(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - In a major confrontation over President Donald Trump regime’s schemes to censor and cow the Mainstream Media, two Locals of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians/Communications Workers of America (CWA), plus The NewsGuild/CWA, are challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) threat to yank the broadcast licenses of ABC’s eight company-owned TV Stations because ABC and its parent - the Disney Company, do not bend the knee to Trump.

The issue may come to a head at the August 6th FCC meeting in D.C., even though the petition to yank the licenses of the eight Stations - including WABC-TV in New York, WLS-TV in Chicago and KABC-TV in Los Angeles and stations in Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina and Fresno, California, is not officially on the meeting agenda - yet. 

Public comments closed on July 30th and the FCC was inundated with at least 170,000 comments.

They were overwhelmingly negative, Commissioner Anna Gomez, who also objects, said.

Trump-named FCC Chair Brendan Carr wants to yank the eight station licenses, in retaliation against ABC.

What is on the agenda, though, is a plan for the FCC to give local over-the-air TV stations, which are more susceptible to political pressure (they don’t have the money to fight the Feds) more ways to expand at the expense of the Networks. 

Trump himself repeatedly denounces the Mainstream Media as liars - or worse.

He’s forced several into humiliating settlements and strong-armed ABC last September into firing Late-Night Host Jimmy Kimmel.

The uproar against that move was so large and included so many cancellations of Disney and ABC pay services that ABC backtracked and restored Kimmel’s show and his job.

The case has important constitutional implications, says the complaint from NABET Locals 43 and 53 and The NewsGuild, three public interest groups and Democracy Forward, a leading legal-battler against Trump’s tyrannical moves. 

To Continue Reading This Labor News Report, Go To: Unions, public interest groups challenge Trump threat vs. ABC – People's World

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