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      The rise and fall of Disney: how the company found then lost its backbone

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      The Walt Disney Company is probably hoping that upon viewing the new trailer for the upcoming Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu, audiences feel a swell of nostalgia. No, not for 1977, when Star Wars was fresh and wondrous; after all, Disney didn’t even own it then. Not even for a decade ago, when the company brought the film series roaring back with 2015’s The Force Awakens, still the highest-grossing movie in US box office history. Rather, the trailer, consciously or not, hopes to transport viewers, and presumably profits, back to the halcyon days of … 2019.They would probably settle for any time before their brief but tumultuous suspension of Jimmy Kimmel from ABC became national news. But 2019 would be preferable. That year, Disney’s exercised almost unprecedented box office domination, boasting an astonishing seven of the year’s 10 biggest hits – and an eighth featuring Spider-Man, a Disney-owned character in a movie produced by Disney’s Marvel Studios (but released by Sony). Remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King, sequels to Toy Story and Frozen, two to three Marvel installments (depending on how to count Spider-Man), and a new Star Wars movie added up to around $10bn in global grosses. If the Star Wars movie The Rise of Skywalker landed a little soft compared to its better-reviewed predecessors, even that cloud had a silver lining: the late 2019 debut of The Mandalorian on the then new Disney+ streaming service was an instant sensation. Even genuinely rapacious corporate moves, like Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, were greeted in some fan corners with unthinking delight, because it meant some errant licensed Marvel characters could be in the MCU.As the Covid-19 pandemic (as well as relatively bare franchise cupboards) made replicating those 2019 profits impossible over the next few years, the company at least attempted to burnish some goodwill from contemporary audiences in other ways. In particular, Disney’s various entertainment brands/fiefdoms – Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, etc – seemed to keep the company’s most evil (or equivocating) corporate instincts at bay. In 2022, Pixar and Marvel employees helped push back against the company’s initial silence on Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill prohibiting discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school classrooms, which the company eventually condemned. Those companies were also beginning, after a long delay, to diversify their slate of movies, shows and characters, with projects such as Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Turning Red and The Acolyte.But the mixed reception to some of these projects, as well as a general mortal terror that they couldn’t somehow make a Frozen, Toy Story, Star Wars and Avengers movie happen every year in perpetuity, seemed to spook Disney somewhere in the transition period from supposedly brilliant CEO Bob Iger to stumblebum replacement Bob Chapek back to Iger again. Despite his savior status, Iger himself exposed that fear when he spoke with corporate-coded cowardice about future projects not putting forward “any kind of agenda”, a pledge in deference to meaninglessness that made even the more craven “exclusively gay moments” or long-delayed female-led Marvel movie seem fiery by comparison. Corporate skittishness over including gay or minority characters that might offend vague “international audiences” was now policy.View image in fullscreenIn some ways, the company was probably just catching some blowback from the much-delayed revelation that CEOs are largely useless figureheads. Yet a series of clumsy, cowardly decisions seemed to transcend boardroom drama. Disney has been carrying out Iger’s edict in a sloppy panic. Seemingly rattled by the ire of random YouTubers, the vagaries of a post-pandemic world and the re-ascension of Donald Trumpo, this year alone the company’s removed all references to a transgender character’s identity on a Pixar streaming show; completed the bowdlerization of the Latino-driven Pixar movie Elio, which originally featured a queer-coded character; reoriented (and renamed) their corporate DEI initiatives to emphasize the generation of that old fan favorite, profit; dumped Black-led Marvel show Ironheart out in a single binge despite using a weekly release model for its marquee shows; and yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air for expressing skepticism over the Maga-world reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk, before eventually backtracking. (ABC affiliates under Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar ownership will continue to pre-empt the show until further notice.) In an elegant cherry of bad PR, Disney apparently decided the time was also right for a streaming-service price increase, its third in three years.Of course, as with any massive corporation, Disney’s earlier diversity focus was probably more for the sake of public image and accompanying business interest than genuine empathy. It’s worth asking, then, whether any of these decisions did, in fact, make money for the company especially compared to the profits generated by the Black Panther movies, or a more diverse Star Wars trilogy. The revised Elio could scarcely have made much less at the box office; it’s the lowest-grossing Pixar movie other than those directly affected by the pandemic. Are any Disney+ subscriptions attributable to de-transing a supporting character on an eight-episode miniseries? On the other hand, plenty of people did seem to cancel their subscriptions over the Kimmel battle, and the company’s stock price dipped over the past week. If the idea for any of this was winning back Maga folks in the long run, well, good luck with that. They’re still fuming over the same-sex kiss in Lightyear or girls being in Star Wars or Black people being in anything. The plain truth is, there’s a certain Maga demographic that accepts nothing less than full capitulation to their preferences and values – and you can’t dabble in full capitulation.That’s why Disney’s real wish must be for a 2019 revival. Back then, there might have been little teapot-level tempests here and there from audience segments who complain that a remake is too woke or, on the less rabid side, who regard the inclusion of, say, queer supporting characters as mild (and cynical) concessions, but $10bn buys executives a lot of confidence (even if it’s apparently not enough for actual courage). After all, that’s an environment where no one’s favorite Star Wars film can still eke out a billion dollars worldwide.Disney isn’t alone in facing a tough entertainment landscape where movies don’t gross quite as much and streaming services can easily tip into overspending. But it’s the company that now seems most terrified of this new world, maybe because its late-2010s surge somehow created the impression that endless and unbeatable growth on the backs of perma-beloved nostalgia brands would be possible. It’s not, and if there’s an upside to Disney’s morally checkered year, it’s the revelation that brands are not bulletproof spine protection. No one mad about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension (or mad about his words to begin with) seems to be taking solace in the upcoming release of another Zootopia movie. The Mandalorian movie looks fun, fan-friendly, perfectly watchable … and that’s not enough to save anyone. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel is coming back. It’s proof that you still have power | Robert Reich

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      ABC says Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to the airwaves next Tuesday – less than a week after Trump’s henchman Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said on a podcast that Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people”.Carr threatened that the FCC could “do this the easy way or the hard way” – suggesting that either ABC and its parent company, Walt Disney, must remove Kimmel or the regulator would have “additional work” to do.Why Walt Disney Company’s turnaround? As it limply explained: “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”But now, apparently, all is well.“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”How lovely. How reasonable. How, well, kumbaya. All it took were some “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” and everything returned to normal.Don’t believe it. In the days since ABC’s decision, the blowback against Disney has been hurricane level.At least five entertainment industry unions, with at least 400,000 workers, spoke out, with the screenwriters’ union charging Disney with “corporate cowardice”.Celebrities Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep called out “government threats to our freedom of speech”.Kimmel was supported by his late-night peers including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, all of whom blasted Disney and ABC with rapier-like humor.Jon Stewart devoted his show to a takedown of Disney’s cowardice.Disney talent was up in arms. Damon Lindelof, a creator of ABC’s Lost, threatened that if Kimmel’s show did not resume, he could not “in good conscience work for the company that imposed it”.Michael Eisner, a former Disney CEO, added a rare public rebuke.Even the rightwing Republican senator Ted Cruz expressed concern, suggested Carr was speaking like a mafioso and calling his threats to retaliate against media companies “dangerous as hell”.“We should not be in this business,” Cruz said. “We should denounce it.”By Monday, Carr himself was busy minimizing his role in the whole affair – denying he had threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC stations (it “did not happen in any way, shape or form”) – and putting the onus on Disney for having made a “business decision” in response to negative feedback from viewers.“Jimmy Kimmel is in the situation that he’s in because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level,” Carr claimed.But the most intense pressure came from us – from Disney viewers and customers – who immediately began to cancel subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu and threaten a broader consumer boycott.Some stars, such as Tatiana Maslany, star of Marvel’s Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Rosie O’Donnell urged people to cancel their subscriptions.But the consumer boycott seems to have begun almost immediately.Shortly after Kimmel’s suspension was announced, Disney stock dipped about 3.5%. It continued to trade lower in subsequent days. The loss in market value has amounted to about $4bn.Investors got the message. Consumers were upset, which meant they’d buy fewer Disney products and services – which meant lower profits.There’s never one single reason for the ups and downs in the value of a particular firm’s shares of stock, but the timing here has been almost exact.Bottom line: We consumers have extraordinary power. We’re the vast majority. Like every other big corporation – especially one selling directly to consumers – Disney relies on us.Even if we can’t count on our elected politicians to protect our first amendment rights, we can rely on ourselves. When our outrage translates into withholding our consumer dollars, a big corporation like Disney is forced to listen – and respond.Next time you’re feeling powerless, remember this.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now More

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      Zohran Mamdani withdraws from ABC town hall in Kimmel protest

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      Zohran Mamdani, the New York Democratic mayoral candidate, has announced he is withdrawing from a televised town hall hosted by a local ABC station in protest of the network’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s talkshow.ABC indefinitely pulled Kimmel’s late-night show off air on 17 September after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened to pull ABC affiliate broadcast licenses if the network did not act against Kimmel. Kimmel had criticized the Trump administration’s reaction to the killing of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk.The suspension sparked backlash from politicians, media figures and free-speech organizations, and it has prompted boycotts and protests against both ABC and its parent company, Disney.Mamdani, who was set to participate in a town hall event with New York’s WABC on Thursday, said he would no longer take part.“I am withdrawing not as an indictment of the local affiliate or the hard-working journalists, but rather in response to the corporate leaders who have put their bottom line ahead of their responsibility in upholding the freedom of the press,” Mamdani said on Monday during a news conference.“We cannot understand this moment of authoritarianism as solely coming from the White House, when it is also characterized by the cowardice of those in response to it.”He also mentioned his opponents in the mayoral race, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Eric Adams. The Trump administration has reportedly explored offering Adams a position in exchange for the incumbent’s dropping out of the race, with polling suggesting the contest would tighten in favor of Cuomo, whom the president prefers to Mamdani.Mamdani said: “I am running to be the next mayor of the city to finally make clear what it looks like to stand up, not just for this city, but also for the constitution.“We have to understand who suffers in these moments. It’s not just a question of Jimmy Kimmel himself, it’s also a question of the engineers, the writers, the musicians who are feeling this attack on the very city they call home. The message that it sends to each and every American across this country is a message that [free speech] is no longer a right that can be counted on, but rather that it is the government which will determine what should and should not be discussed, what can and cannot be spoken.”Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.On Friday, Variety reported that Disney and Kimmel were working on a compromise that would bring his talkshow back on air.Meanwhile, a report from Front Office Sports explored some potential complications to such a compromise. The outlet reported that Disney could be facing a choice between putting Kimmel back on air and completing a multibillion-dollar deal with the National Football League to swap the NFL Network, RedZone brand, NFL Fantasy Football and other media assets for a 10% stake in Disney-owned sportscaster ESPN.Mamdani, a state assembly member from Queens, won the Democratic nomination in June, defeating Cuomo. With less than two months until the 4 November general election, Mamdani has continued to hold a commanding lead in the polls.A recent poll showed Mamdani with 43% support among registered New York City voters. Cuomo, who is now running as an independent, received 28% support in the poll.Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa polled at 10% support, and Adams, also running as an independent, polled at 8%. Nine percent of respondents said they were still undecided.Kathy Hochul, the Democratic New York governor, has endorsed Mamdani in his race to become the next mayor of one of the world’s most prominent cities. More

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      Media giants accused of ‘cowering to threats’ as Trump tries to stamp out criticism

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      Over the past two decades Jimmy Kimmel has interviewed thousands of people – including his ultimate boss – on his late-night talkshow.“I’ve probably, with the possible exception of Roseanne, caused you more headaches than anyone in the last 15 years,” Kimmel grinned at his guest one night in late 2019. “Absolutely,” replied Disney CEO Bob Iger.When ABC, broadcaster of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, decided to suspend the program “indefinitely” this week, it dispatched an anonymous spokesperson to announce the news. Iger, veteran leader of Disney, ABC’s parent company, was nowhere to be seen – but was widely reported to have been intimately involved in the decision.Iger is one of a small handful of powerful executives pulling the strings behind the most prominent media organizations in the US. David Ellison, the new CEO of Paramount Skydance, and son of the billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, is in charge of CBS, and reportedly pursuing a deal to buy the owner of CNN. Brian Roberts, the Comcast chair, is the most senior executive overseeing NBC and its cable news network, MSNBC.View image in fullscreenIn recent months, major broadcasters have faced criticism for their responses to threats and pressure from the Trump administration. CBS paid a $16m defamation settlement to Donald Trump and scheduled the cancellation of the The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. ABC paid a $15m settlement to the US president and suspended Kimmel.And Trump is publicly pushing NBC to cancel its two late night stars, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, too.The owners of the largest US TV networks, and the ultimate employers of their stars, are even bigger companies who conduct business transactions that most viewers may not pay a lot of attention to – mergers, acquisitions, licensing deals – but are firmly in the sights of the White House.On Wednesday, FCC chair Brendan Carr – dubbed Trump’s “censor-in-chief” – dangled the power of the federal government over ABC, and Disney, saying that the regulator has “remedies we can look at” to address comments Kimmel made about conservatives in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing.“These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” Carr said of the affiliates that carry ABC across the US. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”Soon after, ABC announced it would indefinitely suspend Kimmel’s show. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” wrote Trump.But Carr is not done. “I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop,” he said of Kimmel’s suspension, in an interview on the conservative Fox News on Thursday.To Robert Thompson, a media scholar at Syracuse University who specializes in TV history, battles between government regulators and the companies that broadcast America’s favorite shows have long been a part of broadcast history. But the way TV networks are now part of far larger businesses, and complex webs of interest and influence, have changed the stakes of the fight.“Entertainment and news are controlled by these large companies that are very dependent on new acquisitions and mergers that require approval by federal government agencies,” Thompson said. “That’s why there’s a vulnerability for this kind of thing to happen.”The Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed under Bill Clinton, loosened restrictions on how many TV and radio stations a company could own nationally.Now, the dominant US TV networks – and their news and entertainment arms – are controlled by a small, but powerful, collection of entertainment giants. CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance, which includes Paramount Pictures, cable channels like MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, and other TV channels abroad, including Channel 5 in the UK. ABC is owned by Disney, which also owns Marvel Studios, Hulu and ESPN. NBC is owned by Comcast, which is also a cable TV company and an internet service producer, while also being the company behind the European broadcaster Sky and DreamWorks movies like Shrek.The timing of recent mergers have alarmed first amendment advocates, who are starting to see a pattern of companies bowing to the Trump administration in order to get approval for their deals.CBS owner Paramount was criticized for settling with Trump and cancelling Colbert’s show weeks before the FCC greenlit an $8bn merger with Skydance, a Hollywood studio.The merger installed David Ellison, founder of Skydance, at the top of Paramount Skydance, and CBS.CBS News has since appointed a Trump ally as its ombudsman and Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press, an “anti-woke” startup, is said to be in line for a role shaping its coverage.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Nexstar Media, a major owner of local television stations, including over 30 ABC-affiliated stations, has been looking for FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger with Tegna, another broadcast media company. After Carr’s podcast interview, Nexstar announced it would preempt Kimmel’s show on their ABC-affiliated stations, meaning the show wouldn’t access millions of TV viewers in specific markets. (Nexstar executives “had no communication with the FCC or any government agency” before making the call, the firm has stressed.)Christopher Anders, a senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, a leading defender of rights and freedoms enshrined in the US constitution, said Carr was using “the regulatory power the government has over media companies” through his comments.“That is exactly what the first amendment is designed to stop: the government using its power to stifle speech,” Anders said. “And if there’s any speech that’s at the very heart of the first amendment, it would be the ability to criticize those in power, particularly the ability to criticize the president.”Media giants have been “cowering to threats”, he added, ignoring the responsibility they have of defending free speech.Iger, who previously considered running for president, has tried to steer clear of the culture wars that embroiled his predecessor, Bob Chapek. Now he faces intense scrutiny for overseeing a decision – suspending Kimmel – which critics say raises serious free speech concerns.Michael Eisner, Disney’s former CEO, and Iger’s former boss at the firm, wrote on X on Friday: “The ‘suspending indefinitely’ of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation. Maybe the Constitution should have said, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.’”It is still unclear when – or if – Kimmel will come back on air. The companies in charge of US television, and the government agencies who regulate their dealings, loom large.“Anyone that has the privilege of owning one of the major media networks, or owning the affiliate stations that carry those networks, ought to also have recognized the responsibility to protect the right of free speech,” said Anders. “Not just give up that right because an administration official is at least implicitly threatening to block their ability to carry out business.” More

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      Ted Cruz compares threats to ABC by FCC chair to those of mob boss

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      Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, compared Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.“Look, Jimmy Kimmel has been canned. He has been suspended indefinitely. I think that it a fantastic thing,” Cruz said at the start of the latest episode of his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz. There were, however “first amendment implications” of the FCC’s role, the senator, a Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for US supreme court chief justice William Rehnquist, added.Cruz, a formerly fierce political rival of Donald Trump turned strong supporter, called Carr’s comments “unbelievably dangerous” and warned that government attempts to police speech could harm conservatives if Democrats return to power.“He threatens explicitly: ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast any more’ … He says: ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said.“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz also said. “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.”During an Oval Office event on Friday, when Trump was asked about Cruz’s comments on Carr, the president raised the issue of licenses and suggested stations might be “illegally” using the airwaves to broadcast critical coverage of him in news reports.“When you have networks that give somebody 97% bad publicity,” the president said, “I think that’s dishonesty.”“I think Brendan Carr is a patriot. I think Brendan Carr is a courageous person. I think Brendan Carr doesn’t like to see the airwaves be used illegally and incorrectly,” Trump said. “So I disagree with Ted Cruz on that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe president’s claim that news coverage on ABC, NBC and CBS was almost entirely negative appears to have been based on a subjective analysis of “the networks’ spin” by NewsBusters, a conservative media watchdog group founded by Trump’s nominee to serve as US ambassador to South Africa, the activist L Brent Bozell III. More

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      Senate fails to pass short-term funding bill, with both parties blaming the other for looming government shutdown – US politics live

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      The Republican-controlled Senate has failed to pass a short-term funding bill that would prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month.Earlier, continuing resolution (CR) cleared the House, but ultimately stalled in the upper chamber – unable to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.Democrats remain resolute that they will continue to block any bill if it doesn’t include significant amendments to health care provisions. Today, senator John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, was the lone Democrat to vote for the GOP-drawn CR. While Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined their colleagues across the aisle and voted no.The Trump administration officially announced plans to raise the fee companies pay to sponsor H‑1B workers to $100,000, claiming the move will ensure only highly skilled, irreplaceable workers are brought to the US while protecting American jobs.“I think it’s going to be a fantastic thing, and we’re going to take that money and we’re going to reduce taxes, we’re going to reduce debt,” Trump said.Lutnick criticized the H‑1B visa program, saying it has been “abused” to bring in foreign workers who compete with American employees.“All of the big companies are on board,” Lutnick said.President Donald Trump, along with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, unveiled a new immigration program called the “Gold Card,” which would create an expedited visa pathway for foreigners who pay $1 million to the US Treasury.If visa holders are sponsored by a corporation, they must pay $2 million.“Essentially, we’re having people come in, people that, in many cases, I guess, are very successful or whatever,” Trump said. “They’re going to spend a lot of money to come in. They’re going to pay, as opposed to walking over the borders.”After a reporter asked President Donald Trump about his thoughts on cancel culture amid surging debates about free speech, the president claimed that networks gave him overwhelmingly negative coverage, citing – without evidence – that more than 90% of stories about him were “bad.”“I think that’s really illegal,” he said.Trump told reporters that the level of negative coverage made his election victory “a miracle” and said that the networks lack credibility with the public.He also repeated a false claim that the Federal Communications Commission licenses US TV networks. While the FCC requires the owners of local television stations, which are often affiliated with national networks that produce programming, to obtain licenses, the FCC states on its website: “We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR.”President Donald Trump scolded House Democrats who voted against a resolution honoring slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.In a 310-58 vote, the resolution passed nine days after a gunman assassinated Kirk while he was speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University. Several Democrats who opposed the resolution said they condemned Kirk’s murder, as well as political violence, but could not support a figure who used his speech. Many critics have pointed out that Kirk had disparaged Martin Luther King Jr. and called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake.”“Just today, the House Democrats voted against condemning the political assassination of Charlie Turk,” the president said during his remarks at the White House today. “Who could vote against that?”President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications, Bloomberg reports, in what marks the administration’s latest move to deter legal immigration.The presidential proclamation is slated to be signed today.Trump aides have previously argued that the H-1B program, designed to bring skilled foreign workers to the US, suppresses wages for Americans and discourages US-born workers from pursuing STEM fields.The additional fee would add to the already costly process to obtain an H-1B visa, which could go from about $1,700 to $4,500. About 85,000 H-1B visas are granted every year. More than half a million people are authorized to work in the US under H-1B visas. While these are temporary, and typically granted for three years, holders can try to extend them, or apply for green cards.Republican senator Ted Cruz compared Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke ABC’s broadcast license to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.On his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican called Carr’s comments “unbelievably dangerous” and warned that government attempts to police speech could ultimately harm conservatives if Democrats return to power.“He threatens explicitly: ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast anymore’… He says: ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of GoodFellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said.“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said. “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.”The acting inspector general of the department of education, Heidi Semann, said that her office would be launching a probe into the department’s handling of sensitive data.It comes after several Democratic lawmakers, led by senator Elizabeth Warren, wrote to the department’s watchdog – asking her to review the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) “infiltration” of the education department.“Because of the Department’s refusal to provide full and complete information, the full extent of DOGE’s role and influence at ED remains unknown,” the letter states.In response, Semann – whose office serves as an independent entity tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse within the agency – said the following: “Given the sensitive nature of the data it holds, it is crucial that the [education] Department ensures appropriate access to its data systems and maintains effective access controls for system security and privacy protection purposes.”

      On Capitol Hill today, a flurry of action and inaction, after the House passed a stopgap funding bill – written by Republicans to stave off a government shutdown – only for Democrats to reject it in the Senate. In kind, GOP lawmakers blocked a Democratic version of the bill. Funding expires at the end of September, and with congressional lawmakers on recess next week the threat of a shutdown is perilously close.

      In response, legislators from both sides of the aisle have spent the day shirking blame and claiming the other party would be responsible for a shutdown on 1 October. Senate majority leader John Thune said that “Democrats are yielding to the desires of their rabidly leftist base and are attempting to hold government funding hostage to a long list of partisan demands.” While his counterpart, Chuck Schumer said that Republicans “want” the shutdown to happen. “They’re in the majority. They don’t negotiate, they cause the shutdown – plain and simple,” he said.

      Also on the Hill today, a resolution honoring murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, but only after causing considerable consternation among Democrats. All Republicans in attendance voted in favor of the resolution, which describes Kirk as “a courageous American patriot, whose life was tragically and unjustly cut short in an act of political violence”. Ninety five Democrats supported the resolution, while 58 opposed it. Several Democrats who opposed the resolution said they condemned Kirk’s murder, and political violence at large, but could not support a figure who used his speech.

      Meanwhile, a federal judge dismissed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times over its content. US district judge Steven Merryday said Trump violated a federal procedural rule requiring a short and plain statement of why he deserves relief. He gave Trump 28 days to file an amended complaint, and reminded the administration it was “not a protected platform to rage against an adversary”.

      The Trump’s administration also asked the supreme court on Friday to intervene in a bid to refuse to issue passports to transgender and non-binary Americans that reflect their gender identities. It’s one of several disputes in regard to an executive order Trump signed after returning to office in January that directs the government to recognize only two biologically distinct sexes: male and female. A lower court judge had blocked the policy earlier this year, and an appeals court let the judge’s ruling stay in place.

      And on foreign policy, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping “made progress on many very important issues” during their call this morning, according to a Truth Social post from the president. Trump said that the pair discussed “trade, fentanyl, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the TikTok deal”. The president also said he and Xi would have a face-to-face meeting at the APEC summit in South Korea next month, he would travel to China “in the early part of next year”, and Xi would also come to the US at a later date.
      A top donor to Donald Trump and other Maga Republicans has privately mocked the US president’s longtime position that he has an upper hand in trade negotiations with China, in a sign that even some loyal supporters have been uneasy with the White House strategy.Liz Uihlein, the billionaire businesswoman who co-founded office supply company Uline with her husband, Richard, sent an email to her staff earlier this year that contained a cartoon in which Trump can be seen playing cards with Chinese president Xi Jinping. In the cartoon, Trump claims: “I hold the cards”, to which Xi responds: “The cards are made in China.”The email, seen by the Guardian, appears to have been sent in April by an administrative assistant on Liz Uihlein’s behalf. Uihlein prefaced the cartoon with a short remark: “All – The usual. Liz”.The barb is significant because it was sent by an important political ally to Trump and his movement. Liz and Richard Uihlein were the fourth largest political donors in the presidential election cycle, having given $143m to Republicans, according to Opensecrets, which tracks political giving.A Uline spokesperson said Liz Uihlein had no comment. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Also on Capitol Hill today, Alex Acosta, the former US attorney for southern Florida who also served as the labor secretary during the first Trump administration, testified before lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee today in a closed-door deposition.Acosta negotiated the deal in 2008 that saw Jeffrey Epstein plead guilty and receive no federal charges for soliciting minors. At the time he served a 13-month prison sentence in a county jail and received various work privileges.Then, in 2019, Epstein was eventually charged with federal sex trafficking crimes, which shone the spotlight back on Acosta – now the labor secretary under Trump – who resigned from his cabinet position.The 2008 plea deal has come up again throughout the Oversight committee’s investigation into the handling of the Epstein case. Democrats on the committee have called it a “sweetheart deal”, and after today’s deposition several of those lawmakers characterised Acosta was “evasive” and “non-credible”.“It’s very difficult to get straightforward answers out of him regarding what happened during this time, what he knew of the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein,” said congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, a Democrat who sits on the Oversight committee.Earlier today, Republican congressman James Comer said that the committee, which he chairs, has begun receiving documents from the treasury department relating to the Epstein case.“When we met with the victims, and we said, ‘what can we do to expedite this investigation to be able to provide justice for you all?’, they said, ‘follow the money, follow the money’,” Comer told reporters today.A reminder, government funding lapses on 30 September. The Senate isn’t back from recess until 29 September, meaning that any vote to avoid a shutdown would need to happen less than 48 hours before the deadline.In response, congressional Democrats just wrapped a press conference where they said that any blame for a government shutdown lays squarely at the feet of their Republican colleagues.“The bare minimum here is for Republican leadership to simply sit down with Democratic leadership to hammer out a path forward. Now they’re leaving town instead of sitting down with Democrats,” said Democratic senator Patty Murray, who serves as the vice-chair of the Senate appropriations committee.Minority leader Chuck Schumer said today that plans by House lawmakers to not return from recess until 1 October – effectively stymieing Democrat’s hopes of negotiations before government funding expires at the end of this month – was proof that Republicans “want” the shutdown to happen.“They’re in the majority. They don’t negotiate, they cause the shutdown – plain and simple,” Schumer added.Per my last post, on the Senate floor today, majority leader John Thune said he is unlikely to call back lawmakers next week (when Congress is on recess). Instead, he shirked any blame for government funding expiring, and said the“ball is in the Democrats’ court” now.“I can’t stop Democrats from opposing our nonpartisan continuing resolution. If they want to shut down the government, they have the power to do so,” the South Dakota Republican said. “If they think they’re going to gain political points from shutting down the government over a clean, non partisan CR, something they voted for 13 times under the Biden administration, I would strongly urge them to think again.” More