Good evening, I'm Dylan Byers.

Welcome back to In the Room, my biweekly private email on the inner workings of American media. This afternoon, a conversation with my colleague Peter Hamby on the rapidly approaching midterms and ‘24 campaign cycle. Without an obvious storyline for the media to glom onto, we debated how cable networks might augment their coverage this time around; identified the largest, counterintuitive gap in American politics; and addressed the inevitable question: what might a third round of Trump campaign coverage look like with a rival superpower in North Florida?

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First, though, just as I was preparing to ask you about MSNBC and their place in the cable news world, with their ratings dwindling and their uncertain direction in the post-Trump world, the news dropped that the Supreme Court had killed Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion. It feels like their coverage of the ruling also revealed a few things about their challenges.

Peter Hamby: Funny you mention that. I actually flipped on Fox and MSNBC this morning to see how they were covering the abortion news. When I was watching MSNBC, it definitely hit home that they inhabit this sort of tortured spot between news and opinion, especially during dayside programming. It’s been that way for years, and maybe execs are fine with it. But they do this thing where they throw to their really wonderful reporters in the field, all over the country, and those reporters deliver information that often doesn’t square with the received wisdom of the left...