CNN host Erin Burnett will moderate a town hall with progressive Texas Senate candidate James Talarico next month, according to a Monday morning press release from the network. The event, a partnership between CNN and Jubilee Media, is scheduled to air live from Texas on Wednesday, October 14.
Talarico will take questions from Burnett as well as a live audience of Texas voters. CNN stated the audience "will be made up of Democrats, Republicans, and Independent voters." The network also extended an invitation to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee who defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary earlier this year. It is not yet known whether Paxton has accepted.
The town hall arrangement comes as CNN remains locked in a legal fight with the Trump administration. The network, along with MS NOW and Politico, was removed from the White House press pool, prompting a joint lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly ruled the three outlets must be "immediately" reinstated. Despite that order, the White House dropped CNN from traveling with President Trump on Air Force One this past Saturday, according to Breitbart News.
Burnett has publicly criticized the president over the press pool ban. Yet her record on the broader question of media access cuts both ways. When Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2021, Burnett did not push back against the proposition that platforms should remove him over the alleged danger posed by his remarks.
Burnett is no stranger to Democratic politics. She moderated the Democratic Party's 2020 primary debate on CNN and conducted extensive interviews with Democrat candidates during the 2024 election cycle.
The partnership with Jubilee Media is notable. Jubilee's YouTube operation has built a following among young viewers across the political spectrum by hosting debates spanning a wide range of viewpoints. Bringing that audience into a CNN-produced event gives the network access to a younger, digitally native demographic that has largely tuned out legacy cable news.
Talarico, a state representative from Round Rock, has positioned himself as a progressive voice in the Texas Senate race. He faces Paxton, a Republican who has been a fixture of Texas conservative politics and a frequent target of the state's Democratic establishment.
The Texas Senate seat is currently held by Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to Paxton earlier this year. The general election contest will test whether Texas remains reliably red or whether Democrats can make inroads in a state they have long targeted without success.
CNN's decision to host a town hall with a Democratic candidate while simultaneously suing the Trump administration over press credentials has drawn scrutiny. The network's lawsuit argues that its exclusion from the White House press pool violates the First Amendment. The White House has countered that CNN's coverage of the administration has been biased and Democrat-aligned.
Judge Kelly's order reinstating the three outlets came in response to the joint lawsuit. The White House's decision to leave CNN off the Air Force One press charter this past Saturday suggests the administration is not treating the matter as settled.
Our Take
Let's connect the dots here. CNN is suing the Trump administration, claiming it's being punished for its coverage and demanding a seat on Air Force One. At the same time, it's producing a friendly Texas town hall for a progressive Senate candidate, moderated by a host who did Democratic debate duty and sat silent when Trump was deplatformed in 2021.
That's the entire ballgame, folks. CNN wants the legal protections of a neutral news organization while functioning as an arm of the Democrat Party's electoral operation. You can't demand the press pool seat and then hand the mic to Talarico on a friendly stage with no equivalent prime-time platform for Paxton.
The invitation to Paxton is a fig leaf. If CNN wanted a fair fight, it would commit to equal airtime under the same format. There is no indication that has happened.
The press exists to hold power accountable, not to pick winners. Judge Kelly's order may have restored CNN's credentials, but the network's actions keep proving the White House's point.
Is CNN a news network or a campaign operation? The American people can see the answer for themselves on October 14.
