Fox News Media abruptly cut ties with anchor Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, September 3, 2026, ending a run of more than a decade at the conservative media company and touching off an immediate scrubbing of her name from its schedule and websites.

“We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter,” the company said in a terse announcement that offered no explanation and included no comment from Bartiromo. Her Fox Business biography page vanished within minutes, replaced by an error message saying the person could not be found.

The final edition carrying her name ran Thursday morning on Fox Business Network. Bartiromo herself had not appeared on any Fox News Media program since August 9, according to the Los Angeles Times, which reported that she vanished from her own shows weeks before the split was announced.

Her Branding Erased From Three Shows

Within hours, the network pulled her name off three programs. “Mornings with Maria” (6-9 a.m. ET) becomes “Mornings with Fox Business” on Friday, September 4, with rotating anchors. “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” (Fridays, 7-7:30 p.m. ET) becomes “FBN’s Wall Street,” anchored on Friday, September 4, by Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone and by rotating hosts afterward. Over on Fox News Channel, Jason Chaffetz, a Fox contributor and former Utah congressman, anchored “Sunday Morning Futures” (10-11 a.m. ET) on Sunday, September 6, with a permanent host to be announced later; his debut drew an online backlash from pro-Trump viewers demanding Bartiromo’s return. Fox Business said it would roll out a new weekday schedule in the coming weeks.

Neither Side Explains the Break

Publicly, no explanation came from either party. One person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak, characterized it as a business decision. What finally ruptured the relationship may have been Bartiromo’s decision to pass Fox’s internal company texts along to the Trump White House, people with knowledge of the situation said. She is also thought to have forwarded to the White House an instruction sent to Fox Business executive producers; sharing confidential material outside the company would likely violate her employment terms.

Bartiromo, whose pay ran to roughly $6 million a year, had long been favored by Fox Corporation Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, even as her shows created legal trouble for the network. Her executive producer, Patrick Ignozzi, was let go as well. She had earlier consulted Hollywood lawyer Bryan Freedman, who has represented Megyn Kelly and others in disputes with media employers. On Friday, September 4, Freedman went on the record as her attorney and disputed the whole premise of the split, calling reports that she had been fired or was no longer a Fox employee “absolutely and unequivocally false” and saying, “we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise.” Asked about the statement, a Fox News Media representative said the company’s announcement speaks for itself.

Voting-Machine Suits Shadow Her Departure

Her programs were at the heart of Fox’s expensive election-defamation cases. In 2021, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion suit claiming the network knowingly broadcast false assertions that the company had rigged the 2020 presidential race, in part to avoid losing furious viewers. With the trial about to begin in 2023, Fox paid $787.5 million to settle.

Another case remains open. Smartmatic, based in London, contends that Fox’s broadcast of bogus voter-fraud claims damaged its ability to grow in the United States; it is asking for $2.7 billion, with trial set for 2027. Bartiromo is among the defendants and, until Thursday, was the last individual defendant still on Fox’s payroll. The network’s attorneys appeared at a hearing in that case on Thursday morning.

The lawsuits brought unflattering episodes to light, among them a November 2020 segment in which Bartiromo and a guest asserted electoral fraud on the basis of a memo whose author had said the wind speaks to her and had conceded that her own allegations sounded far-fetched. In a separate interview, Bartiromo allowed former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell to air unproven fraud claims without pushback. She has denied that she personally pressed then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate voter-fraud claims, saying she was simply doing a journalist’s job by asking follow-up questions.

Bartiromo delivered an on-air apology in June after entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary had falsely asserted on her program a month earlier that Chinese money was funding opposition to a data center he hoped to build in Utah.

President Donald Trump, who has sat for numerous interviews with her, has described her as a great reporter and in July posted praise on social media calling her fantastic. After the announcement he wrote on Truth Social that he could not believe she would no longer have her shows on Fox, called her “a total professional, and a true warrior” and predicted that her many fans would not be happy. Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Thursday afternoon, “I love Maria,” while saying he had not talked with her and did not know the backstory. An unnamed source said she is not expected to take the vacant White House press secretary job.

From the NYSE Floor to Fox Stardom

Bartiromo arrived at Fox Business Network in 2014 as a financial markets journalist and the channel’s global markets editor, and she ultimately anchored upward of 16 hours a week across Fox Business and Fox News. Before that came nearly 21 years at CNBC, where she hosted “Closing Bell” and became the first person to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange; earlier still, she worked at CNN. A documentary she made about Google earned her an Emmy Award, and she picked up the nickname “Money Honey,” a label she later said gave her misgivings. Joey Ramone of the Ramones recorded a song titled “Maria Bartiromo,” released on his posthumous 2002 album “Don’t Worry About Me,” and she played herself in the 2010 film “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” opposite Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko.

Her exit lengthens a list of Fox departures tied to election-fraud coverage and other controversies. Her former Fox colleague Lou Dobbs, who has since died, lost his job one day after Smartmatic filed its suit in early 2021. Tucker Carlson, another former Fox host, was pushed out in 2023 on the heels of the Dominion settlement and within days of a lawsuit that former producer Abby Grossberg brought against him over workplace issues. Former Fox host Jeanine Pirro, a defendant in both voting-machine cases, was named U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., by Trump in 2025.