‘I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop,’ Trump’s FCC chair tells Fox
In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, praised the owners of local TV stations that broadcast ABC programming for putting pressure on the network’s owner, Disney, to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air, in response to what Carr called Kimmel’s “distortion” of the news about Charlie Kirk’s murder in a monologue on Monday.
“The key point is these were local TV stations, licensed by the FCC, that have a public interest obligation to serve their local community, they pushed back on Disney,” Carr said, referring to ABC affiliated stations owned and operated by Nexstar and Sinclair that decided to take Kimmel off the air. Those station owner, in Carr’s words, “said ‘We don’t think that this type of programming is responsive to the needs of our viewers in Utah, in Pennsylvania,’ and that’s exactly the way the system is supposed to work.”
We’re going to back to that era when local TV stations, judging the public interest, get to decide what the American people think,” Carr added.
He then suggested that pressure from the FCC on the local license holders had been a factor. “We’re constraining the power… of Disney of Comcast. I think the American public are going to be much better off,” he said. “I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop. This is a massive shift that’s taking place in the media ecosystem the consequences will continue to flow.”
Carr’s mention of Comcast, which owns NBC, might be ominous for the network’s late-night hosts Jimmy Fallow and Seth Meyers, both of whom Donald Trump has called for to be fired over their criticism of him.
In July, Carr wrote to Comcast to announce that he that he had launched an investigation into the company’s relations with its NBC affiliates, after Trump called for the network to be held “accountable” for what he called content favoring the Democratic party.
Key events
Jon Stewart, who normally hosts The Daily Show only on Mondays, will be behind the anchor desk tonight, Comedy Central has announced.
Stewart, who transformed the previously apolitical late-night news satire show into a venue for scathing commentary on US politics and media, is no doubt stepping in to discuss the chilling effect of ABC’s capitulation to the Trump administration by suspending Jimmy Kimmel.
Here’s how Stewart responded in July when CBS, which is owned by the same company as Comedy Central, announced that Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s Late Show would be canceled next year:
Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed outrage at the recommendation on Thursday by a CDC vaccine advisory panel, packed with vaccine critics by Robert F Kennedy Jr, that children should no longer receive a single shot with a combination of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines.
Instead, the panel voted to recommend that children should receive vaccines for each of those diseases, making immunization a slower, more time-consuming process that could well led parents to skip some or all of the shots.
“Measles cases hit record highs with RFK Jr. in charge,” Warren wrote. “Now, his hand-picked vaccine panel just voted to make it harder for little babies to get vaccinated for measles and other diseases. How does that keep our kids safe?”
Trump says US TV networks, which are not licensed by the government, should have their licenses revoked
Speaking to reporters on his flight home from England on Thursday, Donald Trump insisted, wrongly, that US TV networks have to be licensed by the government to operate, and suggested that they should lose those licenses, which, again, they do not have, if they continue to host comedians who make fun of him.
While the Federal Communications Commission requires the owners of local television stations, which are often affiliated with national networks that produce programming, to obtain licenses, the FCC explicitly states on its website: “We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR.”
The federal regulator also states: “Broadcasters – not the FCC or any other government agency – are responsible for selecting the material they air. The First Amendment and the Communications Act expressly prohibit the Commission from censoring broadcast matter.”
Trump, however, appears not to know this. When he was asked by a reporter if he intends to ask Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, “to weigh in on other late-night hosts that you have said should be off the air,” the president replied: “You know, when late-night host is on network television, there is a licensing.”
“I’ll give you an example. I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me,” Trump added. “If they’re 97% against, they give me only bad publicity, or press, I mean, they’re getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
Later in the exchange, the president restated his misunderstanding that networks have to be licensed by the FCC.
“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump,” Trump said. “That’s all they do. 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 you take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat party.”
The president then ended the brief news conference by saying: “Thank you everybody. Have a good flight. Fly safely. You know why I say that? Because I’m on the flight. Otherwise I wouldn’t care.”
Kimmel to meet with Disney executives on future of suspended show – report
The comedian Jimmy Kimmel will meet with Disney executives on Thursday to talk about the future of his show, Bloomberg News reports, citing three unnamed sources.
According to the news agency’s sources, the discussion will focus on whether there is some way to bring Jimmy Kimmel Live! back on the air.
Lawmakers arrested at anti-ICE protest
José Olivares
Several New York lawmakers, religious leaders and other demonstrators were arrested on Thursday afternoon as they blocked a garage entry and exit way to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) offices in lower Manhattan.
The underground garage at the federal facility is used by Ice vehicles to transport recently-arrested immigrants, including people detained after attending immigration court these days, since Ice officers began, under Donald Trump, breaking such norms.
Protesters being arrested chanted “Ice out of New York” as they were put in zip ties by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers.
Elected officials arrested outside 26 Federal Plaza included New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams, city council members Tiffany Cabán and Sandy Nurse and state assembly member Phara Souffrant Forrest.
Here are some more images from the protest.
And more.
Carter Sherman
A powerful vaccines committee for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Thursday to change US vaccine policy and start recommending that children receive multiple vaccines to protect against diseases like measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox, instead of a single vaccine that can protect against all four diseases.
The new recommendations from the panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), arrived just one day after top former CDC officials said that Robert F Kennedy Jr was a threat to US children’s ability to receive vaccines on schedule. The committee’s work typically determines which vaccines are provided for free through the US government, shapes state and local laws around vaccine requirements, and influences which vaccines health insurers tend to cover.
Previously, the panel had recommended that children receive the MMMR vaccine, which offers combined protections against measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox, which is also known as varicella. Parents could still choose to immunize their children through multiple vaccines. Under the committee’s new recommendations, children should receive multiple vaccines: one vaccine that guards against measles, mumps and rubella, which is known as the MMR vaccine, and a separate vaccine that immunizes them against chicken pox.
However, the committee also voted not to change the vaccines that are provided for free to low-income children through a US government program called Vaccines for Children. That discrepancy sparked outcry and confusion among several members of the committee, who at times seemed unsure about the meaning of their votes.
Letterman condemns ABC for suspending Kimmel ‘to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration’
In a live interview with the Atlantic on Thursday, David Letterman called the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, under pressure from Donald Trump’s FCC, “a misery.”
“In the world of somebody who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later everyone is going to be touched,” Letterman said.
He added:
“They took care of Colbert – that was rude, that was inexcusable, the man deserves a great deal of credit, he’s in the Hall of Fame nine times, and to be manipulated like that, because the Ellison family didn’t want to trouble Donald Trump with this move, so they got rid of him. Not only got rid of him, got rid of the whole franchise. ‘You’re not going to have to worry about anything, Larry. It’s all gone. It’s fine. Good night.’”
And then my good friend Jimmy Kimmel. You know, I just, I feel bad about this because we all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.
The editor of the Atlantic pressed Letterman on what Trump’s FCC chair called the “news distortion” in Kimmel’s monologue on Monday, the comedian’s claim that Maga Republicans were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” The suspected gunman, Tyler Robinson, was a gun-owning Utahn, raised in a pro-Trump, Republican family, but evidence made public in charging documents suggests that he killed Kirk because he considered the far-right activist “evil”.
“So what? We all make mistakes, I mean, good Lord,” Letterman replied. “Mistakes are going to be made. Hopefully it will improve. I think, sadly, it’s not going to improve. I’m not exactly in full-mind understanding of what Jimmy said, what he was trying to say, and what mistake was made. This is something that was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert. Colbert got walked off. So you’re telling me that this isn’t premeditated at some level?”
‘I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop,’ Trump’s FCC chair tells Fox
In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, praised the owners of local TV stations that broadcast ABC programming for putting pressure on the network’s owner, Disney, to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air, in response to what Carr called Kimmel’s “distortion” of the news about Charlie Kirk’s murder in a monologue on Monday.
“The key point is these were local TV stations, licensed by the FCC, that have a public interest obligation to serve their local community, they pushed back on Disney,” Carr said, referring to ABC affiliated stations owned and operated by Nexstar and Sinclair that decided to take Kimmel off the air. Those station owner, in Carr’s words, “said ‘We don’t think that this type of programming is responsive to the needs of our viewers in Utah, in Pennsylvania,’ and that’s exactly the way the system is supposed to work.”
We’re going to back to that era when local TV stations, judging the public interest, get to decide what the American people think,” Carr added.
He then suggested that pressure from the FCC on the local license holders had been a factor. “We’re constraining the power… of Disney of Comcast. I think the American public are going to be much better off,” he said. “I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop. This is a massive shift that’s taking place in the media ecosystem the consequences will continue to flow.”
Carr’s mention of Comcast, which owns NBC, might be ominous for the network’s late-night hosts Jimmy Fallow and Seth Meyers, both of whom Donald Trump has called for to be fired over their criticism of him.
In July, Carr wrote to Comcast to announce that he that he had launched an investigation into the company’s relations with its NBC affiliates, after Trump called for the network to be held “accountable” for what he called content favoring the Democratic party.
Chair of Senate health committee calls on RFK Jr to ‘share his side of the story’ after fired CDC director’s testimony
The chairman of the Senate’s health committee, Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who is also a medical doctor, called on Thursday for the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to appear before the committee again, one day after it heard from the fired director of the CDC, Susan Monarez.
“I am inviting Secretary Kennedy to speak with the Committee to share his side of the story,” Cassidy wrote in a statement.
Monarez testified on Wednesday that Kennedy had tried to get her to agree in advance to approve whatever vaccine recommendations a panel of outside experts, including anti-vaccine activists appointed by him, issued, without applying her own scientific judgement, or consulting CDC scientists. When she refused, he fired her.
Lost creator pledges not to work with Disney unless it puts Jimmy Kimmel back on the air
As Writers Guild of America union members protested the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel outside Disney/ABC in Los Angeles on Thursday, a powerful Hollywood showrunner, Damon Lindelof, has promised not to work with Disney unless it puts Kimmel back on the air.
Lindelof, a creator of the ABC series Lost and other dramas, wrote on Instagram:
I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon. If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.
Lindelof also wrote: “if you know Jimmy… You know he loves his country. You know he appreciates a good roast and he can take as good as he gives. You know he supported his crew through multiple strikes and you know he is generous and philanthropic and most of all, you know that he is kind.”
