The Trump administration is using the immense muscle of federal power to punish media outlets whose coverage is disparaged as overly negative.

The president has long used harsh rhetorical attacks against such companies as CNN and The New York Times, as well as individual journalists, and filed a flurry of lawsuits against them. He’s even accused the press of “seditious” conduct. I suppose we’ve grown accustomed to that.

But there is a whole new level of escalation that goes beyond intimidation. Trump and his allies are pushing the regulatory levers to force networks to spend enormous time and money to preserve their franchise.

And the biggest target right now is ABC.

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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who along with Trump has demanded Jimmy Kimmel’s firing, has launched a review of the local station licenses connected to the Disney-owned company. This legal war will drag on for years and is unlikely to succeed; only one license has ever been pulled, and that was a half-century ago.

Think about it. Why should an ABC-owned station in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles have its license jeopardized because a federal agency dislikes the network’s content?

ABC has produced 11,000 documents in the inquiry so far, which gives you an idea of the scope of the showdown.

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“The commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to ‘The View’ and more broadly,” ABC said in a legal filing.

Yes, “The View,” the all-female talk show founded by Barbara Walters in 1997 and syndicated by ABC. That’s now a bullseye within the larger target.

The show has generally featured one conservative to balance the aggressively liberal Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. But these days the conservative panelists are also strongly anti-Trump.

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The initial filing was based on an ABC station in Houston, KTRK, stemming from a minor dispute with “The View.” And as the New York Times points out, the station’s paperwork was signed by former solicitor general Paul Clement.

At issue is whether the program, which is part of ABC’s news division, should be exempt from equal-time rules.

ABC says it has invited JD Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Elon Musk, Kevin McCarthy and Marco Rubio, according to the Hollywood Reporter, but all have refused.

TEXAS-BASED ABC AFFILIATES FILE EQUAL TIME NOTICES AS FCC CRACKS DOWN ON ‘THE VIEW’ OVER TALARICO SEGMENT

“The View” was given an exemption as a news show back in 2002.

Disney also notes that the FCC hasn’t gone after conservatives – or liberals – on talk radio. 

We’ve seen these tactics in other realms. The Trump Justice Department last fall brought an indictment against James Comey, which was rejected by a judge. After Trump fired Pam Bondi for not getting results, the department last month brought a second, much narrower indictment against the former FBI chief despised by Trump, based solely on the posting of seashell art that said 86*47. And Comey has to hire lawyers again.

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It so happens that the media, even most conservative legal commentators, are calling the case absurd.

Says National Review’s Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor: 

“Sure, Comey plainly did not intend to threaten bodily harm. More fundamentally, though, even if Comey’s state of mind had been sinister, he’d still be innocent because the seashell array was not an actionable threat…

LINE IN THE SAND: WHY TRUMP IS DRAWING FLAK FOR THE JAMES COMEY INDICTMENT OVER SEASHELLS

“The case must be thrown out pretrial because ‘86 47’ is not a true threat.” 

Look, the administration has done what it can to crack down on the press, such as booting Pentagon reporters out of the building after they refused to submit to advance censorship.

And Trump has previously collected at least $16 million apiece from earlier lawsuits against CBS and ABC.

What’s more, Trump’s friend, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and his son David, who bought CBS without government interference, may soon control CNN as well. The expectation is that they would shift the world’s first 24-hour network, whose founder Ted Turner died last week, in a more Trump-friendly direction.

Singling out a network or program for retaliation is itself a form of sheer partisanship.

And using the unchecked levers of government against disliked journalists and programs, down to the Whoopi Goldberg level, is deeply troubling. 

A Pennsylvania man is accused of setting a home on fire after police said he became upset when a woman at the residence rejected him, killing an Army veteran and seriously injuring two others.

Robert Shane Zimmerman, 40, was arrested after allegedly starting a fire at a home in Lewistown around 11:55 p.m. on Wednesday, the Lewistown Police Department wrote on Facebook. 

When officers arrived at the scene, several residents said the fire was intentionally set and that people were trapped inside the home, which was rented out to several subletters.

A man suffered significant facial injuries after jumping from the second floor of the home and was flown to a burn trauma center with internal burns to his throat. He informed authorities that his girlfriend was still inside.

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A woman also sustained serious injuries after passing out from smoke inhalation and falling onto a concrete sidewalk below, according to police. She was also transported to a trauma center for treatment.

Another victim, identified as Brandy Phillippe, 44, was found dead inside the home after authorities said she appeared to have attempted to escape but became trapped in the residence, according to the Mifflin County Coroner’s Office.

Multiple witnesses reported Zimmerman was at the home to profess his love for a woman living in the attic, police said. The fire was later confirmed to be arson by the Pennsylvania State Police Fire Marshal.

“It was reported that Zimmerman became upset when he was rejected by the female and he began setting several items on fire on the first floor of the residence,” police said, adding that the woman was later taken into custody for a prothonotary warrant issued in February.

During the investigation, witnesses reported hearing Zimmerman admit to starting the fire. They also said they saw him standing in a nearby alley watching the residence burn.

Surveillance images appeared to corroborate the witnesses’ statements, police said.

Zimmerman was later taken into custody at his home on an outstanding warrant, as well as for questioning related to the house fire, with police saying he smelled like ash and smoke.

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After being taken into custody, Zimmerman said he had just ingested fentanyl and displayed signs of an opioid overdose. He was transported to a hospital for evaluation. Several hours later, medical staff cleared him, and he was transported to the police department for questioning in connection with the fire.

During questioning, Zimmerman made “several incriminating statements,” police said.

Zimmerman claimed he could not recall any details from the exact time the fire began, but he was able to make several statements about events immediately before and after the fire started, according to police.

When he was informed someone in the residence had died as a result of the fire, police said Zimmerman had a “strong emotional response.”

Zimmerman is being held at the Mifflin County Correctional Facility on multiple charges, including arson, police told the Lewistown Sentinel.

Fox News Digital has reached out to police for additional information.

It was not immediately clear whether Zimmerman had legal representation.

Phillippe’s death is being investigated as a homicide, according to the coroner’s office.

According to her obituary, Phillippe was a “woman of many talents” who had a background in culinary arts and attended flight attendant school.

“She was a proud Army veteran who specialized in Patriot missiles during her service. Later in life, she achieved her CDL and worked as a professional truck driver,” the obituary reads.

“She had a passion for cats and loved many over the years,” it continued.

When I was first sworn in as ninth director of the FBI, one of my top priorities was to modernize the bureau with new, cutting-edge technology that would allow us to better serve and protect the American people. When I arrived, the FBI was running on archaic patchwork systems without AI, effectively putting a 2025 car battery into a vehicle from 1985. Our infrastructure was a Commodore 64 when it needed to be a supercomputer. No more Band-Aids on gunshot wounds. Wholesale change was necessary.

In the past year, I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made under President Trump’s leadership. We have rebuilt and revamped the FBI’s infrastructure across the enterprise, helping the bureau achieve record-breaking results in crushing violent crime and defending the homeland, while providing historic transparency.

Artificial intelligence is a huge part of that overhaul. When then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino and I arrived here at headquarters, AI had almost zero role at the FBI. That had to change, so we got to work. We immediately led the way by setting up an AI working group to evaluate how we could accelerate modernization, getting input from field leaders on the ground in your communities. We appointed a chief AI officer and established an AI Review Board to streamline our efforts. We created an AI Champions Program to identify advocates across the bureau. Maybe most importantly, we created direct partnerships with private-sector industry leaders to rebuild our infrastructure and bring in AI on a broad scale.

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AI is central to what we do. It is helping us identify victims of child exploitation, arrest and convict predators, and more. Last year alone, this FBI identified and located 6,300 missing kids, a 30% increase, and arrested 2,000 abusers, a 20% increase — largely thanks to these improvements. In a recent FBI Richmond case, the FBI’s Child Exploitation Operational Unit used facial recognition tools to save 8- and 12-year-old children from a would-be abuser, who will now spend 50 years in prison.

This FBI now uses new AI tools to generate call transcriptions, provide concise synopses and even help correlate contacts with other received complaints. When someone calls into NTOC — the National Threat Operations Center, our 911 center — AI tools generate a transcript of the call, draft an effective summary of the threat and immediately scan our database for comparisons to other open threat lines. Every tip also receives a lead value to surface the highest threat-related calls for Threat Intake Examiners. This specific threat intake process helped the FBI quickly act and stop an attacker plotting a mass shooting at a North Carolina preschool.

Fingerprint matching is one of the most common methods the FBI uses to identify individuals. Some adversaries try to manipulate their prints to obscure their identities by burning, cutting or biting their fingertips to remove ridge detail and make it difficult or impossible to make a match. Because fingerprint matching is an automated process, altered fingerprints were being missed. CJIS — the Criminal Justice Information Services Division, our data hub — integrated an AI-enabled, real-time altered fingerprint detection capability. In 2025, this new solution detected 34 altered fingerprint identities, ultimately leading to the positive identification and arrest of wanted persons, drug traffickers and fraudsters.

We’re also using AI to facilitate rapid translations of large volumes of text, audio and video, and to triage terabytes of data. In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, the FBI had more than 75 terabytes of data to review, with more information coming in every day, including more than 75 search warrant returns. For perspective, a single search warrant return can contain 180,000 messages. It would take six or seven analysts working seven days a week for four or five weeks to review a single search warrant return. The FBI routinely has thousands of audio files and texts to review over the course of a single case. Our current models translate with roughly 80% accuracy, so our linguists can home in on the 20% that requires a human touch. 

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We are not replacing humans; we’re supplementing them, sharpening their focus and expediting the pace of our investigations. Collecting data to sit in storage is like keeping Babe Ruth on the bench permanently.

We’re identifying and arresting more fraudsters, scammers and drug traffickers who try to hide their identities, thanks to AI. Through cooperative research and development agreements with the private sector, the FBI is advancing our deepfake detection systems in support of these investigations.

Equally important, AI is helping this FBI be more accountable to the taxpayer by applying it to business operations across the bureau and getting maximum value out of your money. With the help of our Enterprise AI assistant, this FBI cut $300 million in spending and identified more than $1.2 billion in contract ceiling savings.

These are just a few of the ways artificial intelligence has allowed this FBI to meet the mission. Under the Trump administration’s leadership, this FBI is now a faster, more efficient and more accountable crime-fighting machine thanks to the implementation of modern technology. This FBI has desperately needed these transformational changes, but prior leadership refused to spend the time and resources, kneecapping our abilities. That changed immediately under my leadership and will continue.

The new FBI — the greatest law enforcement agency on Earth — is now providing our team the tools they need to execute the dangerous mission we ask them to perform every day: safeguarding America. And thanks to the brave personnel using those tools, America is safer than we’ve been in decades.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL