U.S President FCC faces blowback in attempt to police speech on broadcast TV: “Chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don’t like at your peril.”

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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/trump-fccs-war-on-abc-slammed-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals/

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Exactly as predicted years ago. Project 2025 is still being followed, and they’ve accomplished over 50% of their stated goals in less than two years, with more to go.

Heritage employees+funders, current and former, plus any family that doesn’t turn on them, need to be hunted.



For anyone who may not know, Brendan Carr literally wrote the project 2025 sections on how to use the fcc to eliminate free expression


Yeah, but if you’ve ever been involved in a big project at work, you know that 80% of the progress comes from 20% of the effort.

Resistance better start increasing real quick. Because there’s been very little resistance so far. New Hampshire has already been telling everyone what the choices are: live free, or die.

Death is not the worst of evils.


Hollow succor when it’s democracy on the line, and they’re more than 50% done with more than 50% of their time left. They’re ahead of schedule.




Fascism, without the white sheets covering up all the ugly


Brendan Carr belongs in a a cell in the Hague.

a box in the ground would also be acceptable, I think.



The only people who still vote for them are watching network television all day, every day while their brain matter slowly drips out of their ears.


Meanwhile, Sinclair local stations happy they will get to finally wear MAGA lapel pins on air now


Works for China.


Its like the US is saying, yeah 1930s Germany, let’s have some of that shit and none of you are doing anything about it.

none of you are doing anything about it

Considering that there have been multiple large scale protests, efforts towards economic blackouts, major shifts in political elections, and organizations working through the legal system to combat what is going on - I’m somewhat curious to know what your version of “doing anything about it” looks like.

Tap for spoiler

It’s violence, isn’t it?


Who do you think Nazi Germany based their ideas off of ?

Frederick Nietzche

Jim Crow

And the genocide of the Native Americans. Hitler used that as the inspiration for the holocaust.


Consider me TIL, though I believe Nazi Germany was more into Nietzche’s ubermensch theory. He was Hitlers favorite philosopher and where the idea of the Aryan race was galvanised. From an outward perspective looking in, to me it seems the US are trying their own new mix of that, this “Jim Crow Law” and an extreme capitalist society. The US is using race as a means to invoke fear into their supporters who are currently in an abusive domestic relationship and are the ones taking the hits.

I’m reading up on the 1844-1900 Nietzche or was there another one ?








This isn’t new. It’s always been this way. He’s just finally saying the quiet part out loud.

The FCC has always asserted governance over the airwaves on the basis that only so many frequencies are available so regulations are required to ensure their limited availability goes toward the advancement of the public good.

Because the airwaves are freely available to anyone with an antenna, one of the ways the FCC “ensures the advancement of the public good” is regulating what’s allowed to be shown and said on television under the basis that children are watching at home.

The FCC has a long and varied history of enforcing censorship on the airwaves. It used to be that women’s periods couldn’t be mentioned, it used to be that actors had to keep one foot on the floor so they didn’t show “a man and woman in bed together.”

Violators have always been subject to fines and revocation of their license. Corrective action has always been at the sole discretion of the FCC. The only thing that’s changed is how openly aggressive the FCC has been wielding their authority.

Historically, the FCC has always been regarded as having too much power, but they’ve always managed to avoid regulation by wielding it responsibly and conservatively and generally not pissing off the public to much. The current administration is highlighting why this has been a mistake.

It hasn’t always been this way. They haven’t always been able to say the quiet part out loud. In the past, if that had happened, they would’ve been punished for it and an example made of them, there would be public outcry and eventually some semblance of consequences. Nothing else substantial may have changed, they might have continued the exact same behaviors afterwards, but they stayed quiet and they were at least kept in check by the systems above them. This prevented others from seeing open corruption being tolerated and created a chilling effect on open corruption to put limits on it. It’s not ideal: Keeping it quiet obviously doesn’t eliminate it, but it does help control it.

Being able to say the quiet part out loud now is an escalation, and it will lead to even more severe escalations as more and more of the corruption and rot moves into the open. This is not a good sign and is not simply a sign of an organization or administration being too conservative and having too much power, this is not just being behind the times of social progress, this is something far beyond that, and it will continue to escalate.



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“Blowback” basically means no consequences.

especially when it has no teeth like this



Although the Trump FCC says the proceeding is over ABC’s potential violation of anti-discrimination rules with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, it was statements by Jimmy Kimmel that seemed to spur Carr into action on Trump’s behalf. In September 2025, Carr threatened to revoke ABC station licenses for “news distortion” if they continued airing Kimmel’s show. In April of this year, Carr ordered the highly unusual ABC license review one day after Trump and the first lady called for Kimmel to be fired over a joke in which he said Melania Trump looked like an “expectant widow.”

As per the Streisand effect, let’s have a moment of silence to honor the expectant widow of Pedophile Trump.


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