FCC

Bomb the United Nations headquarters. Or maybe gas it. Fox News host Jesse Watters had plenty of ideas about how to punish the U.N. after President Trump’s humiliating visit to the organization’s New York headquarters Tuesday.

Trump’s arrival at the General Assembly meeting with First Lady Melania Trump began with the pair stranded at the bottom of an escalator that stopped just as the couple stepped on. The hijinks continued when he stepped behind the lectern to speak and the teleprompter was not working. Trump decided to wing it, leaning into his impromptu-diatribe skills with threats, boasts, mentions of assorted global thingamabobs and something about ending seven wars.

The “from the heart” address did not appear to impress the gathering of world leaders, especially the part where he said, “Your countries are going to hell.” Here’s where I imagine Norway leaning over and whispering to Oman, “At least our escalators work.”

But one man’s technical glitch is another man’s conspiracy theory, as Watters showed Tuesday on Fox News’ talk show “The Five.” He asserted that Trump’s troubles were the result of sabotage and that those malfunctions were in fact “an insurrection.”

“What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,” Watters joked. Co-hosts Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld groan-laughed, if there is such a thing.

Watters then said, “[The U.N. headquarters] is in New York, though, right? Could be some fallout there. Maybe gas it?”

“Let’s not do that,” Perino said.

Watters acquiesced, then said, “OK, but we need to destroy it. Maybe can we demolish the building? Have everybody leave and then we’ll demolish the building.”

He continued: “This is absolutely unacceptable, and I hope they get to the bottom of it, and I hope they really injure, emotionally, the people that did it.”

The comments did not come from a liberal late-night host, which probably explains why there were no Mafioso-style threats from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr calling for Fox and Watters to tone it down — or else.

Like Watters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt smelled escalator sabotage and said as much in an X post: “If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately.” She shared a screenshot of a Sunday article from the Times of London with reporting that said U.N. staff members had “joked that they may turn off the escalators” and “tell him they ran out of money so he has to walk up the stairs.”

Then guess what everyone is now posting about? That would be former VP hopeful and current Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s response to Leavitt’s post: “Not only do they need to be fired, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It’s a miracle the President ever made it up the stairs.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on X has been mocking Trump’s social media approach for months, zeroed in on the 79-year-old president’s careful climb up the stationary set of stairs Tuesday. “DOZY DON WAS DEFEATED BY THE ESCALATOR, POOR GUY! THE ENTIRE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT THE LOW IQ ‘PRESIDENT.’ NEXT STOP: THE BEST ROOM AT MEMORY MEADOWS RETIREMENT RESORT. TYLENOL INCLUDED. ENJOY YOUR STAY, DON! — GCN.”

Leavitt said the U.S. Secret Service is among the agencies deployed to investigate the escalator whodunit.

But the escalator perpetrator may be closer to home than Trump’s inner circle and his supporters in the media imagined. According to a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Trump’s videographer may have been responsible for jamming the escalator when he ran ahead of the president, potentially triggering a safety mechanism.

As for the teleprompter, the Associated Press reported that the White House was responsible for operating the teleprompter for the president. And a person with knowledge of the situation revealed to the Daily Beast that delegations are allowed to bring their own laptops and teleprompter operators, and the U.N. was not running it for Trump’s speech. The source said that the White House had its own laptop and U.N. technicians were not in the booth for the president’s address. A separate anonymous source also told ABC News that the teleprompter was being operated by someone from the White House, not a member of the U.N. staff.

Watters’ “blow up the U.N.” joke was not funny, especially in our current climate of deadly attacks on political figures by troubled men with guns. But his dangerous strain of humor was soon overshadowed by what another TV personality had to say that evening.

In Jimmy Kimmel’s first opening monologue since his show was pulled last week by ABC, he asked that Americans fight censorship, not each other. The host’s long-running show was indefinitely pulled by the network a week ago after conservative outcry over his remark that “the MAGA gang [was] 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.”

On Tuesday, Kimmel teared up when he spoke of Kirk’s death and said he never meant to make light of a young man’s killing. The host also reiterated that liking him or his show was not the point. “This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this,” he said, emphasizing the value of free speech.

The ousting of Kimmel, a longtime critic and target of the president, was the most high-profile test yet of protecting the 1st Amendment right to free speech in the face of an administration that has weaponized the FCC against its detractors. Upon his return Tuesday, the host was greeted with a standing ovation by his studio audience. Kimmel’s monologue then amassed 11 million YouTube views in its first 12 hours online and is now poised to set a record for being the host’s most-watched opening monologue ever.

Kimmel’s comeback was yet another unfortunate turn for Trump on the Worst Tuesday Ever, and it can’t be explained away as the act of a teleprompter terrorist. But the MAGA-verse is doing its best to make the case, or when it comes to Watters, joking about blowing up places that offend their leader, proving there’s more broken in America than just a U.N. escalator.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — The FCC is prohibited from influencing network content but Chairman Brendan Carr and President Donald Trump have used pressure campaigns on ABC and others to test those limits.

The Trump administration’s attempt to push Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air worked, briefly. While consumer backlash convinced Disney and ABC to reverse course, the alarm has been sounded over the weaponization of federal authority to suppress free speech.

Kimmel returned to ABC on Tuesday, lamenting the importance of standing up for free speech in his opening monologue, calling attempts to take shows like his off the air for sharing dissenting opinions “un-American.”

“Ten years ago this sounded crazy: Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and ‘These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,'” Kimmel said. “In addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, it is not a particularly intelligent threat to be made in public.”

Section 326 of the Communications Act states that the commission cannot interfere with the right to exercise free speech.

Former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler, who served during the Obama administration, told UPI Carr is bringing the commission into “uncharted territory.”

“The FCC is approaching 100 years old,” Wheeler said. “Over that period, one of its primary purposes has been to make sure when it comes to broadcasters using the people’s airwaves that there is a diversity of voices and a diversity of ownership.”

“That’s something that has held true until today, when we see the chairman of the FCC attempting to influence what people hear and we hear the president of the United States saying that he wants to consider yanking the broadcast licenses for those who don’t agree with him,” he continued.

One of the FCC’s chief responsibilities is licensing. It is responsible for ensuring that licenses are distributed and used in the public’s interest, convenience and necessity. The statute does not go on to define what public interest means, leaving it up to the heads of the FCC to determine this over the years.

Throughout its history, according to Wheeler, FCC chairmen have taken seriously the importance of fulfilling their duties in a neutral and independent way.

The FCC operations manual refers to Section 326 of the Communications Act and the First Amendment, stating that both “expressly prohibit the commission from censoring broadcast matter. Our role in overseeing program content is very limited.”

“Those are pretty explicit,” Wheeler said of the First Amendment and Section 326. “The public interest definition ought to presumably fall within the four corners of those kinds of descriptions.”

The FCC’s role in overseeing content may be limited, as its manual acknowledges, but it still has influence.

Networks are required to renew their licenses every eight years. This applies to all networks, including major networks like ABC and local companies.

The FCC must also approve the transfer of licenses when companies merge. For example, when Disney bought ABC, the ownership of its licenses needed to reflect this transfer of ownership. This is also true for companies like Sinclair and Nexstar purchasing local networks.

Nexstar has an agreement in place to purchase Tegna for $6.2 billion. If the deal is approved, Nexstar would own 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, including 132 of the top 210 TV markets in the country, expanding its reach to 80% of U.S. households.

The FCC has a 39% cap on how many households a network group can reach. It is called the National Television Ownership rule and its purpose is to maintain diversity, competition and localism by preventing a small number of companies from controlling the airwaves.

In June, the FCC Media Bureau filed a public notice that it seeks new public comments to refresh the record on television network ownership rules. It is looking for input on whether it should retain, modify or eliminate the 39% cap on network ownership. It last did this in 2017.

“The FCC has an economic lever over those that it regulates,” Wheeler said. “There’s economic leverage that Brendan Carr has been very successful in playing up.”

Nexstar owns 32 ABC affiliate networks and Sinclair owns more than 30. Both announced Tuesday that they will not air Jimmy Kimmel Live! despite ABC electing to bring it back.

The licenses held by networks permit them to use the public’s airwaves to broadcast content. It does not give them ownership of those airwaves. They belong to the public.

The licensing renewal process is usually straightforward and without much controversy, Gigi Sohn, Benton Institute senior fellow and public advocate, told UPI.

“Throughout almost the entire history of the FCC there has been one time and one time only that the FCC has denied a license renewal based on the content of programming,” Sohn said. “That was in the ’60s when a Mississippi radio and TV station refused to run any news program or any program of any kind about the Civil Rights movement and instead ran racist programming.”

Sohn added that the FCC, in that instance, did not tell the station it could not run one program and had to run another or had to change how it edited its programs. Instead, it determined the station was not serving the public interest because it was not giving its audience access to all the information related to the stories it was broadcasting.

“That is something that the FCC has the right to do when it looks at the overall programming of a broadcaster,” Sohn said. “What it doesn’t have the right to do is bully a network — into dropping one program because he made a joke about, not even about the president, not about Charlie Kirk, but about the way the president’s followers were reacting to the Kirk murder.”

After Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on his late-night show about the late Charlie Kirk, the FCC chairman threatened to take action against ABC and parent company Disney. Media companies Nexstar and Sinclair quickly followed with statements that were critical of Kimmel’s comments.

Within hours of Carr’s threats, ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be preempted indefinitely.

According to Sohn and Wheeler, Carr wielded his regulatory power in this instance to influence ABC to remove Kimmel’s show from the airwaves due to his longtime criticism of the president. They add that it is not the first time Carr has done something like this since becoming chairman earlier this year.

A pending merger between Skydance and Paramount remained under scrutiny by Carr and the FCC for months before being approved in July. During the hold up, Carr investigated CBS News over its editorial decisions.

Trump meanwhile had an open lawsuit against CBS, seeking $20 billion over allegations that 60 Minutes edited an interview with former presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a way that was favorable to her and her candidacy. On July 2, it was reported that Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, settled with Trump for $16 million.

The FCC approved the Skydance-Paramount merger on July 24. As conditions of the merger, Skydance agreed to Carr’s demands that the company will end or not establish any diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

It also agreed to hire an ombudsman to oversee CBS News editorial decisions. The ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, is the former president and CEO of conservative think tank the Hudson Institute.

Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, told UPI a bad precedent is being set by networks like ABC and CBS as they give into pressure from the FCC and the president.

“Not only does it show the administration that these guys are going to cave and therefore we can keep pushing them, but it also means we won’t get coverage when the administration does this to other companies,” Feld said. “If the news has been cowed into submission it means the administration is free to do this to anyone and nobody will find out about it.”

Former FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez issued a statement after the suspension of Kimmel’s program was reinstated.

“As this FCC considers steps that would let the same billion-dollar media conglomerates that caved in to government pressure grow even bigger, we must combat these efforts to stifle free expression,” Gomez said.

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California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr of unlawfully intimidating television broadcasters into toeing a conservative line in favor of President Trump, and urged him to reverse course.

In a letter to Carr, Bonta specifically cited ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air after Kimmel made comments about the killing of close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, and Carr demanded ABC’s parent company Disney “take action” against the late-night host.

Bonta wrote that California “is home to a great many artists, entertainers, and other individuals who every day exercise their right to free speech and free expression,” and that Carr’s demands of Disney threatened their 1st Amendment rights.

“As the Supreme Court held over sixty years ago and unanimously reaffirmed just last year, ‘the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,’” Bonta wrote.

Carr and Trump have both denied playing a role in Kimmel’s suspension, alleging instead that it was due to his show having poor ratings.

After Disney announced Monday that Kimmel’s show would be returning to ABC, Bonta said he was “pleased to hear ABC is reversing course on its capitulation to the FCC’s unlawful threats,” but that his “concerns stand.”

He rejected Trump and Carr’s denials of involvement, and accused the administration of “waging a dangerous attack on those who dare to speak out against it.”

“Censoring and silencing critics because you don’t like what they say — be it a comedian, a lawyer, or a peaceful protester — is fundamentally un-American,” while such censorship by the U.S. government is “absolutely chilling,” Bonta said.

Bonta called on Carr to “stop his campaign of censorship” and commit to defending the right to free speech in the U.S., which he said would require “an express disavowal” of his previous threats and “an unambiguous pledge” that he will not use the FCC “to retaliate against private parties” for speech he disagrees with moving forward.

“News outlets have reported today that ABC will be returning Mr. Kimmel’s show to its broadcast tomorrow night. While it is heartening to see the exercise of free speech ultimately prevail, this does not erase your threats and the resultant suppression of free speech from this past week or the prospect that your threats will chill free speech in the future,” Bonta wrote.

After Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said during a monologue that the U.S. had “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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Carr responded on a conservative podcast, saying, “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Two major owners of ABC affiliates dropped the show, after which ABC said it would be “preempted indefinitely.”

Both Kirk’s killing and Kimmel’s suspension — which followed the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” by CBS — kicked off a tense debate about freedom of speech in the U.S. Both Kimmel and Colbert are critics of Trump, while Kirk was an ardent supporter.

Constitutional scholars and other 1st amendment advocates said the administration and Carr have clearly been exerting inappropriate pressure on media companies.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said Carr’s actions were part of a broad assault on free speech by the administration, which “is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st amendment.”

Summer Lopez, the interim co-chief executive of PEN America, said this is “a dangerous moment for free speech” in the U.S. because of a host of Trump administration actions that are “pretty clear violations of the 1st Amendment” — including Carr’s threats but also statements about “hate speech” by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and new Pentagon restrictions on journalists reporting on the U.S. military.

She said Kimmel’s return to ABC showed that “public outrage does make a difference,” but that “it’s important that we generate that level of public outrage when the targeting is of people who don’t have that same prominence.”

Carr has also drawn criticism from conservative corners, including from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. He recently said on his podcast that he found it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

Cruz said he works closely with Carr, whom he likes, but that what Carr said was “dangerous as hell” and could be used down the line “to silence every conservative in America.”

NEW YORK — The decision about whether to keep Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night ABC show depends on far more than his jokes. The choice is complicated by a web of business and regulatory considerations involving ABC’s parent company, other media companies and the Trump administration.

It’s the inevitable result of industry consolidation that over years has built giant corporations with wide-ranging interests.

ABC owner Walt Disney Co., a massive organization with far-flung operations, frequently seeks federal regulatory approval to expand, buy or sell businesses or acquire licenses. And the Trump administration has not spared the company from investigations, opening multiple inquiries in just the last few months to investigate alleged antitrust, programming and hiring violations.

Kimmel was suspended from his show last week following comments suggesting that fans of Charlie Kirk were trying to “score political points” over the conservative activist’s shooting death. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr called the remarks “truly sick” and suggested his agency would look into them.

Carr answers to President Trump, a frequent Kimmel target whose dislike of the comedian is well known.

Two companies that operate roughly a quarter of ABC affiliates nationwide, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcasting, also said they would not air Kimmel’s show.

Disney took a step in December to avoid a confrontation with Trump by paying $15 million to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos, in a case many civil rights attorneys considered weak. It also made moves to dismantle some of its diversity, equity and inclusion practices, including removing references in its annual report to its Reimagine Tomorrow program aimed at “amplifying underrepresented voices.”

Apparently that wasn’t enough.

In April, the FCC sent a a blistering letter to Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger saying it suspected the company was so thoroughly “infected” with “invidious” practices favoring minorities that it had no choice but to open an investigation.

Among other questions, the inquiry sought to determine whether Disney had really ended policies designed to ensure characters in its shows and its hiring practices favored “underrepresented groups.”

Meanwhile, a Disney deal struck in January to buy a stake in the streaming service FuboTV fell under scrutiny too, with several reports that the Justice Department was investigating possible antitrust violations.

The Federal Trade Commission also launched an inquiry into whether Disney broke rules by gathering personal data from children watching its videos without permission from parents. Disney settled the case this month by paying $10 million and agreeing to change its practices.

Disney also needs approval from the Trump administration for ESPN to complete its acquisition of the NFL Network.

It hasn’t helped that Disney was a target for many conservatives well before the current controversy. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis battled with the company over its criticism of a DeSantis-backed law that restricted discussion of sexual orientation in schools.

Kirk wasn’t a fan, either, criticizing Disney when it closed Splash Mountain rides at theme parks three years ago to remove references to the 1946 film “Song of the South,” which has long been decried as racist for its romanticized depictions of slavery.

The move, Kirk’s website posted, was “destructive to our cultural and societal fabric.”

The companies with ABC stations that put out statements disavowing Kimmel have their own business before the government. Nexstar needs the Trump administration’s approval to complete its $6.2-billion purchase of broadcast rival Tegna.

Sinclair has its own regulatory challenges. In June, it entered into an agreement with the FCC to fix problems with paperwork filed to the agency and to observe rules about advertising on children’s shows and closed-captioning requirements. It has also petitioned the regulator to relax rules limiting broadcaster ownership of stations.

The companies are being asked by advocates and others to put aside financial concerns to stand up for free speech.

“Where has all the leadership gone?” ex-Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner wrote Friday on social media. “If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners and corporate chief executives standing up to bullies, then who will step up for the First Amendment?”

The administration’s attacks on Kimmel have also been criticized in some unexpected places, such as the Wall Street Journal and Bari Weiss’ website, the Free Press — both known for their conservative editorial voices — and by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a staunch conservative and Trump ally.

The comedian’s comments don’t justify the right wing’s move toward regulatory censorship, the Journal wrote in an editorial. “As victims of cancel culture for so long, conservatives more than anyone should oppose it,” the Journal wrote. “They will surely be the targets again when the left returns to power.”

“When a network drops a high-profile talent hours after the FCC chairman makes a barely veiled threat, then it’s no longer just a business decision,” the Free Press wrote in an editorial. “It’s government coercion. Is it now Trump administration policy to punish broadcasters for comedy that doesn’t conform to its politics?”

Bauder and Condon write for the Associated Press.

The recent suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is an attack on democracy. Though not necessarily the democracy one might think.

Free speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. This grants the late-night host the freedom to say whatever he thinks without fear of arrest or state-sanctioned violence. It does not necessarily guarantee that he will not be censured, or fired, if his remarks violate his employer’s rules or standards.

President Trump discovered this in 2015 when, citing inflammatory remarks the then-presidential candidate made about undocumented Mexican immigrants, NBC — the network that aired “The Apprentice” and Trump’s Miss Universe pageant — cut ties with him.

This is the most obvious explanation for Trump declaring war on television, despite it being the industry that, via “The Apprentice” and a deluge of coverage during his first presidential campaign, helped propel him to the presidency. Paybacks are a b— and this particular president thrives on them.

And it is definitely war. Trump has a long history of attacking various TV networks and personalities, including Kimmel. The regularity, name-checking and vitriol of these attacks far outstrip the anger many presidents have expressed toward the media, but they are in keeping with Trump’s general brand of “whataboutism” and victimization.

A brand that last year a majority of voters decided, in a free and fair election, represented their best interests.

What they did not vote for, because it was not part of Trump’s platform or promises, was the weaponization of his office in general, and the FCC in particular, to destroy the democracy of broadcast television.

First by a spurious suit against “60 Minutes,” which many believe was settled to allow the sale of Paramount Global to Skydance Media to go forward, then with CBS (owned by Paramount) canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and now with the suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Television is an industry that relies on a continual public voting system — people watch or they don’t watch, and the networks renew, cancel and tweak their programming accordingly. This is an oversimplification of a byzantine and often mysterious system that often involves the personal preferences of network executives and, increasingly, algorithms, but essentially the viewers are in charge — with their eyeballs and, occasionally, their outrage.

If, as the president claims, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” had been canceled due to its low ratings or suspended after Kimmel’s recent remarks caused longtime viewers to inundate ABC or the show’s sponsors with messages of outrage, fans would have been upset, but it would have been a mere blip in the news cycle.

But that is not what happened. Instead, a handful of conservative pundits who have made it their business to punish anyone who mentions slain influencer Charlie Kirk with anything but near-sanctification used a few ill-chosen but innocuous lines regarding the crime in Kimmel’s opening monologue Monday to call for swift and terrible retribution.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr answered the call. On the podcast “The Benny Show,” hosted by right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson, he threatened television affiliates with regulatory action if they did not take action against Kimmel.

He did so knowing that Nexstar, which owns many of those affiliates, was attempting to buy Tegna, in order to gain control of over 80% of U.S. television stations. That merger would require not just FCC approval but Carr’s willingness to eliminate the rule that prevents any media company from owning more than 39% of television stations.

Nexstar appeared to do precisely what Carr demanded of them. As did ABC/Disney, which decided that the loss of revenue from these affiliates, and the animosity of Trump and his supporters, posed a bigger threat than the potential fallout from pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air. (And good luck getting the four-time Oscars host to emcee this ceremony again in the future.)

Perhaps it did. But given that “seize the media” and “silence comedians” are historical hallmarks of totalitarianism, the resulting three-day-and-counting news cycle, in which Carr, Trump and Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger have been regularly accused of dismantling democracy, has given anti-MAGA forces a new and legitimate rallying cry.

All while pushing broadcast television just a bit closer to the edge of extinction.

Nexstar denied that it benched Kimmel due to pressure from Carr.

“The decision to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision,” Gary Weitman, Nexstar’s chief communications officer, said in a statement.

Trump’s obsession with broadcast networks and late-night hosts is perilous, and not just because it underlines his desire to attack culture with every means at his disposal (including those that may not be legal).

Certainly, it exposes his authoritarian bent, but it also reveals his anachronistic view of the world.

First, in these divisive times, having critics allows your supporters to coalesce around hating them. And second, broadcast television, including and especially late night, has been in its death throes for more than a decade.

As alarming, unacceptable and authoritarian as the attacks on “60 Minutes,” Colbert and Kimmel are, media freedom is not going to die on this particular hill for the simple reason that it is no longer the free media’s main residence.

Carr ordered his hit on Kimmel not from the comforts of “Fox & Friends” but on a podcast. Trump still delivers televised speeches, but most of his communications and policy decisions are delivered via social media.

The tsunami of corporate mergers involving television networks and streaming services have occurred not because these things are profitable tools of power but because, at least separately, they are not. YouTube is the most popular media platform in the country.

As Trump points out, Kimmel’s television ratings are very low — less than 2 million on average. Kimmel himself has said that he and other late-night shows get far more viewers from clips on social media than on television. If he and Colbert decide to take their voices straight to social media, well, good luck controlling that.

There is certainly much to fear in Trump’s brazen attacks on venerable institutions like “60 Minutes” and late-night television (though with conservatives like Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson siding, at least in principle, with Kimmel, things may not be going quite the way Carr or Trump planned), but as Kirk knew, one doesn’t need a television show to be an effective, influential voice.

Seen from one angle, Trump is most certainly attempting to quash what we have come to know as democracy. But from another, it’s a grudge-holding president kicking the industry that helped him achieve power when it’s already struggling for breath.

NEW YORK — Two ABC affiliate owners spoke out against late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel ahead of ABC’s decision to suspend the presenter over comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Their comments highlight the influence that local TV station owners have on national broadcasters such as Disney-owned ABC.

Here are key facts about the two companies.

Nexstar Media Group, based in Irving, Texas, operates 28 ABC affiliates. It said it would pull Kimmel’s show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.

The company owns or partners with more than 200 stations in 116 U.S. markets, and owns broadcast networks the CW and NewsNation, as well as the political website the Hill and nearly a third of the Food Network.

It hopes to get even bigger. Last month, it announced a $6.2-billion deal to buy TEGNA Inc., which owns 64 other TV stations.

The deal would require the Federal Communications Commission to change rules limiting the number of stations a single company can own. The FCC’s chair, Brendan Carr, has expressed openness to changing the rule.

Sinclair Broadcast Group

Sinclair Broadcast Group, based in Hunt Valley, Md., operates 38 local ABC affiliates. On Wednesday the company, which has a reputation for a conservative viewpoint in its broadcasts, called on Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to the activist’s political organization, Turning Point USA. Sinclair said its ABC stations will air a tribute to Kirk on Friday in Kimmel’s time slot.

Sinclair owns, operates or provides services to 178 TV stations in 81 markets affiliated with all major broadcast networks and owns Tennis Channel.

Controversies

Sinclair made headlines in 2018 when a video that stitched together dozens of news anchors for Sinclair-owned local stations reading identical statements decrying “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing the country” went viral. Sinclair didn’t disclose that it ordered the anchors to read the statement.

Nexstar operates similarly.

Danilo Yanich, professor of public policy at the University of Delaware, said the company is the “biggest duplicator” of news content today His research showed Nexstar stations duplicated broadcasts more than other affiliate owners.

Affiliate influence

Lauren Herold, an editor of the forthcoming book “Local TV,” said the web of companies involved in getting Americans their television shows is “relatively unknown” to most viewers, though their influence has been made known for decades.

Often, Herold said, that’s been when local affiliates have balked at airing something they viewed as controversial, such as the episode of the 1990s comedy “Ellen” in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character came out as gay.

“It’s not a complete oddity,” Herold said. “I think what’s more alarming about this particular incident to me is the top-down nature of it.”

Whereas past flare-ups between affiliates and their parent networks have often involved individual local TV executives, Herold pointed to the powerful voices at play in Kimmel’s suspension: Disney CEO Bob Iger, the FCC’s chair Carr, as well as Sinclair and Nexstar.

“The FCC kind of pinpointing particular programs to cancel is concerning to people who advocate for television to be a forum for free discussion and debate,” Herold said.

Jasmine Bloemhof, a media strategist who has worked with local stations, including ones owned by Sinclair and Nexstar, said consolidation has given such companies “enormous influence.” Controversies like the latest involving Kimmel, she said, “reveal the tension between Hollywood-driven programming and the values of everyday Americans.”

“Networks may push one agenda, but affiliates owned by companies like Sinclair and Nexstar understand they serve conservative-leaning communities across the country,” Bloemhof said. “And that friction is bound to surface.”

Anderson and Sedensky write for the Associated Press.

On a Wednesday podcast, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said ABC had to act on Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about the killing of right wing activist Charlie Kirk. “We can do it the easy way or the hard way,” the Trump appointee told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson.

The intended audience, the owners of ABC stations across the country, heard the message loud and clear. They chose the easy way.

Within hours of Carr’s comments, Nexstar, which controls 32 ABC affiliates, agreed to drop “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely.

Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC quickly followed with its own announcement that it was pulling Kimmel from the network. Sinclair Broadcasting, a TV station company long sympathetic to conservative causes, also shelved the show and went a step further by demanding that Kimmel make a financial contribution to Kirk’s family and his conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA.

It is not clear if or when Kimmel’s show will return. On Thursday, high-level ABC executives spoke with Kimmel and his team to see whether there was a way to “bring the temperature down,” allowing the show to return, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment.

The situation reflects the power that Carr has over the companies with outlets that still reach the largest audiences in the U.S., even in the age of streaming. Over-the-air TV and radio stations are the only media licensed by the government due to their use of the public airwaves, and Carr, whose commitment to President Trump is unwavering, holds the keys to their future.

Companies that own TV stations are desperate to make acquisition or merger deals so they can compete with the clout of tech companies. Nexstar, for example, needs the FCC’s permission for a proposed $6.2-billion acquisition of rival station operator Tegna, and other companies are expected to swap and acquire outlets as well. All deals have to get approval of the FCC, which is also being lobbied to lift the cap on how much of the U.S. station owners can cover.

That gives Carr tremendous leverage.

The latest trouble for Kimmel started Monday when he seemed to suggest during his monologue that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are 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.”

Carr, during Johnson’s podcast, called Kimmel’s comments “the sickest conduct possible.” Carr, who has previously styled himself as a free speech absolutist, argues that stations have the right to pull the show if owners believe the content conflicts with community standards.

“Broadcast TV stations have always been required by their licenses to operate in the public interest — that includes serving the needs of their local communities,” he wrote Thursday on X. “And broadcasters have long retained the right to not air national programs that they believe are inconsistent with the public interest, including their local communities’ values. I am glad to see that many broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”

Kimmel’s staff was told not to report to work Thursday but has been given no information about the program’s future. Kimmel has yet to comment.

Top Disney executives, including Chief Executive Bob Iger — who has a close relationship with the host — and Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, made the decision to bench Kimmel.

Disney executives had been huddling as the crisis mounted throughout Wednesday and Kimmel and his staff had been preparing the show. The comedian planned to address the situation, according to three people close to the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Some Disney execs were belatedly uncomfortable with Kimmel’s monologue, which became a lightning rod for conservatives on social media. Walden spoke with Kimmel on Wednesday, one of the knowledgeable sources said, and she and other executives became concerned that Kimmel’s planned remarks were “pretty emotional” and “did not strike the right tone.”

With only about an hour before the show was set to begin taping, the ABC executives felt they did not have time to work out an appropriate response and decided to suspend the show rather than risk an escalation of the cultural tensions, one of the sources said.

The call to dump Kimmel by Nexstar, whose founder and CEO Perry Sook has praised the administration and said lifting station ownership restrictions was the company’s top priority, put pressure on Disney to act because of the number of affiliate stations it owns.

Losing Kimmel would be a major blow to ABC.

While late-night ratings are in decline and profits on his show have greatly diminished, Kimmel is a recognizable personality who is strongly identified with the network. He has emceed the Emmys and the Oscars, and hosted game shows in addition to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He’s also the current host of ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” After years of ABC being a non-entity in late-night TV, Kimmel put the network in the game when he arrived in 2003 after hosting popular shows on Comedy Central.

Trump and Kimmel have long sparred. Tensions date back to 2017, when Trump first moved into the White House and Kimmel poked fun at the new president from the Oscars stage. The comedian’s position on Trump hardened, and grew more personal, later that year after he and his wife nearly lost their infant son who was born with a rare heart condition.

Kimmel then advocated for the preservation of the Affordable Care Act, which had been a Trump target. The rift widened last year at the Oscars when Trump posted a harsh review of Kimmel on Truth Social in real time, asking whether there had ever been a worse emcee.

Kimmel read the post during the telecast, then looked at the camera and said: “Thank you for watching. I’m surprised you’re still — isn’t it past your jail time?” Since then Trump has called for Kimmel’s cancellation.

Trump has long been comedic fodder for late-night hosts, and now he is exacting his revenge with Carr’s help. He called for the firing of Stephen Colbert ahead of CBS’ decision to cancel his program, “The Late Show,” for financial reasons. That decision came after Colbert blasted parent company Paramount’s decision to pay $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit — a move he and many others speculated was made to get FCC approval of its merger deal with Skydance Media.

Trump has also gone after NBC’s late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, saying they should be next on the chopping block.

The chilling effect is already evident on ABC. “The View,” the network’s daytime talk program that airs live and regularly skewers Trump, made no mention of the Kimmel controversy on Thursday. The story was covered briefly on the network’s “Good Morning America.”

Prominent writer-producer Damon Lindelof (a creator of ABC’s hit drama “Lost” and HBO’s “The Leftovers”) posted on Instagram that he was “shocked, saddened and infuriated” by Kimmel’s suspension. Lindelof wrote he could not “in good conscience work” for Disney if the company failed to bring Kimmel back.

Disney’s action was quickly condemned by Hollywood unions, progressive groups, free speech organizations and Democratic politicians.

“The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other — to disturb, even — is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people,” the Writers Guild of America West and East chapters said in a statement. “It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.”

“If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution,” the writers group said. “Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world.”

Tino Gagliardi, international president of the American Federation of Musicians, which includes members of Kimmel’s band, added: “This is not complicated. Trump’s FCC identified speech it did not like and threatened ABC with extreme reprisals. This is state censorship.”

Four prominent unions, including Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, issued a joint statement saying that the removal of Kimmel “under government pressure” has added further uncertainty to the Hollywood workforce, which already has been reeling from a cutback in film and television production.

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the lone Democrat on the three-member panel, said the agency “does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes.” Gomez also was sharply critical of Disney, calling out what she called as “cowardly corporate capitulation.”

Disney has not commented beyond its initial announcement.

Gomez referenced an incident earlier in the week, when Trump threatened ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl after the president bristled over a question Karl asked about a crackdown on free speech. Trump said Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi might “go after” the reporter “because you treat me so unfairly.”

“We cannot allow an inexcusable act of political violence to be twisted into a justification for government censorship and control,” Gomez said.

Jimmy Kimmel’s show is gone. So is Stephen Colbert’s. And if President Trump has his way, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon will be next.

In the MAGA establishment’s ongoing censorship campaign against Trump’s critics, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became its latest victim when ABC announced Wednesday that it was pulling the show “indefinitely.” The network’s abrupt announcement followed an outcry from Trump’s supporters that the show’s host — a longtime critic of the president — had inaccurately described the political motivations of Tyler Robinson, the suspect in last week’s killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The network’s announcement came hours after Brendan Carr, the Trump-nominated chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, targeted Kimmel on a right-wing podcast and suggested the FCC could take action against ABC because of remarks made by the host. He said Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

The alleged “lies” cited by Kimmel in his Monday night monologue? That MAGA was trying to paint Robinson as “anything other than one of them.”

“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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was, uh, grieving on Friday — the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”

Kimmel then cut to a clip showing Trump taking questions from reporters, and when the president was asked how he was holding up, he said, “I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.” Trump went on to discuss the plans for the ballroom and said the results will “be a beauty.”

It wasn’t Kimmel’s best work, but it certainly wasn’t a bombshell, either. Yet in today’s environment, it was enough to spook ABC into pulling a late-night franchise that’s endured for decades.

The FCC unsurprisingly did not apply the same standards to an outburst Monday by Greg Gutfeld, Fox News’ conservative answer to network television’s thinning herd of late-night hosts. Gutfeld cursed on air, demeaned the loss of life from another assassination earlier this year and cited information that was incorrect to back his tirade.

On Fox’s show “The Five,” Gutfeld asserted that political violence in the U.S. was only going one way — from left to right — during a conversation with co-host Jessica Tarlov. When she pushed back on his argument by bringing up the June assassination of the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, Gutfeld exploded.

“What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right?” he asked. “That’s all we need to know.”

“You wanna talk about Melissa Hortman?” he shouted at her. “Did you know her name before it happened? None of us did. None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman — I never heard of her until after she died.”

“So, it doesn’t matter?” Tarlov asked.

“Don’t play that bulls— with me!” Gutfeld shouted. “You know what I’m talking … What I’m saying is there was no demonization, amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.”

No evidence has been publicly presented that the alleged killer of the Hortmans, Vance Boelter, knew the couple. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Boelter “had a list of possible targets,” and investigators have suggested that the suspect’s right-wing political views played a role in the attacks.

Carr’s assail of Kimmel is the latest attack against the media by Trump and his administration. Trump sued ABC last year in a case that the network paid $15 million to settle. On Monday, the president filed a $15-billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and four of its reporters.

In July, CBS also canceled storied network franchise “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” claiming that the cancellation was a financial decision, but the timing also suggests it was done to placate Trump while Paramount was awaiting the FCC’s approval of a major merger between CBS’ owner Paramount and Skydance Media. A few weeks after CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the merger was approved.

Ratings for late-night television have been slipping over the last decade due to a number of factors, including the decline of linear TV as a whole and changing viewing habits with the advent of streaming and online engagement. In the 1990s, for example, Johnny Carson’s final episode in 1992 drew 50 million viewers. Letterman averaged around 7.8 million viewers in the same year. In the second quarter of 2025, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” topped the 11:35 p.m. hour with an average of 2.417 million viewers. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” came in second with an average of 1.772 million viewers. NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” finished third with an average of 1.188 million viewers.

On Wednesday, Trump posted a celebratory comment about Kimmel’s show being pulled: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote. “Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”

But the true loser here isn’t Trump’s critics or his enemy, the left. It’s freedom of speech.

EchoStar Corp. has agreed to sell spectrum licenses to AT&T Inc. for about $23 billion in a deal that will help the company stay out of bankruptcy and fend off regulatory concerns about its airwave use.

The sale will expand AT&T’s network and add about 50 megahertz of low-band and mid-band spectrum in an all-cash transaction, the Dallas telecommunications company said in a statement Tuesday. The deal is expected to close by mid-2026, pending regulatory approval.

The White House and the Federal Communications Commission were briefed about the transaction before the announcement, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions who asked to not be identified because the talks were private. America’s leadership in wireless services has a been a priority for President Trump, according to a White House official, who said the president believes this deal will accelerate the use of the wireless spectrum.

“We appreciate the productive and ongoing discussions with the EchoStar team,” FCC spokesperson Katie Gorscak said in a statement. “The FCC will continue to focus on ensuring the beneficial use of scarce spectrum resources.”

EchoStar shares jumped as much as 85% to hit the highest level on record after the announcement. AT&T shares were largely unchanged. Bonds in the broader EchoStar universe rallied. Dish DBS bonds due 2029 soared as much as 12 cents on the dollar to 83 cents and were the biggest gainers in the U.S. junk bond market, according to Trace pricing data. Trading in AT&T bonds was more than 10 times the average for this time of day.

The purchase price is $9 billion more than EchoStar paid for the spectrum and $5 billion more than the appraised value used in securitizing the assets, New Street Research’s Philip Burnett said in a research note Tuesday. Though $1.5 billion shy of New Street’s valuation, he said, the sale price was “nevertheless a great mark on value.”

Federal regulators have been pushing EchoStar to sell some of its airwaves after concerns it had failed to put valuable slices of wireless spectrum to use, Bloomberg reported in July. The FCC launched an investigation in May into whether EchoStar was meeting its obligations for its wireless and satellite spectrum rights. The company skipped bond payments and considered filing for bankruptcy, saying the investigation had stymied its ability to make decisions about its 5G network.

In a June meeting, first reported by Bloomberg, Trump urged EchoStar Chairman Charlie Ergen and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to cut a deal to resolve the dispute. EchoStar shopped the assets to other would-be buyers, including Elon Musk’s Starlink, Bloomberg earlier reported.

AT&T said the acquisition of about 30 MHz of mid-band spectrum and 20 MHz of low-band spectrum will strengthen the company’s ability to deliver 5G and fiber services across the U.S. EchoStar will operate in the U.S. market as a hybrid mobile network operator under its Boost brand, the company said in the statement. AT&T will be its primary network partner for wireless service.

In a separate news release, Ergen called the sale and related agreement to work with AT&T “critical steps toward resolving the FCC’s spectrum utilization concerns.”

The U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said in a statement posted on X that it has been working with the FCC and other parties for several months on the EchoStar matter and would review the transaction.

On a conference call with investors Tuesday, AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey said regulators shouldn’t be concerned that the transaction was putting too much wireless spectrum in the hands of the largest telecom carriers.

“The dynamics of what’s occurring in the market support the fact that concentration really isn’t an issue,” Stankey said. “Getting more capacity out into the market is ultimately a good thing for consumers over the long haul.”

AT&T has been spending heavily to expand its fiber-optic network across the country and previously said it would use cash savings from Trump’s tax and spending bill to accelerate those plans. In May, it agreed to buy the consumer fiber operations of Lumen Technologies Inc. for $5.75 billion, expanding its fast broadband service in major cities such as Denver and Las Vegas.

The company intends to finance the EchoStar deal with a combination of cash on hand and borrowings. AT&T maintained its earlier projections for as much as $20 billion for share repurchases through 2027. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. advised AT&T on the EchoStar acquisition.

EchoStar had $5 billion of cash on its balance sheet and subsequently committed to resuming bond payments including interest on the defaulted amounts. Its bond prices signaled that creditors weren’t expecting big losses even against the implied threat of a bankruptcy, which may have provided a fast way to get a federal judge to mediate a process that could otherwise drag on.

Solon, Griffis and Dlouhy write for Bloomberg.

July 24 (UPI) — The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced its approval of Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global, ending months of uncertainty surrounding the deal but inflaming allegations of corruption directed at the Trump administration.

The FCC voted 2-1 in favor of Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount and all of its subsidiaries, including Paramount Pictures, CBS television, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

Among the commitments Skydance made to the Trump administration was ensuring it will include news and entertainment programming that “will embody a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum” and that CBS News’ reporting “will be fair, unbiased and fact-based,” according to the FCC.

Skydance has also pledged that it will not establish any diversity, equity and inclusion policies — ideology that seeks to create inclusive environments that the Trump administration has been seeking to remove from both public and private sectors on allegations of discrimination.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr described the merger as a change that will instill public trust in media.

“It is time for a change,” he said in a statement.

“That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

Though the FCC said Skydance does not have any DEI programs, Carr said the agreement “marks another step forward in the FCC’s efforts to eliminate invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”

Skydance announced the deal in July of last year, but the merger has stalled amid frictions with the Trump administration, as President Donald Trump has sparred with CBS News.

Trump sued CBS News while campaigning for re-election in October for $10 billion in a lawsuit many saw as one he wouldn’t win over editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his political opponent, Democrat Kamala Harris. He then upped the amount in damages to $20 billion after winning re-election.

Earlier this month, Paramount Global reached a $16 million settlement with Trump that Democrats and critics of the Trump administration are calling a bribe and an affront to free speech — accusations that only intensified after Trump earlier this week said Skydance has pledged $20 million more in advertising, PSAs and “other Similar Programming, for a total $36 MillIon Dollars.”

Paramount Global told UPI that the $16 million, minus fees and costs, will be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democrat of the three commissioners and the only one not appointed by Trump, dissented to the merger, and described Paramount’s settlement as “cowardly capitulation” and accused the FCC of losing its independence.

In her strongly worded dissent, Gomez warned that this merger will not be the last time the Trump administration threatens the First Amendment.

“The Paramount payout and this reckless approval have emboldened those who believe the government can — and should — abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment and secure positive media coverage,” she said.

“It is a dark chapter in a long and growing record of abuse that threatens press freedom in this country.”

Democrats were quick to lament their concerns online.

“Trump filed a sham lawsuit against CBS, but instead of fighting it CBS’ parent company, Paramount, paid Trump $16 million to his future library. So, you got to ask, why did Paramount do that if the suit was quote ‘meritless’?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a video statement published online. “Well, maybe because they needed Trump to approve their multibillion-dollar merger, which Trump just did.

The appearance of this wink-wink deal basically let’s every other company and every other billionaire know that Trump is open for business, apparently happy to accept offers in exchange for favors.”

Warren has called for a full investigation into the deal.

Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., described Thursday as “a dark day for independent journalism” and called the approval of the merger “a stain on the storied history of the Federal Communications Commission.

“The FCC’s approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger reeks of the worst form of corruption. The timing speaks for itself: Paramount settled with Trump for $36 million on Tuesday and the FCC approved the merger on Wednesday,” they said in a joint statement.

“The stench of this transaction will linger over the commission for years.”

David Ellison stepped within reach of his hard-fought prize, Paramount Global, after winning regulators’ blessing for his Skydance Media’s $8-billion takeover of the storied media company.

President Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr approved the Skydance-Paramount merger Thursday after months of turmoil and a monumental collision between the president’s broad powers and press freedoms.

Carr’s consent came just three weeks after Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle the president’s lawsuit over edits to a “60 Minutes” broadcast. Trump had claimed CBS producers doctored the October interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to boost her election chances. CBS denied his allegations, saying the edits were routine.

1st Amendment experts called Trump’s suit “frivolous.” But, after months of internal upheaval, Paramount capitulated. The move was widely seen as a prerequisite for Skydance to win FCC approval and push the Paramount-Skydance merger over the finish line.

Trump has said on social media that, as part of the settlement, he also expects the new owners to provide another $20 million in public service announcements and other free programming.

The FCC approval clears the final regulatory hurdle for the acquisition that will bring another technology titan to Hollywood. Carr authorized the transfer of Paramount’s CBS television station licenses to Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder who ranks among the world’s richest men, and his family.

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” Carr said in a statement. “That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

The FCC commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of the deal. Two Republicans, Carr and Olivia Trusty, voted yes, while Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the panel, dissented.

“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted,” Gomez said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions.”

The Ellisons’ takeover of Paramount is expected to be complete in the coming days.

Santa Monica-based Skydance, which is owned by the Ellison family and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, faces an uphill slog to restore Paramount to its former glory. Years of programming under-investments, management missteps and ownership turmoil have taken a heavy toll.

Viewers’ shift to streaming has upended Paramount’s TV networks, CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV and BET. Paramount Pictures lags behind Disney, Universal and Warner Bros.

Sumner Redstone’s family will exit the Hollywood stage, after nearly 40 years. The pugnacious mogul from Boston, who died five years ago, presided during an era of entertainment excesses in the 80s, 90s and early aughts — when Paramount released beloved blockbusters and cable television was in its hey-day.

For a stretch this spring, it seemed the Skydance deal could unravel.

The FCC’s review had stalled amid the legal wrangling over Trump’s lawsuit. Carr, in one of his first moves as chairman, separately opened an FCC inquiry into alleged news distortion with the “60 Minutes” Harris interview — putting CBS uncomfortably under the microscope.

Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone (Sumner’s daughter), and some Skydance executives, urged Paramount to settle. But CBS News executives refused to apologize to Trump for the “60 Minutes” edits, saying CBS journalists did nothing wrong. The settlement, which steers money to Trump’s future presidential library, did not include an apology from CBS News or Paramount.

Two high-level CBS News executives departed and three progressive U.S. senators demanded answers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the others lambasted the settlement talks, saying that paying Trump money to end a “bogus” lawsuit simply to get a merger approved could be akin to paying a bribe.

The winds shifted in June. David Ellison, Larry’s 42-year-old son, talked briefly with Trump at a UFC fight in New Jersey. Days later, Trump talked favorably about his friendship with Larry Ellison and the Paramount-Skydance deal.

“Ellison’s great,” Trump told reporters in mid-June. “He’ll do a great job with it.”

David Ellison last week met with Carr in Washington to persuade him that Paramount would be in good hands. They discussed the firm’s commitments and management philosophies. Skydance also gave assurances that its Chinese investors would not have a say in the company’s affairs.

Last week, CBS separately said it was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” in May. The company said the move was financial, but conservatives and progressives alike questioned the timing due to the pending merger and Colbert’s pointed barbs at Trump.

Skydance outlined its planned changes at Paramount in a letter this week to Carr. Skydance promised to cancel all diversity initiatives, disband its Office of Global Inclusion and strip references to DEI from its internal and external messaging. The company also said news and entertainment programming would not tilt in any one political direction.

“New Paramount’s new management will ensure that the company’s array of news and entertainment programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum, consistent with the varying perspectives of the viewing audience,” Skydance’s general counsel Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon wrote in Tuesday’s letter to Carr.

The company said it would install an ombudsman at CBS News for at least two years.

“They are committing to serious changes at CBS,” Carr told reporters in Washington earlier Thursday. “I think that would be a good thing. They’ve committed to addressing bias issues. They committed to embracing fact-based journalism.”

Ellison began his pursuit of Paramount two years ago.

He formalized his bid by January 2024. After months of negotiations, Paramount’s board and Redstone approved the Skydance takeover July 7, 2024.

Paramount’s leaders considered other prospective owners but concluded that Skydance, with its Ellison backing, would bring a solid financial foundation for a company that traces its roots back more than a century. Redstone also wanted Paramount to remain whole, rather than broken into pieces.

As part of the agreement, Skydance will be folded into the public company. Its backers will inject new capital to bolster Paramount’s finances and install a new cadre of leaders. Ellison will serve as chairman and chief executive. Former NBCUniversal Chief Executive Jeff Shell is slated to be president.

CBS’ current leader George Cheeks, one of Paramount’s three co-chief executives, could join the new regime. But the two other current chiefs, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins, are expected to depart.

The Skydance deal is expected to be executed in two parts. Larry Ellison and RedBird will buyout the Redstone family holding company, National Amusements Inc., for $2.4 billion.

After their debts are paid, the Redstone family will leave with $1.75 billion. The family controls 77% of Paramount’s voting shares, which will be passed to the Ellisons and RedBird.

Under the deal terms, the new Paramount will offer to buy out some shares of existing shareholders and inject $1.5 billion into Paramount’s strained balance sheet.

Paramount will then absorb Skydance, which has a movie, television, animation, video games and a sports unit. The deal values Skydance at $4.75-billion.

“We’re going to reorganize and restructure the business to prioritize cash flow generation,” David Ellison told investors last July. “With a track record in both entertainment and technological expertise [we will] be able to transition the company through this period of time to ensure that Paramount’s brightest days are ahead.”

David Ellison’s Skydance Media pledged to abandon all diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Paramount Global in an attempt to win government approval for its $8-billion merger.

Paramount already had scaled back diversity programs earlier this year. In a Tuesday letter to Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, Skydance said it would go further to cancel diversity efforts.

“Paramount no longer will maintain an Office of Global Inclusion and will not have any teams or individual roles focused on DEI,” Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon, Skydance general counsel, wrote in the three-page letter to Carr. The appointee of President Trump, in one of his first moves as chair, dismantled the agency’s diversity programs and called on companies to do the same.

Kyoko McKinnon said Paramount will remove “references to DEI in its public messaging, including on its websites and social media,” along with culling DEI language in “internal messaging and training materials.”

Last week, Ellison met with Carr to press his case that Skydance and its backer RedBird Capital Partners would be strong stewards of Paramount, which includes CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, Paramount Pictures. Skydance needs Carr’s approval for the merger and the transfer of the CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family.

Skydance separately tackled persistent complaints by conservatives about alleged news bias at “60 Minutes” and other programs.

Ellison’s firm pledged to “promote transparency and increased accountability” at CBS News. The company said it would install an ombudsman, reporting to the president of Paramount, “to receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS” for at least two years.

Trump’s ire over edits of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview last fall nearly derailed Skydance’s takeover of Paramount. Carr opened an inquiry into alleged news distortion after Trump sued CBS in federal court in Texas.

Earlier this month, Paramount reached a $16-million settlement with Trump to resolve the dispute that caused deep divisions within Paramount and prompted high-level CBS departures. Trump boasted Tuesday on Truth Social that he anticipates receiving an additional $20 million worth of advertising and PSA time from the new owners.

During his July 15 meeting with Carr, Ellison underscored “Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers,” according to an FCC filing.

Skydance’s Kyoko McKinnon added: “We further reaffirm that, after consummation of the proposed transaction, New Paramount’s new management will ensure that the company’s array of news and entertainment programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum, consistent with the varying perspectives of the viewing audience.”

Ellison recently met with prominent journalist Bari Weiss, reportedly to discuss Skydance acquiring her center-right online publication, the Free Press, as an alternative to traditional news sites. She started the outlet, which is often critical of DEI, after quitting her job as a New York Times opinion writer, citing intolerance of her and her more conservative viewpoints.

Also last week, late-night host Stephen Colbert learned his CBS talk show would be canceled in May. CBS has said Colbert’s cancellation, which will take place in May, was “strictly financial” and not related to the merger approval. Still, conservatives and liberals have widely questioned whether Colbert’s frequent criticisms of Trump played into the decision.

Skydance has said it didn’t have a role in the Colbert decision.

Skydance isn’t the only company under pressure to ditch diversity programs to win FCC approval for a deal.

Two months ago, telecommunications giant Verizon pledged to drop diversity efforts to gain Carr’s blessing for the company’s $20-billion takeover of Frontier Communications.

Carr separately launched probes into Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp.’s workplace diversity efforts.

After George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis, Paramount and other Hollywood companies vowed to hire more people of color. Such moves were cheered by many, including those cognizant of Hollywood’s troubled history with diversity.

Paramount encouraged executives to make diverse hires and promotions, and progress toward the corporate goals was one of many factors considered when calculating bonuses. That program was dismantled last year.

For years, CBS struggled to shake its prime-time sitcom formula to build shows around white men, a la “King of Queens,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Two and a Half Men.”

The network broke the pattern in 2018 with “The Neighborhood,” starring Cedric the Entertainer, and procedural drama “FBI,” starring Zeeko Zaki.

CBS also championed mentorship programs for writers and directors to build a more diverse pipeline of creators. That initiative dated to 2004.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has made a priority of abolishing DEI programs.

(Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Skydance promised not to set numerical goals related to race, ethnicity or gender of job applicants.

“The company is committed to ensuring that its storytelling reflects the many audiences and communities it serves in a manner that complies with non-discrimination requirements and other applicable laws,” Kyoko McKinnon wrote.

“I am very encouraged by today’s announcements,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights, which filed an FCC complaint about “60 Minutes” and suggested a CBS News ombudsman. “These are important steps towards better broadcasting that serves all consumers.”

July 11 (UPI) — T-Mobile announced it will scrap its diversity, equity and inclusion policy on Friday, while it awaits Federal Communications Commission approval to buy U.S. Cellular for $4.4 million.

The company, owned by German company Deutsche Telekom, is the second-largest wireless operator in the United States. It’s trying to buy most of U.S. Cellular and Internet service provider Metronet.

“T-Mobile will no longer have any individual roles or teams focused on DEI,” the company said. “T-Mobile is also removing any references to DEI on its websites and will ensure that company websites and future communications do not have any references to DEI.”

The FCC follows an informal timeline of 180 days to review mergers. The T-Mobile/U.S. Cellular deal is on day 253.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr said on X that the move was “another good step forward for equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and the public interest.”

In a letter to Carr, Mark W. Nelson, executive vice president and general counsel for T-Mobile U.S., said, “Our belief then and now is that skills, aptitude, and a growth mindset are what contribute to exceptional performance — and that merit is how you advance at our company, regardless of who you are or where you’re from. Equality of opportunity, performance-based rewards, and ensuring we’re a place where everyone can win as ‘One Team, Together’ — that’s what we intended through some of our practices that were labeled as ‘DEI.'”

The letter said the company reviewed its policies and is “ending its DEI-related policies as described below, not just in name, but in substance.”

The letter goes on to list the different areas T-Mobile is making changes, including:

• Leadership and public messaging
• Hiring and recruitment
• Career development, mentorship and training
• Supplier and vendor diversity, corporate sponsorships and memberships
• Employee resource groups

Carr has told Bloomberg News that “any businesses that are looking for FCC approval, I would encourage them to get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”

Anna M. Gomez, a member of the FCC, disparaged T-Mobile’s decision on X: “In yet another cynical bid to win FCC regulatory approval, T-Mobile is making a mockery of its professed commitment to eliminating discrimination, promoting fairness, and amplifying underrepresented voices,” Gomez said. “History will not be kind to this cowardly corporate capitulation.”

Many companies and organizations have backed off their DEI programs to curry favor with the administration of President Donald Trump. Thursday, the Department of Education launched an investigation against George Mason University and its hiring practices. If the agency determines that the university violated the staff’s civil rights, GMU could lose federal funding.

With new legal muscle, the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation is upping pressure on Paramount Global to abandon efforts to settle President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit targeting CBS and “60 Minutes.”

Respected Washington litigator Abbe David Lowell this week joined the team representing the New York advocacy group, which has vowed to sue Paramount should it settle with Trump. The group owns Paramount shares.

Lowell, who has represented Hunter Biden, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, is working on the case with attorney Norm Eisen, a Trump critic who helped House Democrats with strategy during Trump’s first impeachment hearings in 2019.

Eisen is a former ambassador to the Czech Republic who served as White House ethics advisor under President Obama.

Late Thursday, the two attorneys sent a strongly worded letter to Paramount’s chairwoman and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and other board members arguing that a Trump settlement would cause “catastrophic” harm to the embattled media company.

Hunter Biden (left) with his attorney Abbe Lowell (right) at a House committee hearing last year.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

1st Amendment experts have labeled Trump’s lawsuit frivolous. But Paramount leaders are desperate to end the Trump drama and some believe a truce could clear a path for the Federal Communications Commission to approve the company’s $8-billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Paramount needs the FCC to authorize the transfer of the CBS station licenses to the Ellison family.

The prospect of a Trump settlement has carved deep divisions within Paramount, which includes CBS News and “60 Minutes.”

“Trading away the credibility of CBS’s news division to curry favor with the Trump Administration is an improper and reckless act that will irreparably damage the company’s brand and destroy shareholder value,” Lowell said in a statement late Thursday.

“The board is legally and morally obligated to protect the company, not auction off its integrity for regulatory approval,” Lowell said.

The FCC review of Skydance’s proposed takeover of Paramount has become a slog. Skydance and Paramount face an October deadline to finalize the sale or the deal could collapse.

Paramount, in a statement, said that it is treating the FCC review and the Trump lawsuit as separate matters. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case,” a corporate spokesman said.

Paramount’s lawyers entered mediation with the president’s legal team in late April, but no resolution has been reached. Paramount offered $15 million to Trump to end his suit, according to the Wall Street Journal, but the president rejected the overture and asked for more.

On Thursday, Redstone disclosed that she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is receiving treatment. Last month, doctors removed her thyroid but cancer cells had spread to her vocal chords.

In their seven-page letter, Lowell and Eisen told Paramount’s leaders that, should they approve a Trump settlement to gain traction at the FCC, they would be violating their fiduciary duty to shareholders and potentially breaking federal anti-bribery statutes.

“We believe [a settlement] could violate laws prohibiting bribery of public officials, thereby causing severe and last damage to Paramount and its shareholders,” Lowell and Eisen wrote.

“To be as clear as possible, you control what happens next,” they said.

The admonition follows a similar warning from three U.S. senators — Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) In a May 19 letter, the senators wrote that paying money to Trump to help win clearance for the Paramount sale could constitute a bribe.

“It is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the three senators wrote in their letter.

In addition, two California Democrats have proposed a state Senate hearing to examine problems with a possible Trump settlement.

The senators invited two former CBS News executives — who both left, in large part, because of the controversy — to testify before a yet-unscheduled joint committee hearing in Sacramento.

The California lawmakers, in their letter, said a Trump settlement could also violate California’s Unfair Competition Law because it could disrupt the playing field for news organizations.

Earlier this week, Paramount asked shareholders to increase the size of its board to seven members at the company’s annual investor meeting next month.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation was created in 2012 to protect and defend public interest journalism.

This spring, Lowell left his former major law firm, Winston & Strawn, where he had been a partner for years. He formed his own boutique firm, Lowell & Assoc., with a focus on “public interest representation in matters that defend the integrity of the legal system and protect individuals and institutions from government overreach,” according to its website.

Lowell’s firm also includes lawyer Brenna Frey, who made a high-profile exit from another prominent law firm, Skadden Arps, after it cut a deal with Trump to avoid becoming a target. That law firm agreed to provide $100 million in free legal services.

Last month, Frey appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to air her decision to resign from Skadden Arps.

“I was able to tell my story on CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ because of the independence of a courageous news division, which is what’s at risk now,” Frey said in a statement.

With its sale to Skydance Media still beyond its reach, Paramount Global has nominated three new directors to bolster its small board, which has been racked with drama and churn since early last year.

The debt-laden New York-based company currently has only five board members, including controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who serves as chairwoman. The Redstone family holds nearly 77% of Paramount’s voting shares, giving the heiress tremendous sway.

In a proxy filing Monday, Paramount asked shareholders to elect seven directors at its July 2 annual meeting. The slate includes Redstone and three recruits: attorney Mary Boies (a member of the firm led by her husband David Boies); Silicon Valley venture capital executive Charles E. Ryan ; and former Massachusetts trial court judge Roanne Sragow Licht.

In addition to Redstone, three longtime board members — Linda M. Griego, Susan Schuman and Barbara M. Byrne — will stand for reelection.

Board member Judith A. McHale has decided to step down.

The company has grappled with a series of setbacks since it announced its sale to tech scion David Ellison’s Skydance Media last July.

The company took a $6-billion write-down on its cable television networks business, in yet another sign that Hollywood is reckoning with the ongoing deterioration of the traditional television business.

Leading independent director Charles Phillips left the board in October. His exit came six months after three other directors — Rob Klieger, Nicole Seligman and Dawn Ostroff — abruptly departed as the panel was struggling over terms of Redstone’s planned Paramount sale.

In late October, President Trump filed a lawsuit in Texas over his dismay with edits of a “60 Minutes” interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the closing weeks of the election. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, opened an inquiry to determine whether the edits rose to the level of news distortion.

Trump doubled the amount of damages he was seeking to $20 billion.

Paramount has been defending against the lawsuit. In a court filing last week, Trump’s lawyers asserted the president suffered “mental anguish” due to the “60 Minutes” broadcast.

Redstone’s desire to settle Trump’s suit over the “60 Minutes” edits has carved deep divides within the company.

1st Amendment experts have called Trump’s lawsuit frivolous; CBS News executives and other journalists believe it is a shakedown to exploit the vulnerable company that is desperate to have the FCC approve the sale to Skydance.

The ruckus over the edits contributed to the departure of two top CBS News executives. Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News and Stations, stepped down under pressure last month. In April, “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens departed.

Redstone has expressed her dissatisfaction with CBS News’ coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

Last month, three Democrat U.S. senators warned Redstone that the company could face allegations of bribery if they write a big check to mollify Trump in an effort to facilitate the FCC’s review of the Skydance takeover. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Paramount offered Trump $15 million to make the lawsuit go away, but he declined.

It’s been nearly 11 months since Paramount agreed to be sold to Skydance in an $8-billion deal that would inject $1.5 billion in capital into Paramount’s battered balance sheet.

Paramount has not revised its guidance on when it expects the deal to close — but the contractual deadline is early October.

As part of its proxy statement, the company again detailed the compensation packages — totaling $148 million to the top three executives and ousted Chief Executive Bob Bakish, who received compensation valued at $87 million. Co-CEO George Cheeks was paid $22.2 million. His counterparts Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy were paid $19.6 million and $19.5 million, respectively, according to the filing.

Federal Communications Commissioner Anna M. Gomez traveled to Los Angeles this week to sound an alarm that attacks on the media by President Trump and his lieutenants could fray the fabric of the 1st Amendment.

Gomez’s appearance Wednesday at Cal State L.A. was designed to take feedback from community members about the changed media atmosphere since Trump returned to office. The president initially expelled Associated Press journalists from the White House, for example. He signed an executive order demanding government funding be cut to PBS and NPR stations.

Should that order take effect, Pasadena-based radio station LAist would lose nearly $1.7 million — or about 4% of its annual budget, according to Alejandra Santamaria, chief executive of parent organization Southern California Public Radio.

“The point of all these actions is to chill speech,” Gomez told the small crowd. “We all need to understand what is happening and we need people to speak up and push back.”

Congress in the 1930s designed the FCC as an independent body, she said, rather than one beholden to the president.

But those lines have blurred. In the closing days of last fall’s presidential campaign, Trump sued CBS and “60 Minutes” over edits to an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging producers doctored the broadcast to enhance her election chances. CBS has denied the allegations and the raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted.

Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, upon taking office in January, revived three complaints of bias against ABC, NBC and CBS, including one alleging the “60 Minutes” edits had violated rules against news distortion. He demanded that CBS release the unedited footage.

The FCC’s review of Skydance Media’s pending takeover of CBS-parent Paramount Global has been clouded by the president’s $20-billion lawsuit against CBS. The president rejected Paramount’s offer to settle for $15 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said Trump has demanded more.

Two high-level CBS News executives involved in “60 Minutes” were forced out this spring.

Gomez, in an interview, declined to discuss the FCC’s review of the Skydance-Paramount deal beyond saying: “It would be entirely inappropriate to consider the complaint against the ’60 Minutes’ segment as part of a transaction review.” Scrutinizing edits to a national newscast “are not part of the public interest analysis that the commission does when it considers mergers and acquisitions,” she said.

For months, Gomez has been the lone voice of dissent at the FCC. Next month, she will become the sole Democrat on the panel.

The longtime communications attorney, who was appointed to the commission in 2023 by former President Biden, has openly challenged her colleague Carr and his policies that align with Trump’s directives. She maintains that some of Carr’s proposals, including opening investigations into diversity and inclusion policies at Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, go beyond the scope of the FCC, which is designed to regulate radio and TV stations and others that use the public airwaves.

The pressure campaign is working, Gomez said.

“When you see corporate parents of news providers … telling their broadcasters to tone down their criticisms of this administration, or to push out the executive producer of ’60 Minutes’ or the head of [CBS] News because of concerns about retribution from this administration because of corporate transactions — that is a chilling effect,” Gomez said.

Wednesday’s forum, organized by the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, was punctuated with pleas from professors, journalists and community advocates for help in fending off Trump’s attacks. One journalist said she lost her job this spring at Voice of America after Trump took aim at the organization, which was founded more than 80 years ago to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.

The Voice of America’s remaining staffers could receive reduction-in-force notices later this week, according to Politico.

Latino journalists spoke about the difficulty of covering some stories because people have been frightened into silence due to the administration’s immigration crackdown.

For now, journalists are able to carry out their missions “for the most part,” said Gabriel Lerner, editor emeritus of the Spanish-language La Opinión.

But he added a warning.

“Many think that America is so exceptional that you don’t have to do anything because fascism will never happen here,” Lerner said. “I compare that with those who dance on the Titanic thinking it will never sink.”

The White House pushed back on such narratives:

“President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. He regularly takes questions from the media, communicates directly to the public, and signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office,” spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “He will continue to fight against censorship while evaluating all federal spending to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.”

FCC Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on Capitol Hill.

(Alex Wroblewski / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Traditionally, the five-member FCC has maintained an ideological balance with three commissioners from the party in power and two from the minority. But the senior Democrat — Geoffrey Starks — plans to step down next month, which will leave just three commissioners: Gomez, Carr and another Republican, Nathan Simington.

Trump has nominated a third Republican, Olivia Trusty, but the Senate has not confirmed her appointment.

Trump has not named a Democrat to replace Starks.

Some on Wednesday expressed concern that Gomez’s five-year tenure on the commission could be cut short. Trump has fired Democrats from other independent bodies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Gomez said if she is pushed out, it would only be because she was doing her job, which she said was defending the Constitution.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) applauded Gomez’s efforts and noted that he’s long appreciated coordinating with her on more routine FCC matters, such as ensuring wider broadband internet access.

“But now the fight is the survival of the free press,” Ruiz said.

He noted that millions of people now get news from non-journalist sources, leading to a rise of misinformation and confusion.

“What is the truth?” Ruiz said. “How can we begin to have a debate? How can we begin to create policy on problems when we can’t even agree on what reality is?”

One fateful October decision to trim two convoluted sentences from a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris has snowballed into a full-blown corporate crisis for CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, and its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone.

President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit — claiming “60 Minutes” producers deceptively manipulated the Harris interview to make her look smarter — has festered, clouding the future of Paramount and the company’s hoped-for $8-billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

The dispute over the edits has sparked massive unrest within the company, prompted high-level departures and triggered a Federal Communications Commission examination of alleged news bias. The FCC’s review of the Skydance deal has become bogged down, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to comment.

The agency, chaired by a Trump appointee, must approve the transfer of CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family for the deal to advance.

A lawsuit resolution, through court-ordered mediation, remains out of reach. And last week, three Democratic U.S. senators raised the stakes by suggesting, in a letter to Redstone, that a Trump settlement could be considered an illegal payoff.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned in their letter that any payment to Trump to gain favorable treatment by the FCC could violate federal anti-bribery laws. Paramount’s dealings with Trump “raises serious concerns of corruption and improper conduct,” the senators wrote.

“Under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the senators said.

President Trump during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House.

(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Redstone is desperate for the Paramount-Skydance deal to go through.

Her family’s holding company is cratering under a mountain of debt. Paramount’s sale to the Ellison family would provide the clan $2.4 billion for their preferred shares — proceeds that would allow the Redstones to pay their nearly $600 million in debt — and remain billionaires.

Paramount, Skydance and a spokesperson for Redstone declined to comment.

While recusing herself from granular and final decision-making, Redstone has made it clear that she wants Paramount to settle with Trump, rather than wage an ongoing beef with the sitting president, according to people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Figuring a way out of the dispute has divided the company, according to insiders.

For CBS News professionals, apologizing to Trump over routine edits of a lengthy interview is a red line. Tensions have spilled into public view.

Redstone has been cast as the villain. The Drudge Report, created by journalist Matt Drudge, who got his start at CBS in Los Angeles, last month published a photo of 71-year-old heiress, identifying her in all caps as “The woman who destroyed CBS News.”

Two top CBS News executives have resigned. Both refused to apologize to Trump as part of any settlement, the knowledgeable sources said.

Most CBS journalists and 1st Amendment experts see Trump’s lawsuit a shakedown, one seemingly designed to exploit Paramount’s vulnerability because it needs the government’s approval for the Skydance deal.

“Settling such a case for anything of substance would thus compromise 1st Amendment principles today and the broad notion of freedom of the press in the future,” prominent press freedom lawyer Floyd Abrams said.

Paramount has stressed that it sees the Trump lawsuit and the FCC review of the Skydance deal as separate. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case,” a Paramount spokesperson said.

But “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley connected the two for viewers during an extraordinary April broadcast, in which he rebuked Paramount management on air at the end of the program. That, according to sources, angered some of Paramount’s leaders.

While “60 Minutes” has received additional corporate oversight, some insiders pointed to Pelley’s acknowledgment that “none of our stories have been blocked.”

All the high-level scrutiny has put Paramount and Redstone in a box, and the Skydance deal looks less certain than it did months ago.

“Who’s going to sign that settlement, knowing that you could be accused of paying a bribe?” asked one person close to Paramount.

Paramount Global’s path to peril began long before the infamous “60 Minutes” edits. The company was diminished by management turmoil and years of cost-cutting, which would eventually force Redstone to find a buyer for one of Hollywood’s most storied studios.

Should New York-based Paramount, which also owns Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and the famed Melrose Avenue movie studio, fail to complete its sale to Skydance by its October deadline, the deal could collapse.

Paramount then would owe $400 million to Skydance as a breakup fee, putting the company in further dire financial straits. Skydance and its investor RedBird Capital Partners have agreed, once they take over, to inject $1.5 billion into Paramount, helping it pay down some debt.

Redstone would also be on the hook to repay her financiers. Two years ago, a Chicago banker rescued the Redstone family investment firm, National Amusements Inc., with a $125-million equity investment.

The family’s finances were strained after Paramount cut its dividend to shareholders that spring during the Hollywood writers’ strike. The family’s dire financial situation was a leading impetus for Paramount’s sale.

If the deal fell through, Redstone would also have to repay a $186-million loan from tech mogul Larry Ellison. The billionaire Oracle co-founder and father of David Ellison extended the loan so National Amusements could make a looming debt payment.

National Amusements holds 77% of Paramount’s controlling shares, giving the Redstone family enormous sway over Paramount management.

Paramount Chairwoman Shari Redstone in 2023 in New York.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / Associated Press)

Critics privately note Redstone’s role in setting up the company for the current drama. It took nearly a year for Redstone and Paramount’s special board committee to negotiate a deal with Skydance. The independent directors spent months searching for an alternate buyer, adding to the delays that now haunt both sides.

Had the parties reached agreement sooner, the companies could have asked the FCC for approval earlier last year during the less hostile Biden administration.

Instead, weeks were spent haggling over various demands, including having Skydance indemnify Redstone and her family against shareholder lawsuits. In the end, the Ellisons also agreed to help Redstone pay for her New York apartment and private jet after the deal closes, according to the knowledgeable people.

Paramount petitioned the FCC for review in September.

By that time, political environment was caustic for mainstream media companies. Conservatives were upset over ABC News’ handling of the Sept. 10 debate between Trump and Harris after ABC anchors fact-checked Trump in real time, including pushing back on his false claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.

Trump reportedly backed out of a “60 Minutes” appearance — long a traditional stop for presidential candidates — because CBS intended to fact-check his remarks. Conservatives viewed such formats as a double standard and as an example of how news bias has seeped into major networks’ coverage of Republicans.

“This was an issue we were already sensitive to and focused on,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights legal group, which filed an FCC complaint against Walt Disney Co.’s ABC after the debate.

At CBS, another firestorm had engulfed the newsroom.

Redstone, who had previously urged news executives to bring more balance to CBS’ coverage, was livid after managers scolded “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil for his sharp questioning of author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel during an interview segment. Coates’ book, “The Message,” compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow South in the U.S.

Redstone, who is Jewish and has focused her philanthropy on battling antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, publicly rebuked CBS News managers for their treatment of Dokoupil.

The controversial exchange in the Harris “60 Minutes” interview also happened to concern Israel.

“60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker suggested to Harris that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was not listening to the Biden administration.

Harris gave a long-winded three-sentence response.

CBS broadcast the convoluted first sentence on its Sunday public affairs show, “Face the Nation,” on Oct. 6. The following night — the anniversary of the Hamas attacks — “60 Minutes” aired only her most forceful and succinct third sentence: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

Conservatives zeroed in.

“CBS created this mess for itself. … The conservative ecosystem was outraged when they saw the two different clips because it vindicated everything,” Suhr said. “Folks had always believed the media was selectively manipulating interviews like that.”

Journalists routinely cut extraneous words to provide clear and compact soundbites for audiences. CBS released a statement saying that it had not doctored the interview. Rather, news producers said they trimmed Harris’ response to cover more ground during the broadcast.

Internally, CBS debated whether to release the full transcript to quell the furor — but it stopped short at first. Some people close to the company have been particularly critical of CBS for not immediately releasing the unedited video.

Trump sued in late October for $10 billion. After he returned to the White House, he doubled his demand to $20 billion.

One of Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s first moves was to revive a separate news distortion complaint against “60 Minutes,” which Suhr had filed shortly after the broadcast. The matter had been dismissed by the previous Biden-appointed chair.

CBS and the FCC released the Harris footage in February.

By that time, the controversy had consumed the company.

Last month, Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes” stepped down, citing a loss of editorial independence.

“60 Minutes” continued with Trump-critical stories — to the chagrin of people who want the Skydance deal to close.

Less than two weeks after CBS Chief Executive George Cheeks pledged support for his team, Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, was forced to go.

“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon told her staff in a note last week.

Insiders note other McMahon decisions, including the introduction of a new “CBS Evening News” format, which has led to plummeting ratings, as factors in her fall. McMahon could not be reached for comment.

Redstone and others hope the mediation with Trump’s attorneys will produce a truce.

But several questions remain: What will it take for Paramount to appease the president? And could the company’s leaders be prosecuted if they pay the president a multimillion-dollar settlement?

In “normal times,” officials might be alarmed by a president’s demand for a big check, said Michael C. Dorf, a Cornell Law School professor.

“These are not normal times, however, so the president will likely be able to get away with soliciting a bribe from Paramount, just as he is getting away with extortion of law firms and universities,” Dorf said.

Staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán urged the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to follow through on plans to modernize the federal emergency alert system and provide multilingual alerts in natural disasters for residents who speak a language other than English at home.

The call comes nearly five months after deadly fires in Los Angeles threatened communities with a high proportion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — some with limited English proficiency — highlighting the need for multilingual alerts.

In a letter sent to Brendan Carr, the Republican chair of the FCC, Barragán (D-San Pedro) expressed “deep concern” that the FCC under the Trump administration has delayed enabling multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts for severe natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

“This is about saving lives,” Barragán said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve got about 68 million Americans that use a language other than English and everybody should have the ability to to understand these emergency alerts. We shouldn’t be looking at any politicization of alerts — certainly not because someone’s an immigrant or they don’t know English.”

Multilingual emergency alerts should be in place across the nation, Barragán said. But the January Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires served as a reminder that the need is particularly acute in Los Angeles.

Not only does L.A. have a significant risk of wildfires, flooding, mudslides, and earthquakes, but the sprawling region is home to a diverse immigrant population, some of whom have limited English proficiency.

“When you think about it, in California we have wildfires, we’re always on earthquake alert,” Barragán said. “In other parts of the country, it could be hurricanes or tornadoes — we just want people to have the information on what to do.”

Four months ago, the FCC was supposed to publish an order that would allow Americans to get multilingual alerts

In October 2023, the FCC approved rules to update the federal emergency alert system by enabling Wireless Emergency Alerts to be delivered in more than a dozen languages — not just English, Spanish and sign language — without the need of a translator.

Then, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau developed templates for critical disaster alerts in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the US. In January, the commission declared a “major step forward” in expanding alert languages when it issued a report and order that would require commercial mobile service providers to install templates on cellphones within 30 months of publication of the federal register.

“The language you speak shouldn’t keep you from receiving the information you or your family need to stay safe,” then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a January statement.

But shortly after, Trump took control of the White House. Under the chairmanship of Brendan Carr, the commission has yet to publish the January 8 Report and Order in the Federal Register — a critical step that triggers the 30-month compliance clock.

“This delay is not only indefensible but dangerous,” Barragán wrote in a letter to Carr that was signed by nearly two dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. “It directly jeopardizes the ability of our communities to receive life-saving emergency information in the language they understand best.”

Barragán noted that Carr previously supported the push for multilingual alerts when he was a member of the commission, before taking over leadership.

“Your failure to complete this ministerial step — despite having supported the rule itself — has left this life-saving policy in limbo and significantly delayed access to multilingual alerts for millions of Americans,” she wrote.

Asked by The Times what explained the delay, Barragán said her office had been told that Trump’s regulatory freeze prohibited all federal agencies, including the FCC, from publishing any rule in the Federal Register until a designated Trump official is able to review and approve it.

“It’s all politics,” she said. “We don’t know why it’s stuck there and why the administration hasn’t moved forward, but it seems, like, with everything these days, they’re waiting on the president’s green light.”

Barragán also noted that multilingual alerts helped first responders.

“If you have a community that’s supposed to be evacuated, and they’re not evacuating because they don’t know they’re supposed to evacuate, that’s only going to hurt first responders and emergency crews,” she said. “So I think this is a safety issue all around, not just for the people receiving it.”

A study published earlier this year by UCLA researchers and the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Equity Alliance found that Asian communities in harm’s way during the January L.A. fires encountered difficulties accessing information about emergency evacuations because of language barriers.

Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of 50 community-based groups that serves the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who live in Los Angeles, told The Times the FCC’s failure to push alerts in more languages represented a “real dereliction of duty.”

Over half a million Asian Americans across L.A. County are classified as Limited English Proficiency, with many speaking primarily in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese, she noted.

“President Trump and many members of his administration have made clear they plan to go on the attack against immigrants,” Kulkarni said. “If this makes the lives of immigrants easier, then they will stand in its way.”

During the January L.A. fires, Kulkarni said, residents complained that fire alerts were sent only in English and Spanish. More than 12,000 of the 50,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants who lived within four evacuation zones — Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Hughes — need language assistance.

“There were community members who didn’t realize until they were evacuated that the fire was so close to them, so they had little to no notice of it,” Kulkarni said. “Really, it can mean life or death in a lot of cases where you don’t get the information, where it’s not translated in a city and county like Los Angeles.”

Community members ended up suffering not just because of the fires themselves, Kulkarni said, but because of federal and local officials’ failure to provide alerts in languages every resident can understand.

“It is incumbent that the alerts be made available,” she said. “We need those at local, state and federal levels to do their part so that individuals can survive catastrophic incidents.”

Verizon Communications Inc. won Federal Communications Commission approval for its $9.6-billion acquisition of Frontier Communications Parent Inc. after agreeing to agency demands to pare back diversity initiatives in line with President Donald Trump’s policies.

The deal “will unleash billions of dollars in new infrastructure builds in communities across the country — including rural America,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Friday. “This investment will accelerate the transition away from old, copper line networks to modern, high-speed ones.”

The transaction values the Dallas-based company at $20 billion when including debt.

The approval marks one of the first deals to get the green light under Carr, who had threatened to block mergers unless companies rolled back what he called “invidious” diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Carr sent a letter to Verizon in February warning the company that its DEI efforts run afoul of Trump administration directives. Carr told the New York-based telecom carrier to end its promotion of DEI in corporate values and training materials.

Trump has been pushing to root out such policies from the federal government, corporate America and beyond, issuing executive orders banning the practices and asking agency heads to identify targets, including listed companies, to investigate for “illegal DEI” efforts.

Verizon committed to ending some practices and has reaffirmed a commitment to equal opportunity and nondiscrimination, the FCC said in its statement. “This will ensure that the combined business will enact policies and practices consistent with the law and the public interest.”

The FCC approval paves the way for the biggest U.S. phone company to expand its high-speed internet business. It will allow Verizon to upgrade and expand Frontier’s existing network in 25 states, according to the FCC.

Telecommunications companies like Verizon have been bulking up on fiber-optic assets to add capacity for customers’ surging data use. The flow of data is expected to increase further as more companies adopt artificial intelligence.

The deal combines Frontier’s fiber network with Verizon’s portfolio of fiber and wireless assets, including its Fios offering. It also brings back some assets that Verizon sold to Frontier in 2015 for $10.54 billion.

Frontier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020 after years of losses in its wire-line telecom business led to ballooning debt. It emerged from bankruptcy the following year and focused on building out its fiber network to better compete against cable and wireless companies.

Over about the last four years, Frontier has invested $4.1 billion upgrading its network and replacing antiquated copper lines. Now, the company derives more than half of its revenue from fiber products.

Following the transaction, Verizon expects to deploy fiber to 1 million or more U.S. homes annually, according to the FCC statement.

Griffis writes for Bloomberg.