It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat. Republicanism doesnt work for anyone but the wealthy, it will do everything in its power here.
"Very liberal/liberal" has increased though (at the expense of moderates).
After all the polarism in "reality show politics", my diehard liberal friends seem less liberal to me, but they'll state which team they're on more fervently than ever.
To be clear, they were “handed power” by decisively winning a national election, which sort of undercuts your opening statement about how unpopular they are.
The issues with Republicans right now go far, far, far beyond "they care more about the wealthy than the poor" (though that is definitely one of their core problems). They're basically destroying the rule of law, the country's internal and international reputation and credibility, all of our most important institutions, our ability to discern what is true, our sense of decency, our civil liberties, our basic respect of human rights... The class stuff is secondary or tertiary to the bigger issues, in my opinion.
Hard to do that on just rural townships.
So you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives. Now I get that the idea here was to avoid a dictatorship of the majority that can just ignore smaller states, but the way it is now it is a dictatorship of the minority, even if you ignore all the blatant ways of voter disenfranchisement.
Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Ideally you'd want a party to have to listen to their voters. Gerrymandering, predicting voter behavior and throwing out the ones who might not vote for you are all the shameful behavior of traitors to democracy.
This has to be stopped and punished on every political level, as long as you still have a say.
Isn't their main assertion that only citizens should vote?
(something like 80% of people claiming allegiance to both parties said the same, last i saw, but numbers surely fluctuate from poll to poll)
- In the 1980s The RNC created the Ballot Security Task Force [1], which was a scheme to strike people off the voter rolls by sending them a mailer if they didn't respond. This led to a consent decree requiring "preclearance" for any voter roll enforcement that lasted 25+ years [2];
- Republicans lead the charge in restricting access to mail-in voting because it's used more by Democratic Party voters [3] despite there being no evidence of fraud;
- In response to Arizona turning blue in 2020, Republicans went on a massive voter suppression spree [4], which disproportionately impacts Native Americans [5];
- Nationally, the push to have a street address unfairly impacts Native Americans who often don't have an official sstreet address if they live on a reservation. That's not an accident. It's the point;
- Even the push to force people to have birth certificates is aimed at Native Americans and poor people. There are quite literally millions of Americans who don't have them [6];
- Even if you have the necessary documentation to get an ID, you may have problems getting access. Again, this is by design. For example, Louisiana closed a bunch of DMV offices in minority areas such that the only DMV in certain black-majority areas was only open one day a month [7];
- The so-called SAVE Act recently passed by the house required your birth certificate to match your ID. Well, that's a problem for married women [8].
- States such as Florida have used private firms to strike people off the voter rolls if their name sounds like a convicted felon anywhere else in the country [9].
And why are we doing all this? There is zero evidence of voter fraud on a large scale [10]. And those convicted of voter fraud are most commonly Republican anyway [11].
But let's just say that we want an ID to vote. Why don't we fund the Federal government to issue it and make sure it is readily available and cheap or free? No, we can't have that because it's never been the point.
At some point you have to realize that they don't care about "integrity". Voter suppression is the point because it's the only way they can win elections.
Lastly, I feel compelled to remind people of Lee Atwater's famous 1981 remarks [12]. Republicans went from overt racism to being ever more abstract but the goals remained the same: to disproportionately impact black and brown people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
[2]: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/rnc-ballot-securit...
[3]: https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/how-policy-influence...
[4]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/ariz...
[5]: https://azmirror.com/2024/06/06/100-years-after-citizenship-...
[6]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...
[7]: https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/one-day-a-month-is-no...
[8]: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/g-s1-59684/save-act-married-w...
[9]: https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/06/23/hundreds-of-vote...
[10]: https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-voter-fraud-guid...
[11]: https://archive.amarkfoundation.org/the2020election/voter-fr...
[12]: https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/lee-atwaters-infamous-...
What if I am not home? I go to a website a month before the vote, they send me a letter and I vote whenever I like before my election.
Everybody has such an ID card since that card is what you would also show to proove your identity elsewhere. And since we have working social welfare every slice of the citizen population can also afford it.
If you want to solve that problem, it is possible. If you want to solve it, that is. Right wing parties will always use non-citizens as scapegoats that are at the same time draining the welfare state and stealing your jobs. Oh, and you votes. Believing them without citation is the problem here.
Doesn't California have 54 reps, out of 485? And 90 out of ~800 Article III judges (lifetime appointment). It also collects $858 billion a year in state and local taxes that it gets to do mostly what it wants with
In what world is that fair or remotely democratic?
And don't get me started on freezing the rep count to 435. I certainly don't feel represented by my congresscritter.
Even if you just count the House of Representatives, smaller states have a per capita advantage.
We shouldn't give our[1] government too much leverage over any company that controls what people can say. If we do, we may be solving a very serious problem, but creating one which is even more serious. If the government can apply large fines to social media companies, and also has a large amount of discretion about which companies it prosecutes, it's very easy for them to make a deal where a company won't be prosecuted if they remove speech that the government doesn't like.
[1] Use whichever definition of "our" you like, the point is equally valid regardless of country.
This is kind of like when conservatives spent years wrapping their advocacy in the banner of free speech, and then Brendan Carr announced that free speech is over, actually, because Jimmy Kimmel was mean. Oops! Nevermind.
You think it’s going to be enforced against their side ?
Read the room
My favorite dictator quote:
> To my friends everything, to my enemies the law
Why assume the rule would be applied fairly? Carr said they would not enforce it against right wing radio.
My general understanding is that Republican politicians are more often refused speaking slots on non-Right media, whereas Democratic politicians don't want to go on Right media.
Do you disagree with that general statement?
Don’t act like this FCC’s actions should be taken in good faith.
No, they weren't prevented from coming on, as the article poorly points out. It appears that CBS sees equal airtime as a very serious threat to their programming. This makes complete sense, if you've watched an intentionally biased show like Colbert.
edit: downvotes, please explain. This is the stated reason from TFA!:
> "CC Chairman Brendan Carr recently issued a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule, and subsequently opened an investigation into ABC’s The View after an interview with Talarico."
> Colbert played audio of a recent Carr interview in which the FCC chairman said, “If [Jimmy] Kimmel and Colbert want to continue to do their programming, they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service and that’s fine.”
> Colbert said he “decided to take Brendan Carr’s advice” and interviewed Talarico for a segment posted on his show’s YouTube channel.
Help me understand if I'm missing something here. And the show is, clearly, intentionally biased. It targets a left wing audience, with its jokes specifically written around that (always has, that's fine), and nearly exclusively, has left wing political guests.
This seems very dubious given the recent ownership change of CBS and the lack of reason behind the decision. The point the parent comment brings up is that "equal airtime" requires that someone actually request to go on the show and be refused. There is no legitimate cover for CBS' decision as this did not occur. It seems incredibly likely to be one made in fear of political liability rather than legal.
These rules have generally not been enforced this broadly because the expectation is that they wouldn't actually stand up to First Amendment scrutiny, should it make it to the Supreme Court. Of course, CBS is at no risk of suing the administration if Paramount wants any chance of buying Warner, so in this case they can restrict as they please.
So, if you give coverage to one candidate, that is favoring that candidate over the other. That doesn't seem fair.
But if you give both candidates air time, then you're giving air time to two Democratic candidates and zero Republican candidates. That can also be viewed as unfair (never mind that the Republican candidate is not in an election until November).
The only other option is to give neither candidate air time. That results in a less-informed electorate, and that's not a good outcome either.
All in all, the "give both candidates air time, even if they're both from the same party, as they will be in a primary" seems like the best answer, especially if it's applied to primary candidates from both parties. But it's not quite as straightforward a question as it appears at first glance.
This says it now does (and parent is right): https://www.mediainstitute.org/2026/01/22/fcc-late-night-sho...
To me, this seems reasonable, since I could imagine all the networks skirting the intent in any way possible.
Legitimate or not, the policy is what's there now, until challenged. You agree with that:
> might attempt to enforce it and courts might uphold that enforcement
And, clearly, so do their lawyers.
I am sure, however, that we have some lawyer folks on HN. Hopefully one of them can weigh in on whether or not this is accurate interpretation of the law as it is currently written.
The radicals on the far-right control three branches of the federal government. The George Floyd protestors were barely able to influence their local boards.
That's the result of well known disinformation tactics by certain media in concert with police forces: wait or provoke a violent outburst in a otherwise peaceful protest, often triggered by carefully planned repetitive police charges, then be ready to film when protesters discharge their frustration against what they have nearby like shops windows and cars, make a enraging video out of it and show only that in prime time to families dining.