Carr Tries To Wash His Hands Of the Colbert Matter

It appears that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is trying to avoid any responsibility for the situation that unfolded this week on “The Late Show” — despite the fact that it all unfolded after the FCC launched an investigation into the daytime talk show “The View,” which, like Late Show host Stephen Colbert, had interviewed Texas Democratic Senate candidate and state Rep. James Talarico.

Multiple media outlets reported earlier this month that the FCC was investigating whether “The View” violated equal time rules for political candidates. As we wrote in yesterday’s edition of Where Things Stand, news programs and interviews with politicians on daytime and late-night talk shows have, historically, been exempt from the FCC rule — which requires radio and television to also interview all of a political candidate’s opponents, if a candidate is brought on air for an interview.

“I think yesterday perfectly sums up why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than in the national news media,” Carr told reporters at an FCC meeting Wednesday. “I think you should be a little ashamed of yourself for being lied to and then run with those lies.”

Carr is, of course, referring to what happened on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” this week, when Colbert announced that CBS lawyers told him the network couldn’t livestream his interview with Talarico. Colbert ended up posting the interview on the show’s YouTube channel and it garnered nearly 6.5 million views as of Wednesday evening. Colbert took the opportunity to explain the equal time rule and the fact that talk interviews with politicians were generally exempt, until recently, when Carr announced that the FCC might reinterpret the rules to begin excluding talk shows from the exemption. In early February, reports emerged of the FCC’s investigation into “The View.” Colbert criticized the Trump administration for changing agency policy to suppress dissent.

CBS released a vague statement Monday downplaying how explicit the legal advice given to Colbert was, saying “the show received legal guidance that broadcasting could trigger the FCC’s equal time rule.” Colbert doubled down on his show Tuesday, saying he let the network know he was going to talk about the issue on Monday night’s show and that CBS lawyers also approved his script to depict the series of events.

“This is where I want to tell the lawyers how to do their job: They know full well that every word of my script last night was approved by the CBS lawyers who, for the record, approve every script that is broadcast,” Colbert said Tuesday. “They told us the language they wanted me to use to describe this equal duration exception. So, I don’t know what it is.”

Carr warned again when speaking with reporters at the FCC meeting Wednesday that the exemption for talk shows could be coming to an end.

“The idea is that if you are a partisan political actor within the meaning of the case law, you probably won’t qualify for the good faith information exception,” he said.

—Nicole LaFond

They are now targeting the public transport budgets of blue cities

As part of President Trump’s current hyper-focus on punishing areas of the country that generally don’t support him, the Trump administration has been talking for some time about cracking down on sanctuary cities and states across the country. Early last year, he threatened to cut off federal funding for facilities providing services and protections to undocumented immigrants. This thinking is also reflected in his most recent threats to withhold federal funding for social services to a handful of blue states.

It appears his Transportation Ministry is also facing retaliation. Under a proposal obtained by Politico, Trump’s DoT is pushing for provisions to be included in the highway bill that Congress is expected to reauthorize in the fall that would prohibit states and municipalities from granting free transportation to undocumented immigrants. All of this would be seen as a measure that would prevent local governments from being able to help undocumented immigrants “evade federal immigration authorities,” in Politico’s words. More from Politico:

But the proposed language could encompass a much broader range of activities, such as any free transportation to migrants, said a person close to the project who was granted anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Such services have typically popped up in Democratic-led cities and states.

The proposal would ensure that “systems that receive federal funds do not use them to circumvent or violate federal immigration law,” the text states. It would cover all federal programs administered by the Federal Transit Administration, including buses, subways, light rail and ferries.

—Nicole LaFond

Fed government union representation on the rise despite Trump attacks

The share of Americans in unions remained roughly stable in 2025 compared to 2024, with one notable area of ​​growth: the federal government.

Union membership increased negligibly year over year, from 9.9% in 2024 to 10% in 2025, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual union membership summary released Wednesday morning. Many historical trends remain true in the new report: union members still make more money than non-union workers ($1,404 vs. $1,174), the public sector has a much higher proportion of unionized workers than the private sector (32.9% vs. 5.9%), and men still have higher unionization rates than women (10.4% vs. 9.6%).

But it’s interesting to note that despite President Donald Trump’s constant attacks on federal government employees and unions, federal government unions have seen their membership increase even as the overall number of federal employees has declined over the past year. While the number of federal employees decreased by 0.93% according to BLS data, the total number of union members in the federal civil service increased by 6.4% between 2024 and 2025.

Trump signed an executive order in March stripping away collective bargaining rights for workers at a long list of federal agencies and departments. In August, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower court injunction that blocked enactment of the EO, and the Trump administration quickly stripped the collective bargaining rights of 379,000 public workers, or more than 2.6 percent of all union workers in America.

Federal employee unions like the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) have challenged many of the administration’s actions in court and won some victories. In December, a federal judge restored union representation to employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. And although it is not factored into the BLS’s 2025 tally, a district court judge ruled in January that the Trump administration must honor a collective bargaining agreement with the TSA as long as a preliminary injunction remains in effect.

-Layla A. Jones

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