weighed

Before Disney announced Monday that Jimmy Kimmel would be returning to ABC, the dialogue about the indefinite pause on his late-night show had continued to heat up.

Protesters packed the Hollywood block where Kimmel’s show is taped and sounded off both online and in public displays since the announcement of the suspension last week, and a horde of actors, writers, musicians and artists made their opinions on the matter clear.

Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Kerry Washington, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Pedro Pascal, Maya Rudolph and more than 400 other artists signed an open letter organized by the American Civil Liberties Union calling for the defense of free speech in the wake of Kimmel’s benching.

The letter, which was published Monday, says Kimmel’s suspension marks “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation” and said that the government’s “attempt to silence its critics” runs “counter to the values our nation was built upon, and our Constitution guarantees.”

“Regardless of our political affiliation, or whether we engage in politics or not, we all love our country,” the letter continues. “We also share the belief that our voices should never be silenced by those in power — because if it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.”

The letter came together over the weekend, according to Jessica Weitz, director of artist and entertainment engagement at the ACLU. The list of names continued to grow after the letter was published, she said.

“Behind those signatures are teams of people who made their own calls to their networks to ask people to join, feeling strongly that this attack on free expression must be called out,” Weitz said in a statement to The Times. “When speech is being targeted with so much precision, it takes courage from every single person to speak out — and the creative community is meeting the urgency of this moment.”

Kimmel’s late-night program, which airs weeknights on ABC, has been dark since Wednesday, when the Disney-owned network announced it will be “preempted indefinitely.” The decision came after two major owners of ABC affiliates said they were dropping the show because of Kimmel’s remarks about the suspect in the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Late-night hosts were quick to respond to the news, with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon each commenting on Kimmel’s situation in their Thursday episodes.

Over the weekend, HBO talk shows “Real Time With Bill Maher” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” weighed in on the controversy, beginning with Maher, who focused on Kimmel in his monologue Friday. Maher referred to “Politically Incorrect,” his late-night show that was canceled by ABC in 2002 after advertisers pulled out following a comment by the host about the Sept. 11 hijackers, saying they were “not cowardly.” Kimmel’s show replaced Maher’s slot.

“I got canceled before cancel even had a culture,” Maher said. “This s— ain’t new. It’s worse. We’ll get to that. But you know, ABC, they are steady. ABC stands for ‘Always be caving.’ So Jimmy, pal, I am with you. I support you. And on the bright side, you don’t have to pretend anymore that you like Disneyland.”

Maher, who is a self-described “old-school liberal” and has been critical of the Democratic Party in recent years, said he disagreed with Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s suspected killer but believed he shouldn’t lose his job over them.

“You have the right to be wrong or to have any opinion you want, he said. “That’s what the 1st Amendment is all about.”

“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver zeroed in on Kimmel’s suspension and the Federal Communications Commission during his Sunday night episode. He blasted FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, directly addressed Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger and dove into the implications of the suspension in a nearly 30-minute-long segment.

“Kimmel is by no means the first casualty in Trump’s attacks on free speech. He’s just the latest canary in the coal mine — a mine that, at this point, now seems more dead canary than coal,” Oliver said. “This Kimmel situation does feel like a turning point, and not because comedians are important, but because we are not. If the government can force a network to pull a late-night show off the air and do so in plain view, it can do a f— of a lot worse.”

In addressing Disney head Iger, Oliver urged him to understand that “giving the bully your lunch money doesn’t make him go away. It just makes him come back hungrier each time.”

Oliver said his show is “lucky” to be in a different situation than Kimmel’s because neither HBO or its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, owns broadcast networks, meaning they are “much less susceptible to pressure from the FCC.” He then cut to a news segment about how Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS, is preparing a bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which Oliver followed up with repeated expletives.

The women who host ABC’s “The View,” which is known for not shying away from hot-button topics, had been silent on the issue last week, but addressed Kimmel’s suspension Monday.

“Did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel?” host Whoopi Goldberg said. “I mean, have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons? No one silences us.”

FCC head Carr has indicated that “The View” might be the next subject of a future investigation.

The panel, including Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin, also weighed in before Goldberg said, “We fight for everybody’s right to have freedom of speech because it means my speech is free, it means your speech is free.”

Reporting from Washington — President Trump’s effort Wednesday to influence the federal appeals judges who are considering whether to reinstate his restrictions on entry into the U.S. was notable for both the highly public setting — a televised speech — and the vitriol that Trump aimed at sitting judges still deciding the case.

Here’s how it compares with other recent presidents weighing in on pending court cases, ranging from cajoling to avoiding the topic altogether.

Lyndon Johnson, Civil Rights Act

In a speech at a dinner in Cleveland, Johnson lamented the struggles of implementing the 1964 Civil Rights Act while a challenge to the law — a case known as Heart of Atlanta Motel vs. United States — sat before the court. He did not comment on the case itself.

“It is now in the Supreme Court and we have had lots of difficulty with it, but we have tried to be patient and we have tried to be understanding.”

The court would go on to decide that the Constitution gave the government the power to force businesses to comply with the Civil Rights Act.

Jimmy Carter, affirmative action

Asked during a Q&A about Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, which challenged affirmative action, Carter pointed to the separation of powers in avoiding comment.

“It’s in the hands of the Supreme Court and we have filed our position, that there’s nothing additionally that we would do until after the Supreme Court rules.”

Ronald Reagan, separation of powers

Bowsher vs. Synar, a case that challenged a key provision of the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing act, produced a landmark decision on the separation of powers itself. Reagan opened a news conference by remarking on a recent lower-court ruling in the case but chose to steer the conversation to the underlying issue, the federal budget.

“We await a final Supreme Court decision, but nothing the court says should or will remove our obligation to bring overspending under control.”

George H.W. Bush, abortion

On the day that an abortion-related case, Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, was argued before the Supreme Court, Bush was asked about it at a news conference but demurred. When a reporter pressed him, Bush, who had spoken out multiple times against abortion, hinted that he wanted to make his position known but stopped short of stating it plainly.

“I hate to not respond to your question,” he said. “But the court is probably going to make a decision very soon, and I would prefer to address myself to the question after the court has decided.”

Barack Obama, Affordable Care Act

Obama was the first president to make a persistent public push for his side of a pending court case; his landmark healthcare law hung in the balance.

But his tone was subtler than Trump.

First, during a news conference in 2012, Obama, who once taught constitutional law, urged justices to respect the separation of powers.

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” he said.

Obama followed up a day later by suggesting the justices follow precedent. “I expect the Supreme Court actually to — to recognize that and to abide by well-established precedents out there,” he said.

His persistence marked a departure for the presidency, Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law, wrote in his book “Unraveled.”

“Very few presidents have spoken about pending Supreme Court cases after arguments were submitted. Even fewer discussed the merits of the cases,” Blackman wrote. “Only a handful could be seen as preemptively faulting the justices for ruling against the government.”

The Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the Obama administration in the case, National Federation of Independent Business vs. Sebelius, as it would later in King vs. Burwell.

Obama, money in politics

The Affordable Care Act was not Obama’s first venture into court commentary, though. He also used one of the president’s most high-profile venues to address a ruling: the State of the Union.

In addressing lawmakers in late January 2010, Obama criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission of a few days earlier that held that corporations had the same right to free speech as people. The court’s conservative majority concluded that the government thus could not stop corporations from spending on candidates.

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. “I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

Obama drew applause from Democrats, but an immediate rebuke from one justice who was present: Samuel Alito shook his head and mouthed “not true” as Obama spoke.

As a senator, Obama had voted against Alito’s confirmation in 2006.

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UPDATES:

12:40 p.m., Feb. 9: This story was updated with Obama’s comments on the Citizens United ruling.

This story was originally published at 3:20 p.m. on Feb. 8.