The Fellas At The Freakin' FCC

They may just be neurotic or possibly psychotic

Jul 19, 2025

Welcome back to KTB.

Back in May, KTB recommended social rejection as a “cost” that the rest of us can impose on MAGA - a consequence for serving Trump that might compel some of the servants to quit their master for the good of their own social lives.

This week, I discovered that your weirdo friend, a fellow Substacker, has recommended much the same. weirdo writes,

Imagine, if you will, that [Trump] supporters could, themselves, be sanctioned. There’s good news on this front: they can be sanctioned. All that’s required is for everyday people to step into their integrity and refuse to socialize with people who support this regime.

weirdo is discussing how to deal with the MAGA in your own life - Trump-supporting friends, relatives, etc. But her advice also applies to stopping the MAGA KTB profiles, the “back office” functionaries and the behind-the-scenes apparatchiks in the Trump Administration and MAGA movement.

In an accompanying audio, weirdo also explains why social rejection works:

By continuing to socialize with those people, by continuing to be in relationships with them…you are offering them your social, emotional, and political capital, [and] that communicates to them that their views are socially acceptable. …
[But] when people experience emotional and social sanctions, it hurts. It makes you wonder whether you are on the right side of things. [Trumpers] are coming to face facts, that they have lost real relationships for supporting a fascist.

That is one of many keen observations made in weirdo’s post - which also offers encouragement, reassurance, and empathy to anyone who feels saddened by having to impose the cost of social rejection. Check it out; it’s a must read.

The FCC won't let me be

Today, KTB is calling out three Trump functionaries who have or want the power to determine who can transmit what information through our airwaves.

First, Adam Cassady. He went to law school at University of Chicago, launched a failed startup, and then worked at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a commissioner who was appointed by Trump.

Adam is in the Heritage Foundation’s leaked Presidential Personnel Database, the subject of two previous KTB posts. Adam’s “short essay” responses to Heritage’s job application accuse the FCC’s Democratic commissioners of some unspecified dishonesty:

I have been astonished at how comfortable the Democrats leading the Commission have been with justifying policy cuts that require for their existence the baldest of lies.

But far worse than Adam’s peevish partisanship are the disgusting things he wrote about an “uncomfortable truth”:

Cultural practices can influence population genetics which of course, and in turn, influence culture. I think paleoconservatives in their focus on a nation and its culture firmly grasp the nettle of this sometimes uncomfortable truth. …
Without a thriving founding stock of the nation, these institutions - which supervene on the people in the nation, cannot exist without them, and cannot but be changed by a replacement population - will ultimately mutate or fail outright.

So Adam believes that a “replacement population” will poison the superior genetics of America’s “founding stock,” and that will destroy American culture...

It’s Great Replacement bigotry mixed with a weird take on genetics.

Adam, who had risen to become his commissioner’s Chief of Staff, now has a new gig: in March, Trump appointed Adam an acting Assistant Secretary at the Department of Commerce and acting Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the FCC’s sister agency.

Godspeed, Adam, protecting our businesses and bandwidth from yucky foreign genes.

Adam’s replacement as Chief of Staff was Gavin Wax. Gavin is a young MAGA firebrand who has held positions in many alt-right outfits and who has guested on OAN, Newsmax, and other right-wing media.

Gavin has also praised white nationalist Nick Fuentes, has been caught running a private online chat group for white nationalists, and, in the online magazine he edited, published racist articles by white nationalist authors.

Journalists had been calling out this extremism long before Gavin joined the FCC,(check out Amanda Moore’s great work), and last month, SPLC’s Hatewatch did a nice summary. KTB won’t duplicate that work, but it will report what Gavin did after joining the FCC. Much of which was tweeting and retweeting.

Tweeting at South Africa for committing “genocide” against white people; tweeting support for Hungary’s far-right; tweeting against what he calls the European Union’s “war on free speech”; tweeting angrily at American Idol for having Lin-Manuel Miranda guest; tweeting and retweeting many times each day.

Gavin also wrote several threatening essays which he placed in far-right media outlets. One was called “Time For Trump To DOGE The FCC”; another was “Trump Vs. CBS Is Just the Start. Here’s How To Hit The Fake News Where It Really Hurts…”

In that latter essay, Gavin makes clear what network journalists can expect from him if he becomes an FCC commissioner:

Make no mistake: this is a fight for the soul of the American media. National networks have shown they cannot be trusted. They’ve censored stories, smeared dissenters, and openly campaigned against conservative candidates. …
Let’s follow President Trump’s lead [and] end the fake news grift.

Hold on…Gavin wants to be a commissioner? Yup. In early June, the commissioner who Gavin worked for resigned, and Gavin has since gotten many far-right colleagues to beg Trump to appoint him to the vacancy.

Consider Gavin’s plotline to be continued.

While Gavin was busy lobbying for himself, Congress confirmed another Trump appointee to another commissioner slot. That appointee is Olivia Trusty.

Olivia is from Baltimore. She graduated from University of North Carolina and then worked for two decades as a staffer in Congress. Olivia became a commissioner in mid-June, giving Trump appointees a 2-1 majority on the commission (Brendan Carr, the FCC Chairman - and Project 2025 author - is Trump’s other commissioner).

Olivia is also in the Heritage Foundation’s database. In her short essays, she writes, “I would like to see a large wall built (similar to the wall Egypt maintains on its border with Gaza) at the southern and northern [KTB’s emphasis] borders.”

Sorry, Olivia, you landed in the wrong agency for that: the FCC doesn’t have the budget or the authority to build a northern border wall, even to protect us from the threat of Canadian migrants. The most you could do is force Peacock to stop streaming those inane Caillou reruns… Yeah, take that, Canada.

Olivia Trusty, staring down three Canadian migrants

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Also, just a reminder about KTB’s One Big Ground Rule:

Do NOT do anything illegal and/or violent to the individuals whom KTB profiles. The phrase “Kill The Body” is an adage and a metaphor, not a command to be taken literally. KTB eschews lawbreaking and violence. You should too. Otherwise, we are no better than Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, or any of the other thugs who MAGA types crush on.