The DSR Network

Donald Trump and his dutiful Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, have been targeting a number of ABC’s broadcast licenses, and ABC just challenged this hard in a new filing. In an interesting move, ABC cited Trump’s own social media postings and remarks at speeches to show that he is corruptly trying to censor the network as punishment for its content and viewpoints, in violation of the First Amendment. Amusingly, in those examples, Trump blurted right out in public that he does in fact want the FCC to punish ABC precisely because of its speech. Now this has become a weapon against Trump. We talked to law professor Leah Litman, author of a good book about the Supreme Court. She explains why Trump’s public bullying of ABC should undermine his case, walks us through the legal ins-and-outs here, details why ABC might prevail, and discusses how open, explicit corruption is intrinsic to his political project.

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On the DSR Daily for Thursday, we break down new reports that the economy is in worse shape than predicted, new Iranian strikes near the Suez Canal, Elon Musk’s attempt to block anti-nudification legislation in Minnesota, and more.
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Donald Trump is suddenly bumping up against limits in many areas at once. Top aides just leaked to The Atlantic that he’s “frustrated” with his inability to force Iran’s hand with his increasingly deranged threats. In the case of Trump’s bogus efforts to prosecute James Comey, we just learned that he personally demanded briefings in real time about interrogations of him. That reveals in deeply humiliating fashion his extraordinary personal involvement in the case and makes it more likely it’ll get tossed. His acting DNI chief Bill Pulte is boasting about firing “deep state” denizens even though this may not have actually happened. To make sense of all this, we talked to Talking Points Memo editor-at-large David Kurtz, author of the excellent “Morning Memo” newsletter. We discuss the legal ins-and-outs of these new developments, why there’s some cause for optimism that Trump is being meaningfully constrained, how our institutions are nonetheless on a knife’s edge, and what the endgame of Trump’s attempted authoritarian takeover might look like.

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In its bout with Iran, the US is neither floating like a butterfly nor stinging like a bee. Trump’s dual meetings with Netanyahu and Zelensky have laid bare the foreign policy lightweight that our president really is while Iran only gets stronger. Lieutenant General Douglas Lute joins David Rothkopf and Ed Luce to discuss the war against Iran, Ukraine’s continued defense against Russian aggression, and how each misstep by the administration is leading up to an inevitable knockout.
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On the DSR Daily for Wednesday, we break down the US and Saudi Arabia launching strikes in Iraq, Rand Paul’s latest attack on Fauci ahead of a Senate hearing, the confirmation of Jay Clayton as intelligence chief, and more.
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