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ABC Wants Free Speech Protection And A News Exemption — It Cannot Have Both

Disney and ABC walked into federal court this week demanding a judge protect them from the Trump administration — arguing the FCC is running a retaliatory campaign against their broadcast licenses because the White House dislikes what they air. It is a serious First Amendment claim. It is also being made simultaneously with an argument, in a separate FCC docket, that The View is functionally identical to Meet the Press.

Both things cannot be true at once.

The FCC, under Chairman Brendan Carr, ordered early license renewal reviews for Disney’s eight owned-and-operated ABC stations in April — the first such action in more than 50 years. The timing followed a dust-up over Jimmy Kimmel mocking Melania Trump, and landed on top of an existing FCC probe into Disney’s DEI practices. ABC’s 45-page lawsuit, filed before U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, calls it a retaliatory campaign against protected speech and asks for a temporary restraining order.

At the same time, Disney’s lawyers have spent months arguing in a separate FCC docket that The View — a daytime opinion panel anchored by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg — qualifies for the “bona fide news interview” exemption to the federal equal time rule. That exemption, written into law in 1959, lets stations host one candidate without owing every rival candidate equal minutes. The catch: the programming has to actually function as journalism.

A NewsBusters count of The View’s full 29th season found 87 liberal guests against 5 conservative ones — a 95-to-5 ratio. The year before was worse: 128 liberal guests, 2 conservative, better than 98 percent one-sided. One of those two conservative bookings only happened because Marjorie Taylor Greene was feuding with her own party that week.

That is not a rounding error. That is a programming decision made deliberately, year after year, by a staff that knows exactly what it is producing.

Co-host Ana Navarro told her audience on air earlier this year to “vote Democrat.” ABC is now asking a federal agency to treat that same program as a neutral news broadcast.

Here is the reality Washington’s media class refuses to say plainly: both sides can be wrong at once. The FCC ordering accelerated license reviews because a president dislikes a late-night comedian’s jokes is exactly the kind of government content-based pressure the First Amendment was designed to stop. That is a real concern, and conservatives who forget it when the target is a network they dislike are making a mistake they will regret.

But ABC’s position is equally dishonest. A program booking political guests at a 95-to-5 liberal ratio is not a discussion. It is a caucus meeting with commercial breaks. Free speech protects ABC’s right to run an all-left-wing panel every weekday morning. It does not entitle ABC to call that panel a news program when the equal time rule is inconvenient, and a protected editorial product when the FCC comes knocking.

Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro vowed this week that ABC “won’t be told how to run” its business. He is right that government does not get to dictate editorial content. He is wrong to pretend The View is journalism. The American public deserves honesty from both the FCC and the network — and right now it is getting spin from both directions.

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Mexican President Rushes to Defend Former President’s Son Over Illegal Fuel Allegations

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum rushed to defend the son of her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) after the U.S. Department of State revoked his visa, and various news outlets linked him to the cartel-connected illegal fuel market. Sheinbaum claimed there is no evidence of wrongdoing on the politician’s part and that the visa revocation was carried out for political purposes.

During a news conference, Sheinbaum revealed that Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran was not under investigation in Mexico in connection with the illegal fuel trade known as huachacol. As Breitbart Texas reported, Lopez Beltran recently made national headlines after revealing that the U.S. Department of State revoked his tourist visa. While no reason for the visa revocation was given, the ex-president’s son has been the topic of multiple Breitbart Texas articles for his alleged role in the smuggling of illegal fuel in and out of Mexico through a network that included top Mexican military and naval officials, as well as political figures.

This week, news outlets in Mexico reported that Lopez Beltran was mentioned in two separate statements from cooperating witnesses in connection with ongoing investigations over cartel-connected fuel trade. Additionally, various news outlets, including Latinus, have reported that friends of Lopez Beltran have been recorded claiming to have close relationships with leaders of CJNG.

Since Lopez Beltran is the son of former Mexican President AMLO, Mexico’s political elite, including Sheinbaum, has rushed to his defense, proclaiming his innocence. Earlier this week, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office released a statement confirming that Lopez Beltran was not under investigation and that news articles tying him to the fuel trade were false, Breitbart Texas reported.

Mexico’s government’s defense of Lopez Beltran is similar to the way Sheinbaum and her government protected Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya earlier this year. As Breitbart Texas reported, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the criminal indictment of Rocha Moya and nine of his closest political allies in April, charging them with drug conspiracy and weapons charges for their alleged role in working with the Sinaloa Cartel. Rather than help the United States with arrests and extraditions, Shenbaum publicly claimed that there was no evidence of wrongdoing on Rocha Moya’s part. Despite being a wanted fugitive, the Sinaloa governor continues to live in Mexico and is allegedly being provided with military protection.

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OUTRAGE: Far-Left NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill Signs Draconian Law That Will Effectively Block People from Praying Outside Abortion Centers

The radical Left’s relentless war on religious freedom and the unborn has reached a terrifying new level in New Jersey.

Far-left Governor Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) signed sweeping legislation Thursday that creates harsh new criminal and civil penalties for alleged “interference” with abortion and transgender medical procedures.

Pro-life leaders warn the measure could be weaponized to frighten Christians and sidewalk counselors away from peacefully praying outside abortion facilities.

Sherrill signed S2260/A2218, which creates a new criminal offense called “interference with reproductive health care services.”

The Democrat governor claimed the legislation was necessary to protect abortionists and their patients.

“We have seen attacks from the Trump Administration and other states on access to reproductive and gender affirming healthcare, and attempts to impose restrictions across state borders. Here in New Jersey, we are standing firm in defense of reproductive freedoms – including the right to choose and the right to receive gender-affirming care,” Sherrill said in an official statement.

“No one should fear intimidation or violence for seeking healthcare, and no healthcare professional should fear punishment from another state for providing care that is legal in New Jersey. With this legislation, we are making clear that New Jersey will protect patients, providers, and the fundamental freedom to make personal healthcare decisions.”

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Really, O’Reilly? Bill Demands War Crimes In Iran

Hasn’t Bill O’Reilly done enough harm beating the drums for America’s failed foreign wars? But he’s still around somewhere, trying to top his earlier act with more of his trademark fever-swamp rants, now offering advice to President Donald Trump on the Iran War.

His latest advice is the stuff of world historic war crimes.

The danger is acute. The president watches Fox News “incessantly.” No one is real in Trump-world unless they are seen on TV. Those who are real assume a larger-than-life influence if they’ve been Fox fixtures. The passageway between Fox News and the Trump administration is like an eerie science fiction wormhole between galaxies. It not only seems to defy space and time, it defies common sense. How else could Trump have gotten Pete Hegseth?

Other Fox New hosts and contributors who ended up in the Trump administration include Sean Duffy, Jeanine Pirro, John Bolton, Larry Kudlow, Mike Walz, Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka, Mike Huckabee… There are more, but you get the idea. A preponderance of war enthusiasts, some for Iraq, others for Ukraine, all for Iran.

O’Reilly supported all three wars. And since he was the biggest Fox star for sixteen years, one must assume he looms large in Trump’s consciousness. That makes his pathogenic influence especially menacing.

O’Reilly does not appear to be given to intellectual exertions. During the heyday of Dr. Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns, for example, when the Federal Reserve, fiat money, and monetary policy were front and center, Bill asked a guest, “Who is this guy Keens [sic] that everybody is talking about?” Despite bloviating about politics and policy every night for years, O’Reilly simply had no idea who John Maynard Keynes was, the North Star of Washington’s calamitous economic policies for generations now.

In the twilight of a career riddled with little knowledge and worse judgement, O’Reilly showed up on NewsNation recently with advice for Trump in the Iran War. This, said O’Reilly, is what he would do if he were president of the United States:

“I would tell Iranians living in Tehran, the capital city, to get out. Because we’re going to wreck your infrastructure. That means water. That means power.”

Given his intellectual indolence, one immediately suspects that strategic advice isn’t original with O’Reilly. He is merely giving structure to a babbling, midnight Trump post during the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran: “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

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Key Democratic Senate Candidate’s Campaign Descends Into ‘Complete Chaos’

Just hours before a key jungle primary decided the field for a critical Senate race the left hopes to flip, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, a former state representative, fired numerous senior campaign staffers in what one local outlet described as a “Saturday night massacre.”

Peltola would win the all-party primary by a 48.1 percent to 42.7 percent margin over incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.

However, most of the remaining votes are likely to skew Sullivan’s way in November — including a candidate with the name Daniel J. Sullivan who ran as a Republican but was a Democratic op to draw votes away from the incumbent on the first ballot.

In addition, while polling of varying quality consistently showed Peltola ahead by anywhere between 2 to 7 percentage points in a general election matchup, a June 15-29 New York Times/Siena University poll showed Sullivan up by two. The poll was the first survey to meet the Times’ quality-control standards for its polling aggregate.

While it’s unclear why, The Alaska Landmine reported Monday that Peltola had “abruptly fired multiple senior campaign staff” over the weekend, just days before the primary.

This included two senior officials, Anton McParland and Elisa Rios, who had been with her since 2022, when she was elected to the U.S. House in 2022; Rios was her chief of staff.

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US Government Warns: Hackers Attacking Vulnerable Water Systems With AI Help

Several U.S. government agencies have said that cyber actors are attempting to hack into devices made by industrial systems company Siemens that are used to monitor water and other critical infrastructure systems.

In an advisory published on Wednesday, the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other U.S. agencies informed “owners and operators of industrial control systems” that there is an “active cyber threat to Siemens S7 Series PLCs,” or programmable logic controllers—an industrial automation system.

Unnamed “threat actors are conducting reconnaissance and capability development against U.S.-based Siemens PLC installations using AI-generated exploitation scripts disguised as legitimate monitoring tools,” the advisory said.

It added that the hackers use services to find PLCs connected to the internet that run what the agencies said is “outdated software” or are “otherwise poorly protected.”

“The U.S. critical infrastructure sectors most targeted by this threat activity include Critical Manufacturing, Energy, Water and Wastewater, Chemical, Food and Agriculture, and Commercial Facilities,” the advisory reads.

“This is not a theoretical risk—it is an active threat.”

The agencies further warned that “exploitation of poorly protected PLCs could lead to disruption of critical industrial processes, safety incidents, downtime or equipment damage, compromise of sensitive data, compliance violations, and cascading impacts across interconnected systems.”

Organizations using Siemens systems are encouraged to apply relevant security updates, isolate devices and systems from the internet where possible, implement strong security protocols, and strengthen monitoring for potential malicious activity, according to the advisory.

“These mitigations are particularly important for owners and operators who work with third-party service providers or system integrators who may have remote access to PLCs, as the asset owners may not realize that their systems are exposed and at risk,” they added.

The advisory did not provide the name of a specific group, country, or actor that may be involved in attempting to hack the Siemens systems. Nor did it name companies that may have been targeted by the threat actors.

The warning ‌comes amid U.S. cyber incidents ⁠targeting local water systems in several states in recent weeks. The FBI said earlier this month that from July 27 to July 30, water and wastewater utility companies in seven states reported security-related incidents.

In July, CISA and other agencies said Iran-linked hackers have targeted PLCs made by Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, Siemens, and potentially others.

A cybersecurity risk organization, Encrygma, said on Wednesday that a group linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the CyberAv3ngers, has attacked water systems in the United States and displayed political messaging. CISA linked the group to cyberattacks on PLCs in late 2024.

Since February, the United States and Iran have traded strikes as the Trump administration has demanded that Tehran give up its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway that allows for the transportation of significant amounts of the world’s traded oil.

Other agencies that were involved in the release of Wednesday’s advisory included the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The NSA, FBI, CISA, and other U.S. agencies have long said that the Chinese regime, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have engaged in malicious cyber activity against U.S. infrastructure networks, collecting intelligence and engaging in cyber espionage.

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ISIS-inspired plot thwarted: N.Y. woman charged in plan to bomb Albany Capitol

A New York woman who converted to Islam has been arrested in an ISIS-inspired terror plot to bomb the state Capitol in Albany. She was charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

According to a federal criminal complaint released on Thursday, 35-year-old Jessica Bowie was taken into custody on Wednesday.

Bowie’s plan reportedly involved detonating a bomb, which would be placed inside of a DoorDash delivery food bag, in front of the state Capitol. However, unbeknownst to her, she detailed the plan to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant whom she believed would assist her as an accomplice.

“Blowing kafirs [non-Muslims] brains out is beautiful,” she told the FBI informant.

Prosecutors say that Bowie — who posted “Praise be to Allah for September 11th” on social media — regularly shared pro-radical Islamist and anti-American messages online, expressed her belief that “jihad is an obligation” and recorded audio files reciting a pledge to ISIS.

Investigators also say that Bowie began planning the attack in mid-July. In August, she then purchased $200 worth of nails and other bomb materials from Home Depot using funds provided by an informant. It is unclear if this was the same informant.

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US Academic Who Exposed Plagiarist Jason Arday Is Suspended After Arday Commits Suicide

American academic Nathan Cofnas has been suspended by Belgium’s Ghent University after he helped expose explosive plagiarism allegations involving the late Cambridge professor Jason Arday.

Cofnas announced the suspension on X on Thursday.

“I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me,” Cofnas wrote.

“The decision was made by rector Petra De Sutter, a former leader of the Green Party.”

Hours earlier, Cofnas said the university was investigating him for allegedly “discriminating against Arday.”

Ghent University confirmed that Cofnas had been suspended “as a precautionary measure” while officials conduct a preliminary disciplinary investigation.

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Calif.: New GOP-led bill targets sales of ‘glow-in-the-dark rabbits’ and other ‘novelty’ pets

California legislators are seeking to pass a bill that would prohibit the sale of animals that possess a “cosmetic transgenic trait,” including “glow-in-the-dark” rabbits and other so-called “novelty” pets.

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Leticia Castillo (R-Calif.), voiced her desire to protect animals and treat them ethically, asserting that genetic engineering should not be used for arbitrary reasons.

“As technology moves forward, our responsibility to protect animals must move forward to,” Castillo said in an August 5th press release.

“Genetic engineering has the potential to improve animal health and support lifesaving research. But animals should never be changed simply to create a product that is more unusual or more profitable,” she continued.

The bill, AB 1382, passed the Assembly in California, but it stalled in committee in the state Senate, where it has been held under submission since August 13th.

In a recent press release, Assemblywoman Castillo noted that biotech startups are already engineering “designer pets,” including “glow-in-the-dark rabbits” and proposals for “unicorn”-like animals.

“‘Transgenic trait’ means a trait that has been deliberately altered, modified, or engineered, through means not possible under natural conditions, by insertion of a foreign gene using genetic engineering methods,” the bill reads. “Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not import for profit, sell, or offer for sale in this state a transgenic pet animal that possesses a cosmetic transgenic trait.”

The bill broadly defines pet animals to include dogs, cats, rabbits, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish and “other species of animal kept for the purpose of being a household pet.”

In a legislative analysis of the bill, the company the Los Angeles Project, a startup up in Austin, Texas, was specifically referenced. The analysis stated that the company was utilizing the gene-editing tool CRISPR with the aim to have “glowing baby bunnies” to eventually sell as pets.

The Los Angeles Project was cofounded by biohacker Josie Zayner and is using gene-editing to work on making “glow-in-the-dark rabbits, hypoallergenic cats and dogs, and possibly, one day, actual unicorns,” according to a February 2025 WIRED article.

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Entitled Democrat lawmaker who’s been arrested three times while in office demands enormous six-figure salary increase that’ll take her pay to $250,000

A Texas Democrat who has been arrested three times while in office is seeking a six-figure salary raise. 

Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt has requested $250,000 ‘or more’ according to a formal salary grievance filed with the county and seen by the Houston Chronicle.

The increase, if approved, would be equivalent to a 79 percent raise on her current salary of just over $139,500.

It was filed as part of an annual process that lets elected members ask a committee for a raise, her request will be considered today. 

According to the grievance, seen by the outlet, Wyatt said she was asking for ‘an amount that fairly and appropriately reflects the statutory responsibilities, fiduciary obligations, scope of authority, workload, and level of accountability associated with the office of Harris County Treasurer.’

The request comes after her office was stripped of some of its financial oversight powers in an ongoing effort to abolish her position entirely, the outlet reported. 

Wyatt made the request while a drink driving case against her works its way though the legal system. 

Police in Galveston said that they approached a car flagged by a concerned onlooker during a patrol in May, only to find the female driver, Wyatt, ‘to be asleep.’

An officer woke Wyatt up and asked her where she was, to which she responded that she was ‘in Heaven.’

After repeated attempts to get the treasurer to say where she was and where she was going, she finally said she was in Houston, trying to get to Galveston for a conference the next morning.

At one point, Wyatt admitted to having one glass of wine that evening, before eventually changing her story to two glasses.

The arresting officers said they ‘smelled the odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting’ from Wyatt.

Wyatt also sat on the rear bumper of her car to remain upright, the officer said, according to police documents obtained by ABC13.

She eventually failed a field sobriety test and was arrested for driving while intoxicated.

Wyatt was immediately taken to the Galveston County jail but has since been released, according to jail records.

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