ICE Opportunism Expands To Passengers On Domestic Flights
from the raiding-parties-everywhere dept
Things used to be normal. We used to be doing alright here in the United States, limiting ourselves to catching people at the borders or picking up migrants with criminal charges or convictions with detainers at local jails.
Now, it’s just a constant swarm all day, every day. “Worst of the worst” has long been abandoned as a pretense. Under Trump, it’s “anyone of anyone,” so long as they fit the profile: not white from whatever countries Trump claims are “shitholes,” especially if they speak with an accent.
No more targeting. No more plugging holes in the migration dyke with border-focused deterrents. These days, its masked officers storming hardware store parking lots to grab day laborers, hanging around immigration courts to pick off people just trying to follow the naturalization process, leveraging surveillance tech and government data to find people with un-American surnames, and generally terrorizing entire neighborhoods — if not entire cities — just to satiate this administration’s bigoted bloodlust.
Now, we’re doing this, which is yet another thing we’ve never done before because there was never a reason to do it, much less the will or the desire.
The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with immigration lawyers — a tactic that opens up a vast new pool of people for deportation.
Immigration agents in plain clothes have whisked away targets at check-in counters and arrival gates, with enforcement actions in at least 15 airports in recent weeks. Some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters.
The obvious question is “why?” Why do we need to do this? Why are we ambushing people boarding or disembarking from planes over something as menial as an expired visa? Is this going to make America greater or safer? Or is it just going to cement our reputation as a nation of bigots who were just waiting for a white nationalist-leaning blowhard to finally start massaging our repressed id?
Whatever it is, it’s fucking ugly. And it doesn’t look like America. It looks like some “lets round up the Jews” action from Nazi Germany, except that Trump’s “Jews” are people who come from any country that doesn’t have a Caucasian majority.
And it’s even worse than jumping travelers at the gates. In some cases, ICE officers — greatly enabled by new TSA data sharing provisions — are attempting to board planes to arrest people.
On July 25, a Southwest agent prevented ICE from boarding a flight from Dallas to Orlando, according to documents reviewed by the journal. The gate agent reportedly wouldn’t allow officers to board without a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
Following the incident, Southwest said in a statement that it “has longstanding policies in place to ensure appropriate legal documentation is presented by law enforcement personnel before any information about customers is shared.”
The journal also reported that an unnamed airline at a southern airport recently declined to assist ICE in accessing a jet bridge so they could arrest a man traveling with his family.
The DHS has defended its actions. And by “defended,” I mean has issued yet another “we’re right and everyone else is wrong” bit of pissiness.
“This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,” a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department said in a statement.
I’m sure another equally bitter statement will greet “Welcome to the Resistance… Southwest Airlines?” activity. While the federal government is free to move about airports, it is not free to board private property (the planes themselves) without the proper paperwork. Good to know Southwest staffers can tell the difference between an “administrative warrant” (which is not a “warrant” in the generally accepted definition of the term) and a real, judicially authorized warrant. When even front line employees are willing to push back, you know the administration has pushed too far.
On the other hand, this is same airline:
In one widely circulated video, Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old from Ecuador, was detained by plainclothes officers as she boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland, Calif., on July 20. She had been spending the weekend with the family for whom she had worked as an au pair, according to the family.
When Ms. Morales Rojas scanned her boarding pass, an alarm sounded and the gate agent asked her to wait. Moments later, two plainclothes agents intercepted her in the jetway.
However it all shakes out, it reeks of desperation. The administration can’t keep its arrest numbers up which means immigration agencies are becoming increasingly opportunistic. None of this has anything to do with public safety, crime reduction, or just enforcing the rules. It’s a war on migrants being waged on as many fronts as the DHS can at all times. It’s the government padding its stats while satiating the xenophobes that make up most of its party, as well as its voting base.
It all looks a whole lot like things this country swore it would never do (or never do again). It’s rounding up and caging undesirables who will also be blamed for any or all societal ills. And it’s not that far removed from pursuing escaped slaves who went north in hopes of actually partaking in the American dream.
Filed Under: bigotry, cbp, dhs, ice, markwayne mullin, mass deportation, trump administration
Companies: southwest airlines
Libraries Beg Brendan Carr To Back Off Plan To Make U.S. Broadband Shittier, More Expensive
from the protecting-kids-by-hurting-kids dept
Back in June, Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr announced he’d be reviewing the FCC E-Rate program with an eye on “reforms.” Generally, when Brendan Carr promises “reforms,” usually what he means is either “I’m going to destroy this program,” or “I’m going to illegally make changes to this congressionally-mandated program that ensures telecom giants like AT&T get more money with less accountability.”
E-Rate is a historically bipartisan and uncontroversial program that helps bring affordable broadband to rural libraries, schools, and communities. While it has had some issues with fraud at times (almost always at the hands of private companies), the program generally does a lot of good in bringing affordable internet access into communities neglected by telecom monopolies.
Without it, or under a pared down version, schools and rural schoolkids would be more inclined to have to rely on what regional telecom monopolies deem appropriate, which is usually either over-priced broadband, or nothing at all.
Carr’s June announcement proclaimed he was “taking a look” at the program because he’s worried about kids having too much “screen time”:
“Over the last several years—and especially during COVID—many schools dramatically increased screen time for kids, with many students now swiping for hours every day. Research has now been pouring in that America’s experiment with heightened screen time in schools may be related to the negative educational outcomes we are now seeing in classrooms across the country—from declining academic performance to diminished reading comprehension skills.”
That’s quite the act of misdirection. For one, the FCC doesn’t regulate “screen time,” so you’ve once again got Carr wandering into areas he should have no say in. Which is weird for a guy who has endlessly complained of “government overreach” every single time previous FCCs have tried to bolster broadband telecom consumer protection (see: net neutrality) or prevent harmful media consolidation.
E-Rate was also mandated by Congress. Much like other recent actions (like Carr’s illegal dismantling of media consolidation limits), Carr is pretending he’s only making modest tweaks to existing systems, so he can pretend he’s not openly breaking the law.
Carr’s FCC is also pretending to be seriously fielding comments on his upcoming E-Rate rule changes. Librarian organizations this week filed their input defending E-Rate, correctly noting that Carr’s obsession with “screen time” is a straw man designed to misdirect attention from the potential harm of gutting a useful subsidy program.
From the Education and Libraries Networks Coalition (EdLiNC):
“E-Rate was established by Congress for a specific purpose – to ensure affordable connectivity for schools and libraries, and that mission must remain the focus of this proceeding. For nearly three decades, E-Rate has been successful in connecting students, educators, and library patrons in rural, suburban, and urban communities alike.
Questions about curriculum, instructional practice, or student behavior should not be used to undermine a proven program that helps schools and libraries maintain the networks modern education depends on.“
This sort of stuff doesn’t really get press attention, but it matters all the same.
The E-Rate program spends about $3 billion a year driving affordable broadband into parts of the country left high-and-dry by the regional telecom monopolies Carr refuses to regulate. While there is sometimes fraud in programs like this, the vast majority of the time it’s caused by private companies that Carr, again, refuses to competently regulate and is afraid to stand up to.
Were you seriously interested in reforming these programs, you’d start doing audits of major companies like AT&T, which have a long history of defrauding these and other initiatives. Instead, Carr’s trying to shift the focus to the idea that taxpayers are funding internet access that’s delivering “harmful content” to kids, which, if you’ve tracked Brendan Carr’s censorial extremism, should be a huge red flag.
I suspect there are several motivations here. One being big telecoms like AT&T that want E-rate revamped in a way that financially benefits them. The other being Carr and the right wing extremist mission to extend their censorship and ideological dominance into every aspect of American life, starting with the classroom, where they’re compelled to root out any and all criticism of right wing ideology.
This is how he framed his new plan for E-Rate reforms on a recent appearance on Fox News:
“There are school districts that have read our law as only requiring them to put Internet safety procedures in place on the devices that the school owns. If you bring your own device to a network supported by this program, you don’t necessarily have any filters on where you can go. Kids are ultimately finding pornography, and that’s a problem.”
To be clear, schools already employ filtering systems. Some work, some don’t. The nature of these systems is such that they not only tend to over-filter content, but they’re generally easy to bypass.
Still, it’s not the FCC’s job to determine what content is acceptable, or even to manage kid “screen time” on personally-owned devices. That’s not only an unworkable game of whack-a-mole that would waste a lot of taxpayer money, that’s the precise sort of weird overreach Carr (and Republicans, and “free market” Libertarians) have whined about for as long as I’ve been alive.
But as with so much Republican “policy,” the pretense that they’re protecting kids helps obscure the fact they’re actively hurting them. In this case by making already shaky U.S. broadband even more expensive and spotty in long-neglected rural, minority, and lower-income areas.
Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, e-rate, fcc, high speed internet, libraries, students, telecom
Buc-ee’s Billboard Near Beaver’s Mini Mart Vandalized As Corporation Gaslights Mayor
from the buc-off dept
This Buc-ee’s vs. the Beaver’s Mini-Mart is just not going to go away. While Buc-ee’s has made quite the name for itself as a trademark bully over the past several years, it may have finally run into a combination that is more than the corporation can handle. Between John Oliver’s continued coverage of this lawsuit, in which he is clearly on the side of the mini-mart and in which he is attempting to goad Buc-ee’s into a lawsuit, combined with the community of Beavercreek which isn’t having this shit, the PR is starting to look really bad here.
As a result, the locals in Beavercreek are getting ornery. You can see blurry proof of that in a picture of what vandals apparently did to a Buc-ee’s billboard nearby.
A Buc-ee’s highway advertisement along state Route 4 in Riverside, Ohio, was vandalized amid a controversial lawsuit between the popular chain and a small mini-mart in Beavercreek, Ohio.
My friends in the media can do their half-assed blurring all they want, but someone turned “Buc-ee’s” into “Fuc-ee’s” and then added some otherwise indecipherable graffiti. Now, I’m not here to encourage anyone to participate in vandalism, or break any other law for that matter. But actions like this certainly do give you a sense of just how pissed off the locals are at Buc-ee’s bullying one of its local businesses. This has become a national story and a local one, meaning that the breadth of anger at the company is both intimate and wide-spread.
And I have very little time for the obvious gaslighting that Buc-ee’s is attempting to pull off as a result. Huber Heights is the Ohio town in which Buc-ee’s opened up its first Ohio location and CEO Arch Aplin apparently attempted to enlist the town’s mayor to try to placate the locals.
In a public Facebook post published Aug. 7, Huber Heights Mayor Jeff Gore wrote that there were “two sides to every story” and that he had been in contact with Buc-ee’s CEO Arch Aplin.
Gore wrote that Vik Boparai had filed for the trade name “Beavers Mini Mart” and that the name was in conflict with a federal trademark owned by Buc-ee’s. He said Aplin informed him that Boparai had filed for a federal trademark for “Beavermart,” which “would have given him access to set up Beavermarts all across the country.” Gore noted that the filing was made a “few months after” Buc-ee’s officials announced a location in the Dayton area.
“Mr. Aplin told me directly that Buc-ee’s had no issues with Beavermart using the Beaver logo in Beavercreek. He understood and said that makes sense. What Buc-ee’s did not want was a series of Beavermarts popping up across the state or regionally or eventually nationally that violated their trademark,” the post reads in part.
Two things on this. First, whether two trademarks are in conflict is not for any mayor, nor even one of the trademark holders to determine on their own. That is for the USPTO and the court system to decide, should it get that far. Gore’s commentary here on that is pointless and meaningless.
As for Aplin’s comments about having no issues with the current location’s name or signage, his own fucking lawsuit says otherwise. I’ve embedded the suit below so you can read it for yourself. The complaint specifically calls out the current signage, the cartoon beaver mascot, the current color scheme of its branding, and even the expression of said beaver mascot and states that this is all trademark infringement in its current form. In fact, it asks for relief specifically in the form of an injunction against the mini-mart for continued use of that branding as it currently exists and then asks for a written report from the mini-mart confirming under oath that it has complied.
This is gaslighting. Aplin is lying about what his own lawsuit is demanding. And if there is any one rule in crisis PR above all else, it’s simply: don’t lie. Because that makes the PR even worse as a result, which is exactly what has now happened.
Filed Under: arch aplin, beavers, jeff gore, ohio, trademark, trademark bullies
Companies: beaver's mini mart, buc-ee's
An Update On How I Use AI To Help With Techdirt (It’s Still Not Writing Articles)
from the oh-no-techdirt's-gone-slop dept
Over in our Insider Chat, someone recently pointed out a tiered “REAL Rating” five-tier scale designed to replace the fairly blunt and misleading question of “did you use AI on that?” with something a bit more nuanced. As someone who believes the discussion about AI could use a lot more nuance, I’m all for the premise. I ran my own usage through their wizard and came out with a “one” — the tier for automation. While this is technically accurate, it also tells you very little about how I actually use AI.
Which is why I thought it made sense to revisit the public discussion regarding my AI usage.
But going through that thought process reminded me that it’s been a little while since I last spoke about how I’m using these tools here, and given that some readers want more transparency, I thought I’d update you on the latest. I’ve written about it at length a few times before, starting in April of 2024, when I described how I used a tool called Lex to help me edit articles. The key was always that I’d write the articles myself, and then I had trained Lex on my own writing style to ask it how it might improve the article. Sometimes it would give good advice that would make me rewrite, and sometimes… it would give bad advice that I would skip or ignore. But all in all it was a useful forcing function.
In June of 2025, I wrote about how I had built a personal task management tool, using a vibe coding tool called Lovable, which I was using to keep track of various tasks, including what I wanted to write about each day. At the beginning of this year, mostly out of curiosity, I explored whether or not you could, with a ton of scaffolding and detailed instructions and effort, get AI tools to write a passable Techdirt article, and concluded no, you absolutely could not. Every attempt was still a weak facsimile of a Techdirt article with iffy language and clichéd phrases.
In the time since then I’ve run that test for myself a few times, and even as the models have improved, in my experience, my initial analysis stands. It cannot write Techdirt-style articles well, and even if I wanted to use it that way, the rewriting, changing, and fact-checking would take way more time than just… writing it myself. So, yes, I continue to write my own articles.
What’s changed in the last couple of years is that I’ve moved away from Lex (which has not received many updates in the past year or so as the team behind it appears to have moved on to other projects), and I ended up building my own editing tool, which is built directly into the task management tool I mentioned last year (which is now self-hosted and entirely within my control). The benefit now is that I can turn any task immediately into a writing project with a single click:
That was the task that turned into this article about Judge Andrew Oldham’s bizarrely out of context quote on mail-in ballots. From there I can go into the writing project which has a bunch of useful features. Within each writing project I can add sources, which turn out to be really useful during edits. I can upload PDFs, URLs, or just add text myself (and actually, as I was finishing up this article, I had it build a new feature that will automatically add all the sources I link to in a story, so the editor checks them even if I don’t add them manually, which is another example of realizing a potentially useful feature and having it created on the spot). I can also have the tool go out and research if there are other sources I should add, though I haven’t yet found that to be that useful as compared to just searching myself.
The tool is specifically trained on my writing, and has a detailed style guide regarding my voice and style, as well as a detailed system prompt of what I am looking for in editorial help vs. what I’m not looking for (e.g., yes, challenge my assumptions and facts, but no do not think you need to rewrite what I’ve written).
After I’ve written the full piece, there’s a button to open up the “AI review” tool (which lets me use any underlying LLM engine I choose, including local ones), which will give me a critical review and make general suggestions about what works and what doesn’t. I do switch up models from time to time to see how they work, but generally will default to either Claude Opus 5 or Sonnet 5. I am also using Gemma 4 locally and am increasingly trying to use that. It’s good on straightforward pieces, but less so once the argument gets more complicated. I’m hopeful that the next generation of local models will be more reliable.
For example here’s part of the initial review of my first draft on the Oldham ruling:
The only specific line edits tend to be suggestions on typos or confusing sections, such as here where it suggested a way to clean up and tighten a poorly drafted sentence in my initial draft:
You can also see that “Discuss” button in there, which I will frequently use to debate or discuss certain suggested edits if I think the suggestions miss the mark or are unnecessary. Or I’ll just reject them if I totally disagree.
Usually at that point I’ll do a more thorough rewrite based on my own reread of the article with an eye towards what it called out as problematic. For what it’s worth, this is where the inclusion of original sources is often quite helpful, because the AI will press me on things if its review felt that I’m not being completely fair and honest regarding the source material. Sometimes it calls me out for missing stuff and suggest I dig deeper (it’s not always correct, but often is, and pushes me to reread things even more carefully). Here’s one example, where the AI editor tool told me to go back and review the original documents more closely:
It also catches me when I start rambling, which often happens on a first draft when I’m trying to figure out the best way to nail down a certain point:
Again, I don’t always follow its suggestions, but it does make me revisit and look at rewriting sections to make them clearer and tighter.
Separately, I have a built in set of “sub-agents” that will check certain things, including suggesting better headlines (this is very hit or miss, but usually at least helps me think of something better than either my initial attempt or its suggestions) and one sub-agent whose whole job is to poke holes in the arguments in the piece (this one is fun, but annoying, as it’s basically trolling myself, but in a way that helps me make the arguments stronger):
You may notice that the features I appreciate the most here are the ones that in some sense make my life harder, by telling me to work harder, check my sources, and question my arguments. Considering how often we hear about the problem with these tools being how much smoke they blow up the asses of users, it’s certainly possible to set them up to deliberately challenge and provoke you. The parts I find most useful are the parts built to disagree, because it helps make my work stronger by stress testing it before it goes out in the world.
Anyway, once the piece is then written and edited, it’s a two-click process to import the final version into Techdirt’s WordPress system and hand it off to someone else on the team for a human review before it goes into the queue to get posted.
Compared to how I described the process two years ago, the actual writing process hasn’t changed — which is kind of the whole point. The human part (the thing that is central to what I do) doesn’t get automated away. What’s changed is the structure around it. I have total control over the tool now, it’s better trained and designed to help me write better.
There are a few other more experimental features, including one where after I’ve added all my sources to the writing project, I’ll also write a short paragraph (or two or three) about my focus on the article, and the system will ask me some questions based on the sources and how I want to frame the article. This is sometimes useful in testing some of my assumptions before diving into the writing. This has been most helpful when I’m a bit undecided on what the central backbone of a piece really should be. In the past I would just start writing, realize I went down the wrong path, and then start again. Using the “editorial interview” feature has helped me a few times to think deeper about which way I want to take the article before I get to the actual writing.
I also built in a tool to also write a potential outline of the article based on that “interview,” but I’ve only tried to use that a couple times, and neither time did I follow the outline, so I’ll likely just get rid of that feature. Once again, the benefit of having total control over the tool. For all the (reasonable! understandable!) complaints of big tech companies “shoving AI into everything,” with this tool, I decide what goes where, and if something doesn’t work, I can just remove it.
I’ve also built in a bunch of other features that are simply useful for organizing my day and focus. The same tool creates a morning and afternoon briefing based on my tasks, my email, my calendar, and a growing knowledge base about me and my work. It also texts me news stories it finds that might be interesting for Techdirt (based on search criteria I have provided), which I can turn into tasks/writing projects with one response. Just last week I received my Pebble Index 01 ring that I had mentioned last year, and one of the first things I did with it is hack it so that I can speak into it to create tasks. It can also research things and leave the notes in the task tool (and text me back quick facts if I need them).
In short, as I’ve suggested repeatedly, the power of AI tools is in empowering individuals to be able to accomplish what they want to do, rather than replacing humans or doing the fundamental work. Building very personalized tools that I can constantly update and tweak to meet my needs has made me less and less interested in using software that other people built for me. It’s shockingly empowering to look at a feature that doesn’t quite work the way you want, and to be able to just tell your tools “hey, make this work differently” and have it work properly.
As I mentioned up top, using the wizard on that REAL Ratings site, I came out with a score of “one,” noting that I used AI for automation. You could argue that it maybe should be somewhere between one and two, depending on how much you consider the “brainstorming” part of what the editor feature is doing. But I’d argue this is a long way from the assumption many have of “if you use AI you’re using it for slop.”
Either way, I’m still not writing articles with these tools, and I don’t plan to start. The assumption that any use of AI means you’ve handed your brain over to it misses the part I actually find interesting: building your own tools, on your own terms, and telling them what to do rather than the other way around.
Filed Under: ai, editing, editorial review, llms, writing
Companies: techdirt
FOIA Documents Show Epstein Files Had Flag List Which Included The Term ‘POTUS’
from the we-don't-need-to-talk-about-the-sex-offender-in-chief dept
MAGA, the GOP, and the Trump administration don’t really care about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking. The MAGA GOP made a lot of noise during Biden’s single term because they were sure the files would show a Pizzagate’s-worth of Democratic political figures engaged in the ritual abuse of underage girls.
Once Trump was elected in 2024, the furor died down. While the MAGA faithful were willing to take down their own just to put a few Dems’ heads on spikes, they were suddenly less audible once they realized any document dump would take down a few of their own. Even Donald Trump seemed to know this, which is he why he shifted his focus elsewhere.
It took a literal act of Congress to get the Epstein files released, despite Trump and other GOP figures having promised to put this at the top of the MAGA to-do list if they retook the White House. Trump engaged in multiple rounds of spin, hoping to make it look as though demanding the release of the files and refusing to release the files were both the same side of the MAGA coin.
Trump’s DOJ then reluctantly began complying with the law. Millions of records were withheld. Those that were released were riddled with redactions, forcing politicians on the other side of the political divide to demand more releases with fewer redactions. Meanwhile, a handful of leaks and unforced errors revealed the Trump DOJ was doing whatever it could to cover for Trump and anyone else Trump might want to have redacted from rolling Epstein File releases.
FOIA requests are incapable of expediting the full release of the Epstein Files. But they are capable of sniffing out the details of the Trump administration’s attempts to maintain control of the “this was mainly Dems” narrative even as it seeks to satiate the MAGA base that has been demanding access to these files for years.
This report for Bloomberg — written by “FOIA terrorist” Jason Leopold and Harry Wilson — not only details FBI Director Kash Patel and former DOJ deputy director Dan Bongino attempts to spin Trump’s refusal to release documents as demonstrative of his “full transparency” promises.
It also shows the DOJ’s pre-release review of the files had President Trump in mind the entire time. While pretending to be engaging in radical levels of transparency and complying with both the letter and the spirit of law, the DOJ was actually flagging anything that might include Trump for the apparent reason of keeping these files out of the public’s hands.
In addition to the discussions about Ferguson and Hervey, the documents contain other noteworthy details, including a spreadsheet dated March 25, 2025 and titled “DOJ Document Flag List.” The first page, labeled “FLAGGED Items List, per case – per DOJ guidance,” includes a case number associated with the FBI’s 2006 investigation of Epstein by its Miami field office.
[…]
There are 16 entries on the list where the reason for the flag was simply marked “POTUS.” Those items include magazine and newspaper articles, message pads, phone message books and one unidentified record.
The report notes that some of these flagged files have since been released. But others have not and this FOIA release by the DOJ perhaps points to why they have not been. The DOJ could have cleared everything up with an explanation, but of course it didn’t, because why would it.
DOJ referred a request for comment on the “Flag List” to the FBI, which declined to comment.
Assuming every “no comment” is an admission of guilt is as fatuous as assuming everyone who pleads the Fifth is guilty of whatever they’ve been accused of. We won’t be doing that here. But it is strange that agencies that treat every request for comment as an opportunity to engage in attacks on journalists and/or personal attacks on the person making the request would have absolutely nothing to say here. Read into that what you will.
Filed Under: doj, donald trump, epstein files, faux transparency, foia, jason leopold, jeffrey epstein, kash patel, opacity, todd blanche, trump administration
ABC Sues The FCC For Massive First Amendment Violations
from the suddenly:-backbone dept
After years of feckless capitulation, ABC is clearly developing something vaguely resembling a backbone.
The company has filed a new lawsuit against Brendan Carr and the FCC (pdf), (correctly) claiming that the agency has been engaged in a coordinated campaign of harassment that violates the First Amendment and tramples the company’s free speech rights. The lawsuit asks a federal court to put an end to the harassment campaign the company says poses an “existential threat” to its operations.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” ABC/Disney wrote in its complaint.
As we’ve explored at length, the Trump FCC has been engaged in multiple overlapping manufactured investigations into the company for a variety of “offenses,” ranging from comedian Jimmy Kimmel making fun of the president’s wife, to the morning talk show The View hosting politicians that Trumpism is clearly worried could erode Republican control of the Senate.
In the latter case, the Carr FCC appears to have colluded with right-wing local broadcast companies to falsely make it appear that a local ABC affiliate violated dated FCC “equal opportunity” rules by hosting Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico last February. Carr used this to try and justify an unprecedented early review of ABC’s eight local affiliate broadcast licenses.
Carr has also engaged in various other phony investigations into ABC, including false claims that the company had violated dated FCC “news distortion” rules simply by reporting on the presidency. Carr and Trump also leveraged additional threats to ABC’s broadcast licenses after the network refused to air a recent Trump speech live.
According to ABC’s complaint, the review of ABC’s broadcast licenses for upsetting the thin-skinned president poses an existential threat to the company either way the wind blows.
“At one extreme, the Commission may intentionally prolong the adjudicative process, miring ABC in years of costly litigation, with the threat of adverse action ever present and with every editorial judgment shadowed by the prospect of provoking the Administration into further retaliation,” ABC’s lawyers wrote.
“At another extreme, the Commission may use the hearing to deny license renewal or immediately revoke the Stations’ licenses, forcing Plaintiffs off the air entirely, as the president has repeatedly demanded,” the complaint said. “In either scenario, the Administration accomplishes its goal of eliminating a perceived media critic.”
Carr has a real dead dog of a case here, which would explain why ABC had been sending signals for weeks that they intend to fight this (as opposed to that time they paid the president a $15 million bribe to settle a baseless lawsuit). In addition to recent filings calling out Carr for manufacturing a fake legal scandal, ABC recently ran ad spots calling on its viewers to file complaints with the FCC.
Carr never really wanted a legal showdown with deep-pocketed Disney over this turd of a case. He was just hoping to make life so costly and annoying for ABC/Disney that the company not only fired Jimmy Kimmel, but thought twice about supporting any journalist, satirist, or comedian who dares challenge the administration.
As ABC correctly notes in its complaint that the harassment campaign serves as a very unsubtle threat not just to ABC — but to other media companies that platform voices (be they journalists or comedians) critical of the increasingly unpopular president.
“The consequences of the Administration’s campaign against free speech reach well beyond ABC,” the ABC/Disney complaint notes. “If the Administration gets its way, the message to every media company in the country will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government. In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free.”
As the president’s health, polling, and political power more quickly start to weaken, you’re beginning to see even traditionally feckless U.S. media giants start to show signs of courage (overseas media giants like the BBC are also starting to stand up for themselves). With any luck, that’s a harbinger of additional opposition to come.
Filed Under: brendan carr, censorship, comedy, fcc, first amendment, free speech, harassment, journalism, media
Companies: abc, disney
Daily Deal: Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock
from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
The Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock is meticulously engineered to reduce the cable clutter and streamline your daily routine. Featuring 2 dedicated wireless charging surfaces, you can power up your phone and AirPods easily. In addition, you can charge your Apple Watch with the built-in charger mount. Stylish and compact, the dock is perfect for your tabletop, desk, or nightstand and will effortlessly charge your everyday essentials in one convenient place. It’s on sale for $33.
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Filed Under: daily deal
MAGA GOP Keeps Taking Ownership Stakes In Private Companies, Then Warning You The Communists Are Coming
from the oh-no-communists dept
Words used to mean things. The MAGA GOP strategy lately seems to be pulling a page from the 1980s playbook (a Trump specialty) and declaring anyone they don’t like to be “communist.” The whole thing is laughable. Even if you disagree with some of the policy positions of far left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (and they do have some wacky, nonsensical things on their platform) they are (1) not even remotely close to communism and (2) have zero chance of actually being put into policy.
But, really, so much of it seems to be projection. Former UBS CEO and regular Fox News contributor Robert Wolf went on that network earlier this week, where the host clearly expected him to trash Mayor Mamdani’s proposals in NYC as communist. Wolf seemed to surprise the host by pointing out that the only real activity that seemed communistic was coming from the Trump White House.
“Let me reverse this a little. If Mayor Mamdani did the following: if he put price controls on products like pharmaceuticals, if he bailed out farmers, if he took private stakes in public companies, if he said to energy companies ‘you’re making too much money,’ if he proposed credit card caps, you would all go apoplectic, as would your viewers. That’s what President Trump’s doing. You could argue he’s the most powerful socialist in the country today.”
When the host finally comes back in, she laughs nervously and says “I’ll have to think about that, Robert,” before quickly changing the subject. Wolf gets in a final: “Well, all those five points I made, he did, the President, so…” The host then immediately… goes back to claiming that Democrats are going to destroy NYC with socialism, without ever addressing a single one of Wolf’s five points about Trump’s actual “socialistic” tendencies.
Meanwhile the left wingers over at [checks notes…] the Cato Institute, are pointing out that the federal government taking ownership stakes in private companies has become “routine”.
Since December, the CHIPS Research and Development (R&D) Office has announced 19 final or proposed company awards totaling up to $3.8 billion. They cover 18 companies because GlobalFoundries has two separate projects. Three agreements are final, while 16 remain letters of intent. All 19 have been publicly tied to equity.
Commerce’s current funding rules state that award recipients may be required to provide equity, warrants, intellectual property licenses, royalties, revenue sharing, or other instruments to generate a government return. The Biden administration, by contrast, used the same CHIPS R&D appropriation through separate competitions to award funds to private companies without taking ownership stakes. That makes the Trump administration’s insistence on equity a policy choice. The CHIPS Act itself authorizes Commerce to make grants, cooperative agreements, and “other transactions” but doesn’t expressly authorize the department to acquire stock.
Last time around, you’ll recall, Trump and MAGA also tried to make out Biden as a far left “communist.” Yet, given the chance he didn’t setup the apparatus for government ownership of private companies. Trump is now using the law passed under Biden’s guidance, which didn’t require ownership stakes, and using it that way. Which one is more of a communist?
We’ve talked a little about this before, with regards to Trump taking an equity stake in Intel and getting a golden share in US Steel. But in any other administration — especially a Democratic one — the business press and Republicans would be up in arms over so much government ownership of private companies.
This is the opposite of free market capitalism. It’s the government picking winners and losers, and then demanding a cut of the winnings for doing it. Even if the bets work out (and Trump keeps hyping up how successful the Intel investment has been), it’s still the sorta thing that is fundamentally against the principles of free markets. Hell, when the Obama administration merely guaranteed a loan to Solyndra — no equity, no ownership, no board seat, just a loan guarantee — it became an albatross Republicans hung around his neck for the better part of a decade.
Here, as Cato notes, Trump is normalizing the US government taking significant ownership stakes in private companies:
A year ago, these deals looked like a scattered series of one-off improvisations. Commerce now announces companies in batches and openly describes a “portfolio approach.” As I argued in a December 2025 essay, the administration has been assembling a pseudo-sovereign wealth fund under executive control, one deal at a time.
The latest six companies are not especially remarkable. What is remarkable is that federal corporate ownership is becoming routine under a Republican administration, while a Republican-controlled Congress is not just letting it happen but may even enshrine the practice in statute.
Republicans warning that communists are taking over the Democratic Party might first ask why their own administration is so eager to have the government acquire pieces of private companies.
And don’t sleep on the bit buried at the end of that second paragraph: the Republican-controlled Congress is trying to write more of this into the NDAA and hand the Pentagon its own equity portfolio with which to further nationalize and take equity stakes in more companies. A president doing weird one-off deals is one thing. But now we’re having Republicans literally build into the law the machinery of government ownership of private companies.
And they want you to believe the other guys are communists?
Every Republican currently warning that the communists are coming to take over American business might want to consider what they’re actually building here. They’re the ones picking winners and losers. They’re the ones normalizing the federal government taking ownership stakes in private companies. They’re the ones putting into law that this is to be expected.
So then, when Democrats eventually get back in power, it will have been the GOP that handed them the tools for government ownership of companies. It’s difficult to see how the GOP can whine about “communism” while building the fundamental infrastructure to enable the government to nationalize industry.
“Socialism” and “communism” are just bogeymen at this point, words deployed to scare people away from voting for Democrats — because the alternative is running on their actual record, we can all see how that’s going.
Filed Under: chips act, communism, dod, donald trump, equity stakes, gop, nationalization, ndaa, private companies
The Ellisons Again Threaten To Move CBS/Paramount Somewhere Shittier And Hotter If State Antitrust Lawsuit Isn’t Settled
from the taking-my-ball-and-going-home dept
Paramount bosses Larry and David Ellison aren’t having much fun in the wake of a 12 state antitrust lawsuit that risks derailing their $111 billion attempt to dominate what’s left of U.S. corporate media.
There’s been a certain creeping desperation apparent the last month or two; whether it’s the company’s top lawyer claiming that critics of the deal are somehow antisemitic, or the continued threats that the company will leave California if states don’t back off their lawsuit. The company has also been funding no limit of shitty editorials trying to pretend further consolidation is just what Hollywood needs.
This report (paywalled) from Puck indicates that David Ellison is laying the groundwork to move Paramount to Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, or another state if California AG Rob Bonta doesn’t settle the antitrust case. It’s kind of an irrelevant threat in some contexts given that most U.S. film and TV production was already leaving California, and may occur whether or not the deal is approved.
Unfortunately for Ellison and his nepobaby kid, the old “I’m taking my ball and going home” threat doesn’t appear to be working on Bonta, and the antitrust lawsuit case is slated to begin next March — much later than the Ellisons were hoping. From Vulture:
“It’s possible Ellison and his team were hoping all of this would scare Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, into backing down. But so far, Bonta doesn’t seem cowed and has accused Paramount of “blackmail” in trying to get its way. And outside observers seem to agree: “Paramount’s PR campaign appears to be strengthening Bonta’s hand rather than weakening it,” the analysts at Lightshed wrote in a note to clients this week.”
Amusingly, a bunch of Paramount employees told Business Insider they were mostly just happy the merger was paused so they could focus on their work:
“It’s nice to be able to focus on what we do without the impending disruption that a merger in 2026 would have brought,” a high-level advertising employee said of the merger delay.”
Ellison is also trying to apply pressure on more corporate-cozy Democrats to push Bonta to support a deal (see: California Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, and off-the record comments by Gavin Newsom), but that doesn’t seem to be working either. In part because the U.S. cultural animosity toward billionaires and shitty giant companies is bubbling over, but also because time is simply on Bonta’s side.
Starting in October the company has to start paying a $7 million per day ticking fee to investors, which clearly has the Ellisons panicking. Larry’s over-extension in AI, should a bubble pop, could also complicate the financing for what’s already a very debt-heavy deal.
And again, it’s more than possible that Ellison follows through and moves Paramount out of California regardless of whether the deal is or isn’t approved simply to grab some tax breaks, putting a stake in the heart of an already reeling Hollywood that’s steadily watched most film and TV production migrate overseas.
But at the same time this exact sort of consolidation is just foundationally deadly. These deals always (and 50 years of data is not subtle on this point) result in mass layoffs, higher prices, less competition, and broad enshittification as the remaining company struggles to manage debt.
So for the few remaining regulators we have concerned about the public interest and labor, the best tack continues to be to simply block this and any other “growth for growth’s sake” consolidation. Though Ellison’s megamerger is extra shitty for numerous additional reasons, ranging from the dodgy financial support from overseas autocrats, to the Bari Weiss extraction class agitprop degradation of whatever’s left of journalistic institutions like CBS and CNN.
It’s very possible that Larry Ellison likely loses either way this goes. Either the state wins its antitrust lawsuit derailing his dreams of media domination, or he succeeds with his acquisition and is overloaded with debt while a bizarre assortment of nepobabies and brunchlords (who appear to have no idea what they’re doing) struggle to remain relevant as traditional broadcast TV heads toward extinction.
Filed Under: agitprop, bari weiss, california, consolidation, david ellison, journalism, lerry ellison, media, mergers, rob bonta
Companies: paramount, warner bros.
Screwworm Infections Get Worse, Government Unleashing Drone Army For Surveillance
from the we're-screwed dept
A couple of months back, we discussed how screwworm infections had reappeared in Texas for the first time in decades. The foreign surveillance program designed to keep this from occurring in partnership with countries south of the border dissipated after losing funding as a result of the DOGE bros deciding it just wasn’t worth it. So, just as with measles, the country had to deal with a problem that we had once essentially eradicated with a good government program.
Screwworms are a very real and serious problem if left unchecked. Flies lay their eggs in livestock, mainly cattle, and it can kill the host in a matter of weeks. There are currently reports that hundreds of Mexican citizens have also been infected. And on the American side of the border, the problem is getting worse, not better. As a result, the government is diverting drones from patrolling the border to instead look for screwworm infections in livestock.
Since the first screwworm cases were detected in South Texas in June, the US Department of Agriculture and US Customs and Border Protection have been conducting “one of the most extensive animal-health surveillance operations in the country,” the USDA said on August 10 in social media posts on platforms like X and Facebook.
The effort involves at least 200 drones owned by the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. But the actual number in use “varies depending on availability and need,” a USDA spokesperson told Ars.
The USDA also described performing 1,226 drone flights that surveyed more than 23,000 animals as of August 11.
This all costs money. As does the reinvestment in facilities to release sterile flies to reduce their overall numbers in both Mexico and domestically. $21 million was spent in Mexico for this. Untold millions are being spent for a facility at Moore Air Base in Texas. $25 million is being spent right now to build another facility in Arizona. The grant that DOGE canceled funded animal disease surveillance programs generally, including that of screwworms, cost $170 million. We’ve likely already eclipsed the cost of keeping screwworms out of the country in the government’s response this outbreak.
And what it’s reappearance risks is nearly $2 billion in damage to the Texas economy.
$1.8 billion. That’s how much economic damage could be caused by another outbreak on the scale of the Texas incident in 1976, according to USDA estimates.
This is the very definition of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. It’s governmental malpractice and a failure of stewardship of taxpayer dollars and the economic health of America, which was the very fucking thing DOGE was pitched to have as its north star.
Our government is currently very broken, and brutally stupid. And we have yet another health issue, not to mention a food supply issue, as a result.
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