Extreme Commanders

it was clearly DEI.

Trump's FCC chief opens investigation into NPR and PBS

President Trump's new head of the Federal Communications Commission has ordered an investigation of NPR and PBS, with an eye toward unraveling federal funding for all public broadcasting.

"I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials," Chairman Brendan Carr wrote on Wednesday to the presidents and chief executives of NPR and PBS, Katherine Maher and Paula A. Kerger, respectively. "In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements."

The FCC does not directly regulate the two networks. Instead, it evaluates the actions of roughly 1,500 public broadcasting stations across the country, which hold licenses granted by the FCC for use of public airwaves for radio and television, even in the digital age.

Both CEOs rejected the claim that the public broadcasters had violated federal laws or practices that stretch back decades.

"PBS is proud of the noncommercial educational programming we provide to all Americans through our member stations," Kerger said in a statement shared with NPR. "We work diligently to comply with the FCC's underwriting regulations and welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that to the Commission."

Carr noted in his letter that he was sharing it with lawmakers on Capitol Hill because he thought it could inform their debate over whether to cut off all taxpayer subsidies of NPR and PBS programming.

"For my own part, I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS given the changes in the media marketplace," Carr wrote.

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ixcuincle wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2025 3:36 pm

Even after that election, I still have to deal with polling...

I've seen polls that showed that a majority of Americans feel Trump will fail and he has the lowest net favorability of any president coming into office in 80 years. Anyways, I'm curious about his polling as things stand now.

Well, what a week, eh? Had enough yet? Way too much has happened, too much for me to want to spend all of that time typing it out. So, I'm just going to give my overall take on things:

1. I knew it would all fall apart, I figured it would take at least 6 months for things to go visibly south and maybe a year...maybe two before the Trump admin collapsed. I was betting it would be high gas and groceries, turns out pure incompetence works just as well, if not better. These maga chuds don't like politics, they like Trump. Thats why they don't care about policy, they're straight up voting for the man and the man only. The actual politics, the sausage no one wants to see get made, is actually very boring. If you're in this thread, you're into politics. The average maga doesn't know what it takes to smoothly run a country and they'll never be able to grasp it...because they can't do it. Its all fun and games to them until things actually break and effect them, like aircraft falling out of the freaking sky. They're getting a real taste of what they wanted, most of them don't like it. The leopards are eating.

2. The ineptitude this time around is staggering, its mind boggling. Every mistake Trump made in his four years of office the first time, he's made again in less than 14 days. The mistakes and gaffes committed are hitting them right in the dick, time and time again. Using AI to write nonsensical EOs that turned all Americans into women, to his press secretary ruining his federal freeze in court, the Musk nazi salute and now the Musk aircraft tragedy. There are no professionals in this admin, but they can't do anything right. Hell, I'm hearing the federal workforce is energized and are refusing to leave out of spite. Everyone is fighting, everyone is winning. Not saying he'll lose all the time, but this has to make people feel good about our future. If we make it...

Edit: Oh yeah, chaos. I forgot to mention that their plan was to "shock and awe" us. Hit us with so much, from so many sides, that we won't be able to keep up. Seems like Trump got way ahead of his own skates, we seem to be keeping up just fine. The Dems have been swift(...ish) and hitting back hard and efficiently, Trump is on his heels already. The dumbass shocked and awed himself.

Not withstanding the kerfluffle it is causing with two of our allies, aren’t the tarrifs that Trump is innacting a type of consumption tax?

@PeterMP

FBI Quantico training facility yesterday, core values being painted over.

Trump just said he wants to do away with public service completely and privatize the entire government workforce.

America's cooked. We had a good run.

Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries

At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019

In the aftermath of the deadly collision between a jetliner and a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan National Airport, Trump held an extraordinary news conference during which he speculated on the cause of the accident. At length, he attacked former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for imposing what he called “a big push to put diversity” that he said weakened the Federal Aviation Administration.

Reading from a 2024 Fox News report — which he incorrectly identified as being two weeks old — Trump listed conditions that he suggested disqualify people from being air traffic controllers: “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

“Can you imagine?” he asked. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress.” He suggested that it was wrong for anyone with those conditions to qualify “for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”

But here’s the rub: During Trump’s first term, the FAA began a program to hire air traffic controllers with the conditions that Trump decried.

The facts
In the news conference, Trump said Obama weakened standards and “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best, to extraordinary. … Then they changed it back — that was Biden.”

Trump’s claim was repeated in an executive order Trump signed Thursday that ordered a review of aviation safety: “During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence.”

That’s false. In his first term, Trump left the standards unchanged.

For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps. The program was criticized, such as in a Fox News report in 2015, as making it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.

But Trump, in his first term, left the policy in place, leading to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 by Mountain States Legal Foundation. The case was due to go to trial this year.

Moreover, the FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference.

“FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the announcement said, would “identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”

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Since we're 11 days through this new admin and every day seems like a 5 alarm fire, how long before the riots begin?

I'm going to put the +/- at 5 months. The expected tariffs next week and the price impact will be felt by all his mouth breathing supporters who were whining and crying about not being able to afford anything.

Another plane crash. Small plane crash near a mall in Philly.