Policy

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board voted to wind down the 58-year-old organization after Congress slashed its funding. CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said shutting it down would “protect the integrity of the public media system ... rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.”

The Trump administration — and antivax crusader RFK Jr. — are cutting down the number of childhood immunizations federal agencies recommend.

The MAGA-friendly television network officially filed a complaint to the FCC asking them to halt the proposed merger between television broadcast companies Nexstar and Tegna, with Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy calling it a “dangerous consolidation” that would hand them “immense control over local news and political news coverage.” Unfortunately for them, Nexstar can curry favor with the Trump administration in ways that Newsmax cannot.

Since his administration attacked Caracas and arrested President Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s been clear that he wants US companies to “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken [oil] infrastructure” in Venezuela. That’s easier said than done with massive logistical challenges and political instability still weighing on the oil industry in the region.

Early on Saturday morning, American forces struck multiple sites inside Venezuela, including a large-scale assault on Caracas, and arrested President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The two are expected to stand trial in New York for drug and weapons charges.

As we noted about Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign, not everything can be done online, including his New Year’s Day public inauguration (following the private midnight swearing-in). Then the transition team, including former FTC boss Lina Khan, started work on the “sewer socialism” that Mamdani projects as part of “a new story” for the city.

The Financial Times reporting on the delayed Trump Mobile phone that’s definitely not made in the USA:

After going a year between his first and second videos investigating the PayPal-owned shopping extension, MegaLag didn’t make us wait long for part three.

A private swearing-in ceremony for New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will take place inside the original City Hall station at midnight on January 1st, ahead of a public ceremony at City Hall later that day. Mamdani’s subway PR continues to be a delightful vibe. In a statement to Streetsblog, he said:

The proposed rules would be among the toughest global AI regulations if passed. Minors and elderly users would be required to register a guardian to use AI services, who’d be notified if topics like suicide come up, and chatbots would be banned from emotional manipulation and promoting violence, crime, or self-harm.

Several polls from Gallup and Pew reveal that voters overwhelmingly view the rise of AI as a net negative:

In June, the New York state legislature passed a bill requiring social media companies to display warnings about the potential mental health harms of using their products. Now the governor has officially signed the bill into law. The announcement of the signing says that:

Most of us have been rolling our eyes at the (likely illegally) renamed The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. But Toby Morton, a comedian who has written for Mad TV and South Park, saw the move coming and snatched up trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com a while back. Morton told the Washington Post:

The CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is suing Trump administration officials after they targeted him for deportation from the US because of his online content moderation work.

The Trump administration just sanctioned five people, including Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) founder Imran Ahmed, over their work in content moderation and anti-disinformation. On Wednesday he filed a lawsuit (pdf) to stop their “unconstitutional attempt to arrest and expel him.”

The feds have spent the last day or so replying to @PopBase on X and sloppily redacting documents. Now it’s claiming “The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI have informed the Department of Justice that they have uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case,” which could take weeks to release.

The Justice Department reached a proposed agreement with landlord LivCor to resolve claims that it illegally coordinated rent prices with other landlords using algorithmic recommendations from RealPage. The DOJ previously settled with RealPage, and two large landlords involved in the case.

The Federal Trade Commission set aside a 2024 order against a company it previously accused of selling an AI service that could generate false online reviews. The agency found the order didn’t adequately satisfy legal requirements and “unduly burdens innovation in the nascent AI industry,” violating the president’s directives.

The administration’s top AI adviser championed Trump’s executive order preempting states from regulating the industry, but alienated everyone from kids’ safety groups to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Insiders worry that the Musk-aligned investor doesn’t understand how Washington works.

Bari Weiss killed a 60 Minutes story on CECOT, the El Salvador prison where the Trump administration has been deporting people. A senior correspondent noted that the story had been cleared by Standards and Practices, as well as the company’s lawyers, calling the decision “political.”