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Tag: Free speech
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Bonta demands FCC chair ‘stop his campaign of censorship’ following Kimmel suspension
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California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr of unlawfully intimidating television broadcasters into toeing a conservative line in favor of President Trump, and urged him to reverse course.
In a letter to Carr, Bonta specifically cited ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air after Kimmel made comments about the killing of close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, and Carr demanded ABC’s parent company Disney “take action” against the late-night host.
Bonta wrote that California “is home to a great many artists, entertainers, and other individuals who every day exercise their right to free speech and free expression,” and that Carr’s demands of Disney threatened their 1st Amendment rights.
“As the Supreme Court held over sixty years ago and unanimously reaffirmed just last year, ‘the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,’” Bonta wrote.
Carr and Trump have both denied playing a role in Kimmel’s suspension, alleging instead that it was due to his show having poor ratings.
After Disney announced Monday that Kimmel’s show would be returning to ABC, Bonta said he was “pleased to hear ABC is reversing course on its capitulation to the FCC’s unlawful threats,” but that his “concerns stand.”
He rejected Trump and Carr’s denials of involvement, and accused the administration of “waging a dangerous attack on those who dare to speak out against it.”
“Censoring and silencing critics because you don’t like what they say — be it a comedian, a lawyer, or a peaceful protester — is fundamentally un-American,” while such censorship by the U.S. government is “absolutely chilling,” Bonta said.
Bonta called on Carr to “stop his campaign of censorship” and commit to defending the right to free speech in the U.S., which he said would require “an express disavowal” of his previous threats and “an unambiguous pledge” that he will not use the FCC “to retaliate against private parties” for speech he disagrees with moving forward.
“News outlets have reported today that ABC will be returning Mr. Kimmel’s show to its broadcast tomorrow night. While it is heartening to see the exercise of free speech ultimately prevail, this does not erase your threats and the resultant suppression of free speech from this past week or the prospect that your threats will chill free speech in the future,” Bonta wrote.
After Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said during a monologue that the U.S. had “hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Carr responded on a conservative podcast, saying, “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Two major owners of ABC affiliates dropped the show, after which ABC said it would be “preempted indefinitely.”
Both Kirk’s killing and Kimmel’s suspension — which followed the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” by CBS — kicked off a tense debate about freedom of speech in the U.S. Both Kimmel and Colbert are critics of Trump, while Kirk was an ardent supporter.
Constitutional scholars and other 1st amendment advocates said the administration and Carr have clearly been exerting inappropriate pressure on media companies.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said Carr’s actions were part of a broad assault on free speech by the administration, which “is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st amendment.”
Summer Lopez, the interim co-chief executive of PEN America, said this is “a dangerous moment for free speech” in the U.S. because of a host of Trump administration actions that are “pretty clear violations of the 1st Amendment” — including Carr’s threats but also statements about “hate speech” by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and new Pentagon restrictions on journalists reporting on the U.S. military.
She said Kimmel’s return to ABC showed that “public outrage does make a difference,” but that “it’s important that we generate that level of public outrage when the targeting is of people who don’t have that same prominence.”
Carr has also drawn criticism from conservative corners, including from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. He recently said on his podcast that he found it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”
Cruz said he works closely with Carr, whom he likes, but that what Carr said was “dangerous as hell” and could be used down the line “to silence every conservative in America.”
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Kevin Rector
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60 years ago, Ayn Rand denounced FCC censorship. Brendan Carr should listen.
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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr has received much criticism after appearing to pressure broadcast channels to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air following the comedian’s misinformed monologue about the motivations of Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer. Republican Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), Ted Cruz (R–Texas), and Dave McCormick (R–Pa.), all chastised Carr for seemingly using his position to steer the editorial decisions of private companies—a serious breach of free speech principles.
Carr is not without his defenders, however. Nathan Leamer, tech policy expert and advisor to former FCC Chair Ajit Pai, asserts that Carr’s actions fall squarely within his duty to promote the “public interest” on television, as defined by the Communications Act of 1934. He also assails “libertarians” in particular for not caring about how the FCC works (his words), and suggests that such skeptics are incorrectly or selectively railing against the public interest standard in the Kimmel case.
But of course, libertarians have been warning that broad interpretations of the public interest standard will empower the FCC to engage in censorship for decades. Just ask Ayn Rand.
In 1962, Rand penned a prophetic warning about the public interest standard, which then FCC Chair Newton Minow was citing as justification for pressuring television companies to create more educational programming. Minow famously railed against a supposedly “vast wasteland” of shoddy television shows, and claimed that the FCC’s charter empowered him to push for editorial changes to the medium that would align with his view of the public interest.
“You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives,” said Minow in his well-remembered 1961 speech. “It is not enough to cater to the nation’s whims; you must also serve the nation’s needs.”
Minow repeatedly claimed that he was not in favor of government censorship, and was not trying to tell broadcasters what they could and could not say. Rather, he charged them to make nebulous and ill-defined improvements to the product that he believed would be better appreciated by the American public—i.e., the public interest.
And that’s precisely what Rand disliked about his approach. Her essay, “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” published in The Objectivist Newsletter in March 1962, makes clear her disdain not just for abject censorship, but also for a reality in which the FCC chair makes vague statements regarding the actions that private actors should or should not take.
“It is true, as Mr. Minow assures us, that he does not propose to establish censorship; what he proposes is much worse,” she wrote. She continued:
Censorship, in its old-fashioned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas—such, for instance, as sex, religion or criticism of government officials—an edict enforced by the government’s scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release. But for stifling the freedom of men’s minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of non-objective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men’s lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. It spares the bureaucrat the troublesome necessity of committing himself to rigid rules—and it places upon the victims the burden of discovering how to please him, with a fluid unknowable as their only guide.
No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-assistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Washington whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?
What makes it possible to bring a free country down to such a level? If you doubt the connection between altruism and statism, I suggest that you count how many times—in the current articles, speeches, debates and hearings—there appeared the magic formula which makes all such outrages possible: “The Public Interest.”
The title of the essay was inspired by Rand’s contention that a man who holds a gun to your head and demands your wallet is surely deploying impermissible force rather than mere encouragement. When the FCC chair proclaims that a private company can “do this the easy way or the hard way,” he is providing a similar kind of nudge.
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Robby Soave
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Jimmy Kimmel’s show set to return on Tuesday
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(CNN) — “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to air on ABC on Tuesday night, the network announced in a statement.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” a spokesperson for the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, said in a statement to CNN. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was abruptly and indefinitely taken off the air last week after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr and networks of affiliate stations owned by Sinclair and Nexstar threatened ABC over comments Kimmel made in a monologue about the MAGA movement’s response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
The move sparked a national debate about government interference and freedom speech between supporters of President Donald Trump’s administration and Kimmel, who have been vocally critically of each other over the years.
Before news of his pending return on Monday, more than 400 artists, including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Jennifer Aniston, signed an open letter, organized by the ACLU, in support of Kimmel.
There were organized protests against Disney outside of the company’s offices in New York and Burbank, California over the past week, as well as outside the theater where Kimmel’s show is recorded in Hollywood.
Media analysts have watched as Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chairman Dana Walden have navigated competing pressures. Disney needs government approval for pending deals like ESPN’s pact with the NFL, while many of its station partners are in the same boat. Additionally, Kimmel’s contract is expiring in May and late-night TV audiences and revenue have been on decline.
Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet is keeping the pressure on station owners: “Disney and ABC caving and allowing Kimmel back on the air is not surprising, but it’s their mistake to make. Nextstar and Sinclair do not have to make the same choice.”
Still, Kimmel’s sudden suspension sent shock waves through the entertainment industry, where the comedian and long-time host is well-regarded, both inside and outside ABC.
His show employs between 200 and 250 people. During the WGA strike, which shut down Hollywood productions in 2023, Kimmel provided funds for his crew when production on his show was halted. When production was shut down again during wildfires in Los Angeles early this year, the show’s backlot was used as a donation center to collect and distribute resources to those impacted by the disaster.
Kimmel has not yet publicly commented on the controversy, but presumably will on his show Tuesday night.
CNN has reached out to representatives of the late-night host, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar for comment.
Editor’s note: CNN’s David Goldman and Lisa Respers France contributed to this story.
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Elizabeth Wagmeister, Brian Stelter and CNN
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WIRED Roundup: The Right Embraces Cancel Culture
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Zoë Schiffer: Right.
Manisha Krishnan: … which some human design followers believe that your spleen is a better guide than your gut. And so he ended up breaking it off with one of the women that he was dating in Love Is Blind because he said, “His spleen was silent.”
Zoë Schiffer: I was locked in for the first part of this. And then we got to the spleen thing. What does that mean? Is it literally a gut sense? What are they tapping into?
Manisha Krishnan: Honestly, it is really confusing because they have all of these rules around deconditioning yourself from essentially forces within you that don’t jive with who you really are, but the way that you decondition yourself seems to be in some cases very rigid. I saw one person on Reddit posting about how they only eat polenta because that’s the only ingredient that will allow them to become their truest self according to human design.
Zoë Schiffer: I do want to know, do you know what I am?
Manisha Krishnan: Yes.
Zoë Schiffer: Because you asked me my birthday yesterday, so I’m on the edge of my seat.
Manisha Krishnan: I did. I plugged it in. And you are a generator, which is an energy type defined with a sacral center characterized by a consistent self-sustaining life force—
Zoë Schiffer: Wow.
Manisha Krishnan: … that provides stamina and the capacity to do fulfilling work.
Zoë Schiffer: Did WIRED write this?
Manisha Krishnan: I know, I was just thinking that.
Zoë Schiffer: Well, great. I love that for myself. Coming up after the break, we’ll dive into the backlash that some people from graphic designers to high-profile entertainers have received after commenting on Charlie Kirk’s death.
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Zoë Schiffer: Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. I’m Zoë Schiffer. I’m joined today by senior culture editor Manisha Krishnan. Manisha, the story that keeps on reverberating this week is that of Charlie Kirk’s death. Our colleague, Jake Lahut, has been covering how the Trump administration in the general right-wing base has maintained their position that Kirk’s death was a result of leftist ideology and maybe even a coordinated attack. Both of these claims have been debunked, but it’s done little to change people’s minds. And this week, you reported that different artists have been facing professional retaliation for voicing their opinions on Kirk. What did you find in your reporting?
Manisha Krishnan: There’s been a bunch of people from different industries that have lost their jobs over posting unsympathetically about Charlie Kirk’s death, from journalists to video game developers. But one that stuck out in my mind was I interviewed this trans writer who was doing a comic series for DC Comics. She referred to Charlie Kirk as a Nazi bitch after he died, and she was suspended on Bluesky for a week, and DC fired her and they’ve canceled the series. And that really stuck out to me because she has said that Charlie Kirk, he was staunchly anti-trans. I mean, he was anti a lot of things that weren’t a straight Christian white male, and he was pretty loud and proud about those views. And so I think it really does stick out to me because it’s almost like, are people expected to perform grief for someone who espoused hateful views towards the community that they’re part of, but it almost feels like this really, really hard line that a lot of corporations have taken. Making someone apologize is one thing, but literally disappearing art, canceling an entire series or South Park deciding not to re-air an episode about Charlie Kirk that he himself loved. He said he really liked it. I just think it goes a little bit beyond just reprimanding people.
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Zoë Schiffer, Manisha Krishnan
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The FCC’s Involvement in Canceling Jimmy Kimmel Was ‘Unbelievably Dangerous,’ Ted Cruz Says
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Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) is happy that ABC decided to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show. But like Fox News political analyst Brit Hume, Cruz is not happy about the role that Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), played in that decision. By threatening TV stations that carried Jimmy Kimmel Live! with fines and license revocation, Cruz warned in his podcast on Friday, Carr set a dangerous precedent that could invite similar treatment of conservative speech under a future administration.
“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” Cruz declared, referring to the September 15 monologue in which the late-night comedian erroneously suggested that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college in Utah five days earlier, was part of the MAGA movement. “I am thrilled that he was fired. But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”
In an interview with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday, Carr warned that there are “actions we can take on licensed broadcasters” that dared to air Kimmel’s show, including “fines or license revocations.” He added that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Either “these companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel,” he said, “or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Hours later, Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC affiliate stations, announced that it would preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! “for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show.” Sinclair, which owns 38 ABC affiliates, likewise said it would “indefinitely preempt” Jimmy Kimmel Live! beginning that night. ABC, which produces the programming aired by those affiliates and owns eight of the network’s stations, fell in line the same night, saying it would “indefinitely” suspend the show.
Cruz likened Carr to a mafioso. “He says, ‘We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,’” the senator noted. “And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar [and] going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
In fact, Carr’s threat was more explicit than that. “This sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable,” he declared, saying it was “past time” for “these licensed broadcasters” to say, “Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run, Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we licensed broadcaster[s] are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.”
That rationale for punishing stations that carried Kimmel’s show was absurd on its face. The policy to which Carr alluded applies to a “broadcast news report” that was “deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners” about “a significant event.” While Kimmel’s remarks were certainly misinformed, it is doubtful that he intended to “mislead viewers.” It seems more plausible that he committed to a partisan narrative without bothering to ask whether it was supported by the facts, an example of carelessness rather than deliberate deceit. But whatever you think of Kimmel’s intent, a comedian’s monologue is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “broadcast news report.”
By abusing his power to exert pressure on ABC and its affiliates, Cruz said, Carr was setting an example that Democrats are apt to copy. “Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat…wins the White House,” the senator said, and “they will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”
Although “it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel,” Cruz said, “when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it….It is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.’”
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) agreed that Carr’s involvement in kiboshing Kimmel was “absolutely inappropriate.” The FCC’s chairman “has got no business weighing in on this,” Paul said on Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press. “If you’re losing money, you can be fired. But the government’s got no business in it. And the FCC was wrong to weigh in. And I’ll fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.”
Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson perceives a similar danger in Attorney General Pam Bondi’s response to online commentary that celebrated Kirk’s murder or justified violence against conservatives more generally. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Bondi said last week, erroneously asserting a constitutional distinction between “free speech” and “hate speech.” She later claimed she had in mind “threats of violence that individuals incite against others.” But the speech that offended Bondi generally would not meet the First Amendment test that the Supreme Court established in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, which requires advocacy that is both “directed” at inciting “imminent lawless action” and “likely” to have that effect.
“This is the attorney general of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, telling you that there is this other category…called hate speech,” Carlson remarked on his show last Wednesday. “And of course, the implication is that’s a crime. There’s no sentence that Charlie Kirk would have objected to more than that.”
With good reason, Carlson said: “You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever. And there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think.”
It is encouraging that at least some of President Donald Trump’s allies recognize that freedom of speech is unreliable unless it protects their political opponents. But Trump himself seems oblivious to that point. When asked about Cruz’s criticism of Carr on Friday, Trump described the FCC chairman as “a great American patriot,” adding, “I disagree with Ted Cruz on that.”
Of course he does. For years, Trump has been eager to wield the FCC’s powers against broadcasters who air programming that offends him. During Trump’s first administration, he averred that “network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected that suggestion in no uncertain terms. “I believe in the First Amendment,” he said. “The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment, and under the law the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”
Trump’s views on the subject have not changed. Last week, he cheered Kimmel’s suspension as “Great News for America” and urged NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, two other late-night comedians who are often critical of him. “Do it NBC!!!” he demanded. In case there was any doubt that Trump was not merely offering advice as a businessman or TV critic, he signed that Truth Social missive “President DJT” and later clarified the underlying threat. “You have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump,” he complained to reporters. “It’s all they do….They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.” When network newscasts “take a great story” and “make it bad,” he averred, “that’s really illegal.”
The difference this time around is that the FCC’s Trump-appointed chairman, an avowed free speech champion, has no constitutional compunction about using his powers to bully broadcasters into submission. “They give me only bad publicity or press,” Trump said on Thursday. “I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr.”
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Jacob Sullum
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Jimmy Kimmel celebrated Hollywood Boulevard’s wacky character. Locals fear life without him
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Spider-Man and a Hollywood tour guide were having it out.
They stood right outside Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard, arguing about whether ABC was right to yank the host’s TV show off the air last week after he commented on the political response to right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.
“I like Kimmel!” said the Spider-Man impersonator, who wore pink Nike sneakers and leaned in close so he could hear through his thin, face-covering costume. “What he said is free speech.”
A tour bus drives past what was Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard on Sept. 18, 2025.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Todd Doten, a tour agent for Beverly Hills Tours of Hollywood, pushed back. He said he believed broadcasters are held to a different standard than private citizens, and that the Federal Communications Commission — which pushed to get Kimmel’s show canceled — “has somewhat of a point.”
The men verbally sparred beside singer Little Richard’s cracked star on the Walk of Fame. Then Doten patted the selfie-hawking superhero on the back and they parted ways amicably.
The scene on Friday afternoon captured the Hollywood that Kimmel embraced and aggressively promoted: Weird, gritty and surprisingly poignant.
Ever since he began filming at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in 2003, Kimmel has been one of the famed neighborhood’s biggest ambassadors. He drew tourists to the storied Hollywood Boulevard, which — despite being home to the Academy Awards, TCL Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame — has long struggled with crime, homelessness and blight. He used his celebrity to help homeless youth and opened a donation center on his show’s backlot for victims of the January wildfires.
And he filmed many a sketch with Hollywood itself as the bizarro backdrop — including one returning bit called “Who’s High?” in which he tried to guess which of three pedestrians was stoned.
Protesters in front of Jimmy Kimmel’s theater a day after ABC pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely over comments he made about the response to right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk’s death.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Now, locals and entertainment industry officials alike worry what will happen if Kimmel’s show permanently disappears from a Hollywood still struggling to recover from the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 and the COVID-19 pandemic that literally shut the neighborhood down. While his suspension has sparked a roiling debate over free speech rights nationwide, in this neighborhood, the impact is more close to home.
“A hostile act toward Jimmy Kimmel is a hostile act toward Hollywood itself and one of its great champions,” former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The Times on Friday.
“Hollywood is both a place and an idea. It’s an industry and a geography. Jimmy is always big on both. He actually lives in Hollywood, at a time when not a lot of stars do.”
Miguel Aguilar, a fruit vendor who often sets up near Kimmel’s theater, said Friday that business was always better on the days “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” filmed because so many audience members bought his strawberries and pineapples doused in chamoy. He was stunned when a Times reporter told him the show had been suspended.
“Was it canceled by the government?” Aguilar asked. “We used to get a lot more customers [from the show]. That’s pretty scary.”
A man holding a sign advertising at a nearby diner said he worried about Kimmel’s crew, including the gaffers and makeup artists.
“How many people went down with Kimmel?” he asked.
And Daniel Gomez, who lives down the street, said he feared that nearby businesses will suffer from the loss of foot traffic from the show, for which audience members lined up all the way down the block.
“Tourists still will come to Hollywood no matter what, but a portion of that won’t be coming anymore,” Gomez said as he signed a large canvas outside the theater on which scores of fans and free speech advocates wrote messages about the show being axed.
Protesters in front of Jimmy Kimmel’s theater in Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“It’s pretty bad that he got shut down because of his comments,” Gomez added. “Comedians should be free to say whatever they want.”
In a joint statement, a coalition of Hollywood labor groups including the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said the kind of political pressure that Kimmel faced as a broadcaster “chills free speech and threatens the livelihoods of thousands of working Americans.”
“At a time when America’s film and television industry is still struggling due to globalization and industry contraction, further unnecessary job losses only make a bad situation worse,” the statement read.
During his monologue Monday, Kimmel made remarks about Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of fatally shooting Kirk. He said the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Ingrid Salazar protests outside of the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” studio on Thursday.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
While Kimmel’s remarks could be interpreted in different ways, Kirk’s supporters immediately accused the talk show host of claiming Robinson was a Trump ally, which many of Kimmel’s supporters reject. Kimmel himself has not publicly responded.
Kimmel also mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was coping with the killing of his close ally.
Nexstar Media Group responded on Wednesday, saying it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations because of Kimmel’s comments. Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, then announced it would suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely.
Nexstar’s decision to yank the show came after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, threatened to take action against ABC and urged local ABC affiliate stations to stand up the network.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told right-wing podcast host Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”
He also targeted late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, calling them “total losers.” He pressured NBC to cancel their shows, writing: “Do it NBC!!!”
The president this summer praised CBS’s decision to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” after this season, writing on Truth Social on July 18: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
Pedestrians walk across the street from the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” theater a day after ABC has pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
While the show is in limbo, it is unclear what will happen to Kimmel’s iconic theater in the historic former Hollywood Masonic Temple, a neoclassical 1921 building fronted by six imposing columns.
Disney owns the building, as well as the adjacent 1920s office building that contains the El Capitan Theatre and the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop. Kimmel’s production company, 12:05 AM Productions, occupies four floors — 26,000 square feet — in the six-story office building, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
Garcetti, who long represented Hollywood on the L.A. City Council, said Kimmel was a major advocate for renovation of the old Masonic lodge and other revitalization Hollywood projects.
And after the Oscars returned for good to the Kodak Theatre (now Dolby Theatre) across the street in 2002 after several years outside of Hollywood, Kimmel “helped usher in what I call Hollywood’s second golden age, when the Academy Awards came back and people saw actual stars in nightclubs and restaurants,” Garcetti said.
When Garcetti was showing off the city to officials with the International Olympic Committee years ago in an effort to host the Games, Kimmel met their helicopter on the roof of a Hollywood hotel to brag about the neighborhood.
Jimmy Kimmel, host and executive producer of the late-night talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” celebrates as he receives his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Jan. 25, 2013.
(Reed Saxon/Associated Press)
At the 2013 Hollywood Chamber of Commerce ceremony awarding Kimmel a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Garcetti quipped: “When you came here to Hollywood Boulevard, this place was full of drug dealers and prostitutes, and you welcomed them with open arms.”
Kimmel joked that his parents brought him to the Walk of Fame as a 10-year-old and left him there to fend for himself.
“I’m getting emotional,” he said during the ceremony. “This is embarrassing. I feel like I’m speaking at my own funeral. This is ridiculous. People are going to pee on this star.”
Kimmel’s star is by his theater, near the stars for rapper Snoop Dogg — and Donald Duck.
On his show in May, pop star Miley Cyrus told Kimmel she developed a serious infection after filming on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, where she rolled around on the sidewalk. Part of her leg, she said, started to “disintegrate.”
“Have you been to the Walk of Fame in the middle of the night?” she asked.
“I live here,” Kimmel said.
“I thought it was my last day,” Cyrus responded.
Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside Kimmel’s theater in recent days, decrying the suspension of his show.
The cancellation occurred right after Dianne Hall and Michael Talbur of Kansas City got tickets to a live taping of the show and traveled to Los Angeles. So, they attended a protest Thursday instead.
Hall said she was expecting Kimmel’s monologue “to be something rude toward the [Kirk] family” but was surprised when she actually listened to it.
“I kept thinking, ‘Surely something bad was said for him to get fired,’ ” Hall said. “But it was nothing like that.”
Hollywood resident Ken Tullo said he’s “not a protesting type of guy, but enough’s enough” and he did not want his daughters to grow up with a fear of speaking freely.
“The current administration cannot laugh at themselves,” Tullo said, “and they don’t want anybody else to laugh.”
Times staff writer Roger Vincent contributed to this report.
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Christopher Buchanan, Hailey Branson-Potts
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Miller-Meeks calls for more free speech, condemns celebrating political violence
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Sep. 20—Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks this past weekend called for more discourse and free speech in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination while also condemning an Oskaloosa teacher who exercised his free speech by celebrating the conservative activist’s death in an inflammatory post on social media.
“We need more debate. We need more discourse. We need more free speech,” she said. “But we also have to hold people accountable.”
The congresswoman’s conflicting message was given during the Jasper County Republican Party Trapshoot fundraiser on Sept. 13 in Newton. Miller-Meeks prefaced her remarks by saying there is a lot of extremism in politics now and that elected officials should be counted on to “bring down the temperature.”
Miller-Meeks also told fellow party members that there is no place for political violence in the United States and that Republicans have to make that known. She also mentioned that she condemned the assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband back in June.
Miller-Meeks claimed Kirk’s main goals in life were to have more debate and more discourse and to support free speech. However, she also said people have to be held accountable for their speech, particularly when it comes to celebrating political violence. She specifically mentioned the incident in Oskaloosa.
According to local media reports, high school art teacher Matt Kargol posted the message “1 Nazi down” on his personal Facebook page after Kirk was killed. The post has since been deleted and the Oskaloosa superintendent recommended he be fired. Miller-Meeks said on Twitter/X that she was “disturbed” by the post.
“Cheering political violence is always wrong and should never be done by those who educate our children,” Miller-Meeks said in the Twitter/X on Sept. 10, noting she reached out to the school district. “I will be contacting the superintendent and principal first thing in the morning to ensure this is addressed immediately.”
The Oskaloosa School Board is scheduled to consider whether to terminate Kargol’s contract at its Sept. 17 meeting. Miller-Meeks told Republicans it is important for them to know their elected leaders want to “tamp down the rhetoric” and make sure people in positions of authority are “held to a higher standard.”
At the trapshoot, Miller-Meeks provided party members with an update that was met with applause.
“That individual has been terminated,” she said. “Now, of course, they’ll have due process, as they should. But at this point in time they’re recommending, well, they’re not terminating, but they recommend termination. But they went through the process. And that’s what we hope for everyone else.”
Other employees across the United States are being reprimanded — or “canceled” — for similar remarks about Kirk’s death. Lawmakers in Iowa have called for the firing of university employees who celebrated Kirk’s death. Vice President J.D. Vance even encouraged people to contact employers.
Free speech is a constitutional right of the United States of America, and it is protected under the First Amendment. However, some speech is not protected by the First Amendment, including incitement of imminent lawless actions, obscenity, defamation and true threats or fighting words.
When it comes to school employees expressing themselves, oftentimes districts develop policies that limit or restrict speech.
For instance, the Newton Community School District’s employee handbook says that teachers who use social media platforms are encouraged to remember the school community may not be able to separate employees as private citizens from their role within the district.
The handbook goes on to say that if an employee’s expression on social media platforms interferes with the district’s operations or prevents the district or employee from functioning efficiently and effectively, they may be subject to discipline up to and including termination.
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In Defense of Jimmy Kimmel’s Stupid Words | Opinion
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Jimmy Kimmel said something dumb. He joked that the gunman who tried to assassinate Charlie Kirk was “one of them,” meaning a conservative.
That remark was stupid, careless, and offensive to at least half the country, myself included. But the shooter’s politics are as relevant as Charlie Kirk’s politics—in that they are not. Yes, the shooter was comfortable with guns and in a relationship with a trans person in the middle of transitioning. None of these facts are relevant. Like many ordinary Americans, he probably holds ideas that contradict the doctrine of either political party. To blame the Left or the Right for this lone-wolf act is total surface-level mentality. You are just phoning it in, missing the complex dynamics for what they really are.
That goes for Jimmy Kimmel and for anybody who flaps their gums for a living. Jimmy knows better and should apologize. But pulling the show? That is where the real story begins.
Kimmel made his remark. Then FCC chair Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, publicly warned local ABC affiliates that they could face investigations and even license trouble if they kept airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! Many of these affiliates are mom-and-pop operations held together with shoestring budgets and minimum-wage reporters. Carr basically put those tiny, vulnerable outlets in the crosshairs. Nexstar, the biggest ABC affiliate owner, caught the signal and yanked the show. Within hours ABC and Disney announced an indefinite suspension. From the outside it reads like the nation’s top broadcast cop leaning on the smallest, poorest stations first, triggering a chain reaction that made ABC fold.
This is where things get dark, and where we should all be worried. The FCC chair crossed the line from free speech into government coercion on behalf of Donald Trump. The U.S. government, at the direction of a president with a long record of punishing critics, has been setting this up for years. It is not a far leap to believe Trump called this shot personally. That is not free speech. That is the president crossing the line into dictatorship.
Protesters leave their signs on a ledge during a protest against ABC removing Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air in front of the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2025.
Benjamin Hanson / Middle East Images via AFP/Getty Images
While it is unfortunate that ABC and its affiliates do not show more backbone, Trump’s FCC went after the local station owners threatening to pull their licenses. They have no legal firepower to fight back and it is not even remotely a fair fight. This is a third-world country shakedown, all because someone who talks for a living said something stupid.
Free speech has become a major liability in a disgustingly litigious society. Say something offensive and the Left might cancel you, and now the Right might cancel you too—unless you are Brian Kilmeade of Fox News suggesting that homeless people be euthanized.
Kilmeade quickly apologized, so it’s all good now. But if Kimmel is going down for saying that Charlie Kirk’s shooter was a conservative, then Kilmeade should definitely have gone down for suggesting we murder homeless people. Or we can realize, like adults, that people who talk all day are bound to say stupid things sometimes. Own the moment, apologize, move on, and do not do it again. Only a clear pattern should cost someone their job.
Meanwhile Trump has sued The New York Times for $15 billion for daring to question his propaganda, and demanded up to $20 billion from CBS before settling for a tiny fraction. This is not about money. It is about using the full force of the executive branch and Trump’s personal lawyers as a battering ram to intimidate institutions. Conservatives who cheer now will regret it when the pendulum swings. A future left-wing president could use the same precedent to target Fox News, Newsmax, or Sinclair under the guise of a revived fairness doctrine.
All of this points toward a dystopian future where late-night comedians are banned because no one is allowed to poke fun at the president, regardless of who is in office. Trump does it to soothe his ego. Democrats will do it because they see he got away with it. And then there are no more funny talk shows at all.
Thinking out loud is precisely what free speech is supposed to protect. If we do not defend the rights of people we disagree with, we do not really believe in free speech. Jimmy Kimmel said something stupid and should apologize. That is where this should end. Instead it looks like it is just getting started.
Jesse Edwards is director of Newsweek Radio & Podcasting, and the host of Newsweek Radio.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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Republicans support free speech, unless it offends them
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Last week, a gunman in Utah shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It was a brutal and tragic event, regardless of one’s politics. And yet the fallout of Kirk’s murder has revealed a disturbing hostility toward free speech on the political right.
Republicans have long cast themselves as defenders of free speech against cancel culture and the censorial impulses of the political left. And there was merit to the argument—Reason has covered many cases of overreach.
But over the last week, MAGA Republicans have scoured social media for government employees posting about Kirk’s murder, contacting employers in an attempt to get them fired. “Kirk’s online defenders have snitch-tagged the employers of government workers over social media posts saying they don’t care about the assassination, that they didn’t like Kirk even as they condemn his assassination, and even criticizing Kirk prior to his assassination,” Reason‘s Christian Britschgi wrote this week. Even for nongovernmental employees, social media detectives apparently compiled a database with tens of thousands of people who criticized Kirk, including their names and employers.
Of course, that’s just people online. It’s not like those with government power are advocating such a thing, right?
“I would think maybe their [broadcast] license should be taken away,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week on Air Force One, about TV networks. “All they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer,” Vice President J.D. Vance said while guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast this week. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”
Vance’s argument bears a striking resemblance to the comments made just a few years ago by his ideological enemies. When certain public and not-so-public figures received backlash for offensive statements, some commentators noted that this was not cancel culture, it was “consequence culture”—people merely experiencing the consequences of their actions.
It’s no surprise that Trump has no principles on free speech—from the beginning of his first term, he called the press the “enemy of the American people.” But Vance’s position marks a notable pivot from just a few months ago.
“Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite,” Vance said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. “Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square, agree or disagree.”
Now, Vance seems less keen on defending someone’s right to offer views that he personally disagrees with. Unfortunately, he’s not alone.
This week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized TV host Jimmy Kimmel for comments made about Kirk during his show. Carr openly intimated that ABC should take action or potentially face reprisal; within hours, the network suspended Kimmel’s show indefinitely. (Trump later praised Carr as “outstanding. He’s a patriot. He loves our country, and he’s a tough guy.”)
Of course, when the opposing party was in power, Carr recognized the error of such a threat. In 2022, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that during the 2020 election, Facebook artificially decreased the spread of a story about Hunter Biden in response to a request from the FBI.
“The government does not evade the First Amendment’s restraints on censoring political speech by jawboning a company into suppressing it—rather, that conduct runs headlong into those constitutional restrictions, as Supreme Court law makes clear,” Carr posted on X in response. Now that government power is in his hands, Carr apparently has fewer qualms about wielding it like that.
Other officials have made their shifting beliefs more blatant.
“Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right. And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don’t feel that way anymore,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) told Semafor on Thursday. “We just can’t let people call each other those kinds of insane things and then be surprised when politicians get shot and the death threats they are receiving and then trying to get extra money for security.”
Lummis’ complaint sounds like a more aggressive version of the heckler’s veto, a “form of censorship, where a speaker’s event is canceled due to the actual or potential hostility of ideological opponents,” wrote Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In Lummis’ telling, the government must punish people for saying offensive or inflammatory things because of how others might respond.
That’s not only completely wrong, it’s unconstitutional.
“The First Amendment to the Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union. “Speech that deeply offends our morality or is hostile to our way of life warrants the same constitutional protection as other speech because the right of free speech is indivisible: When we grant the government the power to suppress controversial ideas, we are all subject to censorship by the state.”
Lummis, Vance, and Carr apparently see no problem policing offensive speech, at least when they’re the ones who are offended.
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Joe Lancaster
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Video of Education Law and Policy Panel on “Federal Efforts to Combat Antisemitism: Restoring Campus Civil Rights or Infringing Academic Freedom?”
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NA Below is a video of the panel on “Federal Efforts to Combat Antisemitism: Restoring Campus Civil Rights or Infringing Academic Freedom?” from the recent Education Law and Policy Conference, co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Defense of Freedom Institute. I was one of the participants. The others were Tyler Coward (Lead Counsel, Government Affairs, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)), Ken Marcus (Chairman & Founder, Brandeis Center), and Sarah Perry (Vice President & Legal Fellow, Defending Education). Carlos Muniz, Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, moderated.
Not surprisingly, Tyler Coward and I were much more critical of the the Trump Administration’s policies than Perry and Marcus. In my view, much of what is being done under the pretext of combatting campus anti-Semitism is actually undermining freedom of speech and academic freedom, and also illegally seeking federal control over state and private universities. But there were more areas of agreement. For example, we all agreed that the federal government cannot properly seek control over university curricula (Perry even said the Trump Administration’s efforts to do so at Harvard gave her “apoplexy”) and that campus protests that devolve into violence and disruption must be banned, and are subject to punishment. Though in my view, not all of the latter qualify as anti-Semitic, and some are properly addressed by state and local law, rather than federal enforcement.
We also all agree that Jews are among the groups protected by Title VI (the federal law banning racial and “national origin” discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funding). This position was once controversial, but has gained widespread cross-ideological acceptance more recently. On the other hand, Marcus and I differed over whether the very broad IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is the right one to apply in this context. In my view- as applied to anti-discrimination law, that definition creates dangers similar to those of overbroad definitions of racism and sexism, traditionally decried by conservatives and libertarians.
I have previously written about campus anti-Israel protests here and about far-left versions of anti-Semitism here (discussing, among other things, how they differ from right-wing/nationalist anti-Semitism).
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Ilya Somin
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Political Witch Hunts and Blacklists: Donald Trump and the New Era of McCarthyism
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A modern-day political inquisition is unfolding in “digital town squares” across the United States. The slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk has become a focal point for a coordinated campaign of silencing critics that chillingly echoes one of the darkest chapters in American history…
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Shannon Brincat
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ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from Trump’s FCC chair
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(CNN) — Disney’s ABC is taking Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show off the air indefinitely amid a controversy over his recent comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said, declining to share any further details.
A representative for Kimmel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The stunning decision came just a few hours after the Trump administration official responsible for licensing ABC’s local stations publicly pressured the company to punish Kimmel.
At least two major owners of ABC-affiliated stations subsequently said they would preempt Kimmel’s show, sparking speculation that the owners were trying to curry favor with the administration. The local media conglomerates are each seeking mergers that would require administration approval.
As Kimmel prepared to tape Wednesday night’s episode in Hollywood, ABC decided to pull the plug, much to the astonishment of the entertainment industry.
Free speech and free expression groups immediately condemned ABC, calling the suspension cowardly, while President Trump, who frequently sparred with Kimmel, celebrated all the way from the UK, where he is on a state visit.
“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “That leaves Jimmy (Fallon) and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”
The indefinite hiatus underscores how politicized opinions and comments around the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk have become, with high-profile campaigns urging employers to fire people who make comments perceived as unflattering about Kirk.
And the president has also gone after media companies, specifically, when they displease him, as with a $15 billion defamation lawsuit he filed against the New York Times this week and lawsuits against other outlets.
During his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel said the MAGA movement was trying to score political points by trying to prove that Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was not one of its own.
“The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
The ABC late-night host’s remarks constituted “the sickest conduct possible,” FCC chair Brendan Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday. Carr suggested his FCC could move to revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way to force Disney to punish Kimmel.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
And speaking on Fox Wednesday night, Carr suggested broadcasters would see more of this kind of pressure in the future.
“We at the FCC are going to force the public interest obligation. There are broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn in their license in to the FCC,” Carr said. “But that’s our job. Again, we’re making some progress now.”
But Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner at the FCC, wrote on X that while “an inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship and control,” the Trump administration “is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”
Speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett after Kimmel’s show was taken off the air, Gomez said “the First Amendment does not allow us, the FCC, to tell broadcasters what they can broadcast.”
“I saw the clip. He did not make any unfounded claims, but he did make a joke, one that others may even find crude, but that is neither illegal nor grounds for companies to capitulate to this administration in ways that violate the First Amendment,” Gomez told CNN. “This sets a dangerous new precedent, and companies must stand firm against any efforts to trade away First Amendment freedom.”
Pro-Trump websites and TV shows began to criticize Kimmel for his remarks on Tuesday, and as the story gained traction on Wednesday, some owners of ABC-affiliated stations felt compelled to speak out.
Local broadcasters get involved
Nexstar, which operates about two dozen ABC affiliates, issued a press release saying it “strongly objects” to Kimmel’s remarks and saying its stations would “replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”
Notably, Nexstar is seeking Trump administration approval to acquire another big US station group, Tegna. The deal requires the FCC to loosen the government’s limits on broadcast station ownership.
Minutes after Nexstar criticized Kimmel publicly, ABC said the show was being yanked nationwide.
Later in the evening, another big station group, Sinclair, said it had also told ABC that it was preempting Kimmel’s show on its ABC-affiliated stations before the network announced its nationwide decision.
Sinclair, too, has business pending before the Trump administration, and it made a bid for Tegna a day before Nexstar stepped in with its bid. The company announced Wednesday night that it will air a one-hour special tribute to Kirk on Friday night in Kimmel’s usual time slot.
Following ABC’s action to indefinitely pull Kimmel’s show off the air, Sinclair issued a statement saying the late-night host’s suspension “is not enough” and called on the network, the FCC and Kimmel to go further.
“Sinclair will not lift the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability,” the company said in its statement. “Regardless of ABC’s plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return Jimmy Kimmel Live! to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform.”
Sinclair said it demanded Kimmel directly apologize to the Kirk family and make a “meaningful” donation to Kirk’s family and his organization, Turning Point USA.
The FCC’s role
The FCC regulates the public airwaves, including broadcast signals and content. Before Trump appointed Carr to lead the agency, the FCC, for the most part, had taken a hands-off approach to broadcasters’ political content in recent years.
But Carr has taken a broader view of the FCC’s remit to serve the public interest, and has served as a political attack dog for Trump, threatening his perceived enemies in the broadcast media.
“I can’t imagine another time when we’ve had local broadcasters tell a national programmer like Disney that your content no longer meets the needs and the values of our community,” Carr told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday. “So this is an important turning point.”
The Center for American Rights, which has previously lodged bias complaints against NBC, ABC and CBS, on Wednesday filed a complaint with the FCC over Kimmel’s comments, writing that “it is no defense to say that Kimmel was engaging in satire or late-night comedy rather than traditional news.”
“ABC’s affiliates need to step up and hold ABC accountable as a network for passing through material that fails to respect the public-interest standard to which they are held,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, wrote in the complaint. “Disney as ABC’s corporate owner needs to act directly to correct this problem.”
SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, said Wednesday night that it “condemns” the suspension of Kimmel’s show.
“Our society depends on freedom of expression. Suppression of free speech and retaliation for speaking out on significant issues of public concern run counter to the fundamental rights we all rely on,” the union said in its statement.
“The decision to suspend airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! is the type of suppression and retaliation that endangers everyone’s freedoms.”
Kimmel has also been a frequent target of President Trump’s ire. Shortly after CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show — a move Carr publicly celebrated — Trump suggested that “Next up will be an even less talented Jimmy Kimmel.”
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Elizabeth Wagmeister, Liam Reilly and CNN
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Michigan Republicans claim to defend free speech while pushing bills to silence it
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Michigan Republicans have branded themselves as defenders of free expression, but a recent spate of bills threatens to erode the very First Amendment rights they claim to defend.
A group of GOP lawmakers recently introduced a House bill, called the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act,” that would ban all online pornography, including depictions or descriptions of transgender people. The bill makes it a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison to “distribute or make available” prohibited content, including what it describes as “a disconnection between biology and gender.”
“Don’t make it, don’t share it, don’t view it,” lead sponsor Rep. Josh Schriver, R-Oxford, wrote on social media, alongside a call to add porn distributors to the sex offender registry. He said the measure was a tool to “defend children” and “safeguard our communities.”
The bill flies in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-held position that pornography is protected under the First Amendment unless it meets a narrow definition of obscenity.
Schriver is also among the Republicans who condemned negative remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk after he was fatally shot in Utah on Sept. 10. But many of those remarks just pointed out that Kirk stoked divisions and inflamed tensions across the country with racist, misogynistic, and homophobic rhetoric.
“The celebration of this assassination is an encouragement for more,” Schriver said in a newsletter Monday, urging the government to “raid online networks to end pipelines of violence.”
That rhetoric is at odds with his own remarks a year ago, when he declared in a newsletter, “No Michigan resident should fear jail time or criminal charges for exercising their 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech.”
Schriver previously lost his committee assignments after promoting the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
On Tuesday, Republicans in the House passed a bill that would criminalize protesting in the street without a permit. Blocking traffic, which is currently a civil infraction, would become a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and fines.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, Republicans said they were expressing their First Amendment rights when they jammed the streets in Lansing and ignored stay-at-home orders. They claimed Democrats were the enemies of free speech.
After the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and the wounding of another, Michigan Republicans were largely quiet, even when it was discovered that the shooting suspect Vance Boelter created a hit list for six Michigan Democrats.
By contrast, when Michigan Republicans claimed President Donald Trump was in danger of political violence, they introduced a bill in May that would criminalize the phrase “8647,” which they claim is a coded call for Trump’s assassination.
In reality, the number “86” is commonly meant to expel or discard, like removing a drunk person from a bar, while “47” is a reference to Trump’s role as the 47th president.
In the case of Rep. Matt Maddock, who co-sponsored both the porn ban and the “8647” bill, the contradictions are even more glaring. He has repeatedly cast himself as a free speech defender and filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Democratic leaders earlier this year for rejecting the use of tax dollars for political mailers.
Just a day before Kirk was shot, Maddock introduced a “free speech bill” aimed at protecting conservative student journalists from censorship.
“Suppression of conservative free speech is under constant attack and ridicule by the left in schools,” he wrote on X. “This protects free speech and allows students to bring civil action against the suppressor.”
Maddock also said Kirk “embodied the best of the 1st Amendment.”
But the Milford Republican has also sponsored proposals that would muzzle others. In 2021, he introduced the “Fact Checker Registration Act,” which would have forced fact-checkers to register with the state and post $1 million bonds. Democrats and others called it an affront to free speech.
At a fundraiser last year for the Trump “fake electors,” who included Maddock’s wife Meshawn Maddock, the lawmaker unleashed his own incendiary rhetoric, warning that the prosecutions of Republicans could lead to bloodshed.
“Someone’s going to get so pissed off, they’re going to shoot someone,” he said after claiming Democrats were communists. “That’s what’s going to happen. Or we’re going to have a civil war or some sort of revolution. That’s where this is going. And when that happens, we’re going to get squashed. The people here are going to be the first ones to go.”
The extent of Republicans’ concerns for speech and violence shift based on the situation. After Kirk’s death, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Sen. Jeremy Moss, both Democrats, faced death threats and bomb scares. GOP voices were largely silent.
But when people said Kirk’s hateful rhetoric helped fuel the violence that claimed his life, Republicans sought to silence their free speech, either through legislation or calling for their firings.
Their self-described loyalty to the U.S. Constitution also oscillates. Rep. Joseph Fox, another Republican sponsor of the porn ban, pushed a bill in 2023 requiring schools to teach that America was founded on “Christian ethics,” a measure Democrats said clearly violates the separation of church and state.
Rep. Jennifer Wortz, also a co-sponsor of the anti-porn bill, was called “a staunch free speech advocate” when she was endorsed last year by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by political activist David Koch.
Republicans also have a pattern of dismissing gun violence until one of their own is killed. It’s usually “thoughts and prayers” when children are gunned down in schools. But after Kirk was killed, Republicans demanded new laws to crack down on speech they dislike and turned their ire on liberals, instead of the man who pulled the trigger.
The national party is no different. Seizing on the fear, anger, and division, Trump said Wednesday he plans to designate the anti-facism group Antifa “a terrorist organization,” even though he pardoned about 1,500 people convicted for their role in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Two of the most violent groups that day were the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, far-right extremist organizations that have long histories of violence and intimidation. Their leaders were convicted of trying to overthrow the government through force.
Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi recently said the administration would “go after” so-called hate speech, only to backtrack when pressed about First Amendment limits. Outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump was asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl about Bondi’s plan to “go after hate speech.”
Trump responded, “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC.”
Speaking of ABC, the network on Wednesday indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show following comments he made about Kirk’s killing, including that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
He’s not wrong.
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Steve Neavling
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Disney, ABC hit with boycott calls after Jimmy Kimmel Live! pulled from air
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ABC News and Disney are facing boycott calls on the heels of Jimmy Kimmel Live! being pulled from the air indefinitely on Wednesday over remarks made by the host after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Newsweek reached out to Disney via email for comment.
Why It Matters
Broadcasters pulling a national late‑night show raises questions about free expression, the power of major station groups to shape local lineups and potential regulatory pressure on networks.
Nexstar’s decision affects dozens of ABC affiliates and advertisers, and the FCC chair’s public comments have prompted concerns from civil‑liberties groups.
Sinclair Inc. media company also pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show from its ABC affiliates and called on the late-night show host to apologize to the family of Kirk and donate to the family and Turning Point USA.
What To Know
ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be “pre‑empted indefinitely.”
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said in a statement.
The controversy centers on remarks Kimmel made in a monologue after Kirk’s death in which he floated that the suspect in the killing, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, could be aligned with “the MAGA gang” or possibly “one of them.”
Kimmel also took a swipe at President Donald Trump’s answer to a reporter asking him how he was holding up after Kirk’s fatal shooting.
Social media erupted in backlash and praise to Kimmel’s show being pulled Wednesday night.
Brian Krassenstein, political commentator who gained social media notoriety for blasting Trump, posted to X on Wednesday: “BOYCOTT ALERT! Disney/ABC just caved & pulled Jimmy Kimmel for political reasons. Nexstar — which owns The CW + 200+ local ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX stations — is part of the same machine.”
“💥 Boycott Disney. Boycott Nexstar. Boycott their advertisers. Hit them where it hurts: the $$$. RESHARE,” his post concluded.
Fred Guttenberg, father of slain Parkland shooting victim, also posted on X Wednesday: “The 2A killed the First Amendment. @jimmykimmel was right. If my memory is correct, these MAGAT’s ran against cancel culture. Shame on @ABCNetwork. My television will never be on ABC ever again.”
Podcast host and YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen reacted on Bluesky Wednesday, saying, “See ya, Hulu.” The post included a picture of a canceled subscription.
Trump praised the decision to pull Kimmel’s show indefinitely, saying on Truth Social, “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”
The president added, “Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”
ABC News signage gets installed at the Pennsylvania Convention Center one day before the presidential debate on September 9, 2024, in Philadelphia. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
What People Are Saying
Columnist and public speaker Wajahat Ali, on X Wednesday: “Every major talent that works for ABC and Disney should refuse to show up for work until Jimmy Kimmel is reinstated. Marvel movies need to shutdown. Ditto the sitcoms. Collective boycott. Corporations love money more than anything, & this will really harm them and force them to do the right thing.”
Podcast host Joanne Carducci, known as JoJoFromJerz, on X Wednesday: “Boycott everything affiliated with ABC and Disney. Pass it on.”
Democratic strategist Keith Edwards, on X Wednesday: “Boycott Disney. Cancel Hulu. Don’t let them get away with this.”
Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator from Massachusetts, on X Wednesday: “First Colbert, now Kimmel. Last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump’s approval. Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy. It sure looks like giant media companies are enabling his authoritarianism.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, on X Wednesday: “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values. I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.”
DNC Chair Ken Martin, in a statement sent to Newsweek Wednesday night via email: “The state under Donald Trump has amassed a chilling record of restricting speech, extorting private companies, and dropping the full weight of the government censorship hammer on First Amendment rights. This is no exaggeration. Trump’s attorney general has directly confirmed that they’ll come after you for your speech and now his FCC chair has doubled down. It’s not the bully pulpit anymore — it’s the thought police presidency.”
What Happens Next
ABC’s suspension is open-ended; the network and its affiliates may negotiate next steps internally, and Nexstar’s position could influence other station groups’ programming choices.
Regulatory filings or formal complaints to the FCC could follow, as the agency has received public attention in the aftermath of Carr’s statements.
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‘The free market is handling it just fine’: How left and right responded to Charlie Kirk’s murder
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The assassination of Charlie Kirk is reorienting the policies of the conservative movement, with major Trump administration leaders such as Vice President J.D. Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller vowing to launch a vast crackdown on left-wing groups that they say are implicitly responsible for inspiring political violence. Some members of the conservative movement are also conducting a campaign of mass cancellation against people who have justified the murder of Kirk on social media.
In the latest episode of Free Media, I discussed with Amber Duke the responses to Kirk’s shocking death from conservatives, the Trump administration, and the mainstream media—as well as our own personal reactions. For her part, Duke was understandably dismayed by the sheer number of people she saw on social media who seemed to approve of Kirk’s demise.
“It’s very disheartening, because I obviously shared a lot of Charlie’s views, as did many people in the conservative movement,” says Duke. “To know so many average people would celebrate our death if that happened to us is quite terrifying.”
Duke said that while she didn’t think people should be canceled for merely criticizing Kirk, people who evince support for his assassination are in a separate category; this is materially different from the kinds of cancellations spearheaded by woke progressives, she says.
While I agreed that I’ve seen far too many pro-murder takes from random and obscure people, I noted that the response from major figures, including people who clearly did not agree with Kirk, was overwhelmingly to condemn the violence as appalling. I also questioned whether it was fair to blame the infrastructure of the left—activist groups, wealthy liberal donors, academia—for the actions of a lone figure who does not seem particularly connected to any broader movement.
“It was online radicalism, not brainwashed by a professor, or brainwashed by George Soros,” I say. “There’s a kind of, maybe conspiratorial thinking is too unfair, but it’s, ‘They’re out to get you…the billionaires are out to get you.’ That sounds itself like leftist thinking. This person was radicalized by his peer group online, probably.”
Duke and I definitely agreed, however, on the foolishness of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s response to the tragedy, which was to vow to take legal action against so-called hate speech.
“She just used the left’s favorite turn of phrase to criminalize free speech,” says Duke. “We don’t need the DOJ to arrest people for not celebrating Charlie Kirk. The free market is handling it just fine.”
Watch the full episode here, and subscribe to both the ReasonTV and Free Media YouTube channels.
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Robby Soave
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The perverse incentives for snitch-tagging teachers who criticized Charlie Kirk
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It’s often said that the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular speech. Benign comments about the weather or statements in support of things everyone already likes aren’t likely to be the subject of government censorship.
In the case of First Amendment protections for government workers’ off-the-job speech, this dynamic is reversed.
Public employees have robust protections against being fired for such speech, unless it proves exceptionally unpopular.
This feature of First Amendment jurisprudence, and the bad incentives it creates for cancel culture campaigns, is on full display following the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk last week.
In the wake of the conservative influencer’s murder, a lot of people said unkind, uncharitable, and even obscene things about the man, including, in some cases, explicit praise for his assassination.
In a country where some 22 million civilians are employed by the government, the pool of people who’ve made nasty comments about Kirk naturally includes some public sector workers.
Public school teachers seem to be overrepresented in this demographic. They’ve become a specific target of conservatives’ cancelation campaigns.
Unlike most private employees who can be fired at will, government employees have robust protections against being fired for their off-the-job speech.
As Eugene Volokh detailed in a post at The Volokh Conspiracy shortly after Kirk’s death, government employees can only be disciplined for their speech when that speech is said as part of their job duties, the speech is not a matter of public concern, and the damage of the speech to the government’s own ability to do its job is outweighed by the benefit of the speech.
Volokh stresses that these protections even cover comments supporting violence, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Rankin v. McPherson, in which a majority of justices ruled that a police department employee’s firing for praising the Ronald Reagan assassination in a private conversation violated the First Amendment.
The facts of that case would seem to offer a pretty close parallel to public school teachers who praised Kirk’s assassination on social media. Their speech was not made on the job, and speech about Kirk’s assassination is obviously a matter of public concern.
At first blush, this would suggest that even government employees who explicitly praised Kirk’s assassination have First Amendment protections against being fired for that speech, however distasteful.
Whether or not they can, in fact, be fired turns on how much their comments disrupt government operations.
Consequently, the more outrage that can be directed at a particular public worker’s employer, and the more of a headache retaining that worker becomes as a result, the less the First Amendment will protect them from losing their job.
That creates a powerful, toxic incentive to gin up anger at individual government workers as a means of erasing First Amendment protections they have for off-the-job speech.
Organic outrage about a public employee’s private statements from people who heard them directly and have to interface with that person is one thing.
In the case of comments made on social media, people who would never have to deal with a government worker can see their intemperate thoughts and use them to get them fired.
This encourages Kirk’s supporters to actively go hunting for comments they find offensive. The harm created by those statements becomes almost self-inflicted.
It’s hard to imagine a better recipe for creating cancel culture mobs.
Over at National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that “the critique of cancel culture wasn’t intended to protect all speech from normative judgment, but to preserve the necessary space for democratic deliberation and contestation.”
Professionally penalizing people for reveling in Kirk’s assassination, he argues, is distinct from going after people for merely expressing a negative view of him.
That’s a reasonable distinction to draw. But it misses the fact that cancel culture pile-ons are not particularly discerning once they get going. Already, we’re seeing efforts to identify people who literally celebrated Kirk’s death morph into efforts to get people fired for merely posting something critical about him.
Kirk’s online defenders have snitch-tagged the employers of government workers over social media posts saying they don’t care about the assassination, that they didn’t like Kirk even as they condemn his assassination, and even criticizing Kirk prior to his assassination.
With enough online outrage, even relatively benign critical comments could potentially become firing offenses.
This is particularly concerning given that government officials themselves are urging people to be outraged.
“So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility,” said Vice President J.D. Vance while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast yesterday.
Texas’ education commissioner has encouraged school superintendents to report teachers’ “inappropriate comments” to state officials, as have the top education officials in Florida and Oklahoma.
There’s always been the thicker critique of cancel culture made by folks like Reason‘s Robby Soave, who condemned efforts to go hunting for the worst comments made by nonpublic figures in the heat of the moment to their small social media followings.
It makes for a less vindictive world and more robust discourse when we can agree to avoid massive pile-ons of even repugnant comments made in that context.
Kirk was undoubtedly a polarizing figure. The strong feelings, both negative and positive, that he elicited in people are one reason his murder has become such a huge public conversation.
It’s inevitable in that context that some people will say intemperate, mean-spirited things about the man.
It’s foolish to trust online snitch-taggers to be judicious in determining who they’re going to try to get fired, particularly when the more outrage they can generate serves to route around First Amendment protections for government workers’ speech.
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Christian Britschgi
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Trump administration joins Republicans’ campaign to police speech in reaction to Kirk’s murder
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By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and KONSTANTIN TOROPIN
Vice President JD Vance on Monday jumped onto the conservative movement demanding consequences for those who have cheered Charlie Kirk’s killing, calling on the public to turn in anyone who says distasteful things about the assassination of his friend and political ally.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” Vance urged listeners on the slain activist’s podcast Monday. “And hell, call their employer.”
Vance’s call also included a vow to target some of the biggest funders of liberal causes as conservatives stepped up their targeting of private individuals for their comments about the killing. It marked an escalation in a campaign that some warned invoked some of the darkest chapters of American history.
“The government involvement in this does inch this closer to looking like McCarthyism,” said Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, referring to the 1950s campaign to root out communists that led to false allegations and ruined careers. “It was not a shining moment for free expression.”
Campaign broadens to those who quote Kirk critically
Republican-controlled states such as Florida, Oklahoma and Texas have launched investigations of teachers accused of inappropriate statements after last week’s assassination. The U.S. military has invited members of the public to report those who “celebrate or mock” the killing and said some troops have already been removed for their comments.
At the same time, the Trump administration has vowed to target what it contends is a “vast” liberal network that inspired the shooter, even as authorities maintain it appears he acted alone and the investigation is ongoing.
The campaign has broadened to include even those whose statements were critical of Kirk without celebrating his assassination.
The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah, an opinion columnist, for posts on the day of the shooting that lamented how “white America” was not ready to solve gun violence and that quoted Kirk denigrating the intelligence of prominent Black women such as Michelle Obama.
PEN America, a press freedom group, warned in a statement that firings like Attiah’s “risk creating a chilling effect.”
Goldstein worried there were many cases of people targeted for simply quoting Kirk or failing to mourn his passing adequately. “That’s one of the key symptoms of cancel culture,” he said. “Trying to paint everyone with the same brush.”
Conservatives coined the term cancel culture for what they claimed was persecution of those on the right for their views, especially related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, leading to campaigns to get regular people fired.
It was a significant cause for President Donald Trum p, who pledged to end it during his campaign last year. But after the Kirk killing, he and his administration have instead leaned into it from the right.
A hero to conservatives, a provocateur to many Democrats
A father of two and a Christian conservative, Kirk was a hero to many Trump Republicans for his fiery warnings about the dangers of Democrats and ability to organize young voters. But Kirk also was a provocateur and supporter of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss who left a long record of partisan quips that enraged many on the left.
“According to Kirk, empathy is a made-up new-age term, so keep the jokes coming. It’s what he would have wanted,” read one post on X that Melvin Villaver Jr., a Clemson University music professor, re-posted the day of the killing, according to a screenshot circulated by college Republicans demanding his firing. Clemson eventually fired one staffer and suspended Villaver and another professor after intense pressure from elected South Carolina Republican officials.
Other targeted posters, such as Army Lt. Col. Christopher Ladnier, simply quoted Kirk on the day of his assassination. This included Kirk calling the Civil Rights Act a “beast” that “has now turned into an anti-white weapon,” his criticism of Martin Luther King Jr. and his statement that some gun deaths are the cost of a robust Second Amendment.
Ladnier, who has been targeted by conservative activists online, said in a Facebook message to The Associated Press that he would respond “when/if” his chain of command takes action.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott approvingly posted a video of a Texas Tech University student who was arrested Friday after a confrontation at a campus vigil for Kirk, writing: “This is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Texas Tech.”
Some people targeted have been victims of mistaken identity.
A school district in rural Elkhorn, Wisconsin, reported receiving more than 800 messages after one conservative influencer mistakenly identified an associate principal at an elementary school as celebrating Kirk’s death.
Top Republicans vow to go after ‘domestic terrorist network’
Authorities say Kirk was shot by 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who grew up in a conservative household in southern Utah but was enmeshed in “leftist ideology,” according to the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox.
Cox said investigators may reveal more about what motivated the attack after Robinson’s initial court appearance, scheduled for Tuesday. The governor said the suspect, who allegedly carved memes onto his bullet casings, appeared radicalized by the “dark corners of the internet.”
On Monday, Vance was joined on Kirk’s podcast by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, who vowed to crack down on what he called the “vast domestic terrorist network” he blamed for Kirk’s death.
Alluding to free speech concerns, Vance said: “You have the crazies on the far left that say, ’Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech.’”
But he added: “No no no! We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” — a reference to non-governmental organizations.
The White House did not immediately return a request seeking clarity on the remarks, including which groups might be targeted.
The idea of a retribution campaign against individuals or groups for expressing a particular viewpoint has alarmed many.
“Just having that ideology, just believing differently than some other American is not illegal,” Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said on CNN on Sunday.
Instead, he said any groups that have been involved in illegal or violent acts should be targeted.
Killing as a pretext to go after political rivals
On Kirk’s show, Vance talked about the need for unity after the assassination, but then dismissed it as impossible given what he described as the left’s embrace of political violence. Naming two foundations that fund a wide range of liberal causes, Vance said: “There is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers.”
Democratic officials have roundly condemned Kirk’s murder. Democrats also have been victims of political violence recently, including the June assassination of the speaker of the Minnesota House and her husband, and the 2022 beating of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home.
Caitlin Legacki of Stop Government Censorship, formed to fight the Trump administration’s use of government against its political rivals, said it was one thing for people making abhorrent statements to face consequences.
“When we get concerned is when there appears to be a concerted effort in the government to use this tragedy to punish political opponents,” she said.
Associated Press writers Collin Binkley and Chris Megerian in Washington; Meg Kinnard in Chapin, South Carolina; Juan Lozano in Houston, and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
Originally Published:
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The Associated Press
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