the strangeness of the current moment lies in how the administration is consolidating authoritarian power while also being extremely weak

Neither side found a case of vindictive prosecution where the White House, DOJ, and DHS united against a man who won civil litigation. "But that does not mean that this prosecution is not vindictive. It just means that its vindictiveness is unprecedented," Abrego's team says.

Shana tova?

EXCLU: @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social will announce today he is cancelling a televised town hall with WABC News planned for Sept. 25 in the wake of the network suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show last week. www.amny.com/news/mamdani...

Not a thing that would be happening if food insecurity were getting better.

Making this tonight, as always— thank you, Marian.

It’s really all we should be talking about today.

“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy” V-Dem data

📌WARNING: As a former managing editor of Stars and Stripes, what Hegseth's Pentagon is pulling with the press is dangerous as hell, anti-American, and will HURT THE TROOPS. 📌Any news organization that advocates for THEM and reports on their quality-of-life issues will potentially be squashed. 🧵

@rachelegoodman.bsky.social spoke with @wbur.org's Meghna Chakrabarti to discuss attacks on independent sources of fact-based info, like Wikipedia. “The authoritarian playbook is straightforward here. Neutralize any institution that might contradict your version of reality.”

Sure sounds like an idea from the anti-choice movement metastasizing to the rest of healthcare.

Latvian-American novelist and filmmaker Michael Idov says Trump is trying to exercise control over American media more quickly than Putin moved to take over Russian media. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Michael Eisner, who served as CEO of Disney for 21 years and acquired ABC while he was in charge, slams his successor Bob Iger for bending the knee.

I saw, during my reporting in Hungary, how much putting friendly oligarchs in charge of the media matters in authoritarian consolidation. That's starting to happen in the United States. www.vox.com/politics/462...

In this post I explain why the suspension of Kimmel’s show looks like a blatant 1A violation, as all NINE members of SCOTUS last year made clear.... but also why courts may not be able to do much about it (and yet Kimmel should still sue!) blog.dividedargument.com/p/did-brenda...

There is no reason to cooperate with a increasingly unpopular and authoritarian president.

NEW: We joined a coalition of nonprofit orgs and charities urging the administration to stop its escalation of political division, and the unjustified targeting of orgs and people in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. Full statement via @publiccitizen.bsky.social 🔗 https://protdem.org/3I9KZLk

Took a look at Kimmel's ouster in light of the longstanding Republican attacks on social media over jawboning, which, the Supreme Court has found, requires a direct causal line. The Kimmel case "is as direct a line as you could dream up," @alexabdo.bsky.social told me www.npr.org/2025/09/18/n...

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

The Republican reaction to Kirk’s murder has been a campaign of state repression that ends with Trumpist toadies deciding what Americans are allowed to think, do and say. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This just in: Jon Stewart normally only hosts “The Daily Show” on Monday nights nowadays, but tonight he is returning to his longtime desk for one Thursday edition, Comedy Central says. His guest: Maria Ressa

Swalwell: There’s going to be a Democratic majority in just over a year. To the FCC chairperson and anyone in involved in these dirty deals: get a lawyer and save your records because you’re going to be in this room answering questions

look she is awful but this is a sure sign no one but the most overt maga people like what is going on

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

Carr in 2022

WGA Statement on ABC’s Decision to Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Well, what do Germans know about creeping fascism anyway?

Most Jewish Americans disapprove of the Trump administration withholding funds from colleges to address anti-Jewish sentiment, according to a new survey.

"Only about one-third of American Jews support Israel’s military operation in Gaza, according to a new survey by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Rochester." www.ynetnews.com/article/bk9a...

great news! you're not actually seeing karl rove, john yoo, and david frum criticize the administration's lawlessness more stridently than dem leadership. you, reader, were infected with rabies by a brown bat 36 hours ago and this is all just the virus working its way through your nervous system

What is to prevent Brendan Carr from canceling the licenses of affiliates who accurately report election results unfavorable to Trump? Or a scandal involving a Trump associate? Or bad economic numbers. Unbridled authoritarianism.

There isn't even the slightest amount of subtlety to this. Kimmel criticized the party in power, so the regulators ordered ABC to cancel his show. No different from what would have happened in the Soviet Union. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/b...

Anyway not that there were really any doubt, but "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next" just weeks ago

More corporate surrender. Giving away our democracy. ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Off Air for Charlie Kirk Comments www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/b...

Don't buy the canard that this is about Charlie Kirk. Abusing state power to lean on corporate leaders and get Jimmy Kimmel off the air because he told jokes about the president and made him feel bad was always the plan.

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

So many friends and colleagues in Jewish Studies lost their grants to, for example, translate Yiddish texts from the Holocaust, so that the money could go to the Tikvah Fund's ahistorical project of constructing "Judeo-Christian civilization," making Jews wards of Christian nationalism.

This is part of making American Jews wards of the state, receiving a temporary reprieve from the systematic cuts to the humanities in the US, in exchange for capturing us and making us potential scapegoats if public anger rises. It's court Jews all over again. ejewishphilanthropy.com/neh-awards-i...

the penumbra, if you will

A strong statement from Sen. Thom Tillis.

Spencer Cox: "Our nation is broken. We had political assassinations recently in Minnesota. We had an attempted assassination on the gov of Pennsylvania. And we had an attempted assassination on a president. Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken"

We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.

What happened today is awful. People who fight against gun violence, people who loathe what Charlie Kirk stood for, must also condemn political violence. It’s a vicious cycle. This is a very dangerous moment.

The problem with allowing guns everywhere is that no one is safe anywhere.

Today’s act of political violence in Utah against Charlie Kirk is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we should all agree on this: political violence is wrong, and has no place in our democracy

Nothing good can come from political violence. It doesn't matter where you stand politically—it's a cancer that needs to be rooted out.

I'm horrified to hear that Charlie Kirk was shot at an event in Utah. Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence. Mark and I are praying for Charlie's recovery.