Hello Reader,
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When a tech giant confesses to censorship, bureaucrats threaten broadcasters, and an idea becomes grounds for persecution, it’s a rough week for American liberty. And one institution threatening it must go.

The Global Fight for Freedom

1. FDR, JFK, DJT and the FCC
2. Trump's H1-Blunder
3. When a Word Becomes a Weapon
4. The Scariest Letter of the Alphabet

In 1938, John Shepard III of Boston’s Yankee Network learned how perilous it could be to defy the FDR administration. After his stations criticized the New Deal, the FCC warned his license could be stripped and handed to a rival if he didn’t fall in line.
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Faced with ruin, he backed down. The organization Roosevelt had sold as a neutral regulator just four years earlier had already become a political weapon.
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Roosevelt justified the FCC by “scarcity.” In the 1930s, only so many radio frequencies could exist without interference, so government claimed it had to ration them in the “public interest.” But as Nobel Prize–winning economist Ronald Coase pointed out in 1959, printing presses and newsprint were scarce too — yet no one proposed a federal commission to decide which newspapers could exist. The danger was obvious: licensing breeds favoritism and abuse.
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The politicization continued. JFK’s aides wielded the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” to pressure stations that aired conservative critics, forcing them to provide equal time for his administration’s rebuttals — a tactic that chilled dissent until Reagan’s FCC abolished the doctrine in 1987.
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Meanwhile, the scarcity rationale collapsed. Cable, satellite, and internet broadcasting have created a world of abundance, not shortage. Market forces ensure diversity of voices: Fox and Newsmax rose to challenge liberal outlets, just as Bluesky counters Musk’s X. Today, anyone with a phone can reach millions.
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I examined objections to abolishing the FCC. None withstand scrutiny: each can be addressed through existing laws, state oversight, or free markets.
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Yet the FCC’s licensing power remains a weapon. This week, even Trump ally Ted Cruz called FCC chair Brendan Carr’s threats “unbelievably dangerous,” likening him to a mafioso: “Nice bar you have here — shame if something happened to it.”
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Scarcity is gone. Abuse endures. The FCC must go.

In a move one Indian diplomat predicted will "choke US innovation, and turbocharge India's," Trump imposed a crushing $100,000 application fee on H-1B work visas last weekend, severing America's premier talent pipeline.
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The visa program, created by the bipartisan 1990 Immigration Act to help companies fill critical gaps in "specialty occupations," allocates permits through a lottery system. Indians currently hold 70% of the roughly 730,000 H-1B visas in America—talent that helped build the backbone of Silicon Valley's dominance.
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​Economic research indicates Trump's policy will backfire. Studies show H-1B workers complement rather than replace Americans, with their rare skills boosting domestic employment, innovation, and productivity.
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Restricting H-1B visas won't bring jobs home—it will push them offshore. Unable to access global talent, American companies will move operations abroad, as they've already done in response to H-1B caps that forced firms to establish foreign research centers.
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Former H-1B holders include Google's Sundar Pichai, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, and Tesla's Elon Musk—titans who've all argued that American tech supremacy depends on attracting global talent. The policy further alienates India, our critical ally, with remittances from Indians in America topping $8 billion annually.
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The diplomat's prophecy rings true: "By slamming the door on global talent, America pushes the next wave of labs, patents, innovation and start-ups to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Gurgaon."
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Trump has gift wrapped another present to Xi Jinping.

In 1950, the nation was gripped by fear. The Cold War was heating up, McCarthyism was on the rise, and politicians were convinced that “subversives” lurked everywhere. At the University of California, professors were handed a loyalty oath, forcing them to swear they weren’t members of any “subversive” organizations. The word was never defined.
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Edward C. Tolman, a world-renowned psychology professor, refused. He wasn’t a communist; he was famous for teaching rats to run mazes, not for politics. But he saw the danger: “if they can make me swear this today, tomorrow they can make me swear to anything.”
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Tolman was fired and branded “subversive.” Two years later, in Tolman v. Underhill (1952), the California Supreme Court struck down the oath as unconstitutional. But the damage to his life and reputation had been done.
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That danger has returned. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, President Trump issued an executive order declaring Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” Unlike ISIS or Al Qaeda, however, the president has no legal authority to make such designations. Congress only granted that power for foreign terrorist groups under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
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The First Amendment protects free speech and association, even for groups the government despises. Antifa—short for “Anti-Fascist”—may have nefarious adherents, but it’s not even an organization. No leaders, no donors, no membership cards.
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While the order creates no new powers, it sends a chilling signal: vague words are now weapons agencies can wield as grounds for surveillance and prosecution.
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We know where that path leads.

Google parent Alphabet just admitted what many suspected all along: it censored COVID content on YouTube that didn't even violate its own rules under pressure from the Biden administration. In a letter to Congress this week, the company acknowledged it pulled down lawful speech, pledging to allow banned YouTube content creators to reapply.
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Biden defenders insist COVID-era White House discussions with tech companies were not coercive, but context matters. As Reason noted, these "requests" came amid antitrust threats, congressional hearings excoriating Big Tech, presidential condemnations, and pledges to break companies apart. Against that backdrop, the line between dialogue and intimidation vanishes.
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The 2024 Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court case had already unearthed emails showing the CDC and Surgeon General demanding takedowns and deboosts. One federal judge called it "the most massive attack on free speech in U.S. history." The Fifth Circuit agreed in part. But when the case reached the Supreme Court, the justices refused to weigh in. They said plaintiffs couldn't show a direct enough link between government pressure and platform actions to justify intervention—leaving the larger First Amendment question untouched.
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First, it was Meta. Now Alphabet has confessed: content the government disliked was erased, even if it broke no rules. That should chill every American.
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FCC chair Brendan Carr's recent threat to pull ABC's license over Kimmel was more explicit, but Biden's shadow pressure campaign achieved the same result.
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Alphabet's reversal is welcome news for free speech, but now both parties seek to impose their Ministries of Truth upon the American people.
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​Note: No American Renegade of the Week feature this week due to time constraints—and a dearth of candidates. It will return next week.

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