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Anthony Orrico at HuffPost:

Numerous conservatives on social media lashed out at California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Monday after he announced new legislation to safeguard the upcoming midterm elections. In remarks posted to social media, Newsom issued a stark warning for anyone considering helping President Donald Trump interfere in the state’s elections. “If you violate California’s laws, if you interfere with our voters, tamper with our ballots or meddle in our election, you will be prosecuted,” Newsom said. “It doesn’t matter who gave the order.”

Newsom said the legislation would make it a felony to seize ballots before the election had been certified by state and local officials. “We will be the wall he (Trump) cannot get past,” Newsom said. “Because we believe once an election is decided, the winner governs for everyone.” The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on Newsom’s announcement.

Pippa Crerar at The Guardian:

Donald Trump has revived his bid for the US to acquire Greenland, threatening to pull all American armed forces out of Europe after the continent repeatedly pushed back. Arriving at the Nato summit in Ankara on Tuesday, the US president also suggested his commitment to defending Europe had been tempered by political decisions by leaders on immigration and energy. Keir Starmer and European allies have been determined to avoid another public bust-up with Trump over defence spending after a bruising year for Nato, in which the Iran war once again exposed cracks in the alliance.

The UK has already pushed back on criticism from the US that some allies are “lagging behind” on funding, with Trump expected to rebuke countries, including the UK, for not making enough progress on hitting the target of spending 3.5% of GDP by 2035. As Trump arrived in Turkey, he suggested that Starmer’s decision to keep out of the war against Iran had contributed to his downfall, whereas the prime minister’s stance had in fact been popular with the British public.

“I was very disappointed with Nato. We weren’t treated well because we did something in Iran. We don’t need anybody’s help, but before I asked they said they wouldn’t be there,” the US president told reporters. “In the case of the United Kingdom, the prime minister, I guess he’s no longer there, maybe because of this, it was a very unpopular thing he did. He said: ‘No, we’ll help after the war is over.’ I said: ‘We don’t need that kind of help.’”

Reviving an earlier row, Trump also suggested that the disagreement about the ownership of Greenland – which is part of Denmark, a fellow Nato member – had “hurt” his relationship with the military alliance. “Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s an important part for the US, and it’s surrounded by China ships and Russian ships … [It] should be controlled by the US, not by Denmark. And when they wouldn’t go along with it, and with all the money we spend to help them with Russia,” he said.

Jeremy Barr at The Guardian:

A group of prominent conservative organizations has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny license renewal requests from the eight local television stations owned and operated by ABC, accusing the network of political, racial and sexual bias and supporting the Chinese communist party. The petitions come after the commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, took the nearly unprecedented step of requiring the network, a frequent recipient of attacks from Donald Trump, to apply several years early to maintain its ability to broadcast in markets around the country.

While Carr has said the early license renewal process stems from an FCC investigation into ABC’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, petitioners are free to include a variety of grievances against the network and concerns about whether ABC is operating in the public interest. [...] “ABC ignores long-standing Commission precedents and principles protecting the integrity of the news,” the group wrote. “ABC engages in explicit racial and gender discrimination. ABC cozies up to the Communist Chinese Party and airbrushes over religious and ethnic cleansing. ABC fails to respect this Commission’s rules.”

The organization lobbied the FCC to deny ABC’s renewal requests and to call the matter for a hearing, “because the Petition and accompanying materials raise sufficient questions [about] whether ABC is operating in the public interest or remains worthy of the public trust”.

The Media Research Center, a non-profit conservative media watchdog group, filed a petition to deny the network’s license renewal requests “because of ABC’s continued and sustained abuse of the licenses subject to the current review, its notorious efforts to improperly influence national elections, and its willful engagement in misinformation and the promotion of violence”. The group claimed that ABC-owned and -operated television stations, in markets such as New York City and Los Angeles, “have used public spectrum to suppress news coverage of the most critical stories of our day; to engage in electioneering and relentless political bias; to excuse, minimize, and even justify the epidemic of political violence; and to peddle misinformation and defamation”. The Article III Project, a legal group started by the conservative, Trump-aligned activist Mike Davis, focused its petition to deny on ABC parent company Disney’s employment practices and efforts to hire a more diverse workforce.

“The Commission should deny renewal of ABC’s television licenses,” wrote William Chamberlain, senior counsel for the organization. “The record demonstrates consistent and serious violations of federal [Equal Employment Opportunity] law. In the alternative, any renewal must include sweeping terms and conditions sufficient to eliminate all discriminatory practices and ensure future compliance.” Another petition was filed by the Trump-affiliated conservative advocacy organization America First Legal, which was co-founded by the longtime Trump aide Stephen Miller. The group claimed that ABC’s stations “demonstrated a lack of the character qualifications necessary to hold broadcast licenses”.

Various right-wing groups, including the Media Research Center (MRC) and Article III Project (A3P), have petitioned the FCC to deny license renewals from the 8 ABC owned-and-operated stations for partisan political reasons, and the reasons for the petitions: content on The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, “support” for the CCP, and engages in “explicit racial and gender discrimination”.

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