Inglaterra, The Guardian, Inglês

Brendan Carr, the new, pro-Trump chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has opened an investigation into corporate sponsorship of public media and warned the heads of NPR and PBS that his findings could be used by Republicans in Congress to end all funding for the networks.

“I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials”, Carr wrote on Wednesday in a letter to the presidents of both broadcasters obtained by The New York Times. “In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements”.

As NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, reports, the FCC does not have direct oversight of the networks, but it does regulate the roughly 1,500 public broadcasting stations across the country, which hold licenses granted by the FCC for use of public airwaves for radio and television.

Katherine Maher, the president of NPR and former chief executive of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement that the use of corporate underwriting spots, in place of ads, “complies with federal regulations, including the FCC guidelines on underwriting messages for noncommercial educational broadcasters”.

Two Democrats on bipartisan commission issued statements condemning the investigations. “This appears to be yet another Administration effort to weaponize the power of the FCC” Commissioner Anna M. Gomez wrote. “The FCC has no business intimidating and silencing broadcast media”.

“Public television and radio stations play a significant role in our media ecosystem” Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who was initially nominated by Trump in 2018, added. “Any attempt to intimidate these local media outlets is a threat to the free flow of information and the marketplace of ideas. The announcement of this investigation gives me serious concern”.

Proposals to defund public media have already been introduced by Republicans in the House and Senate.

Defunding the public broadcasters, which provide high-quality, nonpartisan news reporting, has been on the wishlist of the American right for decades.

In 2012, for instance, Mitt Romney promised, during a debate with President Obama, to end the federal subsidy for public broadcasting even though, as he told the PBS moderator Jim Lehrer, “I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I actually like you too”.

Critics point out that Republicans appear to vastly overestimate how much Americans actually spend on public broadcasting. A 2021 study from scholars at the University of Pennsylvania found that while Germans pay $142.42 each for a year of public media, Norwegians pay $110.73, Britons pay $81.30, Spaniards pay $58.25, Americans pay just $3.16.

A poll conducted for CNN in 2011 showed that, after years of conservative complaints about taxpayer dollars funding public broadcasting, most Americans thought NPR and PBS got a much larger share of the federal budget than they actually do.

That survey, which asked respondents to estimate what share of the federal budget was spent on certain government programs, found that just 27% of Americans knew that the money for PBS and NPR was less than 1% of government spending. Almost half of respondents guessed that the share was between 1% and 5% of the federal budget, and nearly a third of those surveyed said the funding for PBS and NPR was in excess of 5% of all federal spending.

As speculation continued over what, exactly, Donald Trump was talking about when he claimed, on Wednesday, to have blocked a $50m grant “to buy condoms to Hamas”, a United Nations agency that promotes sexual and reproductive health has confirmed to the Guardian that it did have $45m in state department funding for its in work Gaza and the West Bank frozen by the Trump administration.

After reporting from the Guardian revealed that not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAid) in the past year went to Gaza, and the administration declined to provide evidence for the claim, Trump supporters have engaged in a desperate scramble to prove that Trump, and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, were not lying about the planned funding.

One straw grasped at by Trump supporters was the theory that someone in the administration had come across funding for reproductive health in a province of Mozambique named Gaza, and gotten confused.

Another, discovered by a Trump supporter scouring a public database of US government spending on Thursday, identified a $45m grant to the United Nations Population Fund, known by its old acronym, UNFPA, made in September to support its work, including in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Eddie Wright, a spokesperson for the UN agency, confirmed that the grant was frozen in emails from USAid to various UNFPA offices since 26 January, all of which were backdated to 24 January. But Wright stressed that none of the funding was used to provide condoms in Gaza.

According to Wright “approximately 70%” of the $45m “was earmarked for Gaza and the rest for West Bank”.

The agency did provide $100,000 worth of male condoms to Gaza last year, Wright said, “but none of it was funded by the United States”.

So what was the money for? Wright says that it was used to equip “six maternity units for normal deliveries; 3 units for C-Sections; Caravans/prefabs for 40 safe spaces”, where survivors of sexual violence can receive medical referrals and counselling.

The grant was also intended to “support the expansion of mental health and psychosocial support services, as well as the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse”.

In addition, Wright explained, the US funds were intended to pay for “life-saving medicine and supplies to prevent maternal mortality, as well as 500,000 dignity kits with key hygiene and sanitation items; 30,000 Mama and Baby kits with essentials for new mothers and newborns, and menstrual health supplies”.

The agency is currently hoping to receive a humanitarian waiver from the state department to unfreeze the funds, “to enable us to continue our lifesaving work”.

Lauren Gambino

Joining Democratic congressional leaders at the press conference, Altadena resident Jackie Jacobs described the moment she realized it was time to evacuate.

The 88-year-old said she received a message telling her and her husband to “get out” and they did just that, carrying with them only the clothes that they were wearing.

The Eaton fire tore through Altadena,a historically Black town in the San Gabriel Valley, claiming nearly every house on their street, including their home.

“Everything now is in ashes,” she said. The houses on their block were only identifiable by their chimneys.

Officials say nearly 9,500 structures have been burned and at least 17 people lost their lives in the fire, which is 99% contained. A new study published by UCLA found that Black residents in Altadena were 1.3 times more likely to have experienced destruction or major damage than non-Black households.

Jacob’s husband, David, said the couple is staying in an Airbnb. They have had friends and family urge them to move back to Alabama. But they want to stay in their beloved Altadena.

“We’re just asking God to guide us,” he said.

The Senate judiciary committee has concluded the confirmation hearing of Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI.

That concludes today’s Senate confirmation hearings, which also saw Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard face questions over their nominations.

Democrat alleges Patel is happy to ‘lie’ for Trump in tense questioning

Hugo Lowell

Hours into Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing to be FBI director, we are getting into his witness testimony before a grand jury in the Trump classified documents case – and it has become awkward for Patel.

During the documents investigation, Patel was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury about whether Donald Trump declassified the documents he had retained at his Mar-a-Lago club, after he publicly represented that Trump was authorized to have those documents because he had declassified them before leaving office.

Patel initially declined to appear, citing his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, the Guardian reported at the time. He later testified after the chief US district judge in Washington authorized Patel to have limited immunity from prosecution, which forced his testimony.

Under oath and under close questioning from Senator Cory Booker, Patel clarified that while he had heard and witnessed Trump issue a declassification order for some documents, he did not actually know whether they applied to the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago.

Booker is seizing on this to say Patel is happy to “lie” on behalf of Trump in public to support him, which he said was disqualifying. “He is refusing the transparency he claims to adhere to,” Booker adds.

Lauren Gambino

House Democratic leaders on Thursday came to Altadena to survey the damage from the Eaton fire that burned through historically Black neighborhoods, vowing to fight for more federal aid without conditions.

“There’s no Democratic way or Republican way to respond to a crisis in an extreme weather event like these horrific wildfires, there is an American way,” House leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said at a press conference after touring the devastation. “We want to make sure that Congress and the American people stand with the people of this amazing community.”

Donald Trump and Republicans have threatened to impose conditions on federal disaster aid for Los Angeles to rebuild after the wildfires, though on a visit to the region last week he told residents and officials: “We have to work together to get this really worked out.”

Led by congresswoman Judy Chu, who represents the fire victims of Altadena, Jeffries toured the area with House Democratic whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar of California.

“There is enough Fema money to last us up until March but we will need supplemental money, as has happened in every major disaster in this country,” Chu said, adding that it is unprecedented for Congress to attach partisan conditions to federal disaster aid.

Chu and Jeffries also warned that the Trump administration’s now-paused freeze on federal grant and loan funding threatened to impact communities like Altadena as they recover from disaster.

Jeffries added: “California has sent more money to the federal government year after year after year than they ever get back in return. The people of California are simply asking for some of those tax dollars to come back to the state to help the people in need.”

At least five senior FBI leaders who were promoted by the bureau’s former director, Christopher Wray, have been notified they are being demoted or reassigned, CNN reports.

The senior officials are at the executive assistant director level and include those who oversee cyber, national security and criminal investigations, the outlet writes, citing sources.

The report comes after the firing of more than a dozen federal prosecutors at the justice department, across the street from the FBI headquarters, earlier this week.

Sam Levin

Transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons have been placed in isolation, told they will be transferred to men’s prisons and advised they will lose access to gender-affirming medical treatments in response to Donald Trump’s executive order “defending women from gender ideology extremism”, according to civil rights advocates and people behind bars.

The executive order on “gender ideology” was announced on Trump’s first day in office, and is part of a flurry of executive actions targeting trans rights and LGBTQ+ education.

Staff at Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell, a US women’s prison in Texas that houses people with special medical needs, took actions within days of the order, according to attorneys and one resident. Officers went to trans women’s cells one by one and ordered them out, according to one incarcerated resident, a trans man housed with the women.

“The officers yelled at these women: ‘Come right now, leave your things. You don’t have time to pack,’” the man said in Spanish. “The officials were degrading them and saying disgusting things, like: ‘We don’t have to call you women anymore. Where you’re going, you’re going to be a man.’”

As one trans woman was trying to pack her bra, an official laughed at her and said: “You won’t need that where you’re going,” he recalled. “The women were screaming and crying, saying: ‘Where are you taking us?’ It was so humiliating.”

LGBTQ+-rights lawyers say the moves will have major consequences for the health and safety of trans people in federal custody, and blatantly violate federal laws and a range of constitutional protections.

Read the full story here:

Democrats on the Senate budget committee boycotted Thursday’s vote to advance Russell Vought’s nomination to head the office of management and budget.

Calling Vought a threat to democracy, Senate Democrats on the committee said they refused to “vote for someone so clearly unfit for office”.

Senate Democrats had urged a delay on Vought’s confirmation hearings after the office Donald Trump nominated him to lead ordered a freeze on federal grant funding.

Issued on Monday by the acting director of the office of management and budget and rescinded on Wednesday, the order would have potentially impacted critical programs that receive federal aid, including Head Start and Meals on Wheels.

But Republican lawmakers have plowed ahead with Vought’s confirmation, and Republican members of the Senate budget committee held the vote anyway on Thursday without any Democrats present.

Vought’s confirmation will move to the full Senate after the 11-0 committee vote.