FCC to investigate 'DEI discrimination' at Disney, ABC

March 29 (UPI) -- The Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau has launched an investigation into hiring practices at Disney and ABC to ensure neither is violating equal employment opportunity regulations through "DEI discrimination."
"I want to ensure that Disney and ABC have not been violating FCC equal employee opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of [diversity, equity and inclusion] discrimination," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday in a letter to Walt Disney Company Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger.
The FCC investigation is to ensure Disney and ABC have ended "any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just in name," Carr said.
He also wants to determine whether Disney's actions complied at all times with applicable FCC regulations, even if those actions have ended.
"Disney started out a century ago as an iconic American company," Carr said.
"For decades, Disney focused on churning out box office and programming successes," he continued. "But then, something changed. Disney has now been embroiled in rounds of controversy surrounding its DEI policies."
Carr said "numerous reports" suggest Disney's leaders "went all-in on insidious forms of DEI discrimination" in a manner that "infected" the company's decision making.
The Communications Act and FCC rules prohibit entities like Disney and ABC from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age or gender, Carr wrote.
"I am concerned that ABC and its parent company have been or may still be promoting invidious formed of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations," he said.
Carr said Disney in recent years prioritized DEI and "embedded explicit race- and gender-based criteria across its operations."
Such practices include implementing "racially segregated affinity groups and spaces" and launching Disney's "Reimagine Tomorrow" initiative that Carr called a "mechanism for advancing its DEI mission."
Carr also accuses ABC of imposing mandatory "inclusion standards" that require half of all regular and recurring characters to depict underrepresented groups and at least half of all writers, directors, crew and vendors be hired based on group identity.
"It appears that executive bonuses may also have been tied to DEI 'performance,' and ABC has utilized race-based hiring databases and restricted fellowships to select demographic groups," Carr wrote.
He said it is unclear if Disney and ABC have fundamentally changed their recent DEI-driven policies and if their past practices violated FCC regulations.
Disney officials are reviewing Carr's letter, according to a prepared statement shared with the BBC.
"We look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions," the statement said.
ABC officials did not respond to a UPI request for comment on Saturday afternoon.
The Trump administration has banned DEI practices within the federal government and is opposing discrimination among U.S. employers.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

42 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Those who invested in LPL Financial Holdings (NASDAQ:LPLA) five years ago are up 437%

Buying shares in the best businesses can build meaningful wealth for you and your family. And we've seen some truly amazing gains over the years. Just think about the savvy investors who held LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LPLA) shares for the last five years, while they gained 422%. And this is just one example of the epic gains achieved by some long term investors. It's also good to see the share price up 11% over the last quarter. But this move may well have been assisted by the reasonably buoyant market (up 5.3% in 90 days). Now it's worth having a look at the company's fundamentals too, because that will help us determine if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business. Trump has pledged to "unleash" American oil and gas and these 15 US stocks have developments that are poised to benefit. In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price. During five years of share price growth, LPL Financial Holdings achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 15% per year. This EPS growth is slower than the share price growth of 39% per year, over the same period. So it's fair to assume the market has a higher opinion of the business than it did five years ago. And that's hardly shocking given the track record of growth. You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values). We're pleased to report that the CEO is remunerated more modestly than most CEOs at similarly capitalized companies. But while CEO remuneration is always worth checking, the really important question is whether the company can grow earnings going forward. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of LPL Financial Holdings' earnings, revenue and cash flow. It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of LPL Financial Holdings, it has a TSR of 437% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence! It's nice to see that LPL Financial Holdings shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 36% over the last year. That's including the dividend. Having said that, the five-year TSR of 40% a year, is even better. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should be aware of the 2 warning signs we've spotted with LPL Financial Holdings . If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: many of them are unnoticed AND have attractive valuation). Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on American exchanges. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

CNBC

42 minutes ago

• CNBC

U.S. airlines face heightened risks as global carriers bypass Middle East after attacks on Iran

An organization that monitors flight risks warned on Sunday that U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites could heighten the threat to American operators in the region as airlines continued to avoid large parts of the Middle East due to ongoing missile exchanges. But following a barrage of early morning Iranian missiles, Israel has reopened its airspace for six hours on Sunday to bring back those stranded abroad since the conflict with Iran began on June 13. Safe Airspace, a membership-based website run by OPSGROUP, said the U.S. attacks on Iran may increase risks to U.S. operators in the region. "While there have been no specific threats made against civil aviation, Iran has previously warned it would retaliate by attacking US military interests in the Middle East — either directly or via proxies such as Hezbollah," Safe Airspace said. Meanwhile, flight tracking website FlightRadar24, said airlines maintained flight diversions around the region. "Following US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, commercial traffic in the region is operating as it has since new airspace restrictions were put into place last week," it said on social media platform X. Its website showed airlines were not flying in the airspace over Iran, Iraq, Syria and Israel. They have chosen other routes such as north via the Caspian Sea or south via Egypt and Saudi Arabia, even if these result in higher fuel and crew costs and longer flight times. Missile and drone barrages in an expanding number of conflict zones globally represent a high risk to airline traffic. Since Israel launched strikes on Iran on June 13, carriers have suspended flights to destinations in the affected countries, though there have been some evacuation flights from neighboring nations and some bringing stranded Israelis home. In the days before the U.S. strikes, American Airlines suspended flights to Qatar and United Airlines did the same with flights to Dubai. Safe Airspace said it was possible airspace risks could now extend to countries including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. "We continue to advise a high degree of caution at this time," it said. Israel's carriers, El Al Israel Airlines, Arkia, Israir and Air Haifa, said earlier on Sunday they had suspended rescue flights that allowed people to return to Israel until further notice. El Al said it would also extend its cancellation of scheduled flights through Friday and Israir said it had halted the sale of tickets for all flights through July 7. A spokesperson for Israel's airports authority said the country's main airport, Ben Gurion near Tel Aviv, was expected to reopen for rescue flight landings on Sunday between 1100 and 1700 GMT. The small Haifa Airport serving Israel's north would also be open from 1100 to 1700 GMT. Flag carrier El Al, along with Arkia, Air Haifa and Israir said they would operate at least 10 flights on Sunday starting at 1100 GMT. Tens of thousands of Israelis and others who had booked tickets to Israel are stuck abroad. At the same time, nearly 40,000 tourists in Israel are looking to leave the country, some of whom are going via Jordan's borders to Amman and Aqaba and others via Egypt and by boat to Cyprus. "In accordance with security directives, we are working to bring Israelis home as quickly as possible," Israel's Transport Minister Miri Regev said in a statement. Japan's foreign ministry said on Sunday it had evacuated 21 people, including 16 Japanese nationals, from Iran overland to Azerbaijan. It said it was the second such evacuation since Thursday and that it would conduct further evacuations if necessary. New Zealand's government said on Sunday it would send a Hercules military transport plane to the Middle East on standby to evacuate New Zealanders from the region. It said in a statement that government personnel and a C-130J Hercules aircraft would leave Auckland on Monday. The plane would take some days to reach the region, it said. The government was also in talks with commercial airlines to assess how they may be able to assist, it added.

Vox

an hour ago

• Vox

The economic theory behind Trumpism

For more than half a century, the American right has preached the virtues of free markets and low taxes and deregulation. But a new wave of conservative thinkers are now arguing that Republicans have been wrong — or at the very least misguided — about the economy. This new economic thinking represents a break from what we've come to expect from the American right. Its proponents argue for a new strain of economic populism, one that departs from the GOP's past allegiance to big business and focuses instead on the working class. The question is, is it for real? Oren Cass is the founder of the think tank American Compass and the editor of a new book called The New Conservatives. He's also one of the most influential advocates of this conservative economic populism. Cass thinks the Republican Party has been too captive to corporate interests and market fundamentalism, and that conservatism needs a major reset, one that embraces American manufacturing and empowers workers. I invited him onto The Gray Area to talk about this new right-wing populism, what distinguishes it from the left, and whether the Republican Party is serious about adopting it. As always, there's much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Back in 2018, you wrote: 'Our political economy has relied upon the insidious metaphor of the economic pie, which measures success by the amount of GDP available to every American for consumption. … But the things America thought she wanted have not made her happy.' Let's start there: What did we think we wanted, and why hasn't it made us happy? You're very perceptive to start there. We were just putting together this new book called The New Conservatives, which is an anthology of everything we've been doing at American Compass over the last five years. And I actually went back and grabbed that essay and made it a prologue to the book. Because exactly as you said, it is a starting point for the way I think about a lot of this. In my mind, what we saw go wrong in our economics and our politics is that we did come to think of consumption as the end unto itself. And to be clear, I love consumption as much as the next guy. I'm not saying we should go back and live in log cabins, but I think we assumed that as long as we were increasing consumption, as long as material living standards were rising, everybody would be happy and we could declare success. And it's important to say that, from a formal perspective, that is in fact how our economic models operate. Economists will tell you their assumption is that the goal of the economic system is to maximize consumption. And so that's where that economic pie metaphor comes from. Something that was so widely embraced across the political spectrum, across the intellectual spectrum, was this idea that as long as you're growing the economy, you're growing GDP, you don't really have to worry too much about what's in the pie or where it's coming from. You can always then chop it up and make sure everybody has lots of pie. And I think it's important to say that — and this is the point, that we got what we thought we wanted — it's important to say that that worked. That for all of the problems we have in this country, if you're only looking at material living standards, if you're asking how much stuff people have, how big their houses are, whether they're air-conditioned, even how much health care they consume, at every socioeconomic level, consumption is up. We did that. And yet I think it's also very obvious that that did not achieve what we were trying to achieve, that [it] did not necessarily correspond to human flourishing, did not correspond to a strengthening economy over time, that it certainly did not correspond to strengthening families and communities. And ultimately, it didn't correspond to a strong and healthy political system or democracy. And so there's obviously a lot of talk of, Okay, well, why isn't that right? Why did it go wrong? What do you do about it? The strange thing for someone like me is that American conservatism, certainly in my lifetime, has largely existed to reinforce the ideology you're rejecting here. Why do you think the political right has been blind for so long to the things you're fighting for now? There's a very interesting pivot point that you see around the time of the Reagan revolution. The coalition that Reagan assembled had these different elements. It had the social conservatives, who I would say are most closely aligned to a fundamentally conservative outlook on a lot of these questions. But then it brought to that the very libertarian free-market folks on the economic side, and the quite aggressive interventionist foreign policy hawks. And what all these folks had in common was they really hated communism and really wanted to win the Cold War and saw that as the existential crisis. But what happened is, within that coalition, a very libertarian free-market mindset was then imposed on the economic policy of the right of center, even when that was very much in tension with a lot of other conservative values. And you saw people writing about that from both sides. From one side, Friedrich Hayek, who is one of the ultimate carriers of this pre-market ideology, has a very famous essay titled 'Why I Am Not a Conservative,' emphasizing that what he calls faith in markets to solve problems and self-regulate was very much at odds with how conservatives looked at the world. And from the flip side, you had a lot of conservatives, folks like Yuval Levin, who prefer markets as a way of ordering the economy to other options, but recognize that markets are very much in tension with other values like family and community. And in some cases, markets even actively can undermine or erode the strength of those other institutions. Markets are also dependent on institutions. If you want markets to work well, you actually need constraints. You need institutional supports. And so that tension was always present. I think that the coalition made a lot of sense in the context of winning the Cold War. It made a lot of sense when markets in the middle of the late 20th century really did seem to be delivering on a lot of the things that conservatives really cared about. But I think it reached its expiration date and just lived on by inertia into the 2000s, into this era of radical embrace of free trade even with communist China and cutting taxes even in the face of big deficits. I can imagine a skeptical leftist hearing all of this and thinking it's just a rebranded democratic socialism. Why is that wrong? What makes this conservative? There's a real disconnect both on the ends and on the means. I think there's a very healthy contestation over what are the appropriate ends that we're actually building toward. And what you're seeing conservatives coming back to articulating a set of actual value judgments about, what do we think the good life consists of? I think there is a set of value judgments and preferences for, in many respects, quite traditional formations at the family level, at the community level. [For] saying that it is not merely a value-neutral choice — 'Would you rather get married and have kids or spend more money on vacations in Greece?' — that it is actually appropriate and necessary for the good society to say, No, one of these things is better than the other and more important and should be valued more highly. At the national level, you're also seeing a much more robust nationalism on the right of center. Conservatives recognize the importance of the nation and solidarity within the nation to functioning markets, to a functioning society, in a way that at least the modern left tends to resist in a lot of cases. Part of the case you're making is that there's an ongoing paradigm shift within American conservatism. When you look at what this administration is doing on the policy front, when you look at what the Republican Party is doing, do you see them moving in your direction? We're definitely moving in the right direction. On tariffs alone, [we could] spend a tremendous amount of time emphasizing the ways I think the problems that they're addressing, the direction they're trying to go, is the right one. On the specifics of how things are timed and what the levels are and so forth, what legal authorities you use for what, I have all sorts of thoughts on how it might be done better. But broadly speaking, to your question about the direction that things are headed, I think it's extraordinarily clear to me that the Republican Party and the conservative movement are shifting quite dramatically in this direction. One way to look at that is in terms of personnel. Trump has obviously been something of a constant over the last decade in Republican politics, but the distance from Mike Pence to JD Vance is pretty dramatic. The distance from [Secretaries of State] Rex Tillerson to Marco Rubio is pretty dramatic. The distance from the various secretaries of labor in the first term to a secretary of labor recommended by the Teamsters is pretty dramatic. Is it really, though? Rhetorically, yes. But substantively? If you want to know why I can't take this iteration of the GOP seriously, look at the domestic policy they just passed in the House. It's the same Republican Party. It's jammed up with a bunch of stuff that reflects conventional conservative priorities. It's not doing a whole lot to help working-class people. It's more tax cuts offset by more cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, which low-income people depend on. And the net result, as always, will be more upward redistribution of wealth. And on top of that, another $3 or $4 or $5 trillion tacked onto the deficit just for good measure. How can you look at that and feel like the GOP is genuinely pivoting in your direction? I've been extremely critical of the 'big, beautiful bill' — particularly of the deficit element — because I think if one is going to be a fiscal conservative, one has to not be adding to deficits right now. But a lot of the efforts to argue that things are not changing in the Republican Party strike me as a real disservice to people who are trying to understand where things are going. Elected political leaders are always going to be the lagging indicator of what's happening in any political party or political movement. They are by definition going to be the oldest, the ones who have been around the longest, the ones who have built their careers and ideologies and relationships around what was happening 20 or 30 years ago. And so if one wants to know what is passing in Congress today, then yes, you count the votes of the people in Congress today. If you want to know what's actually moving within a party or what's going to happen over a 10- or 15-year period, counting the votes today is just not what someone in good faith trying to understand the direction would do. The tariff regime, the trade war — that is a genuine shift. No doubt about it. It's not entirely clear to me how that helps poor and working-class people at the moment, but maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture. There's a very interesting economic debate to be had about whether it will work. I obviously have one very strong view. But it seems pretty clear to me that what they are trying to do is quite explicitly focused on the economic interests of workers. Another very interesting area — I mentioned some of the things that are going on on the labor front. One really interesting effort that's underway, and [Sen.] Josh Hawley is the leader of it, but Bernie Moreno, the new senator from Ohio, is the co-sponsor of it — they've taken the [proposed] PRO Act, which is the ultimate Democratic wish list of labor reforms, and they've chopped it up. And they've said, Look, some of these are perfectly legitimate and good ideas. Others of these we don't agree with. And we're going to start advancing the ones we think are good ideas. That's a dramatic shift in how you would see the Republican Party. I think you're seeing the same thing in the financial sector. There was a great example recently where a private equity firm that had bought out a bunch of paper plants was trying to shut down a paper plant in Ohio. And you literally had the Republican politicians out there at the rally with the union leaders, forcing a change and a commitment to at least keep the plant open for the rest of the year and try to find a transaction that would keep it open afterward. On family policy, in 2017 you had [then-Sens.] Marco Rubio and Mike Lee threatening to tank the entire tax cut bill to get an expanded child tax credit in it. Now it is an uncontroversial top priority that the child tax credit is not only kept at that level, but expanded further. And so even at the level of what is happening in legislation, it's clear that this is a very different party from 2017. If you look at who Trump has appointed, it's a very different set of appointments. If you look at the critical mass and sometimes center of gravity among the younger elected officials, the people coming into the Senate, it's a completely different set of priorities and policies from those who have been there for a long time. Like I said, I'm not convinced that the DNA of the party has changed, but I will grant that there are indications of a shift. I don't know what it's going to amount to, materially, but this is not the party of Mitt Romney. I think Trump has cultivated a very unique coalition, certainly much more working-class than the pre-Trump Republican Party. I don't know how much of that coalition is a function of Trump and how much of that coalition will fade when he fades. If the Republican Party does prove an unreliable vehicle for your movement, can you see a world in which you're working with Democrats? We do work with some Democrats. I think there are Democrats who are doing very good and interesting work. We recently had [Rep.] Jared Golden from Maine on the American Compass Podcast because he is the sponsor of the 10 percent global tariff legislation in Congress. One thing I always emphasize is that I think a healthy American politics is not one where one party gets everything right and dominates and the other one collapses into irrelevance. It's one where we actually have two healthy political parties that are both focused on the concerns and priorities of the typical American and are then contesting a lot of these very legitimate disagreements about ends and means. But based on what is happening in American politics today and the fundamental differences between conservatism and progressivism, I would expect that this is going to have the most success and salience and overlap in thinking on the right of center.