We begin with this clip, in which Donald Trump defends FCC chair Brendan Carr’s warning to Disney about ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about the right’s reaction to Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk’s murder.
Image credit: chayanuphol/Shutterstock
News roundup:
On Monday, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order designating “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.” There is no structure or organization called Antifa, and domestic terrorism does not exist as a category in the United States federal legal code.
House and Senate Democrats want a probe into Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision to drop an investigation into bribery allegations against Border Czar Tom Homan. In 2024, Homan, who has close ties to private prison contracting, was recorded accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents in exchange for a promise to steer contracts once Trump was in office.
New York Magazine alleges that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem may be ICE Barbie—but that Ken, otherwise known as unpaid government contractor Corey Lewandowski, really runs the show. The pair are said to have been in a long-term intimate relationship, although still married to other people. As importantly, DHS is an administrative mess.
This week’s biggest news is the HSS recommendation linking autism to the use of the pain killer acetaminophen during pregnancy. Teased by Donald Trump at Charlie Kirk’s memorial on Sunday, the “finding” was announced by him and HSS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at a White House Press conference. There is little scientific evidence for this claim. Major medical associations are pushing back strongly on it, as well as the administration’s continued misinformation about the childhood vaccination schedule. Republicans Mehmet Oz, in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, and Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy have pushed back strongly, as have world health organizations, numerous autism foundations, and Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol. The March of Dimes also reminds us that high fever can be the cause of facial and heart deformity, miscarriage and perhaps autism.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Our focus: Free speech for me—but not for thee?
The First Amendment to the Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Here is what speech, and forms of speech, are or are not covered by the Constitution. Satire is protected speech.
Jimmy Kimmel returned to late night TV on Tuesday, following a major backlash that even crossed into the MAGA ranks. You can listen to Kimmel’s original statement about the political furor surrounding Charlie Kirk’s death; his Tuesday opening monologue about free speech is here. ABC stations in the Sinclair and Nexstar systems have declined to broadcast the show (Sinclair is conservative, while Nexstar has a merger pending with the FCC.) Fox hosts are scrambling to support the Trump administration’s assertion that Kimmel’s suspension was unrelated to federal pressure.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr is unrepentant for having threatened Disney, raising larger questions about how the government agency now exercises its power to regulate. Some Republicans have opposed Kimmel’s brief suspension
As Brian Stelter noted in his CNN newsletter, one battle for free speech has been won but the war is not over. MAGA Republicans demand free speech for themselves, even as they seek to limit the speech of liberals and leftists, while government officials suppress journalists’s efforts to report the news.
Speech can be deemed constitutionally protected; at the same time, suffering consequences from that speech can be legal, depending on the nature of the institution, its policies, and how that speech is received. However, late night TV is traditionally edgy and provocative.
Censorship is not the only issue. Courts has also held (for example in American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, 1985) that creating an atmosphere to chill speech can also be unconstitutional.
Private entities are permitted to regulate speech, while publicly-funded institutions must meet a higher bar. Right-wing figures claim that social media platforms have, in the past, suppressed their speech. One of the first policy changes Elon Musk made on X (formerly Twitter) was to unban suspended users, something all internet platforms can elect to do because they are privately held. But they must also operate in accordance with their own rules: here are the regulations each platform claims to abide by.
Eight free speech cases will come before the Supreme Court in the next term.
What we want to go viral:
Neil highlights the work of Marian Burros, a New York Times food journalist and cookbook author who died last weekend at the age of 92. Pete Wells’s “Her Torte Will Outlast Us All” (New York Times, September 23, 2025) tells the story of Burros’s classic dessert, the plum torte, originally published in 1983. It is the all-time most requested recipe from The New York Times food section.
Catching up on unread magazines, Claire was mesmerized by Ezra Marcus and Jen Wieczner’s hair-raising tale about the crypto world, “The Crypto Maniacs and the Torture Townhouse,” (New York Magazine, August 11, 2025) The article describes a criminal atmosphere that a lack of regulation, or institutional checks-and-balances, cultivates.
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Short takes:
Are calls for civility a distraction from understanding the stakes of political disagreement? “The people who call for civility harbor the belief that we can contend with challenging ideas, and we can be open to changing our minds and we can be well mannered even in the face of significant differences,” New York Times opinion writer Roxane Gay argues. “For such an atmosphere to exist, we would have to forget everything that makes us who we are. We would have to believe, despite so much evidence to the contrary, that the world is a fair and just place. And we would have to have nothing at stake.” (September 24, 2025)
At The Deviant Dispatch, DJ Gay Panic reports on the anger in Fire Island New York’s historically queer towns when officials lowered flags to half-mast in honor of Charlie Kirk (as per President Trump’s orders.) “Since apparently pride flags have to fly at the same height as American flags, the people of Cherry Grove lowered the Pride flags as well,” Panic writes, despite the fact that New York State elected not to change its flag status to honor Kirk. “Clearly the President doesn’t care about federal protocol, so why should gay people?” Panic continues. “Charlie Kirk called trans people ‘a middle finger to God,’ so why would we lower the trans flag in honor of his death?” (September 20, 2025)
