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FCC commissioner accuses CBS of ‘company capitulation’ in Colbert row
Good day and welcome to the US politics stay weblog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will likely be bringing you all the newest information strains over the subsequent few hours.
We begin with FCC commissioner Anna M Gomez criticizing CBS for what she referred to as “company capitulation within the face of this administration’s broader marketing campaign to censor and management speech”.
Gomez, the one Democrat on the FCC, was appointed by former president Joe Biden to the five-person board in 2023. Her feedback observe talkshow host Stephen Colbert accusing the Trump administration and CBS of censorship after he mentioned the community advised him to not air a tv interview with a Texas Democrat working for Senate.
Gomez mentioned in a press release:
That is one more troubling instance of company capitulation within the face of this administration’s broader marketing campaign to censor and management speech.
The FCC has no lawful authority to strain broadcasters for political functions or to create a local weather that chills free expression.
CBS is absolutely protected beneath the First Modification to find out what interviews it airs, which makes its resolution to yield to political strain all of the extra disappointing.
On his present, Colbert advised viewers of the Late Present that community legal professionals advised him he was additionally prohibited from speaking about their refusal to air his interview with James Talarico, a Texas state consultant searching for his get together’s nomination to problem the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn, for a Senate seat in November.
“He was presupposed to be right here, however we had been advised in no unsure phrases by our community’s legal professionals, who referred to as us instantly, that we couldn’t have him on the printed,” Colbert mentioned, stemming from a priority that it could set off a authorized requirement to supply equal entry to Talarico’s marketing campaign rivals.
Ultimately, the interview was as a substitute broadcast on Colbert’s YouTube web page, which is out of the remit of the Federal Communications Fee. CBS has disputed Colbert’s account, saying that the community solely “offered authorized steerage” that broadcasting the interview might violate the FCC directive.
Learn our full story right here:
In different developments:
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Democrats mourned the passing of Jesse Jackson, the civil rights chief whose 1988 marketing campaign for the Democratic nomination to be president paved the way in which for Barack Obama.
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Donald Trump’s former receptionist, Chamberlain Harris, 26, will likely be sworn in on Thursday as the latest member of the US Fee of Superb Arts, simply in time to evaluation his ballroom plans.
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Cops “surrounded and arrested a person who ran towards the U.S. Capitol with a loaded shotgun” on Tuesday, the USA Capitol Police mentioned.
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A US immigration decide has ended the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia College scholar who helped lead protests on the faculty over the Israeli assault on Gaza
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After Republican congressman Randy Superb posted an Islamophobic remark to social media over the weekend, the backlash from Democrats has been swift.
Key occasions
A reminder that my colleagues are masking the newest out of Europe, together with the information that Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned no settlement has been reached within the US-brokered conferences between Ukraine and Russia, in an try to finish the four-year battle within the area.
“We will see that some groundwork has been completed, however for now the positions differ, as a result of the negotiations weren’t simple,”the Zelenskyy advised reporters after the talks had completed
A reminder that Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, after which president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are representing the US on the talks in Geneva.
Donald Trump is in Washington immediately. We’ll hear from the president at 3pm ET, when he hosts a Black Historical past Month reception within the East Room of the White Home. This comes simply weeks after Trump posted and deleted a racist video to social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama at apes. The White Home in the end blamed a staffer for the transfer, and distanced the president from the backlash.
Additionally immediately, we’ll hear from White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who maintain a briefing for reporters at 1pm ET.
Dharna Noor
Greater than a dozen well being and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Safety Company over its revocation of the authorized dedication that underpins US federal local weather laws.
Filed in Washington DC circuit courtroom, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment discovering”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping air pollution within the ambiance endangers public well being and welfare and has allowed the EPA to restrict these emissions from autos, energy crops and different industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was extensively seen as a serious setback to US efforts to fight the local weather disaster.
The go well with was introduced by the American Public Well being Affiliation, American Lung Affiliation, the Middle for Organic Range, the Environmental Protection Fund, the Pure Assets Protection Council, the Sierra Membership and 11 different public well being and environmental organizations. The lawsuit was filed by inexperienced authorized organizations Clear Air Activity Pressure and Earthjustice and it names the EPA and the company’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.
“EPA’s repeal of the endangerment discovering and safeguards to restrict car emissions marks an entire dereliction of the company’s mission to guard individuals’s well being and its authorized obligation beneath the Clear Air Act,” mentioned Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO on the Union of Involved Scientists, one other one of many teams behind the lawsuit. “This shameful and harmful motion by the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Zeldin is rooted in falsehoods not info and is at full odds with the general public curiosity and the very best out there science.”
Joseph Gedeon
Fifteen members of Congress have written to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, demanding to know what steps the USA has taken in response to the mistreatment of a Palestinian-American teenager who spent 9 months in Israeli detention.
The letter, led by Senator Peter Welch and first seen by the Guardian, is centered across the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, a Florida resident who was 15 when Israeli troopers arrested him throughout a raid on his household’s West Financial institution residence in February 2025. He was charged with throwing objects at shifting autos earlier than being launched on 27 November following a responsible plea and suspended sentence, and was taken on to hospital upon his return.
The then 16-year-old was severely underweight, having misplaced roughly a 3rd of his physique weight, and had suffered a scabies pores and skin an infection a number of months into his detention, the state division advised his household on the time, in keeping with correspondences seen by the Guardian.
Mohammed advised relations and US consular officers that he and different Palestinian minors held in the identical cell had been crushed, threatened, pepper-sprayed and denied sufficient meals and medical care over the course of his detention.
In an interview with the advocacy group Protection for Youngsters Worldwide – Palestine whereas nonetheless detained, Mohammed described receiving three small items of bread and a spoonful of yogurt for breakfast, with no dinner offered.
“There was case after case of Palestinians, together with a whole bunch of youngsters, swept up within the Israeli army justice system, the place they don’t seem to be solely denied primary rights of due course of however subjected to systematic bodily and psychological abuse,” the lawmakers wrote within the 16 February letter. “Whereas such abuses are by no means permissible, we’re particularly involved that instances involving abuse of US residents within the West Financial institution be totally investigated and that these accountable are delivered to justice.”
A decide in Florida has set a trial date in US president Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit in opposition to the BBC over a Panorama programme.
Courtroom paperwork from the US District Courtroom Southern District of Florida present decide Roy Okay Altman set a trial date of 15 February subsequent 12 months.
The order, made on 11 February, mentioned:
This matter is about for trial throughout the Courtroom’s two-week trial calendar starting February 15, 2027. Counsel for all events shall additionally seem at a calendar name at 1:45 p.m. on February 9, 2027.
Except instructed in any other case by subsequent order, the trial and all different proceedings on this case shall be performed in Courtroom 12-4 on the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse, 400 N. Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida 33128.
US decide blocks deportation of Columbia College Palestinian activist
A US immigration decide has blocked the deportation of a Palestinian graduate scholar who helped arrange protests at Columbia College in opposition to Israel’s conflict in Gaza, in keeping with US media reviews.
Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested by immigration brokers final 12 months as he was attending an interview to develop into a US citizen, AFP reported.
Mahdawi had been concerned in a wave of demonstrations that gripped a number of main US college campuses since Israel started a large army marketing campaign within the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas militants’ lethal 7 October, 2023 assault.
A Palestinian born within the occupied West Financial institution, Mahdawi has been a authorized US everlasting resident since 2015 and graduated from the celebrated New York college in Might. He has been free from federal custody since April.
In an order made public on Tuesday, Choose Nina Froes mentioned that President Donald Trump’s administration didn’t present enough proof that Mahdawi might be legally faraway from the USA, a number of media shops reported.
Individuals imagine that rich and highly effective persons are hardly ever held accountable, a brand new Reuters/Ipsos ballot discovered after the discharge of thousands and thousands of information on the late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections in elite US enterprise and political circles.
Some 69% of respondents within the four-day ballot, which concluded on Monday, mentioned their views had been captured “very nicely” or “extraordinarily nicely” by a press release that the Epstein information “present that highly effective individuals within the US are hardly ever held accountable for his or her actions.“
One other 17% mentioned the assertion described their views “considerably nicely,” whereas 11% mentioned it didn’t mirror their considering. Amongst each Republicans and Democrats, greater than 80% mentioned the assertion described their considering at the very least considerably nicely.
CBS earlier this week tried to deal with Stepen Colbert’s allegations a couple of company mandate to not broadcast the James Talarico interview.
“The Late Present was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” the community mentioned in a press release.
“The present was offered authorized steerage that the printed might set off the FCC equal-time rule for 2 different candidates, together with Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and offered choices for a way the equal time for different candidates might be fulfilled.
“The Late Present determined to current the interview by means of its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the printed somewhat than probably offering the equal-time choices.”
Colbert has accused the Trump administration of censoring critics and has been notably crucial of FCC chairman Brendan Carr.
“Let’s simply name this what it’s,” he mentioned on Monday. “Donald Trump’s administration needs to silence anybody who says something unhealthy about Trump on TV, as a result of all Trump does is watch TV.”
FCC commissioner accuses CBS of ‘company capitulation’ in Colbert row
Good day and welcome to the US politics stay weblog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will likely be bringing you all the newest information strains over the subsequent few hours.
We begin with FCC commissioner Anna M Gomez criticizing CBS for what she referred to as “company capitulation within the face of this administration’s broader marketing campaign to censor and management speech”.
Gomez, the one Democrat on the FCC, was appointed by former president Joe Biden to the five-person board in 2023. Her feedback observe talkshow host Stephen Colbert accusing the Trump administration and CBS of censorship after he mentioned the community advised him to not air a tv interview with a Texas Democrat working for Senate.
Gomez mentioned in a press release:
That is one more troubling instance of company capitulation within the face of this administration’s broader marketing campaign to censor and management speech.
The FCC has no lawful authority to strain broadcasters for political functions or to create a local weather that chills free expression.
CBS is absolutely protected beneath the First Modification to find out what interviews it airs, which makes its resolution to yield to political strain all of the extra disappointing.
On his present, Colbert advised viewers of the Late Present that community legal professionals advised him he was additionally prohibited from speaking about their refusal to air his interview with James Talarico, a Texas state consultant searching for his get together’s nomination to problem the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn, for a Senate seat in November.
“He was presupposed to be right here, however we had been advised in no unsure phrases by our community’s legal professionals, who referred to as us instantly, that we couldn’t have him on the printed,” Colbert mentioned, stemming from a priority that it could set off a authorized requirement to supply equal entry to Talarico’s marketing campaign rivals.
Ultimately, the interview was as a substitute broadcast on Colbert’s YouTube web page, which is out of the remit of the Federal Communications Fee. CBS has disputed Colbert’s account, saying that the community solely “offered authorized steerage” that broadcasting the interview might violate the FCC directive.
Learn our full story right here:
In different developments:
-
Democrats mourned the passing of Jesse Jackson, the civil rights chief whose 1988 marketing campaign for the Democratic nomination to be president paved the way in which for Barack Obama.
-
Donald Trump’s former receptionist, Chamberlain Harris, 26, will likely be sworn in on Thursday as the latest member of the US Fee of Superb Arts, simply in time to evaluation his ballroom plans.
-
Cops “surrounded and arrested a person who ran towards the U.S. Capitol with a loaded shotgun” on Tuesday, the USA Capitol Police mentioned.
-
A US immigration decide has ended the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia College scholar who helped lead protests on the faculty over the Israeli assault on Gaza
-
After Republican congressman Randy Superb posted an Islamophobic remark to social media over the weekend, the backlash from Democrats has been swift.