New FCC Chair to Reinstate Complaints Against ABC, CBS, NBC

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/fcc-chair-media/2025/01/22/id/1196050/

The new Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will reverse the 11th hour decision by the former Democrat chair to reject three complaints against major media outlets, sources tell Newsmax.

With days left in her term under the Biden administration, Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, last week announced she was dismissing four pending petitions and complaints before the FCC that she believed sought "to curtail freedom of the press."

Three of the petitions related to coverage of the presidential campaign while one was a complaint about Fox News Channel.

New Chair Brendan Carr, a Republican appointed Monday by President Donald Trump, plans to reverse the dismissal of presidential election complaints against ABC, NBC and CBS, but not the one against Fox.

A source told Newsmax that Carr will put the ABC, NBC, and CBS cases back into pending or active status. The move means the complaints against the three networks can be adjudicated on their merits.

The source added that Rosenworcel could have prevented the FCC from reversing course had she acted a few weeks earlier. That could have prevented Carr from overturning his predecessor's decision.

Three of the complaints were filed by the Center of American Rights, a conservative nonprofit. One complaint said ABC News favored Vice President Kamala Harris during the presidential debate, another was about how CBS News' "60 Minutes" edited an interview with Harris, and the third complained about Harris' appearance on "Saturday Night Live" because Trump didn't get equal time.

The complaint against Fox over Jan. 6, 2021, coverage will not be brought back.

Trump Threatens Foreign Nationals, Companies With Double Taxes

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/donald-trump-double-taxes-foreign-nationals/2025/01/22/id/1196041/

President Donald Trump reportedly threatened to undertake the retaliatory move of doubling tax rates for foreign nationals and companies.

The possible move is intended to hit back at "discriminatory" levies on American multinationals.

Trump on Monday issued a memo outlining his "America First" trade policy. It referred to an obscure 90-year-old provision of the U.S. tax code that empowers him to impose punitive taxes on foreign countries and their citizens and businesses, Financial Times reported.

Trump ordered the Treasury Department to "investigate whether any foreign country subjects United States citizens or corporations to discriminatory or extraterritorial taxes" pursuant to the tax code known as Section 891, The Times of London reported.

That statute became law in the 1930s when the U.S. and France argued over taxes on U.S. businesses.

Alex Parker, the tax legal affairs director at the business advisory firm Eide Bailly, said Trump's order "initiates the process to apply Section 891," a "century-old, never-used statute" that would allow the Treasury to "double taxes on taxpayers from countries engaging in discrimination against the U.S.," The Times of London reported.

News of the potential tax increase on foreign nationals and businesses came amid Trump's intentions to hit the European Union with tariffs.

During his first full day in office Monday, Trump effectively withdrew the U.S. from a 2021 global agreement that aimed to stop tax avoidance by multinational companies. The deal, signed by 130 countries, required companies to pay a global minimum corporation tax rate of 15%.

Although Congress never approved measures to bring the U.S. into compliance with the agreement, U.S. companies are subject to a global minimum tax of about 10%. Countries including the U.K., though, have adopted the 15% global minimum tax and could pursue U.S. companies for a top-up tax if they are paying a lower rate, The Times of London reported.

Trump wrote that his memo "recaptures our nation's sovereignty and economic competitiveness by clarifying that the Global Tax Deal has no force or effect in the United States."

"This is likely aimed at jurisdictions where corporations have housed a lot of their intellectual property like Ireland, and it also likely gets at what the EU is doing on trying to extract more revenues from U.S. tech companies," Everett Eissenstat, a partner at the international law firm Squire Patton Boggs, told the Financial Times.

DOJ: Probe Locals Who Obstruct Immigration Effort

https://www.newsmax.com/us/justice-department-immigration-enforcement/2025/01/22/id/1196036/

The Justice Department is directing its federal prosecutors to investigate any state or local officials who stand in the way of beefed-up enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration, according to a memo to the entire workforce obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Written by Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, the memo also says the department will return to the principle of charging defendants with the most serious crime it can prove, a staple position of Republican-led departments meant to remove a prosecutor’s discretion to charge a lower-level offense.

Much of the memo is centered on immigration enforcement. Bove wrote that prosecutors shall "take all steps necessary to protect the public and secure the American border by removing illegal aliens from the country and prosecuting illegal aliens for crimes" committed in U.S. jurisdiction.

The memo also suggests state and local officials who stand in the way of federal immigration enforcement could themselves come under scrutiny. It directs prosecutors to investigate any episodes in which state and local officials obstruct or impede federal functions.

"Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests," the memo says. "The U.S. Attorney’s Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution."

The three-page memo signals an immediate and sharp turnabout in priorities from President Joe Biden's Democratic administration, with prosecutors told in no uncertain terms that they will be on the front lines of an administration-wide effort to crack down on illegal immigration and border crime and that they are expected to carry out the policy vision of President Donald Trump's Republican White House when it comes to violent crimes, the threat of transnational gangs and drug trafficking.

"Indeed, it is the responsibility of the Justice Department to defend the Constitution, and accordingly, to lawfully execute the policies that the American people elected President Trump to implement," Bove wrote in the memo obtained by the AP.

"The Justice Department’s responsibility, proudly shouldered by each of its employees, includes aggressive enforcement of laws enacted by Congress, as well as vigorous defense of the President’s actions on behalf of the United States against legal challenges," Bove added. "The Department’s personnel must come together in the offices that taxpayers have funded to do this important work."

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