FCC Chair Takes Victory Lap After Muzzling Kimmel

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr—who just a few years ago was waxing poetic about how political satire is the “oldest and most important form of free speech”—is now using The Office GIFs to celebrate taking away Jimmy Kimmel’s freedom of speech.

Carr appeared on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast and floated punishing Kimmel for making remarks about Trump’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s killing. While ABC was not initially going to rebuke Kimmel, as his statements were pretty run of the mill, threats from Carr and the Trump administration regarding pulling their broadcast licenses made them cave. Late that night they suspended Kimmel indefinitely.

Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, has been jubilant in the days since Kimmel’s muzzling. Wednesday night he went on Hannity for a victory lap.

“Late-night shows, something’s gone seriously awry there. They went from going for applause, for laugh lines, to applause lines. They went from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology,” Carr told Hannity. “There’s more work to go, but I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of the community and we don’t just have progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.

Kimmel is no cleric. And Carr is rich for acting as if his firing was the product of some local, grassroots campaign when it’s extremely clear that this was a result of direct pressure on ABC from the federal government.

The backlash to Carr’s spineless hypocrisy has been swift, as receipt after receipt of him defending the same principles he is now attacking is circulating widely.

“Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not,” he said in 2019. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of ‘public interest.’”

“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself—Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he said the very next year. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”

The plug has been pulled on another Trump-critical late-night host, and the president is over the moon.

“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Donald Trump posted to Truth Social Wednesday. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”

“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible,” he continued, referring to Stephen Colbert, who had his show on CBS canceled in July.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was put on indefinite hiatus Wednesday by Nexstar, one of the largest owners of ABC stations in the country. Nexstar said it “strongly” objected “to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk,” according to a statement.

Kimmel was excoriated by Republicans after he suggested earlier this week that Kirk’s suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, was a MAGA conservative.

“We 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,” Kimmel said during a monologue.

But emerging details have painted a more complicated picture of the 22-year-old Utahn, who according to his friends was relatively apolitical.

The move to deplatform Kimmel immediately followed a threat from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who condemned Kimmel’s language as the “sickest conduct possible.”

“[This] appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into the narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican-motivated person,” Carr told YouTuber Benny Johnson. “What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr was celebrating the decision hours later. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the FCC chair thanked Nexstar for “doing the right thing” and implored other broadcasters to “follow Nexstar’s lead.”

Trump was, apparently, in a similar headspace. On Truth Social, the president made it clear that his ideal version of a late-night lineup involves nixing two other NBC hosts who have been hard on his administration. Addressing the network directly, Trump urged NBC to fire two of its stars: Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

“That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” Trump wrote. “Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”

But Nexstar’s opposition to Kimmel’s monologue might not be entirely moralistic. The massive broadcast network is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, an acquisition that would make Nexstar the biggest owner of local stations in the country.

The pattern is remarkably similar to the circumstances surrounding Colbert’s ended contract. Colbert’s show—the most popular show in its time slot—was canceled three days after the comedian claimed that Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over his groundless lawsuit targeting Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview looked like a “big, fat bribe.” Days after the cancellation was announced, the FCC approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.

President Donald Trump announced that he would designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization—but not only do anti-fascists not commit nearly as much political violence as the far right, they’re not even an organization. Oh yeah, and Trump’s move is illegal.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday night. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.”

But antifa, which is short for “anti-fascist,” is a movement, not a group. The so-called organization lacks a central structure and is instead a loose network of individuals and groups who act separately under the banner of opposing facism.

In May 2020, Trump announced that he would designate antifa as a terrorist organization, and Attorney General Bill Barr warned he would treat violence from group members as domestic terrorism. But in September 2020, FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress that antifa was an ideology, not a group or organization, earning him an earful from Trump.

Crucially, the president lacks the legal authority to designate antifa as a terrorist organization. Congress previously granted the secretary of state the power to designate foreign groups as foreign terrorist organizations, but has granted no such power to the executive branch to designate domestic groups.

During Trump’s first term, Mary McCord, a former senior official at the Department of Justice, told Al Jazeera there was no procedure for “designating domestic organisations as terrorist organisations,” and Trump’s efforts raised “significant First Amendment concerns.”

It’s worth noting that while counterprotesters acting under the antifa banner have sometimes turned violent, the actual rate of political violence motivated by left-wing ideologies is dwarfed by right-wing violence. Between 1975 and September 2025, individuals motivated by right-wing ideologies such white supremacy, involuntary celibacy, and anti-abortion beliefs committed 391 murders, according to the Cato Institute. Comparatively, people motivated by left-wing ideologies were responsible for 65 deaths.

It seems Trump’s latest effort is a reactionary move following the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, which elicited condemnations of left-wing violence before the shooter’s identity was even known. Earlier this week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said that the administration planned to “channel all of the anger that we have over the organised campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”

As of yet, there is no evidence to suggest that Kirk’s death was linked to the network known as antifa or that his assassin was motivated by a radical left-wing ideology.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday described a “curious balance” in the labor market, in which both supply and demand have sunk “sharply,” thanks to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and potentially his tariffs.

Asked whether tariffs have created the weakened U.S. job market, Powell said that is “certainly possible.” But while trade policy “may” be affecting the labor market, Powell said, “the change in immigration” is the primary reason “employment is doing what it’s doing.” The change, of course, being Trump’s disruptive mass deportation campaign, which has dramatically decreased the supply of workers.

Amid this decrease in supply, Powell added, “demand for workers has also come down quite sharply,” leading to a “curious balance,” he said, repeating a term he used in a speech last month. “Typically when we say things are in balance that sounds good,” he added. “But in this case, the balance is because both supply and demand have come down quite sharply.”

The situation Powell described, some observers noted, resembles stagflation—the dreaded combination of stagnant economic growth, rising prices, and high unemployment. “‘Curious balance’ … Say the S word Jay,” tweeted Kevin Green, a markets correspondent at the Schwab Network, alongside a crying-laughing emoji.

At least eight members of the military have been punished for comments made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, and dozens more have been doxed and reported.

Task and Purpose reports that at least five Army officers and one Air Force sergeant have been suspended, one Marine was fired from his recruitment job for posting a meme of Kirk captioned, “Another racist man popped,” and one Army reserve major is under investigation.

“The Department of War maintains a zero-tolerance policy for military personnel or DOW civilians who celebrate or mock the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” the Pentagon posted from its rapid response account last Friday on X.

Even so, it won’t be as simple to just fire soldiers for posting things that don’t align with the current administration’s politics as the Pentagon is making it out to be.

“People who join the military have less First Amendment rights than those who don’t, but they still have robust First Amendment rights,” former military colonel, judge, and prosecutor Don Christensen told CNN. He went on to note that nothing says, “Pete Hegseth doesn’t like what you’re saying so I’m going to prosecute you.”

“You can’t just say out of the blue, ‘If you say something on social media about Charlie Kirk that Pete Hegseth doesn’t like, that’s a crime,’” Christensen continued.

While that may be true, it’s likely that the Pentagon’s gag order has already had the desired chilling effect.

House Republicans wouldn’t even let their Democratic colleague finish reading a motion to subpoena Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Wednesday for information about alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

During Kash Patel’s House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier, the FBI director repeatedly deferred Representative Mary Gay Scanlon’s questions about $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions, which major banks had flagged to the government related to Epstein and his alleged collaborators, to the Treasury Department.

After the hearing, Scanlon attempted to introduce a motion to subpoena Bessent to produce the suspicious activity reports—but her Republican colleague Tom McClintock wouldn’t even let her get the words out.

Scanlon said she was seeking reports “in the possession of the Treasury Department identifying the roughly $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions—”

“Uh, Mr. Chairman?” McClintock interjected.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan then recognized McClintock, who made a motion to table Scanlon’s request. Jordan replied that the motion was “not debatable.”

“I didn’t finish,” Scanlon said.

“She hadn’t completed the motion,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “It’s improper to cut it off before it’s completed, Mr. Chairman.”

Jordan said she could finish her last sentence.

“OK, so we’re asking them to identify the roughly $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions related to the sex trafficking crimes of Epstein, Maxwell, and their co-conspirators—” Scanlon continued, before being interrupted by McClintock yet again.

This time, Jordan moved straight to vote on McClintock’s motion to table, and Republicans promptly squashed her attempt to call Bessent in.

Scanlon wrote on X that her Republican colleagues had “voted for continuing the cover-up.”

McClintock also moved to table Representative Jasmine Crockett’s motion to subpoena the head of the Bureau of Prisons to produce records relating to Maxwell’s transfer, and Representative Eric Swalwell’s motion to subpoena deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino for witness interviews.

The Trump administration is taking its recent assault on alleged drug boats from Venezuela very seriously—not.

Recalling a recent conversation he had with War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth about the unprovoked air strikes in the Caribbean, Vice President JD Vance joked Wednesday that he “wouldn’t go fishing right now in that part of the world.”

So far this month, the United States has destroyed two small Venezuelan boats traversing international waters, which Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs.

The first attack killed 11 people on September 2, while a second attack on September 15 killed an additional three individuals, according to Donald Trump.

Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, said that the Trump administration had violated U.S. and international laws by striking the boats. He condemned the attacks as a “heinous crime” and also suggested that the strikes were an attempt to goad Venezuela into a “major war.”

In a rare interview, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil told CNN last week that the nation is not looking for a military confrontation with the U.S.

“We are not betting on conflict, nor do we want conflict,” Gil told the network.

Another incident late last week, in which the U.S. military “illegally and hostilely” detained another boat off the coast of a Venezuelan island, further intensified relations between the two countries.

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. was “looking for an incident to justify escalating war in the Caribbean, with the aim of regime change” in Venezuela. It further demanded that the U.S. “immediately cease these actions that endanger security and peace in the Caribbean.”

But the White House is apparently not looking to deescalate the situation. Instead, Trump and Vance have openly boasted about the unconstitutional killings. On Monday, Trump publicized that the second attack was on his orders, while promising to continue the “hunt,” and Vance has claimed that the needless deaths were the “highest and best use of our military.”

When a political commentator noted that killing citizens of another country without due process is a war crime, Vance simply retorted, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

Some Republicans back at home, meanwhile, have not been impressed by the aggressive international display. In an interview last week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul told Fox News that he felt compelled to address the attacks, underscoring that not every ship sailing in the Caribbean is smuggling drugs.

“The reason we board them before we blow the crap out of them is some of them don’t have drugs,” Paul said.

Paul additionally lamented that the Trump administration was involving itself in affairs thousands of miles off U.S. coastlines, and expending federal resources on the lowest echelons of the global drug trade.

Representative Nancy Mace’s crusade against Representative Ilhan Omar has dredged up an old, Islamaphobic rumor.

The pair were going back and forth on X Wednesday, ahead of a scheduled floor debate over Omar’s potential censure, and Mace referred to the Minnesota lawmaker as “Somalia Ilhan Omar.”

“Is your ridiculous censure about me being born in Somalia? Because that’s just as crazy as you are,” wrote Omar.

But then Mace reached for the top shelf to offend her colleague.

“Who knows, maybe it’ll be about you marrying your brother next!” Mace responded. “Tune in!”

MAGA conservatives have rumbled for years—without evidence—that Omar married her brother to bring him into the United States. The conspiracy first emerged during Omar’s 2016 campaign for the Minnesota state legislature, in a since-deleted post on the conservative blog Power Line, where an anonymous source was quoted as saying that Omar’s ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was related to her by blood.

Omar has vehemently and repeatedly denied the unfounded allegations, which have been disproven by her marriage certificate. At the time, Omar described the insinuation that she had married her brother to be “absurd and offensive.”

But that hasn’t stopped Mace from digging the details back up. Over the last week, Mace has advocated stripping Omar of her committee assignments and censuring her, and has publicly suggested that Omar should be deported back to Somalia for having allegedly “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” during an interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan.

Clips from that interview were similarly picked up by far-right personalities, who claimed that Omar had said Kirk deserved to die. But that’s not accurate.

“No one said he deserved to die. Ilhan Omar said the exact opposite to me,” Hasan wrote on X. “She condemned his killing. And she said her heart goes out to Kirk’s widow.”

Omar also pushed back against Mace, arguing that she never made the comments that Mace was attempting to silence her for.

“Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any,” Omar said. “Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for Governor.”

Even other Republicans didn’t appear to galvanize behind Mace’s cause, apparently wiping their hands of the South Carolinian’s vendetta.

“It just seems like every week or so we want to censure somebody for something,” Texas Representative Troy Nehls told Fox News’s Chad Pergram on Tuesday. “A lot of people say a lot of stupid stuff around here.”

Ironically, Mace’s mudslinging comes just days after she insisted that she never bad-mouthed her Democratic colleagues.

The Trump administration has finally managed to make something significantly cheaper for Americans: cocaine.

The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump has been committing so much manpower to fight dual wars on fentanyl and immigration that he’s opened up a new and fruitful hole in the drug trafficking ecosystem, which Mexican cocaine trafficker Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera and his Jalisco cartel have filled with record amounts of cocaine in the United States—and at a new low cost.

Record levels of cocaine production in Colombia are driven by the fentanyl crackdown near the border and a significant surge in usage here in the U.S. Now prices for the powder have fallen to $60–$75 per gram, a 25 percent decrease, according to researcher Morgan Godvin. “The price of pure cocaine has plummeted,” he told the Journal.

The 2016 arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s more recent crackdown on his cartel, the Sinaloans, handicapped Mexico’s top fentanyl trafficking cartel. Trump’s overzealous deportation campaign has also pulled officers away from two main fentanyl checkpoints along the southern border.

The U.S. has placed a $15 million bounty on Oseguera.

This news comes as the Trump administration conducted drone strikes on what it claims were two speedboats carrying cocaine and fentanyl from Venezuela in the Caribbean. Trump has made multiple threats of military intervention against cartels, even positing bombing Mexican soil.

Oseguera reportedly transports his product via speedboat, from Colombia and Ecuador to Mexico. As the economy continues to struggle, Americans everywhere can now powder their noses for cheap thanks to Trump.

Bill Cassidy, the moderate Republican senator who helms the Senate Health Committee, gave a feeble reaction to the committee’s Wednesday hearing with fired CDC Director Susan Monarez.

As a physician, Cassidy’s pro-vaccination stance has put him at odds with President Trump’s anti-vax health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Cassidy voted to confirm in February. At a September 4 hearing, for instance, the Louisiana senator questioned how Kennedy could reconcile being staunchly anti-vaccine while heaping praise on his boss’s 2020–21 initiative to develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy’s answers laid bare his cravenness.

But Cassidy had his own low moment Wednesday. Seemingly keeping his own political future in mind, he remained reticent after Monarez’s testimony.

As he seeks reelection in 2026, Cassidy faces a competitive GOP primary. He is already on the president’s bad side—due to his past criticism of and impeachment vote against Trump—and his chances would worsen if Trump were to publicly oppose him. Before the hearing, a Republican source close to the White House told CNN, “The White House is watching” and that Cassidy could “seal his own fate” with the hearing—“if he hasn’t already”—if it was perceived as too anti-Kennedy.

Perhaps that accounts for Cassidy’s tight-lipped response to the hearing—during which Monarez revealed that RFK Jr. told her to either fire CDC scientists and rubber-stamp recommendations by his overhauled vaccine advisory committee, or resign.

After the damning testimony, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported on X that he could only eke out the following answer from Cassidy on Monarez’s claims: “I’ll let her speak for herself.” Pressed further on his feelings about the hearing, the senator replied, “What do you think?” before disappearing behind closing elevator doors.