First, though I’m deeply skeptical about the power of boycotts and protests, this one seems to have worked. A combination of cancellations, petitions, announcements by creatives that they would no longer work for Disney, and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s trash-talking his successor, Bob Iger (though not by name), apparently had a lot to do with the lifting of Kimmel’s suspension.
Second, there are a few factors that have yet to play out. FCC chair Brendan Carr, whose threat to Disney and to broadcasters that continued to carry Kimmel’s show is what started all this, lied on Monday by saying he had not threatened anyone. Well, if that’s what he’s claiming now and he’s sticking to it, then that’s good news.
But though Kimmel may be coming back to ABC, we have not yet heard a final decision from Nexstar or Sinclair, two giant broadcasting companies that together own about 25% of the country’s ABC affiliates. Nexstar is trying to pull off a merger with another media company and needs FCC approval.
Sinclair is controlled by right-wing interests, and the company went so far last week as to demand that Kimmel apologize for his mildly offensive monologue about Donald Trump and the late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and make a sizable donation to Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Kirk.
George W. Bush in 2001. Public domain photo via the U.S. National Archives.
FCC chair Brendan Carr’s thuggish threat to crack down on media companies following late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk differed from past instances only in that he said it out loud.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said in an appearance on a right-wing podcaster’s show. And Disney, Nexstar and Sinclair, all of which have significant regulatory issues before the FCC, wasted no time in making sure that Kimmel was banished from ABC’s airwaves.
Trump himself put it even more bluntly, saying that broadcasters who are “against me” should lose their licenses, reported Zoë Richards of NBC News.
The first comparison that comes to mind, naturally, is Richard Nixon’s threat in 1973 to take away the licenses of two Florida television stations owned by The Washington Post amid the paper’s dogged reporting on the Watergate scandal. “The difference here is that Nixon talked about the scheme only privately,” the Post’s Aaron Blake wrote about the scheme many years later.
On the afternoon that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, three teenagers, including the shooter, were reported to be in critical condition following a school shooting in Evergreen, Colorado. The shooter later died.
The only difference between these two awful events is that we’ve become numb to gun violence aimed at our children. Indeed, the Colorado incident barely registered in the media, while Kirk’s assassination got front-page coverage and was virtually the only story on cable news Wednesday evening.
What can any of us say at a moment like this except that it was just another day in America? Oliver Darcy offers a rundown (sub. req.) of recent incidents involving political violence:
Acts of political extremism are surfacing with alarming regularity in this country. Paul Pelosi was brutally attacked in his own home. Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer. Luigi Mangione was charged in December with killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in what authorities described as a politically motivated act. In the spring, an arsonist set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence and prosecutors later charged a suspect with attempted murder. In Minnesota over the summer, a man was charged after stalking Democrats and murdering House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband. Last month, a gunman sprayed more than 180 bullets at the Centers for Disease Control headquarters, killing a police officer. Each of the incidents were different, but together they paint an unsettling portrait: political violence is increasingly becoming the norm in America.
Darcy is correct in observing that the rise of politically motivated attacks is deeply disturbing. So is the ongoing epidemic of school shootings — not to mention mass gun violence in general. Let’s not forget the horror that unfolded in Lewiston, Maine, in October 2023, when a gunman killed 18 people and injured 13 more.
The Charlie Kirk killing is different in that it has all the appearances of a political assassination; it took place in front of a large crowd of students at Utah Valley University; and the shooting was captured on video that then went viral on social media. One of the videos making the rounds was among the most graphic and disturbing I’ve seen.
Then, too, there was Kirk’s notoriety. He was about as famous as it is possible for a political figure to become without actually serving as an elected official or in a high government position. He was, as you no doubt know, notorious on the left, which led to a lot of offensive social media posts from people who ought to know better. MSNBC fired conservative-turned-liberal commentator Matthew Dowd after he walked right up to the edge of suggesting that Kirk got what he deserved. Dowd later apologized.
There’s really nothing to say at a time like this except that we have to do something about gun violence in this country, and that violence of any kind needs to be firmly condemned by all of us. Our thoughts today should be with Charlie Kirk and his family — as well as the families of the school shooting victims in Colorado, in addition to all the other victims of shootings, past and future.
“The Downfall of Mother Bank,” with Andrew Jackson holding a scroll that reads “Order for the Removal of the Public Money deposited in the United States Bank.” Via the Library of Congress.
The Federal Reserve Board was set up to be free from political interference so that it could engage in the uncertain art of steering the economy without regard to the needs and desires of elected officials. Board members are appointed by the president to staggered 14-year terms and confirmed by the Senate.
But now Donald Trump has threatened to end all that by claiming he has fired Fed Governor (as board members are known) Lisa Cook. Trump is paying lip service to the rule that says he can’t fire governors except for cause by accusing her of mortgage fraud. But not only has Cook not been formally charged with misconduct, there isn’t even an investigation under way.
Trump has also suggested that he might fire Fed board chair Jerome Powell, which he also lacks the authority to do. Even this Supreme Court said recently that the president’s authority does not extend to breeching the Fed’s independence.
The Fed regulates interest rates with an eye toward keeping inflation in check and unemployment low, two goals that are sometimes at odds with each other, which means the agency must aim for a delicate balance. Trump wants lower interest rates, in part to finance the massive increase in the federal debt that he’s presided over with tax cuts for the rich. As The Wall Street Journal puts it:
Both the central bank and the economy at large are entering unknown territory. Presidents have periodically criticized the Fed since its founding in 1913 and attempted to sway its decisions. But especially in recent decades, politicians have broadly recognized that an independent central bank is important because it has a free hand to make unpopular moves that preserve the economy’s long-run health.
There’s a historical analogy that’s worth keeping in mind. I’m currently reading Jill Lepore’s massive history of the United States, “These Truths.” As with Trump, Andrew Jackson didn’t like bankers telling him what to do, and in 1832 he refused to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. Congress vetoed his action, and Jackson overrode its veto. Lepore describes what happened next:
Jackson’s bank veto unmoored the American economy. With the dissolution of the Bank of the United States, the stability it had provided, ballast in a ship’s hull, floated away. Proponents of the national bank had insisted on the need for federal regulation of paper currency. Jackson and his supporters, known as “gold-bugs,” would have rather had no paper money at all. In 1832, $59 million in paper bills was in circulation, in 1836, $140 million. Without the national bank’s regulatory force, very little metal backed up this blizzard of paper, American banks holding only $10.5 million in gold.
Moreover, Jackson’s irresponsible action led to a financial panic in 1837, just in time for the inauguration of his vice president and chosen successor, Martin Van Buren, who earned the nickname “Martin Van Ruin.” The panic set off a seven-year depression; it also led to the abolition of debtors’ prison and to bankruptcy reform. Van Buren was easily defeated for re-election in 1840 by the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison.
If Trump follows through on turning the Fed into just another arm of MAGA, will similar economic calamities follow? As I write this, the market indexes are flat, which suggests that Wall Street isn’t too worried about Trump’s threat against Cook. But Jackson’s war on the national bank shows what can happen when economic expertise is thrown aside in favor of political expediency.
This may be the most important story you’ll read all month. Konrad Putzier and Rachel Louise Ensign report in The Wall Street Journal (gift link) that we are losing our economic dynamism. Americans have stopped moving to different parts of the country, and they are less likely to leave their jobs to try something new.
In addition, the combination of record-low interest rates a few years ago and much higher rates now means that too many people feel like they’re locked into their home. Putzier and Ensign write:
This immobility has economic consequences for everyone. The frozen housing market means growing families can’t upgrade, empty-nesters can’t downsize and first-time buyers are all but locked out. When people can’t move for a job offer, or to a city with better job opportunities, they often earn less. When companies can’t hire people who currently live in, say, a different state, corporate productivity and profits can suffer.
This phenomenon has been building for years, although it’s gotten worse since COVID. Some of the more traditional liberal policies that Joe Biden was pursuing might have helped reverse these trends, but now Donald Trump is creating economic uncertainty with massive tax cuts for the rich and his chaotic tariff policy.
I’m one to talk. I have always lived in the Boston area, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else; my wife and I have lived in one apartment and three homes in just two communities. Over the past 45 years I’ve worked at exactly three jobs, not counting a few short-time stints when I was unemployed during the 1990 recession.
But that was a conscious choice. In the Journal article, you’ll see that a number of people interviewed would like find a better job and a different place to live, but they’re stymied by factors beyond their control.
Our country is not just spinning out of control — it’s also spinning down. We need government policies that will help restore the dynamism that defined us until recently.
An ‘abundance’ of punditry
Do we need another publication aimed at helping to define a new form of liberalism? Whether we do or not, we’re getting one. It’s called The Argument, and it sounds like it might be interesting.
Max Tani of Semafor reports that Jerusalem Demsas left The Atlantic recently to start the project, which sounds like it will be largely rooted in the “abundance” agenda promoted by writers like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their book of that name. The idea is that the left has stymied innovation and growth by creating a bureaucratic and legal framework aimed more at stopping things rather than building, whether it be public transportation or housing.
Indeed, Thompson will be one of the contributors to The Argument, which is published at Substack.
Based on Demsas’ introductory video and message, it sounds like The Argument will mainly appeal to the center left in an attempt to try to craft a vision that reaches beyond not just the MAGA pestilence that has infected the body politic but also the excesses of the progressive left, which she doesn’t exactly define. That’s going to be hard given the ease with which the right caricatured Kamala Harris as a left-wing menace while she was actually espousing moderately liberal policies. Demsas writes:
We will convene not just self-described political liberals, but socialists, moderates, libertarians and center-right conservatives. I won’t agree with everyone we publish, and I doubt they all agree with everything I have said, but we will only publish people who seek truth from facts and who are excited to engage directly with their opponent’s ideas.
I can think of a whole host of reasons why The Argument might fail, or modestly succeed while fading into obscurity and irrelevance. But let’s hope that it will have a wider impact than that. Democrats have a difficult needle to thread if they are going to return to power in 2026 and ’28. A new source of ideas with broad, popular appeal would be a welcome development.
AI’s power grab
We are nearing the end, blessedly, of what’s been a brutally hot summer. I don’t know what we’d do without air conditioning, or, frankly, how we got by without it when I was growing up — and yes, heat waves were shorter and nights were cooler back in the 1960s and ’70s.
But air conditioning is powered by electricity, and we are using it at a reckless rate as the AI surge continues apace. You can’t avoid it. It’s not just a matter of consciously using it with programs like ChatGPT and Claude; now you can’t even search Google without getting an AI-generated answer at the top of your screen. I recently tested the latest version of ChatGPT by asking it to draw a photorealistic version of Bob Dylan drumming. You can see the result; but how many kilowatts did I use?
The economist Paul Krugman’s latest newsletter post is about AI and electricity, noting that AI data centers were already consuming 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, and that it may rise to 12% by 2028. We need vastly more electricity-generating capacity, and yet Krugman observes that Trump has “a deep, irrational hatred for renewable energy.” He adds that many tasks being performed by brute-force AI could be turned over instead to lighter, less-energy-intensive versions; still, he observes:
It’s obvious that any attempt to make AI more energy-efficient would lead to howls from tech bros who believe that they embody humanity’s future — and these bros have bought themselves a lot of political power.
So I don’t know how this will play out. I do know that your future electricity bills depend on the answer.
Among other things, news organizations are embracing AI both for better and for worse. My own view is that there’s a lot more to dislike about AI than to like. But it’s here to stay, and we might as well try to use it in ways that are ethical and responsible. Unfortunately, we appear to be rushing headlong in the wrong direction.
There is so much awful Trump-related news to make sense of today that I’m going to offer a roundup, though I doubt I’ll attain the eloquence or profundity of Heather Cox Richardson. I’ll begin with two stories that are puzzling once you look beneath the surface — CBS’s decision to cancel Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and The Wall Street Journal’s report on Trump’s pervy birthday greetings to Jeffrey Epstein.
First, Colbert. Late-night television isn’t what it used to be, though Colbert’s program was the highest-rated among the genre. Like most people, I never watched, and what little I did see of it was through YouTube clips. Still, it’s only natural to think that he was canceled because CBS’s owner, Paramount, which recently gifted Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit, is trying to win favor as it seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance. Colbert is an outspoken Trump critic, and he hasn’t been shy about taking on his corporate overlords, either.
If that’s the case, it seems odd to announce that Colbert’s show will run through next May. That makes no sense if the idea is to appease Trump. If it’s a contractual matter, Colbert could be paid to stay home. Now he’s free to unload on Trump and network executives every night without having to worry about whether his show will be renewed. And for those who argue that Colbert is on a short leash: No, he isn’t. I suspect we’ll learn more.
Now for that Wall Street Journal story (gift link). I don’t want to minimize the importance of Trump’s demented message and R-rated drawings that he gave to Epstein for his 50th birthday. There was a time in public life when it would have — and should have — been a major scandal. But I didn’t think the article quite lived up to its advance billing. Before publication, media reporter Oliver Darcy called it “potentially explosive” and wrote about Trump’s personal efforts to kill it, but I’m not sure that it is.
Several weeks ago we had a reunion of Northeastern University journalism alumni who were involved in student media in the 1970s and early ’80s. Among those attending was David McKay Wilson, one of the very few in our crowd who is still working as a full-time reporter. And he was excited about a story he was digging into about a Republican politician who seemed to have infiltrated a Democratic group in the suburbs north of New York City using a fake name.
Today The Journal News published that story, and it is weird and wonderful. Erin Crowley, a county legislator who also works for Republican congressman Mike Lawler, appears to have gotten herself inserted into an anti-Lawler chat group on Signal using the name “Jack Thomas.” Once in, Thomas — again, almost certainly Crowley — tried to generate an uproar against Lawler at a town meeting he was holding in May. Thomas/Crowley apparently believed that such behavior would create sympathy for her boss.
Although there is no definite proof, Thomas’ phone number is identical to one that Crowley has used. Wilson writes:
After two Lawler critics were carried out of the hall by New York State troopers, Thomas posted that chat group members should leave the auditorium to protest Lawler’s crackdown on dissent and his evasive answers to questions from the audience.
“Should we walk out en masse?” posted Thomas. “Make a point we won’t tolerate his bullsh** anymore.”
Wilson also quotes an anti-Lawler activist named Ann Starer, who says, “Walking out of the hall would have been to their benefit. That would have been great for them. I said on the chat that I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
The story is locked behind a paywall. Because The Journal News is a Gannett paper, I was able to access it through my USA Today subscription. If that’s not an option, you can read a thorough synopsis by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who calls it “my official new favorite story ever.”
Wilson has tangled with Lawler before, as I’ve written, and last month he was kicked out of a Lawler event for photographing Crowley. David’s doggedness at holding power to account at an age when many of his peers are retired is an inspiration.
Lyndon Johnson on the campaign trail in 1954. Photo via the LBJ Library.
The IRS has ruled that religious leaders can endorse political candidates from the pulpit, thus overturning a ban that had been in place since 1954. The New York Times broke the story, but in case you can’t get around the paywall, here is The Associated Press’ version.
The news is sure to be greeted with consternation among many observers, especially on the left. But the ban was, in fact, an unintended consequence of a move by Lyndon Johnson to silence a tax-exempt political group that opposed his re-election to the Senate. Johnson’s chief aide, George Reedy, told an interviewer years later that he believed LBJ had not intended to include religious organizations in the ban.
The IRS action comes just days after the presiding bishop of our denomination, Sean Rowe, wrote a powerful commentary in which he called on the Episcopal Church to be an engine of the resistance to Donald Trump’s authoritarian rule. (You may recall that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budd got Trump’s second term off to a rousing start by admonishing him from the pulpit on Inauguration Day.) It sounds like it just became easier for our church to speak out and not have its tax status threatened, although who knows if the regime will try to punish religious liberals? Here is part of what Bishop Rowe wrote:
Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy.
We did not seek this predicament, but God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all.
In 2017 I wrote a commentary for GBH News in which I expressed agreement with Trump after he called for the Johnson Amendment to be overturned. Now that has happened. I’m posting the full piece after the jump.
A protest in Chicago against the illegal detention of Kilmar Ábrego García in a Salvadoran prison. Photo (cc) 2025 by Paul Goyette.
This is likely to be my last post of the week, and it’s a depressingly fitting one this Fourth of July. Although we may have much to celebrate in our own lives, we all recognize that our country is in great danger. Donald Trump is trampling on the Constitution, and the Republican-led Congress and Supreme Court are doing nothing to slow him down.
So today I want to make sure you’ve seen this story about Kilmar Ábrego García, one of the better known victims of Trump’s persecution of undocumented immigrants. Earlier this year, Ábrego García, of Maryland, charged with no crime other than living in the U.S. without the proper papers, was illegally shipped off to a prison in El Salvador. He’s back, at least for now, and his lawyers filed chilling documents on Wednesday alleging that he was tortured while in Salvadoran custody. Maanvi Singh reports for The Guardian:
While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.
Guards struck anyone who fell from exhaustion while kneeling, and during that time, “Ábrego García was denied bathroom access and soiled himself”, according to the filing.
Detainees were held in an overcrowded cell with no windows, and bright lights on 24 hours a day. They were confined to metal bunk beds with no mattresses.
Ábrego García is back in the U.S., and now federal prosecutors are charging him with human smuggling and being a member of the MS-13 gang. We’ll see if there’s any actual evidence; the case has all the hallmarks of a story that the Trump regime concocted after the fact.
But why should we take seriously Trump’s alleged desire to crack down on MS-13? On Monday, a team of six New York Times reporters revealed (gift link) that Trump had returned a notorious MS-13 killer and other gang members to El Salvador who are allies of that country’s thuggish president, Nayib Bukele. The transfer appears to be a quid pro quo for Bukele’s willingness to accept U.S. deportees.
I hope there will come a time when Trump and everyone associated with his brutal reign is held to account, perhaps by the International Court of Justice. In the meantime, we have to live through this and do what we can to call out their shocking behavior and engage in acts of resistance. For what it’s worth, I write.
May you, your families and friends have a wonderful Independence Day. There will be better times ahead.
For a brief moment Monday, it looked like Donald Trump had given up on his ridiculous lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer.
You may recall that Trump claimed they had committed consumer fraud because of a poll taken just before Election Day showing Kamala Harris with a 3-point lead in the Hawkeye State. Notwithstanding Selzer’s sterling reputation, Harris ended up losing Iowa by 13 points, which is about what you’d expect. She was wrong, and the error may have hastened her retirement, but the notion that she put out a false poll to help Harris is transparently ludicrous.
Well, Monday’s good news didn’t last. It turns out that Trump withdrew his suit from the federal courts and refiled it in state court one day before an Iowa anti-SLAPP law was scheduled to take effect, William Morris reports for the Register. SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuits against political participation,” and it’s designed to give judges a reason to throw out garbage suits such as Trump’s. No such luck since Trump beat the deadline.
This isn’t the first time Trump has sought to have his Iowa case heard in state court. Apparently his lawyers believe the federal courts are unlikely to tolerate his foolishness. To its credit, the Register’s corporate owner, Gannett, has hung tough. A spokesperson for the paper, Lark-Marie Anton, said in a statement:
After losing his first attempt to send his case back to Iowa state court, and apparently recognizing that his appeal will be unsuccessful, President Trump is attempting to unilaterally dismiss his lawsuit from federal court and refile it in Iowa state court. Although such a procedural maneuver is improper, and may not be permitted by the court, it is clearly intended to avoid the inevitable outcome of the Des Moines Register’s motion to dismiss President Trump’s amended complaint currently pending in federal court.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing Selzer, said on social media that Trump’s attempt to move the case to state court was “a transparent attempt to avoid federal court review of the president’s transparently frivolous claims,” according to The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, there have been some developments in one of Trump’s other legal attempts to intimidate the press. According to media reporter Oliver Darcy, all seven correspondents at CBS News’ “60 Minutes” have sent a message to their corporate owner, Paramount, demanding that it stand firm in fighting Trump’s lawsuit over the way the program edited an interview with Harris last October. Darcy writes:
They pointedly expressed concern that Paramount is failing to put up a fierce and unrelenting fight in the face of Trump’s lawsuit over the program’s Kamala Harris interview, which has been widely denounced by the legal community as baseless, according to the people familiar with the matter. They said Trump’s allegations against the storied program are false and ripped his lawsuit as baseless. And they warned in no uncertain terms that if Paramount were to settle with Trump, it will stain the reputation of the company and undermine the First Amendment.
Trump is claiming consumer fraud in a Texas federal court under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, alleging that “60 Minutes” edited its interview with Harris to make her appear more coherent, thus helping her campaign. “60 Minutes” has defended the editing as normal and routine. The interview has been nominated for an Emmy in the editing category, no doubt to send a message to the White House.
Unfortunately, Darcy reports that Paramount continues to lurch toward a settlement with Trump in order to pave the way for federal approval of a merger with Skydance Media.
There’s a historical analogy that’s worth keeping in mind. I’m currently reading Jill Lepore’s massive history of the United States, 
The economist Paul Krugman’s latest newsletter post is about 
