Opinion
By Jeff Childers
9/20/25
Good morning, C&C, it’s finally Friday! The weekend has practically arrived. The news cycle has been shaped almost entirely by Charlie Kirk’s assassination, perhaps the most significant political killing in our lifetimes. Today’s roundup includes lot of surprises: Jimmy Kimmel story expands like JB Pritzer’s belt size, and although evidence shows lack of a government cause for his suspension, the free speech hysteria expanded just as fast; Democrats, fueled by Trump Derangement, propose what could be a terrific free speech bill; CDC vaccine committee gingerly prunes childhood vaccine requirements and the world is ending; Senate begins confirming Trump nominees in blocks; and Melbourne mayor moves to rename street outside anti-Trump business after deranged Charlie Kirk comments.
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It’s another Trump miracle! He got the Democrats to do exactly what he wanted. Let’s begin with the Jimmy Kimmel train, which kept frantically rolling yesterday as new leaked details tumbled out of the coal car. The Hollywood Reporter ran its story headlined, “How Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension Went Down: Sponsor Panic, a Defiant Host and a Painful Call.” The sub-headline added, “Disney’s Bob Iger and Dana Walden wanted to know how Kimmel was going to address the situation. Sources say he planned to defend what he said rather than ‘kowtowing’ to the outrage. Disney thought that would fan the flames.”
Haha, now we know who really got Jimmy Kimmel fired: Jimmy Kimmel.
The story has swollen to the point we must dub it Joke-gate. Hollywood Reporter carefully plotted the timeline like it was JFK’s assassination or something. It began late on Monday night when Kimmel aired his injudicious ‘joke’ alleging Kirk’s assassin was MAGA, igniting a pungent “social media s—storm.”
The next day, FCC Chair Carr chimed in, suggesting the agency might get involved. But around that time, “multiple ABC station owners” were also already calling Disney to complain about Kimmel. Disney execs called the jokester to confer, but after “multiple conversations,” his bosses learned Jimmy remained defiant and even planned to double down on his very next show.
That’s about when “the advertiser calls began to roll in.” Then ABC’s two biggest affiliates, Nexstar and Sinclair, publicly announced plans to unplug Kimmel’s show. “By this point, 66 of the roughly 200 affiliate stations had said they would not carry the episode,” the story explained. About an hour before Wednesday’s 4pm taping (the show isn’t actually ‘live’), Bob Iger had to make a fast call, before Kimmel poured more gas on the flames.
As you know, Iger suspended the show, and he had solid reasons, lots of them, and apart from anything Carr said. That said, existing FCC regulations governing “false information concerning a crime or catastrophe” fully justified Carr’s warning:
But yesterday’s growing “free speech” delirium justifies a few more comments about the story.
🔥 First, the left is making Kimmel into a firewall, to stop the firings from spreading further. They hunkered down and endured the backlash for a couple of days, but now the wildfire is reaching their celebrity town center, so it’s time to draw the line. Which is why Obama skittered out of the woodwork yesterday to defend the unamusing funnyman.
Democrats’ normal playbook is to behave so obnoxiously that the next Disney will think twice about firing the next mouthy celebrity.
Second, the media’s narrative is the same tired, old chestnut: “the dark night of fascism is descending on Hollywood!” As Tom Wolfe quipped in 1987, fascism always seems to be descending here, but it always lands on Europe. Whatever Brendan Carr did on Tuesday is a tiny crumb compared to the wedding cake of censorship Democrats have been shoving down the media’s throat for generations.
Remember Biden sending FBI agents to Facebook to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story?
Democrats have kept their tight, iron grip on media and Hollywood out of a credible threat of retaliation. For 20 years, corporate America has been taught to believe Democrats will always punish them if they don’t play progressive ball. What else, for example, are DEI requirements in federal contracting rules? It’s a plain threat: If you don’t adopt DEI, no more contracts.
But, until now, conservatives were not willing or able to play the same game.
We have soared past the point of think-tank debates. The stakes are for Western Civilization itself. The best way to get Democrats to agree to fix the problem they created is by making it into their problem. Yesterday, President Trump defiantly told reporters that one-sided broadcasters should lose their licenses. Game on.
Jimmy Kimmel is not a free speech crisis. Free speech has been under attack by Democrats in government for decades. But as boomers and Gen-Xers know, you can’t solve a bullying problem by making the kids shake hands. Somebody has to punch the bully in the nose.
And … Trump’s strategy is working. Already. Behold the next story.
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Yesterday, the New York Times ran an astonishing story headlined, “Democrats Pitch Bill to Protect Speech Targeted by Trump.” It only took one lame comedian. They’re not laughing anymore.
Without any exaggeration or hyperbole whatsoever, Representative Greg Casar (D-Tx.), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “We are in the biggest free speech crisis this country has faced since the McCarthy era.” (I’d bet Michelle’s Tahoe that Greg Casar couldn’t name three “victims” of McCarthy, but I digress.)
The Times explained that yesterday, a group of Senate and House Democrats announced their sudden and unexpected plan to introduce a bill to “bolster legal protections for people targeted by President Trump.” That’s the Times’s framing; the bill, of course, would not be limited to President Trump. Behold, in the Times’s words:
That actually sounds terrific. Had Americans enjoyed access to a law like NOPE during the pandemic, everything would have been different. This is precisely what has been missing— a viable way for ordinary citizens to sue the government over speech suppression.
As the Democrats well know, the secret sauce is including the right to recover attorney’s fees. That way, public interest lawyers can take these difficult cases even if the client is broke. Clients shouldn’t have to fund these cases anyway.
If the stars in the sky were federal statutes, then only a few tiny, distant dots would represent laws allowing citizens to sue the government. The rest of the sky and the vast arrays of constellations are shielded from suit by a firmament called “sovereign immunity,” which is a blanket rule precluding citizens’ cases against the government absent an authorizing law.
Defying all prediction, somehow, Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension (he isn’t even fired!) has now prompted Democrats into proposing a real solution for one of conservatives’ biggest complaints: the egregious excesses of Twitter files censorship. Since we haven’t yet seen it, who knows whether the NOPE bill’s text will actually have teeth. But things are obviously moving in the right direction.
🔥 The turnaround was so astonishing that you could even call it miraculous. Democrats have not exactly championed free speech. After all, they are the party of microaggression, deplatforming, virtue-signaling, social media censorship, hate speech, and cancel culture. We could recite a long list of Democrat cancellation victims. But I’ll just offer this single example from Newsweek, 2022:
Where, indeed, was the outrage? Democrats’ current embrace of free speech rhetoric —amid a sea change in the balance of government power— stands in stark contrast to Democrats’ shrugs when censorship involved agencies controlled by their own party.
Back in 2022, Democrats did not introduce any NOPE bills while the dark night of fascism was descending on America. They could hardly remember Senator McCarthy in 2022, never mind invoke his ghost. In fact, in 2022, Democrat think-tanks were publishing Orwellian papers arguing that the First Amendment was obsolete and new laws regulating speech were needed to “protect democracy.”
But now they are clutching the Constitution’s sacred essence like there’s no tomorrow. “The Trump administration should not use the assassination of Mr. Kirk to rip up the First Amendment, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) said.”
In other words, Democrats love censorship, except when it’s directed at them, even a little. Their sudden self-interest is wholly contingent on being out of power.
But never mind all the hypocrisy. The point is, we are at the point where Democrats are proposing new laws protecting First Amendment rights and letting citizens sue federal officials who censor them. And, mark my words, rank-and-file Democrats will line up behind this free-speech effort since it’s aimed at Trump.
All it took was for them to believe that conservatives were willing to play the same games they’ve been playing. That, and one suspended late-night host (who is mid at best), plus a non-apologetic Trump threatening even more.
President Trump has done it again. He’s forced the Democrats to adopt his position. If Republicans play this right, we may get everything we ever hoped that the Weaponization Committee could produce.
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Yesterday, the Hill ran a terrific story headlined, “CDC panel votes to push back MMRV vaccine recommendation to 4 years old.”
CLIP: Dr. James Neuenschwander gave public comment at the ACIP meeting (3:31).
The “MMRV” vaccine is a family-pack of four shots in one: measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox (varicella). They’ve been combined for ‘convenience’ —mainly for pediatricians— and because one shot instead of four ‘increases compliance.’
Yesterday, the CDC’s new ACIP vaccine committee heard evidence that risks of adverse events increased when the shots are combined, but were lower when the shots are given one at a time. So the committee voted 8-3 to “not recommend” the combo MMRV shot, but instead to “recommend” separate shots— but only for kids aged four or under.
That’s all they did.
Based on the media and ‘expert’ response, you would think the committee banned all vaccines or something. “The disadvantage is that we know compliance falls. And the advantage of combination vaccines is that children and adults are more likely to complete the vaccine requirements if it’s given as a single dose,” said Cody Meissner, one of the three committee members voting “no.”
Today, the committee will vote on the Hep-B and covid vaccines. Stay tuned.
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Yesterday, CNN ran a wonderful story headlined, “Senate confirms 48 Trump nominees in single vote, after Republicans went ‘nuclear’ to speed up confirmations.”
Last week, Senate Republicans changed the rules to allow low-level nominees to be confirmed ‘en bloc’ —all at once— overriding months of Democrat stonewalling. The first block of 48 Trump nominations for various ambassadors and under-secretaries sailed through yesterday.
Done and done. As promised.
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Yesterday, Florida Today ran a story headlined, “Melbourne mayor suggests naming street for Charlie Kirk after backlash against Eau Gallie business.” The street, now Cypress Avenue, is right outside Lamb & Co. Fishmongers. Lamb & Co.’s owner, Kaili Lamb, experienced a sudden euphoria after hearing about Charlie’s killing and tweeted something horrible about it. FAFO.
A swift, furious, and bloody backlash ensued, including a flood of negative reviews that resembled an attack by a pack of rabid piranhas. Kaili felt just like one of her fish out of water. It prompted the fragile fishmonger to sail into deeper waters of self-reflection.
Kaili deleted her post and apologized online.
“My business serves customers across the political spectrum, and I do value every single one of them,” Ms. Lamb realized, a little too late to get off the hook. “I have deleted the comment, and I want to publicly apologize to Charlie Kirk’s family, friends, and supporters. No one deserves to have their grief compounded by such callous remarks, regardless of political beliefs.”
It wasn’t fishy. It was the sweet smell of fresh clarity, assisted by a direct threat to the pocketbook. But now Kaili is back in the school and swimming with the current.
Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey decided to honor Charlie Kirk by renaming a section of Cypress Avenue after the gentle debater. It’s not partisan; that’s a red herring. In 2019, Alfrey made waves by successfully sponsoring an ordinance to rename the airport road after Martin Luther King, Jr. So.
Mayor Alfrey’s measure will sink or swim on September 24th, at 6:30 pm, when Melbourne’s City Council votes on the measure. Just in case you’re in the neighborhood and have your tackle box with you.
Have a fabulous Friday! Return here tomorrow morning, for more C&C style essential news and commentary.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florid
