LIVE: FCC Chair Brendan Carr holds briefing

to just be part of this review, which is solely restricted to DEI, the license, the early license reviews. Our DEI review is going to continue and it's going to be part of that. We are calling their licenses in for early renewal. I think they have eight station licenses. Once they make that filing, then anybody can file petitions to deny. We can't control what claims they make in their petitions to deny and we'll take a look at all of that and we'll work through it, or if we don't have to work through it, we won't work through it. We'll make the next decisions based on their filing, based on any petitions to deny that come in. But Disney, as part of the filing, is going to come in and demonstrate that they've been operating in the public interest, and the agency has a lot of case law out there that describes in detail what those public interest obligations are, and they're going to have to demonstrate that they've met their burden.

Well, I would actually frame it slightly differently. I think our focus has been much more broad in terms of threats from foreign adversary nations, from bad actors abroad that aren't even nation-state actors. And we specifically stood up a council on national security. And one of the good things is when you stand something up like that, it's going to be an active group. We've got a very hard-charging, active group that is running point on our national security thing. So, again, we take actions, for instance, on drones. We prohibited all drones produced in foreign countries originally, whether it's Europe or anywhere. On routers, same thing. It was about foreign-produced routers, again, almost regardless of where it is. And then we'll go through and create exceptions as necessary on a case-by-case basis. But I would view it more as national security as a general matter. There's always a component here, too, of when you take action to have bad actors out, that creates opportunity for domestic onshoring as well. So I would frame it more through that broader perspective rather than narrowly a country-specific basis for our actions.

I didn't file it. NRB filed it.

Yeah, I mean, again, it's just a little bit of a saying, but how do you look at DEI? Which perspective do you look at it through? But our EEO rules, in my view, do not promote or require or even allow invidious forms of discrimination. And with respect to your question about NAB, all I'll say is they filed a petition. I honestly haven't read it all the way through, but we're going to treat it the way we treat any petition or document that we get.

If we need to update them, then we'll take a look at updating as possible.

Stay tuned.

Seems like the same question we got from the DC Circuit. So, we will respond to the DC Circuit. They gave us till May 11th to provide a response on the status of the applications for review, and stay tuned to the May 11th FCC filing to see what we say there. As you know, obviously pleased to see that the court generally denied the request for interlocutory appeal. Obviously, it's sort of very rare and exceptional circumstances where that would happen. So, I was pleased with the general disposition of it, and we're happy to provide the court with an update on May 11th in our filing.

Well, I guess you could say there's my view, there's FCC case law, there's what other FCC leaders have done over the years, and you can have debates about whether there's daylight between those things. I think my position from the get-go has been very clear, which is I think the FCC has rules on the books that we're supposed to enforce. And I think that there have been agency leaders here over the last number of years that simply haven't done that. But I actually think that the agency itself has been clear about what the public interest standard is. If you go back, the entire model that the agency uses for the public interest is what we refer to as a public trustee model. And so, broadcast, I think more people are actually getting this. Broadcast is fundamentally different than cable or streaming or newspaper or a soapbox on the street. And the reason is this: you can have unlimited numbers of effectively streaming services, and today almost unlimited cable and unlimited soapboxes and newspapers. There's no interference or conflict between them. You don't need a government to pick a winner or a loser or to license them. Broadcast, by its very nature, is different. You have to give somebody a monopoly on a particular set of frequencies because if you're not, it's as an old FCC case says, it's like the Coke and Cast. You can't hear each other because of the interference. And so, because the government has to pick a winner, give someone a monopoly on that microphone and license them, the next question is, well, what happens to the community member that was denied the ability by the government to use it as a microphone? And one option is to say, 'Tough luck. It's like cable. They can do whatever they want, say whatever they want. It's like a soapbox. It's like a newspaper.' But that's not what Congress and the FCC decided. What they said was, 'No, we want a public trustee model.' So, yeah, you won. You got this for free. You can exclude others. You have a monopoly on this. But you need to nonetheless account for the entire community in terms of delivering your public interest obligations. You're supposed to assess the needs of the community. That's what localism is in our rule. And deliver. Again, there was a fork in the road where you could have said, 'You won. Be like a cable channel. Be like a newspaper. Do whatever you want.' But they said, 'No, because you got it for free. You got a monopoly. You got a license. You're standing not just in your shoes, but you're standing up for the interest of the whole community.' We've been very clear about that over the years, and it's gone all the way to the Supreme Court. And they've said that holding broadcasters to their public interest obligations isn't censorship. It isn't a violation of their First Amendment because of that analysis, that mode of First Amendment analysis that applies uniquely in that monopoly. So, we can't step back the way you step back in cable or streaming or newspaper because of that physical reality of interference. So, I think it's less about people focus on scarcity. I think it's less about scarcity. It's more about you have to exclude someone, the government does, otherwise there'll be interference.

We've said that pretty clearly. But if we need to compile some of those case laws together and put it into a single document, and I know call it a public interest public notice, then maybe we'll do that.

We're looking at the case law, whether it's 50s, 60s, 70s case law or otherwise, this is what the FCC has said and we're reminding you that this is what the FCC has said. And I don't think it's making it up or not making it up. It's someone else looked the other way. Maybe, I don't know, but I'm not looking somewhere new. I'm looking to the actual decisions of the FCC and saying, 'We've said this. You know we've said it. Like we were serious. We're not just going to look the other way.' Because again, I think part of the dynamic that's happened here at the agency is you see the rise of the internet, you see the rise of social media, you see the rise of cable and you say, 'Okay, let's eliminate all these regulations of broadcast and treat them just like cable.' But it's not. It's technically not that way. The law doesn't allow us. And if Congress wants to come together and the president and change it and say, 'We want broadcast to be like...' again, I think there's a technical problem because of the nature of interference on spectrum that isn't present in those other places. But if Congress wants to deregulate because of all of these, they can. But as of right now, it's just different technically and legally.

If you need to take a nap today, just rewind 10 minutes.

Looking for melatonin.