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Elon Musk speaks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas.
Virtually everyone, except Elon Musk, agrees that the rich have too much political power these days. When a single individual can put tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars behind their favored candidate, it seriously distorts democracy. Unfortunately, there are few serious strategies for addressing this problem.
Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, as well as prior rulings saying effectively that money is speech, there is little prospect for any sort of limits on campaign spending, at least until we have a very different Supreme Court. While this is bad news for fans of democracy, the problem is even worse.
People have generally viewed the media and political campaigns as two distinct buckets. Most attention has been focused on the second bucket. But the first bucket (including social media), is at least as important in determining political attitudes.
If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media.
While this should be obvious in the age of Fox News, for some reason many people seem to be under the impression that we will have limited the political power of the rich if we restrict their campaign spending. This is a bizarre view when the rich would still have the option to buy every major media outlet and social media platform and turn them all into Fox News. Given Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and Donald Trump’s very explicit threats against critical media, this story should not seem far-fetched.
To be clear, there is still much useful reporting done by leading media outlets like the New York Times and CNN. But these outlets will likely take threats of major lawsuits and other reprisals seriously. And recalcitrant outlets can always be taken over by Elon Musk.
If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media. And this has to go well beyond urging people to support progressive outlets and their local newspapers. Such individual efforts are great, but we need a public channel of funding to supplement current sources.
To my mind, the best way to set up a new channel to support the media is with public funding through a modest-sized individual tax credit of say $100. This tax credit would be fully refundable and available to every adult to support the news outlet of their choice.
There are two reasons for making it an individual tax credit, rather than just a direct subsidy of existing newspapers and other media. The first is that traditional media is viewed with enormous suspicion by much of the public. It would likely be far more difficult to gain political support for subsidies designated for the media that currently exists.
The second and more important reason is that people should be able to decide what newspapers or news outlets they want to support. If they make this choice themselves, they will be more invested in it and will be more likely to appreciate the outlets they choose to support.
Also, it is likely that many new outlets will spring up to take advantage of this new source of support. Some of these will undoubtedly be low quality and provide little real news, but this is true of many news outlets currently. If people choose to use their tax credit on them, that would be their choice, as it now when they opt to buy a supermarket tabloid or to watch Fox News. But there would also be a substantial pot of money available to support serious news outlets that provide real information about what is going on in the city, state, or country.
Another benefit of going this route is that it can be done at the state or even local level. There is little prospect that a MAGA Congress would pass legislation that could challenge billionaire power, but there are a number of states — including large states like California, New York, and Illinois — where Democrats have a trifecta. It would be possible in principle to pass a journalism or media tax credit in these states. And if it proved successful, the idea would likely spread.
The tax deduction for charitable contributions provides a good model for how a journalism tax credit could work. With the charitable contribution tax deduction, organizations file with the I.R.S. to be eligible for tax-exempt status. To get eligibility an organization just has to tell the I.R.S. what it does — for example, it’s an educational institution or a church. The I.R.S. doesn’t try to determine whether the organization does a good job as an educational institution or a church, that’s for individual donors to do. The I.R.S. just ensures that the organization does what it claims to do.
It would be the same story with an organization applying to be eligible to get a journalism tax credit. They just have to say what type of reporting they are doing and where their work is available. The oversight agency will not try to determine the quality of the journalism, that decision is for the individual contributors.
Also, a requirement of getting the funding is that all the supported work be freely available on the web with no paywall. The logic is that the public paid for the work, it should be able to benefit from it. This would not prevent a newspaper from having some material behind a paywall, if it supported the work from other sources, such as subscriptions or advertising.
A major difference with the tax deduction is that it would be equally available to everyone. Only around 10 percent of the public takes the charitable deduction tax credit. The vast majority of taxpayers take the standard deduction, which means they can’t write off charitable deductions against their taxable income. Also, the deduction is worth much more to a high-income person in the 35 percent bracket than to a middle-income person in the 12 percent tax bracket. This credit would be $100 for everyone, or whatever sum is agreed upon.
The short answer to that is not right away. Even if we could get one or two progressive cities or states to create this sort of tax credit in the near future, it will take some years to get it up and running. And even then, the size of the credits in a small number of states or cities will be a drop in the bucket compared to the money at the disposal of Musk and his billionaire buddies.
But if a journalism tax credit proves popular, it can expand over time with more states and cities adopting it. If we got to the point where most of the blue states had this sort of credit in place, we could perhaps see 60 or 70 million people kicking in $100 a head to support media they liked. That would come to $6-$7 billion a year.
While much of this journalism would not be especially political (papers report on sports, weather, and civic events) if just a third went to progressive reporting, or just solid investigative reporting, it could make a huge difference in the public’s awareness. And remember, even if the news outlets are only in blue states, everything is going up on the web, where everyone in the country and world can see it. If a newspaper in Minnesota reports that Donald Trump Jr. is selling off the Grand Canyon to buy himself another mansion, even people in Florida and Texas will be able to read the stories.
It is still not fair that the Elon Musks of the world have such an outsize voice in political debates, but as a practical matter we have no way to limit their political spending in the foreseeable future. The best we can hope to do is to build up alternative voices so we don’t just hear from the billionaires and their lackeys.
We also should do something to downsize the huge social media platforms that give their owners so much power. This was a noticeable problem to anyone paying attention even before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
This story may not be satisfying to people seeing billionaires openly flaunting their money to make politicians grant their wishes, but we don’t have a better alternative. It’s great to say that we shouldn’t have billionaires or that we need a big wealth tax, but those statements have as much political impact as watching kids cartoons. We have to start building an institutional structure that can support long-term progressive opposition, and a big part of that is having media outlets that the billionaires can’t buy or intimidate into acquiescence.
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Virtually everyone, except Elon Musk, agrees that the rich have too much political power these days. When a single individual can put tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars behind their favored candidate, it seriously distorts democracy. Unfortunately, there are few serious strategies for addressing this problem.
Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, as well as prior rulings saying effectively that money is speech, there is little prospect for any sort of limits on campaign spending, at least until we have a very different Supreme Court. While this is bad news for fans of democracy, the problem is even worse.
People have generally viewed the media and political campaigns as two distinct buckets. Most attention has been focused on the second bucket. But the first bucket (including social media), is at least as important in determining political attitudes.
If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media.
While this should be obvious in the age of Fox News, for some reason many people seem to be under the impression that we will have limited the political power of the rich if we restrict their campaign spending. This is a bizarre view when the rich would still have the option to buy every major media outlet and social media platform and turn them all into Fox News. Given Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and Donald Trump’s very explicit threats against critical media, this story should not seem far-fetched.
To be clear, there is still much useful reporting done by leading media outlets like the New York Times and CNN. But these outlets will likely take threats of major lawsuits and other reprisals seriously. And recalcitrant outlets can always be taken over by Elon Musk.
If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media. And this has to go well beyond urging people to support progressive outlets and their local newspapers. Such individual efforts are great, but we need a public channel of funding to supplement current sources.
To my mind, the best way to set up a new channel to support the media is with public funding through a modest-sized individual tax credit of say $100. This tax credit would be fully refundable and available to every adult to support the news outlet of their choice.
There are two reasons for making it an individual tax credit, rather than just a direct subsidy of existing newspapers and other media. The first is that traditional media is viewed with enormous suspicion by much of the public. It would likely be far more difficult to gain political support for subsidies designated for the media that currently exists.
The second and more important reason is that people should be able to decide what newspapers or news outlets they want to support. If they make this choice themselves, they will be more invested in it and will be more likely to appreciate the outlets they choose to support.
Also, it is likely that many new outlets will spring up to take advantage of this new source of support. Some of these will undoubtedly be low quality and provide little real news, but this is true of many news outlets currently. If people choose to use their tax credit on them, that would be their choice, as it now when they opt to buy a supermarket tabloid or to watch Fox News. But there would also be a substantial pot of money available to support serious news outlets that provide real information about what is going on in the city, state, or country.
Another benefit of going this route is that it can be done at the state or even local level. There is little prospect that a MAGA Congress would pass legislation that could challenge billionaire power, but there are a number of states — including large states like California, New York, and Illinois — where Democrats have a trifecta. It would be possible in principle to pass a journalism or media tax credit in these states. And if it proved successful, the idea would likely spread.
The tax deduction for charitable contributions provides a good model for how a journalism tax credit could work. With the charitable contribution tax deduction, organizations file with the I.R.S. to be eligible for tax-exempt status. To get eligibility an organization just has to tell the I.R.S. what it does — for example, it’s an educational institution or a church. The I.R.S. doesn’t try to determine whether the organization does a good job as an educational institution or a church, that’s for individual donors to do. The I.R.S. just ensures that the organization does what it claims to do.
It would be the same story with an organization applying to be eligible to get a journalism tax credit. They just have to say what type of reporting they are doing and where their work is available. The oversight agency will not try to determine the quality of the journalism, that decision is for the individual contributors.
Also, a requirement of getting the funding is that all the supported work be freely available on the web with no paywall. The logic is that the public paid for the work, it should be able to benefit from it. This would not prevent a newspaper from having some material behind a paywall, if it supported the work from other sources, such as subscriptions or advertising.
A major difference with the tax deduction is that it would be equally available to everyone. Only around 10 percent of the public takes the charitable deduction tax credit. The vast majority of taxpayers take the standard deduction, which means they can’t write off charitable deductions against their taxable income. Also, the deduction is worth much more to a high-income person in the 35 percent bracket than to a middle-income person in the 12 percent tax bracket. This credit would be $100 for everyone, or whatever sum is agreed upon.
The short answer to that is not right away. Even if we could get one or two progressive cities or states to create this sort of tax credit in the near future, it will take some years to get it up and running. And even then, the size of the credits in a small number of states or cities will be a drop in the bucket compared to the money at the disposal of Musk and his billionaire buddies.
But if a journalism tax credit proves popular, it can expand over time with more states and cities adopting it. If we got to the point where most of the blue states had this sort of credit in place, we could perhaps see 60 or 70 million people kicking in $100 a head to support media they liked. That would come to $6-$7 billion a year.
While much of this journalism would not be especially political (papers report on sports, weather, and civic events) if just a third went to progressive reporting, or just solid investigative reporting, it could make a huge difference in the public’s awareness. And remember, even if the news outlets are only in blue states, everything is going up on the web, where everyone in the country and world can see it. If a newspaper in Minnesota reports that Donald Trump Jr. is selling off the Grand Canyon to buy himself another mansion, even people in Florida and Texas will be able to read the stories.
It is still not fair that the Elon Musks of the world have such an outsize voice in political debates, but as a practical matter we have no way to limit their political spending in the foreseeable future. The best we can hope to do is to build up alternative voices so we don’t just hear from the billionaires and their lackeys.
We also should do something to downsize the huge social media platforms that give their owners so much power. This was a noticeable problem to anyone paying attention even before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
This story may not be satisfying to people seeing billionaires openly flaunting their money to make politicians grant their wishes, but we don’t have a better alternative. It’s great to say that we shouldn’t have billionaires or that we need a big wealth tax, but those statements have as much political impact as watching kids cartoons. We have to start building an institutional structure that can support long-term progressive opposition, and a big part of that is having media outlets that the billionaires can’t buy or intimidate into acquiescence.
Virtually everyone, except Elon Musk, agrees that the rich have too much political power these days. When a single individual can put tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars behind their favored candidate, it seriously distorts democracy. Unfortunately, there are few serious strategies for addressing this problem.
Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, as well as prior rulings saying effectively that money is speech, there is little prospect for any sort of limits on campaign spending, at least until we have a very different Supreme Court. While this is bad news for fans of democracy, the problem is even worse.
People have generally viewed the media and political campaigns as two distinct buckets. Most attention has been focused on the second bucket. But the first bucket (including social media), is at least as important in determining political attitudes.
If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media.
While this should be obvious in the age of Fox News, for some reason many people seem to be under the impression that we will have limited the political power of the rich if we restrict their campaign spending. This is a bizarre view when the rich would still have the option to buy every major media outlet and social media platform and turn them all into Fox News. Given Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and Donald Trump’s very explicit threats against critical media, this story should not seem far-fetched.
To be clear, there is still much useful reporting done by leading media outlets like the New York Times and CNN. But these outlets will likely take threats of major lawsuits and other reprisals seriously. And recalcitrant outlets can always be taken over by Elon Musk.
If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media. And this has to go well beyond urging people to support progressive outlets and their local newspapers. Such individual efforts are great, but we need a public channel of funding to supplement current sources.
To my mind, the best way to set up a new channel to support the media is with public funding through a modest-sized individual tax credit of say $100. This tax credit would be fully refundable and available to every adult to support the news outlet of their choice.
There are two reasons for making it an individual tax credit, rather than just a direct subsidy of existing newspapers and other media. The first is that traditional media is viewed with enormous suspicion by much of the public. It would likely be far more difficult to gain political support for subsidies designated for the media that currently exists.
The second and more important reason is that people should be able to decide what newspapers or news outlets they want to support. If they make this choice themselves, they will be more invested in it and will be more likely to appreciate the outlets they choose to support.
Also, it is likely that many new outlets will spring up to take advantage of this new source of support. Some of these will undoubtedly be low quality and provide little real news, but this is true of many news outlets currently. If people choose to use their tax credit on them, that would be their choice, as it now when they opt to buy a supermarket tabloid or to watch Fox News. But there would also be a substantial pot of money available to support serious news outlets that provide real information about what is going on in the city, state, or country.
Another benefit of going this route is that it can be done at the state or even local level. There is little prospect that a MAGA Congress would pass legislation that could challenge billionaire power, but there are a number of states — including large states like California, New York, and Illinois — where Democrats have a trifecta. It would be possible in principle to pass a journalism or media tax credit in these states. And if it proved successful, the idea would likely spread.
The tax deduction for charitable contributions provides a good model for how a journalism tax credit could work. With the charitable contribution tax deduction, organizations file with the I.R.S. to be eligible for tax-exempt status. To get eligibility an organization just has to tell the I.R.S. what it does — for example, it’s an educational institution or a church. The I.R.S. doesn’t try to determine whether the organization does a good job as an educational institution or a church, that’s for individual donors to do. The I.R.S. just ensures that the organization does what it claims to do.
It would be the same story with an organization applying to be eligible to get a journalism tax credit. They just have to say what type of reporting they are doing and where their work is available. The oversight agency will not try to determine the quality of the journalism, that decision is for the individual contributors.
Also, a requirement of getting the funding is that all the supported work be freely available on the web with no paywall. The logic is that the public paid for the work, it should be able to benefit from it. This would not prevent a newspaper from having some material behind a paywall, if it supported the work from other sources, such as subscriptions or advertising.
A major difference with the tax deduction is that it would be equally available to everyone. Only around 10 percent of the public takes the charitable deduction tax credit. The vast majority of taxpayers take the standard deduction, which means they can’t write off charitable deductions against their taxable income. Also, the deduction is worth much more to a high-income person in the 35 percent bracket than to a middle-income person in the 12 percent tax bracket. This credit would be $100 for everyone, or whatever sum is agreed upon.
The short answer to that is not right away. Even if we could get one or two progressive cities or states to create this sort of tax credit in the near future, it will take some years to get it up and running. And even then, the size of the credits in a small number of states or cities will be a drop in the bucket compared to the money at the disposal of Musk and his billionaire buddies.
But if a journalism tax credit proves popular, it can expand over time with more states and cities adopting it. If we got to the point where most of the blue states had this sort of credit in place, we could perhaps see 60 or 70 million people kicking in $100 a head to support media they liked. That would come to $6-$7 billion a year.
While much of this journalism would not be especially political (papers report on sports, weather, and civic events) if just a third went to progressive reporting, or just solid investigative reporting, it could make a huge difference in the public’s awareness. And remember, even if the news outlets are only in blue states, everything is going up on the web, where everyone in the country and world can see it. If a newspaper in Minnesota reports that Donald Trump Jr. is selling off the Grand Canyon to buy himself another mansion, even people in Florida and Texas will be able to read the stories.
It is still not fair that the Elon Musks of the world have such an outsize voice in political debates, but as a practical matter we have no way to limit their political spending in the foreseeable future. The best we can hope to do is to build up alternative voices so we don’t just hear from the billionaires and their lackeys.
We also should do something to downsize the huge social media platforms that give their owners so much power. This was a noticeable problem to anyone paying attention even before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
This story may not be satisfying to people seeing billionaires openly flaunting their money to make politicians grant their wishes, but we don’t have a better alternative. It’s great to say that we shouldn’t have billionaires or that we need a big wealth tax, but those statements have as much political impact as watching kids cartoons. We have to start building an institutional structure that can support long-term progressive opposition, and a big part of that is having media outlets that the billionaires can’t buy or intimidate into acquiescence.
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.”