Apple is the new target for nonsense harassment by Trump’s regulators (but your news org could be next)

On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump’s head of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, sent a ludicrous letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, threatening to bring the hammer of the federal government down on the tech giant because he doesn’t like its morning email newsletter.

No, really — that’s what he did. He sent a three-page letter complaining that Fox News, The Gateway Pundit, and their ideological fellow travelers don’t get featured in Apple News’ morning newsletter as much as he would like, and as a result, Cook should “take corrective action swiftly.”

The evidence presented for this claim is that someone at the right-wing “think tank” Media Research Center did some counting and found that, in the month of January, the “Good Morning from Apple News” email newsletter did not link once to “notable right-leaning media sources such as Fox News, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Breitbart or The Gateway Pundit.” (Gosh, why would anyone avoid linking to The Gateway Pundit?) Instead, it linked regularly to notorious Maoist zines like the Associated Press and USA Today. This “study” got tweeted by Donald Trump on Truth Social, and the federal government kicked into gear.

“Any act or practice by Apple News to suppress or promote news articles based on the perceived ideological or political viewpoint of the article or publication, if inconsistent with Apple’s terms of service or the reasonable expectations of consumers, may violate the FTC Act,” Ferguson wrote. Ferguson’s big brother Brendan Carr, taking a break from running American late-night programming, chimed in: “FTC Chairman Ferguson is exactly right. Apple has no right to suppress conservative viewpoints in violation of the FTC Act.”

This is absurd, of course. The First Amendment exists. Whatever one thinks of Apple, or of “Big Tech” more broadly, it is acting as a publisher here, and publishers do not have to submit their milquetoast morning newsletters to the feds for preapproval. Do other giant corporations have the same obligation not to “suppress” viewpoints? Is Fox News required to air “Jacobin Tonight” after Hannity? Is David Ellison going to get a threat from the federal government to ensure Bari Weiss puts enough Democrats on the CBS Evening News? There is no evidence that Apple News is engaged in some ideologically motivated quest to silence conservatives — there are plenty of other reasons not to put Breitbart in your mass-market morning newsletter — but even if it was, it’d be completely within their rights. There is no constitutional requirement to link to Fox News. And there’s nothing in Ferguson’s legal “arguments” against Apple here that he couldn’t apply to your local newspaper, TV station, or news site.

Just before I finished typing this, I launched the Apple News app on my Mac to see what their top trending stories were. You’ll never guess who’s at No. 1!

Here’s Ferguson’s letter: