<ABC’s indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday was, by all appearances, an act of government-coerced censorship designed to punish speech that the White House dislikes. After Kimmel bemoaned that “the MAGA gang” sought to exploit Charlie Kirk’s murder, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr urged local affiliates to drop his late-night show. He also suggested that the FCC might penalize ABC and its affiliates if they did not cancel Kimmel, warning that the agency would undertake “additional work” to bring any necessary “remedies.” The message was clear: ABC and its affiliates could either “change conduct” or face the wrath of the FCC, including the revocation of broadcast licenses. (So could Disney, which owns ABC.) “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr proclaimed. The targets of his ire responded accordingly: Local affiliates promptly yanked Kimmel’s show, and ABC removed the host until further notice, a move that President Donald Trump promptly praised.

The FCC’s retaliation against Kimmel’s criticism is a textbook violation of the First Amendment, as the agency’s lone Democratic commissioner has pointed out. Carr and other Republicans claimed the host falsely stated that Kirk’s alleged assassin was himself MAGA. But that doesn’t matter: The First Amendment generally prohibits the government from censoring even false or misleading speech, with no carve-out for opinionated comedians.

Yet many conservatives are defending or even celebrating this attack on free expression, mocking progressives for ostensibly getting a taste of their own medicine. They’ve argued that the Biden administration set this precedent when it urged social media companies to throttle COVID misinformation during the pandemic. And they claim that, with liberal support, the Supreme Court let the Biden administration off the hook for this purported misdeed in 2024’s Murthy v. Missouri. So what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and the Trump administration, through Carr, may now legally coerce ABC into censoring Kimmel. This argument that Murthy paved the way for Kimmel’s suspension has been made by Republican former Federal Election Commission Commissioner Brad Smith, conservative litigator Ted Frank, Washington Post columnist Jason Willick, GOP policy wonk Avik Roy, and plenty of other commentators on the right.

This reaction is preposterous on two levels. First, it’s just wrong to equate the Biden administration’s efforts to slow COVID misinformation with the Trump administration’s frontal assault on ABC. Carr’s threats against the network are far more direct and dangerous than anything Biden’s team ever did to curb lies about the virus or the vaccine. Second, the Supreme Court did not say in Murthy that the government can strong-arm private companies into silencing speech. Rather, it tossed the case on standing grounds, largely because it found no real evidence of unconstitutional censorship. Just a month earlier, however, the court unanimously reaffirmed that the First Amendment forbids the government from coercing companies into suppressing expression.

So the law is clear: Government officials can’t strong-arm private companies into censorship viewpoints they dislike. Carr’s pressure on ABC to cancel Kimmel appears to be flagrantly unconstitutional. And any attempt to justify it on the right is probably best understood as a cynical bid to embrace the Trump administration’s war on free speech as well-deserved comeuppance for a censorious left.

The facts of Murthy demonstrate why there is no real comparison between that case and Carr’s coercion of ABC. The plaintiffs, a group of individuals and red states, accused the Biden administration of forcing social media platforms into taking down COVID misinformation at risk of punishment by the state. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, embraced this fiction and ruled that the government had acted unconstitutionally. But when Doughty’s decision reached the Supreme Court, the case quickly fell apart. It turned out that the judge had selectively misquoted the record to make it seem like Biden officials had threatened platforms with penalties if they did not comply with the White House’s demands. In reality, though, no such direct coercion occurred. The plaintiffs built their argument on egregious factual misrepresentations which Doughty eagerly embraced. His opinion repeatedly misquoted key pieces of evidence to accuse officials of saying things that they did not....>

<....In June 2024, the Supreme Court reversed Doughty by a 6–3 vote, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing the majority opinion. Barrett bristled with evident frustration over the district court’s distortion of the record; “unfortunately,” she explained, many of his factual findings “appear to be clearly erroneous.” She tossed out the case because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate standing. That was primarily because they could not show that the Biden administration actually directed the removal of any posts even after exhaustive discovery.

Murthy was therefore a narrow decision that avoided the merits entirely. But the Supreme Court did confront the question of unlawful coercion, or “jawboning,” one month earlier in NRA v. Vullo. In that case, the National Rifle Association accused New York regulators of pressuring banks and insurers to cut ties with the organization in retaliation against its advocacy for gun rights. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor held that New York’s conduct, if proved, ran afoul of the First Amendment. “Viewpoint discrimination is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society,” Sotomayor wrote. And it is no less harmful when done by a corporation on behalf of the state. So, the justice explained, “a government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf.”

In other words, under the First Amendment, “a government official cannot do indirectly what she is barred from doing directly.” They may not retaliate against expression through the threat of “regulatory hostility” toward “private intermediaries.”

This is the constitutional rule that is relevant to Kimmel’s firing. And it illustrates why this episode is such an affront to the First Amendment. Carr made it abundantly clear that ABC, along with local affiliates, would face adverse regulatory action if they did not pull Kimmel’s late-night show. Nexstar, which owns many of those affiliates, almost immediately yanked the show. And Nexstar is currently trying to acquire its rival—a move that would require FCC approval.

No one at the company could miss the implication of Carr’s threat. If Nexstar did not punish Kimmel for his speech, the FCC chair would do things “the hard way.” That almost certainly meant heightened scrutiny, and perhaps rejection, of Nexstar’s pending acquisition. It could also mean revocation of Nexstar and ABC’s broadcast licenses. That is plainly how this FCC does business. Earlier this year, when Paramount sought the agency’s approval to combine with Skydance, the company handed Trump $16 million in a settlement and axed Stephen Colbert’s show. It was hard to see those moves as anything but a concession designed to secure the FCC’s approval of the deal. (Sure enough, the agency blessed the merger shortly thereafter.)

At a bare minimum, the facts of Kimmel’s cancellation lay out an eminently plausible infringement on the First Amendment. The companies that create and carry the show pulled it just hours after Carr threatened to pull their broadcast licenses. If anything, the censorship here is even clearer than it was in Vullo. And Murthy does not stand in the way of these companies, or Kimmel himself, bringing a free speech claim against the FCC—that is, if they are not too cowed by the prospect of even more punishment. Even this Supreme Court might affirm an injunction prohibiting retaliation against Kimmel’s commentary, a decision it could tout as principled consistency after Murthy and Vullo.

When the NRA faced alleged retaliation for its free speech by Democratic politicians, it was the American Civil Liberties Union that volunteered to defend its rights in court. The ACLU explained its decision to represent a pro-gun group by explaining: “President Trump has already promised to use the power of the government to go after his political adversaries. … The timing couldn’t be better for drawing a bright line that would help bind a future Trump administration and other government officials who misuse their power.” Liberal advocates at the nation’s premier civil liberties organization understand that government coercion of censorship is a threat no matter which party is behind it. It’s self-styled conservatives who’ve thrown that principle out the window the moment it’s their turn to censor.>

<White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is good at her job. Not only does she fulfill the traditional duty of spokesperson for President Donald Trump, but she also serves as chief gaslighter of the nation. Leavitt consistently contradicts reality with ease — it’s a skill that would cause mental collapse in a person with a conscience. On Tuesday, this knack for playing dumb was on full display when she was asked by a reporter about a telling page from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book, which was revealed earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal.

The book, compiled by Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, included a photo of Epstein holding what the Journal described as “a poster board-sized check for $22,500.” Presented to him by Joel Pashcow, a businessman, Mar-a-Lago member and mutual friend of Epstein and Trump, the fake check was a sort of in-joke, made to appear as if Trump had sent it to Epstein. The caption said it was for a “fully depreciated” woman that Epstein was selling to Trump.

When asked about the photo, Leavitt performed a clever trick. “It is not Donald Trump’s signature on that check. The president did not sign that check.”

No one had accused Trump of signing the check. Leavitt, who isn’t as stupid as she pretends, knew full well what was going on. Pashcow was teasing his two friends by suggesting Trump was dating a woman that Epstein had “depreciated.” The joke’s premise was that both Epstein and Trump saw women not as human beings, but as objects to be used however men see fit. As the word “depreciation” suggests, the metaphor here is that this woman was more like a car than a person; she had no rights that a man needed to respect.

Leavitt wasn’t alone in trying to ignore the obvious. Many MAGA propagandists have desperately denied the evidence of how Trump clearly feels about women. After meeting with a group of Epstein survivors on Sept. 3, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., laughably tweeted that Trump “is COMMITTED to protecting women and kids.” The president himself, however, has frequently revealed — and indeed, boasted about — his ugly views of women.

On Monday, Trump gave a speech supposedly about religious liberty in which he complained that domestic violence is treated as a crime — and was interfering with statistics that should have shown, he said, a bigger reduction of crime in Washington, D.C., while its police force has been under federal control. “Much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime,” he said. “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime.”

White House spin on Epstein spirals out of control

That “little fight” language was a ham-fisted effort to pretend he was not talking about violence. But of course he was. Cops don’t arrest men for a “little fight,” but for violence or serious threats — just as they would if the victim were a stranger to the abuser. The president’s comments were in line with his long history of similar language. In the deposition he gave while facing a civil lawsuit for sexually assaulting journalist E. Jean Carroll, Trump argued that elite men have been entitled to abuse women for “the last million years.” When he was asked later on CNN what he meant, Trump clarified that, “fortunately,” that was reserved for privileged men like him.

Leavitt’s efforts to maneuver her way around the implications of the check photo were slick enough, but undermined by two important points. First, the president’s public attitudes about women are in keeping with the misogyny behind Pashcow’s attempt at humor. Then there are the experiences of at least three women who felt victimized in the world inhabited by Trump’s close friend Epstein and those in his orbit.

Stacey Williams, a model who casually dated Epstein in the 1990s, has accused the president of sexually assaulting her in Trump Tower in 1993. She has said that Epstein brought her to meet Trump, who immediately put his hands “all over my breasts” while he and Epstein grinned at each other. Williams said she felt the whole thing was a “twisted game” Epstein was playing. She is one of over two dozen women who have told similar stories about Trump, who has repeatedly denied all such allegations and has never been charged with any such crime.

Maria Farmer was profiled in the New York Times in 2019 as being one of the first women who tried to take down Epstein, alleging he and Maxwell attacked her and abused her sister. Farmer also described an unsettling encounter with Trump. When he stopped by Epstein’s office for a visit, Trump allegedly eyed “her before Mr. Epstein informed him that ‘she’s not for you,'” the Times reported....>

<....Anouska De Georgiou has accused Epstein of trafficking her. Like most of his and Maxwell’s alleged victims, De Georgiou told NBC News she was lured into his world as a teen by all the glamour and wealth, only to find herself being manipulated into sexual abuse. “By the time I was being raped, it was too late” to escape the extensive grooming, she alleged. While De Georgiou doesn’t speak about her experience often, a contemporary account published by London’s Sunday Mirror in 1997 claimed that she had dated Trump following her years with Epstein. “Several American millionaires already had their eyes on Anouska,” the story read. “But she was there with Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who has introduced several of her attractive friends to the property developer.” At the time, De Georgiou was 20 and Trump was 50.

These stories are all different, but they all offer us glimpses of the world Pashcow was referring to with his joke about Trump purchasing a “depreciated” woman from Epstein.

The larger context of the birthday book offers more insight. As Jessica Winter of the New Yorker explained, the whole book is a document of “hideous, maggot-crawling depravity” that “reads like a catalogue raisonné of outsider art by registered sex offenders.” It’s full of cartoons and jokes about Epstein’s sexual proclivities, many of which winkingly hint at pedophilia. The birthday card attributed to Trump features a female figure with barely-there breasts — much different than the president’s usual Playboy ideals of womanhood — that fit right into that larger, disturbing picture. It’s not just a world where men view women as objects to be used, bought and sold. It’s one where these men are downright delighted with themselves for behaving this way.

All too often, men like this get away with these attitudes because they convince enough people that, while it may be gross, it’s ultimately just decadent, consensual behavior that harms no one else. But the stories told by Epstein and Trump’s staggering number of accusers reveal an uncomfortable truth: Dehumanizing women, like dehumanizing any group of people, is a predicate to violence.

When Karoline Leavitt gets behind the podium in the Brady Briefing Room and excuses, lies or otherwise deflects inquiry into Trump’s association with Epstein, she’s contributing to a system that allows women and girls to be abused every day without consequence. It’s why her unblinking shamelessness is so unnerving. On some level, no matter what she tells herself at night, she is participating in the cover-up of details related to a reported sex trafficking ring.

How does she even begin to sleep?>

<Few things make President Donald Trump angrier than the memory of his two impeachments. Despite his return to the White House this year, he frequently complains privately and publicly about Democrats’ efforts to remove him from office in his first term. Trump, to this day, insists that he did nothing wrong, calling both impeachments “witch hunts.”

And he is fearful that he might have to go through it all again.

The party out of power tends to do well in midterm elections, and Trump remembers how Democrats wielded the majority after capturing the House of Representatives in 2018. If the Democrats win control of one chamber of Congress next year—they are the slight favorites in the House, whereas the Senate would be harder—they won’t just have the ability to block whatever remains of Trump’s lame-duck legislative agenda. Armed with the power of the subpoena, they would also be able to open investigations into the Trump administration, dragging key officials to the Hill for embarrassing, headline-grabbing hearings. And even a simple majority in the House would allow Democrats the chance to impeach Trump for a third time.

The specter of investigations and impeachment has fueled many of the president’s most dramatic actions in recent weeks, three senior White House officials and two close outside allies told me. Trump’s unprecedented (and, Democrats say, illegal) mid-decade redistricting push, the deployment of the National Guard to Washington, his unceasing pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates—all can be seen as part of a sweeping, frantic attempt to swing next year’s midterm elections.

The president has told confidants that he does not want a repeat of what happened after Republicans lost control in 2018 and is not going to cost himself this time by adhering to political norms. He has been pushing aides to focus on the midterms, and he is making more of an effort than he did seven years ago to nationalize the races and to motivate Republican voters who haven’t turned out when his name isn’t on the ballot. Trump believes that not just the tenor of his final two years in office, but the shape of his legacy as a whole, ride on whether he can reverse historical political trends and hold on to the House and the Senate in 2026.

“The president believes that he stayed in his lane” in 2018—“that he took a more conservative approach and tried to reach across the aisle,” one of the senior White House officials told me. (This person, like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to speak about internal discussions.) “And look where that got him: We lost. He’s not making that mistake again.”

Trump has a tendency to inject politics into nearly every presidential act or social-media post. But the White House made a concerted pivot toward the midterms once the Republicans’ signature piece of legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was passed into law in July, the three White House officials told me. White House aides, working with the congressional-campaign committees, knew almost immediately that they had a problem: The legislation’s tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the wealthy, and the bill will slash services and health care for many poorer Americans. The president, to the surprise of many in his party, has done very little domestic travel to promote the legislation. After Republican lawmakers began facing hostile crowds at town halls, the White House asked the GOP congressional leadership to hold fewer of them.

Meanwhile, the years-old Jeffrey Epstein scandal flared up again over the summer and has proved impossible for Trump to extinguish as more details have emerged about his relationship with the disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 in what was ruled a suicide after he was charged with sex trafficking. The president has faced rare defiance from portions of his MAGA base, which has demanded that the administration fulfill its promise to release more information about the powerful people who associated with Epstein. Trump’s summer of discontent has continued as he has struggled to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, while the economy, reacting to the president’s scattershot tariff policies, has begun to flash warning signs....>

<....Trump’s top advisers convened a series of late-summer West Wing meetings in an effort to change the political narrative. One of the officials I spoke with downplayed the level of anxiety—“We’re not freaking out and trying to play 4-D chess,” this person told me. But the White House plotted methods to reverse its slide, including rethinking the way Republicans sell their signature piece of legislation. In recent days, the White House and Trump himself have suggested to lawmakers that they move away from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” moniker—even though it was Trump’s own coinage—and instead embrace a new name. They’ve kicked around a few possibilities, including the (not exactly accurate) “Working Families Tax Cut Bill.”

Trump’s midterms push has gone far beyond the megabill. In June, he began floating the idea that Texas should redraw its congressional-district maps in an effort to create five additional Republican seats—enough to allow the GOP to keep the House. Although both parties have long engaged in partisan gerrymandering, the Texas plan was particularly audacious: Traditionally, redistricting takes place once a decade, after the census. It had just been done in Texas in 2021 and was not due again until after the 2030 count. Texas lawmakers went ahead at the behest of the president. Democrats howled, and their local lawmakers fled the state. It didn’t matter. The maps were redrawn, setting off a redistricting arms race. California moved to redo its own maps to offset the GOP gains in Texas, while other red and blue states—Missouri, Indiana, New York, and more—began considering their own redistricting plans. (“If Republicans thought they could win on their record, they wouldn’t have opened the redistricting conversation in the first place,” Andrew Bates, a former senior staffer to President Joe Biden, told me.)

Last month, Trump spoke with Steve Bannon, and the influential outside adviser began outlining to him other maneuvers to try to change who will be able to vote in 2026 and how they will be able to do so. Over the course of a few days, Bannon called on his podcast for a mid-decade census that would exclude people in the United States without authorization (which experts have argued would be unconstitutional) and a requirement of proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections (which critics have described as an attempt at voter suppression). Bannon also railed against mail-in voting, a longtime crusade for Trump, and the president picked up that fight again last month by threatening an executive order to ban the process, which he claims, without evidence, has led to rampant fraud.

“There’s a very potent brew of deeply held beliefs driving these tactics,” Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who was a senior aide on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, told me of Trump’s midterms push. “First and foremost, Trump thinks that his election was an absolute mandate, delivered by the voters despite every attempt by his opponents and critics to use politics and lawfare to defeat him.”

White House aides know that next year’s midterms could very well turn on the economy and privately worry about what will happen if Trump’s tariffs, which they have sold as a way to revive American industry, are permanently struck down in the courts. Most experts would say that Trump should be worried about what will happen to the economy if the tariffs do go into effect. August’s weak jobs report showed slowing growth, and that followed the previous month’s sluggish report, which had prompted Trump to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on unfounded claims of bias. The West Wing is aware of these weak signs, and is warily watching inflation and looking for ways to juice the economy. Officials are discussing a sweeping deregulation effort due this fall that is meant to spark business growth.

But Trump is also taking more extreme measures. He has unleashed a relentless pressure campaign on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates and, when met with defiance, mused about ousting Powell before his term ends in May. That prospect rattled the markets, and Trump briefly backed off, only to then latch on to a right-wing narrative that Powell had overseen a wildly over-budget renovation of the Fed building in Washington and could be fired for cause. Although Trump donned a hard hat and toured the building, he seems to have let that issue slide, while continuing to slam Powell....>

<....More recently, Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud. (Cook is suing Trump in response.) Her departure would allow Trump to replace her with someone willing to vote to lower interest rates. Or, as some in his orbit have suggested, he could demand that Powell fire Cook and then try to oust the chairman if he refuses, on the theory that the resulting cuts in rates would offset any initial market blowback. The Department of Justice recently opened an investigation into Cook, further alarming those who believe that Trump is weaponizing the federal government against anyone he sees as a political obstacle.

Although officials in the West Wing are anxious about the future of the economy, they feel confident about the radical steps Trump has taken on what they believe is a winning issue for the midterms. For generations, Republicans have attacked Democrats as soft on crime. This time, Trump is doing it with armored vehicles. His deployment of the National Guard to Washington last month triggered a backlash in the city, where many residents have made clear that they don’t want a military presence, particularly if the troops appear to be there mostly for photo ops around the National Mall. And although the president has more authority in the nation’s capital than he does in other cities, Democrats have denounced his move as federal overreach and a prelude to authoritarianism, especially after he floated the idea of also deploying troops to cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and New York over the objections of those states’ governors.

The White House believes that the debate puts Democrats on the defensive. Violent crime rose nationwide during the coronavirus pandemic and in its immediate aftermath, and although it has fallen in most of the country since then, polling suggests that it remains a significant concern for many Americans. Trump believes that he has tapped into that, looking to play on voters’ fears more successfully than he did in 2018, when he hyped up the dangers posed by an alleged “caravan” of migrants approaching the southern border.

The overall goal of Trump’s various presidential power plays, aides told me, is to nationalize the midterms and make them about him. Trump has long believed that he is his party’s best messenger, and he mused recently about holding a national political convention in 2026, an unusual move for a nonpresidential year.

“President Trump has delivered win after win for the American people since taking office—a booming economy, a secure border, historic investments in United States manufacturing, massive tax cuts for working Americans, and the list goes on!” the White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told me in a statement. “As the leader of the Republican party, President Trump will obviously play a critical role in all efforts moving forward—after all, there’s nothing more powerful in politics than a Trump endorsement.”

But this strategy holds risks for the party. Trump’s unpopularity hurt the GOP in 2018. And although the midterms are more than a year away, polling shows that Trump is losing support from some of the voting blocs that helped put him back into office. Traditionally, the president’s own party is held accountable if voters don’t feel that their lives have improved—no matter how hard the chief executive tries.

“Donald Trump knows that he needs the Republicans to control the House in order for him to keep operating without any checks on his power and avoiding congressional investigations,” Susan del Percio, a longtime Republican strategist and a Trump critic, told me. “But in the end, like almost every election, it will be about the economy, price of groceries, and if swing voters feel like they got screwed by the White House.”>

<It has been an ominous couple of weeks for campus free speech - in Texas and across the country.

On September 9, just one day after a viral video showed Texas A&M lecturer Melissa McCoul teaching about trans representation in children's literature, she was unceremoniously fired. The next day, Texas State terminated faculty member Thomas Alter for speaking about government overthrow at a socialism conference.

Then, on September 10, a catastrophe: Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. In the days since, dozens of faculty and students have faced discipline across the country because of political commentary surrounding Kirk's death.

Killing someone to silence them is not just a human tragedy, it's the ultimate attack on free expression. Colleges and universities are meant to be bastions of free expression, where inquiring minds may be challenged and grow. But this attack just weeks into the fall semester - and the larger pattern of censorship - may mark the beginning of a disastrous year for campus expression.

While far less grave than murder, the kind of censorship we see every day in our work at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression - situations like that faced by Melissa McCoul - also erodes our freedom. McCoul's ultimate "sin" was teaching that some children's books feature trans characters. She taught this during a session of her children's literature class, which state Rep. Brian Harrison called "DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination." A&M President Mark Welsh claimed that the course contained "content that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum" and that the lesson did not comport with the public description of the class.

Texas A&M President stepping down after a week of turmoil over viral classroom video But McCoul had the right to teach lessons that did not appear in the course description. When it comes to academic freedom, we must ask whether the speech was related to the topic of the course. If the lesson is relevant, then it's protected. In McCoul's case, I've seen no argument that her lesson on trans representation in children's literature wasn't related to the broad topic of children's literature. To argue such would be absurd.

The notion that her teaching went beyond the course description is nothing but a red herring. Course descriptions usually stick to general information, and are not intended to mention alllessons or topics to be covered.

Such was the case for McCoul's course, which A&M's website described as examining "what [children's] books can tell us about how we (and others) understand childhood, how those definitions have changed over time, and how these books participate in larger movements of history, culture, and literature." There's no question that acceptance of transgender identity qualifies as a historical and cultural movement, regardless of whether one thinks that's a positive or negative development.

The right to academic freedom is by no means limited to teaching from progressive vantage points like McCoul's. It is this same right to academic freedom that should have protected University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax's alleged in-class comments that gay couples are unfit for parenting. It's the same right that protected San Francisco State professor Maziar Behrooz's displaying an image of the Prophet Muhammad during a class about the history of the Islamic world.

Yet McCoul's censors want us to believe that her speech was beyond the pale, just as some on the left want us to believe that Charlie Kirk's speech was beyond the pale, and just as Texas State wants us to believe that Thomas Alter's speech was beyond the pale.

The last couple weeks are a stark reminder that free speech is only as strong as its weakest link.

That's true even if we all agree, as we should, that vigilante violence is unacceptable. None of this happens in a vacuum. If McCoul can't teach about transgender issues in children's literature, then Kirk can't speak about his opposition to "woke" ideology. And if Kirk can't speak about his belief in God, then Alter can't speak about his belief in anarchy. And if Alter can't speak about socialism, then none of us can speak about anything of import.

Censorship of one opens us all to the subjective whims of those in power, whether they hold your political views or not. And when we stop being able to listen to and learn from those with whom we disagree - when censorship prevails - violence is unfortunately likely to follow.

<The Trump administration’s pressure campaign against ABC and Jimmy Kimmel, which saw the Federal Communications Commission chief turn up the heat on broadcasters, is intensifying fears over the policing of speech — which were already rising before this week’s late night television uproar.

Kimmel’s fate was up in the air Friday evening after he was indefinitely suspended Wednesday night. It is unclear whether he’ll return to the airwaves or exit ABC.

The Trump administration and its allies have offered no apologies for their actions, arguing Kimmel was facing justifiable consequences for ill-thought-out remarks about the political background of the suspect in conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death.

“Welcome to Consequence Culture,” deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich posted Thursday on the social platform X. “Normal, common sense Americans are no longer taking the bulls‑‑‑ and companies like ABC are finally willing to do the right and reasonable thing.”

But even on the right, there were some signs of concern about whether the reaction to Kimmel’s comedy routine, and specifically the FCC’s involvement, was appropriate.

Kimmel has long been a figure of ire with conservatives as he has talked more about politics on his show, but some influential voices suggested they were worried the government was getting into the censorship business.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday on his podcast. “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.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence suggested he had no issue with Kimmel facing consequences but expressed reluctance about the FCC’s involvement.

“Private employers have every right to dismiss employees, whether they’re television talk show hosts or otherwise, if they violate the standards of that company,” Pence said at an event hosted by The Atlantic. “Now, I would have preferred that the chairman of the FCC had not weighed in.”

Trump has argued Kimmel was canceled because of bad ratings and shrugged off questions about free speech implications. Carr has argued licensed networks have a responsibility to act in the public interest.

But Trump and Carr have also shown why there is a wider fear about the government cracking down on what their critics are saying on the airwaves.

During a flight home from the United Kingdom, Trump raised the prospect of revoking network licenses over negative coverage.

“They’re 97 percent against; they give me only bad press. I mean, they’re getting a license,” he said. “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

Carr told conservative commentator Scott Jennings on the pundit’s podcast that ABC daytime talk program “The View,” whose liberal hosts are relentlessly critical of Trump,” could be subject to scrutiny over whether it should be required to give equal time to both sides of an issue.

“This is not a role for the federal government or the chairman of the FCC to be playing,” said Tom Wheeler, who was FCC chair under former President Obama, during a CNN appearance on Friday. “The danger here is authoritarian control of the media. The FCC for 90 years has promoted diversity of thought and now the Trump, Carr FCC is coming in and saying they’ll be the judge of what those views should be.”

The Kimmel saga unfolded in the same week that multiple Trump administration officials indicated they would use Kirk’s killing as a basis to target certain left-wing groups or types of speech.

Attorney General Pam Bondi landed in hot water after she said the Justice Department would target those who used hate speech. Bondi and other top DOJ officials were quick to clarify her comments after numerous prominent conservatives noted that hate speech is largely protected by the First Amendment and warned that policing rhetoric could boomerang back around and hurt conservatives under a future Democratic administration.

Vice President Vance earlier in the week vowed to target left-wing groups he claimed were fomenting violence, indicating the administration would go after their funding or tax-exempt status.

The administration has for months taken steps that have alarmed free speech and press advocates.

The White House earlier this year barred The Associated Press from the pool of reporters that travel with the president and cover in-person events over the outlet’s refusal to use the term “Gulf of America.” The restriction was later upheld by a federal judge.

Foreign students coming to the U.S. must go through a new social media check when applying for a visa, with any controversial content potentially blocking their path....>

<....Trump has hit multiple news outlets with massive lawsuits over coverage that is unflattering or that he does not like, the latest instance being a $15 billion suit accusing The New York Times and four of its reporters of defamation and libel. A judge struck the lawsuit on Friday, saying his court was not a venue for Trump to “rage against an adversary.”

Critics have also cited the words of Trump and other top officials to argue the administration is being hypocritical after portraying themselves as protectors of free speech.

On his first day in office, Trump vowed to “stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” signing an executive order to that effect.

Vance stunned European leaders with a speech in February at the Munich Security Conference in which he accused some in Europe of censoring free speech and dissent.

But Kimmel’s suspension and the government’s role in it could serve as a flashpoint that appears to unite Democrats, free speech advocates and even some Republicans in their concerns about a slippery slope.

Sen. Mark Warner (R-Va.) shared a clip from Cruz’s podcast in which the Texas Republican said Carr’s threats against ABC were “right out of ‘Goodfellas.’”

“I don’t often agree with Ted Cruz, but when he’s right, he’s right,” Warner said.>

<I'm not too happy with the name change here:

Jose Luis Fernandez

What was wrong with Fernandez Garcia?

All these names, <Jose, Luis, Fernandez and Garcia> are extremely common in Spanish speaking countries, so I really think we should use the full name here.>

<In the days since Charlie Kirk’s killing, conservatives have embraced a phenomenon they previously called toxic: cancel culture.

The impulse to cancel some voices this past week is understandable: Celebrating murder is cruel. It’s gross. It’s wrong. But the irony is impossible to miss: Conservatives, who long treated cancel culture as an affront to the 1st Amendment spirit of open discourse, are now calling for people to lose their jobs and their livelihoods, all because of something stupid they said on the internet.

This is the same issue that drove numerous stand-up comedians, young men, podcasters and Silicon Valley tech bros into the arms of Donald Trump in 2024. But now, in an amazing turn of events, conservatives are now aping the progressive scolds and speech cops, only with red hats.

Actually, their version is worse. The left’s “accountability culture” mob might have been overbearing, but their agenda was (with a few notable exceptions) largely driven by hall monitors. Today’s “woke right” is executing things in a more overt, efficient and official manner — which for the record means it can violate not just the spirit of the 1st Amendment but the actual, you know … 1st Amendment.

As a case in point, JD Vance, the vice president of the United States of America, recently told Kirk’s radio audience: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer.”

Which raises the question, what if their employer is the government? That would be awkward. But no problem! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly telling staff to track down soldiers guilty of wrongspeak. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) is trying to get teachers terminated, tweeting: “We don’t fund hate. We fire it” — which feels like the sort of slogan Mao might have had printed on a T-shirt.

And speaking of printers, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has warned that the government can “prosecute” any professional printer who refuses to “print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil.” She also pledged to “absolutely target” anyone who targets anyone with “hate speech.”

Not long ago, progressives insisted bakers must bake cakes for gay weddings, and now a U.S. attorney general from a Republican administration is insisting that printers must print images for vigils. Funny how the tables turn.

Then, there’s the so-called Charlie Kirk Data Foundation, which claims to have a searchable list of tens of thousands of people who posted mean tweets after Kirk’s death. Collectively, this purge campaign seems to be working. A lot of scalps have already been claimed, including prominent pundits, and late night host Jimmy Kimmel (who was suspended after making remarks about the motives of Kirk’s killer)....>

<....But — let’s be clear — opposition to cancel culture is merely the latest principle that Trump-era Republicans have conveniently abandoned. Indeed, almost every tenet that conservatives held dear a decade ago has been reversed.

And people are starting to notice. Oregon State Rep. Cyrus Javadi recently switched parties, citing the GOP’s abandonment of principles like “limited government, fiscal responsibility, free speech, free trade, and, above all, the rule of law.”

He has a point. Trump’s America now owns a chunk of U.S. chipmaker Intel (so much for small government), spends like a drunken sailor, slaps tariffs on everything that moves (bye-bye, free trade) and ignores laws he doesn’t like — most recently, the TikTok sell-off mandate that was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, which Trump decided to treat like a menu item he didn’t order — until he found a suitable buyer.

But it's not just normie Republicans who are worried about Trump diverting from the Reagan-Bush playbook.

Comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon recently observed that the Trump agenda looks suspiciously like the dystopia that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones used to warn us about between colloidal silver ads: “Military in the street, the FEMA camp, the tech company that monitors everything, the surveillance. This is all of that.”

So why is this happening? Why the contortions? I’m reminded of an old story Rush Limbaugh used to tell about the late actor Ron Silver.

As the story goes, Silver went to Bill Clinton’s first inauguration as a bleeding-heart liberal and was horrified by the military flyover. And then he realized, “Those are our planes now.”

That’s where conservatives are when it comes to cancel culture. They’ve finally realized that this is their cancel culture now.

And maybe that’s the grubby little secret about politics in the Trump era. Almost nobody cares about values or morals — or “principles” — anymore. Free speech, limited government, fiscal restraint — these are all rules for thee, but not for me.

Cancel culture wasn’t rejected, it was just co-opted. So go ahead. Drop a dime. See something, say something. Big Brother is watching.

Irony, meet guillotine.>

<Last week, on Twitter, the novelist quoted-tweeted remarks by Fox host Jesse Watters. “Charlie Kirk was not a ‘controversial’ or ‘polarizing’ man,” Watters said. “Charlie was a PATRIOT. THIS is a turning point and we all need to turn in the right direction. Rest in peace, my friend.”

It should be said first of all that this is a lie. Kirk was nothing but controversial and polarizing. That was his entire shtick. And that’s why Stephen King said: “He advocated for stoning gays to death. Just sayin’.”

This set off a firestorm of outrage, perhaps the loudest coming from US Senator Mike Lee of Utah: “Please share if you agree that the estate of Charlie Kirk should sue Stephen King for defamation over this heinously false accusation. He crossed a line. It will prove costly.”

Actually, it won’t. You can’t defame the dead. Defamation is about an injury to one’s reputation. You don’t have an injury, and you don’t have a reputation, when you’re dead. Once you’re dead, there’s nothing anyone can say to hurt you. Mike Lee, who is an attorney, knows that.

If litigation wasn’t Lee’s point, what was? Silencing a famous and (nominally) liberal critic of the broader totalitarian project. And he and others succeeded by forcing King to apologize. “I apologize for saying Charlie Kirk advocated stoning gays,” King said. “What he actually demonstrated was how some people cherry-pick Biblical passages.”

But King wasn’t wrong – not exactly. While it’s true that Kirk never said, “I hereby advocate for the stoning of gays to death,” he did say a Bible chapter, which calls for stoning a man who lies with another man, “affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” That might not be advocacy, in the word’s strictest sense, but close enough.

The context matters, too. Kirk was criticizing Rachel Anne Accurso, the YouTube children’s video personality who goes by Ms Rachel. In June of last year, she made a biblical case for LGBTQ-plus inclusion. According to Factcheck.org, she said: “In Matthew 22, a religious teacher asked Jesus, what’s the most important commandment? And Jesus says, to love God and to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’

“It doesn’t say love every neighbor except,” Ms Rachel said.

That’s what Kirk was responding to. Ms Rachel made no room for exceptions to God’s greatest law. In reply, Kirk did his own cherry-picking. He reached back to the Old Testament for a chapter that “affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” Instead of including LGBTQ-plus people in God’s beloved community, as Jesus Christ might have done, he made the case for excluding them.

Ms Rachel advocated for love.

Kirk advocated for hate.

That Kirk did not explicitly advocate for the stoning of gays to death, in the strictest sense and syntax of those words, is therefore a distinction without a difference – unless, like Kirk, you’re a liar. In that case, the distinction between saying what you’re saying and not saying what you’re saying is important. If that collapses, so does your deception.

As long as the distinction between what is said and what is intended to be understood is in place, it’s possible to bully people into silence.

That’s what happened to Stephen King and others. They spoke the truth about Kirk – not the strict letter of it but the true spirit of it – but did not have the courage to stand by the truth after being accused of slander. And in the process of apologizing, they ended up affirming the lie, making it grow bigger, such that a USA Today story about King’s apology says that he “repeatedly apologized for a false accusation.” (After all, it must have been false if Stephen King apologized for it.)....>

<....I dwell on this episode, because it’s a microcosm of a much larger and more pernicious pattern in American politics in which the Republicans and their media allies (not just in the rightwing media) have taken the deceit that resides between what is said and what is intended to be understood, and have made that deceit structural, so such that telling the truth – in this case, saying plainly what Charlie Kirk meant, as opposed to what he said – is a radical act deserving of punishment.

The AP reported Monday that “after years of complaints from the right about ‘cancel culture’ from the left, some conservatives are seeking to upend the lives and careers of those who disparaged Charlie Kirk after his death. They are going after companies, educators, news outlets, political rivals and others they judge as promoting hate speech.”

Or as Radley Balko said, expanding on his first comment, “the extreme, opportunistic, completely disingenuous reaction to Kirk's murder also makes clear that if there's an Oklahoma City or 9/11-level attack in the next few years, this administration will absolutely exploit it to try to end our democracy and permanently entrench itself in power.”

I want to end with a small litmus test that can help determine what demagogues like Kirk really meant, so the courageous can fight back.

Try this: make their statements true.

Jesse Watters said Charlie Kirk was neither “controversial” nor “polarizing.” “Charlie was a PATRIOT,” the Fox host insisted. His death “is a turning point and we all need to turn in the right direction.”

Kirk was controversial. He was polarizing. As I said, that was his shtick. He advocated for the exclusion (hatred) of racial, sexual and religious minorities. What needs to happen for Watters’ words to be true?

“Patriot” needs to mean loyalty to white power and all that implies – unequal treatment, legal prejudice, exploitation, corruption, and a social order that’s rigidly hierarchical, with rich white men on top.

Only then is Charlie Kirk neither “controversial” nor “polarizing” man. Only then is it clear what Jesse Watters really meant when he said “THIS is a turning point and we all need to turn in the right direction.”

“THIS” is the end of liberty and justice for all.

And he’ll prove it by trying to silence you for saying so.>

<It appears that Americans required a second and even more brutal lesson than the one delivered during Donald Trump’s first term: Democracy does not come with guarantees, and requires not just the consent of the governed but also their active participation. Its so-called institutions, among them our nation’s increasingly threadbare 18th-century Constitution, are visibly crumbling, as if eaten away from within by an army of persistent termites.

Trump sat next to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the latter’s English country retreat on Thursday and delivered a veritable torrent of half-truths, misstatements, fantasies and flat-out lies: Inflation had been vanquished, fuel prices were down, the U.S. economy was booming, he had personally resolved seven (!) international conflicts, although those did not, sadly enough, include the ones in Ukraine and Gaza. Public opinion polls suggest it might be hard to find anyone in America who believes all that, even among Republican voters. But Trump and his minions have a plan — or concepts of a plan, we might say — to change that too.

When asked about ABC’s abrupt decision to “suspend” Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show, the president tried to have it both ways in classic Trumpian fashion, strutting for his fans just a bit while also brushing off the question with obvious lies. “Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings” and “for lack of talent,” he said, but oh yeah, by the way, Kimmel had also “said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.” (Unnecessary fact check: Kimmel hadn’t said anything about Kirk, horrible or otherwise, and had offered routine social-media condolences to Kirk’s family.)

Jimmy Kimmel isn’t the point here, as I hope everyone understands. Jimmy Kimmel will be fine. It’s already been suggested over the weekend that, under some benevolent compromise, he may be allowed to return to the airwaves, lack of talent and all. It isn’t quite right to call Kimmel a canary in the coal mine; we’ve had plenty of those already. His literal cancellation is more like a test case, designed to measure the breadth and power of the accelerating authoritarian coup now underway in America.

The MAGA assault on late-night comedy — which is doubly vulnerable, as both a fading cultural institution and the veritable definition of First Amendment-protected speech — represents a kind of pincer movement, bringing together multiple overlapping fascist tendencies. On one hand, we see the consolidation of mainstream media companies, now increasingly under the oligarchic control of Big Tech and finance capital, and increasingly dependent on the corrupt Trump regime to approve their corrupt cartel-building mergers and acquisitions. On the other, we see the regime’s undisguised campaign to restrict and punish dissent, and to redefine “free speech” as a conditional benefit conferred only on its most loyal grovelers and forelock-tuggers, and subject to revocation at any time.

Those two tendencies are, of course, not independent or purely coincidental. They are part of a larger pattern, which former Salon columnist Bill Curry (also a former Democratic Party insider) described in a recent Facebook post as a “Gaza-like assault on civil society.”

As a media creature and low-grade oligarch himself, as well as a hopeless cable-TV addict, Trump remains personally fixated on the idea of manipulating public opinion by forcing the networks to lavish him with 24/7 praise and affection. It was his slavishly loyal pals at Nexstar and Sinclair, the right-wing corporations that between them control nearly 400 local TV stations across the U.S., who led the pitchfork brigade against Kimmel’s show and forced Disney/ABC corporate leadership to choose between commitment to principle and capitulation to power. (Sinclair announced on Thursday that suspending Kimmel was “not enough,” saying it wouldn’t bring his show back to its stations absent “immediate regulatory action” and a public display of contrition.)

Did Nexstar and Sinclair take marching orders directly from the White House, or did their leaders just seize an opportunity to curry favor and demonstrate obedience in advance? It hardly matters (although I’d go with option A), but the importance of those hundreds of outlets, whose cookie-cutter local news broadcasts are overtly driven by the MAGA agenda and overwhelmingly watched by lower-income senior citizens, should not be underestimated. Consider this extraordinary remark from Trump’s attack-dog FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, in a recent Fox News interview: “We’re going back to that era where local TV stations, judging the public interest, get to decide what the American people think.”...>

<....At least we can’t accuse Carr of concealing his intentions. I don’t know whether that’s more menacing or more ridiculous: We will tell the TV stations what to say, and they will decide what you think. That is straight-up Donald Trump’s thinking — and although public opinion doesn’t exactly work like that, it probably works more like that than most of us would like to admit. If it sounds like Carr is describing an unachievable MAGA-world dystopia, let’s consider what has already happened in actual reality:

The Washington Post, now owned by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, has declawed its opinion section, decreeing that it must advocate for “personal liberties and free markets.” It recently fired Karen Attiah, its only full-time Black opinion columnist, for posting comments about race and gun control (that did not directly mention Charlie Kirk’s killing).

CBS, CNN, HBO and Paramount are all likely to end up under the control of Big Tech billionaire Larry Ellison and his son, David, who are Trump supporters eager to push those venerable news organizations to the right. Along the way, CBS has already forced out the editorial leadership at “60 Minutes,” paid Trump $16 million to settle a specious lawsuit and canceled Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. Reports suggest that Bari Weiss, founding editor of the conservative Free Press and a staunch supporter of Israel, will land a leading editorial position at the network that once employed Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

ABC News also settled a bogus Trump defamation suit it could likely have won, paying him $16 million and forcing “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos to apologize. Then came Kimmel, of course.

NBC News is likely next on the list: Trump has said he hopes to force its late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers off the air as well. Recently spun-off subsidiary MSNBC covered itself in infamy by firing commentator Matthew Dowd, a former Republican strategist, for anodyne comments about the Kirk shooting.

Twitter and Facebook became … whatever it is that they became. I’m so old that I can remember when people thought Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were cool!

Oh, and there’s the New York Times. Let’s have that conversation another time, shall we? Ezra Klein, Tom Friedman, Ross Douthat and David Brooks are still hanging out together in bearded-dude podcast-land, trying to be Responsible Voices of the Sensible Center, and no doubt there’s an audience for that. (It might be my mother’s cousin in Savannah and a few of her book-group friends.)

As I suggested earlier, Jimmy Kimmel was a test case, deliberately pushing the outer edges of MAGA power to see what was possible. It may turn out to be a slight overreach, given the existence of weirdo Republicans like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul who cling to the last tattered remnants of libertarian ideals. But as with all acts of state terror and intimidation — as with Kilmar Ábrego García and Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk and so many other people whose names we don’t know — the specifics are less important than the heightened climate of fear and the much larger and more ominous message: We will do whatever we want to whoever we want whenever we want, and you are powerless to stop it....>

<....At least we can’t accuse FCC chair Brendan Carr of concealing his intentions, which are both menacing and ridiculous: We will tell the TV stations what to say, and they will decide what you think.

If Donald Trump is personally obsessed with the media, the people who actually steer his administration — first and foremost that would be Stephen Miller, the Gríma Wormtongue of MAGAville — understand that they can never exert full control over what can be said, seen and heard. Furthermore, they know that’s only one element of an authoritarian seizure of power, which demands, to quote Bill Curry again, “the nullification of our Constitution and the collapse of every institution our democracy runs on.”

In other words, the point of forcing ABC/Disney, and effectively every other major media corporation, to bend the knee before a president who got 49.8 percent of the popular vote (and won by the smallest margin in 24 years), is to convince everyone — on the left, the right, the center and nowhere in particular — that no one is fighting back and there’s no point in fighting back. The Supreme Court has given Trump free rein, the FBI and Justice Department have become his enforcers, the civil service has been co-opted and subverted, the public health agencies have been conquered by moonbats and Republican state legislatures are doing their best to rig the midterm elections. As Curry puts it, leaders at white-shoe law firms, elite universities and major foundations have repeatedly surrendered without a shot, revealing themselves as “traitors, cowards, rank opportunists or simply inept.”

Maybe there’s a valuable lesson in the near-total capitulation of mainstream media conglomerates: It might just put to rest the innocent neoliberal doctrine that the marketplace of capitalism prefers democracy over tyranny, or values “diversity” as a market opportunity. I would suggest there are bigger lessons available as well, too big to tackle here and now.

Those institutions of democracy that fill Americans with so much outmoded pride served as inspirations to the world; that much is true. But they were always intended to sustain an unstable compromise between true popular sovereignty and the oligarchic forms of power created and demanded by an economy built on private enterprise. That compromise has now been breached by dedicated and determined enemies of democracy, and the institutions can do nothing to stop them. Only the people can do that.>

<Twenty-nine years ago next month, I came on board with a fledgling cable channel. The start-up’s novel idea was to appeal directly to conservatives, people who voted for Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 — or what Richard Nixon famously called his “silent majority.”

The conservatives who started Fox News knew exactly what they were getting with me. I had worked at the Washington Post and CNN. In popular books, I had called out politicians, right and left. As a Black writer, I was known to trade punches with Black politicians.

Fox’s founders wanted me to debate star right-wing media personalities. I was happy to bring my credentials and counter their arguments. It made me sharper. And at Fox, it made for good television. Ratings climbed as viewers welcomed furious, right-leaning debates among informed people.

It’s in this spirit that I’ve been reflecting on the legacy of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, assassinated less than two weeks ago.

He built his name by inviting critics to challenge his ideas in the name of free speech. As Ezra Klein put it in The New York Times, “You can dislike much of what Kirk believed, and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.”

Now contrast that with the disturbing comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi. I must protest when the nation’s top law enforcement officer talks about punishing “hate speech.”

As my Fox colleague Brit Hume tweeted: “Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called ‘hate speech,’ repulsive though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this.”

Kirk himself once said: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Erick Erickson, a conservative and someone I’ve learned from in debate, was even more blunt:

“Our Attorney General is apparently a moron. ‘There’s free speech and then there is hate speech.’ No ma’am. That is not the law.”

The attorney general’s words carry weight. They cannot be brushed off as a gaffe when they come against a backdrop of the administration’s efforts to stifle critics. That includes the chair of the Federal Communications Commission saying, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” pressuring networks to fire late-night comedians who mock the president, as happened last week with ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel....>

<....Add to this toxic mix President Trump’s frivolous lawsuits designed to inhibit critical coverage in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Trump personally threatened ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, telling him he will “probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate.”

Judges may ultimately dismiss these attacks, but mounting a costly legal defense is the punishment. Media companies often find it cheaper to cave than to defend principle. And in the Kimmel case they may fear government challenges to mergers and licensing. High fear of government retribution is also leading corporations to fire people who are not famous for posting critical comments about Kirk.

I know this storm all too well. Fourteen years ago, NPR fired me for telling Fox’s Bill O’Reilly that, immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, I felt nervous when I saw people in traditional Muslim garb boarding a plane with me.

By acknowledging my personal fear, I was trying to spark an honest discussion about the need for tolerance. My point had been that openly talking about hidden fears can help free people to think clearly and avoid bad policy.

But the politically correct crowd called me an anti-Muslim bigot. They didn’t like that I was on Fox, either.

You might even say I was the canary in the coal mine for what we now call “cancel culture.” And when the blue team showed me the door, it was Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin who rallied to my defense. Fox allowed me to stay on their air.

I wrote a best-selling book about it, “Muzzled – The Assault on Honest Debate.” The book warned against the anti–free speech forces I saw gathering on both left and right, especially online.

Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox (R) waved the same warning flag. “I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt we’ve seen over the last five, six years,” he said. “There is no question in my mind. … What we have done to our kids. It has taken us a decade to understand how evil these algorithms really are.”

Throughout my time as a journalist, my message has been the same: liberals and conservatives, across racial and religious lines — “We the People,” Americans of all stripes — must find common ground in defense of honest debate and its lifeblood: free speech.

Without getting to know people who likely disagreed with me, I would never have enjoyed ballgames with my fellow Washington Nationals fan, the late Charles Krauthammer, or my fellow NBA fan, Fred Barnes. I would’ve never come to know influential Black conservatives like economist Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, or my friend, commentator Armstrong Williams.

Too many people — especially in the Trump era — are willing to demonize, even silence, opposing views. America: Stop It.>

<Finding a deal this week to avoid a government shutdown will come down to a negotiation between President Trump and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), whose relationship is so bitter that lawmakers in both parties see little chance of an agreement.

Trump is scheduled to meet with Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) this week on how to avoid the looming shutdown, a White House official told The Hill on Monday.

While Jeffries is an important player, Schumer has more leverage because he proved last week that Senate Democrats have the votes to block any partisan funding measure passed by the House. It will take 60 votes to get anything through the Senate.

The last time Trump and Schumer tried to negotiate something was at the start of August, when Republicans were trying to get more than 140 of Trump’s stalled executive branch nominees past a Democratic blockade in the Senate.

It didn’t end well. Trump scuttled the negotiations by delivering a blunt directive to Schumer on social media: “Go to hell.”

Schumer rips Trump on a near-daily basis on the Senate floor, accusing the president of being a wannabe dictator and serial liar who puts his own interests and even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests ahead of what’s best for the United States.

Senate Democrats slow-walked Trump’s lower-level executive branch nominees this year, refusing to confirm a single civilian nominee by unanimous consent or voice vote. The unprecedented obstruction of routine nominees resulted in Republicans changing the Senate rules by invoking the so-called nuclear option.

Trump dubbed the Senate Democratic leader “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” early in his first term and mocked him again over the summer for repeatedly stepping on political landmines on crime, immigration and transgender rights.

This has left observers decidedly pessimistic about their chances of reaching a deal.

“Schumer and Trump, do they have an interest in and can they get together and do something? I think it’s very, very tough for Schumer. I think he’s got a left flank in his party that does not want to deal at all with Trump regardless of the merits of the issue,” said Republican strategist Vin Weber, a former member of the House who came to Congress in 1981, the same year Schumer came to Washington as a first-term House member.

“He’s a very capable guy and would be capable of doing a deal, but I think that he’s prevented from doing one by the left flank of his own party,” he added.

Schumer was the target of an angry backlash from progressives in March after he voted along with nine other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus for a six-month partisan funding bill passed by the House.

Liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted Schumer’s vote as a “tremendous mistake,” and she’s now eyeing a potential challenge to Schumer in New York’s 2028 Senate Democratic primary, according to a source who has spoken to her.

Weber said he doesn’t see Trump making any significant concessions to Schumer, who has demanded that Republicans agree to permanently extend the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced health insurance premium subsidies, something that would cost $350 billion over 10 years.

“Trump is not in concessions mode. The Charlie Kirk thing has got conservatives with a certain edge to them now. I doubt very much the president is going to be in a mood to make concessions, which his base doesn’t like,” he added, referring to the murder of Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, which has unleashed a wave of anger from Trump’s MAGA base.

Trump vented his own anger with the political left this weekend when he urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political enemies, singling out New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for their roles in indicting and impeaching him.

“I hate my opponent,” Trump said bluntly at Kirk’s memorial service in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on Sunday, offering a sharp contrast to Kirk’s widow, Erika, who said moments earlier in a tearful speech that she forgave her husband’s alleged killer.

The president could barely contain his disdain for Democrats when asked Saturday whether he would meet with Schumer and Jeffries to hash out a spending deal.

“They want all this stuff. They don’t change. They haven’t learned from the biggest beating they’ve ever taken. … I’d love to meet with them, but I don’t think it’s going to have an impact,” he told reporters at the White House.

Trump’s rhetoric has Democrats pessimistic about a deal before the Sept. 30 deadline....>

<....“I don’t expect a quick resolution,” said Jim Kessler, a former Schumer aide who now serves as executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank.

“What Schumer is asking for falls well within the realm of normal and what Trump is doing falls well outside the realm of normal,” he said. “I’ll also add that Trump has spoken to [Chinese President] Xi Jinping this year more than he’s spoken to Schumer.”

“I do feel that Republicans and Trump believe that a government shutdown works to their political benefit,” he said. “This is a different era and a different type of president who has spent nine months breaking things. Schumer cut a deal to keep [government] open in March [that] showed that he was willing to bend over backwards to keep the government running.”

Trump made it clear in a recent Fox News interview that he doesn’t think it’s worth talking to Democrats, telling “Fox & Friends” that “there’s something wrong” with Democrats and that his advice to Republicans is “don’t even bother dealing with them.”

Schumer, Jeffries and other Democratic leaders are demanding a lot in exchange for their votes on a government funding bill.

In addition to extending health insurance subsidies, they want Republicans to restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending cuts enacted by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Democrats also want to unfreeze funds that have been targeted for rescission by Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought, including the $5 billion in foreign aid the White House is trying to claw back with a pocket rescission.

Trump-allied Republican strategists say Trump shouldn’t make any concessions to Schumer on health care, likening the Democrats’ demands to Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) attempt to use government funding as leverage to repeal ObamaCare in 2013 — a tactic that failed and split the Republican Party at the time.

John Ullyot, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 president campaign, said he “shouldn’t” give any concessions to Schumer.

“This is something where Schumer has tried to stop him in any way that he can and now he’s asking for a favor when President Trump holds all the cards. This is going to be a Democratic shutdown if it happens,” he said. “They’re insisting on getting riders on the [continuing resolution (CR)] and Trump has a very easy argument, which is a clean CR makes sense right now to avoid a government shutdown.”

The last time Trump and Schumer held a high-stake, high-profile meeting over government funding was in December of 2018, and it didn’t end well.

The meeting, which then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also attended, quickly went off the rails. Trump, Schumer and Pelosi talked over each other, raising their voices, until Trump heatedly declared he would be “proud” to shut the government down over border security.

“I’ll be the one to shut it down. I will take the mantle,” Trump said as his frustration boiled over.

That tense meeting preceded what turned out to be a 35-day partial government shutdown, the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former Senate aide, said whether or not the government closes will hinge on Trump and Schumer meeting face-to-face.

“The two of them have to get in a room. They’ve known each other for years, they’re both from outer boroughs,” he said. “The two of them need to sit down in a room together, put their differences aside and figure out what they compromise on. Until that happens, there’s not going to be any movement.

“The animosity is real,” he added. “Sen. Schumer is fighting for not just New York but for what the Democrats believe in, and he believes Donald Trump is trying to dismantle all of that.”>

<Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is doubling down on his attempt to punish Jimmy Kimmel — and now blames Democrats for the wave of backlash after Disney and ABC pulled the show last week.

"Democrats just keep digging themselves a deeper & deeper hole on Kimmel," Carr wrote on X. "They simply can’t stand that local TV stations—for the first time in years—stood up to a national programmer & chose to exercise their lawful right to preempt programming. We need to keep empowering local TV stations to serve their communities of license."

TV station groups Nexstar Media and Sinclair Broadcasting have said they plan to boycott Kimmel's show after ABC and its parent company Disney announced it will return Tuesday — backtracking on its earlier decision to pull the show after comments made about Charlie Kirk.

Nexstar and Sinclair plan to replace it with news programming for about a quarter of the stations they control, which is about 20% of ABC local affiliates, the New York Times reported.

Carr last week threatened Jimmy Kimmel's suspension on a conservative podcast, saying Disney should "take action," just hours before the network pulled the show and suspended the late-night host "indefinitely" over his remarks about Trump and slain MAGA influencer Kirk.

Disney on Monday announced that it had "thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday."

The suspension of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" had been condemned by lawmakers, free speech advocates and notable Hollywood stars. Protests broke out in Los Angeles outside the studio where the show is taped.

The company's stock dropped in the days following as calls grew to boycott ABC/Disney and Hulu amid the ongoing pressures from conservative affiliate owners Sinclair and Nexstar.

Nexstar is trying to close a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, another TV station owner, and needs the FCC's and the Trump administration's approval to secure the deal, The Times reported. The show could ultimately move to another TV station owner.

Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has accused Carr of using his leverage to approve corporate mergers to "bludgeon" regulated companies like Nexstar and Sinclair, both of which have corporate mergers awaiting his approval. He said the chairman's justification for getting involved was improper.

"The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the public interest," Wheeler said.>

<The Situation on Sunday pondered the removal of the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia—Erik Siebert—over his lack of enthusiasm for indicting a certain set of the president’s political foes.

Monday, Bloomberg News reported, a White House aide and former Trump personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, was sworn in as interim U.S. attorney.

As this column discussed on Sunday, the reason for the switch was that the earlier occupant of the office was apparently unwilling to move forward with cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

One must imagine, then, that Halligan, unlike her predecessor, is willing to go forward with such charges. That, after all, is the only reason she is now in the role. Indeed, today, MSNBC is reporting that Comey “is expected to be indicted in the coming days in the Eastern District of Virginia.”

So let’s try to play Halligan’s hand out for a moment—a “Choose Your Own Adventure: Lindsey Halligan Edition,” if you will. You, the reader, play the role of Halligan.

At least as regards Comey, you don’t have a lot of time. The key statute of limitation runs out in six days; after that, any case gets exponentially harder. So you have a brief window in which to decide whether or not you really want to pursue this.

If you don’t go forward, off with your head. Remember how you got this job, after all.

But you know that both cases are weak. How do you know this? Again, remember how you got this job. Your Trumpist U.S. attorney predecessor was willing to lose his job, rather than bring these.

So you know you’re playing with a bad hand, but you move forward anyway because you have no choice. Bloomberg News reports:

The US Justice Department is pushing ahead with its investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James over mortgage fraud allegations after President Donald Trump demanded the case move forward, according to people familiar with the matter.

The case is still being pursued through the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia in an effort led by senior Justice Department official Ed Martin, according to the people, who asked not to be named speaking about an ongoing investigation. One of Trump’s aides, Lindsey Halligan, took over the office on Monday.

You seem to be pushing forward with Comey too. (Disclosure: James Comey is a friend of one of the present authors and has written for Lawfare both as FBI director and his subsequent life as a private citizen. He contributed no information to this article.)

That means that sometime over the next few days, you have to push at least one weak case past a grand jury to keep the president happy.

Let’s assume that MSNBC is correct and you focus first on the Comey case, rather than the James case, as it’s the one with the ticking clock. James’s case relates to a 2023 house purchase; while her defenses against any mortgage fraud allegation appear prohibitively strong, that case will be the same two weeks from now as it is today.

But assuming you decide to move forward with the Comey case—you face an immediate problem: What should you charge him with?

This isn’t normally a problem prosecutors face, as they start with a crime, then figure out whodunnit, rather than starting with a person and only then deciding whathedun. But Trump wants Comey charged and is convinced he’s guilty of something, and it’s your job now to figure out what.

Realistically, you’ve only got a few choices here, and they all suck.

Nearly all of them involve charging Comey with some kind of false statement in connection with his Sept. 30, 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That’s the last testimony he gave, and it’s almost exactly five years ago. This idea is appealing because it might just be possible to slap together a simple false statements case and get it in under the wire.

Assuming, that is, that you can convince a grand jury that there is probable cause that Comey knowingly testified falsely at that hearing as to any matter of material fact.

And here the right-wing fever swamp brims with putative possibilities. Perhaps Comey testified falsely when, for example, he stood by his earlier testimony from May 2017 that he had never authorized leaks by anonymous sources of material about the Trump or Hillary Clinton investigations. This idea has been making the rounds....>