Republican Congressional committees have made an emergency filing with the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure they get lower rates for political advertising, Yahoo News reports. Candidates can get such rates, or the “lowest unit charge,” but it is not clear whether political parties and joint fundraising committees can get them. A ruling that the GOP cannot get lower rates for these entities would favor Democrats.

The Federal Trade Commission has won an “AI washing case” against the Cox Media Group and two smaller firms, Tech Insider reports. The FTC alleged that Cox, along with MindSift LLC and 1010 Digital Advertising Works LLC, offered an “active listening” ad product that claimed to analyze conversations accessed by smart devices to serve hyper-local ads. But the FTC charged that the product did not exist. The finalized consent order requires Cox to pay $880,000 and MindSift and Digital Works to pay $25,000 apiece. Cox and the other firms now face a 20-year compliance term in which their ad claims will be …

The Trump administration plans to spend $4 million to help right-wing media in Europe, Reuters reports. This is part of $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes. The grants could increase tensions between President Trump and European governments. However, the U.S. State Department says the funding plan is designed to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. 

Publishers received a break last Friday when the California Legislature and Senate both passed a law that would end private right of action for lawsuits involving the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), the News/Media Alliance (NME) reports. “While the amended measure was modified from its initial scope, SB-690 will provide much needed relief to small businesses and news publishers facing lawsuits and arbitration demands for the use of expected and widely-used online tools,” NME writes.

President Trump said he will report Kristen Welker, NBC’s Meet the Press moderator, to the Federal Communications Commission for “rebuke or punishment” for her comments on his election endorsements, The Washington Post reports. Welker said Trump had “some mixed results.” Trump said that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr “will take this Threat to our Country very seriously.” This is Trump’s latest call for the agency to “take action against broadcasters,” the Post writes. 

Sony Music Publishing has joined with Warner Chappell and other music publishers to sue Anthropic for “blatant theft,” TechCrunch reports. The suit, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of  California, alleges that Anthropic conducted a ““brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works” to train Claude, its AI model.” Anthropic denies the claims, with the intention to “defend ourselves robustly in court,” it said in a statement to TechCrunch. 

Nielsen has sent a message to networks, saying that “mixing internal or third-party data with Nielsen metrics to make comparative statements in the press is not permissible,” Awful Announcing reports. The move could particularly affect NBC, which regularly publicizes viewership metric combining Nielsen data with streaming numbers measured by Adobe Analytics. NBC has argued that Nielsen does not track streaming viewership on Peacock, so the Nielsen-Adobe Analytics is comparable to the Nielsen-only numbers tracked by other networks. But Nielsen did measure streaming viewership for the Super Bowl.  

Good Good Golf, facing extensive criticism for an ad showing a woman being shoved to the ground, has  “removed people responsible for the ad,” CEO Matt Kendrick told Front Office Sports, the New York Post reports. The company was dumped as a partner by Callaway, and its bottom line has suffered. The ad, which was withdrawn, shows company co-founder Garrett Clark knocking down brand influencer Alexis Miestowski, saying “Do not touch my new driver.”

Calloway has ended its relationship with Good Good Golf two days after it apologized for its part in a Good Good Golf advertisement, saying, “Violence against women is unacceptable and should never be trivialized, normalized or used as entertainment,” The Athletic reports. The 15-second ad depicted a woman being pushed to the ground by Garrett Clark, Good Good Golf co-founder, who tells her “not to touch my new driver.” The PGA Tour announced Good Good Golf would longer be the title sponsor of it Austin, Texas tournament. 

Simon Property Group, the world’s largest shopping mall operator, has launched Simon Media Network, a type of a retail media network, AdExchanger reports. Simon’s goal is to “identify new growth opportunities outside of its core leasing business,” said CRO Jared Blechman. The network will serve as a programmatic vehicle for advertising to use its data for target and measurement throughout the web.