Fox News is bringing one of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s most prominent former aides onto its platform — a move that immediately triggered a furious response from one of the network’s own former personalities.

Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s longtime top lieutenant and former secretary to the governor, has been hired as a Fox News contributor and will appear on the network’s new weekly podcast, “The Girls.”

DeRosa will make her debut when the program premieres Oct. 1, Fox News Media announced Monday.

But the announcement quickly reopened one of the most bitter controversies surrounding Cuomo’s administration: New York’s handling and reporting of nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean blasted the decision.

Dean’s mother-in-law and father-in-law died of COVID-19 in 2020 after living in New York long-term care facilities. Their deaths turned Dean into an outspoken critic of Cuomo and his administration as she pushed for answers about the state’s nursing home policies.

Following news of DeRosa’s Fox role, Dean unloaded.

“Melissa DeRosa helped smear the women who came forward about Andrew Cuomo’s harassment, and played a hand in undercounting nursing home deaths during COVID. Also tried to silence my advocacy.”

DeRosa served as secretary to the New York governor, becoming the first woman to hold the powerful position.

She resigned in August 2021 as sexual harassment allegations engulfed Cuomo’s administration.

But DeRosa had already become a central figure in the controversy surrounding the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing home death information.

Months before her resignation, DeRosa acknowledged during a private call with Democratic state lawmakers that the administration had withheld nursing home death data while facing concerns about a possible investigation by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.

The February 2021 disclosure intensified scrutiny over New York’s accounting of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents.

At the time, the state’s nursing home tally did not include residents who died after being transferred from nursing homes to hospitals, leaving thousands of deaths outside that particular count.

DeRosa later maintained that the administration had placed state lawmakers’ request for the information on hold while it prioritized responding to the federal inquiry.

The controversy did not end there.

A New York State Assembly investigation released in November 2021 concluded that Cuomo had not been fully transparent about nursing home resident deaths.

The investigation also concluded that Cuomo sexually harassed women and used state resources in connection with the production and promotion of his pandemic memoir.

Now DeRosa is returning to the political-media spotlight through Fox News.

She will appear on “The Girls,” a new weekly podcast featuring a rotating group of female co-hosts discussing politics, careers, family life and pop culture.

The premiere will also feature Fox personalities Rachel Campos-Duffy, Harris Faulkner and Kat Timpf.

New episodes are scheduled to be released Thursdays on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The launch will also bring former ESPN personality Sam Ponder back into the spotlight following her 2024 departure from the sports network.

Ponder, the former host of “Sunday NFL Countdown,” will join DeRosa and the Fox personalities for the premiere episode.

But it is DeRosa’s addition that has already generated controversy before the first episode even airs.

For Dean, the issue is deeply personal.

She spent years publicly challenging Cuomo’s administration over its handling of nursing homes after losing two family members during the pandemic.

Now the former governor’s onetime top aide is joining the same media organization where Dean became one of the most visible critics of that administration.

And Dean made clear exactly what she thinks of the decision.

President Donald Trump’s escalating battle with the national media has exploded into a full-blown legal showdown after his administration barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters from the White House — a move prominent Republicans are now publicly defending.

Trump announced Friday that the three organizations would no longer be permitted inside the White House, accusing them of repeatedly publishing what he described as “fake news” and unfair coverage of his administration.

By Saturday, the threat had become reality.

Reporters from all three organizations were denied entry to the White House, with some saying their credentials had been deactivated or confiscated.

Now Republicans are lining up behind the president, arguing that news organizations do not have an automatic right to coveted access inside the White House complex.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., defended Trump during an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“There are literally thousands of media outlets in America,” Scalise said.

Scalise pointed to the obvious physical limitations of the White House press operation, arguing that only a fraction of America’s news organizations can operate from inside the complex and that the administration has authority over who receives that access.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, also defended Trump’s decision, pointing to what he described as years of inaccurate and unfair coverage of the president.

Other Republicans have made a similar argument: barring reporters from physically entering the White House does not prevent CNN, MS NOW or Politico from continuing to report on the Trump administration.

And Trump has indicated the crackdown may not end with those three organizations.

“Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” Trump wrote.

Asked about other organizations that could potentially lose access, Trump criticized The New York Times and The Washington Post but stopped short of announcing additional bans.

The media organizations targeted by Trump aren’t backing down.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a federal lawsuit Monday seeking restoration of their White House access, arguing that the administration retaliated against them because it objected to their journalism.

The organizations are seeking a temporary restraining order that could quickly force the constitutional fight before a federal judge.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the organizations said in a joint statement.

The White House Correspondents’ Association has also pushed back.

WHCA President Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News anchor, called on the administration to restore the organizations’ access, arguing that allowing the government to exclude journalists because officials object to their reporting could establish a precedent affecting other news organizations.

And the criticism isn’t coming exclusively from Trump’s political opponents.

Some prominent conservatives have openly broken with the president over the decision.

Former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer argued that conservatives should confront media organizations they believe are biased rather than remove their access.

“Argue and defeat them,” Fleischer said. “Don’t ban them. Or one day they’ll ban us.”

Fox News contributor and legal scholar Jonathan Turley similarly called excluding disfavored media organizations from the White House a “terrible precedent and practice.”

The showdown is the latest front in Trump’s continuing fight with the national press.

Early in Trump’s second term, the White House took control over decisions involving which journalists participate in the presidential press pool — a responsibility traditionally handled by the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The administration also previously restricted Associated Press access following a dispute over the organization’s decision to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging Trump’s executive order renaming it the Gulf of America.

That dispute also landed in federal court.

And there is significant history surrounding fights over White House press credentials.

During Trump’s first term in 2018, his administration revoked CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass following a contentious exchange with the president.

CNN sued.

A federal judge subsequently ordered the White House to temporarily restore Acosta’s credentials while citing due-process concerns.

An even older case could also loom large over the current fight.

In the 1977 case *Sherrill v. Knight*, a federal appeals court held that once the White House establishes press facilities, decisions involving credentials are subject to constitutional protections and cannot be made arbitrarily.

That precedent could become a major issue as CNN, MS NOW and Politico attempt to convince a federal court that Trump’s latest restrictions crossed a constitutional line.

For Trump and his Republican defenders, the argument centers on whether any particular media organization is entitled to special physical access to the White House.

For the three news organizations, the issue is fundamentally different: they contend the government cannot selectively revoke access in retaliation for reporting it dislikes.

Now that fight is moving from the White House briefing room to a federal courtroom — where a judge could determine just how far a president can go when deciding which journalists are allowed through the gates.

Former President Barack Obama is making another major move in the media world, returning to podcasting with a new series focused on literature as he and former First Lady Michelle Obama continue expanding the media operation they built after leaving the White House.

Obama announced Monday that he will host a six-episode podcast titled **“A Great Book With Barack Obama,”** with the series set to debut this month.

The podcast will explore six books that Obama says helped shape his views on politics, race, faith and American society, giving the former president another platform to discuss the ideas and cultural issues that have defined much of his public career.

“At a time when fewer people are able to sit down with a book, it’s important to remember the joy and power that can come from reading,” Obama wrote in a social media post announcing the project.

“And some books don’t just tell a story — they change the way we see the world,” he added.

Each episode will center on a different book, with Obama and his guests discussing why the works continue to resonate and what lessons they believe readers can draw from them today.

The six books selected for the series are James Baldwin’s **“The Fire Next Time,”** Toni Morrison’s **“Song of Solomon,”** Cormac McCarthy’s **“All the Pretty Horses,”** Marilynne Robinson’s **“Gilead,”** Robert Penn Warren’s **“All the King’s Men”** and John le Carré’s **“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”**

Obama said the series will also feature conversations with invited guests.

“I invited some friends to explore why these books resonate, how they can shape our understanding of ourselves and each other, and why literature matters now more than ever,” he said.

The subject matter is hardly disconnected from Obama’s years in politics.

Several of the authors on his list wrote extensively about race, political power, morality and American identity — subjects that have also occupied a central place in Obama’s speeches, books and political career.

Obama also had a personal connection with Toni Morrison.

As president, he awarded the Nobel Prize-winning author the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Following Morrison’s death in 2019, Obama described her as a close friend.

The new podcast will be distributed through Audible and produced in partnership with **Higher Ground**, the media company Barack and Michelle Obama launched in 2018.

It marks yet another expansion of the Obamas’ sizable post-White House media presence.

Higher Ground has already assembled a growing collection of films, documentaries and audio programs. Previous projects include Michelle Obama’s **“The Light Podcast,”** the documentary **“American Factory,”** the Netflix film **“Leave the World Behind”** and **“Rustin,”** the biographical drama centered on civil rights leader Bayard Rustin.

Barack Obama has also remained closely associated with books since leaving the White House in 2017, regularly publishing annual lists highlighting his favorite books, movies and music.

The new podcast takes that tradition significantly further.

Instead of simply publishing a reading list for his millions of followers, Obama will now have an entire episode to discuss each selected work, the ideas contained within it and why he believes those ideas remain relevant.

His selections stretch across decades and genres.

They range from Baldwin’s examination of race in America and Warren’s novel about political power to McCarthy’s Western fiction and le Carré’s Cold War espionage story.

But Obama’s return to the microphone also comes at a politically consequential moment.

The 2026 midterm elections are rapidly approaching, and an enormous financial battle is already underway over control of the United States Senate.

The Senate Leadership Fund, the powerful Republican super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, says it and its affiliated organizations have raised more than **$500 million** ahead of the 2026 elections.

According to SLF, that represents more money than any previous Senate-focused political effort.

The organization alone has already committed more than **$350 million** to supporting Republican Senate candidates across the country.

Republican groups have spent months assembling a massive financial operation aimed at defending the GOP Senate majority while forcing Democrats to compete across an increasingly expensive electoral map.

SLF is targeting pivotal Senate contests in states including **Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and North Carolina**, while directing additional resources toward other competitive races.

Republicans are seeking not only to defend their existing majority but potentially add seats.

“Thanks to Leader John Thune and our generous investors, Senate Leadership Fund and its affiliated groups have raised more resources than any other Senate effort in history,” SLF Executive Director Alex Latcham said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

The original report also pointed to financial pressure facing Democrats, noting that the Democratic National Committee used its headquarters building as collateral for a $15 million loan over the summer.

For Republican groups, the fundraising numbers are being presented as evidence that there is no reason to ease up as Election Day approaches.

“However, we cannot slow down as Chuck Schumer and Radical Democrats seek to take our nation back to open borders, rampant crime and crushing inflation,” Latcham added.

Against that backdrop, Obama is once again expanding his public platform.

Nearly a decade after leaving the White House, the former president continues to maintain a prominent presence through books, speeches, political appearances and the growing entertainment operation he and Michelle Obama have built through Higher Ground.

Now, he is adding another microphone.

And with the battle for Congress intensifying ahead of the 2026 midterms, Obama’s latest media venture arrives at a moment when the political fight over the direction of the country is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.