Apr. 28, 2026, 6:04 PM EDT

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.

Apr. 28, 2026, 8:44 PM EDT

There is a notable absence in King Charles’ visit to the U.S.: the king’s younger son, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

Charles and Queen Camilla’s itinerary for their four-day state visit is packed. The most prominent items on the agenda are the king’s address to Congress and the state dinner Tuesday in Washington. But there was also tea with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, a tour of the White House beehives and a garden-party reception at the British ambassador’s residence on Monday.

While the schedule will take the royal couple to New York and Virginia for events, including a wreath-laying at the 9/11 memorial, there is nothing scheduled for California, where Harry, Meghan and their children live.

There are several reasons for this.

Family fracture

Harry and Meghan made global headlines in 2020 when they announced they were stepping back from their roles as “working royals.” The changes that followed included the couple losing access to their taxpayer-funded security details. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021Meghan talked about her mental health challenges amid palace life and said a royal relative — whom she did not name — asked during her first pregnancy about the likely skin color of her unborn child.

Buckingham Palace responded with a statement on behalf of Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, then the monarch:

The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.
The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members.

Awkward visits home

Harry and Meghan returned to Britain in June 2022 to attend Platinum Jubilee events marking Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne — but were not present at all of the public celebrations.

The couple flew back to attend memorial events after Queen Elizabeth died in September 2022. That same year, it emerged that Harry had sued the British government seeking for his publicly financed security to be reinstated.

Harry, who is fifth in the line of succession to the throne, flew to Britain again in early 2024 after his father announced he has cancer.

The prince has made few visits to his native country since then, with most trips involving his legal case over security and separate lawsuits against British publishers.

‘Spare’ makes a splash

In January 2023, Harry published a bombshell memoir, “Spare,” detailing his experiences growing up in the royal family, his marriage to Meghan and the death of his mother, Princess Diana. Harry’s account of a physical fight with his brother, Prince Williamand criticism of his stepmotherCamilla, were thought to have inflamed grievances.

Harry later revealed that King Charles would not speak to him because of his lawsuit against the government over security. After he lost an appeal in his security lawsuit last May, he said in a BBC interview that he “would love reconciliation with my family.”

Noting that some relatives “will never forgive me for writing a book,” Harry said, “Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff. But it would be nice to reconcile.”

There have been signs of thaw. Aides for Harry and the king were photographed meeting near Buckingham Palace last summerwhich some media outlets reported as a step toward reconciliation. Father and son met for tea in September. Another government review of security requirements for Harry and his family was begun late last year.

Stealing the spotlight

Another issue is Harry and Meghan’s knack for making headlines. Harry traveled to Ukraine in September to promote his Invictus Games Foundation on behalf of wounded veterans. He spoke about his family on the trip. In a visit to Kyiv last week, the prince called for “American leadership” on Ukraine — remarks that Trump quickly panned as “not speaking for the U.K.” Although Trump has praised Harry’s brother, Prince William, as “wonderful” and a “remarkable son” to Charles, the president said last year that Meghan is “terrible” and called Harry “whipped.”

The absence of a specific meeting with Harry and Meghan may not be a personal snub. The British government requested the king and queen undertake this official trip. The agenda may reflect some of the king and queen’s interests, but it was organized around government priorities — not personal ones.

But given Trump’s past criticism and the years-old royal rift, the couple’s presence could be expected to distract from coverage of the king’s visit.

Autumn Brewington is a senior opinion editor at MS NOW. A longtime editor at The Washington Post, she oversaw the paper’s op-ed page for more than seven years. She also wrote a Post blog and newsletter about the British royal family. She writes about royalty on Substack at http://autumnbrewington.substack.com.

Apr. 28, 2026, 6:52 PM EDT

In an episode of the “High Level Conversations” podcast that premiered on June 30, 2024then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told host 19Keys (also known as Jibrial Muhammad), “Every Black kid is now, just as a standard, put on Adderall, [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors]benzos, which are known to induce violence.” Kennedy, who later ended his campaign, endorsed President Donald Trump and later became his health and human services secretary, went on to reveal a dystopian vision: “And those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cell phones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

Appropriately, Kennedy’s threat of reparenting Black children on “wellness farms” was met last week with intense pushback when he testified multiple times on Capitol Hill last week. Sen. Angela AlsobrooksD-Md.; Sen. Rafael WarnockD-Ga.; and Rep. Terri SewellD-Ala., all expressed outrage. California Gov. Gavin Newsoma Democrat who’s considered likely to run for president in 2028, also demanded answers from Kennedy regarding his horribly racist remark.

Initially, Kennedy vehemently denied making it. But on Wednesday, he offered a non-apologetic apology.

“I would have to see, hear that recording,” Kennedy told Alsobrooks after she quoted his remark to him. “I have no memory of saying anything like that.”

“If I said it, I apologize but I’d have to see the transcript,” he added.

As public health professionals, we demand that apology, even if Kennedy manages to avoid looking at the transcript. His words were offensive and inexcusable.

Kennedy misrepresented studies that have made some connections between violent behaviors and varied psychiatric medications in children. New-age antipsychotic medications, in fact, are shown to reduce aggressionnot induce aggression. And Black children are often underdiagnosed, if not misdiagnosed. Sewell, to her credit, used her time questioning Kennedy to call out a truth far more nefarious: the long history of the government separating families of color. To be clear, we are not talking about separations that were the collateral damage of other policies, but explicit policies of separation.

From slavery to Indian boarding school to immigration enforcement policies to even mass incarceration and the rules governing child protective service agencies, removing children from their families — if not also their culture, language and history — is what America does. Kennedy’s remark about Black children being reparented, then, was not pulled out of thin air. It was his expressed desire to repeat some of the worst of this country’s history.

The period of enslavement in the United States, during which half of all children were ripped from their families, begets a still-visible pattern for the removal of Black children from parental care. Indeed, half of all children held in juvenile facilities before or after criminal trial are Black, while half of all Black children will have an investigation opened by child protective services. As a result, Black children are removed from their homes at a disproportionate rate relative to their peers. The idea, then, to reparent an untold number of Black children may sound like an isolated and strange suggestion from a political candidate-turned-government public health official, but our various branches of government have been removing Black children from their families.

But not just Black children. At this point we are more likely to think of Latino families when we think of children being separated from their parents. In 2018, the Trump administration made it a felony to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, and, in a cruel effort to discourage Central American migrants from traveling north, the administration separated hundreds of parents from their children. Because no investment was made in tracking the families, many of those parents have yet to be reunited with their children. And while family separation as a border enforcement policy was halted that summer due to public pressure, mass deportation efforts across the country have continued to remove parents from their homes, forcing some children into the same child protective services system that have separated so many Black families.

There’s more history, still. Church- and state-run boarding schools resulted in the removal of more than 100,000 Indigenous children from their families between the late 19^th and early 20^th century. This reparenting attempt to force Indigenous youth to adopt the morals and character of a “superior” culture resulted in a host of negative psychological-, cognitive- and health-related outcomes. The horrors of those schools have been made evident in the unidentified remains that have been unearthed during recent land excavations. The inability of so many Indigenous children to make it out alive, and the schools’ pattern of prohibiting cultural expression, has resulted in intergenerational trauma within Indigenous communities.

Life in the home, with parents, siblings, cousins and larger community, is where children learn the language of their culture. And, perhaps most pertinent to the current discussion, it is where they learn about the power structures that have oppressed their people and learn how to do something about them.

Children of color deserve to live in homes where these traditions live on, in communities where they are seen and in a country where their existence is not perceived as a threat. They should be in the capable hands of parents and families who are not written off as negligent for following a pediatrician’s advice. As public health research has shown time and time again, individuals are best able to thrive when they are allowed to be with their families — families that are healthy, happy and whole.

These children don’t need to be reparented. They already have exactly the parents they need.