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For Immediate Release
April, 14 2025, 03:14pm EDT
Contact:
Timothy Karr, tkarr@freepress.net
Trump Urges FCC Chairman Carr to Violate 60 Minutes' First Amendment Rights
On Sunday, President Donald Trump called on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to strip CBS of its broadcast license. Trump issued this order following a 60 Minutes interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a second segment on the fate of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory Trump wants to seize for the United States.
According to the president, Carr “will impose the maximum fines and punishment” for segments that presented more than one side of prominent news stories. Although the FCC does have the authority to issue and deny broadcast licenses, it generally abstains — on First Amendment grounds — from doing so based on the editorial decisions of broadcast outlets.
In March, Free Press called on the FCC to once again dismiss a pro-Trump group’s complaint that accuses local broadcaster WCBS-TV of “news distortion” in airing a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Free Press disputed the merits of the complaint and explained how the agency’s decision to set aside its dismissal and reconsider it falls within FCC Chairman Carr’s broader portfolio of anti-First Amendment actions.
Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said:
“Trump is weaponizing the FCC to attack First Amendment freedoms and threaten free speech. Unfortunately, FCC Chairman Carr has been all too happy to comply and has repeatedly abused his licensing authority to punish any broadcaster that critically covers this president and his political agenda.
“We’re now waiting for the other shoe to drop — for Carr to once again twist himself into a legal pretzel to appease his boss and launch yet another blatantly unconstitutional attack on free speech.
“The irony in all of this is that 60 Minutes’ supposed crime, in the eyes of Trump, is committing an act of journalism. I encourage anyone who watches Sunday’s Zelenskyy interview to see how it meets any of the FCC’s criteria for license denial. It doesn't. I strongly encourage the FCC chairman to stop embarrassing himself, to reject the president’s call to violate his oath of office and the Constitution, and to stand against government censorship. I doubt Carr will.”
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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Watchdog Warns of Trump Plot to Push Alito, Thomas Off Supreme Court While GOP Still Controls Senate
"NPR’s reporting that Justice Alito is retiring was early. But it wasn’t wrong."
Jul 01, 2026
Following a series of major US Supreme Court decisions, NPR retracted an erroneous report on Tuesday that conservative Justice Samuel Alito was planning to retire.
But while that report turned out to be false, a progressive legal action group is warning that it pointed to something potentially very real: That President Donald Trump could try to push aging right-wing justices like 76-year-old Alito, as well as 78-year-old Justice Clarence Thomas, to retire early so he can replace them with young judges who can cement a right-wing majority for decades.
"NPR’s reporting that Justice Alito is retiring was early. But it wasn’t wrong," said Josh Orton, the president of Demand Justice, and Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of Indivisible, in a statement on Wednesday. "We know that Donald Trump will do whatever he can to hold onto power, and we are prepared for him trying to force Alito, Thomas, or both off the bench this year, while Republicans still control the Senate and can ram through a replacement."
It's not an unfounded fear. It's something Trump has discussed openly.
In April, the president told Fox Business interviewer Maria Bartiromo that he was "prepared" to appoint as many as three justices before his term is up—perhaps alluding to the possibility that the liberal 72-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor could die before the next president is inaugurated or that the 71-year-old conservative Chief Justice John Roberts could retire.
"In theory, it's two—you just read the statistics—it could be two, could be three, could be one," Trump said. "I don't know. I'm prepared to do it."
He called Alito—who authored major decisions to gut abortion rights, allow religious businesses to deny contraceptive coverage to employees, and kneecap public sector unions—"one of the great justices of all time," but added, "It’d be nice to say, now I have somebody for 40 years.”
He also invoked the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom he said “really hurt herself within the Democrat Party" by refusing to retire when Barack Obama was president. After Ginsburg's death in 2020, Trump replaced her with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who expanded the court's conservative majority to 6-3.
Trump was asked about possible Supreme Court vacancies again in an interview with Breitbart News on Wednesday after NPR jumped the gun on Alito's retirement. The president suggested he was torn.
“Well I think you know, if you listen to people, there are three potential vacancies for various reasons, so I’m certainly prepared,” he said. “There are a lot of great people out there who would like to have that position.”
While he praised Alito, describing himself as the justice's "single biggest fan," he reiterated that putting “a young conservative judge on the bench for 40 years” is a “very important thing." He said that the idea of replacing either Alito or Thomas was a "mixed blessing."
Rumblings of a concerted push for both Alito and Thomas to pack up can be traced back to 2024, when The Washington Post reported that Trump adviser Mike Davis was championing the idea in conservative legal circles.
But neither man has indicated plans to retire at this moment. And if Thomas, who has sat on the bench since 1991, were to retire before the next Congress is sworn in, he'd be stopping less than two years shy of eclipsing William O. Douglas to become the longest-serving Supreme Court justice.
Demand Justice, however, is betting on long-term political power winning the day. The group said it has invested $3 million "to prepare for a 2026 Supreme Court fight."
This will include pressuring Republican senators to reject Trump's pick—particularly those like Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Thom Tillis (NC) who are retiring at the end of this term, Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Bill Cassidy (La.) who lost their primaries, and Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who have (at least rhetorically) broken with Trump more frequently than their GOP colleagues.
Orton and Levin said that "Trump will choose his nominee for one reason: loyalty." They said he'd likely pick somebody who'd validate even his most lawless actions even more than the current justices do—including supporting his efforts to overturn an election result, which the court rejected in 2020.
"We’ll be ready to expose them," Orton and Levin said. "And we’ll be ready to fight."
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One Year In, Trump's 'Big, Ugly Bill' Is the Kick In the Face Worker Advocates Warned About
"The Republican tax law has proven to be a callous bill that punishes working families to reward billionaires," said one critic.
Jul 01, 2026
As Republicans rammed their so-called One Big Beautiful Bill through Congress last year on the way to President Donald Trump's desk, opponents of the legislation sounded the alarm over the pain it would inflict upon working families for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans. One year in, those warnings have borne out—and experts say the worst is yet to come.
The GOP budget reconciliation package that Trump signed into law last July 4 ushered in the biggest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) in the programs’ histories in order to fund trillions of dollars in tax reductions that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
Senate Democrats said Wednesday that "Republicans stole from the working class to give to the rich," highlighting how "millions of families are going hungry and how the law's cuts "are endangering lives."
“When Republicans passed their ‘Big, Ugly Bill,’ they chose the wealthy elite over working Americans,” US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday in a statement marking the law's looming anniversary. “It wasn’t beautiful; it was a betrayal."
"Republicans gutted healthcare, SNAP, and low-cost clean energy to benefit billionaires and big corporations," he added. "Now, Americans are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis, and they have Donald Trump and Republicans to thank for it. While Trump says, ‘I love the inflation’ and affordable housing is ‘a big yawn’ between rounds of golf, Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to lower costs, expand housing, and make life more affordable.”
The law's Medicaid eligibility restrictions and paperwork requirements are expected to dramatically increase the number of uninsured Americans. The advocacy group Protect Our Care estimates that, since the passage of the GOP legislation, 3.8 million people have lost coverage they previously had under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Combined with the loss of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that Trump and congressional Republicans let expire late last year, approximately 8 million more people are now uninsured.
Health insurance premiums have more than doubled for nearly 22 million families, with further increases expected in 2027.
Since enactment of the Republican law, more than 1,000 hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes have been forced to either close or face the prospect of closure, with rural healthcare services hit particularly hard.
“A mind-boggling number of Americans have found themselves joining the ranks of the uninsured. And this is just the beginning," Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse said on Tuesday. "As working families continue to get squeezed left and right by GOP-driven healthcare cost hikes and bureaucratic red tape, millions more Americans will lose the care they rely on to stay alive and healthy."
Meanwhile, more than 3.5 million people have lost food assistance, including 770,000 children, due at least in part to the law's SNAP cuts. According to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of SNAP caseload data, enrollment in the crucial food aid program plummeted by 4 million between the OBBBA's enactment and March 2026. The result has been what the New York Federal Reserve Bank in late May called a “remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive economic advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative, said Wednesday that “President Trump promised to lower costs. Instead, his signature legislative achievement has left Americans to foot the bill for tax cuts for his wealthy friends and donors."
"Millions have lost healthcare coverage and food assistance, hundreds of nursing homes and clinics have shuttered, and the prices for basics like groceries continue to climb," Owens added. "One year later, the Republican tax law has proven to be a callous bill that punishes working families to reward billionaires.”
There is much more pain to come. The research organization RAND estimates that impending Medicaid cuts under the OBBBA will result in 7.6 million fewer program enrollees by 2034. Overall, roughly 15 million people are projected to lose health coverage and become uninsured by 2034 due to Medicaid and ACA marketplace cuts in the OBBBA, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"We weren’t being hysterical. We knew this would happen," Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said this week. "When Republicans passed the Big Ugly Bill and cut funding for healthcare, they literally signed away millions of Americans’ ability to afford health insurance. And now it’s happening."
On Tuesday, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth published an analysis examining the OBBBA's impacts on the overall economy. The research nonprofit noted that the legislation "makes enormous cuts to critical income supports on which Americans depend to survive," while at the same time "is a windfall for corporations and wealthy households, making it the most regressive tax and budget law in at least 40 years."
As Common Dreams reported, the OBBBA is expected to give the wealthiest 1% of Americans $1 trillion in tax cuts while adding $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
"Even so, its tax cuts were not paid for," the Washington Center said of the law. "By increasing the federal budget deficit, the law not only limits the nation’s ability to invest in future needs but also drives up interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and business loans."
"Thus far, implementation guidance from the Trump administration has been faster and harsher than anticipated, with looming consequences for state budgets—which will necessitate further cuts to state initiatives that support families and that lead to longer-term state economic growth," the center added.
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—a union representing 1.3 million public sector workers and retirees—said Monday that the year of harm wrought by the OBBBA "is only the beginning."
"Some of the law’s cuts hit immediately, while extreme changes and cuts to Medicaid, for example, won’t happen until after November this year. But working families are already feeling its impact," the union said.
"You feel it when you ask yourself whether the energy bill gets paid or the rent does—because you can’t always do both," AFSCME continued. "You feel it when you watch your health insurance premiums climb while your neighborhood clinic cuts its hours."
"For AFSCME members, you feel it at work too—when you talk to families and have to break it to them that new policies mean they will lose food assistance, Medicaid, and other life-sustaining support," the union said. "You feel it when low pay drives high turnover, so you’re forced to work mandatory overtime. And you feel it when states, cities, and towns say they don’t have the resources to compensate you fairly for your work or invest in our schools, hospitals, and roads."
AFSCME asserted that the Republican law and its harms should sound "a nationwide call to action for working families to get organized and demand more."
"The labor movement is how working people have always asserted that we are not spectators in our own lives," the union added. "That we have a voice, a vote, and the power to drive change."
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UN Creates 'AI for Good' Commission—Full of Big Tech Execs
The commission's upcoming first meeting will focus on "strengthening AI infrastructure, accelerating AI's impact on health, education, food security, and disaster response, and ensuring trust and safety," said its CEO co-chair.
Jul 01, 2026
A week after United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called on artificial intelligence companies to "come clean" about the full costs of power-sucking data centers, and as a UN panel on Wednesday released a report detailing the risks and impacts of AI, Axios revealed the creation of a related commission that's full of Big Tech executives.
"The UN and its International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are convening the AI for Good Global Commission, which will hold its first meeting on July 8 in Geneva, Switzerland," according to the outlet. It will be co-chaired by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, with other tech and policy leaders joining as members.
So far, Axios reported, they include ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Estonian President Alar Karis, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, Cohere co-founder Aidan Gomez, Microsoft president Brad Smith, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, and AI and tech policymakers from Kazakhstan, Namibia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.
"AI is the most profound technological transition in history. And our values have to guide every step, because responsibility is the core of AI ethics," Benioff said. The commission will bring together "the people who build AI, deploy it, shape policy, and represent communities."
He added that "our inaugural meeting will focus on where this group is uniquely positioned to act together: strengthening AI infrastructure, accelerating AI's impact on health, education, food security, and disaster response, and ensuring trust and safety."
However, given recent polls showing that the public has limited confidence in large technology companies, opposes constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, is wary of AI’s impact on daily life, and has concerns about politicians having a "cozy relationship" with Big Tech, the commission may be met with skepticism or even backlash.
In the lead-up to the commission's meeting next week at the ITU's AI for Good Global Summit, the UN plans to hold the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance, featuring a presentation of the "Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence," published Wednesday.
Established with a UN resolution last August, the panel is the first global scientific body on AI—and, as Guterres said in a statement about its new report, "the panel is intended to help the world separate fact from fakes, and science from slop."
"We are looking to them to provide an authoritative reference point at a moment when reliable, unbiased understanding of AI has never been more critical," the UN chief explained. "I am pleased to say that they have delivered a down payment on that commitment—in record time."
The panel's co-chair, Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, noted that "AI capabilities are outpacing both scientific understanding and governments' ability to adapt. With growing evidence of deceptive AI behavior, science currently cannot guarantee that as capabilities continue to increase, AI will not cause catastrophic harm, either on its own or due to malicious users."
"To act effectively, global policymakers must understand these systems," he asserted. "This panel provides exactly that: a rigorous, shared scientific foundation to guide our collective way forward."
The report discusses AI's recent advances and expected trajectories; societal applications, from agriculture to education to healthcare; economic implications; security and environmental concerns; impacts on democracy, human rights, and information; potential harms to child safety and culture; and governance of the rapidly developing technology.
"The technology is transformative, but if the world keeps moving along this trajectory, humanity will fail to realize the gains it promises. The risks—to societies, to security, and to our species—are too high, and the forces driving AI forward are not the forces that will deliver its benefits," said Maria Ressa, a panel's co-chair and Nobel Peace Prize-winning Filipino-American journalist.
Guterres, whose term ends this year, similarly stressed the need for urgent action on a global scale. He said that the "single lesson" he wanted to highlight from the multifaceted report is that "the more AI advances without shared rules, the less say governments and people will have in the outcome. So my message to governments is simple: Do not wait."
"Next week in Geneva, the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance will begin to turn science into shared action—with every nation at the same table," he said. "I look forward to joining member states there to help carry this work forward. And soon, I will set out proposals to help countries build the capacity to adequately deal with this technology—and share in its rewards."
Guterres' Wednesday comments came after he publicly took aim at artificial intelligence companies last week, proposing the AI Environmental Transparency Initiative during London Climate Action Week, as the second heatwave in as many months scorched the United Kingdom and various other European countries, killing at least hundreds of people.
"I am calling on every major AI company to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of its systems—carbon, water, and land footprints—and to commit to power every data center with renewable energy by 2030," he declared. "No more hidden costs. No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it."
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