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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to striking Kellogg’s workers in downtown Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 17, 2021. (Photo: Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which aims to end corporate price gouging in the midst of multiple global crises by imposing a 95% tax on the windfall profits of major companies.
“The working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits.”
The bill--spearheaded by Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)--is inspired by previous windfall profits tax plans implemented during World Wars I and II as well as the Korean War. During WWII, Sanders’ office noted, “the tax rate reached as high as 95%, which ensured that companies could not profiteer off the war.”
“The American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented corporate greed that exists all over this country. They are sick and tired of being ripped off by corporations making record-breaking profits while working families are forced to pay outrageously high prices for gas, rent, food, and prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.
The Senate Budget Committee chair argued that “we cannot allow Big Oil companies and other large, profitable corporations to continue to use the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the specter of inflation to make obscene profits by price gouging Americans at the gas pump, the grocery store, or any other sector of our economy.”
“During these troubling times, the working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits,” he added. “The time has come for Congress to work for working families and demand that large, profitable corporations make a little bit less money and pay their fair share of taxes.”
In addition to the existing federal tax rate--which congressional Republicans cut from 35% to 21% under former President Donald Trump--Sanders’ bill would establish a 95% tax on a company’s profits that exceed its average profit level for 2015-19, adjusted for inflation.
The new tax would only apply only to companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue and would be limited to 75% of income per year. Sanders’ office estimates that the temporary emergency measure, which would only apply in 2022-24, “coud raise an estimated $400 billion in one year from 30 of the largest corporate profiteers alone.”
A summary from the senator’s office details how the proposal would likely impact major corporations in various industries: automobile manufacturing, banking, Big Pharma, Big Tech, food and retail, fossil fuels, and housing.
“My constituents are hurting, and they are rightly asking what Congress can do about surging prices for food, energy, and other necessities,” Bowman said Friday. “What we cannot do is ask working Americans to shoulder any more of this burden.”
Related Content
“Corporate price gouging is playing a big role in the inflation we are experiencing right now, putting families in a financial squeeze in the middle of an ongoing pandemic,” he emphasized. “These are the same corporations that are eroding our democracy, eviscerating workers’ rights, and fueling the climate crisis--and it is time to make them pay.”
According to Bowman, “The Ending Corporate Greed Act will take away any incentive for large companies to exploit our current crisis for profit, and it will protect workers, families, and small businesses in New York and across the country.”
Big Oil, in particular, is “raking in record profits, while Americans are facing price hikes at the pump,” Markey pointed out, declaring that “something is fundamentally broken when the biggest corporations in the country are leveraging a pandemic and a war to pad their profit margins as average Americans suffer.”
Recent polling found that 82% of U.S. voters believe inflation is fueled by corporations “jacking up prices.” Another survey showed that 80% of voters--including 73% of Republicans--support a windfall profits tax on fossil fuel giants and 87% of them want Congress and President Joe Biden to “crack down on price gouging and excessive price increases by oil companies that result in higher gas prices at the pump.”
Related Content
Some advocacy groups supporting Sanders’ proposal directed attention at the industry on Friday. As Friends of the Earth’s Lukas Ross put it: “Big Oil is teaching a master class in war profiteering and disaster capitalism. Near record stock buybacks are reprehensible while war rages and consumers suffer. It’s time for a windfall profits tax.”
Sunrise Movement advocacy director Lauren Maunus agreed while calling out “fossil corporations” for “capitalizing on this crisis to loot working people at the gas pump.”
“It’s despicable that corporations can hold us hostage during a pandemic and a deadly conflict to make record profits and line the pockets of their executives at our expense,” she said. “If our politicians are serious about helping everyday people and making corporations pay their fair share, they must pass the Ending Corporate Greed Act.”
Other backers of the bill include tax scholar Reuven Avi-Yonah, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, and experts and campaigners at the American Economic Liberties Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, Economic Policy Institute, Groundwork Action, Patriotic Millionaires, and Roosevelt Institute.
Sanders’ proposal comes as “the White House is studying a range of potential responses to rising gas prices” and engaging in “wide-ranging internal talks about potential ideas for bringing relief to consumers,” according to The Washington Post.
As Jeff Stein reported Friday at the Post:
The ideas they have discussed include a major release of the nation’s oil reserves, loans and other incentives to energy producers to encourage production, and a federal gas tax holiday, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Biden aides have also discussed ideas that they are less likely to advance. These ideas include rebate checks for motorists and using decommissioned buses in major cities to promote public transit and reduce gas demand, the people said.
“Additionally, White House officials have had preliminary conversations about a potential ‘windfall tax’ on the profits of large oil and gas producers,” Stein noted, “although it is unclear if they will embrace such a measure. ”
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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which aims to end corporate price gouging in the midst of multiple global crises by imposing a 95% tax on the windfall profits of major companies.
“The working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits.”
The bill--spearheaded by Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)--is inspired by previous windfall profits tax plans implemented during World Wars I and II as well as the Korean War. During WWII, Sanders’ office noted, “the tax rate reached as high as 95%, which ensured that companies could not profiteer off the war.”
“The American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented corporate greed that exists all over this country. They are sick and tired of being ripped off by corporations making record-breaking profits while working families are forced to pay outrageously high prices for gas, rent, food, and prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.
The Senate Budget Committee chair argued that “we cannot allow Big Oil companies and other large, profitable corporations to continue to use the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the specter of inflation to make obscene profits by price gouging Americans at the gas pump, the grocery store, or any other sector of our economy.”
“During these troubling times, the working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits,” he added. “The time has come for Congress to work for working families and demand that large, profitable corporations make a little bit less money and pay their fair share of taxes.”
In addition to the existing federal tax rate--which congressional Republicans cut from 35% to 21% under former President Donald Trump--Sanders’ bill would establish a 95% tax on a company’s profits that exceed its average profit level for 2015-19, adjusted for inflation.
The new tax would only apply only to companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue and would be limited to 75% of income per year. Sanders’ office estimates that the temporary emergency measure, which would only apply in 2022-24, “coud raise an estimated $400 billion in one year from 30 of the largest corporate profiteers alone.”
A summary from the senator’s office details how the proposal would likely impact major corporations in various industries: automobile manufacturing, banking, Big Pharma, Big Tech, food and retail, fossil fuels, and housing.
“My constituents are hurting, and they are rightly asking what Congress can do about surging prices for food, energy, and other necessities,” Bowman said Friday. “What we cannot do is ask working Americans to shoulder any more of this burden.”
Related Content
“Corporate price gouging is playing a big role in the inflation we are experiencing right now, putting families in a financial squeeze in the middle of an ongoing pandemic,” he emphasized. “These are the same corporations that are eroding our democracy, eviscerating workers’ rights, and fueling the climate crisis--and it is time to make them pay.”
According to Bowman, “The Ending Corporate Greed Act will take away any incentive for large companies to exploit our current crisis for profit, and it will protect workers, families, and small businesses in New York and across the country.”
Big Oil, in particular, is “raking in record profits, while Americans are facing price hikes at the pump,” Markey pointed out, declaring that “something is fundamentally broken when the biggest corporations in the country are leveraging a pandemic and a war to pad their profit margins as average Americans suffer.”
Recent polling found that 82% of U.S. voters believe inflation is fueled by corporations “jacking up prices.” Another survey showed that 80% of voters--including 73% of Republicans--support a windfall profits tax on fossil fuel giants and 87% of them want Congress and President Joe Biden to “crack down on price gouging and excessive price increases by oil companies that result in higher gas prices at the pump.”
Related Content
Some advocacy groups supporting Sanders’ proposal directed attention at the industry on Friday. As Friends of the Earth’s Lukas Ross put it: “Big Oil is teaching a master class in war profiteering and disaster capitalism. Near record stock buybacks are reprehensible while war rages and consumers suffer. It’s time for a windfall profits tax.”
Sunrise Movement advocacy director Lauren Maunus agreed while calling out “fossil corporations” for “capitalizing on this crisis to loot working people at the gas pump.”
“It’s despicable that corporations can hold us hostage during a pandemic and a deadly conflict to make record profits and line the pockets of their executives at our expense,” she said. “If our politicians are serious about helping everyday people and making corporations pay their fair share, they must pass the Ending Corporate Greed Act.”
Other backers of the bill include tax scholar Reuven Avi-Yonah, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, and experts and campaigners at the American Economic Liberties Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, Economic Policy Institute, Groundwork Action, Patriotic Millionaires, and Roosevelt Institute.
Sanders’ proposal comes as “the White House is studying a range of potential responses to rising gas prices” and engaging in “wide-ranging internal talks about potential ideas for bringing relief to consumers,” according to The Washington Post.
As Jeff Stein reported Friday at the Post:
The ideas they have discussed include a major release of the nation’s oil reserves, loans and other incentives to energy producers to encourage production, and a federal gas tax holiday, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Biden aides have also discussed ideas that they are less likely to advance. These ideas include rebate checks for motorists and using decommissioned buses in major cities to promote public transit and reduce gas demand, the people said.
“Additionally, White House officials have had preliminary conversations about a potential ‘windfall tax’ on the profits of large oil and gas producers,” Stein noted, “although it is unclear if they will embrace such a measure. ”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which aims to end corporate price gouging in the midst of multiple global crises by imposing a 95% tax on the windfall profits of major companies.
“The working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits.”
The bill--spearheaded by Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)--is inspired by previous windfall profits tax plans implemented during World Wars I and II as well as the Korean War. During WWII, Sanders’ office noted, “the tax rate reached as high as 95%, which ensured that companies could not profiteer off the war.”
“The American people are sick and tired of the unprecedented corporate greed that exists all over this country. They are sick and tired of being ripped off by corporations making record-breaking profits while working families are forced to pay outrageously high prices for gas, rent, food, and prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.
The Senate Budget Committee chair argued that “we cannot allow Big Oil companies and other large, profitable corporations to continue to use the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the specter of inflation to make obscene profits by price gouging Americans at the gas pump, the grocery store, or any other sector of our economy.”
“During these troubling times, the working class cannot bear the brunt of this economic crisis, while corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, and the billionaire class make out like bandits,” he added. “The time has come for Congress to work for working families and demand that large, profitable corporations make a little bit less money and pay their fair share of taxes.”
In addition to the existing federal tax rate--which congressional Republicans cut from 35% to 21% under former President Donald Trump--Sanders’ bill would establish a 95% tax on a company’s profits that exceed its average profit level for 2015-19, adjusted for inflation.
The new tax would only apply only to companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue and would be limited to 75% of income per year. Sanders’ office estimates that the temporary emergency measure, which would only apply in 2022-24, “coud raise an estimated $400 billion in one year from 30 of the largest corporate profiteers alone.”
A summary from the senator’s office details how the proposal would likely impact major corporations in various industries: automobile manufacturing, banking, Big Pharma, Big Tech, food and retail, fossil fuels, and housing.
“My constituents are hurting, and they are rightly asking what Congress can do about surging prices for food, energy, and other necessities,” Bowman said Friday. “What we cannot do is ask working Americans to shoulder any more of this burden.”
Related Content
“Corporate price gouging is playing a big role in the inflation we are experiencing right now, putting families in a financial squeeze in the middle of an ongoing pandemic,” he emphasized. “These are the same corporations that are eroding our democracy, eviscerating workers’ rights, and fueling the climate crisis--and it is time to make them pay.”
According to Bowman, “The Ending Corporate Greed Act will take away any incentive for large companies to exploit our current crisis for profit, and it will protect workers, families, and small businesses in New York and across the country.”
Big Oil, in particular, is “raking in record profits, while Americans are facing price hikes at the pump,” Markey pointed out, declaring that “something is fundamentally broken when the biggest corporations in the country are leveraging a pandemic and a war to pad their profit margins as average Americans suffer.”
Recent polling found that 82% of U.S. voters believe inflation is fueled by corporations “jacking up prices.” Another survey showed that 80% of voters--including 73% of Republicans--support a windfall profits tax on fossil fuel giants and 87% of them want Congress and President Joe Biden to “crack down on price gouging and excessive price increases by oil companies that result in higher gas prices at the pump.”
Related Content
Some advocacy groups supporting Sanders’ proposal directed attention at the industry on Friday. As Friends of the Earth’s Lukas Ross put it: “Big Oil is teaching a master class in war profiteering and disaster capitalism. Near record stock buybacks are reprehensible while war rages and consumers suffer. It’s time for a windfall profits tax.”
Sunrise Movement advocacy director Lauren Maunus agreed while calling out “fossil corporations” for “capitalizing on this crisis to loot working people at the gas pump.”
“It’s despicable that corporations can hold us hostage during a pandemic and a deadly conflict to make record profits and line the pockets of their executives at our expense,” she said. “If our politicians are serious about helping everyday people and making corporations pay their fair share, they must pass the Ending Corporate Greed Act.”
Other backers of the bill include tax scholar Reuven Avi-Yonah, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, and experts and campaigners at the American Economic Liberties Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, Economic Policy Institute, Groundwork Action, Patriotic Millionaires, and Roosevelt Institute.
Sanders’ proposal comes as “the White House is studying a range of potential responses to rising gas prices” and engaging in “wide-ranging internal talks about potential ideas for bringing relief to consumers,” according to The Washington Post.
As Jeff Stein reported Friday at the Post:
The ideas they have discussed include a major release of the nation’s oil reserves, loans and other incentives to energy producers to encourage production, and a federal gas tax holiday, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Biden aides have also discussed ideas that they are less likely to advance. These ideas include rebate checks for motorists and using decommissioned buses in major cities to promote public transit and reduce gas demand, the people said.
“Additionally, White House officials have had preliminary conversations about a potential ‘windfall tax’ on the profits of large oil and gas producers,” Stein noted, “although it is unclear if they will embrace such a measure. ”
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him "bad press" may have their broadcast licenses taken away.
The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me," Trump told the press gaggle. "I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity... I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away."
"When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do," the president continued. "If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called "distorted" content.
It is unclear where Trump's statistic that networks have been "97% against" him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks "haven't had a conservative on in years."
But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says "the FCC doesn't have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content."
In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel," as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."
National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC's decision to ax Kimmel.
Gomez said that with Trump's intimidation of broadcasters, the "threat is the point."
"It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it's so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable," she said. "And so they don't want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation."
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”