Trump Administration Stomps On Free Speech, Anything Could Be Targeted. Even This Little Blog

The whole Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha this week really 
crystalizes whether the First Amendment can
 survive Donald Trump. That matters to whether
this blog can continue, and much more 
importantly, whether you and everyone else
in American can continue to think 
and speak freely. 

 UPDATE 9/23/25: As you might have seen on the news, ABC has decided to return Jimmy Kimmel's show to the air, starting tonight, September 23.

However, ABC stations owned by Sinclair and Nexstar will not air the show. 

Likely because they have upcoming business moves coming up that need FCC approval and they don't want to get in trouble. 

So government censorship is still ongoing here 

That ABC reversed course does show that public pressure does work. It also shows that standing up to bullies is effective. 

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

I'll start with a disclaimer: 

This post won't seem entirely related to weather and climate like usual, but it's an important topic. The future of real information and freedom and free speech is very much at stake. As is the risk of authoritarianism. 

As I'm sure you've heard you might have heard, Jimmy Kimmel's late night show was "pre-empted indefinitely" Wednesday. All for supposedly insensitive remarks regarding this month's murder of Charlie Kirk.

We're hearing a lot about Jimmy Kimmel and he's going to come up a lot in this post. But this isn't really about Jimmy Kimmel. It's about us. Essentially under Donald Trump's regime, we are all potential Jimmy Kimmels. Or worse. 

The whole thing this week is part of a fast-rising push by Donald Trump and his minions to block  anything but adoring praise for our Orange god. 

It's fascist and stomps all over the First Amendment, but here we are.  

Trump's idea of "free speech" is only speech that he likes. He claimed the other day that 97 percent of the news stories about him are negative. "I think that's really illegal, personally."

Even if his 97 percent figure was true, which it isn't, there would be nothing "illegal" about it. And he prefaced that statement with "I'm a very strong person for free speech."

Sure, Jan. 

No wonder the late night talk show hosts have been mocking him.  

Naturally, Trump is apparently going after late night comedians and daytime talk show hosts first.  Unlike his predecessors in the Oval Office, he is too much of our Snowflake In Chief  to withstand the usual late night comics digs and zings against presidents. 

Trump's administration pushed CBS to announce plans to end Stephen Colbert's show. He has repeatedly said he intends to end the late night comedy/talk shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. 

That he's going after comedians first is telling. 

"Comedy does not change the world, but it's a bellwether. We're the banana peel in the coal mine. When a society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first," Jon Stewart said during his 2022 Mark Twain Award acceptance speech. 

Stewart was prescient, wasn't he?.

This blog is not a big target. Yet. Mostly because I'm really not much of a comedian. And I'm really small potatoes. But you have to wonder, as Stewart said, that if comedians are the first target the rest of us are next.   

We've already seen a bunch of people get fired after Trump's MAGA gang of internet trolls went after people who inadequately grieved over Charlie Kirk. 

I have been critical of the Trump administration's policies or lack thereof on NOAA, the National Weather Service, climate change and other related topics. 

I criticized the DOGE firing of hundreds of National Weather Service employees. I condemned cutbacks on meteorological and climate research. I've mocked Trump on his stance that climate change is a "hoax".  I'm working on a piece now about how some of  his Congressional minions held a conspiracy theory-filled House hearing on weather modification batshittery. 

So, I figure eventually the Trump people, or at least his ragtag social media censorship army will come along to stop all this. But I'll keep going, as everybody who knows me understands it's really hard to shut me up. 

It's not about me, though. It's about you. Unless somebody stops this, we are headed to a point where anything you say might get you in trouble. Even if you like Trump but say something "wrong." 

HOW KIMMEL HAPPENED

There are a lot of offensive things going on here, but Kimmel is not the problem. 

Let's pick it apart, like everyone else seems to be doing. 

Given the atmosphere, I must offer my Captain Obvious opinion on Kirk's death. The murder was horrible, abhorrent and was incredibly wrong no matter how you slice it.   Kirk absolutely did not deserve it. I hope the person who pulled the trigger is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

I'm not saying this to be nice, or to be "correct." Or to please Trump and his merry band of MAGA warriors. It's how I feel and it's how everyone I talked to about it feels.

Anyway,  Trump demanded, and ABC/Disney wimpishly agreeing to suspend Jimmy Kimmel from his late night show for saying something accurate, speaking truth to power, but in the process displeasing our snowflake King "president" Trump.

Here's Kimmel's supposedly objectionable statement: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it."

Notice that sentence, inelegant as it is,  doesn't characterize Kirk one way or another. It also doesn't precisely speculate on the motives behind the assassination. 

Kimmel went on to mock Trump for answering a question about Kirk's death by bragging about White House ballroom construction. 

Trump supporters would have you believe that it was just a private decision by Disney-owned ABC  and Nexstar, the largest owner of television stations in the U.S.,to yank Kimmel off the air. An outfit called Sinclair also owns a lot of ABC affiliates, and wanted Kimmel pulled, too.

Well, if someone says something to make a corporation makes "look bad," they can fire him, right?

Sure, it happens all the time. But what's really going on is an ugly Intersection of fascism and money.

Nexstar needs FCC approval for a deal to acquire an outfit called Tegan. The mega-merger would reach 80 percent of U.S households. But the FCC would have to bend the rules, since a longstanding rule prevents any one company from reaching 39 percent of U.S. households.

Enter Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr. He said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way......These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead." 

Basically, he said,  "Nice network and TV stations you got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to them." Even right wing Republican Ted Cruz correctly criticized Carr's remarks as "right out of Goodfellas."

THE EFFECTS

You see how cute Carr and the rest of the Trumpsters are being with this. They can just say it was ABC and the television stations' decision. Never mind that they did so with a threat of a government crackdown. 

That's where the First Amendment comes in. If I'm your boss and you say something objectionable, in most cases I can fire you. But the First Amendment prohibits the government from suppressing free speech. Even if it's objectionable speech. . 

Apparently, the Trumpsters don't believe in the Constitution. 

Even if courts or somebody resists this trampling of First Amendment rights, free speech has been chilled, which is exactly what Trump wants. 

You can see it on other shows. The women on the ABC show "The View" always weigh in on the top news headlines of the day. They were silent on Kimmel's situation. Because Trump has already criticized that show so they figure they're on the cusp of being canceled.

Carr has already put "The View" in his cross hairs.   

Trump has also said other talk show hosts like Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon should be off the air, too, since they mock the Fearless Leader. Jon Stewart and his friends at "The Daily Show" are somewhat more out of reach of the Trump for now because they are Comedy Central, which isn't licensed by the FCC.

However,  Comedy Central is owned by Paramount Skydance Corp, which has also bended the knee to Trump's demands before. 

PATRIOTISM

To their credit, late night hosts are so far now cowed by Trump. On the day after Kimmel's firing, or suspension or whatever you want to call it, the comedians rallied around Kimmel, and more importantly, the First Amendment. 

Stewart's opening monologue was a mocking version of groveling acquiescence to Trump.  Stephen Colbert began his monologue saying "With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. And if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive."

To be blunt, ABC was incredibly unpatriotic in suspending Kimmel. The put money before country, and look where that got them.

People are dropping their ABC/Disney/ESPN subscriptions in droves. They're canceling Disney vacations and Disney cruises. It's too soon to say how big a financial hit ABC will take, and whether the hit will last long. 

 Trump and his team are actually besmirching Kirk's legacy.  I had a LOT of problems with what much of Kirk said while he was alive. But he really was a free speech advocate. Kirk said the Constitution protected even what he would regard as ugly, gross or evil speech.

 I wonder if Kirk would agree with what's going on if he were still alive. 

There are of course consequences for free speech. And if those consequences don't come from the government, that's mostly OK. Not always fair, not always targeted correctly, but at least the free market that Republicans used to embrace did its job. 

The trouble with all this is it leads to just one voice in the media - from the Trump regime. The ultimate goal might be to have no independent journalism. Whatever the government says would be the "truth."  

That never ends well. Look it up in your history books.  

Readers who are fans of Trump should also understand that his regime can turn on you if you say or do one wrong thing. MAGA always says they stand for freedom. If you really love freedom, this is your moment to speak up. 

 I don't whether somebody from the regime will try to shut me and everybody else down or not, because they don't like what we say and do. 

But remember, there's millions of us and only a relative few of them. We can still win this. Peacefully, with creativity, and resolve, and humor and persistence. 

It's time to be loud, folks!

U.S. Sues Vermont, Other States Over Climate Laws

Donald Trump had her minion, AG Pam Bondi sue 
four states, including Vermont, to try and strike
down their climate laws. 

 As widely expected, the U.S. Justice Department, if you can call it that now, has sued Vermont over its climate "superfund" law.  

Vermont was one of four states targeted in this lawsuit. New York's climate "superfund" law, which is similar to Vermont's is also under the gun. 

The DOJ also filed lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan over their plans for legal action against fossil fuel companies for harms created by climate change, as the Associated Press reported. 

These DOJ actions were widely expected

Back in April. Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting, among other things, Vermont's climate superfund law, saying the law "extorts" energy producers. The order directed U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi to investigate going after Vermont and other states with similar laws.

Bondi has clearly followed orders. 

"These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country's economic and national security," Bondi bleated in a written statement. Bondi said she's trying to stop "these illegitimate impediments to the product of affordable, reliable energy that Americans deserve."

Vermont officials haven't officially reacted much to the DOJ lawsuit, at least not yet. The AP reports  Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark is looking forward to representing Vermont in this case. Gove Phil Scott had not immediately responded to a request for comment at the time of the AP inquired. 

Other Vermonters were more combative. 

"The fact that it has gotten the attention of the White House in my mind tells me we're doing something right right now, because just from what were seeing from the Trump administration, it tells me this is an important law that other states should follow suit on," Vermont State Sen. Anne Watson D/P -Washington County told WCAX.

As has so often happened with Trump executive orders, and his efforts to dictatorially bend people to his will, Bondi's announcement will just add to the huge and growing pile of expensive lawsuits Trump has inspired against him.

The fossil fuel industry was already in litigation against Vermont's law, so this just duplicates efforts. Sure, having the added weight of Trump (literally and figuratively) behind them might help the fossil fuel industry. 

But I do want to hope against hope that this plays out fairly in the courts. 

If, under the Constitution or existing federal law that Vermont's climate superfund is genuinely illegal, then fine, we'll know.

Vermonters tend to be fine with the rule of law, but they're not OK with bullies. Vermont on its own of course can't defeat Trump's efforts.  But he's pretty unwise to mess with this Brave Little State. 

 

NOAA Trouble: DOGE Security Breaches, Threatened Major Budget Cuts, Firings, Public Safety Threatened

The DOGE and Trump ongoing attacks against 
NOAA and the National Weather Service aren't 
really about cost cutting as they'd have you believe.
It's all about denying reality while enriching
the billionaire and corporate class at
the expense of the rest of us. 

The oligarch tech bros and their master Elon Musk are now after NOAA and the National Weather Service. 

Which I guess is fine if you want a future where if a tornado bearing down as a complete surprise, because there was no decent National Weather Service to warn you about it.  

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE is attacking NOAA just like is many other federal departments.  Since NOAA is primarily a science-oriented organization, we can't have that! To the MAGA crowd, Science = Bad.  

The fantasy is that if you deny science and reality, things will just do what you want.  

Until reality bites you in the butt.   

Those bitten butts clearly haven't happened yet, so Trump and Musk and the MAGA crowd continue to have their gleeful field day. 

CUTS AND JOB LOSS

The DOGE crowd is already telling NOAA employees to get ready to pack their bags. 

Per CBS News:

"Former NOAA officials told CBS News that current employees have been told to expect a 50 percent reduction in staff and budget cuts of 30 percent." 

Not that Congress or anybody else in Washington seems to care, but Musk and his snotty-nosed frat pack bros in his DOGE troupe aren't the ones that are supposed to be cutting staff and budgets.  (I swear when somebody asks the parents of these young bucks how/what they're doing, they change the subject).

Congress has the power of the purse. President Trump can of course propose big budget and staff cuts and ask Congress to approve them. Which they might, since so many in Congress are his fan boys and girls. 

So we're so far just standing by while Trump and Musk and their minions circumvent the Constitution in their oligarchical, billionaire ways.

Of course, if there is waste and mismanagement at NOAA, that needs to go. A fact-based review of expenditures is a great idea. But a dictatorial purge?  As the cost of public safety?

As CNN reports:

Further staff reductions at the National Weather Service "means we have a higher - a maybe much higher probability of missing life-saving weather warnings and giving people a heads up they need," said Mary Glackin, former president of the American Meteorological Society and former high ranking NOAA official. 

Hurricane forecasting is just one area of potential trouble. 

As CNN points out, a dozen people work in the National Hurricane Center's specialist forecasting unit.  That's the staffing level that's been in effect for years, even as the number of storms increase. Cutbacks would likely harm hurricane forecasting. 

SECURITY

The big Vermont flood of July, 2023 killed two Vermonters,
but superb warnings from the National Weather 
Service prevented more deaths from this
very dangerous weather event. 

Musk and his minions are just barging into sensitive payroll and computer systems like he owns them, creating security risks, and potentially unilaterally changing payroll, systems and sensitive employee data with no oversight. 

Former NOAA officials told CBS that these DOGE bros showed up at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland and at the U.S. Commerce Department building in Washington DC . (The Commerce Department oversees NOAA like they owned the place. 

Again, per CBS:

"'They walked through security like it didn't apply to them' Andrew Rosenberg, a former deputy director  for NOAA, said of DOGE staff. 'They were there and they were going through IT systems.....They're not asking substantial questions about what NOAA does and the importance of its role. This isn't a review to figure out efficiency."

At least one Congress creature is making a bit of a public stink about this, so we'll take anything we can get. CBS News reports:

"Democratic Sen. Chris Van Holler of Maryland, who represents the state where NOAA is headquartered, said his office is investigating DOGE's work on NOAA, which includes such agencies as the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

'Hearing reports that Musk's cronies are targeting NOAA - infiltrating key systems and locking out career employees,' Van Hollen posted on X Tuesday. "NOAA is vital for weather forecasting, scientific research & more. Their critical work saves lives. My team and I are looking into this & we will not stand for it.'"

It's not just Van Hollen that's hearing about this. Aides to various Congress creatures have heard the same thing.  

SCIENCE 

Getting rid of career employees at NOAA damages the work of science and of weather forecasting, but the Trump administration is going further with this anti-science tirade 

Per Wired:

"'A number of federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. federal agency that monitors and models the oceans and atmosphere for the purpose of predicting changes in climate and weather, have received orders to temporarily cease communication with foreign nationals, including those working directly with the U.S. government, WIRED has learned."

 Wired reports that NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service had received orders to pause "all international engagements" including "foreign national colleagues" including emails "with foreign national colleagues."

It's unclear how extensive this directive extends in NOAA.  The Marine Fisheries Service deals with offshore wind energy among many other things, and Trump hates, hates offshore wind energy for some reason 

So that might be part of it. 

But, Wired's reporting gets even more ominous.

"According to another source at NOAA, the incommunicado orders extend to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. In addition to gathering data from across the federal government, NESDIS relies on a wide range of international partners. NESDIS's weather and climate data is essential not only to air transportation safety but also to combat drought, monitor coral reef destruction and safeguard railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather."

If the directive to stop communicating with foreign nationals ends up extending across NOAA, that right there cripples our ability to forecast weather.  

What goes on in the atmosphere over other countries doesn't stay there. Weather systems are interconnected globally.  A big change in the jet stream over, say, Mongolia, could well have a big influence on what kind of weather eventually happens in Peoria. 

You want an America First policy? Then you have to keep tabs on what's going on elsewhere in the world. Which means cooperating with other international meteorological an climatological organizations. We need to keep close tabs on weather conditions worldwide to help determine if we in the United States face dangerous storms. 

They of course there's climate science. You know, global warming? It affects the United States, too, though Trump seems not to think so. It's getting to the point that I'm actually starting to hope a climate-powered hurricane storm surge damages Mar-A-Lago just to teach him a lesson. After all, just because Trump decrees climate change is a hoax, doesn't make it so. Jokes on him, right?

You need global cooperation to study and combat climate change, including the effects it has on the United States. America First, indeed! 

THE GOAL

Like all the lofty talk from DOGE and Trump that they're trying to end government waste, this is largely about making billionaire and corporations richer. 

Project 2025 calls for privatizing NOAA and the National Weather Service. Here's one reason why, via The Guardian:

"....it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."

You get more details on this from NPR, which noted in one interview that websites made detailed National Weather Service data for anybody to access.  That doesn't sit well with private companies, noted Wailin Wong of the Planet Money podcast The Indicator. "If customers can get sophisticated data from the government for free, maybe they wouldn't pay for that kind of information anymore," he said, 

If you go full bore and privatize the National Weather Service, which seems to be an eventual goal here, people will need to pay for their weather forecasts. Sure, they already do in taxes. 

Each individual taxpayer in the United States spends $3 a year for all that the National Weather Service does. Everything from telling you to bring the umbrella to work with you tomorrow to telling you to hide in the basement NOW because that tornado is headed toward you. 

You can be sure a privatized system would cost all of us more, at least those of us who can afford it.  People who can't would just be out of luck.  I guess in a billionaire's mind, the poors don't deserve the warnings that would save their lives in hurricanes and floods and such.

Americans were sold on the idea of limiting government waste. I'm sold on the idea of eliminating government waste

I think many of the people who voted for Trump had gotten themselves convinced he's the guy who would combat this huge, gaping growing inequality between the billionaire class and everyone else. 

I just hope people soon realize that's not what's going on here. It's not about giving us taxpayers a break.  It's a all a grift. NOAA is the one many pieces of that grift in action. 

And we'll all be the losers because of it. Except of course for Elon Musk and his merry band of oligarchs.