Washington Beat

Two prominent Democratic U.S. Senators from New England on Monday will join in hosting a "spotlight forum" on what they call "the Trump Administration’s unprecedented efforts to use the FCC and government authority to chill First Amendment-protected speech and independent, fact-based news reporting."

The CPB, which is winding down its operations due to Congress voting to end federal funding after more than 50 years, is distributing the very last bit of funding left for stations in FY 2025.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr pushed back against accusations that the agency pressured Disney and ABC over Jimmy Kimmel’s absence from late-night television, while Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez accused the Commission of enabling “government intimidation,” underscoring growing partisan tension over broadcast regulation.

The indefinite suspension by the ABC Television Network of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" — officially concluding Tuesday (9/23) — is what the associate dean of academic affairs and Boston College Law School professor Daniel Lyons says "is part of a long, unfortunate FCC tradition of 'regulation by raised eyebrow,' where informal threats shape media behavior without formal action."

The Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, along with the leading Democrats on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, have called on the FCC's Inspector General to launch an investigation into Chairman Brendan Carr.

FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty offered a luncheon keynote on Thursday at the Free State Foundation, sharing why "we need to support today’s New Golden Age of America, where our communications networks are the most advanced, secure, and widely available in the world." She also touched on Jimmy Kimmel and Chairman Carr.

The lone Democrat-aligned FCC Commissioner on Thursday issued a follow-up statement in response to ABC’s decision to indefinitely suspend late-night talk host Jimmy Kimmel for making false statements about the alleged assassin of Turning Point USA founder and conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.

Constitutional litigator Daniel Suhr and his Chicago-based "CAR" are applauding FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for acting in the public interest by scolding ABC for comments made by Jimmy Kimmel on his now-suspended late-night talk show. CAR took it one step further by filing a complaint at the Commission against KABC-TV.

The FCC's Enforcement Bureau late Friday extended the deadline for stations to upload responses to their Commission-hosted online public inspection file in response to Equal Employment Opportunity audit letters for 2025.

The non-profit, non-partisan technology policy think tank is urging the nation's highest court to deny the Trump Administration's emergency application seeking to "deprive" the Federal Trade Commission of its independence.

A daytime-only 5kw radio station with 4 towers serving the Hispanic communities in Manchester and Nashua, N.H., and neighboring Lawrence and Haverhill, Mass., has been handed a Notice of Violation from the FCC for failing to identify its call letters and city of license to its listeners.

Wilner Baptiste has received a forfeiture order from the FCC nearly one year after receiving a proposed fine for operating an unauthorized radio station known as “M-One Radio Live” or “M-One Live Radio” in a city to the northwest of the City of New York.

She received her Juris Doctor from Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in May and graduated with a Political Science degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2022. Now, this former Alpha Phi marketer and recruiter and competitive ice skater will be serving as a Law Clerk for Brendan Carr.

The Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is reminding Emergency Alert System (EAS) participants of the requirement to submit their Form One identifying information in the EAS Test Reporting System (ETRS) no later than October 3.

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday voted not to restore government dollars directed toward secular non-commercial radio and TV stations in its FY 2026 appropriations bill. The President/CEO of America's Public Television Stations lamented the latest zero-sum motives of Republicans.