President says broadcasters should lose licenses for criticizing him

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/18/us/trump-news

by perihelions • 10 months ago

145 55 10 months ago

What happened to the party of Free Speech absolutism?

Edit: for those claiming this isn't a free speech issue the President is using the FCC to go after people he doesn't like. He must be a special snowflake.

klaff• 10 months ago

It's the party of bad faith.

endemic• 10 months ago

every accusation is an admission

ordinaryradical2• 10 months ago

Their speech was never in jeopardy, they just didn’t like its consequences. And now that they have the upper hand they will try to actively impose the same restrictions which they accused others of placing on them.

Victimhood distorts reality and leads to outsized reprisals.

AlexandrB6• 10 months ago

Their speech was never in jeopardy, they just didn’t like its consequences.

Can't you say the same about the Jimmy Kimmel situation? He's not in jail, he's free to speak, his employer just didn't want to back him up on it.

All of the arguments used to excuse cancel culture ("right to speech not to a platform", "it's a company censoring you, not the government", "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences") are now being leveraged by the right. Why did anyone think it would go any other way? Was the assumption that the left would own the cultural zeitgeist forever? This whole approach to politics was folly.

bilbo0s• 10 months ago

In fairness, conservatives never said they supported free speech.

They said they wanted more promotion of conservative viewpoints.

Kind of a subtle, but important distinction there.

Neither liberals, nor conservatives support free speech.

FranzFerdiNaN2• 10 months ago

This isn’t true. They couldn’t stop talking about free speech and how their hate speech should be allowed and if you didn’t like it you’re just a snowflake.

stfp• 10 months ago

It’s just a tool, a weapon im their arsenal. They are still pushing the free speech narrative in other places, eg. Europe, when people try to stop candidates and pundits from lying. But then obviously once they succeed lying their way into power that tool isn’t necessary anymore, and controlling speech becomes important.

Freedom2• 10 months ago

From VP Vance:

"In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town; and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree."

FranzFerdiNaN2• 10 months ago

Free speech is for them not for you or me. Always has been.

gridder• 10 months ago

Double standard is the standard for those kinds of toxic people and their sycophants

_DeadFred_5• 10 months ago

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because this is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because this is according to my principles. - Frank Herbert

LarsDu882• 10 months ago

How many minutes before HN takes this one down? Seen at least 5 political posts get shut down today

AlexandrB6• 10 months ago

HN has a general rule against posts about politics that occasionally gets ignored for particularly noteworthy events.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

belter3• 10 months ago

If you are quoting the guidelines quote this one also: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I would say, to see the USA moving into Nazism, in realtime, in my lifetime, is a pretty amazing intellectual endeavor to dissect.

jleyank3• 10 months ago

How will US politics affect HN startup's potential market? How will it affect their ability to form, hire and retain staff? Will it affect the H1b's that underpin all sorts of programming efforts. Will it lead to VC money sloshing into Europe/UK? ... There's all sorts of HN-relevant things that are impacted damn near daily by US politics.

Not counting all of the impact on health, medicine, science, ... One can keep flagging away, but if you're going to watch the cash flow elsewhere and the jobs remain open, I would think some concern is merited. And if, somehow, people working in this area realize what their work has helped produced...

belter3• 10 months ago

The most impressive was this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45282482

800 comments and nowhere to be seen in the first 15 pages... :-)

ortusdux• 10 months ago

hckrnews.com

panarchy• 10 months ago

Back in my day hackers were anti-authoritarian

belter3• 10 months ago

Exactly 60 min .... A fair, on-topic critique about policy and its impact on liberty can’t last an hour here...

g-b-r5• 10 months ago

It's been flagged

g-b-r5• 10 months ago

(not by me, if that's why I've been downvoted)

josefritzishere• 10 months ago

Germany 1933

yencabulator• 10 months ago

https://archive.ph/wLuj2

President says broadcasters should lose licenses for criticizing him

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