The Dictatorship
FCC challenges Disney station licenses as Kimmel backlash deepens
The Federal Communications Commission launched an early review Tuesday of Disney’s broadcast station licenses, an unusually aggressive move that came a day after the president called on Disney-owned ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over another joke.
The process, known as an early license reviewwill tee up a lengthy legal review of Disney’s eight ABC-owned and operated station licenses, years before they were scheduled for FCC renewal. The commission is responsible for licensing local TV stations to broadcast network-level programming, such as ABC’s, over public airwaves across the country.
But it is highly unusual for the federal agency to file early renewal orders.
Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed FCC chair, triggered the process shortly after Kimmel once again drew the ire of the administration, this time for comments on his talk show well before a gunman attempted to breach the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
“Of course, our first lady Melania, is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” Kimmel said in a sketch parodying the dinner, two days before the events that upended Trump’s first appearance at the annual gala in Washington.
On Monday, after Kimmel’s clip surfaced, the first lady — who was seated on stage alongside the president when shots were fired Saturday night — denounced the skit as “hateful and violent.” She called on ABC to “take a stand,” but stopped short of saying what actions the network should take.
Her husband, however, was quick to demand ABC fire Kimmel.
Kimmel responded with a statement calling his gag “a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that.”
Disney allowed “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to air in its usual weeknight time slot Monday — a departure from the media conglomerate’s handling of the Kimmel controversy last fall over a joke related to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. In that case, the company suspended Kimmel’s show indefinitely before returning it to the airwaves less than a week later.
Carr’s decision to drag ABC through a long and resource-draining review process was seen by critics as a means of inflicting the punishment Disney has declined to levy this time around.
The move is “a political stunt and it won’t stick,” Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, wrote in a post on X after Traffic light reported Carr was considering the early review. “Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
Under the order, ABC must file license renewals for all of its licensed TV stations by May 28.
Regardless of how the review process turns out, it will force ABC to pony up large sums of money and time to defend itself.
“ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming,” a spokesperson for Disney told MS NOW upon receiving the FCC’s order Tuesday.
“We are confident that record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels.”
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
When it comes to members of Congress and medical transparency, it’s been an unfortunate year.
Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey was away from his duties for nearly four months for reasons he only recently disclosed; Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida missed roughly a month of work for a medical issue she disclosed after the fact; and Republican Rep. Neal Dunn of Florida, who’s struggled with health concerns he didn’t share, has been out for roughly a month and reportedly told GOP leaders that he won’t be voting at all unless party leaders really need him.
And then there’s Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The New York Times reported:
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, his office has provided few updates about his condition.
The scant official statements have led to speculation around Washington and efforts to piece together information on what happened.
Questions about McConnell’s health are not altogether new. In recent years, the former GOP leader, who turned 84 in February, has been seen with unexplained bruises, has suffered unexplained falls and, in some especially unsettling moments, has frozen up and appeared unable to speak.
But as a related NBC News report noted, it’s now been 23 days since McConnell was admitted to the hospital, and if members of his team have information about why he was hospitalized or how he’s doing, they have kept those details from the public for reasons unknown.
The most recent statement from McConnell’s office, issued late last week, said the senator “appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital” and that he “continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”
That sounded vaguely encouraging, and people of goodwill can certainly hope he continues to recover from whatever it is that led to his hospitalization in the first place, but secrecy necessarily generates questions about why a prominent public official is not sharing basic details about his condition with his colleagues and constituents.
The Times’ report added, “Emergency responders the morning the Kentucky Republican was hospitalized reported performing CPR on an unconscious individual undergoing cardiac arrest at the senator’s Washington address, according to recordings of dispatcher calls that were widely reported by news outlets last week and obtained by The New York Times.”
The recordings did not specifically identify McConnell as the patient, and the senator’s office refused to say whether the calls were related to him.
As for the near future, in the event that McConnell’s Senate seat were to become vacant, state law in the Bluegrass State has changed a couple of times in recent years. In 2021, Kentucky’s Republican-led legislature approved a measure that would require Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to fill a Senate vacancy by choosing one of three GOP options presented by state lawmakers.
In 2024, the Republican-led legislature changed state law again to remove the governor’s authority to fill a vacancy altogether: If Kentucky faces a Senate vacancy, the seat would remain empty until a statewide special election can be held.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
As the dam breaks on Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy, what happens next in Maine?
When Democrats in Maine were introduced to Graham Platner last summer, the oyster farmer and combat veteran quickly started picking up the kind of enthusiastic grassroots support other Senate candidates can only dream of. It wasn’t long before his campaign events were drawing the crowds usually reserved for leaders such as Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.
But a couple of months into his candidacy, as his record started to face greater scrutiny, controversies came to the fore. They were followed by more controversies and more still.
Most of his backers shrugged off the revelations, insisting that his near future was more important than his recent past. In early June, Platner held a private meeting with members of the Senate Democratic conference, who heard the candidate offer assurances that the worst was behind him. There was no reason to expect another round of damaging headlines, he said, just days before cruising to an impressive victory in Maine’s statewide primary on June 9.
As this week got underway, however, everything changed after Politico reported that a woman he previously dated had accused him of sexual assault. MS NOW reported:
Jenny Racicot, 41, of Maine said that Platner — whom she said she had casually dated on and off from 2019 to 2021 — entered her home one night late in 2021, uninvited and deeply intoxicated, and forced her to have sex despite her telling him to stop, according to the news outlet.
Racicot also detailed the allegations in a lengthy interview with BLN’s Jake Tapper, describing the accusations after they were first reported by Blue Light News.
For his part, Platner called the allegations “troubling, serious, and false” in a written statement, adding, “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.” The candidate nevertheless went on to post a video to social media in which he said, “[R]egardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people I love, the movement I belong to and the goal of defeating [incumbent Republican Sen.] Susan Collins.”
Democratic officials cannot force him to drop out of the race. Platner won his primary race fair and square, and if he decides to keep running despite the scandals, there is nothing anyone can do about it.
What the party can do, however, is pressure Platner to exit and make clear that his support in Democratic politics has evaporated. That is precisely what happened on Monday afternoon, as the state and national party completely abandoned Platner and urged him to stand down. The pushback was not limited to those who were already skeptical of his candidacy: Several prominent Democrats who had endorsed Platner reversed course after seeing the Blue Light News article, withdrew their backing and called on him to quit.
We’ll learn soon enough whether the candidate reads the writing on the wall, but in the meantime, there are two overarching questions to keep in mind: (1) How would Platner be replaced, and (2) who would Maine Democrats replace him with if he bows out?
As to the former, there is a limited window of opportunity. Under Maine lawDemocratic officials would have the power to choose a replacement candidate, but only if he withdraws before the second Monday in July. At that point, Maine’s secretary of state would declare a vacancy and state party officials would choose a new nominee before a July 27 deadline.
Platner, in other words, has a week to make up his mind.
As to the latter question, quiet whispers about possible Platner alternatives have lingered for weeks, but that conversation grew much louder on Monday. The jockeying to replace Platner began soon after the embattled candidate said he was reflecting on the race, with much of the focus turning to Democrats who ran in Maine’s recent gubernatorial primary, only to come up short against former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree. That list includes Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former state Senate President Troy Jackson and Nirav Shah, former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
There’s been related scuttlebutt about Jordan Wood, who recently lost a competitive U.S. House primary race in the northern part of Maine; Dan Kleban, who briefly ran for the Senate before exiting last year; and former state House Speaker Sara Gideon, who lost to Collins six years ago but who still has a fair amount of money left in her campaign account.
Outgoing Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her own Senate campaign in late April, appears unlikely to gain serious consideration. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
President Donald Trump has a new favorite midterm strategy: painting the Democratic Party as a band of godless communists. It’s not going to pan out the way he wants.
During his speech Friday at Mount Rushmoreon the eve of Independence Day, Trump warned of a “resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” The line was an unsubtle reference to the election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in 2025 and successful left-wing candidates in recent House primaries, including a Mamdani-backed trio that won contests in New York City.
Trump described the growth of the leftists in American politics as an apocalyptic development: “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11,” Trump huffed. He added, “Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.”
The word “communist” is not the bogeyman it was during the 20th century or even the first decade of the 21st century.
During his remarks, Trump mentioned the term “communism” or “communist” 15 times. He invoked communism multiple times the following day in his July 4th speech. And the White House posted on X on Independence Day: “You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.” Right-wing influencers and Republicans have also begun to use the term to attack the left more often in recent weeks. This effort is concerted, desperate and likely doomed.
It’s standard practice for a political party to use the opposition’s most ideologically radical members to paint the entire party with the same brush. Sometimes it can be effective as a messaging strategy. But trying to portray Democrats specifically as communist seems like a dead end.
The word “communist” is not the bogeyman it was during the 20th century or even the first decade of the 21st century. The Cold War has long been over. Millennials and Gen Z Americans either were not alive or were not politically conscious at a time when communism was seen in popular culture as a serious national security and economic threat. To them, communism is a historical term, not a haunting specter. The Communist Party U.S.A. exists, but it is a tiny and politically irrelevant organization. Trump, perpetually stuck in the 1980slikely overestimates the power of “communist” as a slur.
Trump’s “communist” agenda is also inaccurate in a way that a good chunk of the public is likely to understand. He falsely claims that democratic socialists are no different from communists. The most prominent communist projects of the 20th century in the Soviet Union and China involved authoritarian political organizations and centrally planned economies, and were known for massive human rights abuses and dysfunction in distributing resources. By contrast, democratic socialists believe in democratic political organization and reject central planning. (This is a broad delineation; there are nuances that extend beyond the scope of this brief article.)
American democratic socialists today are not proposing extreme upheavals of society and economy, but modest social democratic reforms. These ideas, like publicly funded healthcare and childcare, already exist and are proven to be wildly successful in other affluent democracies. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — the most prominent living democratic socialist in America and consistently one of the most popular politicians in the country — isn’t associated with rationing food, but with taxing billionaires and demanding the popular idea of Medicare for All.
Finally, Trump’s panning of the democratic socialist insurgency as an assault on capitalism implicitly suggests that capitalism is worth defending wholesale. That puts him in the kind of position that doesn’t suit him: defending the status quo. Meanwhile, polls in recent years have indicated a declining approval of capitalism, and slowly rising approval of — or reduced negative feelings toward — socialism. Realistically speaking, not everyone who has a favorable opinion of socialism would not be able to define what it is. But they view it broadly as a program of social equality in a deeply unequal society, not as a portal to gulags.
Of course, it may very well be the case that most of the midterm electorate remains skeptical that the small democratic socialist bloc represents the future of the Democratic Party. The movement gets a lot of attention, but that’s not the same as power. What voters will know is that Trump is in power and has done nothing for the U.S. economy except make it more comfortable for the ultrarich and more expensive for everyone else. And no appeals to 20th century bogeymans can change that.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
- Mitch McConnell’s absence is throwing Trump’s Pentagon budget boost in doubt
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- Maine Democratic voters are wary about repeating mistakes of 2024
- Senate panel schedules Jay Clayton confirmation hearing for July 15
- Trump administration reimposes sanctions on Iran oil sales
- Capitol agenda: Platner’s Hill support crumbles
- The likely next Congressional Black Caucus chair has big plans for the shrinking powerhouse
- Mitch McConnell’s office doesn’t want to talk about why he’s hospitalized
- As the dam breaks on Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy, what happens next in Maine?
- Trump’s attacks on Democrats as ‘communists’ only show he’s out of touch
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