Washington has forced local television stations to compete in a 21st-century media market under rules written for the 20th century.

Americans pay the price whenever outdated regulations make it harder for local broadcasters to invest in better news coverage, stronger emergency alerts, and new technology.

The future of local television should not be determined by regulations written before streaming, smartphones, and digital competition transformed the media landscape.

The Federal Communications Commission has now taken an important step toward fixing that mismatch by replacing a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach with a more flexible, fact-based review process.

The principle is simple: Regulation should respond to today’s marketplace, not yesterday’s assumptions.

Local television still matters. Americans rely on hometown stations for storm warnings, election coverage, school closings, and stories that national outlets rarely cover. Yet, like local newspapers before them, many stations face serious financial pressure.

More than half of U.S. television stations operate at a loss even as they continue providing essential public service.

To survive, broadcasters need investment. They want to upgrade transmission systems, strengthen emergency alerts, expand local journalism, and deploy next-generation broadcast technology.

But investment requires scale, and investors are understandably reluctant to fund companies that federal policy artificially prevents from reaching more than 39% of American households.

That ownership cap was created for a different era, when Americans watched one of three television networks and broadcasters dominated the video marketplace.

The market changed. Washington’s rules did not.

Americans now consume news and entertainment on smartphones, tablets, laptops, streaming services, social media, and podcasts. Broadcasters compete with Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, cable networks, and digital platforms capable of reaching essentially every American.

Local broadcasters, however, remain constrained by a federal ownership cap designed before the internet transformed the media business.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has warned that America should not repeat the mistakes made with local newspapers.

That warning deserves attention.

Washington watched thousands of local newspapers disappear while old business models collapsed and investment arrived too late. Communities never stopped needing local journalism. The economics simply stopped supporting it.

Local television should not be next.

Critics of the FCC’s order warn that loosening ownership restrictions could weaken localism. That is a legitimate concern, but it should be tested against evidence rather than treated as an argument for preserving the status quo indefinitely.

The politics of the moment also matter. Because the reform comes from a Republican FCC, opponents can dismiss it as simple deregulation. Yet media-ownership debates have shifted with partisan control before, and Democrats have supported modernization efforts of their own when they held power.

RELATED: FCC slaps ban on Chinese robots — revealing US plans for unmanned warfighting

John Keeble/Getty Images

Localism should remain the objective. The 39% ownership cap is only one regulatory tool.

There is little evidence that fixing the national ownership limit at 39% — rather than 50%, 75%, or some other figure — produces more local news, stronger emergency coverage, or better community service.

Good public policy should ask whether a regulation produces measurable benefits, not whether it has survived for decades.

If policymakers want stronger local journalism, they should focus on the conditions that make it possible: investment, innovation, modern technology, and financially sustainable business models.

Emergency communications make the point especially clear.

During hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and other disasters, local broadcasters provide information that can save lives. Those capabilities depend on modern infrastructure, skilled journalists, reliable transmission systems, and continuing investment — not on an arbitrary national ownership ceiling.

The FCC’s decision does not guarantee that every station will thrive. Nothing can.

But it gives local broadcasters something they have lacked for too long: greater freedom to attract investment, modernize operations, strengthen emergency communications, and build sustainable local-news organizations.

Government should not freeze one industry in time while every competitor is free to innovate.

The future of local television should not be determined by regulations written before streaming, smartphones, and digital competition transformed the media landscape.

Local communities are best served when their broadcasters have the freedom to grow, compete, and invest in the journalism Americans still depend on.

​Broadcast rights, Fcc, Streaming, Television, Regulations, Tv, Public services, Opinion & analysis 

Last month at a press conference announcing 30% discounts on staple groceries at planned city-owned stores, a reporter asked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) how he would prevent people from buying up the cheap items for resale.

“Our RFP makes very clear that this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling,” he replied before passing the question off to Economic Development Corporation chief Jeanny Pak, who floated the idea of using “library-esque cards” to moderate patrons.

Glenn Beck finds the proposal preposterous and deeply ironic.

“You’re going to put out a library card? Do you need a license or any kind of identification to get a library card? The answer? Yes,” he says, emphasizing Mamdani’s and other progressives’ opposition to voter ID requirements.

“So you’re asking for ID. Okay, well, that makes sense because … you have to know who’s coming in. Are they qualified to buy the stuff in your store?” Glenn continues, highlighting the glaring similarities between accessing NYC’s city-owned grocery stores and voting in an election.

He wonders whether or not Mamdani and other NYC officials have considered the inherent sexism and racism in such a proposal.

“I don’t know why they hate women so much, because married women, you’re not going to be able to do it because maybe you’ve changed your name and you don’t have a birth certificate or any other form of ID whatsoever that could prove who you are,” he sarcastically remarks, mocking liberals’ debunked argument that voter ID laws disenfranchise married women.

After the backlash, Mamdani’s team clarified that the “library card-esque” idea was not an ID requirement but actually a voluntary customer loyalty-style card (like supermarket rewards programs) that the private store operator could use to track purchases and limit bulk buying for resale.

But regardless of how they try to frame their fraud prevention initiative, the irony remains.

“So [it’s] like a Costco card, which I have to sign up for and they have to know who I am, because they just don’t hand them out at the door. … Or like an Albertson’s card, where you have to sign up for it,” Glenn says.

Glenn’s head writer and researcher, Jason Buttrill, notes that the mayor’s office has pledged that the cards will be voluntary and free, with no residency, identity, or income check required to get one — which would make them arbitrary and ineffective at preventing fraud.

“If you’re not going to check residency, why even have a card at all? Because you can come from Texas and just say, ‘Yeah, I live in New York. Give me my discount card,”’ he says.

“They know they’re being hypocrites,” says Glenn.

Communism and socialism always fail, he explains, because even after common sense reveals their failures, the government — afraid of losing face and supporters — doubles down, insisting it will eventually find the magic solution that proves the system works.

“Once a communist, always a communist,” says Glenn.

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Communism, Glenn beck, New york city, Socialism, Voter id, Zohran mamdani, Blazetv show 

Three “women” are accused in the torture death of 7-year-old Ohio boy — but authorities said two of the suspects are male who co-parented the victim with his mother.

Cincinnati police said the Mercy Rookwood emergency department called Thursday after a woman claimed that someone was trying to kill her and her boy.

‘We saw injuries that would indicate physical beatings, blunt force injuries from a striking device on the face, torso, back, upper and lower extremities …’

“We have somebody that came in and kind of just dropped herself on the floor. She’s barefoot. She thinks that her partner’s trying to kill her, that they took her son,” the worker said in the call to police.

“She’s saying that he’s hiding him up in the attic. She is sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth and barefoot,” the worker added.

Hours later officers were called to a home on Madison Road in Oakley over a “suspicious death.”

They found William Evans-Ellis bound and wrapped with duct tape in a closet. Police arrested two males who had been co-parenting with the victim’s mother, who also was arrested.

Cincinnati police detective Kyle Smith said in court that the case is “one of the most disturbing examples of child abuse” he’d ever seen.

“From what we could see, we saw injuries that would indicate physical beatings, blunt force injuries from a striking device on the face, torso, back, upper and lower extremities. Impact injuries to the back of the head,” Smith said.

“We believe that there was, for lack of a better term, some water torture involved,” he added. “We believe the victim was choked under water, held under water for a long period of time. There was some burn torture involved, and the victim was found duct taped in positions that immobilized him.”

The boy also was revealed to have been “mentally handicapped.”

An attorney for 38-year-old Kaitlin Evans — the boy’s biological mother — admitted that she had not done enough to save her child but denied that she had killed him. Evans accused one of the two other suspects of killing the boy.

The attorney for 23-year-old Nessa Keaney said he tried to administer “treatment” to the boy and claimed Keaney was the “least culpable” for the boy’s death.

A detective testified that the third suspect, 33-year-old Kirby Rankin, admitted to his part in the abuse and had implicated Keaney and Evans as “active participants” in the abuse of the boy.

The victim’s biological father also spoke in court.

“Willie was my life, and I trusted you to care for him. They kept him from me for the past nine months over lies,” the father said.

A WXIX-TV news video described the suspects only as “people,” and other outlets described them as women — but Keaney’s arrest record lists him as a male, and Rankin also is listed as a male, while Evans is listed as a female.

RELATED: Florida woman brutally beat man to death with a hammer — and left a note saying ‘PEDO Touches Children’

Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Rodney Harris set each suspect’s bond at $1.1 million — $1 million for murder and $100,000 for child endangering, WXIX said, adding that all three pleaded not guilty and are expected back in court later this month.

Officials apparently missed a chance to save the boy months prior to his death, when Rankin attacked a woman in a parking lot amid a driving dispute. The woman suffered fractured teeth, a concussion, a neck injury, and a torn meniscus — and asked police to charge Rankin with a felony. He was charged only with a misdemeanor and aggravated menacing.

“I asked to go to [the] grand jury. They refused. I kept being told because she was hit one time it wasn’t a felony, which is absolutely absurd,” Lance Bunnell, the husband of the victim and a retired law enforcement captain, said.

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​Child abuse, Child torture, Ohio, Transgender, Murder, Crime 

The depth behind the policies endorsed by the co-chair of the Democratic Socialist Party of America was revealed to be incredibly shallow.

Megan Romer was interviewed by David Remnick on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” about DSA policy positions, when he simply asked her what it meant to tax “the hell” out of millionaires.

‘So again, it’s democracy, right? And we have to look at what we need to spend and what we need. We don’t want to depend on the existence of millionaires, because that means people are still getting exploited.’

Romer said she was more concerned about billionaires before circling back about millionaires.

“I think most billionaires got their wealth because they exploited the working class in some very significant way usually,” Romer said.

“But we do believe in taxing the hell out of millionaires, yeah, absolutely,” she laughed.

“What does ‘taxing the hell out of them’ mean?” Remnick asked simply.

“Yeah. You know, again, I don’t have, like, a solid,” she laughed again.

“But shouldn’t you?” Remnick interrupted.

“Umm, that’s a good question,” she replied.

“If you’re the co-chair of the DSA, shouldn’t you be more specific than just taxing the hell out of something? What exactly do you mean?” he asked.

“So again, it’s democracy, right? And we have to look at what we need to spend and what we need. We don’t want to depend on the existence of millionaires, because that means people are still getting exploited,” she responded.

“So yeah, we need to look at what we need to pay for in the interim, what sort of tax base we need for that to happen, and then build from there,” she added.

While video of the exchange was widely circulated on social media, the entire interview can be viewed on the YouTube channel for the New Yorker.

RELATED: Democratic Socialists of America seek to RADICALLY upend the federal gov’t in reported platform update

The DSA is surging after a recent spree of primary victories against establishment candidates of the Democratic Party, leading to concerns that the extremist fringe is taking over.

Some Democrats responded by rejecting the extremist policies and forming a small group dedicated to defeating the communist fringe of the party.

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​Democratic socialists of america, Socialism, Communism, Democratic party, Politics 

Almost 30 years later, the murder of Tupac Shakur will go to trial for the first time.

The gang leader allegedly responsible, according to the prosecution, will only have himself to blame if he goes behind bars.

‘I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody.’

Smoking gun

Postmortem records, documentaries, and conspiracy theories have surrounded the death of Shakur for decades, and the same goes for his rival, rapper Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious BIG.

The rivalry between the West Coast and East Coast rappers and their entourages hit a boiling point on September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas following a Mike Tyson boxing match.

The two sides had already employed gangs for protection, with Shakur and Death Row Records protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang affiliated with the Bloods. Producer and longtime suspect Marion “Suge” Knight was already affiliated with the group. Wallace’s side, Bad Boy Records and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, had allegedly hired the South Side Compton Crips as their bodyguards.

It was then, prosecutors say, that Duane “Keffe D” Davis was the leader of those Crips who ordered the killing of Shakur on Sept. 7 and provided the gun to kill him in a drive-by shooting, the Guardian reported.

Reports from the trial, starting Monday, say that the cold case was revived only after Davis’ memoirs were published in 2019. In the book, Davis said he was in the front seat of the Cadillac from which Shakur was shot and allegedly handed the pistol used to someone in the back seat. The book reportedly does not say who opened fire, but everyone else who was in the car that night has since died.

RELATED: HULK HYPOCRITE: $35 million man Ruffalo stumps for socialism

Steve Marcus-Pool/Getty Images

‘I ain’t killed nobody’

The story goes that Shakur and Knight attacked Davis’ nephew, another member of the Crips named Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson. The fight was allegedly a retaliation for an assault on an employee of Death Row Records.

Prosecutors say Davis was out for revenge after the scuffle, but the 63-year-old said he did not commit the murder and said there was no evidence against him.

“I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody,” Davis told ABC News in 2025.

Davis argued to the outlet that he should be out living a normal life instead of facing the allegations.

“I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight,” he said. “At one of my f**king grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”

Saying he left the gang life long ago, Davis stated that he was not even in Nevada at the time of the shooting but in Los Angeles, which is over four hours away by car.

RELATED: Diddy’s Big Circus

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Hype or homicide?

“They don’t have no evidence against me. They can’t even put me in Las Vegas,” Davis asserted.

Davis faces life in prison without parole if he is convicted, but despite his apparent admission in his memoirs of being involved in the murder, he has since claimed that the information in the book is not accurate.

“I just gave him details of my life,” Davis said about the author, claiming he never read the memoirs. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”

Davis claimed the book’s details were inflated to generate book sales.

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​Tupac shakur, Notorious big, Suge knight, Diddy, Entertainment 

Newly released texts from Dr. Anthony Fauci showed that he and other health officials knew about a miscarriage risk to the coronavirus vaccine, but told the public it was safe.

The texts were released by Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin as part of the investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

‘It’s really one of those things that’s kind of not a close call. It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.’

The exchange showed Fauci referring to the miscarriage risk in texts to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time.

“I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” he wrote. “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

It was sent Jan. 25, 2021.

Days later, he said the Food and Drug Administration had “found thus far, and we have to be careful, but thus far no red flags about that, about pregnant women,” during a livestream with the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Months after that, Fauci made similar comments to “What to Expect” creator Heidi Murkoff.

“[I]f you look at the literally — literally — tens and tens and tens of thousands of women who have been followed by the CDC who were vaccinated when they were pregnant, there’s no indication whatsoever that there’s any increase of any adverse issues in a pregnant woman who was vaccinated compared to a pregnant woman who wasn’t vaccinated,” said Fauci.

“It’s really one of those things that’s kind of not a close call. It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.”

Johnson posted the message on his social media account.

“While I’ve been conducting oversight for years, now that we have the documents and Fauci’s government-issued phone, my investigation has only just begun,” he said.

“Pregnant women were told it was safe! How many women lost babies due to Dr. Fauci’s lies?” responded Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.

RELATED: Former Fauci adviser INDICTED for allegedly hiding emails about the origins of COVID

“Americans were told to shut up, trust the experts, and get the shot or risk their jobs and livelihoods,” replied Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

“Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Fauci, Walensky, and Murthy were discussing the very uncertainties Americans were attacked for raising: missing pregnancy data, pregnant women excluded from the trials, a WHO statement citing lack of data, and even a theoretical concern about miscarriage after the second dose,” he added.

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​Centers for disease control, Coronavirus vaccine, Dr anthony fauci, Miscarriage, Politics 

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vehemently denied the suggestion he made a crude remark about a female foreign leader’s “melons.”

Albanese made the comments — and hand gestures — during his appearance on the “Bush Deep” podcast with Australian comedian Nikki Osborne. He also said during the show that he would “shag” singer and actress Kylie Minogue.

‘The comments were beneath the office of prime minister.’

Osborne asked him about gifts from foreign leaders when he told a story involving Sanae Takaichi, the female prime minister of Japan

“Here’s something I got recently here that was pretty strange but ended up being quite good was a melon. The Japanese prime minister brought a melon here!” said Albanese.

“How did he get that through customs?” Osbourne asked.

“She — it’s a royal melon,” he answered.

“Oh, she smuggled — it was a she? Did she smuggle it?” the podcaster asked, while making a gesture as if referring to pregnancy.

“I dunno,” he said, smirking.

“Oh, I’m expecting!” Osbourne joked.

“Got a couple of melons!” said Albanese while gesturing with his hands at his chest.

“She brought two?” she laughed.

“She brought two! As you do!” he replied.

“She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson!” the podcaster joked.

“She brought two!” he replied. “And they’re beautiful!”

Video of the interaction can be viewed on social media.

Takaichi had been visiting Australia to improve diplomatic relations as China threatens to expand its influence in the South China Sea.

Albanese’s political critics pounced on the incident, lambasted him, and demanded that he apologize for the joke.

“The comments were beneath the office of prime minister,” said Liberal leader Angus Taylor on Monday. “They were insulting, and the prime minister should make a personal apology. He’s done it through a statement. I mean, the hypocrisy of Labor and the prime minister on this topic knows no bounds, no bounds whatsoever.”

Opposition leader Ted O’Brien, after meeting with Japanese officials, said “the prime minister’s words were inappropriate and a national embarrassment.”

RELATED: France recalls ambassadors from the US and Australia after calling Indo-Pacific pact a ‘stab in the back’

What’s more, Shingo Yamagami — a former Japanese ambassador to Australia — rebuked Albanese for his words.

Yamagami wrote, “Prime Minister, please enjoy Japan’s sweet and juicy melons without thinking about a women’s anatomy” before adding that “however lighthearted it was intended to be, the recent joke delivered by PM Anthony Albanese at the expense of Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi is how he might be remembered by Japanese who most value the friendship with Australia.”

Yamagami added that “what dismayed some was that Takaichi has recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and gender” and that “the last thing she expected was to be so casually mocked by the trusted leader of Japan’s special strategic partner.”

Albanese previously apologized for his comment about shagging Minogue.

Takaichi is considered a very conservative leader who supports the legacy of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The melons in question are a special kind called Shizuoka-grown Crown Melons, which are grown so that only one fruit can be harvested from each plant. They are very expensive and are exported to Canada from Japan.

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​Australia, Chinese communist party, Japan, Sexism, Melons, Politics