Morning Brief: India-Pakistan Conflict Escalates & Trump DOJ Sues Blue States

Attacks between India and Pakistan move the two nuclear powers closer to war, President Donald Trump and Republicans sue Democrat-led states over restrictive energy laws, and live sports programming dominates viewing trends.

It’s Thursday, May 8, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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India Strikes Pakistan, World Holds Breath For Response

Topline: Attacks between India and Pakistan continue to escalate, causing fears of an all-out nuclear war.

In late April, a group of Islamic militants crossed from Pakistan to Indian-controlled Kashmir and slaughtered 26 tourists. India accused the Pakistani government of being involved in the attack, and responded Wednesday with military strikes on Pakistan’s heavily populated Punjab region, killing more than two dozen and injuring 46 others. India says it targeted “terror camps,” while Pakistan says civilians were killed, including worshippers at two mosques. 

Pakistan has said it is mounting a military response to the strikes, but it remains to be seen if that’s saber rattling or a declaration of war.

The Trump administration has largely avoided picking a side, despite their long-running mutual enmity, and both countries are considered U.S. allies.  The White House said it would engage the two in finding a “peaceful solution.” 

Meanwhile, President Trump is preparing for a highly anticipated visit to the Middle East as tensions rise. For security reasons, the White House has yet to release Trump’s full itinerary, but from what we’ve been told, this trip will emphasize economics. Trump is reportedly focused on securing financial deals and solidifying his relationship with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — three of America’s most important allies in the region who often serve as middlemen to the rest of the Middle East, at times helping broker negotiations with U.S. adversaries.

This week, the president also announced that the Houthis “don’t want to fight anymore” and have agreed to a deal to end hostilities. The Houthis, the terror group backed by Iran, have disrupted international shipping in the Red Sea, with missile and drone attacks on countless vessels — some of them American. In response, the Trump administration launched hundreds of airstrikes on Houthi facilities in Yemen. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has been holding negotiations with Iran on a potential nuclear deal — this ceasefire with the Houthis could be a part of that larger process. 

DOJ Files Climate Lawsuits Against Blue States

Topline: President Trump and Republicans in Congress are making moves against state climate rules that they say infringe on federal authority. The fight has sparked political and legal battles between Republicans in Washington, D.C., and Democrat-led states.

Last week, the Department of Justice filed multiple lawsuits against state governments over their climate and energy policies. Two complaints against Hawaii and Michigan aim to block lawsuits those states filed against oil and gas companies. On Thursday, the federal government filed two more lawsuits against Michigan and New York over changes to state “climate superfund” laws. Each DOJ lawsuit focuses on the Clean Air Act, which the Trump administration says the states have violated with their attempts to punish emissions.

“These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

“The Constitution specifically solely delegates the power to regulate interstate commerce to the Congress of the United States of America,” H. Sterling Burnett, the director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, told The Daily Wire. “Not to California, not to New York, only to Congress…California, New York, Hawaii. Some other states…think Congress should regulate interstate commerce differently than they’ve done, and so they’re trying to use the courts to ignore the interstate commerce clause.”

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said in a statement that the federal lawsuit filed by the DOJ “attempts to block Hawaiʻi from holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for deceptive conduct that caused climate change damage.” Hawaii Democratic Governor Josh Green went a step further and suggested that climate change, exacerbated by fossil fuel companies, is responsible for the 2023 Lahaina wildfire that killed 102 people. For context, Hawaii’s utility company said that electrical equipment damaged by high winds caused the fire, but officials have all made accusations against fossil fuel companies.

Sports Dominate New Nielsen Ratings

Topline: The next evolution of TV ratings has arrived, and sports is the overwhelming winner. We break down the data on viewing trends.

Nielsen ratings have long been a guide to help gauge TV viewership, but new technology is delivering more accurate information. It shows that sports programming absolutely dominates the market. The rise of streaming and an increasingly fragmented media market has made it harder than ever to track how many people are actually watching programming, but a new method – Big Data + Panel – is able to synthesize and analyze disparate viewership data more quickly and accurately.

Nielsen’s CEO, Karthik Roa, announced that the Big Data + Panel tech will be used for all its clients starting this year, calling it “a massive change in measurement, at scale.”

Sports programming already dominates much of America’s media landscape. For instance, the NFL delivered 70 of the top 100 broadcasts across all genres in 2024, 70% for just that one league. This new analysis tool is already signaling even higher audience totals going forward. And that’s, of course, very good for sports leagues. The NFL knows it’s poised to benefit – and has publicly cheered the introduction of Big Data + Panel, calling it a move to “modernize measurement.”

The domination of sports is changing how many platforms think about programming. Amazon Prime and Netflix have spent billions of dollars on streaming rights for live sports. Amazon has been among the early adopters of Big Data + Panel, and said its 2024 audience for Thursday Night Football reached an average viewership of 14.2 million, 8% higher than the traditional, panel-based audience count of 13.2 million. The tool was also the basis for Super Bowl LIX, reaching a total of 182.8 million viewers.

One of the issues Nielsen is working through is reducing the turnaround time for reporting results. The enhanced numbers typically take several days to tabulate for each broadcast. Nielsen is working to reduce that turnaround to one day, similar to how quickly traditional viewership totals now arrive.