plus donations as a ‘talent fee’ to fund the revenue-sharing pool for athletes coming as early as 2025.

Season ticket renewals will begin Thursday, and the renewal deadline is Feb. 27, 2025. Tennessee is offering a 10-month payment plan to help fans absorb the cost increase.

Paying Tennessee players, extra scholarships could cost $30 million

The details of revenue sharing aren’t known yet because they’re contingent on the settlement of the House v. NCAA federal antitrust case, which is still amid negotiations. Revenue sharing could go into effect as early as July 2025.

But generally, schools will have the option of funding up to 22% of their annual revenue, or about $22 million, to pay athletes. It could work sort of like a salary cap for college sports, but that structure is also murky.

All SEC and Big Ten schools are expected to opt in to the revenue-sharing model, and some schools from weaker conferences will attempt to keep pace.

Paying athletes for their name, image and likeness could still be a factor in landing and retaining top players. But NIL’s place in a revenue-sharing model is uncertain.

The cap on scholarships also will rise as early as July 2025. Football can go from 85 scholarships to 105. Baseball can go from 11.7 scholarships to 35, and so on.

Many schools won’t be able to fund those extra scholarships unless they drop some sports.

For schools like Tennessee that are opting in, it will require about $30 million annually to both fund revenue sharing and additional scholarships. That’s where UT’s ticket price hike comes in.

‘It’s really a $30 million-plus math problem,’ White said. ‘We’re not just offloading it to our fans. We are asking them to help us with a portion of it.’

How ticket price hike will fund portion of player pay

Tennessee estimates the 10% ticket price increase for a ‘talent fee’ will account for $7.5 million, or about one-third of the annual $22 million revenue-sharing pool to pay athletes.

The university is tapping other revenue streams to keep pace with the richest schools in this new pay-for-play era of college football.

The Tennessee Fund raised $139.7 million in 2023-24, the best year in UT athletics fundraising history. That mark has increased more than $100 million in the past four years since White was hired.

And Tennessee has landed lucrative corporate sponsorships, such as the Pilot branding rights deal on Neyland Stadium. That has helped fund facility renovations and restock the athletic department coffers for this new arms race in college athletics.

Danny White believes resources produce winning

That revenue surge recently yielded White a contract extension and raise to become the highest paid AD at a public university in the country. His pay increased to at least $2.75 million with the same 5% annual increase from his original contract.

White believes resources produce winning, and his track record at Tennessee reinforces that philosophy. So it’s no surprise that he’ll lead UT into the revenue-sharing era in college sports.

In 2023, Tennessee athletics had its highest operating revenue in history at more than $200 million, exceeding the previous record by almost $50 million. And the Volunteers have won at a staggering level alongside those soaring revenues.

In 2023-24, Tennessee finished third in the Learfield Director’s Cup, the highest in school history, and captured its third straight SEC All-Sport title. It was one of two schools in a power conference to have every sport reach the NCAA postseason or a bowl game.

In March, Tennessee men’s basketball made the Elite Eight for the second time in program history. In June, Vols baseball won its first national championship at the College World Series, and Tony Vitello was rewarded with a new contract that made him the highest paid college baseball coach in the nation.

And Tennessee football is ranked in the top 10 for the second time in the past three seasons under coach Josh Heupel, whom White hired.

Tennessee is among hottest tickets in college football

White said Tennessee ticket prices are comparable to competitors in the SEC and nationally, and demand is high for the Vols.

The Vols have posted 15 consecutive sellouts. That’s especially notable considering Neyland Stadium’s capacity of 101,915 makes it the sixth-largest college stadium in the country.

Last season, Tennessee led the SEC in total home attendance (713,405) and average home attendance (101,915), ranking third and fourth, respectively, in the nation.

‘We have a waiting list of 15,000. So if we were about cold-hearted business, we would probably be a lot more aggressive with our price points,’ White said. ‘But this is college athletics, and we have a real passionate fan base.

‘We don’t take these decisions lightly. We work hard to try to thread the needle between generating the revenue we need but also being fair and reasonable.’

Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks.

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
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Eagles star answers for critical drop in stunning collapse

PHILADELPHIA – Jalen Hurts leaned over to make himself eye-level with Saquon Barkley, seated at his locker. 

The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback typically visits with most teammates personally after every game, win or lose. Having finished their second game together, it was the first time Barkley and Hurts had spoken after a loss, a 22-21 heartbreaker at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons on “Monday Night Football.” 

“He said he’s going to trust me every time in that situation,” Barkley said after the game. 

The “situation” in question: third-and-3 with the Eagles leading 18-15 from the Atlanta 10-yard line. Atlanta had no timeouts with 1:46 to go. With a first-down conversion, the Eagles could kneel out the clock. A touchdown would have made it a two-possession game. 

Instead, the ball wound up on the ground. Offensive coordinator Kellen Moore called for a pass play and, for the opening developments of the play, it looked like a wise decision. Hurts took the snap under center and showed his back to the defense. Barkley sprinted right and clearly had the edge for the first down and perhaps a touchdown. The quarterback threw him the ball in stride, except it hit off the running back’s fingertips. The ball hovered above his hands as he clasped them to somehow secure possession – to no avail. 

All things Eagles: Latest Philadelphia Eagles news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

“Make that catch,” Barkley said, “game’s over.” 

The clock stopped. Atlanta’s offense marched down the field and looked like running water flowing through a crevice. The Falcons went 70 yards in six plays and needed 65 seconds to take the lead. Kirk Cousins hit Drake London for the game-tying touchdown, Younghoe Koo’s 48-yard extra point was true and Hurts’ interception on the ensuing last-gasp possession gave the Falcons their first win of head coach Raheem Morris’ tenure. 

“The game comes down to a few plays,” Barkley said. “It hurts a little more when you’re the one who’s making a mistake on that play.” 

Said Hurts: “Obviously, it’s a tough loss. We learn from it. I trust him every day of the week to make a play just like everybody else, and so we’ll be better from it.” 

Head coach Nick Sirianni didn’t want to pin the blame on Barkley’s drop. 

“It’s never just one play. It’s never just that play,” he said. “All the plays equal up to the win or the loss.” 

Sirianni questioned whether he should have gone for the first down again on fourth-and-3, especially since the Eagles had converted in a similar spot earlier in the game. He wanted to go up six points though, he said. 

“In that scenario, (it) obviously didn’t work,” Sirianni said. “Obviously, I’m going to second-guess myself in those scenarios that it doesn’t. 

“Any time it doesn’t work out, you know, that’s why I’m sitting in this seat, the head coaching seat. I’ve got to be ready for the consequences of whether it works or doesn’t work.” 

For full clarity on the reasons for passing the ball in that situation, answers will have to come from Moore.

“Again, we can’t just be too predictable that we’re going to say, ‘Hey, every third-and-3, if you’re in four-down mode, you’re going to run the football.’ That’s not realistic in this league,” Sirianni said. 

Hurts did not have a problem with what he heard from Moore before relaying it to the huddle. 

“It’s not a matter of expectations. It’s just a matter of executing what’s called,” Hurts said, “and (we) came up short in that moment.”

One reason for the play call, Sirianni said, was that the Falcons’ defensive line was “junking it up” on the interior. Attacking the perimeter was how the Eagles wanted to end the game. A field goal from Jake Elliott seemed to suffice.

“I wanted them to be down a touchdown,” Sirianni said, “and see if they could drive the field and they did.” 

Careful what you wish for. 

Not all was lost for Philadelphia, as 34 seconds (plus two timeouts) remained for Hurts to drive Philadelphia into field-goal range; Elliott has made several clutch field goals in his career. Falcons safety Jessie Bates III slid under Hurts’ final throw of the night, which had been intended for wide receiver DeVonta Smith, to complete the sudden comeback. 

The first boo from the crowd clocked in at 8:19 p.m. ET, four minutes of real time after kickoff. Those still remaining at Lincoln Financial Field on the night the organization honored Super Bowl 52 MVP Nick Foles let the team have it as the teams shook hands on the field with zeros on the clock. 

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Of course, the Eagles did not have wide receiver A.J. Brown available, and he could miss the next few games. Moore could also answer why he abandoned feeding Barkley the ball on handoffs after he rushed for 40 yards in the first quarter. Hurts didn’t seem interested in passing the ball for much of the game and was content to leave the pocket and scramble.  

But during the game’s most pivotal play, the star quarterback needed to connect with the team’s offseason free-agent acquisition brought in to make plays like that. It was Barkley’s 16th drop since the start of the 2021 season, the most among running backs, according to ESPN. 

Both Hurts and Barkley said it was a play they have practiced plenty during their first offseason as teammates. Barkley had nearly scored on a similar play earlier in the fourth quarter, but replay review determined his knee was down inches prior to the football crossing the goal line. 

And he knew that the questions he answered at his locker after Hurts walked away were a product of his own doing. 

“I could complain and be upset about it,” Barkley said, “or I could be a professional athlete, go back to the drawing board, take the lick, move on and get better from it.”

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Falcons QB defies doubters to engineer wild last-minute comeback

PHILADELPHIA – Smooth, confident, controlled. 

That’s how Atlanta Falcons left tackle Jake Matthews described quarterback Kirk Cousins during the team’s game-winning drive within the last two minutes of the team’s comeback 22-21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on “Monday Night Football.”  

“He didn’t blink,” Matthews said. 

Cousins acted as though he were on the practice field. 

“You could tell he’d been there before,” said Matthews, an 11-year veteran who started his career blocking for Matt Ryan in Atlanta. 

All things Falcons: Latest Atlanta Falcons news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

It was still an unfamiliar outcome for Cousins in a familiar setting – he’s now faced the Eagles 12 times as a pro (record: 7-5), with eight of those contests coming at Lincoln Financial Field. It was his 14th “MNF” game, and for a player with a less-than-sterling prime-time reputation, playing under the lights was another opportunity to show why he deserved $100 million in guarantees from the Falcons as a free agent this offseason despite coming off a torn Achilles tendon. 

Cousins is now 4-1 in his last five “MNF” appearances. Following a stroke of luck when Eagles running back Saquon Barkley dropped a wide-open third-down pass to gift the Falcons an additional 40 seconds to erase a six-point deficit, Cousins drove the Falcons 70 yards in six plays. He hit wideout Drake London for a 7-yard touchdown that tied the game. 

“Kirk was making great throws,” said cornerback Darius Slay, who was beat by London on a route to the front-right pylon for the crucial score. “Got to tip your hat to him.” 

Younghoe Koo’s 48-yard extra point – the 15-yard penalty was due to London’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty – was the difference. 

“Straight poise,” London said of Cousins. “He knows what he’s doing. We trust in him. Wherever he puts the ball, we got to catch it.” 

Cousins finished 20-of-29 with 241 passing yards and two touchdowns. Most of the damage came in the second half, when he was 13-for-16 with 166 yards and had a 149.5 passer rating.

While facing skepticism about whether he’d fully recovered from his season-ending Achilles injury last year after he took nearly every snap out of shotgun or pistol formations in the Week 1 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cousins appeared to move comfortably, took snaps under center – including the first three of the game – and performed play-action. The Falcons were in shotgun for 30 of 58 offensive plays, including all six on the final possession.

The game’s crucial drive started on the Falcons’ 30-yard line with 1:39 remaining. Cousins hit tight end Kyle Pitts for an 11-yard gain to open the series. He then connected with Darnell Mooney on nearly identical out routes to the left sideline for pickups of 21 and 26 yards, respectively. Three plays later, London was (excessively) celebrating. 

“It reminds you of when you’re in practice, running the two-minute drill, everything’s clicking,” Matthews said. “It’s easier said than done, but to carry that over into the game, you make it happen that smooth, it’s a testament to how we prepared. We were ready for the moment.” 

Coming from behind on the road in one of the league’s toughest environments builds resolve and grit, Cousins said, that “we’re going to have to lean on as the year goes on.” 

“This is how NFL football is, you know, and so we’ve got to kind of get used to this and get comfortable in this, because that’s how these games tend to go,” Cousins said, “and so the more we can be battle-tested and have these moments, I think it would set us up well for what’s coming down the road.”

But winning on “MNF” didn’t mean anything special to him. 

“I just try to go out and play football the best I can, whether it’s noon on Sunday or, you know, a night game, what day of the week it is,” Cousins said. 

Winning during the postseason is what counts, said head coach Raheem Morris, who earned his first non-interim win as the Falcons’ head coach. 

“We’re a long way from that,” Morris said. “We have to get out here and try to put ourselves in a position to get into those competitive moments so we can show those things. We haven’t shown that yet. We’ve shown it (in) that we’ve shown the fact that we can go into somebody else’s stadium and win a game, and we’re showing we can win in a two-minute drive, and those are important for us to go find out.”

At the team hotel Sunday night, Cousins ran into Nick Foles – honored Monday for his Super Bowl heroics and serving as the team’s honorary captain – and his parents. He hadn’t seen Foles’ parents since he and Foles were freshmen at Michigan State University in 2007.

Thinking back over the last 17 years resurfaced a lot of memories for Cousins – and gratitude. 

“I was kind of reminded, with him getting honored tonight, and said to him at the coin toss, ‘You know, it worked out.’ It worked out for both of us,” said Cousins of Foles, who later transferred to the University of Arizona. “And so, I was just reflecting (Sunday night and Monday) a little bit on our journeys. 

“So, playing here tonight kind of brought back a lot of those memories on my journey, and it was a fun way to win it.”

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
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Tulsi Gabbard says she would be ‘honored’ to join a potential Trump administration

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, told Fox News Digital Monday that she would ‘be honored to serve’ in a potential Trump administration.

If tapped, Gabbard expressed her desire to work in a position where she can make the greatest impact, particularly in areas related to foreign policy or national security. Gabbard is an active-duty military veteran who completed two tours in the Middle East, and currently serves as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves. 

‘I feel I can make the most impact in these areas of national security and foreign policy, and work to bring about the changes that President Trump talks about,’ Gabbard said Monday evening from a campaign fundraising event in Atlanta, Georgia. Gabbard added that bringing an end ‘to the influence of the military industrial complex,’ working to prevent World War III and bringing the U.S. back ‘from the brink of nuclear war’ would be among her priorities. War should be a ‘last resort,’ Gabbard said. She has also supported former President Trump’s plans to end the war in Ukraine.

Gabbard spent time as the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee between 2013 and 2016, and previously supported candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, and President Biden. However, blaming a shift within her former party that she has not agreed with, Gabbard became increasingly friendly with the GOP before leaving the party and eventually joining Trump’s transition team last month. 

‘There are a lot of people who I meet in a lot of different places every day who are former Democrats, or people who are leaving the Democratic Party,’ Gabbard said Monday. ‘People who recognize the same things that I have and experienced the same things that I have and realize that the Democratic Party of today doesn’t stand for them, doesn’t stand for freedom, it doesn’t stand for civil liberties… doesn’t stand for peace.’  

The former Democratic congresswoman has been outspoken against what a Harris administration could do to peace around the world and, on Monday, she slammed Democrats – including Vice President Kamala Harris – for what she described as their refusal to engage in diplomacy with U.S. adversaries. 

‘President Trump did in his last administration what President Obama refused to do, what President Biden refused to do, what Kamala Harris has made clear she refuses to do – which is to go out and do that tough work that a president and commander in chief has to do in diplomacy,’ Gabbard said. ‘Not just hanging out with your friends, and your allies, and your partners, but actually going out and talking to your adversaries.’

Gabbard argued that peace will remain elusive until the leaders in the White House are willing to do this sort of diplomacy. She also slammed Harris for escalating the war in Ukraine and being ‘flippant’ about the chances of a nuclear disaster.

‘The longer this war goes on and the more that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and the neocons of Washington continue to escalate this war, the greater risk we are of a potential nuclear war, World War III,’ Gabbard said on Monday. ‘It is unconscionable and unacceptable that Kamala Harris and others who are continuing to escalate [the war in Ukraine] are so flippant about the reality of nuclear war.’

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Top Russian official lands in Iran amid US, UK concerns over alleged nuclear deal

Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu landed in Iran on Tuesday for talks with his counterpart just one day after reports surfaced suggesting the U.S. and the U.K. are increasingly concerned over an alleged nuclear deal between Tehran and Moscow. 

Details of Shoigu’s meeting in Iran remain scarce, but U.S. officials have increasingly begun sounding the alarm that the burgeoning relationship between Iran and Russia amid the war in Ukraine may have reached concerning new levels. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken first referenced these concerns last week during a visit to the U.K., where he confirmed reports that Iran had supplied Russia with short-range ballistic missiles to aid its continued war effort against Kyiv. 

But in comments that largely fell under the radar given the confirmation that ballistic missiles had been given to Moscow, Blinken also said, ‘Russia is sharing technology that Iran seeks – this is a two-way street – including on nuclear issues as well as some space information.’

A report by The Guardian on Monday suggested that President Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer allegedly discussed the potential of a secret deal having been forged in which Russia has agreed to provide Iran with the technological know-how it needs to develop a nuclear weapon. 

Nuclear experts, including the U.N.’s own watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have warned that Tehran has continued to develop its nuclear program unchecked for the last three and half years.

Iran is said to have increased its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium to levels of 60% purity – just shy of weapons-grade uranium, which is achieved with 90% purity levels.  

While information surrounding Shoigu’s meeting Tuesday remains unknown, his trip came just days after he traveled to fellow nuclear-armed nation, North Korea, and met with leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.

Details of that trip also remain murky, but reports suggested Shoigu’s trip was an opportunity to deepen the Russia-North Korea partnership following the signing of a mutual defense treaty in June earlier this year.

Western nations have accused North Korea of supplying Russia with arms to aid its war effort in Ukraine, and concerns have mounted that Pyongyang could escalate its military deliverables to Moscow. 

The U.S. and its Western allies have pledged to hold nations accountable for aiding Russia in its illegal war in Ukraine, but Shoigu’s trips with the top adversarial nations coincided with threats leveled by Putin at Washington last week.

Neither the U.S. nor the U.K. have lifted their strike bans on Ukrainian supplied long-range weapons in order to permit Kyiv to strike deep into Russia – a move it argues is critical for ending the war with Moscow. 

But Putin last week said any move by the U.S. and its NATO allies to reverse these strike bans will be seen as its direct involvement in the conflict and would mean they are ‘at war’ with Russia – possibly extending the threat of a Russian strike outside of Ukraine. 

Putin has made these threats against the West before, though no strike ban reversals were announced during the top meetings last week between Biden and Starmer. 

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Biden admin moves to reinstate Trump-era rule, delist gray wolves from endangered species list

The Biden administration is moving to reinstate a Trump-era rule that lifted endangered species protections on gray wolves in the U.S.

Wolves were delisted from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) under President Trump in 2020, returning management of gray wolf populations to state and tribal wildlife professionals, according to a press release from the Department of Interior.

However, a federal judge reversed Trump’s decision in 2022 after environmental groups sued the Department of the Interior over the delisting, reinstating protection for the species.

Gray wolves are currently protected under the ESA as ‘threatened’ in Minnesota and ‘endangered’ in the remaining states, except for those in the Northern Rocky Mountain region, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. However, a new filing by the Biden administration suggests that the Trump-era ruling should be reinstated.

Attorneys with the Justice Department filed a motion with the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals on Friday to reverse the court’s decision on the Trump-era delisting and lift ESA protections on gray wolves.

The filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco claimed that the court was wrong in overturning the Trump-era ruling on the species. 

‘The district court misunderstood the ESA’s clear mandate and compounded that error by imposing its own views of the science,’ court documents read. ‘Its decision invalidating the rule should be reversed.’

The Biden administration claimed in its 87-page filing that gray wolves no longer meet ESA standards of protection in that they are no longer considered ‘endangered’ or ‘threatened.’

Court documents referenced the 2020 ruling from Trump’s Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service that delisted the wolf species.

‘After that thorough analysis, the Service concluded that no configuration of gray wolves was threatened or endangered in all or a significant portion of its range. That analysis was well-reasoned and well-supported by the administrative record,’ the brief reads.

The move comes just months after a group of 20 House Republicans sent a letter to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Director Martha Williams, urging the Biden administration to remove protections for the gray wolf, citing sometimes life-threatening conflicts with ranchers and farmers.

In February, FWS rejected requests from conservation groups to restore protection for gray wolves across the Northern Rocky Mountain region. 

Most recently, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers passed legislation in April to end federal protection for gray wolves and remove them from the endangered species list. 

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‘Not a cookie-cutter NFL analyst’: Jason Kelce beefs up ESPN’s star power

PHILADELPHIA — Jason Kelce definitely qualifies as a “personality hire.” 

It’s why ESPN coveted his broadcasting services for the 2024 NFL season after all. 

“He kept asking ‘What do you expect from me? What do you want?’ And we’re like, ‘We just want you to be you,’” ESPN vice president of production, Seth Markman, told USA TODAY Sports.

Kelce joined the network’s “Monday Night Countdown” desk alongside host Scott Van Pelt and fellow analysts Marcus Spears and Ryan Clark. Every company that airs the NFL lined up meetings to convince the former Philadelphia Eagles center to join their shop because of his engaging personality. 

“It’s unique. He dresses different. He sounds different,” said Markman, who oversees ESPN’s college football and NFL studio programming. “He’s not a cookie-cutter NFL analyst.” 

NFL STATS CENTRAL: The latest NFL scores, schedules, odds, stats and more.

Indeed, Kelce sported a kelly-green Italian tracksuit and kicked off Monday’s edition of “Countdown” in style by hyping up a frenzied crowd outside of Lincoln Financial Field. As a DJ pumped music behind him, Kelce screamed into a microphone — not unlike his brother and podcast cohost Travis did after winning Super Bowl 58 — and introduced his former Eagles teammates Fletcher Cox, a fellow first-year retiree, and Nick Foles, who was honored before Philadelphia hosted the Atlanta Falcons on “MNF.” 

“I think people see him as an everyman, they really do, and they relate to him,” Markman said. “He’s so likable. And I think it cuts through.” 

Kelce made his way from one stage to the “Countdown” set and high-fived fans as security paved a way like he did for many Eagles ball-carriers over his 13-year NFL career. As he took his chair in between Spears and Clark, Kelce wiped his head and hands with a blue towel. 

“I don’t know that I have any more energy you guys,” he said. 

During the show, Kelce hold harsh truths about the Carolina Panthers after the team announced second-year quarterback Bryce Young would be benched. He made a remark about how a referee who displayed nifty athleticism during Justin Jefferson’s 97-yard touchdown on Sunday should have Next Gen Stats. The six-time All-Pro turned and waved to the fans who canted his name and held up his No. 62 jersey during one commercial and break.  

“This city’s incredible, man,” Kelce said during the show. “It really is. It’s so unique.” 

To help make room for Kelce on “Countdown,” the network moved on from Robert Griffin III, who was let go in what was considered a financial decision. Concerns about chemistry when a new voice joins a show always exist, Markman said. Kelce’s current popularity levels, at an all-time high thanks to his podcast and brother Travis’ romance with Taylor Swift, could have complicated things. Markman brought up the possibility of adding Kelce to the “Countdown” crew, and he said they were receptive to his addition. 

“He draws a lot of attention, especially here,” Markman said. “But these guys are so unselfish and they realize that adding him helps the show.” 

During the third quarter of Monday’s game, Kelce called the game in the ESPN broadcast booth alongside announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. Kelce had expressed interest in trying it out and an Eagles home game made sense, Markman said. The goal was to not have the experiment sound like a celebrity interview. 

“I think it got better as it went,” Kelce said in a brief interview upon his exit from the broadcast booth.

Trying to figure out where he fit in between a duo that’s called games for 23 seasons together was a tall first order. Kelce was asked about his retirement press conference and he had plenty of time to break down the game of his replacement, Eagles center Cam Jurgens. Kelce stayed on well into the fourth quarter as the Eagles embarked on a nine-minute, 34-second drive.

In honor of Kelce, the Eagles converted two ‘Tush Push’ plays, the second of which was a one-yard Jalen Hurts touchdown that put Philadelphia ahead.

“(Buck and Aikman) set me up pretty good a few times,” Kelce said. “I think everybody saw Tom Brady’s first-week performance and had a lot of criticism for it. He bounced back this week and had a great one. I got to see why that’s so hard first-hand, for sure.

“When you’re doing that live, in the moment, in real time, it’s difficult.”

Markman said he thinks Kelce could develop into a solid color commentator. For now, “Countdown” suits Kelce’s lifestyle. But he might want to call games one day, Markman said.  

‘Fun to be on this side too,’ Kelce said during the broadcast.

Any of the other networks would have been happy to have Kelce in any capacity. During Kelce’s initial meeting with ESPN, he expressed what “MNF” meant to him and his brother growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. 

“I thought that gave us a little bit of a leg-up, the relationships and how he felt about our brand,” Markman said. “Honestly, I knew all the other networks were in. And you don’t know. You’re hoping and hoping and trying to convince – I had a good feeling but not like a ‘This is a sure thing.’ When his agent called and gave us the good news, it was an amazing feeling.” 

Kelce said he liked that ‘Countdown’ is done on-site every week, as he clearly feeds off energy from his surroundings. He also confirmed how much ESPN meant to him in his youth. 

“ESPN as a network was ingrained (in us), it was on in our household all growing up,” he said.

Trainers who taped his ankles are now producers who provide talking points. Security guards who said hello to him on Broad Street every day are now sound engineers.

“There’s a lot of similarities to playing a sport,” Kelce said of his new broadcasting career.

Kelce’s addition is part of ESPN beefing up the star power behind the “MNF” brand in recent years. The “Manningcast” with Peyton and Eli Manning became an instant success during the 2021 season. Buck and Aikman making the move from FOX to “MNF” ended the search for a reputable booth. In 2024, Bill Belichick is joining the “Manningcast” for every episode. 

“I think we’ve made a concerted effort to say ‘This is our number one property, this is ‘Monday Night Football,’ and we’re going to put the biggest and best names on this property,” Markman said. “That’s why adding Bill and Jason this year makes us feel even better about what we have – it’s important to us.” 

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New poll reveals this political event swayed only a fraction of Harris-Trump supporters

Only a handful of voters say that last week’s presidential debate caused them to reconsider their support for either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, according to a new national poll.

A slew of political pundits and media analysts said that Harris bested Trump in the debate – their first and potentially only face-to-face encounter ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.

However, only 3% of debate watchers said the showdown in Philadelphia caused them to reconsider whom they may support as president, according to a Monmouth University national poll released on Tuesday.

Just more than seven in 10 respondents said that the debate between the Democratic and Republican Party presidential nominees did not raise any doubts about the candidate they were already supporting in the White House race. Eight percent of those surveyed said some doubts were raised but that the debate did not change their minds on their support. Additionally, 17% offered that they did not see or hear any part of the debate.

‘How much this election is shifting is measured in inches rather than yards right now,’ Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray said.

‘We are basically at the point where turning out 10,000 extra voters in a key swing state could determine the outcome. Polling tells us the broad contours of the race, but it cannot measure these types of micro-shifts,’ Murray emphasized.

Trump, in social media posts and in a couple of Fox News Channel interviews following the debate, said that he won the showdown with Harris.

‘That was my best Debate, EVER,’ he wrote in a social media post.

During a ‘Fox and Friends’ interview, he argued that ‘we had a great night, we won the debate.’

However, Harris, in her first rally last week after the debate, charged that Trump’s performance ‘was the same old show, that same tired playbook that we’ve heard for years… with no plans for how he would address the needs of the American people because, you know, it’s all about him, it’s not about you.’

According to the Monmouth poll, 49% of registered voters nationwide said they would either definitely (39%) or probably (10%) vote for Harris. In a separate question, just over four in 10 said they would definitely (34%) or probably (10%) cast a ballot for Trump.

Nearly every national poll conducted after last week’s debate indicates Harris with a lower to mid-single digital advantage over Trump in the race to succeed President Biden in the White House. 

However, it remains a margin-of-error race in the seven key battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Pointing to those surveyed who said they are extremely motivated to vote, Murray spotlighted that ‘Trump right now is doing better with motivated voters than he is with the overall electorate. This includes a good number of voters who may have sat out the 2020 contest. Perhaps they were exhausted by the Trump era when they stayed home four years ago, but that feeling has faded, and now they are more upset with the Biden presidency.’

‘To counter that, Democrats will be trying to light a fire under voters who already have concerns about Trump but aren’t fully engaged in the election,’ he added.

The Monmouth University poll was conducted Sept. 11-15, with 803 registered voters nationwide questioned. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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Feds open probe into RFK Jr for allegedly decapitating a dead whale

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) opened an investigation into former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for allegedly decapitating a dead whale 20 years ago, Fox News Digital confirmed.

The controversy arose in August after Kennedy’s daughter, Kick Kennedy, shared in a resurfaced 2012 Town and Country interview that her father once beheaded a washed up whale with a chainsaw. According to an interview with the outlet, he reportedly attached the whale’s head to his car and drove it to New York. 

However, Kick Kennedy described the event as just an average day for her family.

‘Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,’ she told the outlet. ‘We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.’

When asked about the incident, the agency told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that it is ‘long-standing NOAA practice not to comment on open investigations.’

Kennedy made the initial assertion that he was under federal investigation for the decades-old incident during a campaign event for former President Donald Trump on Saturday.

The former presidential candidate-turned-Trump ally told rally goers that the investigation was a ‘weaponization of our government against political opponents.’

The Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund called on the NOAA to investigate the events described by Kennedy’s daughter just days after he suspended his presidential bid to join forces with Trump in August.

The group, which endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024, claimed that Kennedy violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, as whales remain protected under those laws.

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