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FCC Chairman Moves to Regulate Internet Sites and Social Media That Refuse to Amplify Trump Propaganda and Lies
On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the agency's plans to move forward on new rules to govern content moderation on social-media platforms and other websites that feature third-party content.
WASHINGTON
On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the agency's plans to move forward on new rules to govern content moderation on social-media platforms and other websites that feature third-party content.
The FCC move comes in response to a White House executive order from May that seeks to punish social-media companies for fact checking President Trump's online posts. Under the order, the FCC was prompted to craft a rule that would potentially take away from social-media companies protections granted in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that generally shields companies from legal liability for the material their users post online.
"The commission's general counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Sec. 230," Pai said in a statement announcing his intention to begin a rulemaking process on the matter.
In August, Free Press joined a lawsuit challenging Trump's executive order. The suit asserts that this unconstitutional order effectively encourages the spread of harmful disinformation about voting rights, racial-justice protests, COVID-19 treatment and other vital issues. In September, Free Press filed FCC comments opposing the kind of move Pai seems bent on making with today's announcement.
Free Press Senior Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia made the following statement:
"With this announcement, the Pai Doctrine gets clearer and clearer. He declares himself a champion of the First Amendment and claims he doesn't want heavy-handed internet regulation -- then pushes policies that stifle free expression online. In this case, the Pai Doctrine would expose websites to liability if they remove any of President Trump's lies or provide any context to such disinformation.
"The FCC has no authority to issue binding pronouncements on Section 230. Its effort to make the platforms liable for their editorializing or content takedowns makes no sense. No one, from Trump on down, has the right to be carried on Facebook, Twitter or any other website -- and those websites have a First Amendment right to disassociate themselves from speech they disapprove of. And without underlying unlawfulness there's nothing for Trump or anyone else to sue over if Twitter takes down a post.
"The real goal of the Trump FCC here is to engage in political retaliation against protected speech and editorializing. Surely President Trump and Chairman Pai can't suggest that Twitter should be liable for carrying the president's lies. The intent instead is to force platforms to carry these lies, and open them up to lawsuits for everything else their users post if the platforms dare to refuse this kind of presidential commandeering.
"The FCC is proposing nothing less than a Fairness Doctrine for Facebook, and a must-carry regime for fraudsters, propagandists, bigots, charlatans and those in power who inspire, provoke and promote them.
"It's no coincidence that this charade is happening during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election. The Trump administration and its FCC allies are trying to bully and intimidate social-media companies into rolling back their content-moderation efforts for election-related disinformation.
"This FCC proceeding is a hypocritical and cynical enterprise that threatens online diversity, our fundamental freedoms and the rule of law."
Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.
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Trump’s Massive July 4 Fireworks Show Is a Public Health Disaster in the Making: Leaked Documents
An internal National Park Service report recommends Washington, DC residents "wear an N95 mask when outdoors" and "remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show."
Jul 02, 2026
President Donald Trump's plans for a massive fireworks show in Washington, DC on July 4th could lead to a public health disaster, according to leaked National Park Service documents obtained by The Washington Post.
As the Post reported on Wednesday, internal NPS models project that Trump's plan to launch an estimated 850,000 fireworks over a 40-minute span on Saturday will lead to "very unhealthy" air quality throughout downtown Washington, DC, Arlington, and the area around Capitol Hill.
NPS' internal report recommends that residents "wear an N95 mask when outdoors" and "remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show."
George Thurston, a professor of medicine and population health at New York University, said that the amount of pollution projected by the NPS is so severe that people should "minimize exposures" to outdoor air during the fireworks show, while adding that wearing "an N95 mask would be a good idea."
Thurston also expressed concern about DC residents living in low-income neighborhoods, which are disproportionately exposed to environmental pollutants and could be particularly vulnerable to hazardous air quality stemming from the festivities.
A Tuesday report from Capital Weather also expressed concerns about Trump's planned fireworks, noting that "the approximately 860,000 shells anticipated in this year's show will be at least roughly 50 times more than the usual 10,000 to 20,000 shells" launched during past events.
The problem could be made worse, Capital Weather added, by the extreme heat Washington, DC is expected to get on July 4, with temperatures projected to peak at 100ºF.
"Unless there are strong winds, there will very likely be near-record amounts of smoke to go with all the fireworks," Capital Weather explained. "As of now, winds only look to be around 5 to 8 mph, which will struggle to push the smoke along. If a chance of scattered storms materializes, it could become even more humid and primed for smoke to hang around."
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US-UK Medicine Deal Will Take 'Wrecking Ball' to NHS, Causing 229,000 Excess Deaths: Study
"We cannot afford to sit by while our NHS is picked apart by a foreign regime," said one member of Parliament.
Jul 02, 2026
One member of British Parliament called on the Labour government to defend the country's revered National Health Service "with everything we have and firmly stand up to the bully in the White House" after a study published Wednesday showed the UK-US pharmaceutical trade deal brokered last year is projected to cause 229,000 excess deaths as funding is stripped away from the NHS.
“It is a complete insult to patients who are suffering and dying on hospital trolleys and waiting months for treatment," said Helen Morgan of the Liberal Democrats Party regarding the new analysis. "We cannot afford to sit by while our NHS is picked apart by a foreign regime."
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of York, the University of Liverpool, and Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand and published in the British Medical Journal, found that £44.7 billion ($59.5 billion) will have to be diverted from health services by 2036 in order to pay for new medications under the deal.
The agreement was reached last December, with recently resigned Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government agreeing to pay 25% more for new US medications over the next decade. The NHS will double the percentage of gross domestic product that it allocates for pharmaceuticals, from 0.3% to 0.6%, with the spending increasing from 10% to 12% of the universal healthcare system's budget.
In exchange, the Trump administration agreed not to impose tariffs of up to 100% that he had threatened for UK medicines being imported to the US.
Science Minister Patrick Vallance insisted in April that the deal would give NHS patients access to "life-changing new medicines that they previously would have been denied" while boosting the UK's "life sciences sector" by avoiding Trump's tariffs.
"Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in Parliament before being rushed through—and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS."
But Sir Ciarán Devane, chief executive of the NHS Alliance, told The Guardian that the study raised "serious questions" about whether Britons will truly benefit from the agreement.
"If billions of pounds are diverted away from frontline care to meet higher medicines costs, the consequences for prevention, community services, and the treatment of long-term conditions could be profound," said Devane. "The government must urgently publish the full impact assessment and ensure there is appropriate scrutiny of the deal if it could have such far-reaching implications for population health.”
The projected avoidable death toll in the study far exceeds that which the UK saw during the coronavirus pandemic, when 137,000 excess deaths were recorded between March 2020-June 2022.
"If the indirect effect on adult social care is also included, the increase in excess deaths is even greater (291,000),” reads the study.
The greatest number of excess deaths is projected to occur in patients suffering from cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal issues as well as cancer.
Patients with “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems" will also face "broader effects on quality of life," the research states.
The government has assured the public that "frontline services" will be protected, notes the report, but "the NHS will need to fund this deal from allocations made six months before the deal was agreed. The evidence suggests that if additional public expenditure was available, it could be more effectively deployed within the NHS itself."
The research projected that the greatest number of deaths would occur in cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and cancer patients.
It added that there will also be broader harm caused to quality of life for patients in those sectors as well as “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems”.
Tim Bierley, a campaigner with the UK-based group Global Justice Now, said that the report "adds to the overwhelming evidence that the Trump medicines deal risks taking a wrecking ball to our health and our economy."
"Billions that could be spent on recruiting more NHS staff, cutting [general practitioner] waiting times, or improving our hospital care are set to be siphoned off by corporate giants in the pharma industry," said Bierley, whose group has joined the campaign Just Treatment in filing a legal challenge against the deal. "Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in Parliament before being rushed through—and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS."
"The next prime minister," said Bierley, "must change direction, stand up for our NHS, and unpick the mess left by their predecessors.”
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Armed With New Slush Fund, 'Lawless and Rogue' ICE Arrests 10,000+ in Just Five Days
Those arrested in the recent surge include a 56-year-old Catholic nun from Nigeria.
Jul 02, 2026
Ordered by the Trump White House to aggressively increase arrest rates, federal immigration officials have reportedly detained more than 10,000 people in just the last five days, intensifying fear in communities across the United States.
The New York Times, which was first to report the new detention figures late Wednesday, noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were "told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement." The agency, flush with cash following President Donald Trump's signing of a reconciliation package containing another $70 billion for immigration enforcement, has been instructed to assign 80% of its officers to "arrest operations," according to the Times.
The Trump administration claims to be targeting the "worst of the worst," but available data shows that the percentage of people arrested by ICE despite having no criminal convictions has tended to rise during the agency's mass detention efforts. On Sunday, ICE briefly detained a 56-year-old nun from Nigeria as she walked to church in McAllen, Texas.
"The geniuses at ICE just arrested a Catholic nun, who practices as a nurse, as she was walking to church," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote in response to Sister Leticia Ugboaja's detention. "Our Republican colleagues think they need even more money. Had enough?"
The Times reported that immigration attorneys across the US "have been on alert" as ICE arrests surge, though much more quietly than earlier blitzes in Minneapolis—where federal immigration agents killed two US citizens—and other major cities, where groups of armed and masked officers roamed the streets and menaced neighborhoods.
"Cindy Blandon, an immigration attorney in Miami, said that one of her clients, a Nicaraguan father of two children, had an immigration court hearing set for 2027, but was arrested by ICE on Monday during a routine check-in," the Times reported. "And in Utah, Ysabel Lonazco, an immigration attorney, has noticed an uptick as well... One of her clients, Arturo, a 48-year-old Mexican man, was arrested in Salt Lake City on his way to a soccer game on Sunday, according to his wife, Veronica. She said the arrest had shattered their family."
ICE also appears to be ignoring a federal judge's order last week curtailing arrests at immigration courthouses. According to The Intercept:
On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an Ecuadorian man at a court at 26 Federal Plaza and a man from the Dominican Republic at another court at 290 Broadway, both in Lower Manhattan. The arrests continued on Monday, when ICE agents detained a third man, originally from Guatemala, at 290 Broadway.
In legal filings challenging the detentions of the men taken Thursday, advocates with the nonprofit Make the Road New York accused ICE of not only violating their clients’ right to due process, but also of brazenly flouting a federal court order.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Intercept that "we’re witnessing ICE, yet again, operate in a lawless and rogue fashion and not following court orders."
“We’re supposedly a nation under the rule of law, and our judicial branch has said that this agency must stop engaging in this lawless behavior, and they continue to do so," said Awawdeh.
ICE is currently headed by Acting Director David Venturella, a former private prison executive. A record number of people have died in ICE custody under the second Trump administration.
Last week, Trump announced that he intends to nominate former Oklahoma state trooper Lance Schroyer to lead ICE in a permanent capacity.
Marcos Charles, the head of ICE’s deportation wing, cheered the recent arrest surge in an email to agency personnel earlier this week. On Saturday, ICE officers arrested 2,400 people.
“I want to personally thank each of you for your extraordinary efforts this past weekend,” Charles wrote, according to the Times. “Through your dedication, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to our mission, enforcement and removal operations achieved remarkable operational results."
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