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Biden administration eyes limits on single-use plastics in government purchases

The Biden administration may set some limits on the use of single-use plastics in goods that are purchased by the federal government. 

The General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees federal government purchasing, said in a notice published on Thursday that it could restrict the purchases.

Single-use plastics contribute significantly to the world’s waste. A report last year from an Australian nonprofit found that globally, more than 130 million metric tons of plastics used a single time were thrown away in 2019. 

In its notice, the GSA asked the public for information on plastic consumed in packaging and shipping and other single-use plastics in agency contracts. 

It said that this information will be used to inform a future rule that sets up requirements and reporting mechanisms aimed at reducing “unnecessary” single use-plastic, including in packaging and shipping materials. 

The notice follows a separate step by the Interior Department to phase out single-use plastics in national parks and on public lands by 2032.

The latest move from the GSA comes after a formal request from environmental groups for the agency to address the issue. 

The author of that petition, Emily Jeffers, called the notice “promising” in a statement. 

“I hope this incredibly promising development marks the start of a federal commitment to strike at the root of the plastic pollution crisis,” said Jeffers, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Congress must recommit to the global fight against trafficking

Human trafficking is one of the great global challenges of our time. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the scourge of trafficking, also known as modern slavery, was already victimizing millions of people in low-income communities, especially children and vulnerable migrants.

Now, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its latest Global Trafficking Report warns that the deterioration of economic conditions resulting from the pandemic will likely increase trafficking in persons, especially in low-income countries. The International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF have reported an alarming rise in the related problem of hazardous child labor and predict this trend will continue through 2022.

Additionally, the 2021 Global Threat Assessment by WeProtect Global Alliance, says that the pandemic has had a huge impact on children and their online exposure to sexual exploitation, with evidence of an increase in live-streamed child sexual abuse for profit (a form of human trafficking) during the pandemic’s quarantine and lock-down periods.

The facts are clear: Modern slavery persists on a global scale.

Governments, including the United States, need to continue to fight it on a global level. Soon, the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP office) will release the 2022 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, an annual account of governmental efforts worldwide to prevent trafficking, bring relief to victims, prosecute traffickers and support survivors of this brutal crime. Government officials, anti-trafficking advocates and legislatures around the globe will watch closely to see how their efforts will be assessed — and what capacity gaps have been widened by the impacts of the pandemic. 

As we await this next installment of the TIP report, Congress must act to provide continued leadership for the anti-trafficking movement, as the State Department has been without a Senate-confirmed anti-trafficking ambassador since January 2021 and the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act has not been reauthorized since it lapsed in September 2021.

The State Department’s TIP report remains vital in the fight against human trafficking worldwide. It serves as the U.S. government’s principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments in their efforts to address trafficking. The creation of the report involves anti-trafficking experts gathering data and discussing findings with government officials and civil society actors in 188 countries. Countries are then evaluated on their efforts (or lack thereof) to address trafficking.

International Justice Mission (IJM) has found the TIP report’s narratives and tier rankings are closely observed in many of the countries where we work and are influential with government officials. For example, in the Philippines, after the 2021 TIP report was released, the Interagency Council Against Trafficking — the central coordinating body that monitors the implementation of the country’s Anti-Human Trafficking Act — convened a special meeting with stakeholders to discuss the report’s recommendations and to form an action plan. 

The TIP report can be an effective tool in driving real change for real people. But we also know that human trafficking enterprises thrive on broken justice systems. Congress’s interest in the issue, and its bipartisan action to fund the TIP office and protect the integrity of the TIP report, has proven invaluable in the work of IJM and other partner organizations around the world over many years. The TIP report and well-directed grants by the U.S. government have assisted in helping to direct the focus of justice systems throughout the world to combat the trafficking of persons. U.S. foreign assistance and diplomatic tools make a difference in this crucial fight.  

That’s why Congress should reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee must hold a confirmation hearing for Cindy Dyer, President Biden’s nominee for ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons. 

IJM’s frontline experience has demonstrated that perpetrators of human trafficking will only persist if the crime remains relatively risk-free. When government systems respond as they should to increase the risk of criminal sanction, word spreads and opportunistic offenders stop exploiting others. Communities see this and begin to trust their local justice system more. A virtuous cycle of perpetrator accountability, survivor-centered protection and the prevention of future crimes prevails. 

If Congress chooses to act, the U.S. can ensure the world’s best resources go toward the prevention and alleviation of modern slavery around the world. And if it does not, what does that mean for the millions suffering from violent exploitation? 

Nate King serves as director of U.S. congressional affairs for International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a global non-governmental organization (NGO) that protects people in poverty from violence.

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How abortion bans could restrict infertility treatments like IVF

Health care providers are trying to navigate a world without legal abortion protections and worry there could be serious implications for those patients with infertility who rely on assisted reproductive technology, like in vitro fertilization (IVF). 

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—the 1973 decision that affirmed abortion as a constitutional right—health care providers aren’t yet certain how it will impact their patients who use fertility technology that implants one or two embryos into a uterus in order to help a person become pregnant.  

It’s a type of assisted reproductive technology (ART) known as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and about 2 percent of all infants born in the U.S. were conceived this way in 2019.  

Though the court’s decision to overturn Roe did not specifically mention ART, health care providers worry it could eventually be targeted.  

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news. 

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) published a policy paper to study the potential impact local states’ abortion trigger laws could have on reproductive medicine. The group emphasized state laws that include overly broad statutory language “could, intentionally or not, implicate and even ban such procedures” like IVF. 

ART procedures like IVF involve freezing and unfreezing embryos that are then thawed for implantation into the uterus and many embryos are found to be defective or do not survive the unfreezing process.  

That’s the key component of IVF at the center of potential legal battles—how a lab and patient handle embryos that are not used for pregnancy.  

Utah is one of 13 states where a trigger law took effect after the downfall of Roe, and it bans all abortions except in cases of rape, incest or severe fetal “brain abnormality,” while also excluding the removal of ectopic pregnancies or a “dead unborn child” from its definition of an abortion.  

ASRM found that Utah’s trigger law could be interpreted to have an impact on ART because it defines abortion to include, “[any] intentional killing or attempted killing of a live unborn child through a medical procedure carried out by a physician or through a substance used under the direction of a physician.” 

For health care providers in Utah, that creates a gray area because that state’s trigger law doesn’t define the term “live unborn child” and ASRM says, “one could argue that discarding an embryo or donating an embryo for research use is an intentional or attempted killing of a live unborn child and constitutes an abortion under this definition.” 

However, on June 27 a lawsuit brought against Utah’s state law was granted a temporary 14-day restraining order and currently the state is allowed to continue providing abortions. 

ASRM didn’t find any additional trigger laws that posed similar risks as Utah’s, but each state has its own unique definitions for “pregnant,” “fertilization,” and “unborn human being,” that ultimately can be interpreted in different ways. 

Like in Arkansas, whose trigger law defines “unborn child” as an individual organism of the species Homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth.  

In Idaho’s trigger law, “pregnancy” is defined as, “the reproductive condition of having a developing fetus in the body commences with fertilization.” ASMR says that creates some level of ambiguity, but it presumes that pregnancy requires both fertilization and the fetus being in the body. 

After the court released its decision to overturn Roe, RESOLVE, The National Infertility Assocation, also warned that it could open the door for states to introduce far-reaching laws that will create barriers to procedures like IVF or even medications that help a patient suffering an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.  

“Not only do people have the right to create embryos, but they are the only ones who have the right to determine what happens to their embryos,” said RESOLVE in a statement. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Watch live: Biden awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 recipients

President Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 recipients Thursday afternoon.

The event is scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET

Watch the video above.

Source: TEST FEED1

Can Joe Biden restore food trade talks with Europe?

For the EU, former President Donald Trump’s international policy was seen as a major regression for global trade policy. When former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker signed the EU-Japan trade deal in 2018 — abolishing virtually all tariffs — Europe sold the move as being in significant contrast to the protectionism taken in the United States. That said, many EU member states prefer consumers only to buy European when it comes to food, even at the expense of major trade deals.

When Europe and the United States tripped up on the conclusion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), it wasn’t because of the Obama administration at the time. Trade deals need to be approved by national parliaments, and the opposition of the Wallonian parliament (Southern Belgium) prevented the accord from being signed. Since then, more EU member countries have joined the protectionist club. France and Ireland have shown fierce opposition to trade between the EU and Mercosur, the South American trade bloc, over the competition that would ultimately arise for their national beef producers.

One year ago, U.S Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack explained to the European Parliament in a virtual appearance that the differences in how Europe and the United States treat crop protection and genetic engineering are an obstacle to the two blocs’ trading. The EU seeks to halve its pesticide use by 2030, with its soon-to-be-released Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive (SUD), and it plans to continue to outlaw genetic engineering technology based on legislation going back to 2001.

However, the ambitious agriculture reforms are now being questioned by its own member nations: Central and Eastern European countries have claimed that the goals are not feasible. French President Macron said in May that the strategy’s “objectives must be reviewed because under no circumstances can Europe afford to produce less,” and he added that a “deep food crisis” could emerge in the upcoming months.

Disagreements in Brussels have reached the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski sings a different tune than Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans. Wojciechowski aims to stall the release of the pesticide reduction targets, while Timmermans slams the opponents of the reforms in the light of the war in Ukraine as opportunistic.

Unlike in the American federal system, the European Commission will need the support of a large set of member states before proceeding, making the 50 percent cut more unlikely than previously believed. On top of that, England is currently mulling legislation (already introduced to the House of Commons) that would legalize gene-editing in the food sector, in what is one of the significant regulatory breaks since Brexit. Meanwhile, the European Union, which has reportedly been reviewing its statutes on the matter, comes under pressure as one of the few remaining developed nations that do not allow new technologies in food.

The existential question for European lawmakers is to what extent EU food rules are supposed to be exported elsewhere. The bloc prides itself on high food standards — yet, simultaneously catches itself contradicting its own food safety agencies and ends up embroiled in World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes over banning specific pesticides. According to Brussels, crop protection tools that are banned in the EU should also not be imported from elsewhere. Yet, instead of addressing regulatory concerns with trade partners, Europe makes up its mind unilaterally and reforms trading nations via press releases. In times when Europe is more dependent than ever on friendly nations to provide anything from wheat to animal feed, it is hard to imagine that this approach will be long-lived.

For the Biden administration, this presents an opportunity to restore food trade talks with Europe. For too long American produce has been held back from the European market over an exaggerated mistrust of U.S food standards. As it dawns on Europe that it needs reliable partners to assure strategic autonomy, Washington should reach out and seize the opportunity. Perhaps we’re in need of a TTIP 2.0, or whatever we are choosing to name trade agreements these days.

Bill Wirtz is the senior policy analyst at the Consumer Choice Center, focusing on new technology, agriculture, trade and lifestyle regulations. He recently published “No Copy-paste: What not to Emulate from Europe’s Agriculture Regulation.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Gasoline prices dip a quarter from recent $5 highs

Gas prices took a dip this week, with a select few stations dropping beneath $4 per gallon as prices fall across the board. 

Data from the Oil Price Information Service shared with The Hill shows that the median price of gasoline in the U.S. is about $4.60 per gallon, down from about $4.70 per gallon a week ago. 

Average prices are also down to $4.74, down from $4.84 a week ago.

The data shows that a small percentage of stations — 2.3 percent — are below $4 per gallon. A week ago, just 0.5 percent were below $4 per gallon. 

On Thursday morning, Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy, a price tracking website, noted that 2,535 stations nationwide had prices under $4 a gallon and that the number “could double or triple in the next week or two.”

Still, this is a small share of the more than 100,000 gas stations in the U.S.

As of Thursday morning, De Haan noted, 15 states have at least one station with gas cheaper than $4, although data from AAA indicates no state has an average gas price below $4.25.

Overall, prices are down about a quarter from recent highs; they were about $4.92 per gallon a month ago, per AAA, and rose as high as $5 per gallon in June.

Prices are continuing what has been a weeks-long downward trend, Devin Gladden, AAA National’s manager for federal affairs, told The Hill.

“One, we’ve seen oil prices decline. … They’re still elevated, but we’ve seen them break below $100 per barrel,” Gladden said. “We’ve also seen gas demand weaken a bit, and so those two forces have helped to put pressure on prices. And as those trends continue, we’re likely to see prices continue to decline.”

As to whether the country as a whole is likely to trend below $4, Gladden said that would largely depend on how long oil prices remain below $100 a barrel. The market has been particularly volatile, he said, and anything that “could set the markets off” could send prices climbing again.

Certain other factors may accelerate the decline, he added, such as anxieties over a potential recession or the resurgence of COVID-19 cases.

“China is instituting various protocols again, and that’s really causing concern around where global crude demand might be heading,” Gladden said. “And so as those trends continue, and yes, it’s likely that oil prices could continue to decline.”

Likewise, Tom Kloza,  global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, said in an email that the current change is “an interlude and not a trend change.”

“What we saw in the last week was that the market had become overbought,” he said. “Those weaker buyers got flushed out.”

Kloza predicted that prices could drop between 5 and 25 cents between now and the end of next week, but he also said they would bounce back later in the summer before cooling down in September.

“This is a month that sees a surge in demand, and really from July 15 through Labor Day, the threats are really, really of epic proportion — you have the hurricane threat, you have the Putin threat,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

However, other experts told The Hill that they believe gasoline prices will decline more amid fears of a recession. De Haan said Wednesday that over the next several weeks, prices would continue to drop.

“If nothing changes, we could see the national average fall 40 to 65 cents a gallon and that would put us very close to a national average that could be closer to $4 a gallon, and that’s going to mean thousands if not tens of thousands of stations eventually fall back under $4 a gallon,” De Haan said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Union presses Park Police chief on staffing levels

A labor union representing United States Park Police officers sent a letter urging for more changes involving staffing levels within the department amid incidents occurring in the Washington, D.C., area over the holiday weekend. 

In a letter sent on Thursday, the United States Park Police Fraternal Order of Police told acting Park Police Chief Christopher Stock that the department has fewer members than it did nearly 50 years ago and continues to lose more members every week due to the ongoing issues.

The union also demanded changes to their yearly salary, recruitment incentives and retention efforts as well.

“With an annual attrition rate of approximately 35 officers per year, hiring 75 officers next fiscal year will do almost nothing to help,” the letter reads. “Radical changes to our pay, recruitment incentives, and retention efforts must happen NOW.” 

The letter noted several incidents over the weekend where responding officers were unable to make proper safety adjustments due to ongoing inclement weather, which caused flooding, downed trees, trapped motorists and motor vehicle crashes in the area. 

One incident in particular involved a U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer sustaining injuries after being rear-ended by an oncoming vehicle while assisting Park Police with a separate accident. In another incident, a Park Police officer sustained a serious head injury when an incoming vehicle struck his patrol car while waiting on a tow service for a disabled vehicle.

“The continued reckless neglect by the Department of Interior and the National Park Service has reached crisis levels. Residents and visitors to the Washington Metropolitan Area are at a serious safety risk while on Park Service property,” the union wrote to Stock in its letter. “The fact that management from all levels has stood by idly without making any changes to their leadership tactics baffles me.” 

The union then urged Stock to use his leadership to combat this issue, asking him to hold the National Park Service accountable for years of neglect and implement new changes to make sure department officers and the public are safe. 

“The Union should not be alone in efforts to make USPP the best Federal Law Enforcement agency it once was. Give us the tools and the staffing we need to effectively carry out our mission,” the letter concluded. “Thank you for your time and I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts.”

Source: TEST FEED1

North Korea talks ‘deterrence,’ but it’s not what it means to the West

North Korean rhetoric of late is so kinetic that it’s spreading concerns that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un is about to move missiles capable of firing tactical nuclear warheads at critical American and South Korean bases into positions close to the North-South line.

As America’s 28,500 troops in South Korea were enjoying the long Fourth of July weekend, North Korea raised the decibel level by claiming “nuclear war might break out simultaneously in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.” Mention of the N word — “n” for nuclear — had analysts with long experience in Korea discussing what Kim might be planning for his next big surprise.

“The North Koreans have the ability to target specific military facilities such as a command center in a large base,” retired South Korean Lt. Gen. Chun In-bum told me. “Also, South Korean and U.S. bases would be certainly a target of attack.”

Kim’s threats to build up “deterrence” fuel the fears of tactical nukes exploding in a North-South showdown.

Andrei Lankov, a Russian scholar who studied in North Korea’s Kim Il Sung University in the 1980s and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul, believes tactical warheads “would bring Pyongyang one step closer to realizing its old dream of subjugating the South.” The nuclear devices that North Korea has tested so far, he wrote on NK News, a website in Seoul, “are far too powerful and destructive for use in actual combat.”

Bruce Bennett, longtime Korea watcher at Rand Corporation, believes, however, that Kim still may be thinking big. For the North’s seventh nuclear test, he said, he may choose a warhead as big or bigger than the hydrogen bomb that reportedly blew up half a mountain in the North’s sixth, most recent nuclear test in September 2017.

“The North has already had a number of nuclear weapon tests of tactical size,” said Bennett. “I suspect that in order to catch global news, which is so diverted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even internal news, Kim may actually try to test a weapon of yield larger than its sixth nuclear weapon test.”

Major U.S. bases would be the most vulnerable. “A weapon that size would be about right for targeting large U.S. facilities,” said Bennett.

David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who served five tours in South Korea, cited “three key sets of targets” for the North Koreans, beginning with U.S. and South Korean air bases and major seaports. He thinks the North will pick targets where the South Koreans are mobilizing their forces.

“The priority targets are the ROK (Republic of Korea) and U.S. air bases,” Maxwell, senior scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told me. By focusing on these targets, he said, the North Koreans would have “the best chance of accomplishing the critical objective of any North Korean attack plan” — that is, “the rapid occupation of the entire peninsula before the ROK can fully mobilize and the U.S. can reinforce the peninsula.”

Among tempting targets would be sprawling Camp Humphreys, America’s largest overseas base, headquarters for U.S. Forces Korea and the U.N. Command, located 65 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the North from South Korea. Other top targets would be nearby Osan Air Base, headquarters of the U.S. Seventh Air Force; the South Korean air base at Cheongju in the central region, where the ROK  keeps its new F35s; and the U.S. air base at Kunsan on the southwest coast.

North Korea’s desire to deliver a quick knockout blow evokes memories of its invasion of South Korea in June 1950 when Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, was convinced he could wipe out ill-equipped South Korean forces within weeks. The great difference this time would be that North Korea could attack with nuclear-tipped, short-range missiles before the U.S. and South Korea could respond.

The North Koreans would have to strike fast, said Maxwell, to keep the U.S. and South Korea from “inflicting damage throughout North Korea” and stop them from wiping out “North Korean leadership and command-and-control targets.”

The enormous port complex of Busan on the southeastern coast also would be in danger of a nuclear strike.

“It is very likely,” said Maxwell, that the North would “simultaneously target Busan to deny its use for U.S. reinforcements” pouring in from U.S. bases in Japan and the United States. “If they wanted to destroy the port, they could employ nuclear weapons.” Ditto the major South Korean ports at Pohang, site of South Korea’s biggest steel plant on the East Coast, and at Pyeongtaek outside Camp Humphreys on the West Coast.

Moreover, said Maxwell, “They could use chemical weapons to terrorize the Korean workforce, which is essential to port operations.”

But would Kim prioritize South Korean over U.S. targets? Bruce Bennett at Rand recalled that more than two decades ago, defectors from North Korea testified before Congress that Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, believed “if North Korea creates more than 20,000 American casualties in the region, the U.S. will roll back and North Korea will win the war.”

Bennett said Kim “might hope that by rapidly killing enough Americans he can decouple the alliance between the U.S. and ROK. Targeting Camp Humphreys with a weapon the size of the sixth nuclear weapon or larger could cause that many U.S. casualties and even more,” he said.

For Kim, however, the blowback would be catastrophic. “Think of Pearl Harbor,” Bennett suggested, conjuring memories of the Japanese attack on the huge U.S. naval base in Honolulu in December 1941 that precipitated America’s entry into World War II. “I think an American president could be impeached,” said Bennett, “if he failed to devastate North Korea in the aftermath of such an attack.”

James Mattis, a retired Marine general and former Secretary of Defense, said at a security forum in Seoul that the logical response would be not be for the Americans and South Koreans to arm themselves with nukes, which the U.S. already has in Japan, but instead they need “a sufficient deterrent to ensure those horrible weapons are never employed.”

But what about America’s will to fight? Some North Korea strategists hope eventually the U.S. will shrink from “a direct fight with a nuclear-armed enemy,” said Andrei Lankov, and “skip its treaty obligations.”

Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflict in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He currently is a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea. He is the author of several books about Asian affairs.

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Tucker Carlson defends his commentary on race in fiery interview

Fox News host Tucker Carlson swatted away suggested ties to white supremacist ideology when pressed about the rhetoric on his nightly show during a tense interview at an event on Thursday.

“I’ve never had a white supremacist work for me. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a white supremacist,” Carlson said during event hosted by Semafor, a new media company founded by journalist Ben Smith and media executive Justin Smith. “I’m not sure what that means. I know it’s a slur and the worst thing that a person can be. I don’t really understand the terms.”

Carlson had been asked by Ben Smith about comments the host has made in recent years on matters of immigration, race relations and demographic changes in the American electorate.

Smith played during Thursday’s event a widely-shared clip from one of Carlson’s recent shows, which pulls in an average viewership of more than 3 million people every weeknight, showing the host arguing that Democratic politicians are working to “replace” what he called “legacy” Americans with new voters from other countries.

Critics have likened comments like those to so-called “Great Replacement Theory,” a racist ideology that suggests white people are being replaced by minorities. A recent analysis conducted by The New York Times found Carlson has mentioned variations on the replacement theory idea in more than 400 episodes of his show since 2016.

“I have no empathy for people who derive their judgments about anything from thirty second clips on Media Matters,” Carlson said Thursday in reference to the liberal watchdog group that tracks narratives present on Fox News and in other conservative media.

Smith pressed Carlson specifically about a number of staffers that formerly worked on his show, who were found to have posted on white supremacist message boards, something Carlson argued at the time he did not know about.

“Why have you been fly paper for racists,” Smith asked Carlson at one point during the testy back and forth about the Fox host’s comments on race.

“I believe that people are not defined by their race, any race,” Carlson said. “People are defined, their value is derived from the fact that they were A, created by God, and B, by what they do, by the choices they make. They’re not part of some larger group, they’re individuals. I believe in the individual and I say that virtually every night.”

To critics who assert that Carlson is a racist, he said, “I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I’m stating my sincere views as reflected in my personal life and my professional life as clearly as I can,” he said.

Smith also asked Carlson about Fox’s place in the American political discourse and the pressures of the cable news ratings race that underpins the industry.

“I’ve been in TV for 27 years, I don’t know how to read a ratings chart. Ask anyone who works for me,” Carlson said. “I never look a the ratings, I’m not on the ratings e-mails … I don’t know what my ratings are and I mean that, you may not believe me, I don’t own a TV. That’s true. So I’m actually never thinking about ratings.”

Asked if he would be allowed to “go negative on Trump in any sustained way” without “clearing it” with Fox News leadership, Carlson said “I don’t clear anything with anyone.”

“The fact that there’s only one TV channel in the entire country, a country of 350 million people that allows actual free speech,” he said. “And that’s the one that the New York Times, the Washington Post or any of these other absurd organizations want to destroy, it tells you everything.”

Source: TEST FEED1