First post removed for posting a gif of the Kirk fountain. He was alive in this frame of the video.

How are you spending this, the first Kirkiversary, everyone?

Matthew 26:52

Tweto https://x.com/blandCinema/status/2098049765346811904

By https://x.com/booyahbornu/status/2098057288632148413

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel told viewers Wednesday night that his show was pulling an interview with Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico from ABC stations amid threats from President Donald Trump's Federal Communications Commission, which press freedom groups are describing as another effort by the administration to "chill" the speech of the president's critics.

“Out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television,” the host said on Wednesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

He added that the interview “will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV.”

It's the second time a major US network has opted to spike a late-night interview with Talarico following FCC pressure. In February, CBS lawyers preemptively stopped Stephen Colbert from conducting an interview with the candidate over what they said were fears of retaliation from the agency, whose chair, Brendan Carr, has threatened to strip broadcast licenses from networks that give Trump unfavorable coverage.

Carr has confirmed that the FCC had opened an investigation and started an "enforcement proceeding" into ABC over whether Talarico's appearance on *"*The View" violated the equal-time rule, which requires that broadcast stations that host political candidates must give their opponents an equal opportunity to appear as well.

Late-night shows have long been considered exempt from this rule as “bona fide news interview” programs. But a public notice issued by the FCC Media Bureau in January stated that programs that advance “partisan” goals, including talk shows, would no longer be considered as such. Carr has said programs he considers to be “fake news” may not qualify for an exemption.

Kimmel on Wednesday emphasized the "unusual circumstances" of his network's decision to cancel the interview with Talarico.

"For the whole 20-plus years of our show, I've been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all... from Hillary Clinton, to Ted Cruz, to Donald Trump himself," he said.

Kimmel noted that when he interviewed Trump during his first presidential run in 2015, he seemed to have no issue with political candidates appearing on his show and eagerly returned for more interviews.

"For some reason, and I can't seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed," Kimmel joked. "Now that he's president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations—based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like."

For that reason, he said, if viewers "want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' YouTube channel."

"Thank goodness we have that," Kimmel said. "Because in the America we have right now, that is the best that we can do, until November, of course."

In August, ABC parent company Disney sued the FCC on First Amendment grounds following the agency’s unusual request for its eight ABC stations to submit their broadcast renewal requests several years in advance, which it described as part of a “retaliatory campaign” against the network's negative coverage of Trump.

The complaint notes that ABC has felt compelled to alter its editorial judgment in order to avoid further retaliation, including passing on interviews with several other political candidates it felt would invite Trump's ire and choosing to air a lie-filled Trump address about supposed election fraud, which it noted it "ordinarily would not have done."

Last September, ABC briefly removed Kimmel from the air following direct threats from Carr to strip ABC stations of their broadcast licenses, which came after a critical monologue from the late-night host about Trump and Republicans in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The complaint notes Carr’s use of explicit coercion to pressure ABC to remove Kimmel, including telling the network that it could proceed “the easy way or the hard way."

Kimmel emphasized what he said was the political nature of the pressure campaign against him and the network, which has continued even after he was reinstated. Republicans, he said, "are very nervous about the midterms and very rightly so," as they are "in serious danger of losing 'bigly.'"

"They are in danger of losing a Senate seat in Texas of all places," he said to cheers from the crowd, "where James Talarico is leading a piece of human silly putty named Ken Paxton there," according to several recent polls.

Press freedom and civil liberties organizations described Carr's threats to networks as part of an effort to chill critical speech on behalf of the president, one that is ratcheting up as the midterms approach.

Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications for Free Press, told Common Dreams that Carr's "unconstitutional crusade against a free press has a clear bias against individuals and outlets that President Trump doesn't like."

"Combine that with Trump's desperation in the face of electoral polling that shows people ready to change political course come November, and you can see the real reason driving Carr's reckless fixation with silencing opposing views," Karr said.

Karr argued that networks were unnecessarily casting aside their rights to editorial judgment out of fear of retaliation.

"For years, the FCC has been very clear that bona fide news interviews, including on late-night talk shows, are entitled to editorial discretion," Karr said. "Carr's ongoing efforts to take this discretion away are part and parcel of his campaign to transform broadcast media into full-time megaphones for Trumpist propaganda."

He said, "What's doubly worrying is that many of these broadcast networks are too eager to cave to Trump and Carr's demands when the First Amendment is clearly on their side."

Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, concurred, telling Common Dreams that the FCC "abusing its rules to chill speech" is "particularly problematic before an election, when voters need more information, not less."

Bob Corn-Revere, the chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told Common Dreams it was “another day, another chilling effect on broadcast speech," adding that ”nothing about the FCC’s actions is normal—or legal.“

Shiva Stella, the legal director at Public Knowledge, emphasized that networks capitulating helps to cement a climate of fear.

"This is a classic chilling effect," Stella told Common Dreams. "Once the FCC threatens stations over editorial decisions, it does not need to repeat the threat every time. Broadcasters begin changing their programming to avoid retaliation."

“The FCC needs to stop using its power to bully news organizations into silencing voices it simply disagrees with,” added Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, in a statement to Common Dreams.

“When broadcasters alter decisions because they fear government retaliation," he said, "that damage extends beyond a single program and threatens the independence of the entire press and the public’s access to information. Which, unfortunately, seems to be the intent in this case.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about a shift in the Pentagon's boat bombing operations, in which the US in recent days has begun interdicting suspected refueling vessels for drug boats in Ecuador's territorial waters—but he made clear that the military is also still killing people aboard boats, as it did Wednesday in the latest bombing in the Caribbean.

US Southern Command announced that Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—the recently rebranded name of the Trump administration's expanding military operation that it says is aimed at stopping drug trafficking—had executed its latest "lethal kinetic strike" on a boat operating along known "narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean," killing three people that the US claimed were "narco-terrorists."

"Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking," said US Southern Command, releasing no evidence of the boat's illegal activities.

International legal experts have emphasized that the US is not in an authorized military conflict with drug cartels and that drug trafficking under international law is treated as a crime by law enforcement agencies—not as an act of force that the US can legally respond to with military action.

Officials and military service members involved in the strikes may be liable for war crimes or murder, experts have warned. Some of the at least 230 victims of the boat bombings since last September have been identified, with family members saying they were not even involved in drug trafficking.

Historian Alexander Aviña used the term "serial killer empire" to describe the Trump administration after the latest bombing.

Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America noted that the announcement by US Southern Command Wednesday night was the first in more than a year of attacks in which the strike order was "not attributed to a person."

Isacson also pointed out that according to Customs and Border Patrol data, there is little, if any, evidence that bombing boats and killing crew members and passengers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean has done anything to stop the flow of drugs into the US.

Outside the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Rubio told reporters Wednesday that as the US also begins conducting joint operations with Ecuador to interdict suspected refueling vessels in the country's territorial waters, "we have to operate according to their laws."

In those operations, people aboard the boats have been removed and handed over to Ecuadorian authorities before the US has conducted strikes.

Rubio at one point referred to the lethal boat bombings as operations that took place "earlier, last year," but also emphasized, "We still blow up ships if need be."

Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group said the administration is continuing its campaign of "illegal killing in a make-believe war."

The latest boat bombing also came as Rubio announced that the US was designating Los Tiguerones, an Ecuadorian gang, as a foreign terrorist organization, empowering the administration to freeze the group's assets in US financial institutions.

The designation does not give the US the legal authority to carry out military strikes against Los Tiguerones or other gangs the administration has designated as terrorist groups—but a key element of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere's expansion in Latin America has been joint military operations, including a US-Ecuadorian joint attack on a dairy farm where officials had claimed drug traffickers were operating.

The new designation "is part of [the administration's] narrative about a new 'War on Terror' against the narcos," said Finucane.

Glaeldys González Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told The New York Times that Los Tiguerones has had diminishing power and influence in Ecuador in recent years and expressed surprise at the designation.

Ecuadorian gangs "operate at the lowest links of the chain" of drug trafficking operations in Latin America, González told the Times. “They provide services, like moving cargo from point A to point B. Ecuadorian groups are not decisive, they aren’t major players.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

By https://x.com/PortugueseGeese/status/2098044279436300462

He couldn't see that well