TMZ Gets Political | The New Yorker

Politics has never been TMZ’s focal point, but political issues that aggrieve Levin personally have steered the outlet’s coverage from its inception. While growing up, in the San Fernando Valley, Levin saw fame’s capacity to protect certain people from the consequences of the law. His father, who owned a liquor store, grappled with frequent sting operations from officials claiming that minors were purchasing alcohol there. It incensed Levin that, meanwhile, on the other side of the mountain, teen-age celebrities clinked perspiring glasses of champagne in night clubs, with little consequence. “Harvey thought it was so unfair that these clubs would get away with it, just because they were selling to celebrities,” a former TMZ publicist told The New Yorker in 2016. As a counterpoint to the common media practice of deifying celebrities in well-composed shots fit for print, or attempting to humanize them in clearly planned errand-running shots, TMZ first made a name for itself by publishing pixelated cellphone shots of haggard-looking A-listers.

After a casino owner turned TV star first became President of the United States, media networks further beefed up their political coverage by treating it like entertainment, amplifying juicy play-by-plays over granular dissections of policy. CNN’s former president, Jeff Zucker, once told the Times Magazine that he aspired to imbue some aspects of ESPN into CNN’s political reporting—a move that has further framed politicians as entertainers rather than as employees who answer to the American public. Some officials have taken advantage of this, stepping into their roles with panache, mudslinging among themselves, and rattling off speeches primed for virality rather than for substance. The transformation of politicians into celebrities has fomented ideal conditions, in other words, for TMZ to chase elected officials with the same feverish intensity that they employ to snap a rumored celebrity couple leaving the Chateau Marmont together.

The partial shutdown began in February, 2026, when the Republican-led U.S. Senate deadlocked over a vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The G.O.P. had insisted on shoring up funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection to pass the resolution, a nonstarter for Democrats. Republicans then rejected the revised legislation, and the government shuttered in turn. Then elected officials went on a two-week recess. The fight is less about the Department of Homeland Security and more about the pathologies of modern politics, in which liberals and conservatives alike have been unwilling to cede any political turf—a perpetual game of chicken that’s caused thousands of federal employees to work for months without pay.

That this stalemate has dragged on this long has infuriated Levin, who considers keeping the government functioning a basic tenet of Congress’s job. A few weeks into the shutdown, a T.S.A. worker named Rebecca Wolf appeared on “TMZ Live,” a gossipy weekday show produced inside the company’s L.A. studio space, featuring Levin and one of the show’s executive producers, Charles Latibeaudiere. Levin, typically springy, glowered as Wolf told them about how the shutdown had devastated her life. She’d contemplated selling her vehicle, adding that her last paycheck had come out to a paltry $13.53; in another video, Wolf shared that she’d considered suicide.

At the end of the interview, Levin speaks directly into the camera, pleading with his fellow-citizens to send photos of politicians doing anything but their jobs. “They can’t reach some agreement, some compromise to pay these people who are losing their houses, losing their cars, losing their livelihood, becoming sacrificial lambs so people can have a political gain,” he seethes. Later in the episode, he adds, if “you see one of the five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress, take a picture and send it to us at TMZ. We will post that picture on our website, on our social media, and we will put it on our television shows. We want to show what they are doing at your expense.” The photos flooded in.