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      With Kimmel’s suspension, the FCC chair has made himself Trump’s comedian-in-chief | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Who’s the comedian? Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairperson, pressured the Disney company to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night talkshow host on ABC, for a remark he made about the right wing’s attempts to shape perceptions about the murderer of the far-right political operative Charlie Kirk. (Kimmel is now back on the air.) It was the opening riff of Carr’s stand-up routine.Carr’s choice of venue to issue his threat – a hard-right podcast – indicated the kind of media of which he approves. His pressure against Kimmel is no isolated gesture, but the execution of a calculated plan he himself helped hatch to eradicate critical political speech. But Carr’s exploitation of the death of Charlie Kirk to serve as the trigger for Trump’s repression only succeeded in turning Jimmy Kimmel into a free speech symbol before his return to television on Tuesday.“Free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control,” Carr wrote as an FCC commissioner in 2023. “That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Then, on 17 September, he told the podcast: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.“These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”Now, Carr was fulfilling “the authoritarian’s dream”. He seems indifferent to his duplicity, boldly tossing aside pretense. Dealing with Kimmel, he posed as a stereotypical gangster speaking in clichés from a 1930s movie: “the easy way or the hard way.” Carr seems excited by his own rough language. His display of brass knuckles, however, demolishes his legitimacy to wear a badge. As the violator of free speech, he betrays his office as a protector. He also destroys conservative posturing as the special victim of speech suppression.Carr is using government power to eliminate criticism. He is implementing a policy of censorship he himself authored in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook. Even when he imitates a mobster, he does not issue his threats in a raised voice. His tone does not rise to the histrionics of Stephen Miller. Carr is a zealot of a certain type, the rightwing Leninist with the grim resolve of a commissar, the bureaucrat rigorously checking off boxes – in this case, purging late-night comedians – to fulfill the larger ideological agenda.The operation of Trump’s purge involves not the slightest bit of persuasion, debate or discussion. Carr is executing the will of the leader who is not to be questioned and above all never to be ridiculed. “We’re not done yet” with the changes in “the media ecosystem”, Carr told CNBC on 18 September. He called the erasure of Kimmel a “market correction”. Carr is incapable of comprehending when he is unintentionally funny in a way that is self-undermining. He’s not only Trump’s executioner. He’s Trump’s straight man.Before the identity, let alone the motive, of the Kirk assassin was known, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, raged against “an ideology at war with family and nature”. Weeks before, on Fox News, he had already declared the Democratic party “a domestic extremist organization”. Now, after Kirk’s assassination, taking Miller’s cue, the rightwing site the Federalist stated: “After a long history of condoning, advocating, and participating in political violence, it is time to designate the Democrat party a domestic terrorist organization.”The influential anti-woke activist Christopher Rufo tweeted: “The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”JD Vance threatened: “We are working very hard to ensure that the funding networks for leftwing violence, that the radicalization networks for leftwing violence – that if you encourage or fund your fellow Americans or anybody else to commit acts of violence because you disagree with political speech, you are going to be treated like a terrorist organization and we are going to go after you.”Trump went on Fox & Friends to point his finger: “The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.”All of this occurred before Jimmy Kimmel’s ouster.Meanwhile, gaggles of feverish far-right influencers, whose stock-in-trade is conspiracy theories, tried to debunk one fantasy spinning around the internet that threatened to boomerang on them. Within the Maga hothouse, Kirk had faced backlash in 2019 from the Groypers, led by Nick Fuentes, who once dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and accused Kirk of being too moderate. Kirk later shifted his position to the hard right on immigration. “I’ve noticed people like Charlie Kirk … are now calling for an immigration moratorium,” Fuentes said in June. “That means they want to shut down all immigration. And suffice to say, the Groypers have won. It’s just not even a question at this point.”The theory spread like wildfire that the killer’s cryptic inscriptions on shell casings could be Groyper messages. If they were, he would be an errant rightwing extremist, not a leftwing one. Those etched messages, however, apparently referred to a range of things, including gaming memes. No evidence has emerged that Tyler Robinson, the suspect, had political connections to any group or the involvement of anyone else in his act.But with the far-right’s history of heated factional warfare flaring in the background, Jimmy Kimmel said in his monologue on 15 September : “The Maga gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”Kimmel’s comment condensed, into a line that was not a joke, a complicated and fraught situation, down the rabbit hole of the far right, involving the frenzied Maga effort to pin the blame on the “radical left” and by extension the whole Democratic party, and to deflect scrutiny of their own infighting. Kimmel’s remark assumed a lot of arcane knowledge on the part of his audience.At the same time, the FCC, which Carr chairs, was considering a $6.2bn merger between Nexstar Media, a large owner of TV stations, and the Tegna media company.Within days of Kimmel’s rather innocuous comment, Carr stated that the comedian was “appearing to directly mislead the American public”. Nexstar announced it would no longer broadcast Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Disney followed by suspending him from ABC. Carr praised Nexstar “for doing the right thing”.Ironically, during the Red Scare, in 1950, when Gypsy Rose Lee, soon to be the host of an ABC radio gameshow called What Makes You Tick?, was accused of being a Communist by the American Legion and Red Channels, a conservative publication seeking to root out subversives in the media, ABC executives stood by her. CBS, on the other hand, demanded all of its employees sign a loyalty oath. Gypsy Rose Lee said about the efforts at censorship: “This may be all right for Russia, but I hope not for us.”Sinclair, a rightwing-controlled media outlet that broadcasts ABC shows, announced that suspension of Kimmel was insufficient and that it would pre-empt his program until further notice. But even that was not enough. Sinclair demanded that Kimmel “make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA”. Instead of airing the show, Sinclair said, it would offer to its affiliates a “remembrance” of Kirk, “who boldly and tirelessly defended biblical values and truth as he challenged a new generation to stand firm for Christ”. The piece was sanitized of his racist, nativist, antisemitic and misogynist views, and his assertion that Joe Biden “should honestly be put in prison and/or be given the death penalty for his crimes against America”. Kirk, extolled as an exemplar of free speech and debate, had in fact created a “Professor Watchlist” to blacklist liberal academics across the board. Sinclair made Kirk, touted as an advocate of free speech, into a symbol of its suppression. But, after further stoking the firestorm, Sinclair put its “remembrance” on YouTube and instead ran an episode of Celebrity Family Feud. Once Disney restored Kimmel’s show, Sinclair and Nexstar stated their affiliates would not air it.Carr launched his attack on Kimmel on a podcast called The Benny Show, hosted by Benny Johnson, the former chief creative officer at Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Carr had plunged down a deep rabbit hole of the right with a dubious character.Johnson was fired from BuzzFeed in 2014 after being accused of plagiarism. He was later associated with a political consulting firm called Arsenal Media – “a chaotic working environment, rife with internal bullying, toxic HR practices, and an intense culture of secrecy”, where some contractors said they were not paid, according to an investigative report in the Verge. (Johnson’s own website described him as a co-founder and chief creative officer of the site until April 2022, according to the report, but a spokesperson for Johnson told the Verge in April 2022 that he “is not currently, nor has ever been an owner, executive, or even employee of Arsenal Media”.) Johnson was also exposed last year to be among a group of six rightwing influencers who were funneled $10m from two Russian agents indicted by the justice department. Johnson and the others claimed to have been duped.When Pam Bondi, the attorney general, created an uproar, including on the right, by stating: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Jonathan Karl, the former ABC White House correspondent, asked Trump his reaction.“She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly,” Trump replied to Karl. “You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they will come after ABC. ABC paid me $16m recently for a form of hate speech. Your company paid me $16m for a form of hate speech, so maybe they will have to go after you.” Trump was referring to his suit against ABC for This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos’s comment coming out of the E Jean Carroll trial describing Trump’s sexual violence. It was generally believed that ABC would have won the case, but the prospective threat to the Disney company from the Trump administration prompted its first capitulation.Trump, on his state visit to Britain, slammed Kimmel at a press conference with Keir Starmer, saying the host had been “fired because he had bad ratings” and was “not a talented person”. The old reality-TV host’s jealousy for an actual show-business star shone through. In fact, Kimmel’s show was rated No 1 with the highly valued young adult demographic.On Air Force One, Trump suggested that the FCC look into revoking the licenses of other networks, saying: “They give me only bad publicity or press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”If there are further attempts at impertinent humor, they will be met with even more severe punishments. Will Carr issue a full report to meet the crisis, perhaps to a newly created House committee on the weaponization of humor, the Trump era version of the Red Scare’s House un-American activities committee? Will witnesses be subpoenaed from the writers’ room? Will comics be permitted to sign confessions regretting their past gags? What about the audience members, fellow travelers all, who laughed? An inquisition of comedy would take everyone’s minds off the Epstein files. Are you now or have you ever been a comedian? No joking! That’s an order – an executive order.

      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist More

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      A US fascism expert’s warning to Australia: ‘You guys are probably next’

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      It’s a warm autumn evening and Jason Stanley is walking through downtown Toronto, his home of a fortnight, discussing his view that America is sliding into fascism, and its global and historical parallels.“But the far right is everywhere,” he tells the Guardian. “There is a chill of fear everywhere.”As if on cue, a man emerges walking in the opposite direction wearing a bright red T-shirt bearing the slogan “Canada First”, a nationalist political movement promoting the mass deportation of migrants.“You can feel the sense of threat,” Stanley says. “Fascism begins with immigrants and national minorities, and it moves quickly to political opponents.”The trend is a global one, Stanley argues; the United States is just further down the path than other places. It is descending more quickly – and, as the events of past days have shown, more violently.When we speak, it is a week since rightwing provocateur Charlie Kirk was murdered at a university campus in Utah. In the days since, Kirk’s death has been weaponised by some supporters to attack political opponents. In an address from the Oval Office, the US president, Donald Trump, specifically blamed “radical left political violence” for Kirk’s death.View image in fullscreenA website has been established to dox anyone the site’s creators believe has “celebrated” Kirk’s assassination, or made comments they deem insufficiently orthodox on his legacy. People’s names, phone numbers, home addresses and places of work have been listed online, accompanied by threats and acts of violence.A thread on X is celebrating people losing their jobs for making comments about Kirk’s death: the thread lists dozens of cases of journalists, teachers, even hamburger cooks and Secret Service agents, summarily fired.“And JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, has encouraged ordinary citizens to report people for their negative comments about Charlie Kirk,” Stanley says.“That was a real signal saying, ‘We’re going to police your speech at every level’ … It’s a terror campaign against ordinary citizens’ speech.”Stanley made global headlines in March this year when, as a Yale professor specialising in the study of fascism, he announced he was leaving the US because he believed it was at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.View image in fullscreenNow a fortnight into his exile, he says he is not surprised by the worsening political climate in the US, “but it’s always terrifying when it comes”.He does not regret the move, arguing he can “fight better” from outside the US.“Right now, walking through the streets of Toronto, I feel safe. Given that the president of the United States said we’re going to target the people who call us fascists and Nazis, I probably wouldn’t feel safe in the United States. A lot of people don’t feel safe in the United States.”There is historical resonance, too, in Stanley’s exile from a rising tide of fascism. His German Jewish forebears, including both his parents and grandmother (who rescued more than 400 Jews from concentration camps) fled a Nazi regime that had them marked for extermination.As we speak, Stanley is partway through writing an article on America’s current moment, drawing from his grandmother’s memoir of the Kristallnacht, a Nazi-coordinated, nationwide antisemitic riot in 1938.View image in fullscreenHe cites a quote (mis)attributed most often to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.”“I find myself asking: ‘Is this moment exactly Kristallnacht? Is it exactly the Reichstag fire?’ It’s like it’s these jigsaw puzzles … it’s a piece of one and a piece of another.”Stanley says he sees elements of Kristallnacht in the current conflagration after Kirk’s killing – the tumult exploited to expand the target of hostility from immigrants to political opponents.There is parallel too, he says, in the militarisation of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) – echoes of the Sturmabteilung, Ernst Röhm’s feared brownshirts.Much of the US’s political upheaval is idiosyncratic to its own history and political moment, but Australia, far distant, perhaps, with a different political culture, is not immune from a descent into fascism, Stanley insists.View image in fullscreenIn fact, he argues, Australia’s history makes it acutely vulnerable to precisely that.“You guys are probably next, right? The first domino to go.“You guys had a White Australia policy until the 1970s. That’s a terrible sign. And you attacked your universities ages ago.”Stanley cites, as well, Australia’s history of Indigenous displacement, its “performatively vicious” treatment of asylum seekers and the fierce “anti-woke” rhetoric that pierces public discourse.“A lot of what you’re seeing in the United States must seem familiar to you, even though you’ve come nowhere close to what we’ve seen in the last few months; but the ideological preconditions are certainly familiar to you.”The response to this might be that Australia has just re-elected a centre-left government with a commanding majority, rejecting anti-immigration rhetoric and division to such an extent that the leader of the opposition – who ran on these campaign platforms – didn’t just lose the election, but his own seat in parliament.Australia’s institutions, too, can be argued to be more robust: the public service and judiciary are far less politicised, voting is independently overseen and compulsory (driving parties towards a more moderate centrism), political violence is rare (and not fuelled by a firearm epidemic).But Stanley points out that fascism often comes cloaked in the language, the institutions and the processes of democracy: an insidiousness that lies in seeking to appear democratic.“Fascism conceals its anti-democratic nature by representing itself as the general will of the people, where ‘the people’ are the dominant racial or religious group.“It will say ‘the majority of people want this’, but that’s not the core idea of democracy. The core idea of democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Democracy is a system based on freedom and equality.”Fascism is not a binary question either, nor one of an absolute threshold. Democracy and fascism are concepts that exist on a spectrum – a country can be more or less democratic, more or less fascist.“Yes, the United States is quite fascist now. It’s much less of a democracy. But, officially, at least, the United States is a democracy living under an emergency.“And this emergency allows the government to scoop people up into unmarked vans; perhaps you can stay indefinitely as a democracy under emergency?”View image in fullscreenA nation’s slide into fascism carries obvious consequence for the nation itself, but Stanley argues that when the country in question possesses the strongest military on Earth, is the global superpower and dominates international politics, it carries immense ramifications for the entire world.“It normalises and legitimates fascist movements everywhere,” Stanley argues. “So you’re going to see more of that dynamic, I suspect. All the remaining democratic countries are going to face surging anti-democratic, ultranationalist movements.”For Australia, the consequence of America’s descent is particularly acute.Since the end of the second world war, Australia has depended on the United States for its defence and security (including sheltering under its nuclear umbrella). The postwar “international rules-based order” (to use the parlance so loved by Australia’s foreign policy establishment) is, some argue, more accurately characterised as a US imperialist one.But Australia’s “great and powerful friend” (another particularly Australian foreign policy nomenclature) is no longer a reliable or consistent ally. Perhaps it never was, only now it is more nakedly so.Trump’s second administration has an exposed record of treating allies with worse than indifference – rather with contempt.Here, Stanley has perhaps his strongest note of caution. “Undoing fascism is very, very hard,” he says. Democracy is not some natural default.“We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, there are no more democracies, or very few. Democracy wasn’t a thing for a long time: we had monarchies and we had empires, and other forms of government, but we’re now in a situation where India, Russia, the United States and China are not democratic countries. So you have to ask: what will remain?” More

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      How Trump’s assault on US wind industry threatens jobs and power for nearly 5m homes

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      Donald Trump has jettisoned Republicans’ long-standing “all of the above” approach to energy by using the US government to aggressively stamp out clean energy projects – particularly offshore wind turbines.The scale of the intervention is remarkable – a total of nine already permitted offshore wind projects that were set to provide electricity to nearly 5m households and create around 9,000 jobs in the US are under investigation or have already been paused by the Trump administration.Trump has barred any new solar and wind projects from federal land and waters, eliminated incentives for clean energy and, almost uniquely for a US president, called for an entire industry to be stopped in its tracks.“Windmills – we’re just not gonna allow them, they are ruining the country,” Trump said last month. On Tuesday, Trump told the United Nations, without evidence, that “countries are on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda.”The president has a long distaste for wind turbines, calling them “ugly”, “disgusting” and “garbage” and calling any support for wind and solar to help ameliorate the climate crisis “the scam of the century.”This grudge has been aimed most pointedly at the US’s nascent offshore wind sector, with the Trump administration currently halting, delaying or investigating nine already permitted projects off the east coast – five of which are already under construction. In the past two weeks alone, officials have filed a legal motion to stop a wind project off Maryland and review another off Massachusetts.Officials also halted Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, which is 80% complete, although work was allowed to resume by a federal judge on Monday.“Under this administration, there is not a future for offshore wind because it is too expensive and not reliable enough,” Doug Burgum, Trump’s interior secretary, told a conference in Italy this month.The interior department, Burgum said at the conference, is “taking a deep look” at the five under-construction offshore wind farms – Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off New York.Officials have taken additional steps to impede certain projects. In a court filing this month, lawyers for the administration asked a federal judge to cancel the approval of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, saying they had identified an error.Last week, they moved to block the SouthCoast Wind project off Massachusetts, and earlier they also announced they are reconsidering approvals for another wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, called New England Wind.In order to squash projects that had already been approved, the Trump administration has variously claimed offshore wind turbines disturb whales, pose national security risks and impede search and rescue efforts, despite presenting little to no evidence of such harms.A Department of Interior spokesperson said that work on Revolution Wind will resume but it will still be investigated over “possible impacts by the project to national security”.The department ‘“remains committed to ensuring that prior decisions are legally and factually sound”, the spokesperson added.This crackdown has rattled businesses and imperiled a sizable amount of power that was to flow from the offshore wind farms.In total, the nine wind projects were set to deliver around 12.5GW of energy capacity, enough to provide power to almost 5m households. More than 9,000 direct and indirect jobs flowing from the projects are also at risk should they be halted, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.“At least a third or maybe 40%, of building trade members, we are pretty sure, voted for this President and his administration … now thousands are losing work,” said David Langlais, who leads the Ironworkers Local 37, whose members were among the more than 1,000 workers whose jobs were threatened by the attempt to halt Revolution Wind in Rhode Island.“The administration came out saying they’re supportive of working people, working Americans, but they just continue to show the opposite of that.”The administration’s war on wind has had spurred chaos among developers. In June, the company behind a planned wind farm off New Jersey’s coast, Atlantic Shores, asked the state to cancel its contract after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency yanked a necessary air permit for the project. The firms behind Empire Wind 2 off New York in January also cancelled their contract, citing economic concerns and supply chain issues.It is unusual for the US government to attempt to shut down a project it has previously approved, even under a different administration. A further six offshore wind projects, promising a further 11.6GW of power, are still in the permitting phase and so will be even more vulnerable to being scrapped by the administration.Experts have pointed out that renewables like wind and solar are often the cheapest sources of electricity, with a slowdown in US deployment set to further raise energy costs for American households. In New England, the grid operator has warned of potential power shortfalls, too, if the targeted offshore wind projects are scrapped.“Halting construction and revoking permits on approved projects after years of thorough agency review will raise electricity prices for millions across the country, jeopardize billions of dollars in private investment, threaten our national shipbuilding, steel, and manufacturing supply chains, and undermine our nation’s energy security,” said Liz Burdock, CEO of Oceantic, the offshore renewable energy-focused organization formerly known as the Business Network for Maryland Offshore Wind.The attack on wind is especially concerning amid the rising demand for energy caused by the growth of AI data centers, said Michael Sabitoni, general secretary-treasurer of the Laborers International Union of North America.That strain has also raised energy prices, including for workers whose jobs are under threat. And no other power projects in New England are slated to bring more energy or jobs online, Sabitoni added.“If you said you wanted to bring, for instance, a new nuclear plant online, do you know how long it would take to site that? It would take years.”The fallout will take a major toll on local economies, said Sabitoni.The onslaught on wind power has bewildered some conservatives who still adhere to ‘all of the above’, a term widely used by Republicans, including the Trump administration in its first term, over the past decade to denote an agnostic, free-market approach to energy.Scientists have warned that fossil fuels must be steadily phased out to avert disastrous climate impacts. By contrast, Trump, who received large donations from the oil and gas industry during his election campaign, has invoked emergency powers, shredded regulations and boosted subsidies to force through more fossil fuel projects.“It’s different from the first term,” said Heather Reams, chief executive of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (Cres), a conservative group that advocates for clean energy. “There’s no real precedence for this and it’s having a chilling effect across energy projects in general.”Right-leaning Americans still overwhelmingly back the all of the above approach, polling released by Cres this week shows. A total of 85% of Republican voters support all of the above, the poll found, with nearly three-quarters wanting the US to use clean energy to help cut planet-heating pollution.“We are seeing a big difference between ordinary voters and what’s happening inside the Beltway,” said Reams. “There’s this harsh turn against renewable energy from the White House, particularly offshore wind. We haven’t heard an economic reason for this, although we know that President Trump has not liked wind for a long time. It sounds like it is personal.” More

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      The Democratic superlawyer Trump can’t silence: ‘We are in the break-glass moment of American history’

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      Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney, has not shied away from standing up to the Trump administration, and has been targeted for retribution this year multiple times as a result.He’s one of scores of lawyers the Trump administration has named in executive actions, joining a list that includes big law firms and attorneys who worked for people Donald Trump considers his opponents.There’s no shortage of reasons why the president would hate Elias and want to shut him down: Elias has for decades represented high-profile Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and prominent liberal groups, including the Democratic national committee (DNC). He hired the research group that investigated Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016, eventually becoming the Steele dossier. He specializes in election law and won 64 of the 65 cases he worked on in response to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.In one presidential memo, the Trump administration listed “examples of grossly unethical misconduct” by lawyers, singling out Elias for his involvement in the Steele dossier. The law firm Elias used to work for, Perkins Coie, got its own presidential action that cited the dossier. Trump mentioned Elias by name in March at a Department of Justice press conference, calling him a “radical” who was trying to “turn America into a corrupt, communist and third-world country”.While a long list of big-name law firms have capitulated to Trump’s demands, Elias says his firm was built to withstand the pressure and its important to him to use his platform to fight back, though his outspokenness often comes with pushback.The presidential memo, which names Elias as an example of an attorney to target, directed the attorney general to “take all appropriate action to refer for disciplinary action” any attorney that violated ethical guidelines and to “review conduct by attorneys or their law firms in litigation against the Federal Government over the last 8 years”.Elias isn’t aware he’s under investigation, but said he thinks people not taking Trump literally is “one of the great failings” of his time in power.“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”He didn’t escape scrutiny during Trump’s first term. He first came up on Trump’s radar, to his knowledge, when the president called him the Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer” after Elias went to work on a close Senate election in Florida in 2018.Trump’s second term, though, is like “day and night” from his first, Elias said. The president is now “single-mindedly focused on going after his political opponents” and any walls between Trump and the Department of Justice have crumbled.“It’s a very different thing when he is not just unleashing the hordes of hate on social media, not just activating the rightwing echo chamber, but is talking to people who are in positions of power to actually do something about his obsessions,” Elias said.Despite not posting on X anymore – his decision to stop using the platform prompted conspiracy theories from the right – he is far from quiet about his work and his opinions on the Trump administration. He posts often on other platforms, runs a democracy-focused outlet and files lawsuits against the Trump administration on the regular.“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”In response to questions about why the administration has targeted Elias, Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Elias “is a crooked hack who was deeply involved in creating a false ‘dossier’ against President Trump on behalf of his crooked client Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the 2016 election in her favor. Marc Elias is a disgraceful swamp creature and President Trump is draining that swamp.”Elias, Democratic superlawyerA lifelong Democrat, Elias helped build up election law to what it is today. When he was a young lawyer, it was a rare specialty – election disputes were typically seen as political issues, not legal ones. Now, post-election disputes are almost entirely legal issues.A 2008 Senate race in Minnesota in which Democrat Al Franken eventually won over Republican Norm Coleman turned the tide. Elias served as Franken’s counsel in what became the longest recount in US history. At the time, some in his party said Franken should concede since Democrats had a strong majority in the Senate and Barack Obama had just won the White House. Elias is always on “team fight”, he said, because “as long as there is a legal fight to be had, we are going to have it”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome have opined that his fighting posture can be counterproductive to voting rights, especially with the courts growing more conservative, because the cases can create bad precedent. He has argued for increased coordination between outside political action committees and political parties, a move that Trump capitalized on for his ground game in 2024. In 2023, Joe Biden parted ways with Elias, with sources saying at the time that Biden’s team had frustrations and discomfort with Elias’s hard charging and big legal bills. That year, he also stopped representing the DNC.“There was a time where there were people who would say: ‘Marc is too quick to litigate, and you can make bad law.’ And I would say then, and I would certainly say now, what are you saving these laws for, if it is not for this moment? … We are in the break-glass moment of American history when it comes to free and fair elections and democracy and so, no, I don’t have any hesitation about litigating everything that we possibly can to protect elections.”He worked at Perkins Coie until 2021, heading up its political law work and counting a host of big-name Democratic groups and elected officials as his clients. He started his own firm, Elias Law Group, after that, and Democracy Docket, which documents attacks on democracy.The firm is built to “withstand the pressures of Donald Trump” and only takes on clients from Democratic campaigns, the party itself, clients associated with Democratic politics or groups advancing voting rights on a nonpartisan basis. It does not take on corporate clients or clients with government contracts. That stance is part of why Elias thinks his firm itself hasn’t been targeted in a Trump executive action. There are fewer ways to pressure him.Elias was initially surprised at the executive orders targeting law firms because he thought the firms would fight back and win, and Trump would look foolish in the process. He didn’t count on the “cowardice” of firms that instead struck up settlements with Trump, capitulating to the president’s demands by dropping cases and giving massive amounts of pro bono work to conservative causes. The firms that did fight back, including Perkins Coie, have won, but it’s hard to argue Trump didn’t achieve his goals by going after lawyers, he said.“I think he thought, if I can prevent big law from being that role, that’ll make it easier for me to run roughshod over people’s rights. And he’s not wrong about that,” Elias said. “He has actually intimidated a lot of law firms, I think, from taking on causes that they otherwise would have taken on.”When CBS’s 60 Minutes covered the crackdown on lawyers in May, host Scott Pelley noted that “it was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice”. Elias sat for an interview.Elias has grappled with whether and how to speak up. Over the years, he’s had threats against him and has at times needed to take extra security precautions. He receives a host of antisemitic commentary, including a writeup years ago in a neo-Nazi publication. He’s often listed as part of the “deep state” despite never working in the government, and called a “globalist”, a frequent antisemitic dog whistle, which he typically dismisses as trolling.He worries about his family. He worries about the people who work at his law firm every day, and about his clients, who have at times received blowback for their association with him.“Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you,” he said. “I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course you’re afraid. Literally the president of the United States, who ran for election on a campaign of vengeance and revenge, is talking about you. Of course you’re worried.” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel says silencing comedians is ‘anti American’, as his show returns to air after suspension

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      Jimmy Kimmel returned to air on Tuesday night, calling government threats to silence comedians “anti American”, as he broke his silence about the suspension from ABC which ignited a national debate over free speech and outcry over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration.“This show is not important” Kimmel said during his first monologue since Disney, which owns ABC, suspended his late-night show from the network last week under pressure from Trump officials over his comments on the shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”Kimmel’s comments come one day after Disney, facing backlash from Hollywood stars, unions, media hosts and even Republicans such as Ted Cruz, allowed Jimmy Kimmel Live! to resume production.The company had indefinitely suspended the show after right-wing outcry over Kimmel’s 15 September monologue, in which he said that “the Maga gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”On Tuesday night, Kimmel thanked his fellow late night hosts for their support and thanked his audience and supporters.“And most of all I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway” Kimmel added.“I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual” he said. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”Later in the monologue, Kimmel hit out against Trump, saying that the president “did his best to cancel me” but that “instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.”Kimmel added that “the president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”“One thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the President doesn’t like is anti American” he added.Kimmel closed his monologue by reflecting on remarks made by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, at her late husband’s memorial service over the weekend.“Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband” Kimmel said. “That is an example we should follow.”“It touched me deeply” he added. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that, not this.”Kimmel’s comments on the shooting of Kirk angered Trump supporters and officials who have vowed to avenge the death of the conservative activist. Last Wednesday, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, threatened ABC’s affiliate licenses if Disney did not “take action” against the host. Two broadcast groups that own hundreds of affiliate stations – Nexstar, which is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger, and Sinclair – then refused to air the program, leading Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden to suspend production.The move drew intense backlash from the Hollywood community and free speech advocates and prompted boycotts and protests against both ABC and Disney.Around an hour before Kimmel’s return on Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Kimmel and criticized ABC for allowing the comedian’s show back on air.“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back” Trump wrote on Tuesday night. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump added.“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network.On Monday, hours before Disney announced Kimmel’s return, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released an open letter signed by over 400 Hollywood stars condemning Disney’s decision as “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.” Signees included Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Robert De Niro.In a statement on Monday, the company said the decision to pre-empt Kimmel’s show was made “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,” the statement continued. “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.”Although Kimmel’s show returned to ABC on Tuesday, it did not return to ABC affiliate networks owned by Sinclair. The company, which is known to promote conservative talking points, said it would not allow the late-night show to air until Kimmel apologized to Kirk’s family and made a donation to his conservative activist group Turning Point USA.“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” the company said, which has the nation’s largest number of ABC affiliate stations.“Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return,” the group added in a statement late Monday.Nexstar also confirmed that it will continue to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its stations in 22 states. “We made a decision last week to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! following what ABC referred to as Mr Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” the company said. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”The two companies’ continued pre-emption means that Jimmy Kimmel Live! did not air on almost a quarter of ABC affiliate stations. The show continues to be available online as well as on the streaming services Hulu and Disney+. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president backs Ukraine to ‘get their land back’ from Russia and lambasts UN

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      Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.Writing on Truth Social after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the UN on Tuesday, the US president said “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.Trump echoed those comments during a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron shortly after. Trump said Ukraine’s ability to fight back might prove that Russia is a “paper tiger”.“I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back,” the president added.Trump says Ukraine can get back all the land lost to Russia since 2022The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble, after meeting Zelenskyy in New York.He wrote: “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back.“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, Nato, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not?”Read the full storyTrump calls for nations to expel foreigners in UN speechDonald Trump launched a full-on assault on the UN during his general assembly speech, describing it as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership.In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.The Guardian’s Andrew Roth said the speech was red meat for Trump’s supporters, and observers from across the aisle in the US quickly identified Trump’s likely audience as his own base.Read the full storyTV hosts celebrate return of Kimmel after backlash Late-night television hosts credited people who boycotted Disney for getting Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show back on the air after the corporation had indefinitely suspended Kimmel amid pressure from the Trump administration.“We got word that our long national late-nightmare is over,” Stephen Colbert said during his show on Monday night. “Once more, I am the only martyr in late night, unless … CBS, you want to announce anything?” Colbert joked, referencing CBS’s decision to cancel his show earlier this year. “Still no?”Read the full story‘Pay no attention’: global health agencies dismiss Trump’s claim on painkillersGlobal health agencies and regulators have dismissed unscientific advice from Donald Trump that made an unproven link between autism and the use of everyday painkillers and vaccines.In a sign of how worried foreign governments are about the US president’s comments, the health secretary of the UK, which is one the US’s closest allies, told the British public they should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine”.Read the full storyTrump cancels Democrat meeting as federal shutdown loomsDonald Trump on Tuesday said he would not meet with top congressional Democrats to discuss their demands for keeping the federal government open, prompting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to accuse the president of “running away from the negotiating table before he even gets there”.Read the full storyMacron phones Trump over motorcade hold-up Emmanuel Macron had to walk half an hour by foot through New York after his speech to the United Nations on recognising Palestine as a state.Video footage shows him getting out of his car to talk to police officers after they stop his vehicle to make way for the expected arrival of the motorcade of Donald Trump.Read the full storyHegseth dissolves women’s military committee over ‘divisive feminist agenda’Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, ended an advisory committee on women in the armed services on Tuesday, saying it was putting forth a “divisive feminist agenda”.“The committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department,” said Kingsley Wilson, press secretary for the Pentagon.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A lawyer for 11 west Africans deported by the US to Ghana said they had been returned to their home countries despite many fearing for their safety. Under Donald Trump’s drive to ramp up expulsions, the US has sent migrants to third countries, including Rwanda, Uganda and El Salvador, prompting accusations that deportee rights have been violated.

      Jerome Powell pushed back hard against claims the US Federal Reserve allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence. Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration’s control over the Fed, has branded Powell “a very political guy” after he declined to bow to the president’s public demands for drastically lower interest rates.

      Keir Starmer is facing demands from Labour MPs to reprimand Donald Trump’s administrationafter the US president falsely claimed London wanted to “go to sharia law” under its “terrible mayor”, Sadiq Khan.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 22 September 2025. More

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      Trump says Ukraine could regain all territory lost to Russia since 2022 invasion after meeting Zelenskyy at UN – live

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      In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that Ukraine is in a position to “fight and win back” all of the territory it has lost since the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion.“Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,” Trump wrote, in a rare full-throated endorsement of Ukraine’s potential.“Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that! Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump said in his lengthy social media meditation. He added that the US will continue to supply Nato with weapons for purchase.Earlier, in a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that the “Russian economy is terrible right now” and Ukraine has done a “pretty amazing” job at staving off the Kremlin’s forces.Donald Trump’s meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders at the United Nations has concluded. The president did not answer any questions, but White House pool reporters noted that he said he had a “very good meeting” and teased his intention to follow up with a meeting with Israel.The Associated Press also noted that special envoy Steve Witkoff offered a thumbs-up in response to a question about how the meeting went.China’s representative to the Security Council criticized the use of sanctions, a strategy that the Trump administration has shown renewed interest in at this meeting of the UN General Assembly.“Abusing unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction under the pretext of the crisis does not contribute to a political settlement,” the representative said.The United States has previously levied sanctions against China, and Chinese companies, for supporting Russia.Secretary of state Marco Rubio touted Donald Trump’s role in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine during a meeting of the UN Security Council, while also noting that the president was open to levying “additional economic costs” on Russia and selling additional defensive weaponry and “potentially offensive weaponry” to Ukraine.“The president is a very patient man,” Rubio said, “but his patience is not infinite.”“The United States remains as committed as it has ever been to a peaceful resolution to this dangeorous conflict, but there will come a moment where we will have to conclude that perhaps there is no interest in a peaceful resolution,” he added.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has decided to close a Defense Department advisory committee dedicated to recruiting and retaining women in the military.In a social media post announcing the closure of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson wrote: “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.”The advisory committee was founded in 1951 under Harry Truman’s presidency. The Military Times reported earlier this year that the committee was one of 14 defense advisory committees flagged for potential termination, though many of those would require congressional approval to be disbanded.Here’s more from my colleague Rachel Leingang:Speaking to the UN General Assembly today, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said that “trade is now being used as a weapon against a number of countries in the world.”The comment may have been a reference to Donald Trump’s tariffs – which include a 30% levy against South Africa. In May, Ramaphosa met Trump in the Oval Office, where the president played Ramaphosa a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people under “the opposite of apartheid”.Here’s more on the state of the US-South Africa relationship from my colleague David Smith:Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticized Donald Trump for canceling a meeting with top Congressional Democrats, scheduled for Thursday, ahead of an approaching government funding deadline at the end of the month.At a press conference, Schumer said Trump should “stop ranting” and that “time is of the essence” as the 30 September deadline approaches.“Mr. President, do your job,” Schumer said.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also speaking currently at a UN meeting of the Security Council. “One of the prominent members of this council is doing everything to prolong the largest war in Europe since World War II,” Zelenskyy said. “Russia does this with its veto power.”“China is also represented here, a powerful nation on which Russia relies completely,” he added. “Without China, Putin’s Russia is nothing.”Zelenskyy also nodded to his recent meeting with Donald Trump. “We expect America’s actions to push Moscow toward peace,” he said.Donald Trump’s multilateral meeting with several leaders of Arab and Muslim countries has begun.In brief remarks to reporters, Trump said, “We want to end the war in Gaza.”“This is my most important meeting,” he added. “We’re going to end something that should have probably never started.”During his pull aside with Macron, Donald Trump flagged that his next meeting – a multilateral sitdown with several leaders of Arab and Muslim countries – will be crucial to address the ongoing crisis in Gaza.“We’re going to see if we can do something about it. We want to stop that. We want to get our hostages back, or their hostages back.”Much like his address to the general assembly today, the president said that we can’t “forget” the October 7 attack by Hamas in his meeting with Macron. In response, the French president said “nobody forgets the seventh of October”.This week, France joined Britain, Canada, Portugal and Australia to formally recognize Palestinian statehood. For his part, Donald Trump has branded the move as a “reward to Hamas”.In a meeting with French president Emanuel Macron, Donald Trump reiterated his recent comments on Truth Social that Ukraine has the potential to win back all the territory it has lost to Russia in the three and a half years since the most recent war in the region began.Trump said that Ukraine’s ability to fight back might prove that Russia is a “paper tiger”.“I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back,” the president added.In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that Ukraine is in a position to “fight and win back” all of the territory it has lost since the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion.“Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,” Trump wrote, in a rare full-throated endorsement of Ukraine’s potential.“Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that! Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump said in his lengthy social media meditation. He added that the US will continue to supply Nato with weapons for purchase.Earlier, in a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that the “Russian economy is terrible right now” and Ukraine has done a “pretty amazing” job at staving off the Kremlin’s forces.Earlier, president of the EU commission Ursula von der Leyen said that Donald Trump was “absolutely right” about European countries continuing to buy Russian energy products. A move the president described as “inexcusable” in his address to the UN general assembly today.“We’re on it. We have reduced already massive gas supply from Russia, completely gotten out of Russian coal, and massively also reduced the oil supply. But there’s still some coming to the European continent,” von der Leyen said during a pull aside meeting with the presiden. “So what we do now? We put sanctions out to those ports where, for example, energy is coming from Russia. And we want to put tariffs on oil supplies that are still coming to the European Union.”Ryan Routh, the man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at the president’s Florida golf course last year, has been found guilty in federal court today.Routh, 59, was convicted on five counts, including attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. In September 2024, he was spotted with a rifle hiding in the bushes at the president’s West Palm Beach club as Trump’s golfing party approached. Routh represented himself in court, and prosecutors accused him of plotting for months to kill Donald Trump during his successful run to return to the White House.“Today’s guilty verdict against would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh illustrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence,” said attorney general Pam Bondi.Jurors deliberated for just a few hours before returning with a guilty verdict. According to reports from the courtroom, as the verdict was being read, Routh attempted to stab himself in the neck with a pen.Fox News reports that four marshals then dragged Routh out of the court room, shackled him, and brought him back. More

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      Jerome Powell dismisses Trump’s criticism of ‘political’ Fed as ‘cheap shot’

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      The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, pushed back hard against claims the central bank allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence.Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration’s control over the Fed, has branded Powell “a very political guy” after he declined to bow to the president’s public demands for drastically lower interest rates.The White House has launched an unprecedented campaign to overhaul the Fed’s rate-setting board of governors, installing an administration official and trying to fire a Biden appointee over unconfirmed claims of mortgage fraud.But on Tuesday, Powell, who is typically diplomatic when speaking publicly, roundly dismissed one of the common allegations made by Trump and his allies: that the Fed is somehow political when making key decisions about the world’s largest economy.“Many people don’t believe” the Fed is simply allowing economic data to drive its decisions, Powell acknowledged at an event in Rhode Island. “But the truth is, mostly people who are calling us political, it’s just a cheap shot.”He did not mention Trump by name. But the president has become the most prominent critic of the Fed and Powell since returning to office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt comes a week after the central bank ordered its first rate cut since December, a move to stabilize a wobbling labor market, even as Trump’s tariffs continue to push up prices.“Near-term risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside – a challenging situation,” Powell reiterated on Tuesday.Stephen Miran, the Trump official now serving as a Fed governor, takes a different view. He dissented from every other policymaker on the central bank’s board of governors last week to advocate for a deeper rate cut.“Relatively small changes in some good prices have led to what I view as unreasonable levels of concern,” Miran argued in a speech earlier this week, claiming that tariffs would ultimately lead to “substantial swings in net national savings” for the country.Reuters contributed reporting More