Alexander Willis

President Donald Trump complained for minutes on end during his address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday about what he perceived as a real estate snub in the early 2000s to renovate the U.N. building in New York City, New York.

“Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York known as Donald J. Trump bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex, I remember it so well,” Trump said in his address to close to 150 world leaders.

“I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It'd be beautiful, I used to talk about ‘I'm going to give you the best of everything; you're going to have mahogany walls, they're going to give you plastic.’”

Trump did, in fact, make a bid in the early 2000s to renovate the U.N. building, though his offer was ultimately rejected, a rejection that reportedly enraged Trump, who went on to appeal the rejection, and even make an offer to waive his fee should he be awarded the contract.

Trump went on to complain about his rejected offer before the several dozen world leaders, alleging that the company that was ultimately awarded the project “did not know what they were doing when it came to construction,” and that he had accurately predicted that the project would see “massive cost overruns.

“I turned out to be right, they had massive cost overruns and spent between $2 trillion and $4 billion on the building, and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them!” Trump continued.

A Pennsylvania school board member is stepping down from her duties after an online post she made – purportedly about gardening – was misinterpreted by her community as attacking the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

On Sept. 10, the same day Kirk was killed while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University, Homer-Center School District Board member Misty Hunt posted a message on social media: “One down, hundreds to go,” she wrote, according to a report Tuesday from The Guardian.

Kirk’s online post immediately devolved into accusations that she was celebrating Kirk’s killing, complaints that reached the school board, which in turn announced that an investigation into Hunt had been launched.

In subsequent posts, however, Hunt said that the entire fiasco had been a misunderstanding, and that she had meant for her initial online post to be accompanied by a video of milkweed seed pods flying out of her vehicle’s window. Using what she described as her “old iPhone” to upload her online post, Hunt blamed the video not being uploaded alongside her caption on being “in the abc roads near the power plant,” a location with presumably poor cell service.

“I have always been outspoken. And I own my BS. I am a big fan of free speech and I enact it quite often. But this is not one of them,” Hunt wrote in a subsequent social media post.

“It was only about butterflies and creating a space for them. The end. Gardening is my life. And I tried to share it with all of you. I won’t make that mistake again. My heart goes out to the Kirk family. No one should grow up without a parent. So for the gross misunderstanding – I apologize to all of you.”

Despite Hunt’s explanation, the school board’s Sept. 18 meeting drew a significantly larger crowd than usual, forcing officials to move the meeting’s location to a school gymnasium, where attendees voiced both outrage at and support for Hunt.

Hunt ultimately was removed from the school board’s negotiations committee according to The Guardian, and decided to step down from her duties for the immediate future.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician-turned-lawmaker who voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy as the head of Health and Human Services, is sparking backlash after raising doubts on the HHS secretary’s new report linking autism to the use of Tylenol by pregnant mothers, a claim that experts say existing data doesn’t support.

“I understand and applaud President Trump’s desire to address this issue and to support HHS,” Cassidy wrote on X Monday shortly after RFJ Jr.’s announcement linking autism to Tylenol.

“HHS should release the new data that it has to support this claim. The preponderance of evidence shows that this is not the case. The concern is that women will be left with no options to manage pain in pregnancy. We must be compassionate to this problem.”

While many X users sympathized with Cassidy’s doubts as to the legitimacy of RFK Jr.’s claims, just as many were quick to point out that he had played a pivotal role in elevating the HHS secretary to his current position, and called out what they considered to be the senators hypocrisy.

“Dude, you had the f------ chance to stand for something and you didn’t do it,” wrote Joanne Carducci, who goes by “JoJoFromJerz” on X and has amassed more than one million followers.

“This is as much your fault as it is anyone else’s and we all know what you did, what you said and who you empowered. You did this, you own this.”

Journalist, Howard Cole, took a sarcastic dig at Cassidy.

“I understand and applaud your desire to address this issue and to support HHS by refusing to vote for RFK, Jr.,” Cole wrote on X to his more than 16,000 followers. “Oh, wait.”

And even fellow physicians took jabs at Cassidy, such as Raghu Venugopal, a Canadian physician who painted a picture of how the senator from Louisiana had ‘fallen from grace.’

“I hold you Dr. Cassidy as a fellow physician to a higher standard,” Venugopal wrote to his more than 15,000 followers on X. “You are now a worldwide case study [on] how a physician can fall from grace and with a pen wrought irreparable harm on children, women, adults and the elderly. You knew better Dr. Cassidy.”

The link between the use of Tylenol by pregnant mothers and autism is inconclusive, experts say, with perhaps the largest study on correlation being conducted between 1995 and 2019 using data from nearly 2.5 million children born in Sweden.

That study found that 1.42% of children exposed to acetaminophen – the active ingredient in Tylenol RFK Jr. has alleged is linked to increased rates of autism – during pregnancy were autistic, compared to 1.33% of children who were not exposed. Even with the small difference, researches say the exposure of acetaminophen could only be a correlation, and not a causation, given that pregnant mothers in poorer health may be more likely to use Tylenol during pregnancy than their peers.

The Secret Service disrupted a potential plot to “disrupt the [United Nations] General Assembly” Tuesday after seizing a cache of hundreds of computer servers and tens of thousands of SIM cards capable of disabling cellular towers or conducting surveillance, according to a report from the New York Times.

The UN General Assembly is set to meet later Tuesday morning in New York City, New York, where close to 150 world leaders will convene for its annual session. President Donald Trump is also slated to address the international body at 9:50 a.m. EST.

The potential plot to disrupt the UN General Assembly was announced shortly before the body convened by Matt McCool, Secret Service special agent in charge, who said updates to the agency’s investigation would be forthcoming.

“We will continue working toward identifying those responsible and their intent, including whether their plan was to disrupt the U.N. General Assembly and communications of government and emergency personnel during the official visit of world leaders in and around New York City,” McCool said in a video statement.

According to the New York Times, 100,000 SIM cards and 300 computer services were seized at several locations within 35 miles of the UN headquarters, and had documented “telephonic threats” made to “three high-level US government officials” earlier this spring.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is sounding the alarm over what she described as the inhumane conditions her former congressional colleague George Santos is being subjected to while incarcerated, saying they amount to “torture.”

A former Republican House representative, George Santos has been imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution, in New Jersey since late July after having been convicted of identity theft and wire fraud charges. He made frantic pleas out of concern for his own safety leading up to his sentence and, according to Greene, has been in solitary confinement for nearly 30 days as of Monday.

“They say [he’s in solitary confinement] ‘for his safety’ due to threats. I’m told he is in his cell 24 hours per day and he is only allowed to get a shower 3 times a week,” Greene wrote Monday evening in a social media post on X.

“He does not get any sunlight. He’s only allowed to buy stamps from the commissary and is drinking water from the sink… This is torture.”

Alongside her comments, Greene also shared a photo of a hand-drawn floor plan of Santos’ cell, both before and after being placed in solitary confinement. The lack of windows and small space Santos is now apparently subjected to, Greene said, has led her to call for a full pardon of her former GOP colleague.

“I have sent a letter asking for his sentence to [be] commuted, 87 months is way too long for the crimes he was sentenced for,” Greene wrote.

“There are criminals as we speak serving in Congress and many other former government officials that are criminals walking free that did far more heinous things than George Santos! George Santos had a better voting record than MOST members of Congress! Including EVERYONE who voted to expel him! Honestly, George should be pardoned!”

Santos was elected to represent part of New York in Congress in 2022, but was expelled by the House following his federal indictment, as well as after an investigation by the House Ethics Committee on his conduct. Santos was also found to have fabricated much of his life story leading up to his election victory, including falsely stating that he was Jewish and that he attended schools that had no record of his enrollment.

The Supreme Court may soon be taking up a case that seeks to undo a precedent on whether government officials can restrict religious expression at public school events — and a justice on the court is being called out for what constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel describes as a blatant conflict of interest in the matter.

That justice is Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump-appointed judge who, roughly 25 years ago, argued as a private attorney in the very case a new lawsuit now seeks to overturn.

A private Christian school in Florida sued the Florida High School Athletic Association in 2016 after the state athletic body refused to allow the school to broadcast a prayer over the loudspeakers at a public high school football game, a lawsuit that the Supreme Court is now considering taking up.

The private school is hoping for a victory, which would require the overturning of a precedent set in the year 2000 by the Supreme Court with a similar case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. The issue, Seidel argued in an analysis published Monday in Rolling Stone, is that Kavanaugh, according to federal law, should be required to recuse himself, but has yet to signal he’d step back from the case.

Kavanaugh filed a legal brief on behalf of the private Christian school in late 1999 as a private attorney at the legal firm Kirkland & Ellis, in which he argued that restricting religious expression at public schools amounted to “the full extermination of private religious speech from the public schools.”

“No fair reading of Kavanaugh’s amicus (or friend of the court) brief in the original case would leave anyone with much doubt as to which way he would rule in the new case seeking to overturn that original case,” Seidel wrote.

“...Kavanaugh’s impartiality is reasonably in doubt as the court decides whether to take up the case and rule again on the constitutionality of prayer in public schools. And that’s why he must recuse.”

Federal law clearly stipulates that members of the Supreme Court must recuse themselves from cases when their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” and the Supreme Court Code of Conduct mandates a recusal when “an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”

Media correspondent and analyst Brian Stelter argued that President Donald Trump was most likely unaware of a new controversial policy announced by his own Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the president uttered contradictory remarks on Sunday.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced that journalists would be required to sign a pledge not to obtain or report on any information not officially disseminated by the Pentagon, lest they lose their credentials. On Sunday, however, when asked whether he thought the Pentagon should be able to decide “what reporters can report on,” Trump said “no, I don’t think so.”

The only explanation for Trump’s contradictory remarks, Stelter argued, would be that the president was clueless as to his own DOD’s policy.

“My best guess is that President Trump didn't know about this new Pentagon plan because that answer makes him sound like he's on a very different page from his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, [who] all year long has been trying to limit independent news coverage of the Pentagon, of the U.S. military,” Stelter said, speaking on CNN Monday.

“Hegseth's press office has booted some news outlets, including CNN from longtime Pentagon work spaces, and has brought in pro-Trump news outlets instead. We've also seen efforts to restrict where reporters can travel within the Pentagon complex, but now, this new memo is, by far, the most severe restriction yet.”

Journalists have pushed back against the policy, many of whom have argued it violates the core tenets of the First Amendment, and would effectively cripple the ability of Pentagon reporters to do their job.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, a former Pentagon reporter himself, said that the matter was “very close to me,” and that the policy was antithetical to journalism itself.

“I spent several years as a Pentagon correspondent during the first Gulf War, and it's hard for me to believe that Pentagon reporters would lose their credentials, lose their opportunity to report from the Pentagon even if they reported some innocuous statement that hadn't been formally announced by the Pentagon,” Blitzer said. “Forget about classified information, this is unclassified information.”

New details on Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed suicide attempt inside a Manhattan jail were revealed Monday after a batch of confidential documents were obtained and reported on by CBS News.

Epstein was arrested in July of 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, but would never stand trial after being found dead in his cell on Aug. 10, 2019 in what was ultimately ruled a suicide. His death came just weeks after another apparent suicide attempt in the early morning hours of July 23 in an incident Epstein initially alleged was an attempt on his life by his cellmate.

“[Epstein] is laying on the floor and his bunkie is screaming: 'I did nothing, I banged on my door to get him out of my cell,’” said one source close to the investigation, speaking with CBS News on the condition of anonymity.

Epstein’s cellmate at the time was Nicholas Tartaglione, a former law enforcement officer who was facing charges for four murders over a drug deal gone bad. Tartaglione has repeatedly denied that he tried to kill Epstein, but details in a corrections memo exclusively obtained by CBS News suggest that Epstein feared Tartaglione well before the July 23 incident.

“Epstein expressed concern about his cellmate the day before the incident, according to a corrections memo and a source who agreed to speak with CBS News on the condition they not be identified,” the report from CBS News reads.

“Epstein claimed to both the corrections officer and the source that he felt threatened by Tartaglione, a hulking retired cop-turned-drug-dealer, who was charged and later convicted for four murders.”

According to the memo, Epstein had feared Tartaglione long before making his concerns known to correctional officers, but had declined to voice them out of fear of retaliation, telling officers that “his bunkie told him that if he beat him up because of [Epstein’s child sex-trafficking] charges, the officers would not report it,” according to the memo.

Epstein told correctional officers that he had received violent threats from Tartaglione “for a week” leading up to the July 23 incident, and that he believed Tartaglione was trying “to extort” him.

The memo also detailed Tartaglione’s account of what happened that night.

“Jeff, what [are you] doing?” Tartaglione asked Epstein in the early morning hours of July 23, according to a separate memo.

Tartaglione told correctional officers that he, sleeping on a mattress on the floor beside Epstein, who had taken the bottom mattress in a bunk bed, felt something hit his legs. After turning on the light, Tartaglione told officers he observed Epstein sitting slumped on the floor “leaning to the side with his eyes opened” and with fabric around his neck, though unresponsive."

Epstein would go on to be placed on suicide watch the following day, on July 24, but taken off suicide watch on July 29, just five days before his death. In the days leading up to his death, the internal memos also reveal that Epstein was feeling optimistic for his future, telling correctional officers he was “too much of a coward” to kill himself, and that he “denied feeling hopeless” and was “reporting positive future plans and reasons to live for.”

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) fired off on his congressional colleague Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Monday after being mocked for a previous attack the Florida Republican made about “leftism” being a “mental illness.”

Last Wednesday, Fine shared a video on X of a man wearing a dog mask rolling on the floor and behaving like the animal, a bizarre scene that he attributed to “leftism.”

“If we don’t tackle this mental illness, this is what will be roaming our streets all across America,” Fine wrote. “Leftism must be crushed.”

On Sunday, Swalwell poked fun at Fine’s online post, sharing it alongside the caption: “No one needs to see footage from your bachelor party.”

Clearly unhappy with Swalwell’s jab, Fine launched into an attack on his congressional colleague over his past acquaintance with a woman suspected of being a spy for the Chinese government.

“Your little Chinese spy girlfriend did wear the mask well,” Fine wrote in a post on X Monday.

The woman Fine was referring to is Fang Fang, who was suspected of targeting American politicians as part of a Chinese intelligence operation, a 2020 Axios report found. One of her suspected targets was Swalwell.

“Fang took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, according to a Bay Area political operative and a current U.S. intelligence official,” the Axios report reads. “Swalwell’s office was directly aware of these activities on its behalf, the political operative said. That same political operative, who witnessed Fang fundraising on Swalwell's behalf, found no evidence of illegal contributions.”

Despite Fang having fundraised for Swalwell, and posing for a photo with him, no evidence exists that the two had an intimate relationship, despite several viral social media posts suggesting otherwise.

Fine’s attack on Swalwell was also promptly ridiculed by some X users, including user “MDR82,” who frequently shares content from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and has amassed more than 1,100 followers.

As the deadline for Congress to pass a spending bill fast approaches, Republican lawmakers have been left stunned after learning of how Democratic lawmakers plan to hold firm and refuse to cooperate with a GOP budget proposal.

Were a spending bill not to be adopted by the beginning of fiscal year 2026, which kicks off Oct. 1, the government would be unable to function and be forced to shut down. In recent years, such standoffs typically see Democrats push for what’s known as a continuing resolution: a temporary stopgap funding bill that continues spending at existing levels for several weeks, thereby giving Congress more time to hash out a more long-term spending bill.

This time, however, it's Republicans who are pushing for a CR and Democrats demanding budget concessions, catching many GOP lawmakers off guard.

“My brain’s falling out of my head,” said Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), speaking with Politico in a report published Monday. “When you talk about the Freedom Caucus talking about passing a CR and the Democrats saying, ‘I’m going to shut down the government.’ I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”

The big question for Democratic lawmakers is how to permanently shore up subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, with existing subsidies set to expire this year. The issue has divided the GOP, with many Republican lawmakers admitting that failing to extend funding for the ACA could become a major political liability for the party in the upcoming midterm elections.

It’s this wedge between Republicans that Democrats are now hoping to exploit, and under the threat of shutting down the government, while at the same time laying blame on the Trump administration and the GOP in the process.

“Everything they’re doing is designed to protect their dismantling of Medicaid and the health care system, and we made a very emphatic statement that we are going to stand strong,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), speaking with Politico.

Republican lawmakers remained shocked at the dynamic playing out in real time, with one House Republican – speaking with Politico on the condition of anonymity – saying they felt like they were in “the Twilight Zone” in witnessing their colleagues support a CR, and Democrats, oppose it.

President Donald Trump has attacked Democrats for refusing to go along with a CR, accusing them of wanting to “shut down the country.” But Trump’s critics note that despite his animosity toward Democrats, he needs them if he ultimately does want to avoid a government shutdown.

“I know the president may not want to acknowledge checks and balances, [but] he can’t do this with Republican-only votes,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), speaking with Politico.

President Donald Trump’s speech Sunday at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk quickly devolved into familiar remarks about targeting his political opponents — remarks that were promptly ridiculed Monday by a panel on CNN.

As the last speaker at the event, which was reportedly attended by around 200,000 people, Trump paid tribute to Kirk as the “greatest evangelist for American liberty,” but also used his speech as an opportunity to announce that his Justice Department was investigating “networks of radical left maniacs,” and declared that he hated his political opponents.

CNN’s Audie Cornish said she was “a little surprised” to hear such comments during what was a memorial service and celebration of life, to which senior CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere said he wasn’t.

“I mean, no, because Donald Trump gives the same speech no matter what venue he's in, even at what was supposed to be a funeral or celebration of Charlie Kirk's life. It was a rally speech,” Dovere said.

“When we see the things that are being done in the name of Charlie Kirk's killing and responding to it, many of them are things that the president and top aides around him have been talking about doing for a long time. Trump, here, is using Kirk's assassination as a pretext for pursuing more political investigations.”

The Justice Department has been stripped of more than 94% of its lawyers tasked with fighting government corruption since President Donald Trump took office in January, according to several ex-DOJ employees.

“To me, it just screams that public corruption cases are no longer a priority of DOJ,” said Andrew Tessman, former assistant U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. and the Southern District of West Virginia, who left the agency this month. He was speaking with NOTUS in a report published Monday.

“I cannot understand why we would want to restrict that section.”

According to the ex-DOJ employees, some of whom spoke with NOTUS on the condition of anonymity, the DOJ had 36 attorneys who were tasked to investigate corrupt law enforcement and government officials when Trump took office. Today, that number has been whittled down to two.

“In a stripped-down office, the consulting function becomes nominal, if it exists at all,” said Michael Romano, who spent more than 17 years working at the DOJ as a prosecutor, and was among those 36 attorneys investigating government and law enforcement corruption cases.

“It sort of exists on paper so the government can say it exists and claim to be complying with the law. But if you want people to provide legitimate oversight, guidance and expertise, you can’t do that with a team of two. In reality, the advising function becomes a box-checking exercise.”

Trump’s DOJ has also reversed a relevant section of its “Justice Manual” – a comprehensive policy manual that lays out the agency’s internal rules, principles and procedures – specifically, the section detailing campaign finance law and corruption violations. It now states that the section is being “revised,” and that it is temporarily “suspended while revisions are ongoing.”

When pressed by NOTUS, a DOJ spokesperson did not respond to direct questions about the stripping down of the agency’s team tasked with investigating government and law enforcement corruption, only giving the outlet a generic response that the agency “takes public corruption seriously.”

Former Trump official and conservative commentator Steve Bannon reignited his feud with Elon Musk Saturday after urging the South African native to be deported to his home country on his podcast “War Room.”

Bannon’s comments came shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring all companies to pay a $100,000 annual fee for every employee hired through an H-1B visa, an announcement that sent shockwaves through the corporate world, much of which has become reliant on cheap foreign labor.

Bannon has historically feuded with Musk over H-1B visas, with Bannon calling them a form of “indentured servitude,” and Musk, championing them and pledging to “go to war on this issue.”

“We started this drama in Mar-a-Lago I guess in late December, early January where I got into it with Vivek Ramaswamy and the great 'Elmo' Musk,” Bannon said. “By the way, he's totally illegal, he came in on an H-1B scam and then scammed the whole thing about his record.”

Bannon also mentioned recent calls from MAGA lawmakers to deport Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a sitting member of Congress and United States citizen, for her criticism of Charlie Kirk’s past controversial comments in the wake of his killing.

“If you want to go after Omar – and I do, to toss her out of the country and send her back to the horn of Africa – I want to toss out Elon 'Elmo' and send him back to South Africa, because he's here on a different version of the scam,” Bannon continued. “...Screw you, dude! You're a foreigner that is taking advantage of foreign labor at the detriment of American citizens.”

Musk’s company Tesla is heavily reliant on H-1B visas, having brought in 724 employees from the program in 2023 alone. Musk himself entered the United States on a similar visa.

The clash between the two over H-1B visas stems back to late last year, and exploded into the public in June after Bannon first urged the Trump administration to launch a probe into Musk’s immigration status, and his alleged use of illegal drugs.

With Trump’s latest announcement, however, an announcement expected to significantly reduce the use of H-1B visas in the United States, Bannon also took a moment to gloat for having gained ground on the debate.

“Given where we were at the beginning of this fight in January, and this was going to be the hill that Elon Musk died on... he's bleeding out a little bit, isn't he, from where President Trump has come?” Bannon said.

In a fit of rage, President Donald Trump demanded thousands of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States to “get [the] hell out of our country,” accusing the Venezuelan government of sending “monsters” to American shores.

He went on to warn that an "incalculable price” would be paid were the migrants not removed “right now.”

“We want Venezuela to immediately accept all of the prisoners, and people from mental institutions, which includes the Worst in the World Insane Asylums, that Venezuelan ‘Leadership’ has forced into the United States of America,” Trump wrote in an online post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“Thousands of people have been badly hurt, and even killed, by these ‘Monsters.’ GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY, RIGHT NOW, OR THE PRICE YOU PAY WILL BE INCALCULABLE!”

There are an estimated 770,000 Venezuelan migrants living in the United States, just less than 2% of all migrants living in the country. Trump, however, has increased his adversarial rhetoric toward Venezuela in recent months over accusations that the country’s leadership under President Nicolas Maduro has intentionally trafficked narcotics to American shores.

In just this week, President Donald Trump has sued the New York Times for $15 billion over its negative coverage of him, suggested that broadcasters who criticize him should potentially have their licenses revoked, and celebrated the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel as "great news for America.”

And for many of Trump’s diehard supporters – self-styled ‘defenders of free speech’ – defending the president has meant twisting themselves “into painful mental contortions” to reconcile their purported beliefs with his recent actions, Jonathan Chait argued Saturday in a column for The Atlantic.

“We should spare a thought for the party’s more conflicted wing, the anti-anti-Trump conservatives… they profess support for free speech, democracy, and the rule of law while attempting to remain Republicans in good standing,” Chait wrote with tongue in cheek.

“...It is a survival strategy, and not a pleasant way to spend four years. That which causes the natcons unremitted joy forces the anti-anti-Trumpers into painful mental contortions. No event to date has given them more anguish than Trump’s gleeful defenestration of Kimmel.”

Kimmel was suspended “indefinitely” this week after receiving scrutiny over a comment he made on the suspected killer of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, comments that suggested he was aligned with MAGA.

The decision to oust Kimmel was reportedly made by top Disney executives, a decision that critics say was made, in part, to curry favor with the Trump administration amid a pursuit of a $6 billion merger, which ultimately would need approval from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission.

Chait pointed to a number of “anti-anti-Trumpers” who he argued had conceded that while the optics of Kimmel’s ousting “looked bad,” it was still consistent with Trump being a champion for free speech.

“Ilya Shapiro, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argued on X that Kimmel was fired because his show ‘was losing money’ – ‘there was thus no govt coercion here.’ But, he allowed, ‘FCC statements were unhelpful because makes it look like threat of govt action for bad viewpoints,’” Chait wrote.

“The conservative commentator Mike Solana insisted that, despite the perception that Trump ordered Kimmel off the air, ‘this didn’t happen.’ Rather, Solana elaborated on X, ‘jimmy’s ratings were abysmal. he spread a conspiracy theory about kirk. two major affiliates refused to carry his show. ABC fired him.’”

Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead the FCC, directly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses from ABC, which is owned by Disney, warning them “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“Awkwardly, these comments do make it seem like Trump may very well be extorting the networks by threatening their broadcast licenses so they’ll remove his critics from the airwaves,” Chait wrote.

“But surely there’s another innocent if convoluted explanation for these facts brewing in the minds of the not-yet-openly authoritarian Republican elite. Their future in the party may depend on it.”