The news distortion policy is no longer justifiable under today's First Amendment doctrine and no longer necessary in today's media environment... The Commission should repeal the policy in full and recognize that it may not investigate or penalize broadcasters for 'distorting,' 'slanting,' or 'staging' the news, unless the broadcast at issue independently meets the high standard for broadcasting a dangerous hoax under 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217,
The FCC has voted that it can now retroactively add devices and components to its list of prohibited equipment that pose "an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States." Currently, that list includes just under a dozen companies like Huawei, ZTE, AO Kaspersky Lab, and Pacific Networks Corp.
Senate Democrats are urging the Federal Communications Commission to enforce a rule that would lower the price of prison phone and video calls. In a letter led by Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), several Democrats, including Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), among others, criticize FCC Chair Brendan Carr's efforts to "effectively gut" a final rule to implement a cap on exorbitant fees.
When Rosenworcel proposed a federal opt-out rule last year, the FCC said it would "increase competition for communications service in these buildings by making it more profitable for competitive providers to deploy service in buildings where it is currently too expensive to serve consumers because tenants are required to take a certain provider's service." But the proposal was nixed in January 2025 by Chairman Brendan Carr, shortly after President Trump elevated Carr to the FCC's top slot.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) was one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against the "mafioso"-like comments Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr issued ahead of Jimmy Kimmel's suspension last month. Now, he's hoping the liberal outrage over government censorship will fuel bipartisan support for a new bill letting Americans sue over speech violations. Cruz plans to introduce the bill in the coming weeks, he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.
The FCC said it will seek comment on how wireline infrastructure deployment can be accelerated by using Section 253 of the Communications Act. The Act, according to the FCC, 'precludes state and local governments from imposing requirements that prohibit or effectively prohibit the provision of telecommunications service.' Currently, the FCC says that providers must obtain authorization from state and local governments to deploy facilities and provide service.
The ruling said that using E-Rate for such funding "both exceeds the FCC's statutory authority and does not promote sound policy choices." The dismantling of the school bus Wi-Fi program began in early September, when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr introduced the declarative ruling. At the time, he said that the program had a record of "poor stewardship of scarce funds, and invited waste, fraud, and abuse."
On September 22, Disney announced that ABC's long-running late-night franchise will return on Tuesday night, roughly one week after the show was pulled from the Disney-owned network's lineup in the wake of threats from the head of President Trump's Federal Communications Commission. "Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country," Disney said in a statement released around 12:30 p.m. Pacific time on Monday afternoon.
So the question is, how did we get here? We have to look at Project 2025. There was a chapter called The Federal Communications Commission, and it was authored by Brendan Carr. He enacted some of this idea of the unitary executive theory. It takes away a lot of the checks and balances that the federal government has long had.
During his monologue Monday, ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel built up a joke like so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them." It was certainly going out on a limb to characterize the shooter as "MAGA" without any information supporting that, and new information we've seen since Monday makes the premise look flat wrong.
On Wednesday, bowing to pressure from the Trump Administration, ABC pulled the late-night series "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" off the air. The show, which had run for more than two decades, was shelved indefinitely over a monologue addressing the murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk—one in which Kimmel did not disparage Kirk, nor, indeed, comment on him at all. Instead, he directed his contempt at those eager to exploit the activist's death: members of "the MAGA gang" who were, he said, "desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
