ABC is ‘right to stand up to pressure tactics’ from Trump administration, say media advocacy organizations – US politics live

The sole Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission, Anna Gomez, has commended ABC and Disney for pushing back against the FCC’s actions. She said in a statement:

For months, the FCC has waged a campaign of censorship and control against Disney’s ABC stations, using the threat of broadcast license revocations to punish a company for speech this administration doesn’t like.

I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up. This should be a welcome sign for every broadcaster who has felt the weight of this overreaching government pressure in silence.

As we’ve been reporting, ABC has sued the FCC, arguing that it is being retaliated against for content the Trump administration disproves of, in a move it warns threatens the independence of the press.

Federal judges Tuesday gave the Department of Homeland Security leave to begin deporting citizens of African countries who had been residing in the United States under Temporary Protected Status.

The orders from US District Court Judges Allison Burroughs and Brian Murphy in Massachusetts denied an emergency request for a preliminary injunction by a group of immigrant advocacy organizations and lifted a brief administrative stay, allowing immigration officials to begin deporting people from Cameroon, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan.

Temporary Protected Status permits a foreign national from a country facing extreme crisis like a war or natural disaster to remain in the United States and obtain work authorization. It does not provide a path to permanent residency.

Advocates have argued that the president’s attacks on immigrants, particularly those from Somalia, whom he has called “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing”, amounted to racial animus driving the decision to end TPS for those foreign nationals.

The Department of Homeland Security has been rolling announcements of the end of TPS status for ۱۳ countries over the last month, with the end of protections for Haitian nationals beginning a wave of deportation enforcement. The litany of recent TPS terminations includes Afghanistan, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Myanmar.

“ALL TPS terminations are now IN EFFECT,” DHS posted Tuesday on X. “Those with terminated TPS should leave NOW. If they don’t, we will DEPORT them.”

Advocates are appealing the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

The release by a federal judge of a woman accused of defacing the second world war memorial in Washington DC has drawn a complaint from Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

In a motion to reconsider the ruling by magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh, Pirro argues that Melissa L Farris posed a high risk of flight.

“Defendant was defiant and outspoken before, during, and immediately after committing her crimes,” the motion contends. “Her attitude only changed after she did not receive the attention she so desperately craved, demonstrating that any expressed remorse is insincere.”

The US attorney’s office charged Farris, ۴۱, of Elizabethtown, Ky. with defacing the wall of the Atlantic Theatre Pavilion at the memorial on Thursday by spray painting the words “Clean Hands Dirty $” while filling the fountain with detergent causing it to foam. The park service briefly closed the memorial to remove the graffiti and the foam. The government alleges that she livestreamed the event from her phone in a bid for attention and donations from an online audience.

She had been arrested three days earlier for unlawfully camping on federal property near the park.

The incident attracted the attention of President Donald Trump, who commented on the incident on social media. “Our beautiful World War II Memorial was just hit by Spray Painting Vandals,” he wrote on Truth Social. “THERE CAN BE NO GREATER INSULT TO THOSE AMERICAN HEROES WHO DIED IN WORLD WAR II. First the Reflecting Pool, now this. We are on their trail! Where do these animals come from???”

Pirro has been under fire from Trump for withdrawing the high-profile prosecution of a former Olympian initially accused of vandalizing the reflecting pool.

Media advocacy organizations are weighing in on a lawsuit that the Walt Disney Corporation and ABC has brought against the FCC over political interference and first amendment rights.

Disney and ABC filed the federal lawsuit in the DC Circuit Court on Tuesday, alleging that the FCC’s demand for an early license renewal process is political retaliation against it for ABC News reporting and shows like Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy that upsets President Donald Trump.

“The day of reckoning for Brendan Carr is finally here,” wrote the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in a post on social media. “Carr has repeatedly shown he won’t hesitate to weaponize the FCC against outlets the Trump administration dislikes.

“Snarky tweets and the president petting him on the back is not going to help him any longer. ABC is right to stand up to Carr’s pressure tactics. In America, government officials cannot abuse their regulatory power to threaten the first amendment.”

“It’s about time for someone to take Carr and his FCC to court over their endless campaign of intimidation and retaliation against journalism that displeases Carr’s thin-skinned boss,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

“No matter what pretexts he asserts, Carr’s modus operandi is clear: to serve as Trump’s censorship czar and abuse his office to repeatedly and exclusively target Trump’s perceived adversaries in the media, whether through sham proceedings or threatening letters and X posts.

“Carr knows the FCC is not the journalism police and said so regularly himself before he decided to throw away any integrity he once had to kiss up to Trump. Countless others whose first amendment rights have been chilled by Carr’s antics should follow Disney’s lead.”

“The current FCC has repeatedly used its power over broadcast speech to jawbone, punish, and threaten censorship of its political opponents,” wrote David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute, in a statement.

“Today’s lawsuit by ABC Disney against the FCC directly challenges the broad and abusive powers that Congress and prior court decisions gave the FCC. No government agency should ever be empowered to restrict free expression based on what it thinks is fair, equal, or in the best interest of the public.

“In a world where the American people and press can speak through print, broadcast, cable, satellite, internet, and other forms of media, there is no justification for the FCC to continue to wield such significant power over broadcast speech.”

The Walt Disney Company, ABC and a number of its affiliated stations filed a federal suit against the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday to block the government’s demand for an early broadcast license renewal process that the companies describe as motivated by political hostility and an attack on press freedom.

As reported by Deadline, the suit argues that the commission is being used by the Trump Administration to wage “a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.”

The FCC ordered Disney’s eight owned-and-operated ABC television stations to file broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule, adding to a line of actions targeting the broadcaster, from calls to fire Jimmy Kimmel from his late-night television show – which briefly led to his suspension – as well as a probe into ABC’s “The View” program and an investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Disney.

Disney and ABC argue in the suit that the commission could not renew licenses at all at this stage of the process, only revoke them, and that the demand for early renewal submissions is meant to mire the network in costly litigation.

President Donald Trump posted an image of a map of the strait of Hormuz on his social media platform Truth Social, with a circle around the strait and the words “New US Territory” as the title on Tuesday morning.

This follows comments made on Friday at a speech at a police academy on Long Island, New York, where Trump said “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States. … Essentially, that’s what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”

About a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil passes through the strait of Hormuz. At its narrowest point, ۲۱ nautical miles across, the strait flows in the territorial waters of both Oman and Iran. The strait itself is international waters under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The convention grants foreign commercial and military vessels the right to freely navigate the strait.

The United States is not a signatory to the convention, however. Treaty ratification has been blocked primarily by Republicans in the US Senate for decades due to concerns about legal liability and the erosion of national sovereignty. Nonetheless, the US has customarily treated the convention as binding customary international law.

Trump has threatened to bomb Oman, a longstanding US ally, if it interferes in negotiations with Iran to end the war.

Trump could not unilaterally seize the strait by executive fiat; the US constitution’s plain language in Article IV, Section ۳ of the US constitution grants Congress the exclusive power to acquire and govern US territories.

If primary elections elsewhere this summer were tussles between progressives and moderates for the direction of the Democratic party’s political future, Tuesday’s contests in Florida could not be more different.

In a former swing state that has in recent years become reliably red, moderate Democratic candidates Alex Vindman and David Jolly are heavily favored to become the party’s nominees for November’s Senate and governor’s race, respectively.

Analysts say the brand of progressive liberalism that worked so well for Democratic candidates in Minnesota, Michigan and New York, won’t cut it with voters in conservative Florida, and neither are Vindman, frontrunner for the Senate nomination to challenge Republican incumbent Ashley Moody, or Jolly, vying to succeed Ron DeSantis as governor, trying to sell it.

“There is a lot of curiosity about me from more traditional, pre-Trump-era Republicans that feel homeless,” Vindman said in March as he weighed the broad coalition of voters he will need to topple Moody, appointed by Republican DeSantis in January ۲۰۲۵ to replace Marco Rubio after his elevation to secretary of state.

“I’m running here as a kind of a different kind of Democrat, I’ve got my handguns, a concealed carry permit, not the standard fare.”

Florida has closed primaries, meaning only those voters who have declared party affiliation can choose its nominees. But Vindman and Jolly are already looking to court independents and disgruntled Republicans beyond Tuesday.

A northern California county that has become a hotbed of activism for those who sow doubts about the reliability of voting machines plans to hire Tina Peters, the prominent Colorado election denier recently released from prison, to work on elections.

Clint Curtis, the top election official in Shasta county, told the Guardian he plans to hire Peters as a consultant to replace Brent Turner, his top deputy, who has been on medical leave. He said Peters would not have access to the county’s voting system and did not directly respond when asked what her responsibilities would be. Plans to hire Peters, who is still on parole and must receive permission to travel outside of Colorado, were first reported by Action News Now.

Shasta county, a conservative region home to ۱۸۲,۰۰۰ people, has emerged as a center of the US election denialism movement in recent years. In ۲۰۲۳, the county’s governing body unsuccessfully sought to remake the voting process by cutting ties with the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems and implementing a hand-count system that experts warned would be costly and far less accurate.

The MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the leading promoters of falsehoods about election fraud in the US, said he would support the county’s effort. The state ultimately blocked Shasta’s plans. In addition, several candidates who lost their race for local office have embraced baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud and sued to overturn results.

Last year, the Shasta county board of supervisors appointed Curtis, a Florida-based attorney who had never before overseen an elections office, to serve as the county clerk and registrar of voters. Curtis, who opposes the use of voting machines and has long argued US elections are being manipulated, vowed to overhaul the elections and set an example for the rest of the US.

Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, Politico reports, citing Palm Beach county voting records. The White House has confirmed the president’s mail-in vote, according to the New York Times, which added that this is at least the third time the president has mailed his ballot.

In March, the president signed an executive ⁠order restricting the ​use of mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of US Congress. Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, calling for restrictions on the policy for years and falsely claiming that his ۲۰۲۰ election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump continued his years-long false claims of election fraud in the United States – including by implying that mail-in voting is insecure.

“Earlier this month, India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, asked our Administration – How can you have Elections in the U.S. without a valid Photo ID? India’s last Election had ۶۴۶,۰۰۰,۰۰۰ Voters! Less than ۱% voted by mail, and every single Voter had to have a VALID Photo Identity Document. We need to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, now!” Trump wrote.

A federal judge has blocked ⁠the US Postal ⁠Service ​from implementing part of the executive order, although Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to intervene.

Donald Trump has downplayed reports about conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln to reporters in the Oval Office.

The aircraft carrier has been the subject of escalating concern over mental health and supply issues for American sailors enduring nearly nine months at sea.

Trump called it a “good period of time” but added that “over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”

The carrier has had a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than ۲۴۰ days, AP reported.

But Trump said he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer.” Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.”

Trump did not name the admiral.

Today is the deadline for plaintiffs in the White House ballroom case to lay out their case on blocking the project.

The Trump administration has asked ⁠the ⁠US supreme court to allow construction of the president’s controversial $۴۰۰m ⁠White House ballroom to proceed after ​an ‌appeals ‌court ordered work to halt.

In a case testing Donald Trump’s presidential authority, the Washington-based US ⁠court of ​appeals for the District of Columbia circuit ruled last week that the controversial ‌project lacked the necessary approval from US Congress.

The US president, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for the planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people. He and his aides have repeatedly cited national security as a benefit of its construction, too.

In a filing, Trump’s administration ‌asked the supreme court justices to keep the ​decision by the US court of appeals for ⁠the District of Columbia ​circuit ​on hold ​while it ​prepares ‌a full ​appeal.

“This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,” D John Sauer, the solicitor general, wrote in the filing.

Chief Justice John Roberts set a deadline of today for the plaintiffs challenging the project to respond.

Donald Trump is up early today, weighing into the Alaska primary and urging voters to back the “real Dan Sullivan”. In typical capital-letter-laden style, he posted on Truth Social:

ALASKA: Be careful, VOTE FOR THE REAL DAN SULLIVAN TODAY. Through me, he’s brought HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS BACK TO YOUR STATE. The Dumocrats know how good he is and have put up an imposter of the same name. Vote for the “INCUMBENT SENATOR.” Don’t let these Fraudsters get away with this HOAX. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP

CNN defended its journalist Kristen Holmes in a statement, calling her “one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House”.

The White House’s “rapid response” social media account posted a clip of the exchange and tagged Holmes, calling her a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession”.

The White House later sent out another post criticizing Holmes, writing: “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”

In response, the network said:

This afternoon, she did her job and asked the president of the United States a tough, relevant and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people.

Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press.

We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.

Trump has a long history of aggressively attacking and insulting women in the press corps who ask tough questions, including saying, “Quiet, piggy” to a Bloomberg reporter, calling another CNN journalist “corrupt”, and storming out of NBC’s Meet the Press after calling the moderator “crooked or stupid”.

Other journalists condemned the White House’s personal attack against Holmes, with one of her colleagues at CNN saying: “Kristen is an incredible reporter, person and, above all, mother. I don’t understand such a reaction to a journalist asking the president for his response to something a Democratic senator has leveled against him.”

White House launches personal attack on CNN reporter over question to Trump

Sam Levin

The White House launched a personal attack against a CNN reporter on Monday with a social media post that mentioned her children and accused her of asking a “disgusting and inhumane question”.

A White House post targeted Kristen Holmes, a senior White House correspondent for the network, after she asked Donald Trump to respond to a widely shared comment by Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in a speech on Sunday.

The Georgia senator told a crowd that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” and instead “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar”.

The comment was an apparent reference to Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant, fueling scrutiny of her perceived closeness to Trump.

When Holmes asked Trump in the Oval Office to respond to Ossoff’s remark, the president dismissed her, calling the senator a “Pee-wee Herman lookalike”.

The White House’s “rapid response” social media account posted a clip of the exchange and tagged Holmes, calling her a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession”.

The post went on to criticize her for taking a “cheap shot” at a staffer, adding: “These scumbags are the lowest of the low.”

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Attention turns to Florida and Alaska, where primaries later on Tuesday will highlight Republican-led redistricting efforts that have scrambled congressional maps.

Today’s contests will also help shape the fiercely contested midterms this fall to determine control of Congress, where Republicans retain a narrow edge, and offer a referendum on president Donald Trump’s second term, AFP reported.

In the Alaska Senate race, incumbent Republican senator Dan Sullivan, a Trump ally seeking a third term, is facing another candidate, curiously also named Dan Sullivan.

Republicans have argued the second Sullivan, who’ll be appearing on the ballot as “Daniel J Sullivan Jr,” is a sham candidate running at the behest of Democrats to cause confusion. Dan J Sullivan Jr, a retired teacher, has denied the charge.

Also in the race is former US representative Mary Peltola. She was the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress, and she would become the first Alaska Native senator if she wins in November.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a GOP-led redrawing scrambled the congressional map, which has created some awkward matchups.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, first elected to Congress in ۲۰۰۴, is running for a new seat in Florida’s ۲۰th congressional district, centered in Broward ‌County, after her existing seat was redrawn to favor Republicans.

Wasserman Schultz, who is white, has faced some criticism for running in the historically Black district from activists who are already worried about losing Black representation in Congress following a Supreme Court decision that weakened a landmark civil rights law. She faces several Black candidates, including rapper Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, who found fame with the ۱۹۸۹ hit “Me So Horny,” and former Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who faces criminal charges of stealing $۵m in disaster relief funds. Cherfilus-McCormick, who has denied wrongdoing, resigned from Congress in April ahead of a possible expulsion.

In other developments:

• Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, Politico reports, citing Palm Beach County voting records. The White House has confirmed the president’s mail-in vote, according to the New York Times, which added that this is at least the third time the president has mailed his ballot.

• A northern California county plans to hire Tina Peters, the prominent Colorado election denier recently released from prison, to work on elections. Shasta county, a conservative region home to ۱۸۲,۰۰۰ people, has emerged as a center of the US election denialism movement in recent years. California governor Gavin Newsom’s office said the state is investigating Peters’ hiring.

• CNN has said it stands behind reporter Kristen Holmes after Trump repeatedly told the CNN reporter to “be quiet” and accused her of being “a fake reporter” during questioning over conditions onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Shortly after the president reprimanded Holmes, the White House invoked her children in a social media post further attacking the reporter when she asked about comments from Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in a speech on Sunday. He had told a crowd that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” and instead “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar”. It was an apparent reference to Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant.

• Trump again threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of his effort to end the US-Israel war on Iran, as the two-month window to negotiate peace with Iran expired on Monday with no end to the conflict in sight. “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News.

• Trump ⁠said that ​North Korean leader ⁠Kim Jong-un ⁠had ​responded ‌to his overtures ‌after he ‌ordered the US to scale back military ‌exercises with South ​Korea. Speaking ‌to reporters in the Oval ‌Office, Trump was asked why Kim had not responded to his overtures.