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The past two weeks brought the administration’s censorship machinery to its most overt phase yet — and finally produced the first significant pushback from a major broadcaster. Meanwhile, the DOJ filed a second indictment against James Comey — this one charging the former FBI director with making a “true threat” against the president by posting an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to read “86 47.” Federal agents in tactical gear and bulletproof vests arrested a 78-year-old former Fauci aide at his home for the alleged crime of using personal email. The FDA admitted it had buried its own scientists’ studies finding COVID-19 and shingles vaccines safe. And on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders downgraded the United States seven places — its lowest ranking in the index’s history.
FCC Orders Early License Renewal for ABC Stations Days After Trump Demands Kimmel’s Firing — and ABC Fights Back
On April 28 — one day after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump demanded ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel over his “expectant widow” joke — FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered Disney’s ABC to file early license renewals for all eight of the network’s owned-and-operated television stations within 30 days. The order is widely understood as direct retaliation for Kimmel’s joke and ABC’s refusal to fire him; the agency has not deployed early-renewal procedures against a major broadcaster in decades. Carr publicly insisted the action stems from a year-old DEI investigation, telling reporters: “There was no pressure from the outside. There was no suggestion from the outside. There was no call for agency action from the outside.” Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was unsparing: “This is clearly a pretext. I mean, give me a break. This is just another part of the pattern of harassment and retaliation in order to bend Disney to this administration’s will.”
Eight days later, ABC fought back. In an FCC filing made public on May 8, the network accused regulators of having a “chilling effect” on free speech by trying to punish political content the administration disagrees with. The filing — technically responding to the FCC’s separate inquiry into whether The View qualifies for the equal-time rule’s news exemption — was signed by Paul D. Clement, a former U.S. Solicitor General under President George W. Bush and one of the most experienced Supreme Court litigators in the country, signaling Disney is preparing for a long legal battle that could ultimately reach the Supreme Court. “Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows,” ABC wrote. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views.” The filing is the most aggressive defense any broadcaster has mounted since Trump began his campaign to bring media organizations to heel — a notable shift from December 2024, when ABC paid Trump a $15 million settlement to end a defamation suit most legal experts believed Trump would lose.
On World Press Freedom Day, the U.S. Falls to 64th in Global Press Freedom Rankings
On May 3, Reporters Without Borders released its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, and the United States fell seven places to rank 64th out of 180 countries — its lowest ranking ever and a stunning marker of how rapidly American press freedom has eroded. RSF said Trump has turned his hostility toward the press into “a systematic policy,” citing the deportation of journalists, the gutting of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and the systematic restriction of press access at the White House and Pentagon. The Index now classifies more than half the world’s countries as having “difficult” or “very serious” press freedom conditions for the first time in 25 years. RSF North America Director Clayton Weimers, writing on April 30, called this “a moment of crisis for American media. During the twentieth century, press freedom — and free expression more broadly — saw a gradual, if uneven, expansion. Now we’re heading in the other direction for the first time in generations.” The Varieties of Democracy Institute’s 2026 Democracy Report separately found that U.S. freedom of expression had declined to World War II–era levels.
U.S. Government Quietly Pressures Satellite Companies to Hide Iran War Imagery
As the Iran war continues, the U.S. government has persuaded American commercial satellite companies — including industry leaders Planet and Vantor — to indefinitely withhold satellite imagery of the entire Middle East from journalists and the public. Planet announced in mid-March that the U.S. government had “requested all satellite imagery providers voluntarily implement an indefinite withhold of imagery in the designated Area of Interest” and that it expected the policy to last “through the end of the conflict.” The restrictions kicked in days after CNN, the New York Times, and NPR used satellite imagery to document U.S. and Iranian strikes — including the strike on the girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran that killed 175 people, which satellite imagery showed was part of a coordinated attack on a nearby military base. Both Planet and Vantor are heavily dependent on Department of Defense and intelligence agency contracts; nearly 60% of Planet’s revenue last quarter came from defense and intelligence work. While both companies say the decision is “voluntary,” the framing matters less than the result: open-source investigators and journalists who relied on commercial satellite imagery to verify wartime claims now lack the most fundamental tool of independent war reporting — the ability to see for themselves. As Bellingcat’s Jake Godin put it, “It’s becoming harder and harder.”
DOJ Indicts James Comey — Again — Over an Instagram Post of Seashells
On April 28, a federal grand jury in North Carolina returned a new indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, this time for two counts of threatening the President’s life. The threat: an Instagram post Comey shared in May 2025 showing seashells on a North Carolina beach arranged to read “86 47.” Prosecutors argue that “86” means “to kill” and “47” refers to the 47th president. Comey, who deleted the post, says he did not interpret “86” as a threat involving violence and that the indictment is vindictive. The phrase “86 47” has been widely used by protesters across the country, including by Democratic officials such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who appeared in a 2020 television interview with a small “86 45” figurine on the table behind her. The Supreme Court in 2023 held that for speech to be punishable as a “true threat,” the government must prove the speaker understood the message would be perceived as threatening. The indictment is the second time the Trump DOJ has charged Comey: a judge dismissed the first indictment in November over the illegal appointment of the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, who had brought the charges against the objections of career prosecutors. The new charges are being described by Comey’s lawyers as “vindictive and selective” prosecution; given the protected status of “86 47” as widely circulated political speech, the charges are likely to face immediate First Amendment challenges. Comey, after his first indictment was dismissed, said: “I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again, and my attitude is going to be the same. I’m innocent. I am not afraid, and I believe in an independent federal judiciary — the gift from our founders that protects us from a would-be tyrant.”
Federal Agents in Tactical Gear Arrest 78-Year-Old Former Fauci Aide
On April 27, six federal agents in tactical gear and bulletproof vests pounded on the door of David Morens, a 78-year-old retired influenza scientist and former senior adviser to Anthony Fauci, while he was drinking his morning coffee at his Maryland home. The agents handcuffed Morens, removed his pants and shirt, and drove him 65 kilometers to be fingerprinted, photographed, and jailed. The crime that warranted this treatment: allegedly using a personal Gmail account to “evade” Freedom of Information Act requests about COVID-19 origins research, and accepting two bottles of wine from a colleague. Morens — a medical doctor with no criminal record who served in both the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the U.S. Army Reserve — faces up to 51 years in prison if convicted of all five counts, which include “conspiracy against the United States.” Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, told Science magazine: “It’s a shameful, politically motivated attack on science. I’m at a loss for words.” Peter Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance scientist named as an unindicted co-conspirator, called it “political theater, and absolutely overkill.” Jeremy Berg, a former NIH institute director, told Chemistry World that “given the widespread reporting about government officials using Signal and other non-governmental services to conduct government business, this seems like an unfairly targeted prosecution, in violation of the equal protection clause of the constitution.”
FDA Buries Its Own Studies Finding COVID and Shingles Vaccines Safe
On May 5, the New York Times revealed that the Food and Drug Administration has spent the past several months blocking publication of multiple studies — conducted by FDA’s own scientists, costing millions of dollars in public funds — that confirm the safety of widely used COVID-19 and shingles vaccines. The studies, which analyzed millions of patient records, found serious side effects from both vaccines to be extremely rare. In October, FDA scientists were directed to withdraw two COVID-19 vaccine studies that had already been accepted for publication in medical journals. In February, top FDA officials declined to approve submission of abstracts on the safety of the shingles vaccine Shingrix to a major drug-safety conference. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon claimed the studies were withdrawn because “the authors drew broad conclusions that were not supported by the underlying data” — a rationale scientists across the field rejected. Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a Harvard medical professor who studies FDA regulation, called it an act of “censorship.” Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician, said the move “suggests a political rather than a scientific motivation and aligns with the anti-vaccine views of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt, noted that “the methods used by these investigators are well established and well recognized” — and that suppressing reassuring findings during a period of elevated vaccine hesitancy “doesn’t protect scientific integrity, it damages it.” Kesselheim added: “At any other time in history, this would be a major scandal that would lead to congressional hearings and resignations of leadership, and I hope that’s what happens next.” The action follows the CDC’s earlier decision not to publish a report showing last winter’s COVID vaccine cut hospitalization risk, and the broader pattern of administration efforts to limit public access to vaccine-safety data.
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The most consequential development of these two weeks is that ABC stopped folding. After more than a year of broadcasters quietly capitulating to Trump-administration pressure — settling defamation suits, suspending hosts, and supplying tens of thousands of pages of documents to FCC inquiries — Disney’s May 8 filing represents the first major broadcaster to formally accuse the FCC of First Amendment violations and to retain top-tier Supreme Court counsel for the fight. Paul Clement is not a lawyer brought in to settle. The legal vulnerabilities of the prosecutions on the other side of the ledger are also significant, and Comey’s attorneys have already announced they will move to dismiss on grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution. The Morens prosecution has provoked a unified rebuke from across the scientific community — including former NIH leadership, biologists at major research universities, and editors of leading scientific journals — making clear that the administration’s effort to use criminal law to police pandemic-origins research will not produce the silence it seeks. The FDA’s suppression of vaccine-safety studies has sparked open calls from Harvard medical faculty for congressional hearings and resignations. The FCC’s order against ABC triggered an immediate D.C. Circuit petition from former FCC chairs and the Radio Television Digital News Association seeking to repeal the agency’s News Distortion policy entirely — a policy Carr himself once said was constitutionally suspect.
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