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Trump is Our King George: What Would the Founders Say?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2025 //
8

A reader who uses the name Quickwrit parses the Constitutionnand finds that Trump is doing today exactly what King George did to the colonists.

Quickwrit writes:

WHAT TRUMP IS DOING TODAY is the very same thing that our Declaration of Independence lists as the violations of liberty that triggered our Declaration of Independence. Take a look:

The King used armed forces to control American cities and towns, without first asking permission from the legislatures; quoting the Declaration, it says: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” Just like King Trump sending armed National Guard units into our cities today.

The King replaced local police with his armed forces. The Declaration says: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

The King’s armed forces were protected from killing civilians: “For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.” People die today in ICE custody, and nothing happens.

The King ignores civil courts: “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices.”

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.”

“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained.” Today, not only do governors of Red States do nothing without Trump’s approval, neither does Congress.

The Declaration also says that we also declare our independence from the King for his:

“cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world’ (just like Trump’s tariffs);

“depriving us in many cases of the benefit of Trial by Jury” and “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” (just like Trump deporting people without trial to be imprisoned in foreign nations).

The Declaration says Americans are breaking away because the King has opposed immigration that is vital to America’s economic growth, by “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” Already in 1740, laws had been passed to grant “natural born” citizenship status to immigrants who lived there for seven consecutive years.

The King has also been “redistricting” Americans out of their right to representation: “He has refused to pass Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.” Just like the redistricting going on today.

Americans today truly need to read the history of our Revolution and what went into and is actually in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Read the ACTUAL WRITINGS of our Founding Fathers, not just listen to or read the “analyses” of political talking heads on today’s TV and social media.

That kind of reading takes time, and too few Americans today are willing to spend the time.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Trump

Disney Announces that Jimmy Kimmel Will Return Tomorrow!

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2025 //
23

Disney announced that it was bringing back the Jimmy Kimmel show, starting tomorrow.

He was suspended for saying that the killer of Charlie Kirk was a MAGA adherent. He was wrong. No one knows the motive of Tyler Robinson, who had not been identified or arrested when Kimmel spoke.

If everyone who made a mistake was suspended from the screen, not many people would be left. The news could be announced by robots using AI. Comedians would disappear.

Disney released this statement:

“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,” the Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent company, said in a statement.

“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement said. “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.”

The outcry against Kimmel’s suspension was so loud that Disney backed down. His removal was seen as a test of the guarantee of free speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Public protest mattered!!

Now what about the teachers, members of the military, and others who have been suspended or fired for not saying the “right” words about the murder of Charlie Kirk? The suppression of speech has been widespread and over-the-top, based on political passions and prejudice.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Humor, Media

Ta-Nehisi Coates Examines Charlie Kirk’s Bigotry

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2025 //
13

In a bipartisan vote, Congress passed a resolution to honor Charlie Kirk on October 14 as a National Day of Remembrance for him.

At a time when Republicans are canonizing Charlie Kirk, it’s useful to remember what he stood for, what he believed, what he advocated.

Here are some video clips of Charlie Kirk in his own words:

The Guardian.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself a controversial figure among some whites for his frank writings about racism, wrote an article in Vanity Fair about Charlie’s oft-expressed views.

Charlie was an unrepentant white supremacist. He was a male chauvinist who believed that a woman’s place was in the home, raising children and deferring to the authority of her husband. He was a proud and unrepentant bigot. He should not have been murdered. Political violence is poison to a democracy, which should rely on persuasion, not repression, censorship, or violence.

Coates reminds us that if Charlie’s views prevailed, we would abandon the rights of everyone who was not a straight white Christian male. That’s a majority of us.

Coates wrote:

Before he was killed last week, Charlie Kirk left a helpful compendium of words—ones that would greatly aid those who sought to understand his legacy and import. It is somewhat difficult to match these words with the manner in which Kirk is presently being memorialized in mainstream discourse. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein dubbed Kirk “one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion” and a man who “was practicing politics in exactly the right way.” California governor Gavin Newsom hailed Kirk’s “passion and commitment to debate,” advising us to continue Kirk’s work by engaging “with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.” Atlantic writer Sally Jenkinssaluted Kirk, claiming he “argued with civility” and asserting that his death was “a significant loss for those who believe engagement can help bridge disagreements.”

The mentions of “debate” and “engagement” are references to Kirk’s campus tours, during which he visited various colleges to take on whoever come may. That this aspect of Kirk’s work would be so attractive to writers and politicians is understandable. There is, after all, a pervasive worry, among the political class, that college students, ensconced in their own bubbles, could use a bit of shock therapy from a man unconcerned with preferred pronouns, trigger warnings, and the humanity of Palestinians. But it also shows how the political class’s obsession with universities blinds it to everything else. And the everything-else of Kirk’s politics amounted to little more than a loathing of those whose mere existence provoked his ire.

It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry. Indeed, claims of Kirk’s “civility” are tough to square with his penchant for demeaning members of the LGBTQ+ community as “freaks” and referring to trans peoplewith the slur “tranny.” Faced with the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency, Kirk told his audience that the threat had to be averted because Harris wanted to “kidnap your child via the trans agenda.” Garden-variety transphobia is sadly unremarkable. But Kirk was a master of folding seemingly discordant bigotries into each other, as when he defined “the American way of life” as marriage, home ownership, and child-rearing free of “the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school,” adding that he did not want kids to “have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day.” The American way of life was “Christendom,” Kirk claimed, and Islam—“the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”—was antithetical to that. Large “dedicated” Islamic areas were “a threat to America,” Kirk asserted, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a “Mohammedan,” with Kirk supposing that anyone trying to see “Mohammedism take over the West” would love to have New York—a “prior Anglo center”—“under Mohammedan rule.”

Kirk habitually railed against “Black crime,” claiming that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people.” He repeated the rape accusations against Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five who is now a New York City councilman, calling him a “disgusting pig” who had gotten away with “gang rape.” Whatever distaste Kirk held for Blacks was multiplied when he turned to those from Haiti. Haiti was, by Kirk’s lights, a country “infested with demonic voodoo,” whose migrants were “raping your women and hunting you down at night.” These Haitians, as well as undocumented immigrants from other countries, were “having a field day,” per Kirk, and “coming for your daughter next.” The only hope was Donald Trump, who had to prevail, lest Haitians “become your masters.”

The point of this so-called mastery was as familiar as it was conspiratorial—“great replacement.” There was an “anti-white agenda,” Kirk howled. One that sought to “make the country more like the Third World.” The southern border was “the dumping ground of the planet,” he claimed, and a magnet for “the rapists, the thugs, the murderers, fighting-age males.” “They’re coming from across the world, from China, from Russia, from Middle Eastern countries,” he said, “and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in…”

You can probably imagine where this line of thinking eventually went.

“Jewish donors,” Kirk claimed, were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”

Kirk’s bigotry was not personal, but extended to the institution he founded, Turning Point USA. Crystal Clanton, the group’s former national field director, once texted a fellow Turning Point employee, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” One of the group’s advisers, Rip McIntosh, once published a newsletter featuring an essay from a pseudonymous writer that said Blacks had “become socially incompatible with other races” and that Black culture was an “un-fixable and crime-ridden mess.” In 2022, after three Black football players were killed at another college, Meg Miller, president of Turning Point’s chapter at the University of Missouri, joked (“joked”) in a social media message, “If they would have killed 4 more n-ggers we would have had the whole week off.”

Kirk subscribed to some of the most disreputable and harmful beliefs that this country has ever known. But it is still chilling to think that those beliefs would be silenced by a gunshot. The tragedy is personal—Kirk was robbed of his life, and his children and family will forever live with the knowledge that a visual record of that robbery is just an internet search away. And the tragedy is national. Political violence ends conversation and invites war; its rejection is paramount to a functioning democracy and a free society. “Political violence is a virus,” Klein noted. This assertion is true. It is also at odds with Kirk’s own words. It’s not that Kirk merely, as Klein put it, “defended the Second Amendment”—it’s that Kirk endorsed hurting people to advance his preferred policy outcomes…

Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump’s deployment of federal troops to DC. “Shock and awe. Force,” he wrote. “We’re taking our country back from these cockroaches.” And in 2023, Kirk told his audience that then president Joe Biden was a “corrupt tyrant” who should be “put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”

What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to “End Racism,” and, on the other, urges us to commemorate an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Immigration, Racism

Heather Cox Richardson: Is the Tide Turning? Could Be.

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2025 //
12

Heather Cox Richardson gives us some hopeful signs and auguries in her latest column. She is so very good at synthesizing the events that matter. No wonder she has 2.6 million subscribers. Wow!

She writes:

Today U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday threw out the $15 billion lawsuit President Donald J. Trump filed on September 15 against the New York Times for defamation. The judge, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, called the complaint “decidedly improper and impermissible” and took Trump’s lawyers to task for using a legal complaint as a public forum for abusive language.

Noting that the two defamation counts followed eighty pages of praise for Trump and allegations against the “hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady,'”—an old nickname for the New York Times—he set a forty-page limit on any amended complaint.

The administration’s pressure on ABC to fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel is very unpopular, as G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, with people polled by YouGov on September 18 seeing it as an attack on free speech.

That unpopularity showed today when podcaster and senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) celebrated Kimmel’s firing but called the threat of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to retaliate against ABC “unbelievably dangerous.” Cruz called Carr’s threats “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.’”

He explained: “I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.’”

Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg noted that three new polls out this week show Trump’s approval rating dropping and commented that voters don’t like “[t]his dictator sh*t.” AP-NORC observed that Republicans are growing pessimistic about the direction of the country. While the share of all American adults who say the country is off track has increased 13 percentage points since June, from 62% to 75%, the biggest change has been among Republicans. In June, 29% of Republicans were concerned about the direction of the country; now that number is 51%.

Most American adults think Trump has gone too far with his tariffs, his use of presidential power, and sending troops into U.S. cities.

Democratic lawmakers this week have reflected the growing opposition to Trump and his administration. Today in The Contrarian, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker wrote that Trump’s attacks on Chicago aren’t really about stopping crime. Instead, Trump is creating chaos and destabilizing the country in order to erode our democratic institutions and cement his power.

Pritzker warned that Trump “has become increasingly brazen and deranged in his rhetoric and his actions” and that the things he “is doing and saying are un-American.” In contrast, Pritzker held up as a model “our collective Midwestern values of hard work, kindness, honesty and caring for our neighbors,” and urged people to “be loud—for America.”

Yesterday Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) spoke at the Center for American Progress. He, too, outlined the administration’s attacks on the rule of law and blamed “billionaires padding their stock portfolios and buying up politicians,” “self-interested CEOs cynically dialing up the outrage and disinformation on their social media platforms,” and “politicians who saw more value in stoking grievance than solving problems” for creating the conditions that ushered Trump into the presidency.

Schiff called for restoring American democracy through legislation, litigation, and mobilization. He noted that Democrats have just introduced a package of reforms to put into law the norms Trump has violated. Democrats have also introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision permitting unlimited corporate money to flow into elections. While this legislation almost certainly won’t pass in a Republican-dominated Congress, he noted, it would force a debate.

He also noted that Democrats are conducting oversight, demanding accountability for wrongdoing and attacks on the rule of law, and are creating a record. Their victories, he noted, have been “modest,” but they have, for example, managed to force the administration to rehire employees at the National Weather Service and succeeded in preserving U.S. Department of Agriculture field offices in California.

Litigation has been more successful, Schiff said. Since January, plaintiffs have brought more than 400 suits against the administration, and courts have halted the administration’s policies in more than 100 of them. Wrongly fired civil servants have been reinstated, funding has been restored to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deportation flights have been grounded, Trump’s tariffs have been struck down.

“Ultimately, though,” Schiff said, “the most powerful check on Trump’s authoritarianism is not Congress. It is not the courts. It is the American people.”

And that was the rallying cry of Representative Jason Crow (D-CO) in Congress yesterday.

Crow, who entered Congress in 2019, is a former Army Ranger who completed three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment.

In his speech, Crow warned that Trump is tearing down the walls of our democracy and called out “some of our most elite and powerful individuals and institutions” for “failing to defend our democracy.” He noted that “[s]ome of our nation’s most powerful law firms have bent the knee. Some of our finest universities are buckling. Some of the most powerful CEOs have capitulated. And some of the largest media companies are simply surrendering.”

“If those with power and influence want to sell off our rights and freedoms to enrich themselves, then Americans should make it clear that cowardice and greed will fail them,” he said.

“We will not shop at your stores. We will not tune into your TV and radio stations. We will not send our kids and our money to your universities, or use your services if you are going to enable our slide to authoritarianism.”

Crow contrasted those elite failures with “the courage we’ve seen from everyday citizens”:

Coach Youman Wilder, who stood up to ICE agents when they started interrogating kids on a baseball diamond in Harlem. A schoolteacher in Twisp, Washington, who joins protests against cuts to Medicaid and SNAP every Saturday because, she says, “Democracy only works if we work it.” Massive demonstrations across the nation in April. Parents in Washington, D.C., patrolling schoolyards to protect the rights of students and other parents as ICE agents are raiding and the National Guard is on the streets. Journalists around the country “reporting the truth, despite threats to them and their family.”

“There is courage everywhere we look,” Crow said. “We have not yet lost our power.

“He continued: “Now is the time…for us to stand with all those defending democracy.

“Defending free speech.

“Defending freedom of religion.

“Defending due process.

“Defending the rule of law.

“Defending the right of schoolchildren to learn without fear of being shot.

“Defending government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

“As a young paratrooper, leading an infantry platoon in the invasion of Iraq,” he said, he was responsible for young men: “Black, White, Asian, Hispanic. From the North, from the South, East, and West. From farms and from cities. Rich and poor.

“When I think of America, I still think of those young paratroopers. How we came together, despite our differences, we served together, we fought together, we found great strength in one another.

“That is America.”

“There’s a tradition in the paratroopers,” he said, “that the leader of the unit jumps out of the plane first and then the others follow.”

He concluded: “I’m ready to jump.”

To read the footnotes, open the link. You may have to subscribe. Help her reach three million subscribers.

—

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Hope, Politics, Trump

Stephen Colbert Responds to Kimmel Affair with Hilarious Video

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2025 //
27

Please watch.

It’s brilliant.

And very funny!!

And don’t miss his opening comments, where he defines his “core values”: Free speech.

Categories Freedom of Speech, Humor, Media

Trump Mob Cancels Jimmy Kimmel

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2025 //
35

Oliver Darcy, media journalist, wrote in his blog Status about the events leading ABC to indefinitely cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show. If you care about the state of our democracy, it’s a scary story. Who will be silenced next?

The concept of free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, is in jeopardy. The Trump administration celebrates every triumph in their ongoing campaign to censor speech that they don’t like. They have made clear that they would like to stifle all criticism and dissent.

Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office, January 20, 2025, ordering the protection of free speech and an end to federal government censorship. The order was titled “Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship.” Hahaha. The joke’s on us.

The point of guaranteeing freedom of speech is not to protect uncontroversial speech. Such speech needs no protection. It’s to protect speech that offends someone, speech that is unpopular, speech that is despised by the powerful.

Please join me and write to the chairman of Disney, which owns ABC: Robert.Iger@Disney.com

Darcy writes:

Inside ABC, emergency meetings were convened after the FCC chair’s Jimmy Kimmel threat, with the late-night host ready to respond on-air—but Disney brass ultimately decided to bench the marquee talent instead.

On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr dropped in via webcam for an appearance on far-right personality Benny Johnson’s program. That the FCC chairman would sit down with Johnson at all was remarkable in itself. Johnson has built his brand trafficking in MAGA memes, misinformation, and cultural outrage; not typically the type of programming a government official would want to lend their credibility to. In any case, it wasn’t the venue alone that raised eyebrows. It was what Carr said once the program started taping. 

Speaking to Johnson’s audience, Carr lashed out at ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a remark the comedian made during his Monday monologue. Kimmel had said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” The day after Kimmel’s comment, authorities released the suspected killer’s messages, which showed he held disdain for the “hate” Kirk espoused. Notably, Kimmel never stated that the suspect was on the right, but that is how many interpreted the remarks. 

Indeed, Carr took significant issue with the comment, first dismissing Kimmel as “frankly talentless” on Johnson’s show. He then went further, delivering a naked threat aimed at Disney, ABC’s parent company: “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” he said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” It was an extraordinary moment: a sitting FCC chairman openly pressuring a network to silence one of its marquee talents. 

Carr’s appearance set off an immediate cascade of events inside ABC. According to people familiar with the matter, the network held a series of emergency meetings to discuss how to respond. Kimmel wanted to address the situation on his program Wednesday night. In fact, I’m told that he had even written a script about how he could respond to the controversy—but ultimately Disney brass wasn’t comfortable with it. Amid the meetings, Nexstar, the largest owner of local television stations in the country, decided it would decline to air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the “foreseeable future.” Ultimately, Disney boss Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment chief Dana Walden, among others, made the decision to pull the program from the network while it determined next steps.

ABC then issued a seven-word statement: “‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will be preempted indefinitely,” a spokesperson said, declining to elaborate on the shock decision. For an acclaimed late-night show long considered a staple of the network’s entertainment offerings, the sudden removal was stunning, even though I’m told the hope is that Kimmel will eventually return.

Donald Trump was also quick to celebrate the announcement, writing on his social platform: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible.” The emboldened Trump also sent a clear message to Comcast and NBCUniversalbrass: “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”

Carr, of course, was also delighted by the outcome. Reached by Status via text on Wednesday evening, he responded to a request for comment with a smiling emoji: “😀.” When pressed for words rather than symbols, Carr shot back that Status “has plenty of room for emojis.” He also singled out Nexstar on social media for praise, commending the company for “doing the right thing” by refusing to carry Kimmel’s program. The reaction would normally be considered inappropriate gloating from a regulator whose remarks had, in the span of hours, helped trigger the cancellation of one of network television’s best-known shows.

Nevertheless, the implications are seismic. Iger blinked, capitulating to political pressure from the Trump administration. The move sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry, where executives and talent agents privately expressed alarm about what it signaled for creatives moving forward. “Clients are texting me scared,” one prominent agent told me in the hours after the announcement, describing a climate of growing unease and concern over what could be next. “This one is really bad,” another media executive texted me, adding that it “feels like an inflection point.” Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner at the FCC, noted that the Trump administration “is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”

Of course, lurking beneath the surface are transactional calculations. Nexstar is working to merge with TEGNA, in a deal that requires FCC approval. Meanwhile, Disney’s decision comes as the company is working to complete a high-stakes deal with the NFL, one that is crucial to the future of ESPN. Securing those rights requires federal regulatory approval, and the company can hardly afford to pick a fight with Trump’s Washingtonwhile the deal hangs in the balance. By sidelining Kimmel, Iger may have protected Disney’s larger business interests. But the cost is a frightening message to the creative community and a major blow to free expression.

To a degree, what we’re also seeing is media executives reckoning with the reality that in 2025, with the country so polarized and in various information silos, there is no way to please everyone. Iger’s decision has sparked fierce backlash from the left and moderates, who are rightly outraged by Disney’s capitulation, even as Trump’s supporters cheer the move as a victory. Once upon a time, companies like Disney prided themselves on speaking to the whole country. That is no longer possible.

It goes without saying, but the Kimmel episode represents yet another example of a major media corporation bending the knee to Trump—and it comes at a time that the president appears more emboldened to target speech he dislikes. Earlier this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi bluntly threatened that the administration would “absolutely target” those engaging in what she described as “hate speech,” in the wake of Kirk’s killing. She quickly attempted to walk it back, but Trump himself then threatened ABC directly, singling out journalist Jonathan Karl as a possible target.

The irony, of course, can’t be missed. For years, Republicans cast themselves as the party of free speech, railing against what they derided as “cancel culture” from the left. Yet what we are witnessing now is a full-scale cancel campaign led from the right, with the force of federal government power behind it. The same voices that once claimed to defend open expression are now actively weaponizing regulatory threats to silence critics.

And Kimmel is hardly the only casualty. Paramount abruptly canceled Stephen Colbert’s program earlier this year, citing financial concerns, but the decision—coming against one of Trump’s sharpest critics—was obviously related to his politics. Now Disney has benched Kimmel. The result is a media landscape where critics of the president are vanishing from broadcast television one by one, not because audiences have turned away, but because executives fear government retribution. The message is chilling: in Trump’s America, even the most powerful media companies will silence their own talent if it keeps them in the administration’s good graces. It is a remarkable, and deeply alarming, moment for free speech.

The right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of dozens of ABC affiliates, issued a press release calling on Jimmy Kimmel to make a “direct apology” and donate to Charlie Kirk’s family and Turning Point USA. It also plans to air a “special in remembrance” of Kirk on Friday in the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” time slot. [BusinessWire]

The Writers Guild of America issued this statement:

WGA Statement on ABC’s Decision to

Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live!

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.

As a Guild, we stand united in opposition to anyone who uses their power and influence to silence the voices of writers, or anyone who speaks in dissent. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution. What we have signed on to – painful as it may be at times – is the freeing agreement to disagree.

Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich.

Silencing us impoverishes the whole world.

The WGA stands with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers.

Categories Censorship, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Media, Trump

Fascism Alert! JD Vance and Stephen Miller Describe Plans to Crack Down on Liberal Groups as “Domestic Terrorists”

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2025 //
16

Have you heard of Horst Wessel? He was a 22-year-old member of the Nazi paramilitary who was assassinated in 1930 by two Comminists. After his death, his name became a propaganda prop for the Nazi party. Lyrics that Wessel had written were turned into the Nazi anthem and called “The Horst Wessel Song.”

I thought of Wessel when I saw how the Trump administration is turning Charlie Kirk into a symbol of leftwing, liberal perfidy that must and will be punished.

Charlie had extremist views about race, immigration, and gender, but he was no Nazi.

I discovered that I was not the only person who was struck by the parallel between Wessel and Kirk, not in what they did, but in how their legacy was used by powerful men. Benjamin Cohen and Hannah Feuer wrote in the Forward, an independent Jewish journal, about the comparison. They interviewed Daniel Siemens, a historian who wrote a book about Wessel. Siemens insisted that the two men should not be compared because Wessel engaged in violence and Kirk did not.

Cohen and Feuer conclude:

The rush to invoke Horst Wessel’s name reflects two realities. On the right, there’s a dangerous willingness among some extremists to valorize Nazi symbols. On the left, a fear that Kirk’s death will be used to erode civil liberties.

It is time to worry about the erosion of civil liberties.

Today, JD Vance became host of “The Charlie Kirk Show.” Among his guests was Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief ideologue. Miller is known for his hatred of immigrants.

The New York Times just reported that they discussed their plans to crack down on liberal groups, whom they hold responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk. They believe this even though no evidence has emerged tying the alleged assassin Tyler Robinson to any group, right or left. No one can say whether Tyler moved to the left or to the right of Kirk. The Utah governor said Tyler had a “leftist ideology,” but Kirk had lately been feuding with far-right white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who accused Charlie of being too moderate, a sell-out.

Without any evidence, Vance and his colleagues are forging ahead on the assumption that liberal groups indoctrinated and funded Tyler Robinson.

Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno Youngs wrote in today’s Times:

Trump administration officials on Monday responded to the activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination by threatening to bring the weight of the federal government down on what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.

Investigators were still working to identify a motive in Mr. Kirk’s killing, but the Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has said that the suspect had a “leftist ideology” and that he acted alone.

The White House and President Trump’s allies suggested that he was part of a coordinated movement that was fomenting violence against conservatives — without presenting evidence that such a network existed. America has seen a wave of violence across the political spectrum, targeting Democrats and Republicans.

On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.

Open the link to finish reading.

I wonder which groups will be targeted. The ACLU? Marc Elias’s “Democracy Docket”? Bloggers like those at The Contrarian, The Bulwark, Rick Wilson, Paul Krugman, Joyce Vance, Heather Cox Richardson, Mary Trump, Norman Eisen of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and dozens of others. Will they try again to shut down Act Blue, which many Democrats use as their primary fundraising platform?

Hang on to your hat. Our political system is in for some difficult, challenging times.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History, Trump, Vance, J.D.

The Campaign to Punish Those Who Did Not Mourn Charlie Kirk’s Death

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2025 //
30

People who did not express genuine grief at the murder of Charlie Kirk are in serious trouble. Some have been fired or suspended. Some have been harassed for their views. Before anyone attacks me for acknowledging this phenomenon, let me point out that I did deplore his murder while making clear that I share none of his views.

Reuters reported on the efforts to ferret out and punish those who did not react to Charlie’s assassination in the correct manner.

At least 15 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs after discussing the killing online, according to a Reuters tally based on interviews, public statements and local press reports. The total includes journalists, academic workers and teachers. On Friday, a junior Nasdaq employee was fired over her posts related to Kirk.

Others have been subjected to torrents of online abuse or seen their offices flooded with calls demanding they be fired, part of a surge in right-wing rage that has followed the killing.

Some Republicans want to go further still and have proposed deporting Kirk’s critics from the United States, suing them into penury or banning them from social media for life.

“Prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death,” said conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a prominent ally of President Donald Trump and one of several far-right figures who are organizing digital campaigns on X, the social media site, to ferret out and publicly shame Kirk’s critics.

CNN reported that there is a coordinated campaign to punish those who speak ill of Charlie on social media.

Indeed there is. It’s called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” on Twitter, and it invites everyone to report the names and screenshots of anyone who posted sentiments critical of Charlie or comments applauding his murder.

The website opens with this message:

Charlie Kirk was murdered.

Is an employee or a student of yours supporting political violence online?

Look them up on this website.

Send information on anyone celebrating Charlie’s death.

Follow us on X/Twitter: @forcharliekirk1

ATTENTION:
This website will soon be converted into a searchable database of over 30,000 submissions, filterable by general location and job industry. This is a permanent and continuously-updating archive of Radical activists calling for violence.

This is the largest firing operation in history.

Since his admirers on all ends of the political spectrum have expressed admiration for his commitment to discussion, debate, and dissent, it is ironic that not only his friends but government officials like Pete Hegseth are searching social media for people they can punish for saying “the wrong thing” (e.g. criticizing Charlie’s views or not mourning his death).

Charlie, a high school graduate, was contemptuous of higher education, which he believed was controlled by leftwing, anti-American ideologues. On Twitter, before his killer was identified, several of Charlie’s admirers speculated that the murderer had been indoctrinated by Marxists and Communist professors at college. Such comments led to snarky responses about the political leanings of the faculty teaching electrical technology (how to be an electrician) at Dixie Technical College in Utah.

Freedom of speech is a basic right, guaranteed in the First Amendment. Even abhorrent views are protected speech; it’s the abhorrent views that need protection, not those that offend no one.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democrats, Extremism, Freedom of Speech

Jamelle Bouie: I Mourn Charlie’s Death But Not His Ideology

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2025 //
15

Jamelle Bouie is one of the best, most interesting opinion writers for The New York Times. As a subscriber to that newspaper, I signed up for Bouie’s newsletter, which is where these thoughts of his appeared.

Jamelle Bouie writes:

Virtually every person of note in American politics has, rightfully, condemned the horrific killing of Charlie Kirk and expressed their deep concerns about the growing incidence of political violence in the United States. Wherever we stand politically, we all agree that he should still be alive.

There has been less agreement about Kirk’s life and work. Death tends to soften our tendency to judge. And sudden, violent death — especially one as gruesome and shocking as this one — can push us toward hagiography, especially in the immediate wake of the killing.

So it goes for Kirk.

“Charlie inspired millions,” President Trump said in an Oval Office speech on Wednesday. “He championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor and grace.”

“The best way to honor Charlie’s memory,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared, “is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.”

Kirk’s approach, wrote the editors of Politico’s Playbook, “was to persuade, to use charm and charisma and provocation and the power of argument to convince people of the righteousness of his cause.”

There is no doubt that Kirk was influential, no doubt that he had millions of devoted fans. But it is difficult to square this idealized portrait of Kirk as model citizen with the man as he was.

Kirk’s eulogists have praised him for his commitment to discourse, dialogue and good-faith discussion. Few if any of them have seen fit to mention the fact that Kirk’s first act on the national stage was to create a McCarthyite watchlist of college and university professors, lecturers and academics. Kirk urged visitors to the website to report those who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

The list, which still exists, is a catalog of speech acts in and outside the classroom. The surest way to find yourself on the watchlist as an academic is to disagree, publicly, with conservative ideology, or even acknowledge ideas and concepts that are verboten among the far right. And the obvious intent of the list is made clear at the end of each entry, where Kirk and his allies urge readers to contact the schools and institutions in question. Targets of the watchlist attest to harassment and threats of violence.

The Professor Watchlist is a straightforward intimidation campaign, and you can draw a line directly from Kirk’s work attacking academics to the Trump administration’s all-out war on American higher education, an assault on the right to speak freely and dissent.

To speak of Kirk as a champion of reasoned discussion is also to ignore his frequent calls for the state suppression of his political opponents.

“‘Investigate first, define the crimes later’ should be the order of the day,” Kirk declared in an editorial demanding the legal intimidation of anyone associated with the political left. “And for even the most minor of offenses, the rule should be: no charity, no goodwill, no mercy.”

Speaking last year in support of Trump’s plan for mass deportation, Kirk warned that the incoming president would not tolerate dissent or resistance. “Playtime is over. And if a Democrat gets in our way, well, then Matt Gaetz very well might go arrest you,” he said.

It is also important to mention that Kirk was a powerful voice in support of Trump’s effort to “stop the steal” after the 2020 presidential election. His organization, Turning Point USA, went as far as to bus participants to Washington for the rally that devolved into the Jan. 6 riot attack on the Capitol.

And then there is Kirk’s vision for America, which wasn’t one of peace and pluralism but white nationalism and the denigration of Americans deemed unworthy of and unfit for equal citizenship.

On his podcast, Kirk called on authorities to create a “citizen force” on the border to protect “white demographics” from “the invasion of the country.” He embraced the rhetoric of white pride and warned of “a great replacement” of rural white Americans.

“The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different,” he said last year. “You believe in God, country, family, faith, and freedom, and they won’t stop until you and your children and your children’s children are eliminated.”

Kirk also targeted Black Americans for contempt. “Prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people — that’s a fact,” he said in 2023. Kirk was preoccupied with the idea of “Black crime,” and on the last episode of his show before he was killed, he devoted a segment to “the ever-increasing amount of Black crime,” telling his audience, falsely, that “one in 22 Black men will be a murderer in their lifetime” and that “by age of 23, half of all Black males have been arrested and not enough of them have been arrested.”

Kirk told his listeners that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of the Supreme Court “is what your country looks like on critical race theory,” that former Vice President Kamala Harris was “the jive speaking spokesperson of equity,” and that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “was awful.”

“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it,” Kirk said at a 2023 event. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

This is just a snippet of Kirk’s rhetoric and his advocacy. He also believed that there was no place for transgender people in American society — “We must ban trans-affirming care — the entire country,” he said in 2024 — and has denounced L.G.B.T. identities as a “social contagion.”

It is sometimes considered gauche, in the world of American political commentary, to give words the weight of their meaning. As this thinking goes, there might be real belief, somewhere, in the provocations of our pundits, but much of it is just performance, and it doesn’t seem fair to condemn someone for the skill of putting on a good show.

But Kirk was not just putting on a show. He was a dedicated proponent of a specific political program. He was a champion for an authoritarian politics that backed the repression of opponents and made light of violence against them. And you can see Kirk’s influence everywhere in the Trump administration, from its efforts to strip legal recognition from transgender Americans to its anti-diversity purge of the federal government.

We can mourn Kirk. We can send prayers to his friends and family. We can take stock of the gravity of this event. We can — and should — do all of this and more without pretending he was something, as a public figure, that he was not.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Reform, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Racism

Mississippi: Federal Judge Enjoins State Ban on DEI

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2025 //
7

I am reposting this news because the earlier version did not have a link. I added additional information about the decision and the Judge.

This decision blocks all efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the state of Mississippi. If ever there was a state that needs DEI to heal from the burden of a racist history, it’s Mississippi.

The Mississippi Free Press reported that Federal District Judge Henry Wingate blocked the implementation of the state’s ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public schools.

Mississippi’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools remains blocked after a federal judge granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction in an Aug. 18 decision.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi also denied the defendants’ requests to dismiss the case, calling the defendants’ points “moot.”

“This Court generally agrees with Plaintiffs’ view of the challenged portions of (House Bill 1193).

It is unconstitutionally vague, fails to treat speech in a viewpoint-neutral manner, and carries with it serious risks of terrible consequences with respect to the chilling of expression and academic freedom,” U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate wrote in the Court’s decision.

The law, which the Mississippi Legislature approved and Gov. Tate Reeves signed in April, prohibits Mississippi public schools and institutions of higher learning from teaching, creating or promoting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The Republican-backed law also bans schools from requiring diversity statements or training during hiring, admission and employment processes in educational institutions.

Public institutions are also not allowed to teach or “endorse divisive concepts or concepts promoting transgender ideology, gender-neutral pronouns, deconstruction of heteronormativity, gender theory (or) sexual privilege,” the law says.

H.B. 1193 would prohibit public schools from requiring diversity statements or training in hiring, admission and employment processes at educational institutions.

Preliminary injunctions are dependent upon four qualities: “a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; the irreparable injury to the movants if the injunction is denied; whether the threatened injury outweighs any damage that the injunction might cause the defendant; and the public interest.”

Wingate Highlights Threat to Academic Freedom

Judge Wingate also granted the plaintiffs’ request to add class action claims to the lawsuit, meaning the injunction will apply to teachers, professors and students across the state. The plaintiffs’ lawyers sought the addition after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June limited the ability of federal judges to grant sweeping injunctions.

Judge Wingate was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa and received his law degree from Yale Law School. He was appointed as a federal district judge by President Ronald Reagan.

Justice Henry Wingate
Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Justice, Mississippi
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