President Trump again suggested that films made outside the U.S. should be subject to a 100% tariff, a move he said would help rejuvenate film production in America but that has been greeted with skepticism by many in Hollywood.
“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote in a post Monday morning on his Truth Social platform. “California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.”
The post did not include details on how such a tariff would work or how it would be levied. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time Trump has floated a tariff on films made overseas to combat so-called runaway production.
In May, Trump said he was authorizing the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative to begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
That announcement surprised studio executives, who said at the time that they had no advance notice of the move. Shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reached out to the White House, offering to work together to create a federal film tax incentive, which many in the industry have said they would prefer over a tariff.
Newsom responded to Trump’s dig by sharing on X a screenshot of a news headline detailing the recent increase in applications for California’s revamped film and TV tax credit program next to a headline about Hollywood studios’ stock performance after Trump’s initial call in May for a 100% tariff on films made outside the U.S. “Almost like we know what we’re doing,” Newsom wrote in his post. “Almost like Donald Trump absolutely does not.”
Countries including Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand have developed generous film tax credit programs, which, along with lower costs, have increasingly lured productions out of the U.S. California has been particularly hard hit by the production exodus.
In response, states have also upped their individual tax credit programs, including California, which has now more than doubled the annual amount allocated to its film and TV tax credit program and expanded its eligibility criteria.
The Motion Picture Assn., the lobbying arm of Hollywood’s major studios, was not immediately available for comment.
On Monday, California congressional representatives reiterated their support for a federal film tax incentive program to support the U.S. film business.
Noting that a tariff could have “unintended and damaging consequences,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he was “ready to work with this administration” and colleagues “on both sides of the aisle” to pass a major federal film tax credit.
The California senator is currently working on a proposal for a federal film incentive, a Schiff spokesperson said.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer, also called for movement on a federal tax incentive, saying that a 100% tariff on films made overseas would only increase costs for consumers.
“I’m relieved President Trump recognizes that we are losing a signature American product: the domestic film and TV industry,” she said in a statement. “I hope the President will join us in pioneering a real solution that levels the playing field with international competition.”
More than three years after 11 U.S. cities were awarded the right to host games during next summer’s World Cup and just two months before the tournament draw, President Trump is threatening to move matches out of places he considers “a little bit dangerous.”
Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters Thursday in the Oval Office and the cities that appear to be in his crosshairs are Democratic ones such as Seattle and San Francisco, which have not supported the president’s immigration policies.
“They’re run by radical left lunatics who don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said.
Seattle is scheduled to host six games, including a group-stage match featuring the U.S. Six matches will also be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, about 40 miles south of San Francisco. The tournament will kick off June 11 and end July 19 with the final in East Rutherford, N.J.
The president did not mention Inglewood, which will stage eight matches — including at least two U.S. games — at SoFi Stadium. The eight other U.S. host cities are Atlanta; Boston; Arlington, Texas; Houston; Kansas City, Mo., Miami; East Rutherford, N.J.; and Philadelphia. The 2026 World Cup will be the first to be shared by three countries with matches also scheduled to be played in Mexico and Canada.
“If any city we think is going to be even a little bit dangerous for the World Cup, or for the [2028] Olympics … but for the World Cup in particular, because they’re playing in so many cities, we won’t allow it,” Trump said.
“We’ll move it around a little bit. But I hope that’s not going to happen.”
Trump does not have the authority to relocate World Cup matches, which are overseen by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. But FIFA leader Gianni Infantino, who Trump calls his “great friend,” has given in to the president before. Just last month, FIFA agreed to Trump’s unusual request to move the World Cup draw, which will set the matchups for the group stage, to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
A FIFA spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. But another person heavily involved in World Cup preparations in multiple cities said Trump’s threat to move games is all bluster.
“As a practical matter, it would be impossible,” said the person, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose district abuts Inglewood, agreed.
“It’s so laughable, it’ll make you want to take a Tylenol,” she said.
“No one is taking this seriously,” she continued. “He has absolutely no power over that. The World Cup is not about Donald Trump. It’s also not about the United States. So another distraction and another example of ego and ignorance.
“My hope is that this president would be focusing on making sure that the U.S. host cities have the infrastructure that they need.”
According to the Athletic, FIFA’s contracts with host cities say the group “shall not have the right for ordinary termination” of the agreements. Most host cities have already spent millions of dollars to prepare for the World Cup and are anticipating a sizable economic boost from the tournament.
A study released last summer by Micronomics, a Long Beach-based economic research and consulting firm, found that the World Cup will have an economic impact of $594 million on Los Angeles County, including $343 million in direct spending from an estimated 180,000 out-of-town visitors.
Trump wouldn’t have to move games to make things difficult for cities he disfavors, however. In July, Congress allocated $625 million in federal funds for World Cup security. According to Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House World Cup task force chaired by Trump, cities will submit their expenditures with requests for reimbursement, but the task force will have wide latitude in deciding which bills to pay.
Trump has made crime and retribution a major theme of his administration, sending national guard troops — or threatening to send them — to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis and Chicago, all cities with Democratic mayors. Nine of the 11 World Cup host cities in the U.S. have Democratic mayors.
A group of Walt Disney Co. shareholders is demanding the company release information related to the suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, according to a recent letter.
The letter, dated Wednesday and sent by the American Federation of Teachers union and press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, said the groups want transparency into Disney’s decision last week to indefinitely suspend the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following comments he made in his monologue about the shooter who killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Disney reinstated Kimmel’s show Tuesday, saying in a statement that the initial decision was made to “avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country” and calling some of his comments “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
The late-night host’s suspension set off a political firestorm and nationwide debate about free speech. Protesters demonstrated outside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood as well as Disney’s Burbank headquarters. More than 400 celebrities signed an open letter decrying attempts at government censorship. Some called for consumers to cancel their Disney+ streaming subscriptions.
“Disney shareholders deserve the truth about exactly what went down inside the company after Brendan Carr’s threat to punish ABC unless action was taken against Jimmy Kimmel,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “The Disney board has a legal responsibility to act in the best interests of its shareholders — and we are seeking answers to discover if that bond was broken to kowtow to the Trump administration.”
Prior to the initial suspension decision, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had called for Disney to take action against Kimmel during a podcast interview that aired last week. Carr said there could be consequences for the TV stations that carry his show. Shortly before Disney announced Kimmel’s initial suspension, TV station groups Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group each said they would preempt the show and have said they will not bring it back.
The letter calls for Disney to provide records, including any meeting minutes or written materials, related to the suspension or return of Kimmel’s show.
“There is a credible basis to suspect that the Board and executives may have breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty, care, and good faith by placing improper political or affiliate considerations above the best interests of the Company and its stockholders,” the letter said.
Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
Jessica Chastain has publicly challenged Apple TV+ following the streamer’s decision to hold her upcoming series “The Savant.”
Apple TV+ on Tuesday said it would be delaying the release of the show about domestic terrorism, which follows an investigator who infiltrates online hate groups.
Chastain voiced her opposition to the postponement Wednesday on Instagram, writing that she and Apple were “not aligned on the decision to pause the release of The Savant.”
Representatives for Apple TV+ did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
In her Instagram post, Chastain said, “In the last five years since we’ve been making the show, we’ve seen an unfortunate amount of violence in the United States,” going on to cite the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Sept. 10 shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk among instances of political violence in recent years.
“I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects, and while I wish this show wasn’t so relevant, unfortunately it is,” Chastain said.
“The Savant is about the heroes who work every day to stop violence before it happens, and honoring their courage feels more urgent than ever,” she said.
Chastain said she hopes audiences will be able to see the show soon. Apple has not yet announced a new release date for the series.
Rescuers in the rugged Eastern Sierra are searching for a Seattle man who has been missing since early September — and possibly longer — after climbing among some of California’s most remote and daunting mountain peaks.
Billy Pierson, an experienced alpinist, was in California getting in shape for an upcoming trip to Nepal, according to a comment his brother, Steve Pierson, left on Facebook.
On Aug. 9, the alpinist was hiking with a friend. “After their hike, he separated from that friend and is believed to have headed toward Inyo County,” the Inyo County Sheriff’s office said in a news release. “He was later reported missing on September 10, 2025.”
It was not immediately clear when Billy Pierson separated from his friend, or who was the person who reported him missing. The Inyo County Sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Billy Pierson, an experienced alpinist, was in California getting in shape for an upcoming trip to Nepal.
(Inyo County Sheriff)
It is believed Pierson was attempting the Palisades Traverse, a classic and technical mountaineering route along the Sierra crest that covers close to 20 miles and crosses the summits of five mountains taller than 14,000 feet.
In addition to climbing the challenging peaks, mountaineers also often have to navigate the Palisades Glacier, one of the last true glaciers remaining in California.
Steve Pierson said his brother’s plan was to begin, or end, his epic trip at Temple Crag, a familiar landmark to seasoned Sierra climbers and hikers that towers above the magnificent, glacier-fed Big Pine Lakes.
The Inyo County Sheriff’s office, working with Inyo County Search and Rescue, scoured the area around Temple Crag with no success.
Pierson is 5’9”, 165 lbs, and was last known to be carrying a large, navy blue or gray backpack. He was wearing black and yellow shoes and liked to hike in a baseball cap with a bandana underneath.
News that Pierson is missing follows several other incidents this summer in which hikers got dangerously lost or were found dead.
On Sept. 12, an Argentinian climber fell 2,000 feet to his death on Mt. Shasta. The 45-year old tech executive had summited successfully, but lost his way on the descent, winding up on the steep and icy Wintum Glacier. He attempted a controlled slide to reach the safety of a trail below, but lost control, collided with a boulder, and eventually slid the length of the glacier.
Also in September, a San Luis Obispo County man — Kirk Thomas-Olsen, 61 — was found dead in Yosemite National Park more than 20 days after he was expected to return from his solo hike.
In August, a boy scout troop hiking in the Emigrant Wilderness north of Yosemite National Park came upon a 78-year old man who had spent a night without food, water or shelter in the mountains. He had lost his pack and seemed incoherent when the scouts found him and escorted him to safety.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday called Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip a “genocide,” marking a decisive shift in her government’s stance on the conflict — and putting it at odds with the United States.
Sheinbaum, who is one of a handful Jewish heads of state, has come under increasing pressure from members of her leftist coalition to more forcefully condemn Israel’s assault on the small Palestinian enclave, where at least 65,000 people have died and more than half a million are trapped in famine.
Speaking to journalists at her daily news conference, Sheinbaum said Mexico stands “with the international community to stop this genocide in Gaza.”
Claudia Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic.
Her comments came amid a meeting in New York of the United Nations General Assembly, where several countries, including France, Britain, Canada and Australia, have formally recognized Palestine as a state. Mexico has formally supported Palestinian statehood for years.
Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic. She grew up in a secular household and rarely talks about her Jewish identity.
Sheinbaum, who entered politics from the world of leftist activism, has long supported the Palestinian cause. In 2009, she wrote a letter to Mexican newspaper La Jornada fiercely condemning Israel’s actions in an earlier war with Gaza, where 13 Israelis and more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians and militants had been killed.
Sheinbaum evoked the Holocaust, saying “many of my relatives … were exterminated in concentration camps.”
“I can only watch with horror the images of the Israeli bombing of Gaza,” she wrote. “Nothing justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians. Nothing, nothing, nothing, can justify the murder of a child.”
The latest conflict broke out in 2023 after Hamas fighters broke through a border fence encircling Gaza and killed more than 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Israel responded with a punishing assault on Gaza from air, land and sea, displacing nearly all of the strip’s 2 million people and damaging or destroying 90% of homes.
Since taking office last year, Sheinbaum has repeatedly called for a cease-fire and reiterated Mexico’s support for a two-state solution in the region, but until Monday she had refrained from categorizing what is unfolding in Gaza as a genocide.
That was possibly to avert conflict with the United States, which has given more foreign assistance to Israel than any other country globally in the decades since World War II, and which has supported the war on Gaza with billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid.
Sheinbaum, whose nation’s economy depends heavily on trade with the U.S., has spent much of her first year in office seeking to appease President Trump on the issues of security and migration in order to avoid the worst of his threatened tariffs on Mexican imports.
Her comments on Gaza come amid growing global consensus that Israel is committing genocide.
The world’s leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The International Assn. of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution that says Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition as spelled out in the United Nations convention on genocide.
And this month, a U.N. commission of inquiry also found Israel has committed genocide.
An Israeli flag waves over debris in an area of the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel last month. Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave has killed at least 65,000 people.
(Maya Levin / Associated Press)
“Explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities and the pattern of conduct of the Israeli security forces indicate that the genocidal acts were committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group,” the commission wrote.
It added that under the Genocide Convention, other nations have an obligation to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide.”
Israeli officials dismissed the report as “baseless.”
Spider-Man and a Hollywood tour guide were having it out.
They stood right outside Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard, arguing about whether ABC was right to yank the host’s TV show off the air last week after he commented on the political response to right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.
“I like Kimmel!” said the Spider-Man impersonator, who wore pink Nike sneakers and leaned in close so he could hear through his thin, face-covering costume. “What he said is free speech.”
A tour bus drives past what was Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard on Sept. 18, 2025.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Todd Doten, a tour agent for Beverly Hills Tours of Hollywood, pushed back. He said he believed broadcasters are held to a different standard than private citizens, and that the Federal Communications Commission — which pushed to get Kimmel’s show canceled — “has somewhat of a point.”
The men verbally sparred beside singer Little Richard’s cracked star on the Walk of Fame. Then Doten patted the selfie-hawking superhero on the back and they parted ways amicably.
The scene on Friday afternoon captured the Hollywood that Kimmel embraced and aggressively promoted: Weird, gritty and surprisingly poignant.
Ever since he began filming at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in 2003, Kimmel has been one of the famed neighborhood’s biggest ambassadors. He drew tourists to the storied Hollywood Boulevard, which — despite being home to the Academy Awards, TCL Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame — has long struggled with crime, homelessness and blight. He used his celebrity to help homeless youth and opened a donation center on his show’s backlot for victims of the January wildfires.
And he filmed many a sketch with Hollywood itself as the bizarro backdrop — including one returning bit called “Who’s High?” in which he tried to guess which of three pedestrians was stoned.
Protesters in front of Jimmy Kimmel’s theater a day after ABC pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely over comments he made about the response to right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk’s death.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Now, locals and entertainment industry officials alike worry what will happen if Kimmel’s show permanently disappears from a Hollywood still struggling to recover from the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 and the COVID-19 pandemic that literally shut the neighborhood down. While his suspension has sparked a roiling debate over free speech rights nationwide, in this neighborhood, the impact is more close to home.
“A hostile act toward Jimmy Kimmel is a hostile act toward Hollywood itself and one of its great champions,” former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The Times on Friday.
“Hollywood is both a place and an idea. It’s an industry and a geography. Jimmy is always big on both. He actually lives in Hollywood, at a time when not a lot of stars do.”
Miguel Aguilar, a fruit vendor who often sets up near Kimmel’s theater, said Friday that business was always better on the days “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” filmed because so many audience members bought his strawberries and pineapples doused in chamoy. He was stunned when a Times reporter told him the show had been suspended.
“Was it canceled by the government?” Aguilar asked. “We used to get a lot more customers [from the show]. That’s pretty scary.”
A man holding a sign advertising at a nearby diner said he worried about Kimmel’s crew, including the gaffers and makeup artists.
“How many people went down with Kimmel?” he asked.
And Daniel Gomez, who lives down the street, said he feared that nearby businesses will suffer from the loss of foot traffic from the show, for which audience members lined up all the way down the block.
“Tourists still will come to Hollywood no matter what, but a portion of that won’t be coming anymore,” Gomez said as he signed a large canvas outside the theater on which scores of fans and free speech advocates wrote messages about the show being axed.
Protesters in front of Jimmy Kimmel’s theater in Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“It’s pretty bad that he got shut down because of his comments,” Gomez added. “Comedians should be free to say whatever they want.”
In a joint statement, a coalition of Hollywood labor groups including the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said the kind of political pressure that Kimmel faced as a broadcaster “chills free speech and threatens the livelihoods of thousands of working Americans.”
“At a time when America’s film and television industry is still struggling due to globalization and industry contraction, further unnecessary job losses only make a bad situation worse,” the statement read.
During his monologue Monday, Kimmel made remarks about Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of fatally shooting Kirk. He said the “MAGA gang” was “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.”
Ingrid Salazar protests outside of the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” studio on Thursday.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
While Kimmel’s remarks could be interpreted in different ways, Kirk’s supporters immediately accused the talk show host of claiming Robinson was a Trump ally, which many of Kimmel’s supporters reject. Kimmel himself has not publicly responded.
Kimmel also mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was coping with the killing of his close ally.
Nexstar Media Group responded on Wednesday, saying it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations because of Kimmel’s comments. Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, then announced it would suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely.
Nexstar’s decision to yank the show came after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, threatened to take action against ABC and urged local ABC affiliate stations to stand up the network.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told right-wing podcast host Benny Johnson. “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.”
Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “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.”
He also targeted late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, calling them “total losers.” He pressured NBC to cancel their shows, writing: “Do it NBC!!!”
The president this summer praised CBS’s decision to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” after this season, writing on Truth Social on July 18: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
Pedestrians walk across the street from the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” theater a day after ABC has pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
While the show is in limbo, it is unclear what will happen to Kimmel’s iconic theater in the historic former Hollywood Masonic Temple, a neoclassical 1921 building fronted by six imposing columns.
Disney owns the building, as well as the adjacent 1920s office building that contains the El Capitan Theatre and the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop. Kimmel’s production company, 12:05 AM Productions, occupies four floors — 26,000 square feet — in the six-story office building, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
Garcetti, who long represented Hollywood on the L.A. City Council, said Kimmel was a major advocate for renovation of the old Masonic lodge and other revitalization Hollywood projects.
And after the Oscars returned for good to the Kodak Theatre (now Dolby Theatre) across the street in 2002 after several years outside of Hollywood, Kimmel “helped usher in what I call Hollywood’s second golden age, when the Academy Awards came back and people saw actual stars in nightclubs and restaurants,” Garcetti said.
When Garcetti was showing off the city to officials with the International Olympic Committee years ago in an effort to host the Games, Kimmel met their helicopter on the roof of a Hollywood hotel to brag about the neighborhood.
Jimmy Kimmel, host and executive producer of the late-night talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” celebrates as he receives his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Jan. 25, 2013.
(Reed Saxon/Associated Press)
At the 2013 Hollywood Chamber of Commerce ceremony awarding Kimmel a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Garcetti quipped: “When you came here to Hollywood Boulevard, this place was full of drug dealers and prostitutes, and you welcomed them with open arms.”
Kimmel joked that his parents brought him to the Walk of Fame as a 10-year-old and left him there to fend for himself.
“I’m getting emotional,” he said during the ceremony. “This is embarrassing. I feel like I’m speaking at my own funeral. This is ridiculous. People are going to pee on this star.”
Kimmel’s star is by his theater, near the stars for rapper Snoop Dogg — and Donald Duck.
On his show in May, pop star Miley Cyrus told Kimmel she developed a serious infection after filming on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, where she rolled around on the sidewalk. Part of her leg, she said, started to “disintegrate.”
“Have you been to the Walk of Fame in the middle of the night?” she asked.
“I live here,” Kimmel said.
“I thought it was my last day,” Cyrus responded.
Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside Kimmel’s theater in recent days, decrying the suspension of his show.
The cancellation occurred right after Dianne Hall and Michael Talbur of Kansas City got tickets to a live taping of the show and traveled to Los Angeles. So, they attended a protest Thursday instead.
Hall said she was expecting Kimmel’s monologue “to be something rude toward the [Kirk] family” but was surprised when she actually listened to it.
“I kept thinking, ‘Surely something bad was said for him to get fired,’ ” Hall said. “But it was nothing like that.”
Hollywood resident Ken Tullo said he’s “not a protesting type of guy, but enough’s enough” and he did not want his daughters to grow up with a fear of speaking freely.
“The current administration cannot laugh at themselves,” Tullo said, “and they don’t want anybody else to laugh.”
Times staff writer Roger Vincent contributed to this report.
The singer D4vd called off a series of upcoming tour dates, including a concert this weekend at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre, as police investigate his connection to the death of a teenage Inland Empire girl whose decomposed body was discovered this month in a car registered to the musician.
A representative for the Greek said the show, which was scheduled for Saturday night, had been canceled. Other tour dates in San Francisco and in Europe had either been removed from or were listed as canceled on Ticketmaster’s website by Friday afternoon.
An event at L.A.’s Grammy Museum scheduled for Wednesday — in which D4vd planned to perform and to take part in a conversation about his work — has also been called off. A representative for D4vd didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, D4vd, 20, announced that he would release a deluxe edition of his 2025 album, “Withered,” on Friday, but the project hadn’t appeared on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music by Friday morning.
Police are investigating the singer’s ties to Celeste Rivas, who was reported missing in April 2024 and whose whereabouts were a mystery until this week, when authorities identified her remains after they found a body in the trunk of a Tesla in a Hollywood tow lot on Sept. 8.
NEW YORK — Two ABC affiliate owners spoke out against late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel ahead of ABC’s decision to suspend the presenter over comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Their comments highlight the influence that local TV station owners have on national broadcasters such as Disney-owned ABC.
Here are key facts about the two companies.
Nexstar Media Group, based in Irving, Texas, operates 28 ABC affiliates. It said it would pull Kimmel’s show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
The company owns or partners with more than 200 stations in 116 U.S. markets, and owns broadcast networks the CW and NewsNation, as well as the political website the Hill and nearly a third of the Food Network.
It hopes to get even bigger. Last month, it announced a $6.2-billion deal to buy TEGNA Inc., which owns 64 other TV stations.
The deal would require the Federal Communications Commission to change rules limiting the number of stations a single company can own. The FCC’s chair, Brendan Carr, has expressed openness to changing the rule.
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, based in Hunt Valley, Md., operates 38 local ABC affiliates. On Wednesday the company, which has a reputation for a conservative viewpoint in its broadcasts, called on Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to the activist’s political organization, Turning Point USA. Sinclair said its ABC stations will air a tribute to Kirk on Friday in Kimmel’s time slot.
Sinclair owns, operates or provides services to 178 TV stations in 81 markets affiliated with all major broadcast networks and owns Tennis Channel.
Controversies
Sinclair made headlines in 2018 when a video that stitched together dozens of news anchors for Sinclair-owned local stations reading identical statements decrying “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing the country” went viral. Sinclair didn’t disclose that it ordered the anchors to read the statement.
Nexstar operates similarly.
Danilo Yanich, professor of public policy at the University of Delaware, said the company is the “biggest duplicator” of news content today His research showed Nexstar stations duplicated broadcasts more than other affiliate owners.
Affiliate influence
Lauren Herold, an editor of the forthcoming book “Local TV,” said the web of companies involved in getting Americans their television shows is “relatively unknown” to most viewers, though their influence has been made known for decades.
Often, Herold said, that’s been when local affiliates have balked at airing something they viewed as controversial, such as the episode of the 1990s comedy “Ellen” in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character came out as gay.
“It’s not a complete oddity,” Herold said. “I think what’s more alarming about this particular incident to me is the top-down nature of it.”
Whereas past flare-ups between affiliates and their parent networks have often involved individual local TV executives, Herold pointed to the powerful voices at play in Kimmel’s suspension: Disney CEO Bob Iger, the FCC’s chair Carr, as well as Sinclair and Nexstar.
“The FCC kind of pinpointing particular programs to cancel is concerning to people who advocate for television to be a forum for free discussion and debate,” Herold said.
Jasmine Bloemhof, a media strategist who has worked with local stations, including ones owned by Sinclair and Nexstar, said consolidation has given such companies “enormous influence.” Controversies like the latest involving Kimmel, she said, “reveal the tension between Hollywood-driven programming and the values of everyday Americans.”
“Networks may push one agenda, but affiliates owned by companies like Sinclair and Nexstar understand they serve conservative-leaning communities across the country,” Bloemhof said. “And that friction is bound to surface.”
Anderson and Sedensky write for the Associated Press.
While Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was preempted by a rerun of “Celebrity Family Feud,” continuing ABC’s indefinite suspension of the talk show, some of Kimmel’s late-night colleagues used their platform to sound off.
On “The Daily Show,” which airs on Paramount-owned Comedy Central and has rotating hosts, Jon Stewart suited up for emceeing duties outside his usual Monday slot. Desi Lydic had been hosting this week, but the comedian had something to say about the issues surrounding his friend Kimmel.
Stewart leaned heavy into irony from the start of the show, saying it is now the “all new, government-approved” version, and was introduced as the evening’s “patriotically obedient host.” Stewart frequently scolded the audience for laughing at his sarcastic pandering to the Trump administration. He said the show was being taped in the “crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City” and notes that “someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?”
“I don’t know who this ‘Johnny Drimmel Live’ ABC character is, but the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech,” Stewart said. “Some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smoke screen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principleless and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that. Not me, though, I think it’s great.”
Stewart and the correspondents then serenaded the president with an off-key tune filled with compliments and praises.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon, host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” briefly addressed the situation in his monologue Thursday night saying, “To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on — no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he is a decent, funny and loving guy. And I hope he comes back.”
Fallon said he would continue his monologue “just like I normally would,” but the punchline of his jokes about Trump came with an announcer interrupting any possible slights with flattery.
Earlier in the day, the host had canceled a scheduled appearance at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival in New York City, where he was set to join a panel titled “Staying on Brand”; organizers did not respond to a request for comment about the cancellation of his appearance.
Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s “Late Night,” also didn’t avoid the topic. He opened his segment “A Closer Look” on Thursday by cracking jokes about how anything negative he’s said about the president is an AI-generated deepfake. “I’ve always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president and even better golfer,” he joked.
He proceeded to show clips from Trump’s recent trip to the U.K., poking fun at the president’s comments and protesters who rallied against his visit. But later in the segment, Meyers’ began to show clips of Trump touting his efforts to “stop all government censorship” and bring back free speech, before cutting to news clips about Kimmel’s suspension.
“Trump promised to end government censorship and bring back free speech, and he’s doing the opposite, and it has experts worried that we’re rapidly devolving into an oppressive autocracy in the style of Russia or Hungary, much faster than anyone could have predicted,” Meyers continued.
The host also commented on his personal relationship with Kimmel, saying it’s a “privilege and an honor” to be his friend, in the same way he feels privileged to host his own show. “I wake up every day, I count my blessings that I live in a country that at least purports to value freedom of speech, and we’re going to keep doing our show the way we’ve always done it, with enthusiasm and integrity,” he said.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” added David Remnick, the editor in chief of the New Yorker, to its lineup Thursday, which already included CNN journalist Jake Tapper. Colbert’s show generated its own headlines this summer when CBS announced the late-night talk show would be canceled after the season wraps in May 2026 — effectively ending the franchise after 33 years on the air. The decision, the company said, was due to financial reasons rather than a response to Colbert’s criticism of a deal between the Trump administration and Paramount, the parent company of CBS, the network that airs “The Late Show,” as many have speculated.
Colbert used his vocal talents Thursday to sing a tune about the situation, presenting a short song as a message from ABC and its parent company, Walt Disney. The song was to the tune of “Be Our Guest,” the “Beauty and The Beast” classic — except the repeating refrain is “shut your trap.”
Colbert sings as an animated clip of the candlestick character Lumière from the movie plays, but he’s donning a red MAGA hat here. “Shut your trap, we’re warning you to cut the crap. Our dear leader’s skin is thinner than a sheet of plastic wrap,” he sings.”Mum’s the word, have you heard, kissing a— is what’s preferred. Don’t insult our great dictator or he’ll hit you with this turd,” the song continues as a photo of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appears on screen.
“The new rule at ABC: Don’t make fun of Donny T,” he sings. “So don’t you make a scene or mention Jeff Epstein, or your show will be scrapped — shut your trap.”
Colbert also spoke about the suspension in a monologue, reading a social media post from Carr that said “While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.”
“You know what my community values are, buster?” Colbert asked. “Freedom of speech.”
Colbert discussed Kimmel’s situation with Tapper, who brought up the Department of Justice’s review of Disney’s deal to take a controlling stake in streaming company FuboTV, which brings up potential antitrust issues. Tapper questioned what Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, would do about Kimmel given that he has business before the Justice Department. “Is he going to poke the bear, Donald Trump, or is he going to ignore this great tradition we have in this country, of not acquiescing — of media, newspapers, comedians, television — not acquiescing to power?”
Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is also scheduled to appear in an episode of “The Late Show” airing Monday; Kelly last appeared on the show last year ahead of the November 2024 presidential election, discussing border security and gun reform.
Earlier on Thursday, while taking part in a panel conversation moderated by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, late-night veteran David Letterman, who once helmed “The Late Show” on CBS, described this week’s turn of events as “misery.”
“In the world of somebody who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched,” Letterman said. He first addressed what transpired with Colbert and the cancellation of “The Late Show,” alluding to political pressure as the real culprit, before addressing the decision to yank Kimmel’s show.
“I just feel bad about this because we all see where this is going, correct?” he said. “It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian — a criminal — administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”
With three decades in the late-night circuit, Letterman never shied from mocking presidents: “Beating up on these people,” he said, “rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy — not once were we squeezed by anyone from any government agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.”
ABC carried out the decision to take Kimmel off the air Wednesday after the comedian and host made comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death during his opening monologue on Monday night.
“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,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel has not yet commented publicly on the matter. But his show’s suspension quickly ignited fierce debate, with critics accusing ABC and its parent company, Disney, of capitulating to political pressure. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said Wednesday that his agency might take action against ABC because of Kimmel’s comments.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said on the Benny Johnson podcast. “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.”
President Trump lauded Kimmel’s suspension in a post he wrote on his Truth Social media site: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.” (The show has not been canceled, but remains on hold.)
It’s also worth noting Kimmel’s outspoken daytime counterparts were mum on the issue. “The View’s” panelists did not address the Kimmel situation during Thursday’s episode. (“Good Morning America,” which is produced by ABC News, did mention the news of the Kimmel hiatus without additional commentary.)
Meanwhile, Kimmel’s fictional late-night competitor, Deborah Vance, has an opinion on the ordeal — or rather, actor Jean Smart does. She may only play a late-night television host on TV, but the “Hacks” actress was quick to share her thoughts on the decision to pull Kimmel from the air: “What Jimmy said was FREE speech, not hate speech,” Smart shared in an Instagram post. “People seem to only want to protect free speech when its suits THEIR agenda.” (Kimmel made a cameo in the recent season of “Hacks.”)
She went on to write: “Thought I didn’t agree at ALL with Charlie Kirk; his shooting death sickened me; and should have sickened any decent human being. What is happening to our country?”
The hugely popular star of ABC’s lineup was known as an outspoken critic of the president of the United States. But when one comment sparked an outrage, the network moved swiftly to yank the entertainer off the air.
It was May 2018, and the star was Roseanne Barr.
Hollywood reacted in shock when ABC abruptly pulled the plug on “Roseanne,” the top-rated reboot of the sitcom about the Conner family and their struggles with harsh economic difficulties. Barr’s reunion with her television family was an instant hit, becoming the most successful TV series on the network in years.
The cancellation came just hours after Barr posted a response to a tweet about a WikiLeaks report claiming that the CIA spied on French presidential candidates during the Obama administration. The comedian made a reference to Valerie Jarrett, a former aide of former President Obama, as the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise.
Although Barr, a vocal supporter of Donald Trump in his first presidential term, had long been a fiery presence on social media, the racism of the barb was undeniable. Executives at the Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster said that the post crossed a line, rejecting Barr’s apology and pleas for forgiveness.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” announced then-ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey. Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger later tweeted about the cancellation, “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.”
The incident had echoes of Wednesday’s announcement that ABC was pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely in the wake of sharp backlash over Kimmel’s comments about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The late-night host said during the monologue on his show Monday that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican.
The network’s decision to suspend the show came after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr suggested on a right-wing podcast Wednesday that the FCC could take action against ABC for Kimmel’s comments. Within hours of Carr’s comments, Nexstar Media Group said it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations, and Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, followed suit, saying it was pulling Kimmel from the network.
Barr on Thursday jumped into the fray over the pulling of Kimmel’s show, firing off a response to Obama’s post on X, formerly Twitter, saying that the Trump administration was taking “cancel culture” to “a new and dangerous level.”
“Remember when you and your wife called Bob Iger to have me fired?” Barr wrote in a repost of his message.
There were no reports or indications that the Obamas had any involvement with the cancellation of “Roseanne.”
Less than six months later, “The Conners,” a spinoff of “Roseanne,” premiered to high ratings. The series picked up the story of the working class family, who were grieving over the death of matriarch Roseanne Conner, who had overdosed on opioids. The comedy became a staple of ABC’s primetime, concluding its seven-season run in April.
In a 2023 Times interview promoting her stand-up special on Fox Nation, Barr called the cancellation “a witch-burning,” lashing out at the network and her former co-stars.
“I felt like the devil himself was coming against me to try to tear me apart, to punish me for believing in God,” she said. “And they denied me the right to apologize. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly. I had never known that they hated me like that. They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion. Even though ‘Roseanne’ became their No. 1 show, they’d rather not have a No. 1 show.”
She added, “It didn’t faze them to murder my character, either. They s— on my contribution to television and the show itself. But I forgive everybody. I started thinking that God took me out of there to save me. And once I started thinking that way, I was, like, a lot better off.”
Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster ABC said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely following backlash over the host’s remarks about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The move comes after station owner Nexstar Media Group said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from its ABC affiliate stations as a result of the comments.
The Irving, Texas-based Nexstar announced Wednesday that Kimmel will be off its stations for the foreseeable future.
“Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets,” a company representative said in a statement.
Kimmel said during a monologue on his Monday program that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel then mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was reacting to the murder of his close ally.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
Alford said continuing to give Kimmel a broadcast platform “is simply not in the public interest at this current time.”
Nexstar’s decision comes just after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC. Appearing on the podcast of right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, Carr said one form of punishment could be pulling the licenses of ABC affiliates, which likely got Nexstar’s attention.
Nexstar has ABC affiliates in 32 markets across the U.S., including in New Orleans, New Haven, Nashville and Salt Lake City.
Network affiliates dropping a late-night program over the political views expressed in it is unprecedented. The closest situation goes back to 1970, when CBS blacked out the image of activist Abbie Hoffman when he appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” wearing a shirt made out of an American flag.
Remember when the notion of government censorship in the U.S. seemed like the plot of an Orwellian novel, or something that happened in other places, countries where masked militia kidnap people off the street and disappear them? Our 1st Amendment rights as Americans seemed to guarantee that would never happen here. The state could not take away our free speech.
It turns out we don’t need a state-sponsored crackdown to punish those who express sentiments that offend, because the private sector has stepped in to do the job. An office supply store, a news network and an airline carrier are among companies that recently fired staff who made comments about influencer Charlie Kirk’s death that were interpreted as celebratory, insensitive or blaming the conservative activist’s polarizing viewpoints for his targeted killing.
Now Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says that she was unfairly fired over thoughts she expressed following the assassination of Kirk last week in Utah. She wrote: “The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation,” Attiah said. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.” She said that in her posts she exercised “restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.”
Her comments were largely about gun violence and issues of race. Attiah mentioned Kirk directly in just one post, paraphrasing from a comment he made about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both of whom are Black. “’Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot’ — Charlie Kirk,” she wrote.
Attiah didn’t celebrate the death of Kirk in her posts or make light of his slaying, but she didn’t mourn him either. In the current political environment, that alone could be enough to make her employer nervous, even compared to all the other truly awful stuff out there.
Sadly, the cruel, inhumane and politicized responses that followed Kirk’s tragic killing shouldn’t surprise anyone. Social media behaved as it always does — as a repository for every good, bad and really bad impulse experience following a tragedy or crisis.
The same quotient of 20% civility, 80% ugliness enveloped X, YouTube, TikTok and the like when three months ago Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home in a politically motivated attack. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also allegedly shot by the same suspect in their home but survived.
The difference back in June? There wasn’t a mass movement to fire, cancel or silence those who minimized the tragic killings or, worse, turned them into a trolling opportunity. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah blamed the killings on the left — “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on X — and posted a picture of suspect Vance Boelter with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” It was a crass reference to Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Lee (who is now publicly mourning Kirk’s death) was taking his cues from the top.
President Trump’s short condemnation of Hortman’s killing on Truth Social stated that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated.” There was no lengthy eulogy, he did not attend the funeral, and when asked the day after Hortman’s killing if he had called Walz, the president said, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”
In response to Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an order to lower American flags to half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, U.S. embassies and military posts. He announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And during an appearance Friday on “Fox & Friends,” he promised vengeance against the left for Kirk’s killing, though the suspect — let alone his motives — were still unknown at the time.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”
The prospect of retribution from a thin-skinned leader leaves no mystery as to why major media outlets such as the Post, “60 Minutes” and MSNBC appear to be reshaping their newsrooms to be less critical of the current administration. The same now goes for break rooms, shop floors and office cubicles across all sectors of American working life. It’s not the Big Brother scenario envisioned in George Orwell’s cautionary tale about a totalitarian state, “1984,” but it’s a start.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump filed a $15-billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists on Monday, according to court documents.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”
“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment early Tuesday.
In a Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused The New York Times of lying about him and defaming him, saying it has become “a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a $10-billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Married At First Sight star Lacey Martin clashed with her co-stars during a fiery reunion episode, which she eventually stormed out of following the tense clash
Lacey Martin stormed out of the Married At First Sight reunion episode in dramatic scenes that aired on Monday night(Image: E4)
Lacey Martin stormed out of the Married At First Sight reunion episode in dramatic scenes that aired on Monday night. The reality star, 28, reunited with stars of the 2023 series and the 2024 outings of the E4 hit for a special programme, but there were fireworks when she clashed with her ex Nathan Campbell.
Fans of the show, which sees total strangers tie the knot after being put through a matchmaking process, decided to stay together after they ‘married’ on the programme, but split up quietly shortly after the series had aired.
Lacey joined her former co-stars for dinner and fumed: “I’ve said enough. The chapter’s closed, I wish you the best, I’m ready to move on with my life!”
MAFS star Lacey has endured a feud with her ex Nathan Campbell and it all came to blows during Monday night’s reunion episode (Image: E4)
But Kieran Chapman piped up: “Is that why you texted him a few days ago, asking him to do a magazine deal just to make us look better? Did you or didn’t you, a couple of days ago? You should know what I’m going to say; that’s why I’m butting in.”
Lacey then said bluntly: “Respectfully, I wish you the best. Enjoy your food,” as Kieran shot back: “You go enjoy your magazine deals!” As she left the room, Lacey said: “And on that note, I’m actually going to go tonight. No, I am. I am proud of myself, I was true. I fell in love with you, Nathan. I wish you all the best, now I have to go and put myself first. The chapter’s ended.”
She walked out in tears and was comforted by some of the girls. Once back inside, she announced to the table: “It was genuine our feelings for each other … I know you, I know you better than anyone else at this table.
Nathan told his fellow MAFS UK co-stars that after the experiment ended, Lacey’s energy changed dramatically, and she stopped making an effort to see him or to spend any quality time together(Image: E4)
“We can cherish our marriage, and it’s just a beautiful memory now. I do truly wish you the best.” After the show ended, it seemed that Lacey’s true colours came to light as Nathan claimed that she asked him to enter into a ‘showmance’ instead of continuing their love story.
Nathan told his fellow MAFS UK co-stars that after the experiment ended, Lacey’s energy changed dramatically, and she stopped making an effort to see him or to spend any quality time together.
When Nathan voiced his concerns about their relationship with Lacey, he claimed that his leading lady suggested that they should ‘just be friends’ and embark on a showmance instead in order to gain further media opportunities.
Kieran Chapman even got involved in the heated moment (Image: E4)
This led to Nathan’s heartbreak, before he ultimately decided to cut Lacey out of his life and block her number and all social media accounts.
Following the dramatic scenes, viewers flocked to X to share their support for Nathan as one gushed: “I wish I could give Nathan the biggest hug. You can see how genuinely upset he is. Bless his heart he really loved her – and she didn’t deserve him.”
Another echoed: “OMG in floods of tears watching Nathan. Lacey is crying because it’s the only way she can get out of it and deflect. She was LUCKY to have a man like him.” Someone else fumed: “Lacey girl, you need to give your head a wobble.”
NEW YORK — In the days since the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, workers in a variety of industries have been fired for their comments on his death.
It’s hardly the first time workers have lost their jobs over things they say publicly — including in social media posts. In the U.S., laws can vary across states, but overall, there’s very few legal protections for employees who are punished for speech made in or out of private workplaces.
“Most people think they have a right to free speech … but that doesn’t necessarily apply in the workplace,” said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and vice president of HR Services for Engage PEO. “Most employees in the private sector do not have any protections for that type of speech at work.”
Add to that the prevalence of social media, which has made it increasingly common to track employees’ conduct outside of work or for internet users to publish information about them with the intent of harming or harassing them.
Employers have leeway
Protections for workers vary from one state to the next. In New York, if an employee is participating in a weekend political protest, but not associating themselves with the organization that employs them, their employer cannot fire them for that activity when they return to work. But if that same employee is at a company event on a weekend and talks about their political viewpoints in a way that makes others feel unsafe or the target of discrimination or harassment, then they could face consequences at work, Matsis-McCready said.
Most of the U.S. defaults to “at-will” employment law — which essentially means employers can choose to hire and fire as they see fit, including over employees’ speech.
“The 1st Amendment does not apply in private workplaces to protect employees’ speech,” said Andrew Kragie, an attorney who specializes in employment and labor law at Maynard Nexsen. “It actually does protect employers’ right to make decisions about employees, based on employees’ speech.”
Kragie said there are “pockets of protection” around the U.S. under various state laws, such as statutes that forbid punishing workers for their political views. But the interpretation of how that gets enforced changes, he notes, making the waters murky.
Steven T. Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and faculty director of the school’s Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center, also points to some state laws that say employers can’t fire their workers for “legal off-duty conduct.” But there’s often an exception for conduct seen as disruptive to an employer’s business or reputation, which could be grounds to fire someone over public comments or social media posts.
“In this scenario, if somebody feels like one of their employees has done something that suggests they are glorifying or celebrating a murder, an employer might still be able to fire them even with one of those laws on the books,” Collis said.
For public employees, including school teachers, postal workers and elected officials, the process is a bit different. That’s because the 1st Amendment plays a unique role when the government is the employer, Collis explains — and the Supreme Court has ruled that if an employee is acting in a private capacity but speaking on a matter of public concern, they’re protected.
However, that has yet to stop the public sector from restricting speech in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. For instance, leaders at the Pentagon unveiled a “zero tolerance” policy for any posts or comments from troops deemed to be making light of or celebrating the killing of Kirk.
The policy, announced by the Defense Department’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, on social media Thursday, came hours after numerous conservative military influencers and activists began forwarding posts they considered problematic to Parnell and his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” Parnell wrote Thursday, referring to the Department of Defense by the name adopted recently by President Trump.
A surge of political debate
The ubiquity of social media is making it easier than ever to share opinions about politics and major news events as they’re unfolding. But posting on social media leaves a record, and in times of escalating political polarization, those declarations can be seen as damaging to the reputation of an individual or their employer.
“People don’t realize when they’re on social media, it is the town square,” said Amy Dufrane, chief executive of the Human Resource Certification Institute. “They’re not having a private conversation with the neighbor over the fence. They’re really broadcasting their views.”
Political debates are certainly not limited to social media and are increasingly making their way into the workplace as well.
“The gamification of the way we communicate in the workplace — Slack and Teams, chat and all these things — they’re very similar to how you might interact on Instagram or other social media, so I do think that makes it feel a little less formal and somebody might be more inclined to take a step and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this happened,’” Matsis-McCready said.
Many employers unprepared
In the tense, divided climate in the United States at the moment, many human resource professionals have expressed that they’re unprepared to address politically charged discussions in the workplace, according to the Human Resource Certification Institute. But those conversations are going to happen, so employers need to set policies about what is acceptable or unacceptable workplace conduct, Dufrane said.
“HR has got to really drill down and make sure that they’re super clear on their policies and practices and communicating to their employees on what are their responsibilities as an employee of the organization,” Dufrane said.
Many employers are reviewing their policies on political speech and providing training about what appropriate conduct looks like, both inside and outside the organization, she said. And the brutal nature of Kirk’s killing may have led some of them to react more strongly in the days since his death.
“Because of the violent nature of what some political discussion is now about, I think there is a real concern from employers that they want to keep the workplace safe and that they’re being extra vigilant about anything that could be viewed as a threat, which is their duty,” Matsis-McCreedy said.
Employees can also be seen as ambassadors of a company’s brand, and their political speech can dilute that brand and hurt its reputation, depending on what is being said and how it is being received. That is leading more companies to act on what employees are saying online, she said.
“Some of the individuals that had posted and their posts went viral, all of a sudden the phone lines of their employers were just nonstop calls complaining,” Matsis-McCready said.
Still, experts such as Collis don’t anticipate a significant change in how employers monitor their workers’ speech — noting that online activity has been in the spotlight for at least the last 15 years.
“Employers are already — and have been for a very long time — vetting employees based on what they’re posting on social media,” he said.
Bussewitz and Grantham-Philips write for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade apologized Sunday for remarks he made last week that suggested using involuntary lethal injections to get mentally ill homeless people off the streets.
Kilmeade’s comments came during a discussion last Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” about the Aug. 22 stabbing death of a 23-year Ukranian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, on a light rail train in Charlotte, N.C.
Zarutska’s suspected killer, DeCarlos Brown Jr., is a homeless man with a long criminal record and is a paranoid schizophrenic, according to his family.
The attack on Zarutska was captured on security cameras and circulated widely online. The incident has sparked a national debate on public safety policy and criminal sentencing.
The topic led “Fox & Friends” co-host Laurence Jones to say that billions of dollars have been spent on programs to care for the homeless and mentally ill but many of those afflicted resist help.
“A lot of them don’t want to take the programs,” Jones said. “A lot of them don’t want to get the help that is necessary. You can’t give them the choice. Either you take the resources that we’re going to give you, or you decide that you’ve got to be locked up in jail.”
Kilmeade added: “Or involuntary lethal injection or something — just kill ‘em.”
A clip of Kilmeade’s remarks started to circulate widely on X on Saturday.
“I apologize for that extremely callous remark,” Kilmeade said during Sunday’s edition of the morning program. “I am obviously aware that not all mentally ill, homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.”
Many online commentators pointed out that Kilmeade’s comments evoked the extermination of mentally ill and disabled people that was authorized by Adolf Hitler in 1939. The German chancellor’s euthanasia program killed more than 250,000 people ahead of the Holocaust.
For now, Kilmeade has avoided the fate of political analyst Matthew Dowd, who lost his contributor role at MSNBC after commenting on the Wednesday shooting death of right wing political activist Charlie Kirk.
Dowd told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions.”
Dowd, once a political strategist for President George W. Bush, described Kirk as a divisive figure “who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups.”
The angry reaction on social media was immediate after Dowd’s comments suggested that Kirk’s history of incendiary remarks led to the shooting.
Rebecca Kutler, president of MSNBC, issued an apology and cut ties with Dowd.
Dowd also apologized in a post on BlueSky. “I in no way intended intended to blame Kirk for this horrendous attack,” he said.
The top executives at MSNBC parent Comcast sent a company-wide memo Friday citing Dowd’s firing and told employees “we need to do better.”
NEW YORK — Matthew Dowd’s firing has opened a floodgate.
The MSNBC political analyst, who lost his job shortly after on-air comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was the first of many figures to face consequences Thursday for public statements or actions about the shooting.
Raw feelings about the killing have ignited a campaign to shame — and worse. Several conservative activists sought to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer said she would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death.
MSNBC said Dowd is no longer with the network after his comments, shortly after the shooting, in which he said that “hateful words” can lead to “hateful actions.” Both MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler and Dowd apologized for the remarks, which Kutler called “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”
Dowd said he didn’t intend for his comments to blame Kirk for the attack, as some may have construed them. Still, it brought an abrupt interruption to his work as a television commentator, which the former aide to President George W. Bush has done for nearly two decades.
The moves to curb certain public commentary after Kirk’s death are particularly notable, as his admirers had lauded him as a champion of free speech.
Actions spread across country
A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a congressman. A comic book writer lost her job because of social media posts, as did educators in Mississippi and Tennessee. “CBS Mornings” host Nate Burleson was attacked for a question he asked. An Arizona sports reporter and a Carolina Panthers public relations official lost their jobs.
An anonymously registered website pledged to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” and asked people to offer tips about people who were “supporting political violence online.”
The site published a running list Thursday of targeted posts, along with the names, locations and employers of people who posted them. While some posts contained incendiary language, others didn’t appear to celebrate the shooting or glorify violence. There were several similar efforts, including one by activist Scott Presler, who asked his followers about teachers purported to have celebrated Kirk’s killing and posted findings on X.
A staff member at the University of Mississippi was fired after sharing “insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death, according to the school’s chancellor, Glenn Boyce. The university did not identify the employee or immediately respond to questions from the Associated Press.
The president of Middle Tennessee State University said he’d fired a staffer who offered “callous and inappropriate comments on social media” about Kirk’s shooting. President Sidney A. McPhee did not identify the staff member but said the person “worked in a position of trust with our students.”
It wasn’t clear if it was the same person, but an X post by Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn identified an assistant dean of students at MTSU who posted online that she had “ZERO sympathy” after the shooting. Blackburn said the person should be ashamed and fired.
A warning to teachers in Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner warned the state’s teachers that making “disgusting” statements about Kirk’s killing could draw sanctions, including the suspension or revocation of teaching licenses. Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said in a memo to school district superintendents that he’d been made aware of “despicable” comments on social media.
“I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior,” Kamoutsas said in the memo, which he also posted on X on Thursday. “Govern yourselves accordingly.”
The rush to police commentary appeared to have little precedent in other recent examples of political violence, such as the 2022 home-invasion hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; or the shooting deaths in June of Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
DC Comics announced that it was ditching a new “Red Hood” series, a Batman spinoff, after one issue had been published and two more were in the works. The comics’ writer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, had published comments about Kirk’s shooting online that DC called offensive.
“Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” the comics publisher said.
Loomer, an informal advisor to President Trump whose pressure campaigns have resulted in several firings in his administration, attacked the entertainment website TMZ for what she called a “disgusting” livestream in which employees could be heard laughing and cheering seconds before Kirk’s death was announced. TMZ said the noise had nothing to do with the Kirk story — the staff members were crowded around a computer watching a car chase — but apologized for the bad timing and how it looked to viewers.
A writer for the Arizona media company PHNX Sports was fired after conservative activists called attention to a series of online posts that attacked Kirk’s positions on guns and Gaza and called him evil.
The NFL’s Carolina Panthers distanced themselves from an employee who posted comments about Kirk and a photo referencing Wu-Tang Clan’s song “Protect Ya Neck.” Kirk was shot in the neck. Football communications coordinator Charlie Rock was fired, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke under condition of anonymity because the team typically doesn’t announce firings.
Rock’s name has been removed from the team’s website. He did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
CBS News anchor under attack
Burleson, a former NFL star turned anchor for CBS News’ morning show, was attacked online for asking former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the air Thursday whether this was a moment for the Republican Party to reflect on political violence. His co-anchor, Gayle King, immediately tried to soften the question by interjecting, “I’d say both parties.”
Another former NFL player, Jay Feely, running for Congress in Arizona, said the question was offensive. “Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of his family and you ask if Republicans need to tone down their rhetoric?” he said. (Kirk’s family was not present at the shooting.) Some conservative media stars also weighed in, with talk show host Erick Erickson calling for Burleson to be fired and Clay Travis calling him a ”moron.”
A reporter for the Floridapolitics.com news site was suspended for texting a Florida congressman a question about gun control immediately after Kirk’s shooting. Peter Schorsch, Floridapolitics.com publisher, said he was concerned that reporter A.G. Gancarski was trying to provoke a source rather than initiate a serious policy discussion. Utah law allows people to carry guns on college campuses; Kirk was slain on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, texted back that he had learned of Kirk’s shooting only 23 minutes earlier and was repulsed to get the question when people should be praying for Kirk’s safety. Schorsch said he agreed that the timing was inappropriate, and didn’t want any of his staff members to be put in danger by anyone angry about it.
“I think everybody today should be asking questions about a wide range of policies,” Schorsch said in an interview Thursday. “But when a house is on fire, I don’t think you should ask questions about a person’s insurance policy. You put out the fire first.”
He said Gancarski was a good reporter who made a mistake. He’ll be back on the job after a few days out. Gancarski, reached by phone, declined comment.
The feminist website Jezebel removed a post headlined “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk” that was published Monday, two days before Kirk’s death. “The piece was intended as satire and made it absolutely clear that we wished no physical harm. We stand by every word,” Jezebel said in an editor’s note.
“We may republish at a later date, but out of compassion for the victim’s family, we want to make clear that we prioritize an end to violence over anyone wanting to read about Etsy witches,” Jezebel said, in a reference to the online storefront.
Bauder and Swenson write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sophie Bates, Kate Payne, Steve Reed and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.
It was another tense night in Bake Off tent as the bakers took part in biscuit week, but away from the bakes one contestant couldn’t help but admit she has the hots for Paul Hollywood
The 11 remaining bakers were back in the tent for the second episode of The Great British Bake Off tonight, as they took part in biscuit week.
As ever, things were heating up in the tent, and things are about to get even hotter next week as a preview saw one contestant admitting to their ‘secret crush’ on Paul Hollywood.
Bridal designer Pui Man, 51, found herself in danger on the Channel 4 show tonight after having a nightmare in the technical challenge with her hobnobs. However, she hasn’t seemed to let it get her down, as she’s set to go one step further to impress Paul next week.
Pui Man was heard making a cheeky comment about Paul Hollywood in a snippet for next week(Image: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)
Next week, the bakers are set to face their biggest challenge yet, bread week. With a savoury signature, a deep fried technical and a towering Showstopper, who will be the next to leave the tent?
Channel 4 are keeping it top secret until next Tuesday night, but one thing they aren’t keeping secret is baker Pui Man’s ‘crush’ on Hollywood.
In a preview for next week, which aired at the end of tonight’s episode, Noel Fielding can be seen asking the contestant: “What is it about Paul kneading bread that you like?”
“Very sexy,” Pui Man laughed, as Noel added: “With his blue eyes and a husky voice!”
The contestants weren’t the only one dropping secrets however, as Noel revealed one just seconds in to tonight’s episode.
Asked by co-host Alison Hammond what his favourite biscuit was, the IT Crowd star cheekily replied: “Not many people know this about me, but at midnight, I like to get naked, glue feathers onto myself and put party rings on my eyes and pretend to be an owl.
At the end of a dramatic episode, it was revealed that Leighton would be the second baker to leave the 2025 series, with his biscuits being called ‘a bit wet’ by the judges.
“Someone had to go right?” he said, as the rest of the bakers were left in tears. “I’ve had the most fun on Bake Off, I’ve loved it. I’ve had the opportunity and then I’ve come up against these amazing bakers.”
Fans were left gutted with Leighton’s departure, as one wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “feel sad Leighton is gone I liked him but glad pui man is still in the game.”
A second penned: “Leighton i will miss you so bad :((,” while a third wrote: “Happy for Pui Man but NOT LEIGHTON!!”
Trump again threatens 100% tariff on movies made outside the U.S.
President Trump again suggested that films made outside the U.S. should be subject to a 100% tariff, a move he said would help rejuvenate film production in America but that has been greeted with skepticism by many in Hollywood.
“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote in a post Monday morning on his Truth Social platform. “California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.”
The post did not include details on how such a tariff would work or how it would be levied. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time Trump has floated a tariff on films made overseas to combat so-called runaway production.
In May, Trump said he was authorizing the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative to begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
That announcement surprised studio executives, who said at the time that they had no advance notice of the move. Shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reached out to the White House, offering to work together to create a federal film tax incentive, which many in the industry have said they would prefer over a tariff.
Newsom responded to Trump’s dig by sharing on X a screenshot of a news headline detailing the recent increase in applications for California’s revamped film and TV tax credit program next to a headline about Hollywood studios’ stock performance after Trump’s initial call in May for a 100% tariff on films made outside the U.S. “Almost like we know what we’re doing,” Newsom wrote in his post. “Almost like Donald Trump absolutely does not.”
Countries including Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand have developed generous film tax credit programs, which, along with lower costs, have increasingly lured productions out of the U.S. California has been particularly hard hit by the production exodus.
In response, states have also upped their individual tax credit programs, including California, which has now more than doubled the annual amount allocated to its film and TV tax credit program and expanded its eligibility criteria.
The Motion Picture Assn., the lobbying arm of Hollywood’s major studios, was not immediately available for comment.
On Monday, California congressional representatives reiterated their support for a federal film tax incentive program to support the U.S. film business.
Noting that a tariff could have “unintended and damaging consequences,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he was “ready to work with this administration” and colleagues “on both sides of the aisle” to pass a major federal film tax credit.
The California senator is currently working on a proposal for a federal film incentive, a Schiff spokesperson said.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer, also called for movement on a federal tax incentive, saying that a 100% tariff on films made overseas would only increase costs for consumers.
“I’m relieved President Trump recognizes that we are losing a signature American product: the domestic film and TV industry,” she said in a statement. “I hope the President will join us in pioneering a real solution that levels the playing field with international competition.”
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MAFS bride makes another ‘fat shaming’ comment at first dinner party – leaving experts seriously unimpressed
A BRIDE on MAFS UK has made another ‘fat shaming’ comment about her husband at the first dinner party.
The experts, Paul Brunson, Mel Schilling and Charlene Douglas were left seriously unimpressed on the E4 show.
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Viewers of Married At First Sight UK tuned in tonight to see the last of the honeymoon scenes.
Next week, all the couples will land back in Blighty for the first dinner party of the series.
A preview for the next episode was shown to the audience at the end of the episode to give them a taste of what they can look forward to.
At the table, Dean, 31, stood up as he broke into one of his custom raps for the rest of the contestants at the table.
The team building host rapped: “Here we are on this mad experiment, seeing things not in our element.”
His bride Sarah, also 31, later made it clear on their honeymoon that she was not a fan of his spontaneous performances.
At the time she said: “The outburst of song and rapping is beginning to grate on me.”
Once again, her expression indicated that she had still not warmed up to aspects of his personality as she was left grimacing.
Then, the voiceover artist teased that Sarah served a ‘scathing review‘ of her new husband after his rap.
Turning to Maeve, she remarked: “He asked me if I ever slept with anyone fat before.”
Before she added: “He’s calling himself the funny fat kid, he’s like a care bear.”
The experts were all seen to be watching all the action unfold in another room.
Mel was left completely unimpressed by those words as she remarked: “That’s not a very hot thing to say about your partner.”
More jibes
This is not the first time that Sarah has landed herself in hot water on the show due to the alleged ‘fat shaming’.
On her wedding day, Sarah admitted that Dean wasn’t her dream man – as she branded him “over the top” and saying she “didn’t fancy him” or want to “rip his clothes off”.
Sarah confessed on their honeymoon that she has never dated anyone as “big” as Dean, which came as a huge blow.
A devastated Dean admitted at the time: “It’s hard to hear, that has left me feeling empty,” as droves of viewers slammed her cruel delivery.
She was later heard talking to the camera about what it would take to get a “spark” with Dean.
The recruitment consultant bluntly replied: “Get some tattoos, lose some weight.”
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Married At First Sight UK continues on E4 and is available to stream back on Channel 4.
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Trump’s pledge to move World Cup matches unlikely to succeed
More than three years after 11 U.S. cities were awarded the right to host games during next summer’s World Cup and just two months before the tournament draw, President Trump is threatening to move matches out of places he considers “a little bit dangerous.”
Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters Thursday in the Oval Office and the cities that appear to be in his crosshairs are Democratic ones such as Seattle and San Francisco, which have not supported the president’s immigration policies.
“They’re run by radical left lunatics who don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said.
Seattle is scheduled to host six games, including a group-stage match featuring the U.S. Six matches will also be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, about 40 miles south of San Francisco. The tournament will kick off June 11 and end July 19 with the final in East Rutherford, N.J.
The president did not mention Inglewood, which will stage eight matches — including at least two U.S. games — at SoFi Stadium. The eight other U.S. host cities are Atlanta; Boston; Arlington, Texas; Houston; Kansas City, Mo., Miami; East Rutherford, N.J.; and Philadelphia. The 2026 World Cup will be the first to be shared by three countries with matches also scheduled to be played in Mexico and Canada.
“If any city we think is going to be even a little bit dangerous for the World Cup, or for the [2028] Olympics … but for the World Cup in particular, because they’re playing in so many cities, we won’t allow it,” Trump said.
“We’ll move it around a little bit. But I hope that’s not going to happen.”
Trump does not have the authority to relocate World Cup matches, which are overseen by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. But FIFA leader Gianni Infantino, who Trump calls his “great friend,” has given in to the president before. Just last month, FIFA agreed to Trump’s unusual request to move the World Cup draw, which will set the matchups for the group stage, to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
A FIFA spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. But another person heavily involved in World Cup preparations in multiple cities said Trump’s threat to move games is all bluster.
“As a practical matter, it would be impossible,” said the person, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose district abuts Inglewood, agreed.
“It’s so laughable, it’ll make you want to take a Tylenol,” she said.
“No one is taking this seriously,” she continued. “He has absolutely no power over that. The World Cup is not about Donald Trump. It’s also not about the United States. So another distraction and another example of ego and ignorance.
“My hope is that this president would be focusing on making sure that the U.S. host cities have the infrastructure that they need.”
According to the Athletic, FIFA’s contracts with host cities say the group “shall not have the right for ordinary termination” of the agreements. Most host cities have already spent millions of dollars to prepare for the World Cup and are anticipating a sizable economic boost from the tournament.
A study released last summer by Micronomics, a Long Beach-based economic research and consulting firm, found that the World Cup will have an economic impact of $594 million on Los Angeles County, including $343 million in direct spending from an estimated 180,000 out-of-town visitors.
Trump wouldn’t have to move games to make things difficult for cities he disfavors, however. In July, Congress allocated $625 million in federal funds for World Cup security. According to Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House World Cup task force chaired by Trump, cities will submit their expenditures with requests for reimbursement, but the task force will have wide latitude in deciding which bills to pay.
Trump has made crime and retribution a major theme of his administration, sending national guard troops — or threatening to send them — to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis and Chicago, all cities with Democratic mayors. Nine of the 11 World Cup host cities in the U.S. have Democratic mayors.
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Shareholders question Disney about decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel
A group of Walt Disney Co. shareholders is demanding the company release information related to the suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, according to a recent letter.
The letter, dated Wednesday and sent by the American Federation of Teachers union and press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, said the groups want transparency into Disney’s decision last week to indefinitely suspend the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following comments he made in his monologue about the shooter who killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Disney reinstated Kimmel’s show Tuesday, saying in a statement that the initial decision was made to “avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country” and calling some of his comments “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
The late-night host’s suspension set off a political firestorm and nationwide debate about free speech. Protesters demonstrated outside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood as well as Disney’s Burbank headquarters. More than 400 celebrities signed an open letter decrying attempts at government censorship. Some called for consumers to cancel their Disney+ streaming subscriptions.
“Disney shareholders deserve the truth about exactly what went down inside the company after Brendan Carr’s threat to punish ABC unless action was taken against Jimmy Kimmel,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “The Disney board has a legal responsibility to act in the best interests of its shareholders — and we are seeking answers to discover if that bond was broken to kowtow to the Trump administration.”
Prior to the initial suspension decision, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had called for Disney to take action against Kimmel during a podcast interview that aired last week. Carr said there could be consequences for the TV stations that carry his show. Shortly before Disney announced Kimmel’s initial suspension, TV station groups Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group each said they would preempt the show and have said they will not bring it back.
The letter calls for Disney to provide records, including any meeting minutes or written materials, related to the suspension or return of Kimmel’s show.
“There is a credible basis to suspect that the Board and executives may have breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty, care, and good faith by placing improper political or affiliate considerations above the best interests of the Company and its stockholders,” the letter said.
Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
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Jessica Chastain is against Apple delaying ‘The Savant’ release
Jessica Chastain has publicly challenged Apple TV+ following the streamer’s decision to hold her upcoming series “The Savant.”
Apple TV+ on Tuesday said it would be delaying the release of the show about domestic terrorism, which follows an investigator who infiltrates online hate groups.
Chastain voiced her opposition to the postponement Wednesday on Instagram, writing that she and Apple were “not aligned on the decision to pause the release of The Savant.”
Representatives for Apple TV+ did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
In her Instagram post, Chastain said, “In the last five years since we’ve been making the show, we’ve seen an unfortunate amount of violence in the United States,” going on to cite the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Sept. 10 shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk among instances of political violence in recent years.
“I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects, and while I wish this show wasn’t so relevant, unfortunately it is,” Chastain said.
“The Savant is about the heroes who work every day to stop violence before it happens, and honoring their courage feels more urgent than ever,” she said.
Chastain said she hopes audiences will be able to see the show soon. Apple has not yet announced a new release date for the series.
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Climber declared missing after search through Eastern Sierra peaks
Rescuers in the rugged Eastern Sierra are searching for a Seattle man who has been missing since early September — and possibly longer — after climbing among some of California’s most remote and daunting mountain peaks.
Billy Pierson, an experienced alpinist, was in California getting in shape for an upcoming trip to Nepal, according to a comment his brother, Steve Pierson, left on Facebook.
On Aug. 9, the alpinist was hiking with a friend. “After their hike, he separated from that friend and is believed to have headed toward Inyo County,” the Inyo County Sheriff’s office said in a news release. “He was later reported missing on September 10, 2025.”
It was not immediately clear when Billy Pierson separated from his friend, or who was the person who reported him missing. The Inyo County Sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Billy Pierson, an experienced alpinist, was in California getting in shape for an upcoming trip to Nepal.
(Inyo County Sheriff)
It is believed Pierson was attempting the Palisades Traverse, a classic and technical mountaineering route along the Sierra crest that covers close to 20 miles and crosses the summits of five mountains taller than 14,000 feet.
In addition to climbing the challenging peaks, mountaineers also often have to navigate the Palisades Glacier, one of the last true glaciers remaining in California.
Steve Pierson said his brother’s plan was to begin, or end, his epic trip at Temple Crag, a familiar landmark to seasoned Sierra climbers and hikers that towers above the magnificent, glacier-fed Big Pine Lakes.
The Inyo County Sheriff’s office, working with Inyo County Search and Rescue, scoured the area around Temple Crag with no success.
Pierson is 5’9”, 165 lbs, and was last known to be carrying a large, navy blue or gray backpack. He was wearing black and yellow shoes and liked to hike in a baseball cap with a bandana underneath.
News that Pierson is missing follows several other incidents this summer in which hikers got dangerously lost or were found dead.
On Sept. 12, an Argentinian climber fell 2,000 feet to his death on Mt. Shasta. The 45-year old tech executive had summited successfully, but lost his way on the descent, winding up on the steep and icy Wintum Glacier. He attempted a controlled slide to reach the safety of a trail below, but lost control, collided with a boulder, and eventually slid the length of the glacier.
Also in September, a San Luis Obispo County man — Kirk Thomas-Olsen, 61 — was found dead in Yosemite National Park more than 20 days after he was expected to return from his solo hike.
In August, a boy scout troop hiking in the Emigrant Wilderness north of Yosemite National Park came upon a 78-year old man who had spent a night without food, water or shelter in the mountains. He had lost his pack and seemed incoherent when the scouts found him and escorted him to safety.
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Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum calls Israel’s war on Gaza a ‘genocide’
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday called Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip a “genocide,” marking a decisive shift in her government’s stance on the conflict — and putting it at odds with the United States.
Sheinbaum, who is one of a handful Jewish heads of state, has come under increasing pressure from members of her leftist coalition to more forcefully condemn Israel’s assault on the small Palestinian enclave, where at least 65,000 people have died and more than half a million are trapped in famine.
Speaking to journalists at her daily news conference, Sheinbaum said Mexico stands “with the international community to stop this genocide in Gaza.”
Claudia Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic.
Her comments came amid a meeting in New York of the United Nations General Assembly, where several countries, including France, Britain, Canada and Australia, have formally recognized Palestine as a state. Mexico has formally supported Palestinian statehood for years.
Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic. She grew up in a secular household and rarely talks about her Jewish identity.
Sheinbaum, who entered politics from the world of leftist activism, has long supported the Palestinian cause. In 2009, she wrote a letter to Mexican newspaper La Jornada fiercely condemning Israel’s actions in an earlier war with Gaza, where 13 Israelis and more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians and militants had been killed.
Sheinbaum evoked the Holocaust, saying “many of my relatives … were exterminated in concentration camps.”
“I can only watch with horror the images of the Israeli bombing of Gaza,” she wrote. “Nothing justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians. Nothing, nothing, nothing, can justify the murder of a child.”
The latest conflict broke out in 2023 after Hamas fighters broke through a border fence encircling Gaza and killed more than 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Israel responded with a punishing assault on Gaza from air, land and sea, displacing nearly all of the strip’s 2 million people and damaging or destroying 90% of homes.
Since taking office last year, Sheinbaum has repeatedly called for a cease-fire and reiterated Mexico’s support for a two-state solution in the region, but until Monday she had refrained from categorizing what is unfolding in Gaza as a genocide.
That was possibly to avert conflict with the United States, which has given more foreign assistance to Israel than any other country globally in the decades since World War II, and which has supported the war on Gaza with billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid.
Sheinbaum, whose nation’s economy depends heavily on trade with the U.S., has spent much of her first year in office seeking to appease President Trump on the issues of security and migration in order to avoid the worst of his threatened tariffs on Mexican imports.
Her comments on Gaza come amid growing global consensus that Israel is committing genocide.
The world’s leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The International Assn. of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution that says Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition as spelled out in the United Nations convention on genocide.
And this month, a U.N. commission of inquiry also found Israel has committed genocide.
An Israeli flag waves over debris in an area of the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel last month. Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave has killed at least 65,000 people.
(Maya Levin / Associated Press)
“Explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities and the pattern of conduct of the Israeli security forces indicate that the genocidal acts were committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group,” the commission wrote.
It added that under the Genocide Convention, other nations have an obligation to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide.”
Israeli officials dismissed the report as “baseless.”
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Jimmy Kimmel boosted Hollywood. Now the neighborhood is worried
Spider-Man and a Hollywood tour guide were having it out.
They stood right outside Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard, arguing about whether ABC was right to yank the host’s TV show off the air last week after he commented on the political response to right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.
“I like Kimmel!” said the Spider-Man impersonator, who wore pink Nike sneakers and leaned in close so he could hear through his thin, face-covering costume. “What he said is free speech.”
A tour bus drives past what was Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard on Sept. 18, 2025.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Todd Doten, a tour agent for Beverly Hills Tours of Hollywood, pushed back. He said he believed broadcasters are held to a different standard than private citizens, and that the Federal Communications Commission — which pushed to get Kimmel’s show canceled — “has somewhat of a point.”
The men verbally sparred beside singer Little Richard’s cracked star on the Walk of Fame. Then Doten patted the selfie-hawking superhero on the back and they parted ways amicably.
The scene on Friday afternoon captured the Hollywood that Kimmel embraced and aggressively promoted: Weird, gritty and surprisingly poignant.
Ever since he began filming at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in 2003, Kimmel has been one of the famed neighborhood’s biggest ambassadors. He drew tourists to the storied Hollywood Boulevard, which — despite being home to the Academy Awards, TCL Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame — has long struggled with crime, homelessness and blight. He used his celebrity to help homeless youth and opened a donation center on his show’s backlot for victims of the January wildfires.
And he filmed many a sketch with Hollywood itself as the bizarro backdrop — including one returning bit called “Who’s High?” in which he tried to guess which of three pedestrians was stoned.
Protesters in front of Jimmy Kimmel’s theater a day after ABC pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely over comments he made about the response to right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk’s death.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Now, locals and entertainment industry officials alike worry what will happen if Kimmel’s show permanently disappears from a Hollywood still struggling to recover from the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 and the COVID-19 pandemic that literally shut the neighborhood down. While his suspension has sparked a roiling debate over free speech rights nationwide, in this neighborhood, the impact is more close to home.
“A hostile act toward Jimmy Kimmel is a hostile act toward Hollywood itself and one of its great champions,” former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The Times on Friday.
“Hollywood is both a place and an idea. It’s an industry and a geography. Jimmy is always big on both. He actually lives in Hollywood, at a time when not a lot of stars do.”
Miguel Aguilar, a fruit vendor who often sets up near Kimmel’s theater, said Friday that business was always better on the days “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” filmed because so many audience members bought his strawberries and pineapples doused in chamoy. He was stunned when a Times reporter told him the show had been suspended.
“Was it canceled by the government?” Aguilar asked. “We used to get a lot more customers [from the show]. That’s pretty scary.”
A man holding a sign advertising at a nearby diner said he worried about Kimmel’s crew, including the gaffers and makeup artists.
“How many people went down with Kimmel?” he asked.
And Daniel Gomez, who lives down the street, said he feared that nearby businesses will suffer from the loss of foot traffic from the show, for which audience members lined up all the way down the block.
“Tourists still will come to Hollywood no matter what, but a portion of that won’t be coming anymore,” Gomez said as he signed a large canvas outside the theater on which scores of fans and free speech advocates wrote messages about the show being axed.
Protesters in front of Jimmy Kimmel’s theater in Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“It’s pretty bad that he got shut down because of his comments,” Gomez added. “Comedians should be free to say whatever they want.”
In a joint statement, a coalition of Hollywood labor groups including the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said the kind of political pressure that Kimmel faced as a broadcaster “chills free speech and threatens the livelihoods of thousands of working Americans.”
“At a time when America’s film and television industry is still struggling due to globalization and industry contraction, further unnecessary job losses only make a bad situation worse,” the statement read.
During his monologue Monday, Kimmel made remarks about Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of fatally shooting Kirk. He said the “MAGA gang” was “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.”
Ingrid Salazar protests outside of the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” studio on Thursday.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
While Kimmel’s remarks could be interpreted in different ways, Kirk’s supporters immediately accused the talk show host of claiming Robinson was a Trump ally, which many of Kimmel’s supporters reject. Kimmel himself has not publicly responded.
Kimmel also mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was coping with the killing of his close ally.
Nexstar Media Group responded on Wednesday, saying it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations because of Kimmel’s comments. Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, then announced it would suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely.
Nexstar’s decision to yank the show came after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, threatened to take action against ABC and urged local ABC affiliate stations to stand up the network.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told right-wing podcast host Benny Johnson. “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.”
Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “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.”
He also targeted late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, calling them “total losers.” He pressured NBC to cancel their shows, writing: “Do it NBC!!!”
The president this summer praised CBS’s decision to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” after this season, writing on Truth Social on July 18: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
Pedestrians walk across the street from the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” theater a day after ABC has pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
While the show is in limbo, it is unclear what will happen to Kimmel’s iconic theater in the historic former Hollywood Masonic Temple, a neoclassical 1921 building fronted by six imposing columns.
Disney owns the building, as well as the adjacent 1920s office building that contains the El Capitan Theatre and the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop. Kimmel’s production company, 12:05 AM Productions, occupies four floors — 26,000 square feet — in the six-story office building, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
Garcetti, who long represented Hollywood on the L.A. City Council, said Kimmel was a major advocate for renovation of the old Masonic lodge and other revitalization Hollywood projects.
And after the Oscars returned for good to the Kodak Theatre (now Dolby Theatre) across the street in 2002 after several years outside of Hollywood, Kimmel “helped usher in what I call Hollywood’s second golden age, when the Academy Awards came back and people saw actual stars in nightclubs and restaurants,” Garcetti said.
When Garcetti was showing off the city to officials with the International Olympic Committee years ago in an effort to host the Games, Kimmel met their helicopter on the roof of a Hollywood hotel to brag about the neighborhood.
Jimmy Kimmel, host and executive producer of the late-night talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” celebrates as he receives his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Jan. 25, 2013.
(Reed Saxon/Associated Press)
At the 2013 Hollywood Chamber of Commerce ceremony awarding Kimmel a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Garcetti quipped: “When you came here to Hollywood Boulevard, this place was full of drug dealers and prostitutes, and you welcomed them with open arms.”
Kimmel joked that his parents brought him to the Walk of Fame as a 10-year-old and left him there to fend for himself.
“I’m getting emotional,” he said during the ceremony. “This is embarrassing. I feel like I’m speaking at my own funeral. This is ridiculous. People are going to pee on this star.”
Kimmel’s star is by his theater, near the stars for rapper Snoop Dogg — and Donald Duck.
On his show in May, pop star Miley Cyrus told Kimmel she developed a serious infection after filming on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, where she rolled around on the sidewalk. Part of her leg, she said, started to “disintegrate.”
“Have you been to the Walk of Fame in the middle of the night?” she asked.
“I live here,” Kimmel said.
“I thought it was my last day,” Cyrus responded.
Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside Kimmel’s theater in recent days, decrying the suspension of his show.
The cancellation occurred right after Dianne Hall and Michael Talbur of Kansas City got tickets to a live taping of the show and traveled to Los Angeles. So, they attended a protest Thursday instead.
Hall said she was expecting Kimmel’s monologue “to be something rude toward the [Kirk] family” but was surprised when she actually listened to it.
“I kept thinking, ‘Surely something bad was said for him to get fired,’ ” Hall said. “But it was nothing like that.”
Hollywood resident Ken Tullo said he’s “not a protesting type of guy, but enough’s enough” and he did not want his daughters to grow up with a fear of speaking freely.
“The current administration cannot laugh at themselves,” Tullo said, “and they don’t want anybody else to laugh.”
Times staff writer Roger Vincent contributed to this report.
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D4vd calls off tour dates amid police investigation into teen girl’s death
The singer D4vd called off a series of upcoming tour dates, including a concert this weekend at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre, as police investigate his connection to the death of a teenage Inland Empire girl whose decomposed body was discovered this month in a car registered to the musician.
A representative for the Greek said the show, which was scheduled for Saturday night, had been canceled. Other tour dates in San Francisco and in Europe had either been removed from or were listed as canceled on Ticketmaster’s website by Friday afternoon.
An event at L.A.’s Grammy Museum scheduled for Wednesday — in which D4vd planned to perform and to take part in a conversation about his work — has also been called off. A representative for D4vd didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, D4vd, 20, announced that he would release a deluxe edition of his 2025 album, “Withered,” on Friday, but the project hadn’t appeared on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music by Friday morning.
Police are investigating the singer’s ties to Celeste Rivas, who was reported missing in April 2024 and whose whereabouts were a mystery until this week, when authorities identified her remains after they found a body in the trunk of a Tesla in a Hollywood tow lot on Sept. 8.
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Who exactly are the ABC affiliate owners who issued statements against Jimmy Kimmel?
NEW YORK — Two ABC affiliate owners spoke out against late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel ahead of ABC’s decision to suspend the presenter over comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Their comments highlight the influence that local TV station owners have on national broadcasters such as Disney-owned ABC.
Here are key facts about the two companies.
Nexstar Media Group, based in Irving, Texas, operates 28 ABC affiliates. It said it would pull Kimmel’s show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
The company owns or partners with more than 200 stations in 116 U.S. markets, and owns broadcast networks the CW and NewsNation, as well as the political website the Hill and nearly a third of the Food Network.
It hopes to get even bigger. Last month, it announced a $6.2-billion deal to buy TEGNA Inc., which owns 64 other TV stations.
The deal would require the Federal Communications Commission to change rules limiting the number of stations a single company can own. The FCC’s chair, Brendan Carr, has expressed openness to changing the rule.
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, based in Hunt Valley, Md., operates 38 local ABC affiliates. On Wednesday the company, which has a reputation for a conservative viewpoint in its broadcasts, called on Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to the activist’s political organization, Turning Point USA. Sinclair said its ABC stations will air a tribute to Kirk on Friday in Kimmel’s time slot.
Sinclair owns, operates or provides services to 178 TV stations in 81 markets affiliated with all major broadcast networks and owns Tennis Channel.
Controversies
Sinclair made headlines in 2018 when a video that stitched together dozens of news anchors for Sinclair-owned local stations reading identical statements decrying “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing the country” went viral. Sinclair didn’t disclose that it ordered the anchors to read the statement.
Nexstar operates similarly.
Danilo Yanich, professor of public policy at the University of Delaware, said the company is the “biggest duplicator” of news content today His research showed Nexstar stations duplicated broadcasts more than other affiliate owners.
Affiliate influence
Lauren Herold, an editor of the forthcoming book “Local TV,” said the web of companies involved in getting Americans their television shows is “relatively unknown” to most viewers, though their influence has been made known for decades.
Often, Herold said, that’s been when local affiliates have balked at airing something they viewed as controversial, such as the episode of the 1990s comedy “Ellen” in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character came out as gay.
“It’s not a complete oddity,” Herold said. “I think what’s more alarming about this particular incident to me is the top-down nature of it.”
Whereas past flare-ups between affiliates and their parent networks have often involved individual local TV executives, Herold pointed to the powerful voices at play in Kimmel’s suspension: Disney CEO Bob Iger, the FCC’s chair Carr, as well as Sinclair and Nexstar.
“The FCC kind of pinpointing particular programs to cancel is concerning to people who advocate for television to be a forum for free discussion and debate,” Herold said.
Jasmine Bloemhof, a media strategist who has worked with local stations, including ones owned by Sinclair and Nexstar, said consolidation has given such companies “enormous influence.” Controversies like the latest involving Kimmel, she said, “reveal the tension between Hollywood-driven programming and the values of everyday Americans.”
“Networks may push one agenda, but affiliates owned by companies like Sinclair and Nexstar understand they serve conservative-leaning communities across the country,” Bloemhof said. “And that friction is bound to surface.”
Anderson and Sedensky write for the Associated Press.
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Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert weigh in on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension
While Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was preempted by a rerun of “Celebrity Family Feud,” continuing ABC’s indefinite suspension of the talk show, some of Kimmel’s late-night colleagues used their platform to sound off.
On “The Daily Show,” which airs on Paramount-owned Comedy Central and has rotating hosts, Jon Stewart suited up for emceeing duties outside his usual Monday slot. Desi Lydic had been hosting this week, but the comedian had something to say about the issues surrounding his friend Kimmel.
Stewart leaned heavy into irony from the start of the show, saying it is now the “all new, government-approved” version, and was introduced as the evening’s “patriotically obedient host.” Stewart frequently scolded the audience for laughing at his sarcastic pandering to the Trump administration. He said the show was being taped in the “crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City” and notes that “someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?”
“I don’t know who this ‘Johnny Drimmel Live’ ABC character is, but the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech,” Stewart said. “Some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smoke screen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principleless and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that. Not me, though, I think it’s great.”
Stewart and the correspondents then serenaded the president with an off-key tune filled with compliments and praises.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon, host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” briefly addressed the situation in his monologue Thursday night saying, “To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on — no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he is a decent, funny and loving guy. And I hope he comes back.”
Fallon said he would continue his monologue “just like I normally would,” but the punchline of his jokes about Trump came with an announcer interrupting any possible slights with flattery.
Earlier in the day, the host had canceled a scheduled appearance at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival in New York City, where he was set to join a panel titled “Staying on Brand”; organizers did not respond to a request for comment about the cancellation of his appearance.
Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s “Late Night,” also didn’t avoid the topic. He opened his segment “A Closer Look” on Thursday by cracking jokes about how anything negative he’s said about the president is an AI-generated deepfake. “I’ve always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president and even better golfer,” he joked.
He proceeded to show clips from Trump’s recent trip to the U.K., poking fun at the president’s comments and protesters who rallied against his visit. But later in the segment, Meyers’ began to show clips of Trump touting his efforts to “stop all government censorship” and bring back free speech, before cutting to news clips about Kimmel’s suspension.
“Trump promised to end government censorship and bring back free speech, and he’s doing the opposite, and it has experts worried that we’re rapidly devolving into an oppressive autocracy in the style of Russia or Hungary, much faster than anyone could have predicted,” Meyers continued.
The host also commented on his personal relationship with Kimmel, saying it’s a “privilege and an honor” to be his friend, in the same way he feels privileged to host his own show. “I wake up every day, I count my blessings that I live in a country that at least purports to value freedom of speech, and we’re going to keep doing our show the way we’ve always done it, with enthusiasm and integrity,” he said.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” added David Remnick, the editor in chief of the New Yorker, to its lineup Thursday, which already included CNN journalist Jake Tapper. Colbert’s show generated its own headlines this summer when CBS announced the late-night talk show would be canceled after the season wraps in May 2026 — effectively ending the franchise after 33 years on the air. The decision, the company said, was due to financial reasons rather than a response to Colbert’s criticism of a deal between the Trump administration and Paramount, the parent company of CBS, the network that airs “The Late Show,” as many have speculated.
Colbert used his vocal talents Thursday to sing a tune about the situation, presenting a short song as a message from ABC and its parent company, Walt Disney. The song was to the tune of “Be Our Guest,” the “Beauty and The Beast” classic — except the repeating refrain is “shut your trap.”
Colbert sings as an animated clip of the candlestick character Lumière from the movie plays, but he’s donning a red MAGA hat here. “Shut your trap, we’re warning you to cut the crap. Our dear leader’s skin is thinner than a sheet of plastic wrap,” he sings.”Mum’s the word, have you heard, kissing a— is what’s preferred. Don’t insult our great dictator or he’ll hit you with this turd,” the song continues as a photo of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appears on screen.
“The new rule at ABC: Don’t make fun of Donny T,” he sings. “So don’t you make a scene or mention Jeff Epstein, or your show will be scrapped — shut your trap.”
Colbert also spoke about the suspension in a monologue, reading a social media post from Carr that said “While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.”
“You know what my community values are, buster?” Colbert asked. “Freedom of speech.”
Colbert discussed Kimmel’s situation with Tapper, who brought up the Department of Justice’s review of Disney’s deal to take a controlling stake in streaming company FuboTV, which brings up potential antitrust issues. Tapper questioned what Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, would do about Kimmel given that he has business before the Justice Department. “Is he going to poke the bear, Donald Trump, or is he going to ignore this great tradition we have in this country, of not acquiescing — of media, newspapers, comedians, television — not acquiescing to power?”
Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is also scheduled to appear in an episode of “The Late Show” airing Monday; Kelly last appeared on the show last year ahead of the November 2024 presidential election, discussing border security and gun reform.
Earlier on Thursday, while taking part in a panel conversation moderated by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, late-night veteran David Letterman, who once helmed “The Late Show” on CBS, described this week’s turn of events as “misery.”
“In the world of somebody who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched,” Letterman said. He first addressed what transpired with Colbert and the cancellation of “The Late Show,” alluding to political pressure as the real culprit, before addressing the decision to yank Kimmel’s show.
“I just feel bad about this because we all see where this is going, correct?” he said. “It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian — a criminal — administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”
With three decades in the late-night circuit, Letterman never shied from mocking presidents: “Beating up on these people,” he said, “rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy — not once were we squeezed by anyone from any government agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.”
ABC carried out the decision to take Kimmel off the air Wednesday after the comedian and host made comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death during his opening monologue on Monday night.
“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,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel has not yet commented publicly on the matter. But his show’s suspension quickly ignited fierce debate, with critics accusing ABC and its parent company, Disney, of capitulating to political pressure. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said Wednesday that his agency might take action against ABC because of Kimmel’s comments.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said on the Benny Johnson podcast. “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.”
President Trump lauded Kimmel’s suspension in a post he wrote on his Truth Social media site: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.” (The show has not been canceled, but remains on hold.)
It’s also worth noting Kimmel’s outspoken daytime counterparts were mum on the issue. “The View’s” panelists did not address the Kimmel situation during Thursday’s episode. (“Good Morning America,” which is produced by ABC News, did mention the news of the Kimmel hiatus without additional commentary.)
Meanwhile, Kimmel’s fictional late-night competitor, Deborah Vance, has an opinion on the ordeal — or rather, actor Jean Smart does. She may only play a late-night television host on TV, but the “Hacks” actress was quick to share her thoughts on the decision to pull Kimmel from the air: “What Jimmy said was FREE speech, not hate speech,” Smart shared in an Instagram post. “People seem to only want to protect free speech when its suits THEIR agenda.” (Kimmel made a cameo in the recent season of “Hacks.”)
She went on to write: “Thought I didn’t agree at ALL with Charlie Kirk; his shooting death sickened me; and should have sickened any decent human being. What is happening to our country?”
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ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel has echoes, contrasts of Roseanne firing
The hugely popular star of ABC’s lineup was known as an outspoken critic of the president of the United States. But when one comment sparked an outrage, the network moved swiftly to yank the entertainer off the air.
It was May 2018, and the star was Roseanne Barr.
Hollywood reacted in shock when ABC abruptly pulled the plug on “Roseanne,” the top-rated reboot of the sitcom about the Conner family and their struggles with harsh economic difficulties. Barr’s reunion with her television family was an instant hit, becoming the most successful TV series on the network in years.
The cancellation came just hours after Barr posted a response to a tweet about a WikiLeaks report claiming that the CIA spied on French presidential candidates during the Obama administration. The comedian made a reference to Valerie Jarrett, a former aide of former President Obama, as the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise.
Although Barr, a vocal supporter of Donald Trump in his first presidential term, had long been a fiery presence on social media, the racism of the barb was undeniable. Executives at the Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster said that the post crossed a line, rejecting Barr’s apology and pleas for forgiveness.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” announced then-ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey. Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger later tweeted about the cancellation, “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.”
The incident had echoes of Wednesday’s announcement that ABC was pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely in the wake of sharp backlash over Kimmel’s comments about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The late-night host said during the monologue on his show Monday that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican.
The network’s decision to suspend the show came after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr suggested on a right-wing podcast Wednesday that the FCC could take action against ABC for Kimmel’s comments. Within hours of Carr’s comments, Nexstar Media Group said it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations, and Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, followed suit, saying it was pulling Kimmel from the network.
Barr on Thursday jumped into the fray over the pulling of Kimmel’s show, firing off a response to Obama’s post on X, formerly Twitter, saying that the Trump administration was taking “cancel culture” to “a new and dangerous level.”
“Remember when you and your wife called Bob Iger to have me fired?” Barr wrote in a repost of his message.
There were no reports or indications that the Obamas had any involvement with the cancellation of “Roseanne.”
Less than six months later, “The Conners,” a spinoff of “Roseanne,” premiered to high ratings. The series picked up the story of the working class family, who were grieving over the death of matriarch Roseanne Conner, who had overdosed on opioids. The comedy became a staple of ABC’s primetime, concluding its seven-season run in April.
In a 2023 Times interview promoting her stand-up special on Fox Nation, Barr called the cancellation “a witch-burning,” lashing out at the network and her former co-stars.
“I felt like the devil himself was coming against me to try to tear me apart, to punish me for believing in God,” she said. “And they denied me the right to apologize. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly. I had never known that they hated me like that. They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion. Even though ‘Roseanne’ became their No. 1 show, they’d rather not have a No. 1 show.”
She added, “It didn’t faze them to murder my character, either. They s— on my contribution to television and the show itself. But I forgive everybody. I started thinking that God took me out of there to save me. And once I started thinking that way, I was, like, a lot better off.”
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ABC drops ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ indefinitely over host’s Charlie Kirk remarks
Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster ABC said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely following backlash over the host’s remarks about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The move comes after station owner Nexstar Media Group said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from its ABC affiliate stations as a result of the comments.
The Irving, Texas-based Nexstar announced Wednesday that Kimmel will be off its stations for the foreseeable future.
“Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets,” a company representative said in a statement.
Kimmel said during a monologue on his Monday program that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel then mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was reacting to the murder of his close ally.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
Alford said continuing to give Kimmel a broadcast platform “is simply not in the public interest at this current time.”
Nexstar’s decision comes just after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC. Appearing on the podcast of right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, Carr said one form of punishment could be pulling the licenses of ABC affiliates, which likely got Nexstar’s attention.
Nexstar has ABC affiliates in 32 markets across the U.S., including in New Orleans, New Haven, Nashville and Salt Lake City.
Network affiliates dropping a late-night program over the political views expressed in it is unprecedented. The closest situation goes back to 1970, when CBS blacked out the image of activist Abbie Hoffman when he appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” wearing a shirt made out of an American flag.
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Charlie Kirk’s killing shows that censorship starts in the workplace
Remember when the notion of government censorship in the U.S. seemed like the plot of an Orwellian novel, or something that happened in other places, countries where masked militia kidnap people off the street and disappear them? Our 1st Amendment rights as Americans seemed to guarantee that would never happen here. The state could not take away our free speech.
It turns out we don’t need a state-sponsored crackdown to punish those who express sentiments that offend, because the private sector has stepped in to do the job. An office supply store, a news network and an airline carrier are among companies that recently fired staff who made comments about influencer Charlie Kirk’s death that were interpreted as celebratory, insensitive or blaming the conservative activist’s polarizing viewpoints for his targeted killing.
Now Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says that she was unfairly fired over thoughts she expressed following the assassination of Kirk last week in Utah. She wrote: “The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation,” Attiah said. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.” She said that in her posts she exercised “restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.”
Her comments were largely about gun violence and issues of race. Attiah mentioned Kirk directly in just one post, paraphrasing from a comment he made about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both of whom are Black. “’Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot’ — Charlie Kirk,” she wrote.
Attiah didn’t celebrate the death of Kirk in her posts or make light of his slaying, but she didn’t mourn him either. In the current political environment, that alone could be enough to make her employer nervous, even compared to all the other truly awful stuff out there.
Sadly, the cruel, inhumane and politicized responses that followed Kirk’s tragic killing shouldn’t surprise anyone. Social media behaved as it always does — as a repository for every good, bad and really bad impulse experience following a tragedy or crisis.
The same quotient of 20% civility, 80% ugliness enveloped X, YouTube, TikTok and the like when three months ago Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home in a politically motivated attack. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also allegedly shot by the same suspect in their home but survived.
The difference back in June? There wasn’t a mass movement to fire, cancel or silence those who minimized the tragic killings or, worse, turned them into a trolling opportunity. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah blamed the killings on the left — “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on X — and posted a picture of suspect Vance Boelter with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” It was a crass reference to Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Lee (who is now publicly mourning Kirk’s death) was taking his cues from the top.
President Trump’s short condemnation of Hortman’s killing on Truth Social stated that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated.” There was no lengthy eulogy, he did not attend the funeral, and when asked the day after Hortman’s killing if he had called Walz, the president said, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”
In response to Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an order to lower American flags to half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, U.S. embassies and military posts. He announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And during an appearance Friday on “Fox & Friends,” he promised vengeance against the left for Kirk’s killing, though the suspect — let alone his motives — were still unknown at the time.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”
The prospect of retribution from a thin-skinned leader leaves no mystery as to why major media outlets such as the Post, “60 Minutes” and MSNBC appear to be reshaping their newsrooms to be less critical of the current administration. The same now goes for break rooms, shop floors and office cubicles across all sectors of American working life. It’s not the Big Brother scenario envisioned in George Orwell’s cautionary tale about a totalitarian state, “1984,” but it’s a start.
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Trump files $15-billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump filed a $15-billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists on Monday, according to court documents.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”
“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment early Tuesday.
In a Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused The New York Times of lying about him and defaming him, saying it has become “a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a $10-billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.
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Married At First Sight star storms out of explosive reunion with two-word comment
Married At First Sight star Lacey Martin clashed with her co-stars during a fiery reunion episode, which she eventually stormed out of following the tense clash
Lacey Martin stormed out of the Married At First Sight reunion episode in dramatic scenes that aired on Monday night. The reality star, 28, reunited with stars of the 2023 series and the 2024 outings of the E4 hit for a special programme, but there were fireworks when she clashed with her ex Nathan Campbell.
Fans of the show, which sees total strangers tie the knot after being put through a matchmaking process, decided to stay together after they ‘married’ on the programme, but split up quietly shortly after the series had aired.
Lacey joined her former co-stars for dinner and fumed: “I’ve said enough. The chapter’s closed, I wish you the best, I’m ready to move on with my life!”
READ MORE: MAFS UK star Lacey Martin’s secret reality TV past amid bombshell ‘showmance’ claimsREAD MORE: Married At First Sight UK 2025 trailer reveals four new couples, twist, turns and tantrums
But Kieran Chapman piped up: “Is that why you texted him a few days ago, asking him to do a magazine deal just to make us look better? Did you or didn’t you, a couple of days ago? You should know what I’m going to say; that’s why I’m butting in.”
Lacey then said bluntly: “Respectfully, I wish you the best. Enjoy your food,” as Kieran shot back: “You go enjoy your magazine deals!” As she left the room, Lacey said: “And on that note, I’m actually going to go tonight. No, I am. I am proud of myself, I was true. I fell in love with you, Nathan. I wish you all the best, now I have to go and put myself first. The chapter’s ended.”
She walked out in tears and was comforted by some of the girls. Once back inside, she announced to the table: “It was genuine our feelings for each other … I know you, I know you better than anyone else at this table.
“We can cherish our marriage, and it’s just a beautiful memory now. I do truly wish you the best.” After the show ended, it seemed that Lacey’s true colours came to light as Nathan claimed that she asked him to enter into a ‘showmance’ instead of continuing their love story.
Nathan told his fellow MAFS UK co-stars that after the experiment ended, Lacey’s energy changed dramatically, and she stopped making an effort to see him or to spend any quality time together.
When Nathan voiced his concerns about their relationship with Lacey, he claimed that his leading lady suggested that they should ‘just be friends’ and embark on a showmance instead in order to gain further media opportunities.
This led to Nathan’s heartbreak, before he ultimately decided to cut Lacey out of his life and block her number and all social media accounts.
Following the dramatic scenes, viewers flocked to X to share their support for Nathan as one gushed: “I wish I could give Nathan the biggest hug. You can see how genuinely upset he is. Bless his heart he really loved her – and she didn’t deserve him.”
Another echoed: “OMG in floods of tears watching Nathan. Lacey is crying because it’s the only way she can get out of it and deflect. She was LUCKY to have a man like him.” Someone else fumed: “Lacey girl, you need to give your head a wobble.”
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After Charlie Kirk’s slaying, workers learn the limits of free speech in and out of their jobs
NEW YORK — In the days since the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, workers in a variety of industries have been fired for their comments on his death.
It’s hardly the first time workers have lost their jobs over things they say publicly — including in social media posts. In the U.S., laws can vary across states, but overall, there’s very few legal protections for employees who are punished for speech made in or out of private workplaces.
“Most people think they have a right to free speech … but that doesn’t necessarily apply in the workplace,” said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and vice president of HR Services for Engage PEO. “Most employees in the private sector do not have any protections for that type of speech at work.”
Add to that the prevalence of social media, which has made it increasingly common to track employees’ conduct outside of work or for internet users to publish information about them with the intent of harming or harassing them.
Employers have leeway
Protections for workers vary from one state to the next. In New York, if an employee is participating in a weekend political protest, but not associating themselves with the organization that employs them, their employer cannot fire them for that activity when they return to work. But if that same employee is at a company event on a weekend and talks about their political viewpoints in a way that makes others feel unsafe or the target of discrimination or harassment, then they could face consequences at work, Matsis-McCready said.
Most of the U.S. defaults to “at-will” employment law — which essentially means employers can choose to hire and fire as they see fit, including over employees’ speech.
“The 1st Amendment does not apply in private workplaces to protect employees’ speech,” said Andrew Kragie, an attorney who specializes in employment and labor law at Maynard Nexsen. “It actually does protect employers’ right to make decisions about employees, based on employees’ speech.”
Kragie said there are “pockets of protection” around the U.S. under various state laws, such as statutes that forbid punishing workers for their political views. But the interpretation of how that gets enforced changes, he notes, making the waters murky.
Steven T. Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and faculty director of the school’s Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center, also points to some state laws that say employers can’t fire their workers for “legal off-duty conduct.” But there’s often an exception for conduct seen as disruptive to an employer’s business or reputation, which could be grounds to fire someone over public comments or social media posts.
“In this scenario, if somebody feels like one of their employees has done something that suggests they are glorifying or celebrating a murder, an employer might still be able to fire them even with one of those laws on the books,” Collis said.
For public employees, including school teachers, postal workers and elected officials, the process is a bit different. That’s because the 1st Amendment plays a unique role when the government is the employer, Collis explains — and the Supreme Court has ruled that if an employee is acting in a private capacity but speaking on a matter of public concern, they’re protected.
However, that has yet to stop the public sector from restricting speech in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. For instance, leaders at the Pentagon unveiled a “zero tolerance” policy for any posts or comments from troops deemed to be making light of or celebrating the killing of Kirk.
The policy, announced by the Defense Department’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, on social media Thursday, came hours after numerous conservative military influencers and activists began forwarding posts they considered problematic to Parnell and his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” Parnell wrote Thursday, referring to the Department of Defense by the name adopted recently by President Trump.
A surge of political debate
The ubiquity of social media is making it easier than ever to share opinions about politics and major news events as they’re unfolding. But posting on social media leaves a record, and in times of escalating political polarization, those declarations can be seen as damaging to the reputation of an individual or their employer.
“People don’t realize when they’re on social media, it is the town square,” said Amy Dufrane, chief executive of the Human Resource Certification Institute. “They’re not having a private conversation with the neighbor over the fence. They’re really broadcasting their views.”
Political debates are certainly not limited to social media and are increasingly making their way into the workplace as well.
“The gamification of the way we communicate in the workplace — Slack and Teams, chat and all these things — they’re very similar to how you might interact on Instagram or other social media, so I do think that makes it feel a little less formal and somebody might be more inclined to take a step and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this happened,’” Matsis-McCready said.
Many employers unprepared
In the tense, divided climate in the United States at the moment, many human resource professionals have expressed that they’re unprepared to address politically charged discussions in the workplace, according to the Human Resource Certification Institute. But those conversations are going to happen, so employers need to set policies about what is acceptable or unacceptable workplace conduct, Dufrane said.
“HR has got to really drill down and make sure that they’re super clear on their policies and practices and communicating to their employees on what are their responsibilities as an employee of the organization,” Dufrane said.
Many employers are reviewing their policies on political speech and providing training about what appropriate conduct looks like, both inside and outside the organization, she said. And the brutal nature of Kirk’s killing may have led some of them to react more strongly in the days since his death.
“Because of the violent nature of what some political discussion is now about, I think there is a real concern from employers that they want to keep the workplace safe and that they’re being extra vigilant about anything that could be viewed as a threat, which is their duty,” Matsis-McCreedy said.
Employees can also be seen as ambassadors of a company’s brand, and their political speech can dilute that brand and hurt its reputation, depending on what is being said and how it is being received. That is leading more companies to act on what employees are saying online, she said.
“Some of the individuals that had posted and their posts went viral, all of a sudden the phone lines of their employers were just nonstop calls complaining,” Matsis-McCready said.
Still, experts such as Collis don’t anticipate a significant change in how employers monitor their workers’ speech — noting that online activity has been in the spotlight for at least the last 15 years.
“Employers are already — and have been for a very long time — vetting employees based on what they’re posting on social media,” he said.
Bussewitz and Grantham-Philips write for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
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Fox News host apologizes for proposing lethal injections for mentally ill homeless people
“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade apologized Sunday for remarks he made last week that suggested using involuntary lethal injections to get mentally ill homeless people off the streets.
Kilmeade’s comments came during a discussion last Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” about the Aug. 22 stabbing death of a 23-year Ukranian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, on a light rail train in Charlotte, N.C.
Zarutska’s suspected killer, DeCarlos Brown Jr., is a homeless man with a long criminal record and is a paranoid schizophrenic, according to his family.
The attack on Zarutska was captured on security cameras and circulated widely online. The incident has sparked a national debate on public safety policy and criminal sentencing.
The topic led “Fox & Friends” co-host Laurence Jones to say that billions of dollars have been spent on programs to care for the homeless and mentally ill but many of those afflicted resist help.
“A lot of them don’t want to take the programs,” Jones said. “A lot of them don’t want to get the help that is necessary. You can’t give them the choice. Either you take the resources that we’re going to give you, or you decide that you’ve got to be locked up in jail.”
Kilmeade added: “Or involuntary lethal injection or something — just kill ‘em.”
A clip of Kilmeade’s remarks started to circulate widely on X on Saturday.
“I apologize for that extremely callous remark,” Kilmeade said during Sunday’s edition of the morning program. “I am obviously aware that not all mentally ill, homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.”
Many online commentators pointed out that Kilmeade’s comments evoked the extermination of mentally ill and disabled people that was authorized by Adolf Hitler in 1939. The German chancellor’s euthanasia program killed more than 250,000 people ahead of the Holocaust.
For now, Kilmeade has avoided the fate of political analyst Matthew Dowd, who lost his contributor role at MSNBC after commenting on the Wednesday shooting death of right wing political activist Charlie Kirk.
Dowd told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions.”
Dowd, once a political strategist for President George W. Bush, described Kirk as a divisive figure “who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups.”
The angry reaction on social media was immediate after Dowd’s comments suggested that Kirk’s history of incendiary remarks led to the shooting.
Rebecca Kutler, president of MSNBC, issued an apology and cut ties with Dowd.
Dowd also apologized in a post on BlueSky. “I in no way intended intended to blame Kirk for this horrendous attack,” he said.
The top executives at MSNBC parent Comcast sent a company-wide memo Friday citing Dowd’s firing and told employees “we need to do better.”
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Matthew Dowd’s firing triggers flood of people facing consequences for comments on Kirk’s death
NEW YORK — Matthew Dowd’s firing has opened a floodgate.
The MSNBC political analyst, who lost his job shortly after on-air comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was the first of many figures to face consequences Thursday for public statements or actions about the shooting.
Raw feelings about the killing have ignited a campaign to shame — and worse. Several conservative activists sought to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer said she would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death.
MSNBC said Dowd is no longer with the network after his comments, shortly after the shooting, in which he said that “hateful words” can lead to “hateful actions.” Both MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler and Dowd apologized for the remarks, which Kutler called “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”
Dowd said he didn’t intend for his comments to blame Kirk for the attack, as some may have construed them. Still, it brought an abrupt interruption to his work as a television commentator, which the former aide to President George W. Bush has done for nearly two decades.
The moves to curb certain public commentary after Kirk’s death are particularly notable, as his admirers had lauded him as a champion of free speech.
Actions spread across country
A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a congressman. A comic book writer lost her job because of social media posts, as did educators in Mississippi and Tennessee. “CBS Mornings” host Nate Burleson was attacked for a question he asked. An Arizona sports reporter and a Carolina Panthers public relations official lost their jobs.
An anonymously registered website pledged to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” and asked people to offer tips about people who were “supporting political violence online.”
The site published a running list Thursday of targeted posts, along with the names, locations and employers of people who posted them. While some posts contained incendiary language, others didn’t appear to celebrate the shooting or glorify violence. There were several similar efforts, including one by activist Scott Presler, who asked his followers about teachers purported to have celebrated Kirk’s killing and posted findings on X.
A staff member at the University of Mississippi was fired after sharing “insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death, according to the school’s chancellor, Glenn Boyce. The university did not identify the employee or immediately respond to questions from the Associated Press.
The president of Middle Tennessee State University said he’d fired a staffer who offered “callous and inappropriate comments on social media” about Kirk’s shooting. President Sidney A. McPhee did not identify the staff member but said the person “worked in a position of trust with our students.”
It wasn’t clear if it was the same person, but an X post by Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn identified an assistant dean of students at MTSU who posted online that she had “ZERO sympathy” after the shooting. Blackburn said the person should be ashamed and fired.
A warning to teachers in Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner warned the state’s teachers that making “disgusting” statements about Kirk’s killing could draw sanctions, including the suspension or revocation of teaching licenses. Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said in a memo to school district superintendents that he’d been made aware of “despicable” comments on social media.
“I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior,” Kamoutsas said in the memo, which he also posted on X on Thursday. “Govern yourselves accordingly.”
The rush to police commentary appeared to have little precedent in other recent examples of political violence, such as the 2022 home-invasion hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; or the shooting deaths in June of Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
DC Comics announced that it was ditching a new “Red Hood” series, a Batman spinoff, after one issue had been published and two more were in the works. The comics’ writer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, had published comments about Kirk’s shooting online that DC called offensive.
“Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” the comics publisher said.
Loomer, an informal advisor to President Trump whose pressure campaigns have resulted in several firings in his administration, attacked the entertainment website TMZ for what she called a “disgusting” livestream in which employees could be heard laughing and cheering seconds before Kirk’s death was announced. TMZ said the noise had nothing to do with the Kirk story — the staff members were crowded around a computer watching a car chase — but apologized for the bad timing and how it looked to viewers.
A writer for the Arizona media company PHNX Sports was fired after conservative activists called attention to a series of online posts that attacked Kirk’s positions on guns and Gaza and called him evil.
The NFL’s Carolina Panthers distanced themselves from an employee who posted comments about Kirk and a photo referencing Wu-Tang Clan’s song “Protect Ya Neck.” Kirk was shot in the neck. Football communications coordinator Charlie Rock was fired, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke under condition of anonymity because the team typically doesn’t announce firings.
Rock’s name has been removed from the team’s website. He did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
CBS News anchor under attack
Burleson, a former NFL star turned anchor for CBS News’ morning show, was attacked online for asking former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the air Thursday whether this was a moment for the Republican Party to reflect on political violence. His co-anchor, Gayle King, immediately tried to soften the question by interjecting, “I’d say both parties.”
Another former NFL player, Jay Feely, running for Congress in Arizona, said the question was offensive. “Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of his family and you ask if Republicans need to tone down their rhetoric?” he said. (Kirk’s family was not present at the shooting.) Some conservative media stars also weighed in, with talk show host Erick Erickson calling for Burleson to be fired and Clay Travis calling him a ”moron.”
A reporter for the Floridapolitics.com news site was suspended for texting a Florida congressman a question about gun control immediately after Kirk’s shooting. Peter Schorsch, Floridapolitics.com publisher, said he was concerned that reporter A.G. Gancarski was trying to provoke a source rather than initiate a serious policy discussion. Utah law allows people to carry guns on college campuses; Kirk was slain on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, texted back that he had learned of Kirk’s shooting only 23 minutes earlier and was repulsed to get the question when people should be praying for Kirk’s safety. Schorsch said he agreed that the timing was inappropriate, and didn’t want any of his staff members to be put in danger by anyone angry about it.
“I think everybody today should be asking questions about a wide range of policies,” Schorsch said in an interview Thursday. “But when a house is on fire, I don’t think you should ask questions about a person’s insurance policy. You put out the fire first.”
He said Gancarski was a good reporter who made a mistake. He’ll be back on the job after a few days out. Gancarski, reached by phone, declined comment.
The feminist website Jezebel removed a post headlined “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk” that was published Monday, two days before Kirk’s death. “The piece was intended as satire and made it absolutely clear that we wished no physical harm. We stand by every word,” Jezebel said in an editor’s note.
“We may republish at a later date, but out of compassion for the victim’s family, we want to make clear that we prioritize an end to violence over anyone wanting to read about Etsy witches,” Jezebel said, in a reference to the online storefront.
Bauder and Swenson write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sophie Bates, Kate Payne, Steve Reed and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.
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Bake Off contestant reveals secret crush on Paul Hollywood with naughty comment
It was another tense night in Bake Off tent as the bakers took part in biscuit week, but away from the bakes one contestant couldn’t help but admit she has the hots for Paul Hollywood
The 11 remaining bakers were back in the tent for the second episode of The Great British Bake Off tonight, as they took part in biscuit week.
As ever, things were heating up in the tent, and things are about to get even hotter next week as a preview saw one contestant admitting to their ‘secret crush’ on Paul Hollywood.
Bridal designer Pui Man, 51, found herself in danger on the Channel 4 show tonight after having a nightmare in the technical challenge with her hobnobs. However, she hasn’t seemed to let it get her down, as she’s set to go one step further to impress Paul next week.
READ MORE: Great British Bake Off star admits show was ‘disaster’ as they’re sent homeREAD MORE: Alison Hammond’s net worth ‘revealed’ after previous admission of money struggles
Next week, the bakers are set to face their biggest challenge yet, bread week. With a savoury signature, a deep fried technical and a towering Showstopper, who will be the next to leave the tent?
Channel 4 are keeping it top secret until next Tuesday night, but one thing they aren’t keeping secret is baker Pui Man’s ‘crush’ on Hollywood.
In a preview for next week, which aired at the end of tonight’s episode, Noel Fielding can be seen asking the contestant: “What is it about Paul kneading bread that you like?”
“Very sexy,” Pui Man laughed, as Noel added: “With his blue eyes and a husky voice!”
The contestants weren’t the only one dropping secrets however, as Noel revealed one just seconds in to tonight’s episode.
Asked by co-host Alison Hammond what his favourite biscuit was, the IT Crowd star cheekily replied: “Not many people know this about me, but at midnight, I like to get naked, glue feathers onto myself and put party rings on my eyes and pretend to be an owl.
At the end of a dramatic episode, it was revealed that Leighton would be the second baker to leave the 2025 series, with his biscuits being called ‘a bit wet’ by the judges.
“Someone had to go right?” he said, as the rest of the bakers were left in tears. “I’ve had the most fun on Bake Off, I’ve loved it. I’ve had the opportunity and then I’ve come up against these amazing bakers.”
Fans were left gutted with Leighton’s departure, as one wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “feel sad Leighton is gone I liked him but glad pui man is still in the game.”
A second penned: “Leighton i will miss you so bad :((,” while a third wrote: “Happy for Pui Man but NOT LEIGHTON!!”
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