Trump Mulls Travel Ban for EU Officials Over ‘Orwellian’ Censorship Law
President Donald Trump is weighing a travel ban on European Union officials behind the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping online regulation that the White House claims is designed to censor Americans.
According to sources familiar with the matter cited by Reuters, the State Department is considering visa restrictions targeting senior EU policymakers responsible for the legislation. A decision hasn’t been made, but discussions inside the administration intensified after a high-level meeting last week.
The move would directly punish foreign officials for domestic policies Washington says undermine U.S. free speech rights.
The EU’s DSA aims to compel tech giants to crack down on illegal content, but the Trump administration argues the policy amounts to government-driven censorship, accusing Brussels of forcing U.S. companies to muzzle American users under the guise of combating misinformation.
“We are monitoring increasing censorship in Europe with great concern but have no further information to provide at this time” a State Department spokesman told the Telegraph.
An EU Commission spokesman fired back, rejecting the claims as “completely unfounded,” insisting that the DSA “sets out rules for online intermediaries to tackle illegal content, while safeguarding freedom of expression and information online.”
Tariffs, Tech, and Tensions
Relations between the Trump administration and the EU have grown increasingly strained, fueled by threats of tariffs and disputes over tech regulation.
Reports earlier this month revealed the U.S. government urged European diplomats to lobby against the DSA, intensifying a battle over who sets the rules for online speech.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has previously threatened visa bans for people who censor speech by Americans, including on social media, suggesting the policy could directly target foreign officials regulating U.S. tech companies.
Vice President JD Vance has also repeatedly slammed European regulators, accusing them of “censoring” Americans. In a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, he accused EU leaders of suppressing the speech of groups such as Germany’s Right-wing AfD party.
UK’s ‘Orwellian’ Online Safety Act
Tensions aren’t limited to Brussels. The Trump administration has also targeted the UK’s Online Safety Act, calling it “Orwellian.”
During Trump’s visit to Scotland last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmerdefended the legislation, insisting London remains committed to protecting free speech while tackling online harms.
The debate is expected to intensify next month when Nigel Faragetestifies before Congress on threats to free expression in Britain. Farage is set to highlight the case of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months over a social media post related to the Southport attacks, before being released earlier this month.
For now, no sanctions have been formally imposed. But if the administration follows through, it would represent a historic clash between Washington and Brussels over free speech, tech regulation, and sovereignty.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Monday urged Islamic nations to work toward suspending Israel from participating in United Nations General Assembly meetings and activities.
Speaking at an emergency summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) foreign ministers held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Fidan said that Palestinians needed collective action to end Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza and settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
“This meeting will focus on three urgent tasks: halting the war, forging a united response of the Islamic Ummah, and mobilizing the international community,” he said.
Fidan stressed that Israel’s “genocidal aggression” continues in Gaza, where half a million people face catastrophic hunger, adding that the UN has now officially declared famine in the territory. He noted that Hamas has already accepted a ceasefire plan proposed by Qatar and Egypt, yet the Israeli government “still seeks the erasure of Palestine”.
“Therefore, we must join our efforts in sustaining and expanding the momentum for Palestine’s recognition, while also launching an initiative within the UN for Palestine’s full membership – and considering the suspension of Israel from the work of the General Assembly,” Fidan added.
On Monday, the OIC foreign ministers meeting issued a statement following the summit that said it “urges the OIC Member States to examine further whether Israel’s membership in the United Nations aligns with the UN Charter, given Israel’s evident violations of the requirements for membership and its consistent disregard for UN resolutions”.
“Additionally, efforts should be coordinated to suspend Israel’s membership in the United Nations,” it said. Fidan’s call to suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly has precedent.
Articles 5 and 6 of the UN Charter state that a member may be suspended or expelled if it “persistently violates the principles contained in the Charter”.
However, such a move requires a recommendation from the Security Council, where the five permanent members, including the United States, hold veto power.
Historic precedent
There is, however, another route: the General Assembly itself. This was used in 1974 against apartheid South Africa. On September 27, 1974, the UN Credentials Committee rejected South Africa’s credentials, a routine procedure before General Assembly meetings.
Three days later, the General Assembly passed Resolution 3207, urging the Security Council to review South Africa’s membership in light of its constant violations of the Charter.
Although the Security Council vetoed the resolution, in November of that year the president of the General Assembly, Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, ruled that, given the Credentials Committee’s decision and the adoption of Resolution 3207, the General Assembly would refuse to allow South Africa’s delegation to participate in its work.
South Africa remained suspended from the General Assembly until June 1994, following the end of apartheid. Activists argue that the UN General Assembly could apply the same process to Israel. They note that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024 issued an advisory opinion declaring Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories “unlawful” and its near-complete segregation of populations in the West Bank a breach of international law on “racial segregation” and “apartheid”.
Turkey is tightening its trade ban on Israel
• Ports will turn away Israeli ships
• Won’t process cargo linked to Israel
• Turkish ships barred from Israeli ports
The ICJ also stated that Israel’s policies and practices in occupied Palestine amount to segregation or apartheid, in violation of Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Major human rights organizations – including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israel’s own B’Tselem – have described Israel’s actions against Palestinians as constituting “apartheid” or an “apartheid regime”.
In a recent interview with the Times, Reform leader Nigel Farage unveiled his plan for dealing with Britain’s illegal migration crisis. It involves four key elements:
Leaving the ECHR and suspending other relevant treaties
Banning those who arrive through irregular channels from claiming asylum
Moving illegal migrants from hotels and rented accommodation to disused RAF bases, and keeping them there
Striking deals with migrants’ home countries, or failing that, deporting them to third countries or British overseas territories like Ascension Island
Predictably, the plan has been criticised by Farage’s political opponents. One Tory MP claimed that he “is just recycling many ideas the Conservatives have already announced”. Which would be easier to take seriously if the Tories hadn’t had 14 years in government to implement some of those ideas.
Meanwhile, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats claimed that Farage’s plan won’t work. Labour called it “pie in the sky” and the Lib Dems insisted it “doesn’t offer any real solutions”. But what would a real solution look like?
The current situation is manifestly preposterous: tens of thousands of migrants turning up uninvited on the South Coast, and then being housed in hotels and private accommodation at taxpayers’ expense – to the tune of billions of pounds per year. And crucially, the overwhelming majority of such migrants are adult men.
Of the 237,592 attempts made to illegally enter the UK since 2018, 85% involved men. (I’m excluding individuals for whom sex was not known or reported). This is arguably the single most important statistic in the entire debate. It is also worth noting that, of the attempts involving men, 83% involved men aged 18 or older (and the true figure is almost certainly higher because some migrants lie about their age).
In other words, the people that British taxpayers are paying to house in hotels all across the country are not desperate women and children with nowhere else to go. They are overwhelmingly drawn from the least vulnerable demographic group.
Even by the Left’s own self-professed values, this is an absurd policy. There are millions of people around the world that are far more needy than the people who turn up uninvited on the South Coast. And we could help them by providing food, medicine and other essentials in situ. Does anyone really believe that covering hotel bills for adult men in Britain is the best way to help the world’s poor?
Even the Economist, long a bastion of pro-migration sentiment, admits that Europe’s asylum system is not working and should be scrapped. As the magazine correctly notes, “it cannot cope with a world of proliferating conflict, cheap travel and huge wage disparities”.
As far as I can see, neither Labour nor the Lib Dems has any plan that would prevent the continual inflow of illegal migrants into Britain. (Saying that you would “create safe and legal routes” is not a plan.) And the current situation is simply not sustainable: of course people don’t want large numbers of adult men being housed in their communities.
The main weakness of Farage’s plan is the difficulty of striking deals with countries like Iran, which is among the biggest sources of illegal migrants.
Britain does little trade with Iran and already imposes sanctions on its government.
In fact, sanctions relief might be the only way to make them take their citizens back.
[ZH: We would be remiss if we did not note that none other than Elon Musk has been focused on the immigration crisis in the UK over the last 24 hours]
He criticized Farage for not going far enough…
Unfortunately, the reality is that Farage will do almost nothing to protect Britain. That is obvious.
Existing law is clear that anyone who was an accessory to aggravated rape or murder, especially of children, is guilty of serious crime and must either serve time in prison if… https://t.co/BVuCM4CC16
Revolution is coming , nothing can stop it, the silent majority will be silent no longer, join us in our stand against tyranny on September 13th https://t.co/LRRF9neMEK
And while British media was evidently silent about it, Musk made it very clear how he feels about the Scottish teenager…
Start by condemning the grovelers and collaborators in positions of authority in Britain who aided the rape epidemic of their own people or turned a blind eye to their responsibilities.
Ukraine Belatedly Confirms Russian Troops Have Breached Central Oblast & Industrial Heartland
Several more villages fell to the Russian army in Donetsk at the end of last week, and the battlefield momentum has continued into Tuesday, as Ukraine has acknowledged for the first time that Russian troops have entered the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region.
Dnipropetrovsk is a central oblast which has long been spared from the main fighting. Russian forces have penetrated this strategic area, which suggests the war is still expanding, significantly beyond the annexed four territories. It is known as the industrial heartland and key production hub of the country.
“Yes, they have entered, and fighting is ongoing as of now,” a Ukrainian military spokesman for the Dnipro Operational Strategic Group of Forces told AFP.
Moscow had first announced it breached the region back in July, but Ukrainian officials had not acknowledged it until this week. Russia also says it has fully captured the villages of Zaporizke and Novogeorgiivka – something which Ukraine’s military leadership is disputing.
But Reuters is confirming, writing, “Russia has captured two villages in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukrainian open-source researchers confirmed on Tuesday, as Kremlin troops press an offensive amid a stalling diplomatic effort to end the war.”
“Ukraine’s outmanned and outgunned military has struggled to fend off grinding Russian advances in much of the east as Moscow increases pressure on Kyiv to give up territory in any peace negotiations,” the report adds.
All that the exhausted Ukrainian military can do at this point is keep sending drones into Russian territory. This again happened overnight as Ukraine’s special forces attacked logistical facilities in Crimea.
A Ukrainian military statement said facilities “that ensure the functioning and combat supply of the military units of the Russian army” were damaged and put out of commission.
President Trump is meanwhile still trying to strike a tone of cautious optimism when it comes to peace talks. On Monday he had confirmed speaking again with President Vladimir Putin.
“Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then, unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and I get very angry about it,” Trump told reporters.
Russian forces have seized control of two villages in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk oblast – Zaporizke and Novoheorhiivka – making them the first villages in that region to fall to Russia, according to the Ukrainian war tracking group @Deepstate_UA. pic.twitter.com/YPMzhFb69y
The White House still doesn’t want to fully admit that Russia is winning the war, and that Kiev has no leverage. This means that realistically a swift ending would involve the US pressuring Zelensky to make serious compromises.
But by and large the Europeans are committed to seeing Ukraine stay in the fight. But this is a recipe for more death and destruction, and the war grinding on toward possible escalation with NATO.
That’s the conclusion reached by Die Welt newspaper, as cited by Hungarian outlet Mandiner.
Based on numerous case studies, it is clear that “far too many children are being sent to school who can barely concentrate and, above all, who do not speak German.”
Families, children, and teachers are suffering the consequences of the bad policies from politicians. In short, they “have failed.” One major issue is the death of the German language itself, across Germany.
In the Hemshof district of Ludwigshafen, for example, barely a word of German is heard. The students in the district’s Gräfenau elementary school are 98 percent migrants.
Welt indicates that plenty of Asian, African, and Slavic languages present, but as Germany has become a nation of migrants, the German language recedes.
“Italian, Greek, Turkish guest workers since the 1960s, and since 2015, the rest of the world,” Die Welt writes about the progression of immigration waves in the country.
The school principal in the Hemshof district, Barbara Mächtle, has been vocal about the issues.
For example, some 40 first-year students, a third of the year, may not be ready to enter the second grade. According to the newspaper, Mächtle “knows the tricks to cover this up, but he doesn’t use them.” For example, these children are enrolled in the second grade, but then “voluntarily drop out” on the first day of school. Machete refuses to play these games and will force these students to repeat the grade – “not to punish them, but to save them.”
Mächtle also dispels the illusion that being surrounded by German, migrant kids will “absorb it on their own.” She says there is no “language immersion” because children “hear everything except German.”
“No child here is swimming in German waters, they remain in their Arab, Turkish, Afghan pools,” and “at best they develop a basic slang, a German of 50-100 words, which is enough for the street and the schoolyard, but not for a profession that can be understood even partially,” Welt reports.
And then there is the violence inflicting schools, which the paper calls a widespread fire, not just here or there. In 2024, the authorities registered 35,570 school violence incidents, an average of 97 per day; 743 of these involved a knife. Students also express their religion, Islam, “aggressively” in the classroom. As Remix News has reported, 40 percent of all violent crime in the German school system is from foreigners. In addition, many of the German students have a foreign background.
This has created a situation where teachers are expected to be social workers first, taking immense time away from their actual work as teachers. With these students, the parents are not doing their jobs in preparing children to behave properly in the classroom.
It is no wonder teachers are leaving the field, and many are discouraged from entering, which is yet another major issue: a massive teacher shortage.
In Germany, it is no longer possible to provide the current student population with trained teachers. In the countryside, people are not applying for teaching jobs, and in the cities, teachers cannot afford to pay the rent, so many people apply for teaching positions immediately after graduating, only to quickly fail.
“In the past 20 years, fourth-grade maths assignments were often purely text-based. Today, books are full of pictures to make understanding possible at all,” bemoans Andreas Baudisch, the principal of the Humboldt primary school in Mannheim.
“Basic operations are a great deal of work for many children. Many cannot formulate a complete sentence,” says the principal. There are some bright spots. Children from Indian families learn German better in four months than those born here because ‘they practice at home, they are interested in it,’ and this is something that is lacking in many other people who are second or third generation Germans living here.”
Die Welt warns that no so long ago, these issues could only be found in troubled neighborhoods of Berlin, a situation that “horrified” people in the rest of the country.
“That’s over, Berlin is everywhere,” the paper writes.
UN Nuclear Chief Given 24/7 Elite Protection Over ‘Specified Iranian Threat’
United Nations atomic agency chief Rafael Grossi has been receiving 24/7 protection from a tactical security unit based out of Austria, amid what’s been reported as specific threats on his life connected to Iran.
Tuesday reporting in The Wall Street Journal has revealed Grossi has received this protection for weeks. Austria’s Cobra special services unit is providing the security detail. It is part of the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior.
WSJ details that “The elite unit of Austria’s security services is protecting Grossi after the country’s intelligence agency received information of a threat to the International Atomic Energy Agency chief from a third party, according to a person involved in the case. The IAEA is based in Vienna.”
Officials are citing a “specified Iranian threat” – but haven’t disclosed precise details of the threat. But it was apparently enough to take drastic action, as “The tactical force is deployed to counter the gravest threats, such as terror plots and to secure top-ranking individuals, including the Austrian chancellor.”
“In instances of concrete threats against dignitaries, the unit deploys officers armed with submachine guns and at least two bulletproof vehicles around the clock,” according to WSJ.
Iranian leaders have blasted the IAEA connected with the 12-day June where, when Israel led a surprise attack, which was ended when the US military dropped huge bunker-buster bombs on three nuclear sites.
Tehran has accused the UN inspectors of essentially spying, and passing sensitive information on to the Israelis. Some Iranian state media reports have gone so far as to label Grossi an Israeli spy.
A person familiar with the matter said the Austrian authorities acted on intelligence outlining a specific threat to Grossi coming from Iran-linked individuals. A second person said they had been told that the threat was believed to come from Iran and was being taken seriously by authorities.
“We can confirm that Austria provided a Cobra unit but we cannot confirm where the specific threat came from,” said Fredrik Dahl, an IAEA spokesman.
Some veiled threats from top Iranian advisers have actually been articulated quite publicly…
Advisor to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Larijani: “When the war ends, we will hold IAEA Director-General, Rafael Grossi, accountable.” pic.twitter.com/g25czGbYSj
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) June 19, 2025
Grossi, who is a veteran Argentine diplomat is said to be in the running to succeed António Guterres as United Nations secretary-general. Guterres term in the post will end next year.
Once upon a time, the braindead puppet in the White House also known as Joe Biden exclaimed that Exxon made “more money than god” and while the former president was chronically wrong about everything, he may have been on to something here (even if the market to this day refuses to give Exxon the proper credit or PE multiple to go with its divine moneymaking skills). And there is a simple reason why while others struggle, Exxon prints money: the company isn’t afraid to go completely against the grain of conventional wisdom.
After huddling with President Trump in Alaska, President Vladimir Putin told reporters Russia and the U.S. could do more business together—for example, between their Pacific coastlines. “We look forward to dealing,” Trump replied.
What the two leaders didn’t say is that behind closed doors, their countries’ biggest energy companies had already sketched out a road map to going back into business, pumping oil-and-gas fields off Russia’s far-east coast.
As the FT and WSJ report, in secret (well, not so secret) talks with Russia’s biggest state energy company this year, a Exxon Mobil executives discussed returning to the massive Sakhalin project if the two governments gave the green light as part of a Ukraine peace process.
Such was the sensitivity that only a handful of people at Exxon knew the talks had taken place. One of the U.S. oil major’s top executives, Senior Vice President Neil Chapman, led the talks on the Exxon side.
Under the Biden and Trump administrations, Exxon and other companies have had U.S. permission and licenses from the Treasury Department to hold talks about stranded assets with Russian counterparts, a WSJ source said, noting that the first round of negotiations took place shortly after Exxon’s exit from Russia in 2022.
In parallel, Exxon executives asked the US government for support if the company goes back to Russia, and received a sympathetic hearing, said a senior administration official. CEO Darren Woods discussed Exxon’s possible return with Trump at the White House in recent weeks.
Resuming business in Russia would mark a dramatic rapprochement after Exxon’s messy breakup with Moscow when Putin attacked Ukraine in 2022. The West’s biggest oil producer dived deeper into Russia than most other companies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Its retreat after the invasion was correspondingly more acrimonious.
One of Exxon’s biggest investments in Russia, Sakhalin-1, named after a island near the three oil fields, was first agreed in 1995. Exxon ran the venture, and owned 30% alongside state-owned Rosneft as well as Japanese and Indian companies, which are still there.
When Western businesses stampeded out of Russia after the invasion, Exxon reduced output and said it would sell its stake, writing down its value by over $4 billion. Moscow blocked a sale, then wiped out Exxon’s stake. Exxon had described the move as expropriation.
Which is why enticing Exxon back would represent a coup for the Kremlin, which wants to draw Western investment as part of the peace talks to stabilize the economy. A return isn’t guaranteed and depends in part on whether Trump succeeds in brokering an end to the Ukraine war, or instead tightens sanctions if Putin refuses to stop fighting.
While Russia’s oil industry has managed to keep oil production high despite sanctions, analysts warn production capacity will eventually erode by lack of know-how and investment. Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries and pipelines have hampered the country’s domestic fuel supplies in recent weeks.
Discussions between Exxon and Rosneft about rebooting their partnership intensified around the time of Trump’s inauguration this January. In February, senior U.S. and Russian government officials met publicly in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to open talks about ending the war. At the time, Russia dangled the promise of investment opportunities for American companies, including in Arctic energy developments.
Privately, Exxon’s Chapman met Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin in the Qatari capital Doh. Sechin, a close ally of Putin, is under blocking sanctions by the U.S., which means Americans are mostly banned from dealing with him without the type of Treasury license obtained by Exxon. Sechin likes to meet foreign business and government leaders in Qatar, whose sovereign-wealth fund has a stake in Rosneft. Qatar has carved out a role as a neutral mediator in global conflicts.
Reuters earlier reported that U.S. and Russian government officials discussed energy deals this month including Exxon’s possible return.
There is a template for Exxon to get involved at Sakhalin: the production-sharing deal the consortium struck with the Russian government in the 1990s. Oil began flowing in 2005. Exports from Sakhalin mostly go to Asian buyers, who kept buying Russian crude after the invasion, in contrast to European companies that forswore it.
Putin removed one obstacle to Exxon’s return the same day as the Alaska summit. He signed a decree allowing foreign companies to own shares in the Russian firm that has operated Sakhalin since Exxon’s departure. Conditions include providing overseas equipment and spare parts, and lobbying for sanctions to be repealed.
Exxon’s re-entrance – which would infuriate Europeans who continue to pretend their actions are tantamount to sanctions on Moscow even though they gladly purchase Indian-refined Russian oil products – will depend on the terms that Russia offers. The company is looking to recoup losses from its Sakhalin exit, at least, and Putin may well indulge it.
Exxon’s close ties with Russia earned then-CEO Rex Tillerson an Order of Friendship from Putin in 2013. Sanctions imposed after Putin annexed Crimea the next year forced Exxon out of some of its Russian ventures, but Sakhalin was unscathed.
Despite the tension after the 2022 invasion, Exxon maintained back-channel communications with state-owned Rosneft throughout the war. That’s because Russia’s energy riches remain a big prize for Western companies if the war ends. When Exxon left, Sakhalin accounted for about 3% of its oil production, a small but proven source of crude. The company was also working with Rosneft to develop its natural-gas reserves to be exported as a frozen liquid on tankers. Rosneft hopes to benefit from Exxon’s capital, technology and managerial expertise.
If it goes back, Exxon would find a different environment for doing business. Russia’s economy has slowed under the pressure of sanctions, high interest rates and inflation. Asset seizures by the state are commonplace. And in wartime the Kremlin has taken even greater control of the country’s vast energy industry.
The market for Russia’s oil has changed. Europe has weaned itself off Russian crude, while refiners in India and China have snapped it up. The traders who buy and sell the oil mostly do so through opaque companies in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump appeared to sour on Putin this spring, icing any immediate prospect of Western businesses diving back into Russia, before warming up to him all over again in Alaska this month.
Comcast Network Horror: Summer Ratings Crash 49%, Advertisers In Major Bind
Building on our previous reporting (read here) about the summer collapse in traditional TV ratings, Goldman’s latest Nielsen tracker delivers yet more evidence of cord-cutting accelerating into the end of August as audiences migrate to streaming. For advertisers, it’s another blow: the viewership base is dwindling, leading some marketers to scramble for new, innovative platforms to reach consumers.
On Monday, a Goldman analyst team led by Michael Ng highlighted to clients yet another series of grim data points from traditional TV:
We refresh our Nielsen TV ratings tracker for our US Media coverage (DIS, CMCSA, PSKY, WBD, FOXA) that includes traditional ACM (average commercial minute) prime time and total day ratings across broadcast and cable. This edition focuses on the C3 cable and broadcast ratings through week ending August 10, 2025 (14 day delay), and L3 cable ratings through week ending August 24, 2025.
Prime time commercial ratings for broadcast ex-sports were down 20% yoy in 3Q25-to-date (through week ending August 10).
Prime time commercial ratings decreased 54% for broadcast including sports and declined -28% for cable, in 3Q25-to-date (through week ending August 10).
Through August 24, cable networks continued to lose viewers. In 3Q25 so far, total day ratings fell at Disney (-11%), Paramount Skydance (-22%), Fox (-20%), Warner Bros. Discovery (-26%), AMC Networks (-34%), and Comcast (-49%).
Exhibit 1: Comcast viewership declined the most QTD at -49% y/y C3Q25-to-date
Additional TV ratings data for the period through August 10:
C3 ratings released
Nielsen released the latest C3 ratings’ data for the week ending August 10, 2025. Cable network primetime ratings for 3Q25-to-date (through August 10) are down 28% yoy. For a sequential comparison, in 2Q25 cable network primetime ratings were down 21% yoy. In 3Q25-to-date, broadcast network primetime ratings are down 54% yoy and down 20% yoy excluding sports. For a sequential comparison, ratings for broadcast primetime were down 15% yoy while broadcast primetime ex-sports were down 21% in 2Q25.
Broadcast primetime:
-54% yoy 3Q25-to-date Broadcast network primetime ratings (C3, A18-49 demo) were down 54% yoy for 3Q25-to-date, reflecting declines at ABC (-12%), CBS (-3%), FOX (-34%) and NBC (-80%) (Exhibit 2). For a sequential comparison, ratings in 2Q25 were down 15% yoy, reflecting growth at CBS (9%), offset by declines at FOX (-34%), NBC (-30%) and ABC (-10%).
Broadcast primetime (ex-sports):
-20% yoy 3Q25-to-date Excluding sports, broadcast network primetime ratings (C3, A18-49 demo) for 3Q25-to-date were down 20% yoy, reflecting declines at ABC (-6%), CBS (-5%), NBC (-20%) and FOX (-45%) (Exhibit 3). For a sequential comparison, ratings for 2Q25 decreased 21% yoy, reflecting declines at FOX (-37%), ABC (-13%), CBS (-15%) and NBC (-19%).
Cable primetime:
-28% yoy 3Q25-to-date Aggregate cable network primetime ratings (C3, A18-49 demo) were down 28% yoy in 3Q25-to-date, worse than 21% decline in 2Q25. In 3Q25-to-date, total day ratings (C3, target demos) declined at DIS (-3%), PSKY (-18%), WBD (-20%), CMCSA (-44%), AMCX (-28%), and FOX (-23%). FNC was down 18% yoy in the same period. For a sequential comparison, in 2Q25 ratings declined at DIS (-17%), PSKY (-21%), WBD (-19%), CMCSA (-25%), and AMCX (-17%), while FOX (18%) grew.
Broadcast primetime ratings (including sports) by broadcast network
Broadcast primetime ratings (excluding sports) by broadcast networks
Cable network ratings by parent company
Earlier this summer, analysts from UBS, led by John Hodulik, marked the point in May where the share of streaming consumption surpassed traditional TV (read here).
The larger issue here is that declining traditional TV ratings create a massive headache for advertisers, because the entire ad-buying model was built on TV’s ability to deliver large, predictable, mass audiences. This means advertisers must entirely overhaul their strategies and move ad dollars into streaming, digital, and or the world of alternative news media.
Jackson Hole’s Parting Advice: Accept Even More Migrants To Offset Demographic Collapse, Or Else
It was first tried in Europe and it was a catastrophic failure as millions of Syrian refugees and various radicalized Islamist overran the continent, sparking a historic right-wing backlash. It was then tried in the US and the record flood of illegal aliens at the southern border cost the Democrats the 2024 election. And now, with the entire world on edge against the growing wave of migrant aliens originating from Africa and the Middle East, the world’s money printing megabrains at Jackson Hole have decided that third time will be the charm.
While doing everything in their power to avoid discussing the Lisa Cook elephant in the room (and literally kicking out anyone who dared to ask how someone who is i) either a criminal or ii) has no idea how to fill out a mortgage is allowed to set the price of the world’s reserve currency) top central bankers gathered at Jackson Hole warned that the world’s largest economies will lack the workers they need to power growth and keep prices stable in the coming decades unless they attract more foreigners. And this calculus doesn’t even include the hundreds of millions of jobs that will be lost to hallucinating chatbots.
Speaking at an annual gathering of leading policymakers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the heads of the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and Bank of England all sought to highlight the challenge to economic growth posed by ageing populations. The BOJ’s Kazuo Ueda told the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual symposium that his country’s rapidly ageing society had made labor shortages one of the country’s “most pressing” economic issues. Of course, far be it for Japan – notoriously racist and militantly hostile to gaijin foreigners – to actually go ahead and accept some of the millions of Guatemalan “refugees” who voted for Kamala in the 2024 US election. But “at least” he is throwing out rubberstamped by his globalist overlords now that they can no longer congregate in Davos where WEF fuhrer Klaus Schwab is dealing with the legal fallout from a life of (alleged) sexual harassment.
While foreign workers accounted for just 3% of the labor force in Japan, Ueda said, they had been responsible for half of the recent rise in labor force growth. “Further increases will surely require a broader discussion,” he said. Only problem with that is that Japan, which is the opposite of an immigrant nation, literally treats foreign workers and asylum seekers as an inferior class of humans.
Which is not to say that there is some easy solution: there isn’t one in a world where central banks have destroyed the middle class and where having children is prohibitively expensive for most potential parents (and then they wonder why there is a global demographic crisis). Across rich economies birth rates are at historically low levels, while people are living much longer. That has raised so-called dependency ratios, meaning that a far higher share of the population is no longer of working age.
But it’s not just Japan: ECB president Christine Lagarde also said an influx of foreign workers would play a “crucial role” in countering the negative impact of demographic trends on economic growth. As if that wasn’t tried by Germany and most of Europe during the mid-2010s when millions of Syrian refugees swept across Europe sparking a historic influx of Muslims, who refuse to – how should one put it politely – integrate culturally.
Lagarde noted that without an influx of foreign workers, the euro area would by 2040 have 3.4 million fewer people of working age, the FT reported. The Eurozone’s labor market came through the pandemic in “unexpectedly good shape”, partly because of more older workers, but “even more” importantly due a rise in the number of foreign workers, she said.
“Although they represented only around 9 per cent of the total labor force in 2022, foreign workers have accounted for half of its growth over the past three years,” Lagarde said. “Without this contribution, labour market conditions could be tighter and output lower.”
BoE governor Andrew Bailey said that the “acute” challenge that demographics and declining productivity posed to the UK economy had not been emphasized enough.
It gets better: proving just how disconnected from the real world economists really are, they believe that attracting foreign workers (many of whom prefer to not actually work but merely laze about all day draining a host nation’s welfare funds as much of Europe is finding out) to fill labor shortages will be essential in keeping growth on track in the coming decades… despite the rising pressures of populism and public sentiment souring on immigration.
Central bankers predict population ageing will not only lower output but also risks pushing up inflation, as workers would be able to demand higher wages in an environment where labor shortages were widespread. By 2040, 40% of the UK population would be older than the standard working age group of 16 to 64, Bailey added.
The UK has also been hit by a fall in labor force participation rates, driven by a rise in the number of people defined as “long-term sick” and a significant drop in young people in work, two factors that Bailey suggested might be intertwined. In other words, as we said – most prefer to pretend work as opposed to actually, you know, work.
The BoE had become “much more focused on [measuring] inactivity” than on unemployment, Bailey said — although he acknowledged that labour force participation, and the reasons for its decline in the UK, were harder to measure than headline unemployment data.
While more older women continued to work, the same was not the case for men, he added.
Australia Expels Iranian Ambassador In Historic First, Blames IRGC For Anti-Jewish Attacks
Australia has on Tuesday expelled the Iranian ambassador from the country, which marks the first time it has booted a foreign ambassador of any nation in the post-World War II period. The government has blamed Iran and its intelligence apparatus for directing two antisemitic attacks against Australia’s Jewish community – especially a shocking firebomb attack on a Melbourne synagogue last December.
There was also a fire set at a kosher food business in Sydney in October, prior to the synagogue fire. The Adass Israel synagogue in southeast Melbourne, which is in a heavily Jewish area, was utterly destroyed by the fire.
The government has singled out Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as the ‘likely’ culprit behind the attacks, though specific evidence hasn’t been made public.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, “These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil” and that “They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community. It is totally unacceptable.”
“Strong and decisive action” is needed he said, which will also include legislation officially proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organization. However, Australian officials have stated their beliefIran’s diplomats in Australia were not involved in the anti-Jewish attacks.
“The actions of my government send a clear message, a message to all Australians that we stand against antisemitism, and we stand against violence,” Albanese continued. “And a message to nations like Iran who seek to interfere in our country, that your aggression will not be tolerated.”
But again, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the way of a smoking-gun related to these attacks. Australian officials have only said the IRGC “used a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement, and that Australia would list it as a terrorist organization. Iran’s diplomats in Australia weren’t involved, Australian officials said.”
Still, the drastic action includes shuttering all Australian embassy operations in Tehran, and diplomats are being called home. This is something of the hardline approach of the United States.
Israel is happy, with its embassy in Australia stating, “Today, it became clear that this threat has reached Australian soil.” And that “The international community can no longer be complacent. Australia has taken a principled stand, others should consider following suit.”
The Associated Press identifies one of the men arrested in the attacks as follows:
Sayed Mohammed Moosawi, a 32-year-old Sydney-based former chapter president of the Nomads biker gang, has been charged with directing the fire bombings of the Sydney café as well as the nearby Curly Lewis Brewery. The brewery was apparently confused for the café and mistakenly targeted three days earlier for an antisemitic attack.
Interestingly, the WSJ has noted “Iran has called the plots it has been accused of false-flag operations or fabrications by Israel, dissident organizations and Western intelligence services.”
The Iranian Government decided in the midst of getting bombed by the US and israel, for their non-existent nuclear program, to hire junkie-criminals to target Australian synagogues, to undermine Australia’s social cohesion.
And the AP has featured Iran’s rebuttal in the following:
Iran denied Australia’s allegations through its Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei, who tried to link it to the challenges Australia faced with Israel after announcing it would recognize a Palestinian state.
“It looks like that the action, which is against Iran, diplomacy and the relations between the two nations, is a compensation for the criticism that the Australians had against the Zionist regime,” Baghaei claimed.
The move against Iran came a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded Albanese a “weak politician who had betrayed Israel” by recognizing a Palestinian state.
Both the IRGC and Iran-allied Hezbollah have long been a favorite bogeyman of the Western allies, which have accused them running global narco-terror organizations, for example in South America. However, evidence is often thin – and to date it remains that Sunni and Saudi-linked terrorism is responsible for most terror incidents in the West, and globally.
