By now most sentient people realize Trump’s tariffs are a mindlessly descructive gambit that’s going to decimate inventory, drive smaller companies out of business, and significantly drive up costs for American consumers. There’s bottomless evidence that the clumsy effort to bully the planet was concocted by imbeciles, and most countries have justifiably told the Trump administration to go fuck itself.

But amusingly (?), the Trump administration still seems to think it can leverage the threat of tariffs to try and force companies into using Elon Musk’s Starlink service, according to the Washington Post:

“A series of internal government messages obtained by The Post reveal how U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name. The documents do not show that the Trump team has explicitly demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs. But they do indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk’s satellite firm at a moment when the White House is calling for wide-ranging talks on trade.”

When asked by WAPO, the State Department just insisted they were being patriotic:

“Starlink is an American-made product that has been game-changing in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity. Any patriotic American should want to see an American company’s success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors.”

A growing number of countries are trying to move away from Starlink because of Musk’s unhinged support of racism and conspiratorial fascism, and the fact they’re not sure they can trust Musk to be objective or reliable when it comes to military and political communications.

Germany and Ukraine, for example, are starting to more heavily use France’s Eutelsat fledgling low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite services after Musk restricted Ukraine’s access to the service near Crimea because he personally opposed Ukraine’s military aims (defending itself from unprovoked invasion by a fascist).

The U.S. certainly has a long history of promoting U.S. corporate interests globally. But even this level of naked cronyism is an extreme outlier. Everywhere you look, the Trump administration is looking to coddle Trump’s rich benefactor, who donated $277 million to ensure Trump’s election victory.

They’ve duct-taped Starlink terminals to the White House roof, creating all sorts of new cybersecurity vulnerabilities by bypassing government security protocols. They’ve installed Starlink at the FAA, in a bid to oust Verizon out of a $2 billion agency telecom contract. They’re rewriting the infrastructure bill grant program to drive as much taxpayer money as possible to Elon Musk.

The head of the Trump FCC, Brendan Carr, has been going around acting like a used car salesmen, telling countries that refuse to sign up for Starlink service that they’re effectively aiding communism. Carr’s been falsely claiming that countries either have the choice of Starlink or compromised Chinese satellite service, ignoring a growing array of looming French, European, Canadian, and Jeff Bezos’ alternatives.

This is, of course, just transparently corrupt effort to reward the authoritarian administration’s top donor. And while Starlink certainly has its uses (disasters, war, or the middle of nowhere rural America–assuming you can afford it), it’s ill-suited for this sort of “use everywhere, for everything” approach.

The technology has been criticized for harming astronomy research and the ozone layer. Starlink customer service is largely nonexistent. It’s too expensive for the folks most in need of reliable broadband access. The nature of satellite physics, launch logistics, and capacity constraints means slowdowns and annoying restrictions are inevitable and will get worse, and making it scale to meet real-world demand is many years away. There are real questions about whether the network is even permanently sustainable.

It’s not an improved solution for White House broadband access (unless you’re trying to hide administration communications from transparency requirements). It’s not a good upgrade over Verizon fiber or 5G at the FAA. And it’s a very problematic a downgrade from the kind of high-capacity, future-proof fiber deployments the infrastructure bill was funding.

This is all before you get to the fact that Starlink is being run by an overt white supremacist openly embracing authoritarianism, who is actively decimating the country’s science, arts, consumer protection, and public safety infrastructure for his own amusement. Musk may be enjoying the fruits of his investments into Trump now, but the longer-term stain and stink on his brands may prove difficult to wash off as the full scope of the administration’s damage begins to penetrate thicker electorate skulls.

We’ve documented for decades how U.S. telecom is an uncompetitive mess dominated by politically powerful telecom monopolies that see no competition and effectively own Congress. As a result, the U.S. telecom and broadband market is an uncompetitive mess, with Americans still seeing higher prices, slower speeds, spottier access, and worse customer service than in many developed nations.

Generally, U.S. regulators are too captured to even acknowledge there’s a problem. When they do propose a solution, it either involves throwing money at the problem, or developing performative half-measures that don’t take aim at the real problem: monopoly power and the corruption that protects it.

With the Trump administration butchering whatever’s left of federal consumer protection and telecom oversight, states are taking a bigger role in telecom policy. That includes New York State, which, during peak COVID, passed a law mandating that big telecom companies provide low-income state residents with affordable broadband (25 Mbps broadband for $15 a month, or 200 Mbps for $25 a month).

That’s not a huge ask for regional telecom giants that routinely overbill for service.

Telecom giants didn’t much like that, though their legal efforts to kill the law fell short recently when the Supreme Court refused to hear their challenge. Now California is exploring its own, similar, law (AB353), which would require giant telecoms like Comcast and AT&T provide low-income state residents 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up broadband for $15 a month.

“Broadband affordability is not an urban versus rural issue, nor does it have to be a partisan issue. We all should agree that broadband is an essential service that must be affordable for all,” California Assemblymember Tasha Boerner said of the law.

The proposal comes after Republicans killed a federal FCC program that provided a $30 discount off the broadband bills of low-income Americans. The Republicans in question claimed they killed the popular program to save money, but a follow up study showed that the program more than paid for itself (by a factor of four) because it helped expand access to remote healthcare, employment, and education.

This is, to be clear, a nightmare if you’re a lumbering giant like AT&T and Comcast, which have carved out lucrative regional monopolies, then glommed onto the federal tit as unaccountable domestic surveillance buddies. They’ve long insisted that any oversight of their business practices is “radical extremism,” and I suspect their lobbyists are extremely hard at work trying to scuttle California’s plan.

But this is, again, a byproduct of these companies’ own making. They’ve worked relentlessly for decades to not only crush regional broadband competition, but to lobotomize federal government oversight. They’re finally on the cusp of achieving this generational victory thanks to Donald Trump, whose government believes that affordable, equitably-deployed fiber optic broadband is “woke.”

Now the only thing that stands between them and unchecked broadband price gouging and predation are a handful of states that occasionally try (with various degrees of success) to do the right thing. And the hundreds of local municipalities that are building their own (usually better, faster, and cheaper) community-owned fiber networks.

I think you’ll find this theme of localism becoming a steady constant drumbeat in the months and years to come. As the corrupt federal kakistocracy fails around us, state and local fights become exponentially more important and heated.

California, despite its well documented flaws on policy, has actually been doing a lot of interesting stuff on broadband. Like using billions in ARPA (COVID relief) bill funding to effectively build a massive new middle-mile fiber network, and fuel a whole bunch of new fiber broadband deployments to neigrhoods long neglected by shitty regional monopolies.

They’re actually targeting the real problem: consolidated monopoly power. That’s being layered with AB353, which just passed the state’s Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee by a vote of 7 to 2. Combined with a huge looming infusion of federal infrastructure bill broadband grants (assuming they don’t all get siphoned off by Elon Musk, AT&T, and Comcast), and there’s some actual potential for reform here, despite the insanity and ignorance going on at the federal level.

Last year Trumplicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was, unsurprisingly, very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefitting at its peak.

At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason the program was killed, of course, was that the ACP was popular with their constituents (the majority of ACP participants were in red states) and they didn’t want Dems to take credit during an election season.

A recent report by The Brattle Group actually found that the $7-$8 billion annual taxpayer cost of the program generated between $28.9 and $29.5 billion in savings thanks to expanded access to affordable internet, remote work opportunities, online education tools, and remote telehealth services. In other words: the program more than paid for itself via downstream benefits (something DOGE dudebros and other Trump cultists have a hard time getting their heads around).

When the program was killed, 23 million Americans suddenly faced significantly higher broadband bills. In some states, community broadband networks have been filling the void. Like in Longmont, Colorado, where the local community-owned Nextlight broadband network has been offering low-income families dirt cheap broadband access.

Because it’s actually interested in serving the community instead of exploiting it, Nextlight’s broadband speeds and pricing are already much cheaper than you’d see from a regional monopoly like Comcast or AT&T. But their low-income plans are even cheaper, with the town offering symmetrical 100 Mbps broadband for $15 a month, and symmetrical gigabit broadband for $45 a month:

According to Longmont officials, the low-income discounts applied to their community-owned broadband network (which just reached 28,000 users total) now reach 14 percent more low-income locals than the FCC’s ACP did:

“The IAP provides qualified households a $25 a month discount. 906 NextLight customers received the federal discount before the ACP ran out of funds. There are currently 1,034 customers taking advantage of the IAP discount.”

That a town built its own broadband network and offers most residents super fast, very cheap fiber access is a pretty cool thing that simply… doesn’t get the kind of policy or press attention it deserves. It’s an interesting example of broadband being treated as an important utility and not exclusively a profit-seeking business, and it’s an example of government directly and efficiently working for the people. And a bipartisan coalition of people being supportive and generally happy about it!

I think it’s also a useful example of the potential, highly localized future we could build if the federal government is going to continue to be too insane, incompetent, and corrupt to function.

When Republicans killed the program the press had a hard time actively blaming Republicans. Most articles just blamed a vague “congressional refusal to fund the program.” It’s part of a toxic, propaganda-laden modern media environment where modern Republicans rarely have agency or are required to take real ownership of their own unpopular policies that harm very real people.

It’s worth remembering that Republicans also tried to ban community broadband during the height of COVID, just when these networks were demonstrating their effectiveness. They didn’t do this out of any functional value system; they did it to protect shitty regional telecom monopolies from better, cheaper, faster service with better, more local customer support.

It’s not a panacea (building these kinds of networks can be complicated, expensive, and tricky to manage), but this model of locally-owned fiber networks (especially when they’re open access) often genuinely works to boost broadband quality and lower prices. It’s the kind of government-driven “abundance” guys like Ezra Klein claim to be clamoring for, yet the efforts still aren’t getting the attention they deserve in press and policy circles.

As recently noted, authoritarian assholes don’t like public broadcasting. Because they don’t like the idea of untethering U.S. journalism from the perverse financial incentives inherent in our consolidated, billionaire-owned, ad-engagement based media system. If we bolstered real independent journalism or public broadcasting, you might see journalism more interested in telling people the truth. Yuck!

That’s at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on public broadcasting and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which uses a modest amount of taxpayer funds to help support organizations like PBS and NPR. As we noted recently, U.S. “public broadcasting” is a shadow of the true concept after years of being undermined. But it’s a major ideological enemy of authoritarian zealots all the same.

Clearly incapable of getting the votes needed to take action in Congress, Trump signed an executive order on May 1 calling for an end of taxpayer funding of U.S. public broadcasting. The claim is that both PBS and NPR exhibit a “left wing bias”:

“The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.  The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

Except the “maximum extend allowed by law” isn’t very much. NPR and PBS are funded by CPB through 2027, and it requires an act of Congress to change that. So the EO tries to tap dance around the law by demanding the CPB rewrite grant eligibility rules by June 30 to ban funding for either NPR or PBS. This is, CPB President Patricia Harrison tells Ars Technica, very clearly illegal:

“CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the president’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” statutorily forbidding “any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors.”

Not only is the U.S. right wing starving public broadcasting of funding forcing them to embrace more traditional commercialization, Trump’s earlobe nibbler over at the FCC, Brendan Carr, is now launching sham investigations into public broadcasting’s reliance on commercials. Carr claims, without evidence, PBS and NPR are violating on-air sponsorship or “underwriting” rules.

Trump’s efforts to dismantle the US Agency for Global Media haven’t fared particularly well in the courts, and it’s likely courts will intervene here as well.

This is all an extension of decades of right wing claims that any criticism of right wing ideology has a “left wing bias” and is to be immediately discredited. One irony is that NPR’s coverage (like CBS, WAPO, the LA Times, and countless others) has folded to this bullying by being friendlier to Republicans than ever, which actively helped normalize authoritarianism this last election season. And they are still being bullied.

The $535 million that Congress currently allocates to the CPB covers roughly 1 percent of NPR’s and 15 percent of PBS’s budget. So even calling this “public funding” is generous (especially in comparison to public media funding in Europe), and yet they’re still being bullied.

That’s because this has nothing to do with government efficiency or saving taxpayers money. It has everything to do with authoritarians controlling the flow of information and the shape of modern media, which they prefer to be a combination of right wing propaganda and feckless, obedient, oligarch controlled mush terrified of having too pointed a relationship with the truth.

We’ve covered for years the ugly retransmission feuds that break out between your cable company and broadcasters during contract negotiations. These fights routinely result in you losing access to channels you pay for with no real recourse. The FCC has perpetually refused to protect consumers from this stuff, taking a sort of “boys will be boys” approach, regardless of party.

Now the Trump FCC has decided to pretend to take action, but their “solution” is super dodgy, likely illegal, and primarily aimed at propping up the local right wing propaganda broadcast ecosystem.

Some simple background: cable, satellite, and platforms pay retransmission fees to local broadcast television stations for the right to retransmit their signals to subscribers. Reverse retransmission fees are payments local television stations make to national broadcast networks for all the leverage and perks that come from being associated with a national broadcast brand (ABC, CBS, NBC).

In an editorial over at The National Pulse, rarely-heard-from Trump FCC pick Nathan Simington has crafted an op-ed proposing reform of retransmission and reverse retransmission fees. His proposal, to cap “retransmission fees” at 30 percent to harm the “corrupt media cartel”:

“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should cap reverse retransmission fees (revenue that local TV stations pay back to their affiliated broadcast networks) at 30 percent to protect local broadcasters, lower consumer costs, and strike a decisive blow against the corrupt media cartel.”

On the surface that’s kind of a snoozer. But if national broadcaster or cable company doesn’t provide appropriate deference and terms to one of these local right wing propaganda peddlers pretending to do journalism, the FCC says it would intervene:

“And if the networks try to make an end-run by demanding an unfair cut in ad sales, restricting available airtime for local news and weather, or prohibiting broadcasters from trying to reach new audiences through alternative distribution channels, then the FCC should be prepared to step in and stop it.”

It’s “funny” because the government, for decades, refused to intervene in the very real problem of retrans feuds and soaring programming costs because they insisted it was overreach. And now that the FCC is intervening, it’s in this super dodgy, bad faith way that’s likely illegal. Simington tries to frame this proposal as a solution to media consolidation and a plan to benefit small town Americans:

“We must return power to the communities and stations serving the people. Local broadcasters provide vital coverage—emergency alerts, school board meetings, small business spotlights—that you’ll never find on CNN or MSNBC. They reflect the values of the towns and cities they serve. “

Except most local U.S. broadcasters do no such thing. Most of America is dominated by consolidated right wing local broadcasters like Nexstar, Fox or Sinclair, which long ago replaced traditional news with a lot of lazy-ass infotainment (the local zoo has a new Panda!) heavily peppered with right wing propaganda on issues like crime, homelessness, drug use, and immigration.

You might recall that Sinclair got the wrong kind of attention a few years back for its “must run” propaganda segments kissing Donald Trump’s ass:

Simington basically wants to exploit a real problem (media consolidation and messy retransmission disputes) and leverage it to push a fake solution favorable to Republican-friendly local broadcasters. As Free Press CEO Craig Aaron notes on Bluesky, it’s illegal for the FCC to take regulatory action based on the political content of broadcasts (I recommend reading his whole thread, especially the bits about Simington’s Chief of Staff Gavin Wax).

This is, as always, about money, size, and influence. Nexstar and Sinclair don’t want to have to pay as much to have their propaganda carried. They also want the FCC to eliminate whatever’s left of U.S. media consolidation limits so they can expand their influence. And Trump Republicans want to continue their radical ideological mission of replacing all journalism with Trump-friendly propaganda.

So Simington and FCC boss Brendan Carr have been making the rounds dressing up this whole plan as a way to “empower local broadcasters.” Something that’s then parroted by lazy journalists or media companies that don’t want to get on the wrong side of King Dingus:

But again, the goal here has nothing to do with helping local journalism, the goal here is to empower right wing propaganda that’s favorable to Trump. As with so much stuff the Trump administration does, this obvious hand out to a handful of rich guys is being portrayed as somehow “populist”:

“This reform is in the same spirit as President Trump’s efforts to break up Big Tech, bring back American manufacturing, and take on the pharmaceutical lobby. It’s a populist solution to a top-down problem. It reduces costs, decentralizes power, and reorients the system to serve the needs of regular Americans, not just media executives and political elites.”

The Republican con here should be obvious by now. They want to destroy journalism and replace it with propaganda. If you do anything other than coddle and amplify that propaganda, you’re accused of “censorship” (remember when they freaked out after DirecTV refused to carry OAN?). They then set about censoring any viewpoints critical of authoritarianism while pretending to be “free speech absolutists.”

Just more dodgy shit from an agency whose primary job appears to be harassing companies for not being racist enough, or launching faking investigations into media companies that do journalism critical of King Trump. It’s like watching the Ministry Of Truth out of 1984 be constructed in real time, except by absolute fucking idiots who worship a used car salesmen operating at a fourth grade reading level.

Washington will soon become the eighth state in the country to pass Right to Repair legislation. While U.S. consumer protection is generally an historic hot mess right now, the “right to repair” movement — making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you own — continues to make steady inroads thanks to widespread, bipartisan annoyance at giant companies trying to monopolize repair.

Technically Washington state is poised to pass two new right to repair bills.

HB 1483, which covers consumer electronics and appliances, was passed by a strong bipartisan vote of 48-1 on April 10, following a similar near-unanimous vote through the House on March 4. HB 1483 helps expand access to manufacturers’ spare parts, physical and software tools, and diagnostic and schematic information needed to make repairs on personal electronics and home appliances. 

The Right to Repair bill for wheelchairs and mobility devices (SB 5680) also passed both chambers with unanimous votes. Getting both bills passed required a lot of hard work from activists across consumer rights, disability, and environmental sectors:

“I spent seven months in a wheelchair that would turn itself off without warning and refuse to start for varying periods of time. I found out after the chair was scrapped that it should have been an easy fix,” said Marsha Cutting, a member of the Governor’s Committee on Disability Issues and Employment. “This bill would have allowed me to fix my wheelchair instead of having to wait for several months. I’m grateful for the years of work on Right to Repair done by Rep. Mia Gregerson, and I hope that our community will continue to work together to make life better for people with disabilities.”

Ohio could potentially be the ninth state to pass such a law, again showcasing how the issue has broad, bipartisan support. Thanks in part due to the monopolistic behavior of agricultural giants like John Deere.

One problem, as noted recently, is that none of the states that have passed such laws have bothered to enforce them. Companies in most states haven’t really been asked to do anything different. In some states, like New York, the bills were watered down after passage to be far less useful.

That’s going to need to change for the reform movement to have real-world impact; but with states facing unprecedented legal threats across the board during Trump 2.0, it’s not hard to think that meaningful consumer protection — and picking bold new fights with corporate giants — will be among the first things on the cutting room floor for cash-strapped states.

In the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, data suggests that wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned the Trump administration would happen when you reduce sector competition).

Recently, T-Mobile imposed another $3-$5 per month price hike on most of its plans — including customers who believed they were under a “price lock” guarantee thanks to a 7-year-old promotion promising that their price would never change. But when users explored the fine print of that agreement it indicated that by “price lock,” T-Mobile actually meant it would pay your final monthly bill if the carrier raised the price and impacted customers decided to cancel. In other words, bullshit.

T-Mobile was flooded with complaints and lawsuits over the practice, but it has so far faced absolutely no accountability for lying to users. Now T-Mobile is back with yet another, new “price lock” guarantee that in no way locks in your pricing.

T-Mobile’s previous, shitty plans at least had “taxes and fees” included. This new promotion doesn’t do that, ensuring that T-Mobile can impose all manner of dodgy fake fees to jack up the advertised price and ignore its promise to not raise prices:

“This will make the plans cost more initially than customers might expect, and it gives T-Mobile wiggle room to raise prices during the five years of the price guarantee since it could increase any fees that are tacked onto the new plans. The fine print in today’s press release describes taxes and fees as “exclusions” to the price guarantee.”

U.S. telecoms have a long and proud history of imposing all sorts of bullshit and fake fees — many disguised to pretend they’re coming from government — to jack up the below the line costs. The Biden FCC and FTC had been taking some steps to combat that, but the second Trump administration has effectively abandoned consumer protection entirely. You know, for populism (?).

So instead of ing down on telecoms that lie about pricing, FCC boss Brendan Carr spends his days harassing companies that aren’t racist and sexist enough, and bullying media companies that don’t kiss Donald Trump’s ass.

So we’ve established by now that the second Trump administration is attempting to completely destroy regulatory authority, consumer protection, labor rights, and corporate oversight. Whether by precedent-ignoring court ruling, executive order, illegally firing commissioners, cronyism, or regulatory capture, the effort isn’t subtle, and is poised to usher forth a new golden age of corruption.

That’s a problem for Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr, who has been trying to abuse now-nonexistent FCC authority to bully companies he thinks aren’t being sexist or racist enough. Or to launch fake investigations into media companies if they dare engage in journalism critical of the Trump administration. Or to harass companies he thinks don’t carry a suitable amount of right wing, religious programming.

As I wrote in a recent Verge profile of Carr’s first 100 days, Carr will routinely proclaim that his agency has no power at all when it comes to protecting consumers or standing up to giants like AT&T, but all the power in the world when it comes time for petty authoritarian bullshit.

Recently, the Fifth Circuit declared the FCC no longer has the authority to leverage fines against companies for wrongdoing. Their ruling let AT&T off the hook for decades of major abuse of sensitive consumer location data, which repeatedly put the public at risk.

The ruling is the latest in a series by Trumplican-stocked courts basically stating that U.S. regulators no longer have the authority to do… anything corporate power doesn’t like. Like the 6th Circuit ruling that the FCC can’t protect broadband consumers. Or the 5th Circuit ruling that federal efforts to help poor people afford broadband are now illegal. Like I said: not subtle.

After the AT&T privacy ruling, both Verizon and T-Mobile unsurprisingly sued the FCC (Verizon in the 2nd Circuit and T-Mobile in the DC Circuit) to have their own privacy fines overturned.  Trump FCC pick Nathan Simington has vowed to vote against any fine imposed by the FCC “until its legal powers are clear” (spoiler: Trumplings don’t want regulatory authority to ever be clear, ever again).

But it’s curious: in some of these latest cases Carr is having his FCC lawyers argue that the 5th Circuit’s ruling should be ignored:

“Carr repeatedly opposed Biden-era efforts to regulate telecom providers and is aiming to eliminate many of the FCC’s rules now that he is in charge. But Carr has also been aggressive in regulation of media, and he doesn’t want the FCC’s ability to issue penalties completely wiped out.”

Carr wants his cake and to eat it too. He’s the dog that caught the car. As his “delete, delete, delete” deregulatory bonanza shows, Carr wants to be a loyal footsoldier in the Trump agenda of destroying all federal oversight of corporate power. But he also wants to be able to, you know, harass Comcast for not being racist enough. Or bully CBS for making King Donald sad with facts.

The FCC already has no remaining authority to hold your shitty broadband provider to account. And if this trajectory holds, they’ll no longer have the ability to police things like scams and robocalls, or to protect public cybersecurity safety, throwing our telecom networks into (further) disarray.

Some of these folks are stripping away regulatory authority simply because, like Musk, they don’t want oversight of their often dubious — if not outright illegal — behaviors. Others have drunk decades of right wing and “free market” Libertarian Kool-Aid about how if you dismantle corporate oversight and regulatory autonomy, magic and innovation spills forth from the sidewalk.

Of course here in reality, when you strip away oversight of large, politically-powerful corporations (like say, AT&T or Comcast), most objective folks know those companies just double down on all their worst, anti-competitive, anti-consumer impulses. It’s been a generational effort by companies like AT&T to turn the FCC into a pile of pudding, and it’s not, I regret to inform you, in service of the public interest.

So on one hand, you have corporate power achieving its generational goal of destroying labor rights, consumer protection, and adult oversight. On the other hand, you have Brendan Carr and his legally-dubious efforts to behave like a full-diapered bully in pursuit of bigotry and religious extremism. If I had to bet between the two, I certainly know who I’d pick as the most likely winner (spoiler: it’s the one with more money).

Either way this country loses. I don’t think the fact we’ve lobotomized all our federal regulators has received anywhere close to enough attention from our feckless, corporate press for what should be obvious reasons. We’re ushering in the golden age of corruption, and I’m not sure the impact of what’s coming is truly fathomable to your average American.

Even in a best case scenario where Trump authoritarianism is destroyed, I’m highly doubtful that, in a country this corrupt, the incentive will ever exist to fully restore regulatory autonomy. This die is cast, the deadly impact is going to reverberate for generations, and I hope all the folks responsible — from Trumplings to “free market” think tankers — fully enjoy the brave new world they helped create.

When last we checked in with CBS, the company was preparing to fold under pressure from the Trump administration, amidst bogus accusations that 60 Minutes had unfairly made Donald Trump look bad. As we’ve noted previously, the accusations are utterly baseless, but that’s apparently not stopping the CBS board from kissing authoritarian ass and throwing their journalists under the bus.

According to the New York Times, CBS/Paramount board members, keen on getting approval of their $8 billion merger with Skydance, are likely moving forward with a fat settlement with the Trump administration. In the process they’re sending a very loud message to everyone that they’re no longer interested in protecting journalism, or their own journalists:

“Paramount’s interest in settling has dismayed CBS’s news division, in particular the staff of “60 Minutes,” the country’s most popular weekly news program. Four days after the April 18 board meeting, the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, abruptly announced he would resign, citing encroachment on its journalistic independence and saying Paramount “is done with me.”

Last weekend 60 minutes covered the fracas in what feels like a death knell for the once-respected cable TV news magazine:

Last fall  Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense.

CBS/Paramount is looking for regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance (run by Larry Ellison’s kid David, who has been palling around with Trumplings at MMA fights). Trump and his FCC boss Brendan Carr quickly zeroed in on this, and began using merger approval as leverage to bully CBS into even more feckless coverage of the administration.

Carr has launched an “investigation” into CBS claiming that the minor edits to the Harris interview violate the FCC’s “Broadcast News Distortion” policy, a rarely enforced rule preventing news outlets from killing stories or dramatically changing stories in exchange for bribes. It’s completely bogus, but whether CBS is guilty doesn’t matter; the right wing has ensured CBS looks guilty of being unfair to the right wing.

Again, legal experts everywhere have pointed out this is all indisputable bullshit. Even longstanding GOP members and former Republican FCC officials have acknowledged the accusations are baseless and the FCC is overstepping any real-world authority. CBS certainly has the money to fight the case. But CBS owners like Shari Redstone are more interested in cashing out of the struggling (one wonders why) media industry:

“Shari Redstone, the company’s controlling shareholder, has said she favors settling the case. She is set to receive a major payday in a pending sale of Paramount to a Hollywood studio, Skydance, that requires sign-off from the Trump administration.”

It’s another example of why consolidated corporate power probably shouldn’t be in the journalism business, and we ought to explore better ways to fund independent media (including public financing). Corporate media owners simply, clearly, and routinely aren’t capable of putting the truth before making money, resulting in an ocean of substandard, pseudo-journalistic, ad-based simulacrum.

The far right doesn’t want reformers untethering journalism and media from commercial interests because they know that ad engagement model is eminently exploitable, something that wasn’t remotely subtle last election season. Looking for major merger approvals, tax cuts, and mindless deregulation, consolidated U.S. media companies have demonstrated they’re more than willing to throw the truth under the bus for financial gain. You see it absolutely everywhere you look. Again: not remotely subtle.

Incompetent authoritarians fear the truth because it illustrates their corruption and incompetence. It’s why they’re bullying media companies and trying to pull the rug out from America’s already woefully under-funded public broadcasters. And even in some of the flimsiest cases widely viewed as winnable, the brunchlords in charge of U.S. media have shown they have the structural integrity of damp cardboard.

What’s left of CBS after the Skydance merger will be run by Skydance exec and soon-to-be CBS boss Jeff Shell (booted from NBC after sexual harassment allegations). It’s inevitable that, like the Washington Post and LA Times, whatever’s left of CBS journalism will follow the trend of even further pandering to the right wing, under the pretense that this sort of feckless ass kissing is the pinnacle of objectivity.

At the same time, the continued, pointless “growth for growth’s sake” impact of even more mindless media consolidation will erode U.S. media quality even further and trigger even more layoffs across the sector, as the recent AT&T, Time Warner, and Discovery series of mergers so ably demonstrated.

It’s utterly pathetic and demented. All around.

Google is developing a tried and true reputation for buying products people like, making them worse, then pulling the rug out from under users’ feet. That’s been a particular problem with Google’s purchase of FitBit, which has generally resulted in less useful hardware, more paywalls, more annoying nickel-and-diming efforts, and just a more miserable user experience overall.

It’s also been a pain in the ass for folks who bought into the Nest smart-home ecosystem. Google has consistently pared back on features and restricted openness for the platform, ensuring Nest doesn’t play as well with other systems. Now Google says it’s pulling software support for the first two generation of Nest thermostats (which made the brand popular in the first place), restricting a bunch of functionality:

“We made the difficult decision that starting October 25, 2025, Nest Learning Thermostat (1st gen, 2011), Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd gen, 2012), and Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd gen, Europe version, 2014) will no longer receive software updates. You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat.”

Google is also stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe because it found adapting to European build requirements too much of a hassle. Google also just announced it was discontinuing the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and Nest x Yale Lock.

You can argue that a decade is a reasonable expected lifespan for a product to have its support phased out, but many thermostats are historically used for decades. And Google is making absolutely no effort to open source the hardware to allow owners to explore extending the lifespan. Ultimately it’s both environmentally harmful and injures consumer relationships built over decades across brands.

Nest users in the Ars Technica and Verge forums are understandably annoyed:

“NEST is intentionally crippling a product that works well. How can I trust that they won’t do it again with other of their products?”

There’s no short term money in quality control and protecting your brand and existing relationships with consumers. So Google, chasing the impossible allure of unstoppable quarterly growth and the AI hype cycle, routinely has been cutting corners on product quality and longevity — increasingly notable in everything from its lagging interest in its own smart home line to sagging Google Search quality.

In the earlier aughts, Google was an interesting, innovative, and occasionally even ethical company. The fall off has been anything but subtle.