Get in Line or ‘Pay the Price’
In a scathingly-written regulatory filing posted on the Federal Communications Commission’s website on Thursday, ABC’s lawyers tore into Trump administration FCC head Brendan Carr for “attempted censorship” and accused Carr of helping President Trump in his retribution campaign against media that criticizes him.
“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” the network’s lawyers wrote in its latest response to Carr’s efforts to conduct an early and unprecedented review of the broadcaster’s TV broadcasting licenses for eight of its stations.
As I’ve documented rather closely in Where Things Stand over the past year, Carr has emerged as one of the most successful sycophants of Trump II when it comes to carrying out Trump’s revenge on his perceived enemies — in Carr’s case, the media, the OG adversary of Trump’s political career in Trump’s eyes. Carr has threatened broadcasters relentlessly throughout his time as chair and the downstream effects have been crushing for some of late night’s top comedians, for daytime talk shows like “The View” and, now, could ultimately spell disaster for ABC’s affiliate news stations in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno.
After Trump launched a war no one asked for in Iran earlier this year, Carr began threatening to conduct early broadcast license renewals for the nation’s top broadcasters’ local TV stations. It’s an unprecedented move that Carr claims was birthed out of an FCC investigation into the Disney’s — which owns ABC — hiring practices, even though he essentially admitted in a post on X that the threat was related to how stations were covering Trump’s war in Iran.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote in March, alongside a screenshot of a Trump Truth Social Post criticizing media coverage of his war with Iran. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Pro-Trump groups have asked the FCC to deny license renewals for eight Disney-owned TV stations and Trump himself has called for ABC and NBC to lose their licenses because they did not air his conspiracy theory-laced speech about election fraud earlier this month.
“Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers,” lawyers for the network wrote. “The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”
“There is no question why the Commission is singling out these eight stations,” they continued. “Each is owned by ABC, and the Administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs.”
In the new filing ABC entered into the record 140,000 comments that have been “received from the Stations’ local communities— from individual viewers to local police and firefighters, charities, businesses, and schools—and over 95% support the Stations. These supporters span the ideological spectrum but share a fundamental commitment to free speech and press freedom.” They went on to ask the FCC to dismiss the petitions from the pro-Trump groups calling the license renewal into question.
“The Commission cannot rest a renewal decision on the content of a station’s programming,” they said. “Nor may it condition renewal on whether a broadcaster gave sufficient airtime to particular viewpoints, covered particular stories, featured particular guests, adopted particular interview formats, or framed public issues in a particular manner.”
Dem Women Call for House Ethics Investigation Into Max Miller
The House Democratic Women’s Caucus has officially asked the House Ethics Committee to look into recently unearthed and sickening domestic violence allegations from Rep. Max Miller’s (R-OH) ex-wife Emily Moreno against the lawmaker. Moreno has said the Ohio Republican “scalded her chest and stomach by throwing hot water from a skillet at her body; held a gun to her head; pushed her against a wall and hit her head; and fractured their daughter’s collarbone and bruised her shoulder,” in the New York Times’ words, citing court documents. Miller has denied the allegations.
“The recent reports of domestic violence and child abuse against Representative Max Miller are deeply disturbing and Congress can’t ignore them. Allegations of violence against women and children have to be met with the utmost seriousness,” Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM), Emilia Sykes (D-OH) and Hillary Scholten (D-MI) wrote in a statement.
“We therefore call on the House Committee on Ethics to swiftly and thoroughly investigate these allegations. Every woman and child deserves to live free from fear of violence, especially within the sanctity of their own home, and we will not stop fighting until that’s the reality,” they said.
Trump Would Rather Pull Blanche Nom Then Kill Slush Fund in Writing
My colleagues John Light and David Kurtz have chronicled most of the latest today in the drama surrounding acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation vote as Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) continue, for now, to resist Blanche’s nomination until a deal is reached over how to kill off Trump’s corrupt slush fund.
The latest this afternoon: Trump, in a Truth Social post threw some kindling on the situation.
“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” he said.
While the DOJ and Cornyn have reportedly been working toward some sort of agreement that would kill off provisions in Trump tax lawsuit settlement agreement that created Trump’s (now-defunct, sorta) slush fund for his political allies and gave Trump and his family sweeping tax audit immunity. The committee vote scheduled for this morning was delayed and now it is unclear how things may move forward.
More From TPM Today
Check out some photos from TPM’s event last night with The Handbasket in Brooklyn 🙂 PHOTOS: TPM and The Handbasket Get Together in Brooklyn
“Trump’s new Federal Reserve Board Chair Kevin Warsh took two missteps in two opposite directions during and after yesterday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) rate decision,” writes Layla A. Jones in her new piece on the board’s interest rates decision this week. More here: People Are Starting to Worry if Kevin Warsh is a Credible Fed Chair
A handful of blue states are suing the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA for withholding funds, arguing its a coersion tactic to try to force states into allowing the federal government to overreach on states’ rights to administer their own elections. Khaya Himmelman unpacks all this in this week’s edition of The Franchise: Blue States Sue DHS and FEMA Over Coercive Election Changes
Yesterday’s Top Story
Juicy and Hilarious New Details About Trump’s Crusade Against Comey
What I’m Reading
Senate education committee blocks parts of Trump’s Education Department breakup
2 in 3 MAGA voters say they’d support GOP candidate accused of sexual assault: Poll
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” he said.
Right now it doesn’t look like Rs will replace Cornyn or Tillis. Does Trump even know that? Seriously, he seems to be sort of staggering through la-la land these days. “We control the Strait of Hormuz.” Soon it will be, “I’m sending Steiner’s Panzer divisions into Iran tomorrow.”
What these broadcasters are going to have to do is put together a huge litigation against the FCC and force the agency to document exactly how they have violated their public interest. Historically, not all Presidential speeches have been broadcast. These are done at the discretion of the broadcasters, not by force, as this is not state television (yet).
The letters from the thousands of viewers and groups calling out this whole thing as poppycock will be ignored because they are not consistent with Carr’s beliefs (and therefore those of the President).
It would be nice if Congress would take a stand, but that’s asking far too much.