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First Trump Administration Moved to Loosen Rules on Media Ownership, Now DOJ Trying to Force Sale of CNN

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Trump Administration Engaging in Assault of a Political Enemy

For more than two years, as a candidate and as president, Donald Trump has viciously attacked CNN, repeatedly calling it “FAKE NEWS” and verbally attacking its reporters. There’s no question CNN is enemy number one to the Trump administration.

So it should come as no surprise that the Dept. of Justice is trying now to force Time Warner to sell CNN before it approves a proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner.

“The Justice Department has called on AT&T and Time Warner to sell Turner Broadcasting, the group of cable channels that includes CNN, as a potential requirement for approving the companies’ pending $85.4 billion deal, people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday,” The New York Times reports today. 

The Times adds, “analysts have said that there were few legal grounds on which to block the transaction.”

AT&T has been told by the US Department of Justice that it needs to sell CNN, Time Warner’s cable news channel, to get its $84.5bn acquisition of the media company approved, according to three people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. 

The Trump administration is engaging in a politicized attack on CNN, pure and simple.

ThinkProgress calls it “Authoritarianism.”

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti‏ saysthe Trump Administration’s push for Time Warner to sell off CNN appears to be illegitimate retaliation against the press.”

How do we know?

Less than two weeks ago the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Republican Ajit Pai (who also is a staunch opponent of net neutrality) announced he is moving to remove a decades-old FCC rule that limits media companies from becoming monopolies in any given market. The rule has prevented newspapers from buying TV stations and vice-versa, if it would mean citizens would have fewer sources of news.

“If you believe, as I do, that the federal government has no business intervening in the news, then we must stop the federal government from intervening in the news business,” Pai told a House communications subcommittee October 25, as Bloomberg News reported. “He said that’s why he offered his rules revision to ‘help pull the government once and for all out of the newsroom.'”

Republicans have been calling, without success, to weaken or kill those rules for more than a decade, and Pai’s ascension to FCC chair as President Donald Trump’s choice gives the party a chance to accomplish that goal. He set a vote for Nov. 16.

Relaxed rules could help Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., which earlier told the FCC that its proposed $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media Inc. would violate local-market ownership strictures in 10 cities.

Pai cast his ownership proposals as part of his commitment to the First Amendmentthat guarantees free speech — a live topic since Trump threatened broadcast licenses over news reports.

Sinclair is a right wing media outlet that has been gobbling up local TV news stations then forcing them to broadcast pro-Trump “reports,” including a nightly opinion segment masquerading as news by former Trump staffer Boris Epshteyn.

Sinclair Broadcasting is giving more exposure to political commentator and former Trump administration official Boris Epshteyn by increasing its number of ‘must run’ segments at its 173 local affiliates across the country,” The Hill reported in July.

Sinclair will now require its stations to run nine Epshteyn commentaries per week, an increase from the three per week requirement since the 34-year-old Russian-born former investment banker and attorney joined in April.

Now, FFC Chairman Pai is dead wrong, but so is the DOJ. The AT&T-Time Warner merger isn’t bad for Americans. It doesn’t help make the quality of the news better, but it doesn’t make it worse, either.

The Trump administration is engaging in the assault of a political enemy, and it’s plain as day.

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News

Trump Expected to Grant Clemency to Almost All J6 Criminals, Including Violent Felons

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President Donald Trump is expected to grant “sweeping” pardons and sentence commutations to all or nearly all the approximately 1600 people convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and assault on the U.S. Capitol — including those convicted of some of the most violent acts against law enforcement. Trump, who was also charged with crimes related to the insurrection and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, has called those serving prison time “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

Those convicted of violent crimes are expected to receive sentence commutations, which could mean lesser sentences or even release from prison.

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders also reports the actions would include “commuting the prison sentences of hundreds of his supporters who have been convicted of violent attacks against law enforcement, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.”

READ MORE: Skipping Hand on Bible, Trump Declares ‘We Will Not Forget Our God’ at Inauguration

Rather than look at each person on a case-by-case basis, Trump, according to The Washington Post, “would grant some form of clemency to virtually everyone prosecuted by the Justice Department, from the plotters imprisoned for seditious conspiracy and felons convicted of assaulting police officers to those who merely trespassed on the restricted grounds on Jan. 6, 2021.”

The U.S. Department of Justice “would also dismiss about 300 cases that have not yet gone to trial, including people charged with violent assaults, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss pending plans,” the Post added.

After the 2024 election, Trump had told TIME magazine, “I’m going to do case-by-case, and if they were nonviolent, I think they’ve been greatly punished.”

READ MORE: Trump Expected to Target Citizenship of Children With Undocumented Parents

He also told NBC News’ Kristen Welker, and supporters at his rallies, he would act “on day one.”

According to the Post, 14 of the January 6 defendants have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. At least 379 were charged with assaulting police or the media — the vast majority of them have also been sentenced. 287 were charged with “less violent or nonviolent felonies.” Most of them have already been convicted. And 869 were charged with “misdemeanor counts such as trespassing or disorderly conduct.” The vast majority of them have also been sentenced.

Contrary to claims by many of Trump’s supporters, including lawmakers and those in the media, the January 6 attack was not “peaceful,” or nonviolent, and weapons were used in the attack.

“Participants carried weapons including firearms, chemical sprays, stun guns, axes, baseball bats, a sword and a hockey stick. A female rioter was shot and killed by police inside the Capitol, and one officer succumbed to two strokes that were partly attributed to the stress of the attack. Three people died as a result of medical emergencies suffered during the riot. Four police officers later died by suicide,” the Post reports.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s DOGE About to Be Sued: Report

 

Image by Tyler Merbler via Flickr and a CC license

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Skipping Hand on Bible, Trump Declares ‘We Will Not Forget Our God’ at Inauguration

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During his presidential swearing-in inaugural ceremony, Donald Trump several times invoked God, while inexplicably not placing his hand on either of the two Bibles Melania Trump held at his side.

“I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump told the former presidents, lawmakers, and billionaires in attendance at the Capitol Rotunda. “We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God,” Trump also declared, adding, “We will not forget our God.”

Many, including the Deputy Chief of Staff to a Democratic U.S. Congressman, noted that Trump did not place his hand on the Bible. And while not a constitutional requirement, it was a striking anomaly.

READ MORE: Trump Expected to Target Citizenship of Children With Undocumented Parents

Also reporting Trump not being sworn in with a hand on the Bible, The New York Post noted, “Trump used both a family Bible and the so-called Lincoln Bible, which was sworn on by the 16th president in 1861 as well as Barack Obama in 2009 and 2013.”

“Instead,”the Post reported, “Trump stood with his left arm down by his side as he raised his right hand for the oath of office.”

Few presidents have skipped the hand-on-the-Bible portion of the swearing in.

President John Quincy Adams in 1825 reportedly used a law book instead of a Bible, according to PBS.

“In 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was hastily sworn in after the assassination of President Wil­liam McKinley,” notes Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Roosevelt had rushed to Buffalo, where McKinley had been shot by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. Roosevelt took the Oath of Office at the home of a friend, and no Bible was used during the private ceremony.”

In 1963, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, “believed it was best for a reeling nation to know that a president was in place immediately. As Johnson was preparing to take the oath of office aboard Air Force One, a Bible was not available. Kennedy’s personal Roman Catholic missal was found in his living quarters,” according to The Washington Post.

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But this may be the first time a president has been sworn in with a Bible by his side yet without putting their hand on it.

Watch the video below or at this link.


READ MORE: ‘Fear Small Crowds?’: Trump and Team Mocked as ‘Snowflakes’ for Inauguration Move

 

Image via Reuters

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Trump Expected to Target Citizenship of Children With Undocumented Parents

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Almost immediately after being sworn in as America’s 47th president, Donald Trump reportedly will sign 200 executive orders across a wide range of issues, despite, as critics note, having Republican majorities in the House and Senate, which could allow him to achieve many of his goals through legislation. Among those orders is one that would, in theory, end birthright citizenship — the constitutional right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil — for children born to undocumented parents.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1898 dealt with birthright citizenship, a guarantee of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which clearly states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The portion that reads, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” the Supreme Court ruled, meant children born in the U.S. to a parent or parents of diplomats of a foreign country.

Candidate Trump in 2015 said he wanted to end birthright citizenship.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s DOGE About to Be Sued: Report

“In August 2015, Donald Trump sat down to talk with then–Fox News host Bill O’Reilly about one of his central campaign promises: the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants. ‘Our country is going to hell,’ Trump said. ‘We have to start a process where we take back our country,'” Mother Jones reported last year.

“O’Reilly found the plan ridiculous. Such a colossal and expensive undertaking, the conservative host said, would take decades. Before then, the courts would stop sweeping raids. The idea, O’Reilly continued, was just ‘not going to happen.’ Perhaps the most obvious reason why, he said, was the 14th Amendment, which ‘says if you’re born here, you’re an American—and you can’t kick Americans out.’ O’Reilly almost screamed at one point: ‘If you’re born here, you’re an American—period! Period!'”

In 2018 he again said he would do so, with an executive order, that never materialized.

Now, it appears Trump will try to fulfill his decade-long wish.

“This executive order will ‘clarify’ the 14th Amendment, [an] incoming official said, such that ‘that on a prospective basis, the federal government will not recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born in the United States,'” Semafor White House correspondent Shelby Talcott said.

READ MORE: ‘Fear Small Crowds?’: Trump and Team Mocked as ‘Snowflakes’ for Inauguration Move

“The incoming official,” The Washington Post adds, “did not provide details on how the administration planned to implement a change that scholars say would be illegal. Trump’s order would reinterpret the words ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which grants citizenship to all people born on U.S. soil, and redefine the phrase to exclude babies born to parents illegally in the country.”

There are millions of Americans of all ages currently living in the U.S., (an estimated 5 million under the age of 18) who are children of undocumented parents. The claim, “on a prospective basis,” suggests Trump will try to deny any child born of undocumented parents, going forward, their right to citizenship.

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis declared, “Birthright citizenship is part of the 14th Amendment and the president cannot write it out with his pen.”

Professor of Law Steve Vladeck noted, “Trump’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship by executive order is (1) unlawful; (2) predicated on conflating two entirely distinct legal arguments; and (3) doomed to fail in (even these) courts.”

Mother Jones’ Isabela Dias last year wrote if it were to happen, “It would be nothing short of seismic.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens FBI Office, Alleges ‘Corruption,’ Demands They ‘Preserve All Records’

 

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