If comedians are not allowed to make jokes that are hated by the president of the United States and his supporters, it suggests a future for our nation that is less free and more dangerous for all, including those laughing and cheering that ABC yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air on Wednesday.

Go ahead and laugh if you want because it’s a free ...Read more

Few pieces of political writing are as widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and falsely disseminated as the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

For years, whenever a public figure has faced backlash and consequences for social media posts, public comments or even private statements that offended people, self-proclaimed defenders of free ...Read more

We were not fans of Jimmy Kimmel’s riff on the shooting of Charlie Kirk and the implication that President Donald Trump cared more about the new ballroom at the White House than the death of a close ally.

The late-night host’s monologue on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was tasteless, unfair and, frankly, cruel, given that all the evidence points...Read more

Jimmy Kimmel is the latest cancel culture casualty of the Charlie Kirk mourning period. His sin is a vague and poorly considered monologue that led many to the reasonable interpretation that he was blaming MAGA for the murder.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered ...Read more

Comics have long been on the front lines of democracy, the canary in the cat's mouth, Looney Tunes style, when it comes to free speech being swallowed by regressive politics.

So Jimmy Kimmel is in good company, though he may not like this particular historical party: Zero Mostel; Philip Loeb; even Lenny Bruce, who claimed, after being watched ...Read more

Too many people in this country think that free speech comes with no consequences. A constitutionally protected free pass to say whatever you want with zero repercussions. But that’s not true. There is a cost to speaking out.

On the left, think Colin Kaepernick being blackballed by the NFL for taking a knee during the national anthem. On the ...Read more

It has come to this: The president of the United States is leading the strangulation of free speech.

And many institutions continue to fall in line.

Donald Trump celebrated the spineless move by ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show after the comedian referenced the politicization surrounding the assassination of right-wing activist ...Read more

ABC television and its corporate parent Disney wrongly sidelined comedian Jimmy Kimmel rather than resisting the unconstitutional demands of Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. By putting their self interest above what is right, Disney is aiding Trump’s ever greater grasping for power that does not belong...Read more

When ABC announced it was indefinitely suspending the late-night Jimmy Kimmel show under severe pressure from the Trump administration, I recalled Vladimir Putin’s deep hostility to Russia’s beloved satirical puppet show Kukly (known in English as Puppets), which lampooned him as an evil gnome.

A year into his presidency, Putin managed to ...Read more

Once again, the president is questioning what purpose is served by publicly traded companies issuing quarterly earnings reports. Not only did Donald Trump raise this issue back in 2018 — so did Barack Obama in 2015.

Which just goes to show that the arguments against quarterly financial reports are neither crazy nor new. It was not until 1970 ...Read more

When people think about legacies, they often think about monuments, textbooks or days marked on a calendar. But a true legacy is measured in lives changed and conversations sparked. That’s why, when we think about Charlie Kirk, we don’t just think of a man who built organizations or packed auditoriums. We think of the way he taught ...Read more

I’ve never had cancer. But it has still shaped my entire life.

I’m a BRCA1 “previvor.” You may never have heard that term before; it was coined by an organization called FORCE over 25 years ago. I carry a gene mutation that increases my risk for breast and ovarian cancer and other kinds, and that’s why, even though I’m in my late ...Read more

In the days since Charlie Kirk’s killing, conservatives have embraced a phenomenon they previously called toxic: cancel culture.

The impulse to cancel some voices this past week is understandable: Celebrating murder is cruel. It’s gross. It’s wrong. But the irony is impossible to miss: Conservatives, who long treated cancel culture as an ...Read more

Susan Monarez, who only served 29 days as CDC director before being fired last month, performed a valuable civic function Wednesday in testifying under oath before a Senate committee that established that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a dire threat to public health. He is the one who must be fired and if President ...Read more

Was Charlie Kirk a martyr? Many on the right have declared him a martyr for freedom of speech, which is understandable, but they use his tragic death as if it were a final, irrefutable proof of their beliefs and a call to take radical action — ironically including suppressing free speech if it’s leftist.

Not to do what Kirk would want would...Read more

When President Donald Trump mustered a military parade in Washington in June, my mind flashed back to a video I once watched in a Rio de Janeiro museum. It featured a 1950s Brazilian dictator waving from an open automobile in his military procession.

Trump mercifully stayed on the reviewing stand. And Brazil’s current democracy has remained ...Read more

The most prevalent guessing game on social media is “Who killed Charlie Kirk?”

Not who fired the bullet that ended the conservative activist’s life last week. That was presumably settled with the surrender of Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old student acting on his expressed hatred of Kirk. Rather, who or what pushed the buttons that led the ...Read more

Last month, I wrote that California is backsliding on climate, and that it’s mostly Gov. Gavin Newsom’s fault. I took him and his appointees to task for undermining rooftop solar, propping up the Aliso Canyon gas field and slowing implementation of a single-use plastics recycling law, among other offenses.

So it’s only fair that I give ...Read more

President Donald Trump has been making anti-democratic moves since returning to the White House eight months ago, from attacking universities to law firms. Now, the president is using the horrible murder of right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk as a pretext to ramp up his authoritarian efforts, openly boasting of the coming crackdown.

...Read more

It appears that President Donald Trump has signaled a total disdain for the Latino community, the country’s largest minority group at 68 million, or 1 of every 5 residents.

This observation is not based totally on Trump’s remarks a decade ago that Mexico “does not send its best” and that immigrants from our southern border are “...Read more