Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The government ignored late night shows for a long time as far as the equal time rules. The rule could be applied to comedy and talk shows, but the Trump administration is unlikely to apply it fairly, rather than based on who bends their speech to Trump’s will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXvJkknt1do
“Carr threatens network daytime and late-night shows with reprisal if they don’t offer candidates equal time. But Fox News’ late-night show Gutfeld!, which draws more viewers than any of the networks, can have on any guests it wants, since the content of cable TV generally falls outside the FCC’s purview. The same goes for social media platforms like TikTok, where 1 in 5 Americans regularly gets their news. The idea that ABC, NBC, and CBS control the flow of information is quaint.
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“Streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025,” Nielsen found in June 2025, “while broadcast (20.1%) and cable (24.1%) combined to represent 44.2% of TV.” In other words, 80 percent of all that we watch on TV is not even subject to the same level of FCC regulation, including the equal-time rule.
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Carr “sees correcting anti-Trump bias as an important part of his job,” Jacob Sullum wrote in the February/March issue of Reason, in a piece about the FCC’s history of policing speech. “In fact, Carr seems eager to embrace what he once derided as ‘a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the “public interest.”‘”
The equal-time rule is an antiquated regulation that becomes more obsolete with each passing year. It’s no longer the case that broadcast networks are Americans’ only—or even main—source of information. It shouldn’t be up to the FCC to decide if talk shows are the right amount of partisan. If viewers don’t want to watch, it’s easier than ever to just watch something else.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/23/the-fcc-wants-to-police-how-many-conservatives-appear-on-the-view/
American Olympians were asked what they thought of Trump’s policies. They said they didn’t agree with a lot of what’s going on but they are still here to compete for their friends and family. Trump and some Republicans attacked them viciously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEBn_sDc9dA
“A federal judge handling a lawsuit over the deportation of pro-Palestinian activists excoriated top administration officials, including President Donald Trump, for trampling on the First Amendment and for what the judge described as a fearful approach to freedom.
“There was no policy here,” said U.S. District Judge William Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee who has been on the federal bench in Boston for 40 years. “What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people.”
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“I find it breathtaking that I have been compelled on the evidence to find the conduct of such high-level officers of our government — cabinet secretaries — conspired to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States,” Young said. “These cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”
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Young used extraordinarily stark language during the hearing, describing Trump as an “authoritarian” while insisting that he was choosing the term carefully, rather than simply using a “pejorative.”
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The judge found the president and his aides targeted the members of the group for their First Amendment-protected views and speech, guided by an anonymously run private website targeting Palestinian students in the United States.
“I’ve asked myself why — how did this happen? How could our own government, the highest officials in our government, seek to infringe the rights of people lawfully here in the United States? And I’ve come to believe that there’s a concept of freedom here that I don’t understand,” the judge continued. “The record in this case convinces me that these high officials, and I include the president of the United States, have a fearful view of freedom.”
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“These professionals were taken off anti-terrorist investigations. They were taken off human trafficking investigations all to look up … what dirt they could find on this group that some private agency, at the very highest levels of the DHS decided — that’s the best use of those people,” Young said. “If ever you want chapter and verse about how the government can be weaponized against a disfavored group, that’s the record of it.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/15/unconstitutional-conspiracy-judge-slams-trump-administration-over-targeted-deportations-00733070
The Legalization Of Corruption
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTWqadj_19k
“The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” …in Bridges v. Wilson (1945), the Supreme Court unambiguously stated that “freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.””
https://reason.com/2025/12/18/yes-the-first-amendment-applies-to-non-citizens-present-in-the-united-states/
“military personnel not only “can refuse illegal orders”; they have an obligation to do so. Lederman also cited The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, which similarly recognizes an exception to the general rule that “an order requiring the performance of a military duty to act may be inferred to be lawful, and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate.” The handbook says that inference “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.” The first example it offers—”an order directing the murder of a civilian [or] a noncombatant”—is clearly relevant to Trump’s bloodthirsty anti-drug strategy.
Trump has tried to justify that strategy in various ways: by conflating drug smuggling with violent aggression, by describing the men whose deaths he has ordered as members of “foreign terrorist organizations,” by asserting a “noninternational armed conflict,” and by preposterously claiming that “we save 25,000 lives” with each boat that is destroyed (which would add up to more than half a million deaths supposedly prevented so far). These arguments have been widely rejected by experts on the law of war.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/21/trump-says-legislators-committed-treason-by-noting-that-soldiers-are-not-obligated-to-obey-unlawful-orders/
“The lawmakers note that “no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” Although “we know this is hard,” they say, “your vigilance is critical,” and “we have your back.”
That stance is legally uncontroversial. According to the Judge Advocate General’s Operational Law Handbook, “soldiers have a duty to disobey” orders that are “manifestly illegal.” Examples include intentional targeting of civilians, torture of prisoners, looting of property, and suppression of constitutionally protected protests.
Trump nevertheless claims reiterating this well-established principle amounts to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS,” which he says is “punishable by DEATH!” Yet the video plainly does not qualify as sedition or treason.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/26/trumps-habitual-charges-of-treason-reflect-his-authoritarian-impulses/
“these materials, although controversial in their advocacy for insurrection, squatting, and anarchy, are all squarely constitutionally protected speech. The government cannot infringe upon one’s First Amendment right to read, possess, or write—unless the author is inciting imminent lawless action—anti-government or pro-revolution literature. And while some may see the ideas in Sanchez’s box as dangerous, anti-government zines and pamphlets are far more similar to the Revolutionary-era literature popular when the First Amendment was passed than today’s social media landscape, as Seth Stern of The Intercept points out.
However, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in September designating “antifa” as a “major terrorist organization, prosecutors, like the ones in Sanchez’s case, are attempting to use materials that “explicitly [call] for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law” as evidence of criminality, despite their constituitonal protection.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/26/texas-man-faces-up-to-40-years-in-prison-for-transporting-constitutionally-protected-pamphlets/
“Oklahoma lawmakers are suggesting that a new state law aimed at “adult performances” means municipalities must predict what sorts of events might become obscene and preemptively prohibit them. It’s a clear recipe for chilling protected speech—especially drag performances, which were one of the main targets of the law.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/03/oklahomas-obscenity-bait-and-switch-could-ban-pride-parades-and-public-drag-shows/