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      Chinese executive jailed for 25 years in US for trafficking fentanyl chemicals

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      A Chinese company executive has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for trafficking in chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, the US justice department has said.Qingzhou Wang, 37, principal executive of Amarvel Biotech, a company based in Wuhan, and Yiyi Chen, 33, the firm’s marketing manager, were convicted in New York in February of fentanyl precusor importation and money laundering.District judge Paul Gardephe sentenced Wang to 25 years in prison on Friday. Chen was sentenced to 15 years in prison on 22 August.“These executives turned a Chinese chemical company into a pipeline of poison, shipping hundreds of kilos of fentanyl-related precursors into the United States, disguising them as everyday goods, and cashing in through cryptocurrency,” Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Terrance Cole said in a statement.Wang and Chen were among eight Chinese nationals and four Chinese companies charged by the justice department in June 2023 with trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals into the US.It was the first time the United States had charged Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals inside the United States, rather than shipping them to Mexico, the origin of most of the fentanyl found in the country.Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin and much easier and cheaper to produce. It has largely replaced heroin and prescription opioids such as oxycodone as a cause of overdoses in the United States.The June 2023 indictment of the Chinese executives and companies drew protests from Beijing.“It is completely illegal and seriously damages the basic human rights of Chinese citizens and Chinese companies,” the Chinese foreign ministry said at the time. “China strongly condemns this.”Although Mexico has been the main source of fentanyl sold in the United States, Washington has increasingly focused its attention on China-based suppliers of ingredients. More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Trump has dragged the US to the abyss and Nigel Farage would do the same to Britain. Here’s how to stop him

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      The march towards the darkness is becoming a sprint. In the US, warnings about the autocratic ambitions of Donald Trump that were once dismissed as hyperbole and hysteria now seem, if anything, too mild. Faster than most imagined, he has moved to weaken institutional checks on his power – whether the courts, the universities, the civil service or the press – and now has set to work gagging his critics, even, it seems, to outlaw large swathes of the opposition.This week saw the suspension by a major broadcasting network, Disney-owned ABC, of a late-night talkshow, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, following remarks Kimmel had made about the killing of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel did not criticise Kirk himself – an act now considered all but blasphemous in the US – but rather Republicans’ reaction to his murder, especially their eagerness to “score political points from it”.That was enough to prompt Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission – the body that grants, or revokes, licences to broadcast – to come on like a wannabe Tony Soprano, all but cracking his knuckles as he said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The threat worked: Kimmel is off the air.Of course, this is no one-off. Trump is also trying to cow the US’s biggest newspaper, filing a $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times, accusing it of “spreading false and defamatory content”. The NYT has the resources to resist, but smaller US papers will have got the message. They could hardly be blamed if they now pull their journalistic punches, if only because they do not have the money to pay for a protracted legal battle against a billionaire president.But the Trump administration is not confining its assault to the media. The Kirk killing has handed it an opportunity to crack down on dissent itself. Witness the promise Trump aide Stephen Miller made this week – on the Charlie Kirk podcast – to take on those left-of-centre organisations whose “messaging” is “designed to trigger and incite violence”. It is hardly a stretch to assume that Miller will define that category very broadly, so that it sweeps up most of those who express opposition to Trump. If that seems alarmist, recall that, even before Kirk was killed, Miller was calling the Democratic party a “domestic extremist organisation”.View image in fullscreenIn the UK, we like to think we can watch all this with, if not smug distance, then a measure of relief. It’s true that we are a long way from the precipice to which Trump has taken the US. But last week between 110,000 and 150,000 Britons took to the streets of London, heeding the summons of the rightwing agitator and serial convict who goes by the name of Tommy Robinson.It’s worth stressing that this was not a Reform or Conservative rally that was hijacked by Robinson. This was his event. Britons know who Robinson is and what he represents – and yet up to 150,000 of them marched behind him. They were undeterred by those who had labelled it a far-right protest and, indeed, by the racist rhetoric that came from the platform. Britain has an admirable history of confining the far right to the margins, ensuring that it had not, until now, demonstrated this kind of strength in numbers. So last Saturday should be understood as a watershed.Not least because of one speech in particular. Elon Musk, via video link, told the crowd “violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.” He added that the Labour government, democratically elected a year ago, needed to be brought down. This was one of the most powerful men in the world issuing a call that may not have broken the law but which seemed to give approval in advance for rightwing political violence in Britain.And yet the British prime minister did not rush to condemn this incendiary intrusion into our politics. Indeed, Downing Street said nothing at all until prompted by reporters’ questions, and MPs’ demands, the following day. We often fault those guilty of overreaction. But, at a moment like this, underreaction is the greater sin.The polls are telling a very stark story. Absent a dramatic shift, a party of nationalist populism is on course to beat both Labour and the Conservatives at the next election, and very probably form the next government. Nigel Farage may be no fan of Tommy Robinson, but he is Trump’s loudest UK cheerleader; he does not condemn the current US gallop towards authoritarianism but rather stands alongside those responsible for it. If we want to prevent Farage doing to Britain what Trump is doing to the US, we need to halt the advance of Reform.The first move in that effort is to puncture Farage’s core claim: that he somehow speaks for the British people, that his views reflect the “commonsense” views of the silent majority. It’s not true. On issue after issue, including those that define him, Farage is an outlier, articulating the positions of a noisy but often small minority.He was the chief advocate of Brexit, a decision so calamitous that only 31% now say it was the right move. Indeed, a healthy majority, 56%, favour its reversal and want to rejoin the EU. Farage is on the wrong side of that number.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has long banged the drum for leaving the European convention on human rights. If you read the rightwing papers, you would assume that is now a majority view. Wrong. Support for staying in the ECHR is close to 60% and has actually increased as the subject has been debated. Farage is out of step with the British people.But surely on the issue he has made his own, immigration, he is in tune with the public? After all, Labour seems to have built its entire political strategy on that assumption. And yet, the numbers tell a different story. While 81% of Reform voters believe migrants have undermined Britain’s culture, only 31% of Britons in general believe that. Ask about the effect of migrants on the economy and you get a similar picture. It’s Reform that is badly out of touch.You can keep doing this – and Labour must, pointing out that Farage speaks for the fringes not the centre. Britons don’t support handing Afghan refugees back to the Taliban, as Farage advocates. They do not agree that Britain has become North Korea – and they don’t regard as a patriot someone who sits in Washington and tells a committee of American politicians that we have. They don’t reply to the question, “Which world leader do you most admire?”, with the words “Vladimir Putin”, as Farage did. And nor do they think that the Liz Truss measures that sent the UK economy spiralling represented “the best Conservative budget since 1986”, to quote Nigel Farage.Reform’s opponents need to expose every one of these gaps between Farage and the electorate, recasting Farage as a figure of the fringes. But this can’t be a task for Labour or the Liberal Democrats alone. Any party that claims to value democracy, including what remains of the Conservatives, and that sees how swiftly nationalist populism leads to authoritarianism, needs to engage in the same effort and fast. We all do. As Americans are learning to their cost, you cannot delay – otherwise the freedoms you thought would last for ever can vanish, in the blink of an eye.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist. His new nonfiction book, The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them (£25), is available from the Guardian Bookshop at £22 More

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      They managed to get accepted to US universities. But they’re still stuck in Gaza

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      Within days of 7 October 2023, much of Maryam’s world had been wiped out: her home in Gaza City, her children’s schools, and the Islamic University of Gaza, where she was a graduate student in physics, were all destroyed by airstrikes. In early December, Maryam’s mentor – Sufian Tayeh, a prominent Palestinian scientist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza – was killed along with his family in an Israeli strike.The professor has been a “father figure” to her, Maryam told the Guardian. When she learned of his death, she remembers closing the physics notebooks she had grabbed as she fled her home and thinking her studies would be over. “My entire world had collapsed,” she said.But as she repeatedly fled Israel’s bombs, Maryam sought ways to keep not only her family alive, but also her dream of becoming a physicist. While living in a tent in Rafah, with no stable access to internet or electricity, she learned of a spot near the border where she could get a faint internet signal from Egypt. Despite the risks, she started going there to research opportunities abroad, eventually managing to earn admission to a fully funded PhD program at the University of Maryland. After deferring her start date by a year, she was meant to start this month.But Maryam remains in Gaza. She is one of dozens of students from the devastated territory who have been admitted to US universities and colleges but are stuck, advocates say, after the Trump administration suspended nearly all non-immigrant visas for Palestinian passport holders.As part of its campaign against US universities, the administration has made it more difficult for international students to travel to the US, and claims it has revoked the visas of thousands of foreign students already in the US over unspecified violations.But for Palestinians in Gaza, the policy change is uniquely devastating.“I will never forget the moment I received the message confirming my acceptance into a fully funded PhD program. I rushed back to our tent to hold my children tightly and tell them the good news – that we would survive this nightmare,” said Maryam, who is using a pseudonym to protect her and her family. “Everything came crashing down again when I heard about the suspension of visa processing. It felt like my dreams had been destroyed once more.”Leila, a 22-year-old from Gaza City, was four years into a five-year engineering program when the war started. She would walk up to two hours a day to find wifi, relying on solar power to charge her phone, and managed to apply and be admitted to a university in the north-western US as a transfer student. (Leila is also a pseudonym, and she asked that the Guardian not publish the name of the university.)Then came the news that all visas were suspended. “We are just stuck in Gaza right now,” she told the Guardian in a series of voice memos.A spokesperson for the state department said in a statement that the department had suspended the processing of nonimmigrant visas for Palestinian Authority passport holders “while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to vet individuals from Gaza” and that it will “take the time necessary to conduct a full and thorough review”.“Every visa decision is a national security decision,” the spokesperson added.According to a cable viewed by the Associated Press, department officials said the new restrictions were intended “to ensure that such applications have undergone necessary, vetting, and screening protocols to ensure the applicants’ identity and eligibility for a visa under US law”. The suspension doesn’t apply to Palestinians who hold passports from other countries – unless they are found to have ties to the Palestinian Authority, or the Palestine Liberation Organization.The Student Justice Network, a US-based collective formed after Donald Trump signed orders in January targeting international students, has been supporting students from Gaza who are seeking to continue their interrupted studies abroad. But of the dozens of students the group says it has helped with university and visa applications, only a handful have made it to the US. (They declined to provide more specific numbers.)Securing a visa to travel to the US from Gaza was an arduous process even in quieter times. Before the war, Palestinians in Gaza had to secure appointments at US embassies outside the territory – usually Egypt or Israel. Obtaining a permit to travel to Israel has been impossible since the war began, while the border with Egypt has remained largely closed.International students have been targeted with a series of federal actions aimed both at Palestinian students specifically and the broader community of more than one million foreign nationals studying in the country.The state department has enlisted consulates overseas into the effort. Earlier this year, it paused all student visa appointments. They have resumed, but prospective students are now being subjected to additional vetting for, among other things, “anti-American” views.But for Palestinians the restrictions are blanket. “Every single one of them has been impacted by this,” Majid said of the students her group has been helping who were meant to start their studies this fall. “There’s no clear understanding as to when their applications will be processed, and this affects their ability to attend their universities on time – and in some cases it could actually impact whether or not they’re able to maintain their scholarships.”Looking elsewhereThomas Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, told the Guardian that Maryam was one of two physics students from Gaza admitted to the university last year. But getting them out of Gaza proved so difficult that the university ended up deferring the students’ admissions by a year as they tried to get visa appointments.Maryam was able to book an interview at the US embassy in Egypt, and Cohen offered to personally pay for her way there – but the border was shut down when Israeli forces took control of it in May 2024. She was still looking for a way out when the US announced the suspension of visas for Palestinians.Cohen said he tried all he could to help Maryam and the other student – because their academic records earned them a spot at the university but also because he understood that the opportunity could save their lives. He spoke of the Holocaust survivors in his own family, and those who “didn’t survive because they had no way to leave” Nazi-occupied Poland.Cohen is now advising the students to pursue opportunities in Europe or Canada. Even if they were to get a visa to the US, “the political climate we’re in, it’s dangerous for Palestinians”, he says.Majid, of the Student Justice Network, said the group had also been encouraging the students they support to pursue options in other countries. But even if they gain admission elsewhere, the border with Egypt remains sealed shut as Israel has intensified its military campaign.“These are students who have gone through two plus years without an educational infrastructure,” Majid said, noting that all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed.“Think about having applied to university when you were 17 or 18, and then think about applying under bombardments, and starvation, and with limited resources, and having your documents destroyed, and having lost your family members,” she added. “To yank these fully funded opportunities away from them is devastating.” More

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      For comedians around the world, the laughs often end as democracy fades

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      The exiled Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef has experienced firsthand how intolerant governments can silence political satire. And he had a short message this week for those living in an age of Donald Trump’s free speech clampdown: “My Fellow American Citizens,” he wrote on X. “Welcome to my world.”In his attacks on the most prominent of American satirists, the US president has joined a cadre of illiberal and sensitive leaders around the world who will not tolerate a joke.The latest target of what critics say is a campaign to silence dissenting voices was Jimmy Kimmel, who had his late-night ABC talkshow suspended after government pressure. The removal, weeks after the rival network CBS cancelled Stephen Colbert’s satirical show, follows other Trump-led crackdowns on media and academia.Political foes of the US president say the diminishing space for free speech shows Trump’s America is moving towards authoritarianism. Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking to MSNBC, said the country was on a path towards becoming more like oppressive regimes in Russia and Saudi Arabia. “This is just another step forward,” he said.From Egypt’s military ruler, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, to India’s populist prime minister, Narendra Modi, the laughs often end for comedians as democracy dwindles.One of the most famous global comedians to have his life turned upside down by his political satire is Youssef, who first found fame with a TV show panning the Egyptian regime.Known as the “Egyptian Jon Stewart” in reference to the US talkshow host whom he was inspired by (and looks like), Youssef is a former heart surgeon who became a household name.But his satire made him the target of two opposing governments. He was first arrested in April 2013, accused of insulting Islam and Egypt’s then president. Months later, when Sisi took power by force, Youssef had to cancel his show and flee the country.View image in fullscreenYoussef has said his struggle was as much against Egypt’s cloying, conservative culture as its repressive leaders. “We didn’t have a space for satire in Egypt. We carved out our own space. We had to fight for it,” he said in a 2015 interview.“And because there’s no platform, no space or infrastructure for that kind of satire to be accepted, we were basically pushed out … We are up against generations of people who don’t have this kind of mindset. That’s why it was an uphill battle for us.”Comedians elsewhere have often found themselves caught up in nationalist fervour.In India, which has a history of a lively and relatively free public discourse, critics of Modi argue space to criticise the policies of his rightwing nationalist government is shrinking.Comedians and comedy venues have increasingly been caught in the crosshairs since the rise of his Hindu Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which has ruled for more than a decade.A Muslim comedian was detained by police for weeks in 2021 for allegedly vulgar jokes insulting Hindu gods – despite never having performed at the show. The comedian Vir Das faced a backlash later the same year and police reports filed by BJP officials after a monologue that dealt with the country’s contradictions on women’s rights and religion.View image in fullscreenPolice in Mumbai registered a criminal case against a comedian in 2017 over a tweet of a photo of Modi modified by Snapchat’s popular dog filter, giving him a canine nose and ears.Similar cases have come out in Russia, including a standup of Azerbaijani origin and a citizen of Belarus, Idrak Mirzalizade, who was detained for 10 days and later banned from the country for a joke about open racism in Russia.Comedy, it seems, can also be treated by some as a transnational crime.The Turkish government asked for the prosecution of a German comedian in 2016 for performing a satirical poem about its president. In the late-night programme screened by the German state broadcaster ZDF, Jan Böhmermann sat in front of a Turkish flag beneath a small, framed portrait of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reading out a poem that accused the president of repressing minorities and “kicking Kurds”.View image in fullscreenErdoğan’s lawyer Michael Hubertus von Sprenger wanted to enforce a complete ban on the poem, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at the time, was widely criticised for appearing to give in to Ankara’s demands.Böhmermann said at the time he felt Merkel had “filleted me [and] served me up for tea” to Erdoğan, and that she risked damaging freedom of speech in Germany. Charges brought against him were later dropped and he was given police protection. More

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      What does Donald Trump think free speech means? – podcast

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      Archive: CBS, Good Morning America, The Charlie Kirk show, ABC News, Katie Miller Pod, CBS Austin, PIX11 News, Fox News
      Listen to Science Weekly’s episode on the data behind political violence
      Listen to Politics Weekly, all about Trump’s state visit to the UK
      Purchase Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
      Send your questions and feedback to [email protected]
      Support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More

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      Trump suggests punishing TV networks for ‘negative’ coverage amid outrage over Kimmel suspension

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      Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that TV networks which cover him “negatively” could lose their licenses after his celebration of ABC suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.On Air Force One, the president spoke to reporters on his flight back to the US from his state visit to the UK. The president said major US networks were “97% against me”, though he did not offer evidence to prove this figure or detail how this conclusion was evaluated. He said he read the statistic “someplace”.“Again, 97% negative, and yet I won easily. I won all seven swing states,” Trump said. “They give me only bad press. I mean they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their licenses should be taken away.”Trump supported ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, saying on Thursday that the comedian was “not a talented person” who “had very bad ratings”.“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump told reporters on Thursday during his state visit to the United Kingdom. “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.”According to Nielsen ratings as reported by LateNighter, although Stephen Colbert’s Late Show leads the time slot in total viewers with 2.42 million, Kimmel’s show averaged 1.77 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025 and edged out Colbert in the key 18-49 demographic.However, there was an 11% drop off in his show’s viewership the last month. Kimmel also has over 20 million subscribers on YouTube.The controversy began after Kimmel, in a recent broadcast, suggested that “many in Maga land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. Within a day, FCC chair Brendan Carr condemned the comments as “truly sick” and suggested ABC could face regulatory consequences.ABC suspended the show after affiliate operator Nexstar called Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive”.The indefinite suspension of the popular late-night show has prompted numerous calls for a boycott against Disney, ABC’s parent company, and other major media conglomerates that have refused to air Kimmel’s show.Writers Guild of America union members protested against the suspension of Kimmel outside Disney/ABC in Los Angeles on Thursday, with the union issuing a statement saying: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other – to disturb, even – is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.”Carr further raised censorship concerns when he suggested that the FCC might be “looking into” The View, another ABC talkshow. Appearing on conservative podcast the Bulwark, Carr was asked if other shows could face similar issues.He said: “I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal-opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.”The View hosts did not comment about Kimmel during the show’s Thursday broadcast.View image in fullscreenDamon Lindelof, a powerful Hollywood showrunner and creator of the ABC series Lost and other dramas, has promised not to work with Disney unless it puts Kimmel back on the air.Lindelof wrote on Instagram: “I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon. If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.”He added: “If you know Jimmy … You know he loves his country. You know he appreciates a good roast and he can take as good as he gives. You know he supported his crew through multiple strikes and you know he is generous and philanthropic and most of all, you know that he is kind.”The feud between Trump and Kimmel stretches back years, most notably when Kimmel hosted the 2024 Academy Awards and Trump posted online calling him a “WORSE HOST”. Kimmel read that message out during the ceremony, and responded by asking Trump if it wasn’t “past your jail time?”The comedian also emerged as a vocal critic during Trump’s first term, leading the fight against Obamacare repeal efforts after revealing his newborn son’s heart surgery had been made possible by the Affordable Care Act.Kimmel is the second prominent US late-night host to lose his show in the past few months. CBS announced in July that it would be cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show after he was also critical of Trump.JD Vance added to the pile-on Thursday, joking on social media that secretary of state Marco Rubio would be taking over as host of ABC’s late night show, a quip referencing Rubio’s multiple roles in the Trump administration.Barack Obama condemned what he called a “dangerous” escalation by the Trump administration. “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote on X.FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat on the commission, also accused ABC of “shameful” corporate capitulation that “has put the foundation of the first amendment in danger”. She said the FCC “does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes”.House Democratic leaders called for Carr’s resignation, accusing him of forcing ABC to suspend the show through regulatory threats.“Brendan Carr has engaged in the corrupt abuse of power,” said the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and five other lawmakers in a joint statement. “He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration.”Ro Khanna, a representative of California, issued a motion to subpoena Carr in the House oversight committee. “This administration has initiated the largest assault on the first amendment and free speech in modern history,” he said. “They’re making comedy illegal.”Democrats are also planning legislative action in response to what they see as escalating government censorship. Senator Chris Murphy and Congressman Jason Crow announced Thursday they will introduce bicameral legislation meant to protect anti-government speech from censorship and includes creating “a specific defense for those that are being targeted for political reasons”.In a press conference in Washington, Murphy warned that “Jimmy Kimmel is likely to not be the last person to lose their job, or face retaliation for their criticism of Donald Trump,” while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the administration’s threats “an assault on everything this country has stood for since the constitution has been signed”.Chris Stein contributed reporting More

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      ‘Censor-in-chief’: Trump-backed FCC chair at heart of Jimmy Kimmel storm

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      “The FCC should promote freedom of speech,” Brendan Carr, now the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote in his chapter on the agency in Project 2025, the conservative manifesto that detailed plans for a second Trump administration.It’s a view he’s held for a long time. He wrote on X in 2023 that “free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”And in 2019, in response to a Democratic commissioner saying the commission should regulate e-cigarette advertising, Carr wrote that the government should not seek to censor speech it does not like. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest’,” he wrote on Twitter at the time.But Carr has found himself at the center of the much-criticized decision by ABC to indefinitely cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show over comments the host made about Charlie Kirk’s killing. Despite the decision being, on its face, in opposition to free speech, Carr has used his position as chair of the commission, tasked with regulating communications networks, to go after broadcasters he deems are not operating in the “public interest”.Before he was named chair, Carr said publicly that “broadcast licenses are not sacred cows” and that he would seek to hold companies accountable if they didn’t operate in the public interest, a vague guideline set forth in the Communications Act of 1934. He has advocated for the FCC to “take a fresh look” at what operating in the public interest means.He knows the agency well: he was nominated by Trump to the commission in 2017 and was tapped by the president to be chair in January. He has also worked as an attorney at the agency and an adviser to then-commissioner Ajit Pai, who later became chair and appointed Carr as general counsel.Tom Wheeler, a former FCC chair appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama, said Carr is “incredibly bright” and savvy about using the broad latitude given to the chairman, “exploiting the vagaries in the term ‘the public interest’.”Instead of the deregulation Trump promised voters, the administration “delivered this kind of micromanagement”, Wheeler said.“It’s not the appropriate job of the FCC chairman to become the censor-in-chief,” Wheeler said.Since Kimmel’s suspension, Carr has said Kimmel’s comments were not jokes, but rather attempts to “directly mislead the American public about a significant fact”. During Monday’s show, Kimmel said that the “Maga gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it”. The comments came before charging documents alleged the shooter had left-leaning viewpoints.Kimmel is just Carr’s latest target. As chair, he has used the agency’s formal investigatory power, and his own bully pulpit, to highlight supposed biases and extract concessions from media companies who fear backlash from the Trump administration if they don’t pre-emptively comply.The commission itself hasn’t directly sought these actions from broadcasters. Carr has instead said publicly what the commission could do – for instance, signaling he would not approve mergers for any companies that had diversity policies in place – and companies have responded by doing what he wants.Nexstar, a CBS affiliate operator which first said it would not air Kimmel’s show on the local channels it owns, wants to buy Tegna.Carr is honing a playbook, and so far it’s working. “It’s rinse and repeat,” Wheeler said. “I think we’ll continue to see it for as long as he can get away with it.”Top Democrats on Thursday called for Carr’s resignation, and some suggested they would find a way to hold Carr accountable, either now or if they regain power in Congress.The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, criticized Carr for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression”. Gomez called ABC’s decision “a shameful show of cowardly corporate capitulation” that threatens the first amendment, and said the FCC is operating beyond its authority and outside the bounds of the constitution.“If it were to take the unprecedented step of trying to revoke broadcast licenses, which are held by local stations rather than national networks, it would run headlong into the first amendment and fail in court on both the facts and the law,” Gomez wrote in a statement. “But even the threat to revoke a license is no small matter. It poses an existential risk to a broadcaster, which by definition cannot exist without its license. That makes billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency all the more vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”Trump has cheered Carr as he collected wins against the president’s longtime foes in the media. On Wednesday, Trump called Kimmel’s suspension “Great News for America” and egged on NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, their late-night hosts.“Do it NBC!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Amid the criticism of Carr, Trump said the FCC chair was doing a great job and was a “great patriot”.Breaking norms at the FCCAt the FCC, the chair has wide latitude and operates as a CEO of the agency, Wheeler said. There are four other commissioners, but the chair sets the agenda and approves every word of what ends up on an agenda, he said. The commissioners are by default in a reactionary position to the power of the chair.“What Chairman Carr has raised to a new art form is the ability to to achieve results without a formal decision by the commission and to use the coercive powers of the chairman,” Wheeler said.Without a formal decision by the commission, he said, there can’t be appeals or court reviews, one of the key ways outside groups have sought to hold the Trump administration accountable for its excesses.The agency has historically been more hands-off about the idea of the “public interest”. On the FCC’s website, for instance, it notes that the agency has “long held that ‘the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views’” and that instead of suppressing speech, it should “encourage responsive ‘counter-speech’ from others.”In Trump’s first term, when Pai was chair, the president called for the agency to revoke broadcast licenses. At the time, Pai said, “the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content”.Wheeler and a former FCC chair appointed by a Republican, Al Sikes, noted in an op-ed earlier this year that Trump has also used executive orders to undermine the independence of the FCC, instead making it into a “blatantly partisan tool” subject to White House approval rather than an independent regulator.What Carr is trying to doIn an appearance on conservative host Benny Johnson’s show that proved fateful for Kimmel, Carr alluded to ways the commission could take action against the late-night host. Carr carefully explained that he could be called upon to judge any claims against the broadcasters while also calling Kimmel’s comments “some of the sickest conduct possible.”“But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”The companies could handle it by issuing on-air apologies or suspending Kimmel, Carr said. He cited the idea of the “public interest” but also claimed there was a case that Kimmel was engaging in “news distortion”. In further comments to Johnson, he talked about the declining relevance of broadcast networks and credited Trump for “smash[ing] the facade”.“We’re seeing a lot of consequences that are flowing from President Trump doing that,” Carr said. “Look, NPR has been defunded. PBS has been defunded. Colbert is retiring. Joy Reid is out at MSNBC. Terry Moran is gone and ABC is now admitting that they are biased. CBS has now made some commitments to us that they’re going to return to more fact-based journalism.“I think you see some lashing out from people like Kimmel, who are frankly talentless and are looking for ways to get attention, but their grip on the narrative is slipping. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not important to hold the public interest standard.” More