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      Georgia governor’s race heats up with entrance of two skeptics of Trump’s 2020 election claims

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      The entrance into the Georgia governor’s race of two prominent figures on the right who stood up to Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election shows how the election interference crisis continues to reverberate in the state’s politics.On Wednesday, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, announced his candidacy. Raffensperger was the recipient of the “perfect phone call” by Trump in 2020 in the wake of his electoral loss in Georgia, pressuring Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn the results.The recording of that phone call led to investigations in Georgia and Washington. Raffensperger’s rejection of stolen election claims and his unwillingness to subvert Georgia election law for partisan purposes landed him near the top of Trump’s enemies list.At a rally in Atlanta during the campaign, Trump called Raffensperger and the outgoing Republican governor, Brian Kemp, “disloyal” and said “they’re doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win”. Kemp is term-limited and cannot run again in 2026.In his announcement address, Raffensperger said: “I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what.”Raffensperger pledged to work toward capping seniors’ property taxes, banning puberty-blocking drugs from minors and eliminating the state income tax.And last Tuesday, former lieutenant governor and erstwhile Republican Geoff Duncan announced his candidacy for governor. Duncan was elected lieutenant governor in 2018 as a Republican, forgoing re-election in 2022 after drawing heated reaction from Trump supporters after repudiating stolen election claims. Duncan testified before the special purpose grand jury in Fulton county examining election-interference claims.Duncan published a book about reforming the Republican party in 2021, and briefly considered running for president under the No Labels brand as an independent in 2024. Presenting himself as a political iconoclast, Duncan announced last month that he had formally switched parties.In the absence of the election-interference case that followed Trump’s efforts in 2020, both Duncan and Raffensperger would have been considered orthodox conservative Republicans by Georgia political standards.But Georgia’s Republican party can no longer be described as orthodox, except in its loyalty to Trump. Delegates to the Georgia GOP convention in January overwhelmingly voted to bar Raffensperger from qualifying as a Republican candidate while they expelled Duncan entirely, citing his appearance at the Democratic National Convention endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election.The move was largely symbolic; state law provides for no mechanism for a political party to bar a candidate. Nonetheless, the animus from the 2020 election persists.In dueling open letters last year, the Georgia GOP chair, Josh McKoon, described Duncan as “prostituting” himself to CNN as a Trump critic.“[Y]our desperate and ridiculous endorsements of Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris for president, coupled with your inexplicable opposition in 2022 to [Republican Senate candidates] Burt Jones and Herschel Walker, not to mention your comical attempt to run for president as an independent candidate, are violations of the oaths of loyalty you repeatedly swore when you qualified as a Republican candidate for office,” McKoon wrote.Duncan legislated as a “100% pro-life” lawmaker, and supported a 2019 state law banning most abortions – a position he is now repudiating as a Democratic candidate, along with prior positions on gun control and Medicaid expansion. His argument to voters is that cross-party appeal is necessary to beat a Republican in the general election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve never wavered on taking on Trump,” Duncan said in his announcement video. “I’m running for governor to put Georgians in the best position to once again love their neighbors and to make Georgia the frontline of democracy and a backstop against extremism.”Duncan enters a Democratic race that grows increasingly crowded. He faces the state senator Jason Esteves, an Atlanta-area legislator and former Atlanta school board chairperson, as well as former labor commissioner and DeKalb county CEO Michael Thurmond and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Other candidates are expected to announce their bids in coming weeks.Among Republicans, Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, and lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, have already declared their candidacies for governor. Carr stepped down from chairing the Republican Attorneys General Association after learning it had paid for a robocall urging supporters to come to Washington DC and “stop the steal” on 6 January 2021. Carr and Kemp are political allies.Jones is favored by Trump and was a mainstay on the 2024 campaign trail.“Chris Carr and Brad Raffensperger have one thing in common: They are both Never Trumpers,” Jones wrote on Instagram following Raffensperger’s announcement. “There is only one candidate in this race that’s always supported and has the full and complete endorsement of [Trump].”Jones, a Republican state senator in 2020, served as one of the 16 fake electors for Trump – all of whom signed a document, submitted to the National Archives, claiming Trump won Georgia.Fulton county’s district attorney, Fani Willis, had considered charging Jones in the election-interference case, but a Fulton county judge barred her in 2022 from investigating the lieutenant governor after she appeared at a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent. An outside prosecutor determined Jones’s actions as a state senator did not merit “further investigation or further actions” and considered the case closed. More

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      A US haven for refugees was divided over Trump – now immigration crackdown has left a ‘community breaking’

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      It was 2022, and the Nepali flea market in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, buzzed with life –handmade hats and colorful flags hung outside the homes of families just yards from the market, who had built new lives after being expelled from Bhutan. Elderly men sat in circles, smoking cigars and playing folk songs, unwilling to let the past slip away.In the early 1990s, Bhutan expelled more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese people during a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Most fled to refugee camps in eastern Nepal, where many remained for nearly two decades. Beginning in 2007, about 85,000 were resettled across the US through a program coordinated by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the US government. Today, central Pennsylvania is home to several thousand Bhutanese refugees, with Harrisburg and nearby towns hosting one of the largest clusters in the country. That concentration carries political weight: Pennsylvania is a swing state, and Trump won it in 2024 by a slight margin.When I returned in July 2025, it felt like another world. The flags were gone. The elders no longer gathered outside. Flea markets and restaurants sat quietly. The change wasn’t about ageing or assimilation – it reflected a community unsettled by politics, as families struggled to make sense of immigration policies that had suddenly put Bhutanese refugees back in the crosshairs. Across central Pennsylvania, old cases have been reopened, removal orders issued, over two dozen Bhutanese refugees have been deported back to Bhutan, and families that once felt secure are now bracing for knocks at the door.View image in fullscreenThe Harrisburg office of Asian Refugees United (ARU) looked more like a campsite than a non-profit hub – backpacks in the corners, water bottles scattered on the floor. Robin Gurung, the soft-spoken executive director, had just returned from a youth camp. I asked what had changed after the 2024 election.“Everything,” he said. “Before the Trump administration, ARU focused on rebuilding lives, teaching leadership, suicide prevention, and youth civic action. Now we’re in rapid-response mode, helping families make sense of deportations.”With larger institutions caving in to the administration’s demands, ARU has struggled to find allies. “A lot of our partners don’t want to engage any more, fearing retaliation,” Gurung told me. “We don’t even have attorneys to guide families. We rely on a few groups, but immigrant communities are being left on their own.”He paused before adding that the political climate had reopened old wounds. “We survived as refugees because of community. We always showed up for each other. But that sense of community is breaking. We’ve never seen this level of division and suspicion.”The turmoil Gurung described stood in sharp contrast to the early years of resettlement, when Bhutanese families in Pennsylvania were carving out new lives. Among them was Binay Luitel, who arrived as a teenager in July 2008 as an early cohort of Bhutanese refugees in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and quickly came to see service as his way of giving back.After years in a refugee camp in Nepal, he entered the US through the refugee resettlement program during the Obama era, a time that seemed to embrace the promise of a multiracial America.View image in fullscreenAt just 23, Luitel enlisted in the US army and deployed to Afghanistan. “Growing up as a refugee, I always had a strong desire to serve in the military, but back home that opportunity didn’t exist for someone like me,” he said. “When the United States gave me not just a home but an identity, joining the military was an act of gratitude, a way to honor the gift of belonging.”After four years in uniform, he returned to Harrisburg, now a hub for Bhutanese refugees. Families were buying homes, opening businesses and preserving their culture. With friends and mentors, Luitel helped establish the Bhutanese Community in Harrisburg, a non-profit, community-based organization that aimed to help the Bhutanese refugee community integrate in Harrisburg and address mental health issues, eventually serving as its president.For Ashika Dhaurali, 20, those years of growth shaped her sense of home. A mental-health advocate who arrived at age six, she once canvassed for senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, convinced his progressive ideals matched her community’s hopes. Today, she feels betrayed.“I canvassed for Fetterman,” she said. “I believed in his ideals, but now he’s nothing but a disappointment.” She points to his silence on deportations, his endorsement of Ice enforcement on X, and his willingness to echo Trump’s rhetoric. Watching her neighbors targeted by Trump’s administration, and Democrats failing to defend them, has left her searching elsewhere. “I won’t be voting for Fetterman again. And if there’s a viable progressive candidate against him, a lot of us will be ready to canvass.”The fragile stability that Bhutanese refugees thought they had created has crumbled during Trump’s second administration, as Trump, in his first week of inauguration, banned all refugee entry and halted asylum cases. Ice raids have rattled households, deportations of many of their community members in Harrisburg, as well as across the US, have reopened old traumas, and what had felt like a safe enclave grew clouded with fear and suspicion.“There has been a degree of political division,” Binay admitted. “It has torn people apart.”For Ghanshyam, a small business owner, the split is moral as well. “Trump defies everything immigrants and refugees stand for,” he told me. “When you elect a president, it’s not just about economics, it’s about values. Do you really want to tell your kids you voted for a man who called immigrants rapists and murderers, who’s been found liable for sexual assault, and who’s declared bankruptcy seven times? That’s not a role model. Voting for him isn’t just bad policy, it’s a moral failure.”Others, like Aiman, 24, who asked not to use his last name for privacy, see it differently. He arrived during the Obama years and once voted Democrat, but by 2024, he had switched to supporting Trump. Inflation, border security, the wars abroad and what he viewed as relentless media persecution of then former president Trump shifted his loyalties.View image in fullscreen“When I saw our president constantly attacked and silenced, I started to see him as human – someone who persevered when everything was against him,” he said.For Aiman, America is less about belonging than duty. “We were given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Citizenship means loyalty. Too many in our community never took that seriously.” Deportations, he admitted, were painful, but to him they were the consequence of broken laws. “Facts outweigh emotions,” he said, echoing rightwing commentators like Ben Shapiro.He even pointed to his own family. “Of course, I wish my brother could come here. But what good is that if, in the process, the whole country burns from the bottom up? I’d be happy to see him here, but not at the cost of destroying America.”Unlike older Bhutanese who hesitate to speak openly, Aiman doesn’t feel isolated. “A lot of my friends are Republicans now,” he said. “The only pushback I get is from college kids, who are too easily offended.” He’s part of a broader group of young men who, in recent years, have drifted toward conservative ideals.Dhaurali, the mental-health advocate, sees that shift as dangerous. “For our community, it has a lot to do with a false sense of patriotism. Because we’ve been deprived of it for so long, we want to embody it. To finally say: ‘I’m proud to be of this nation.’ But that’s why some have sided with Trump. Honestly, a lot of it comes from internalized hatred.”Hearing Aiman, I thought of my own uncle, who also voted for Trump but never admitted it publicly. In our community, politics isn’t just about policies; it’s about belonging. What appears to be a small division within the Bhutanese diaspora reflects a broader erosion of the sense of home that many immigrants and communities of color once felt.Dhaurali, though, doesn’t believe the story ends there. “What Trump’s administration is doing is testing our solidarity, our sense of belonging,” she said. “No, I don’t think I can ever stop believing. Especially with this community I’ve grown up in. I believe my generation is going to be the bridge between these old fears and the future we genuinely deserve.”Lok Darjee is a former Bhutanese refugee and freelance journalist covering politics, immigration, democracy and identity. More

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      Trump’s absurd Tylenol claims heighten the suffering of pregnant women in the US | Moira Donegan

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr continued his futile search for a single pharmaceutical cause of autism on Monday, when the Trump administration claimed that distorted recent studies and misstated scientific evidence to allege a link between women’s Tylenol use during pregnancy and the development of autism in children. Kennedy has long spoken with disturbing disgust about autistic people, claiming at one press conference that autistic children “destroy families” and “will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.” He had previously pledged to find the cause of autism by this month.As part of his apparent quest to eliminate this vast and varied group of people – who do, in fact, pay taxes, hold jobs, play baseball, write poems, go on dates, and function as beloved and caring members of functional families – Kennedy has already sought to restrict access to common vaccines. In June, he fired every member of the advisory committee on immunization practices, an influential group of vaccine experts whose recommendations had long shaped policy for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In place of the experts, he reconstituted the panel with a number of vaccine critics and cranks, whose incompetence has led to chaotic meetings and bizarrely changing vaccine recommendations. Donald Trump has recently joined his health secretary in casting aspersions on childhood vaccines – safe and effective treatments that have saved countless lives and are among the more wonderful miracles of human innovation. “It’s too much liquid,” the president said of the early childhood immunizations on Monday. “Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing, when you look at it.”Trump’s remarks came at what was supposed to be the debut for Kennedy’s new tactic: discouraging pregnant women from taking a common over-the-counter medication to ease pain or reduce fevers. At a rambling and shambolic press conference issued from the White House, Trump was unambivalent in his unproven assertions of the drug’s dangers. “Taking Tylenol is, uh, not good,” Trump said, flanked by Kennedy and Dr Mehmet Oz. “I’ll say it. It’s not good.” The president also offered his opinion that the weight-loss drug Ozempic doesn’t work, offering that his friends who take the drug are still fat. Kennedy, his face an uncanny color, stood awkwardly behind Trump, wearing a suit jacket that was visibly too small and with his head hanging slightly to the side; he looked a bit like a bored child at a prep school assembly. “Don’t. Take. Tylenol,” Trump continued, addressing pregnant women. “And don’t give it to the baby after the baby is born.”There is no evidence suggesting that Tylenol causes autism. A small number of studies have shown a correlation – not a cause – between acetaminophen use and incidents of neurological development disorders in early childhood. But these studies, aside from being inconclusive in their results, are also flawed in their methodologies: because pregnant women cannot be easily or ethically sorted into control groups, it is impossible for researchers to isolate Tylenol as a causal factor in the ensuing health of their children. There is as much evidence to suggest that those women whose children later developed autism got it from the Tylenol they took as there is to suggest that they got it because of a gust of wind, or because their mothers wore the color green. Fevers, however – which Tylenol is used to treat – pose proven risks to a fetus, and have been linked to cleft lip and palate, spina bifida, and congenital heart defects. “The conditions that people use acetaminophen to treat during pregnancy are far more dangerous than any theoretical risks and can create severe morbidity and mortality for the pregnant person and the fetus,” Dr Steven Fleischman, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement.Pregnant women do not lack for judgmental, frightening and dubiously factual instructions about their health. Everywhere, they are told that they risk the health of their fetus by partaking in a series of banal everyday activities – be it jogging or having coffee or eating a certain cheese – that they are told will lead, by obscure mechanisms that are never quite explained, to impossible and devastating health outcomes for their children-to-be. The admonishments are multiple and often contradictory, but they all tend to agree on one thing: that it is always good for women to deprive themselves of joy and relief – and to suffer more – for the sake of their fetuses.Health misinformation has thrived on the ignorance in which most women are kept about their bodies, particularly during pregnancy, and it feeds on the cruel combination of neglect and lack of interest with which many women have been treated by the medical system and the maximally judgmental and punitive treatment that they receive from others while pregnant. Frightened women, scared both for the health of their pregnancies and for the ways they will be blamed if something goes awry, seek out a way to secure a good outcome, and are met by charlatans, grifters and quacks who are happy to tell them lies in exchange for their attention and money. It is this very dynamic, fed like a sourdough starter in the damp and fecund social media environment of the pandemic, that Kennedy used to revive his own career after decades of scandal and disgrace.Now, this cynical exploitation of pregnant women’s fears, deployed to them at a time when they are most vulnerable, is coming from no less a place of authority than the White House itself.At the press conference, Trump advised pregnant women to simply endure their suffering. “A mother will have to tough it out,” he told them. Readers will forgive me if I posit that perhaps pregnant women in the US are already suffering enough. Six justices of the supreme court, three of them appointed by Trump himself, ruled in 2022 that they no longer have the federally protected right to terminate their pregnancies. The laws that have gone into effect since have cost several pregnant women their lives, as laws prohibit the medical interventions that could easily save them and allow them to die painful, premature and needless deaths. Other women have had their corpses desecrated for the sake of Trump’s anti-choice agenda, as hospitals and lawmakers use them as incubators against their will. Others are being forced to wait for care while they bleed and develop sepsis, risking their organs and their lives. The Trump administration has cut off Medicaid funding to some of the largest providers of sexual and reproductive healthcare, meaning many of the clinics that pregnant women rely on will now have to close. With doctors who provide gynecological and obstetric care fleeing states with strict abortion bans, many pregnant women in the US do not have access to competent medical care at all. As a result, more babies are being born sick, and more of them are dying. Women from states such as Florida report being forced to carry fetuses that have no chance of surviving, and then being forced to watch those infants suffer and die in the moments after birth. As Kennedy continues with his search for the causes of autism, his eugenic project will inevitably extract more and more coercion and violence on the bodies of pregnant women. Today’s fearmongering about Tylenol is only the beginning.It can seem darkly comedic at times how laughably incompetent Trump and his administration are. Kennedy’s ill-fitting suit; the president’s ramblings about his fat friends; the brazen indifference to truth in the absurd claim that Tylenol, perhaps the paradigmatic over-the-counter drug, is somehow this lurking danger. Trump’s idiocy and vulgarity give the lie to the pomp and dignity of his office; his now near-total capture of American political life mocks the promise of democracy. But pregnant women are not a punchline. Their hopes for their families, their fears for their bodies, their health, their comfort and their dignity – all of these are things Trump is willing to sacrifice at the altar of his own ego. Tylenol isn’t dangerous, but he is.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Charlie Kirk was a divisive far-right podcaster. Why is he being rebranded as a national hero?

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      The streets of Washington DC are unmistakable. In addition to noting the city’s signature architecture and public monuments, one will know they are in the nation’s capital when they can barely go half a city block without spotting a US flag. Two weeks ago, those flags were flying at half-staff, but not in recognition of the passing of a high-ranking public official, as would be customary. Instead, the half-staff was ordered by the White House in a highly politicized effort to memorialize the 10 September killing of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old podcaster, hard-right party operative, and Maga youth influencer, as an event of national tragedy.Kirk ruled over an online fiefdom peddling his signature brand of rage-baiting racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and misogynistic commentary. It wasn’t just his vitriolic style, but also his popularization of cruelty, humiliation and dehumanization of political opponents – especially college students – that attracted millions to his audience. He famously said empathy was “a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage”.As a Black woman, I felt no sorrow watching these flags hang limp and lifeless from chrome posts in the stiff, humid summer heat that, even on the eve of autumn, will not unhand a city already stifled by federal threats of military occupation. I felt the same when, just hours after the shooting, the speaker of the House of Representatives called for a moment of silence on the floor for a private citizen who had never held office nor served in the military. (The brief silence erupted seconds later into a shouting match melee when congresswoman Lauren Boebert requested that members hold an open prayer for Kirk from the floor). Just nine days later, the House passed a Republican resolution eulogizing Kirk’s life with a sweeping 310-58 majority.I felt no mourning when seven teams in the National Football League – the very organization that has long been criticized for its inconsistent and often hypocritical stance on the place of politics in sports – held in-game memorials for Kirk, who never played any professional sport nor held a role within the league. In the Dallas Cowboys stadium in Texas, Jumbotrons featured a statesman-like image of Kirk, what one might expect for the passing of a former president or a longtime team affiliate. The grand gesture was drenched in hard-to-miss hypocrisy: forced silence from Black players who were punished for advocating for social justice in 2020, while, in the endzone, a painted astroturf read “End Racism” – a relic of just how fleeting the league’s lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement just a few years ago proved to be.I feel no grief because these memorials to Kirk are not created for me to grieve. Instead, they seek not only to enshrine Kirk into the national consciousness, but also to foster national memories about what he represents ideologically and culturally. The lionizing is an official effort to coalesce the state into his movement – a brazen proclamation that his consistently hostile white nationalist, homophobic and misogynistic convictions represent the federal government’s interests, and thus, what the presidency believes should be the national priority.It’s reminiscent of the long aftermath of the civil war, when Confederate memorials were fashioned well into the 20th century not by those seeking to grieve any one individual, but rather by those who wanted to send a message about racial politics in the present. Some people have settled comfortably into a belief that the recent years of anti-racism protests and organizing have successfully toppled enough of these Confederate monuments, that their white-washed histories collapsed with them. But memorials to Kirk conducted by the country’s most powerful institutions are evidence of the revival of a new iteration of neo-Confederate memorialization.Like the Confederate tributes and monuments of the past, current memorials to Kirk function to throttle any interrogation of their subject. Those who are elevated to the esteem of official national memorializing are commonly – although with notable exceptions –figures that the public agrees are beyond reproach. In honoring Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, for example, Bill Clinton sought to canonize the entire Civil Rights Movement for which she fought. It cemented the era as worthy of national honor because it telegraphed the meaning of democracy and freedom for all Americans.In contrast, with the insta-extolling of Kirk, Donald Trump, who has announced that his late close personal friend will be awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom, echoes the intentions behind Confederate memorials of yore. Instead of public recognitions that reflect the long march towards a national reckoning with our past, memorials like those for Kirk elevate his consistent record of hard-right extremism above the reach of public questioning.Kirk’s style of seizing upon those who challenged his ideologies and punishing his detractors is an agenda that has expanded well beyond Trump’s track record of punishing his personal and political enemies. Though I, like the majority of Kirk’s critics, do not condone his shooting, Kirk himself said gun deaths were “worth it” to maintain gun rights. While rhetoric this extreme, including his claim that Black women in government and media lacked “brain processing power”, is being euphemized in tributes as his “advocacy for free speech”, media figures and government employees who openly question if he should be publicly lauded are being fired from their jobs.Additionally, hundreds of college professors were doxed, harassed and threatened by Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, and its notorious “Professor Watchlist”, which published the names and information of any academics with views Kirk construed as incompatible with his own. It’s curious how a virtue like “doing politics the right way” can be afforded to someone who sought to devastate the lives of scholars and intellectuals.The aggrandizing of Kirk shares yet another, more lasting legacy with Confederate memorialization. The historian David Blight notes that in the aftermath of the civil war, the call for reconciliation between white northerners and southerners was achieved at the expense of erasing the legacy of slavery from the postbellum narrative. Thus, the reunification of the white citizenry was done wholly on southern terms and exacerbated the racial atrocities that were never addressed in the postwar era, leaving Black Americans to be wholesale lynched and terrorized throughout the south.Further still, reunification campaigns exonerated and elevated rebel insurgents who were, by definition, traitors and enemies of the state, to a status otherwise reserved for senior statesmen and decorated US veterans. It was a damning declaration that even those who sought to overthrow this country would be celebrated as its heroes before Black Americans would be treated as its citizens. The same tone is struck in the tributes to Kirk that exalt a highly controversial private citizen as though he were a national hero.Elected officials, journalists and public figures on the left who stress calls for unity do so on the right’s terms, and are reminiscent of the kid-gloved white northerners who sought to rebrand a war fought expressly over human trafficking and bondage into a national moment for celebration of duty, honor and valorous military service on both sides. Those who call for us to honor the life of a man who said the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake”, and who described Martin Luther King Jr, as “awful”, have betrayed those of us who heard Kirk espouse eugenics and replacement theory loud and clear, with such vast online influence that it prompted a 2024 investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.The valorization of Kirk by his far-right defenders is an insult to millions of the most marginalized Americans who lived every day in the crosshairs of his rhetoric. Kirk’s memorialization by his supporters and apologists is but a new opportunity to announce an old message about whose country this is and whose it isn’t.

      Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man 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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      Pennsylvania official faces threats over post misconstrued as Charlie Kirk killing celebration

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      A member of a Pennsylvania school board says she is stepping back from her duties – and has been grappling with threats to her safety – after a “one down, hundreds to go” social media post about windblown milkweed seeds was misconstrued as celebrating the killing of far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.Homer-Center school district board member Misty Hunt uploaded the post in question on 10 September, the same day Kirk was shot to death by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University (UVU).Numerous people across the US have been fired from or otherwise disciplined at their jobs over commentary about Kirk’s murder, which authorities allege was carried out by a young man who viewed the Turning Point USA director’s political statements as “hatred”.And once it became apparent that people were accusing Hunt of extolling Kirk’s murder, the school board announced an investigation to “completely understand her intentions”.Subsequent social media posts from Hunt maintained that her “one down, hundreds to go” post was meant to accompany a video of wind blowing one of the milkweed seed pods that she customarily releases to nourish monarch butterflies.Poor cell phone reception near a former local power plant undermined her attempt to upload the video that was meant to be paired with the text, she said. She also said she did not learn of Kirk’s killing – or that video failed to upload – until later that night, having been too absorbed with the outdoors that day.“A tragedy occurred. And I was too busy enjoying nature to know what went down,” Hunt wrote. Calling gardening “my life” and offering condolences to Kirk’s family, she said her post was “only about butterflies and creating a space for them. The end.”Hunt later followed up with a separate social media post condemning all political violence, saying: “No cause, no ideology, no disagreement is worth a human life.”She also wrote: “In a world already torn by division, the killing of anyone – regardless of their political beliefs – is an unacceptable tragedy.”Nonetheless, the Homer-Center school board’s 18 September meeting drew about 60 people, much larger than the usual sparse crowds who typically attend the Indiana county-based panel’s gatherings. Authorities moved the meeting from a central district office board room to a school gymnasium to accommodate the bigger crowd. And law enforcement provided security for the meeting due to the interest Hunt’s posts had gotten online – as well as because of the “death threats” resulting from them, the news outlet PennLive.com reported.Three of seven community members who spoke at that meeting expressed support for Hunt, according to reporting from the Indiana Gazette. Three others assumed Hunt’s “one down hundreds, to go” was indeed about Kirk’s death despite her denial. And the Gazette noted that a fourth speaker simply said: “Every action has consequences, especially with being a public figure.”Hunt, for her part, reportedly apologized for causing “pain”, “misunderstanding”, and “division”.“Even though I did not celebrate anyone’s death, and I do not condone violence, the safety of myself and my children are now in jeopardy,” she said.The Gazette wrote that Hunt described people “threatening her place of work and pressuring her boss to terminate her employment”.“My children – we’re all afraid of going places right now, so it’s been really hard for the family,” she reportedly added. “That’s just where we’re at.”Hunt abstained from voting at the 18 September meeting, was removed from the school board’s negotiations committee and would step back from her role on the seven-member panel for the time being. The Gazette reported that she is running for re-election in November and would wait to see the outcome of the race before plotting her political future.“If the community chooses me again,” she said, “then I feel confident I will continue my good work.” More

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      Global investment in renewable energy up 10% on 2024 despite Trump rollback

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      Investment in renewable energy has continued to increase around the world despite moves by Donald Trump’s White House to cancel and derail low-carbon projects.In the first half of 2025, investment globally in renewable technologies and projects reached a record $386bn, up by about 10% on the same period last year.Investment in energy around the world is likely to hit about $3.3 trillion (£2.4tn) this year. While more than $1tn of the total is still likely to flow into fossil fuels, double that amount – about $2.2tn – is expected for low-carbon forms of energy.A report from the Zero Carbon Analytics thinktank, published on Tuesday, shows that the rate of increase in renewable energy investment has not slowed significantly. Between the first half of 2023 and of 2024, the total increased by 12% and from 2022 to 2023 the increase was 17%.Joanne Bentley-McKune, research analyst at the group, said: “This shows the sector still has momentum and underlying strength. There has been a decline [in the rate of growth] but it aligns with the average [of the last three years], and suggests that renewable energy investment is more resilient than might have been expected.”Finance for onshore and offshore wind increased by about a quarter in this first half of this year, reaching £126bn. China and Europe were the biggest markets for offshore wind.Since January this year, at least $470bn in future clean energy finance has been announced, according to the report, of which roughly three-quarters is slated for energy grids and electricity transmission. This is good news for governments hoping to reach their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as ageing and inadequate grids have been a major bottleneck for the achievement of renewable energy goals.A separate report, also published on Tuesday, found that big companies are also continuing to press ahead with their climate promises, despite hostility from Donald Trump’s administration in the US, and some high-profile moves to row back on commitments.According to data compiled by the Net Zero Tracker, a research consortium made up of thinktanks and academics, companies representing about 70% of the revenue of the top 2,000 listed companies globally were actively pursuing net zero plans.While Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, and dismantled federal efforts to tackle the climate crisis, not all of the US has followed the federal government’s lead: 19 states remain committed to net zero, and 304 large companies headquartered in the US have net zero targets, up from 279 last year. Together, those companies account for nearly two-thirds of US corporate revenue, or about $12tn in revenue globally.John Lang, lead author of the report, said the impact of the White House on climate decisions made by large companies appeared limited. “Talk of a net zero recession is overblown. Backtracking is confined to fossil fuels and their financiers, while more companies are moving from box-ticking to real emission cuts – a long-overdue reset,” he said.But countries and companies still need to move faster, the report found. Although more are now putting measures in place to match their commitments, there is still a large gap between aspiration and action.Thomas Hale, professor of global public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, said: “US companies know they need to keep pace with the EU, China and other regions where climate policy is increasingly shaping competitiveness. Net zero is less a political battleground and more a race to secure future markets, investment and jobs.” More