ABC Accuses Trump’s FCC of Trying to Censor the Whole Media Industry

ABC accused the Federal Communications Commission Thursday of “attempted censorship” and a clear “retaliation” effort meant to send a message to every other media company in the country.

“The Administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs,” ABC wrote in a fiery 119-page regulatory filing to the agency.

The filing is the latest in a legal battle between the television network and the FCC, which abruptly moved to review the licenses of eight ABC-owned television stations in April. The agency initially claimed that the review was related to ABC’s diversity and inclusion hiring policies, though it came shortly after Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about President Trump that Trump didn’t like. The federal government had never before demanded such a vast review of a major television network’s licenses.

ABC’s latest filing called out FCC Chair Brendan Carr by name and made clear that this fight isn’t just about the Disney-owned network: “The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price.”

“Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers,” the filing continued. “The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”

Carr has rejected accusations of censorship, despite the sledgehammer he’s taken to the free press since the start of Trump’s second term.

“Look at the results so far,” Carr bragged at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March. “PBS, defunded. NPR, defunded. Joy Reid, gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd, gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson, gone. Stephen Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership, as well.”

Still, despite it all, Carr claims he doesn’t view the FCC as “the speech police.”

Luckily, as ABC outlined in its filing, the network has received a massive outpouring of support from viewers, current and former FCC officials, advocacy groups, and political leaders on both sides of the aisle—including warnings from conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Senator Ted Cruz. The FCC’s website has been buried in public comments supporting ABC and offering passionate defenses of the First Amendment and local television.

This latest filing may not change Carr’s approach, but it could rally the rest of the industry—and the public—before the FCC makes its next move.

The White House formally announced a program to have veterans skip certain certifications to get commercial drivers’ licenses and become truck drivers. 

The program is called “Freedom Haulers” and promises to cover training costs and offer signing bonuses to veterans who sign up. In a post on X Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy claimed that trucking jobs paid up to six figures, leading with “🚨ILLEGALS OUT, VETERANS IN🚨” and a flashy patriotic video. 

Veterans who recently drove large military vehicles as part of their duties can skip the normally required skills test for a commercial driver’s license. Others who are still on active duty can attend a commercial driving school for their final six months of service. The GI Bill will also fully cover commercial driver’s license training, and will even pay for a housing allowance during this training in some cases. 

Trump spoke about the plan two weeks ago at a Pennsylvania rally, railing against “illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can’t read signs, a lot of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things.”

About 20 percent of all truck drivers in the U.S. are immigrants, according to the AP, but only 5 percent, or 200,000, have what are called non-domiciled licenses, which are issued by states to people who are legally authorized to work in the U.S. but do not have a permanent legal residence or domicile in that state.

Roughly 200,000 immigrants had their commercial licenses revoked in March, preventing them from driving semi-trucks, buses, and tractor-trailers despite passing tests and meeting the legal requirements to drive. Immigrant groups believe that many truck drivers are being targeted because of their ethnic backgrounds, such as Sikhs, who often wear turbans as part of their faith and make up a large portion of the trucking industry. 

Meanwhile, operating a military vehicle is different from operating a commercial vehicle, and some veterans may breeze to a CDL job without having the necessary skills, posing a danger on the road.  

MAGA Senate candidate Mike Collins fled his own press conference Thursday when faced with a question about his son-in-law’s social media posts promoting white nationalism.

During the outdoor event, Collins was asked to respond to reports that David Alan Scheer II, his son-in-law, has shared Nazi and antisemitic material online, including posts from the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front.

“You know, we’ve fully addressed that,” Collins said. “But Jon Ossoff refuses to disavow these Democrat socialist movements in our country—as a matter of fact he embraces them.”

Collins launched into a rant about all the things he felt Ossoff needed to answer for, without holding himself to the same standard. The Republican representative indicated he would take another question, but then abruptly excused himself.

“Listen, thank you. I appreciate y’all’s time. I appreciate you coming out this morning. Thank you very much,” Collins said, before he quickly departed.

Although Collins claims to have “fully addressed” his son-in-law’s actions, his prior response was far from a condemnation. “Nobody speaks for me, and I don’t speak for anybody else,” Collins told reporters last week. He also removed a photograph featuring Scheer from his campaign’s website.

Speaking of Collins’s website, the candidate found himself in hot water earlier this year after he published fake endorsements from several local officials.

President Trump doesn’t want to put in writing that his slush fund is dead, and he’s prepared to sacrifice acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for it.

After the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed its scheduled vote on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination for attorney general Thursday morning, due to Republican opposition, the president made it clear that he cares a whole lot more about his $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” than Blanche’s future.

“Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”

The vote was postponed thanks to Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who have refused to vote “yes” on Blanche’s nomination over concerns about the status of Trump’s settlement with the IRS, which gave an IRS audit immunity deal to Trump and his family and created the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for aggrieved Trump allies who feel that they’ve been attacked for supporting the president. Although Blanche testified publicly that the fund is not “moving forward,” staffers in the Justice Department and White House continued to promise Trump allies some form of payment after the fact.

Cornyn has repeatedly requested written confirmation from the Justice Department that the fund is dead. Without a statement in writing—as well as limits on Trump’s IRS audit immunity deal—he and Tillis are sticking with “no.”

But rather than kill the fund for good, Trump says he’ll wait them out. Blanche can be replaced. The slush fund, apparently, cannot.

“I thought we were pretty close to landing the plane last night, but this morning there’s been some more complications,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday. “I think if this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out. But apparently he’s getting some pushback from higher ups at the White House. I don’t know who, but this doesn’t need to be this hard.”

“We want to make sure that it remains dead, and that the president isn’t given any immunity from future audits that the ordinary taxpayer would not enjoy,” Cornyn clarified to CBS News.

Although both Cornyn and Tillis are set to leave office in January, their outspoken pushback serves as further evidence of the growing cracks in Trump’s grip on congressional Republicans.

“POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” Cornyn posted after Trump moved to sideline Blanche.

The Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, is pulling out of future World Cups over FIFA’s plan to sell shares to the highest bidder, including members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle.

UEFA announced Thursday that the organization of 55 national associations “will not participate in FIFA competitions” going forward. The decision comes shortly after FIFA President Gianni Infantino threatened to cut funding from teams that don’t get behind his moneymaking scheme.

“We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors,” the statement said.

Last week, FIFA announced the creation of the FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, which is expected to raise up to $4.2 million in the next year by “carefully selecting long-term investors who will purchase minority, non-controlling interests in FFE.”

Critics immediately decried the decision to sell stakes in the World Cup, which is managed by FIFA, a nonprofit organization. The move could potentially earn Infantino tens of millions of dollars.

“This model has no place in the world of football,” UEFA said in its statement. The group said it would continue to boycott so long as Infantino’s proposal “stayed alive.”

Shortly after UEFA’s decision, the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football released a statement saying its 41 members had also rejected FIFA’s proposal.

CONCACAF membership had “expressed deep concerns about the lack of due process surrounding the proposal, the artificially short deadline imposed, and the absence of any review or approval by the relevant FIFA governance bodies,” the statement said.

“In addition, the need for private equity investment to fund new and existing FIFA Forward programs following the most profitable FIFA World Cup in history was questioned.”

Infantino reportedly held investor discussions with members of the Trump administration. The move came amid mounting concerns over Infantino’s relationship with Trump, after the U.S. president openly bullied FIFA into lifting a red card against a player on the U.S. men’s soccer team.

In addition, FIFA reportedly stated that once the approval was granted, the investor group would be led by Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared who is under investigation for alleged corruption.

This story has been updated.