FCC Officials Got Some Very Nice Gifts From Paramount After Key Votes

After Paramount Skydance secured its multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media, it gave Federal Communications Commission officials who approved the deal some very pricey gifts. 

ProPublica reports that the company gave away expensive tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala worth thousands of dollars. Commissioner Olivia Trusty, whose vote was needed to approve the merger, went to the black-tie event with a guest, thanks to tickets gifted by Paramount worth $12,000. FCC Chair Brendan Carr got even more expensive seats for himself and his wife: private skybox tickets with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other company executives worth $125,000 each. 

These weren’t the first gifts from Paramount to FCC commissioners. Ethics disclosures show that the company has gifted tickets to the gala to seven of the 10 commissioners over the last decade, a glaring conflict of interest for government employees responsible for regulating broadcasting companies like Paramount. Carr has accepted Kennedy Center tickets at least seven times since his appointment in 2017, totaling $63,000, according to his financial statements.  

Ethics experts told ProPublica that gifts like these compromise the impartiality of the FCC, and that commissioners who accepted them shouldn’t take part in any decisions concerning Paramount’s merger. 

“There’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017, told ProPublica. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”

The FCC’s final seal of approval is one of the last barriers to Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros., which would put one company in charge of the networks CBS and CNN, the streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, and dozens of other media entities. Critics fear it could hand a powerful media conglomerate over to David and Larry Ellison, staunch supporters of President Trump who would likely force CNN to produce right-wing news coverage. 

Twelve Democratic-led states sued to stop the merger on Monday, and the Writers’ Guild, a union representing 18,000 media workers, also filed a lawsuit the next day against the deal in federal court, saying that it threatens the workers’ livelihoods. The British government signaled last month that it would investigate whether the new entity would hurt competition in the entertainment industry. 

Like many business deals in Trump’s second term, this one has a whiff of corruption. The FCC has been tainted and Trump openly supports a deal that could stifle critical news coverage of him, while giving his supporters control of a large swath of the entertainment industry. His own FCC appears to be in Paramount’s pocket. 

The ICE agent who shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine, Monday morning had been with the agency for just a few short months.

The agent who killed Joan Sebastián Guerrero, the father of a three-year-old daughter, has not yet been identified, but a senior administration official who spoke with The Atlantic Tuesday on the condition of anonymity said that the agent was hired this year. The agent had previously been employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs Police, and had worked within the fold of federal law enforcement since 2017.

It was the second such shooting within the span of a week. Last week, another ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo—a 52-year-old Mexican father of three and a local small-business owner—during a traffic stop in Houston. DHS officials have claimed that Salgado Araujo attempted to hit the federal agents with the front of his van, but eyewitnesses have directly contradicted that narrative. Bystanders who spoke with Representative Sylvia Garcia said that the agent fired his gun through the front passenger side window, and that federal agents were never in front of the vehicle.

The offending officer in the Houston shooting has not yet been publicly identified, either.

The two deaths prompted ICE to suspend all vehicle stops “effective immediately,” according to an email notice issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Liana Castano to ICE supervisors around the country. The directive came from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin with support from ICE acting Director David Venturella, reported The Atlantic.

There have now been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since Donald Trump returned to office and made mass deportations a cornerstone of his second-term agenda.

In January, federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good and, days later, ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Both were U.S. citizens. Their deaths sparked national outrage and further incensed the local pandemonium in Minneapolis that started weeks prior with Trump’s sudden decision to occupy the city with federal agents.

It’s been over six months since their deaths, but still virtually nothing has come of the federal investigation into the extrajudicial killings. Instead, Washington has reportedly utilized its heft to stow critical evidence—such as Good’s vehicle—away from the local and private detectives attempting to hold their killers accountable.

Bodycam footage obtained by the Associated Press shows Nevada Republican Governor Joe Lombardo using his name to successfully get out of a traffic ticket.

Lombardo was pulled over in May by a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer.

“Hello, how are you doing, sir?” the officer asked Lombardo in the video while approaching the passenger seat of Lombardo’s white truck, where his wife was sitting. “The reason I’m stopping you is for the—”

“I’m Joe Lombardo,” the governor replied plainly, putting his index finger in the air.

“I’m aware. [I’m stopping you for] the red light violation back there. Your right turn onto Giles here.”

“Come on, man,” Lombardo protested.

“You’re good to go,” the officer said, conceding. “Have a good day.”

The clip was met with immediate criticism of the special privilege that Lombardo was wielding. He received no citation, even though virtually any other Nevadan in that situation would have. Lombardo himself was a member of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department before entering politics.

“RULES FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME: Police body cam footage catches Joe Lombardo demanding special treatment after breaking the law,” the Nevada Democratic Party posted on X.

“Two months ago, Governor Lombardo and his wife were briefly pulled over on their way to the airport by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department over a question about whether Governor Lombardo had come to a complete stop while turning. Governor Lombardo spoke with the officer, fully complied with all instructions, and was promptly on his way,” a statement from Lombardo’s office read. “He remains grateful for the professionalism of the officer involved and for the service of law enforcement officers across Nevada.”

Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained for helping lead pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University and still faces deportation threats, is suing the Trump administration under the KKK Act of 1871. 

Khalil filed the lawsuit against senior administration officials in addition to right-wing Zionist organizations in federal court Tuesday, alleging that the administration conspired with these groups in a campaign of intimidation, arrests, and deportations against pro-Palestine activists, including himself. 

The 131-page lawsuit names multiple administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, and Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem. It also names the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar, among other right-wing and Zionist groups. 

“Collectively, the conspirators’ actions, motivated by their shared unlawful purpose and animus, sought to terrorize and make an example of Mr. Khalil and other noncitizen Palestinians or supporters of Palestinians in order to intimidate and silence the growing movement for Palestinian rights and political freedom, in a manner the KKK Act was designed to proscribe when enacted during Reconstruction,” the lawsuit states. 

Last year, Khalil filed a Freedom of Information Act request with multiple federal agencies to “document and expose the reported collaboration between federal officials and private, anti-Palestinian organizations who have identified, doxxed, and reported him and others for purposes of securing the deportation of student activists advocating on behalf of Palestinian human rights.”

Khalil’s attorneys alleged at the time that his March 2025 arrest and the threat of his deportation, as well as that of other pro-Palestine activists, was part of a pattern of government officials working with far-right and pro-Israel organizations to target them. The Revisionist Zionist organization Betar was openly recommending foreign students and teachers who protested against Israel for deportation to the Trump administration as early as January 2025, and would take credit if one of the people they recommended was arrested. 

Last year, a separate trial revealed that the pro-Israel Canary Mission, which anonymously doxxes critics of Israel online, handed Department of Homeland Security officials a list of foreign citizens in the U.S. who attended pro-Palestine protests. In some cases, the federal government followed up and arrested some of those people. The Heritage Foundation was named in the lawsuit because of Project Esther, an addendum to its Project 2025 manifesto, which outlined plans to target pro-Palestine noncitizens for deportation.  

Khalil, 31, is married to a U.S. citizen and is a legal U.S. permanent resident. He was arrested at his New York apartment in March 2025, spent 100 days in federal detention, missed the birth of his first child, and continues to be threatened with deportation. At a press conference Tuesday, he said, “This lawsuit is about accountability and justice.” 

“No matter where I am, I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to my missing the birth of my son and to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they’ve done,” Khalil said. 

Donald Trump has resorted to begging the Senate to confirm acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to officially run the Justice Department.

In a lengthy Truth Social post Tuesday, the president claimed that Blanche was responsible for the lowest murder rates in 125 years but that arrests for violent crime were simultaneously “UP 100” percent.

“This is what happens when you unleash LAW AND ORDER on our streets, instead of protecting vicious Criminal Thugs, and releasing dangerous Illegal Aliens into our Communities like the Dumocrats did for four disastrous years under Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump wrote.

The president also claimed that Blanche had protected an array of MAGA priorities, including railing against transgender people in women’s sports, protecting free speech, strengthening the nation’s election integrity, ending the “weaponization” of America’s justice system, and going “to all-out-WAR against Fraud like nobody in the History of the Department of Justice.”

But the main reason Trump wants Blanche for the job came at the end of the post. The president lauded Blanche—who prior to his stint in the Justice Department served as Trump’s personal attorney—for representing him throughout several criminal trials. Blanche defended Trump in his New York hush-money case, his classified documents case, the federal 2020 presidential election interference case, as well as the Fulton County, Georgia, RICO case.

As an apparent reward for Blanche’s ongoing loyalty, Trump gave him a plum position with the Justice Department. Since then, Blanche has utilized his office to enact Trump’s retribution campaign against his perceived enemies, attempted to force through the president’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund, worked to squash the Epstein files, and has even arrested local officials—such as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka—for attempting to conduct oversight of ICE’s regional detention facilities.

“He is a great lawyer, always very fair, and every Republican Senator should vote to CONFIRM Todd Blanche, ASAP!” Trump concluded.

But Blanche is nonetheless expected to have a long day ahead of him. The 51-year-old attorney will enter the Senate on Wednesday at 10 a.m. E.T. to begin his confirmation hearing, where several wayward and outbound Republicans—including Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis—have already indicated their intention to grill him. Both senators currently owe nothing to the Trump administration as they ride out the remainder of their respective terms.

Speaking with HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery Tuesday, Tillis said he’s “looking forward to it.”