Late-night hosts stand with Kimmel
It’s Friday. Monday is the first official day of fall. That’s when I finally deem it appropriate to start consuming anything pumpkin spice. 🍂
In today’s issue:
• House passes funding bill, jams Senate Dems
• Late-night hosts fight back with satire
• White House eyes next media target
• GOP A-listers expected at Kirk funeral
🥔 ON CAPITOL HILL
Hot potato, hot potato:
The House just passed a government funding extension that would punt the threat of a shutdown until Nov. 21. Now, they’re leaving for a 12-day recess for Rosh Hashanah, making this the Senate’s problem.
“The ball is in [Senate Democratic Leader] Chuck Schumer’s court. I hope he does the right thing. I hope he does not choose to shut the government down,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters, hoping to pin a potential shutdown on Democrats.
The House vote: 217-212, largely along party lines.
Now, the Senate has the hot potato: The Senate is scheduled to vote on it this afternoon, but it’s widely expected to fail.
This has become a rousing game of chicken: House GOP leaders have told their members they can leave town until Oct. 1 (one day after the government funding deadline!! 😅), putting pressure on the Senate to accept their package — or else.
Sounds easy, eh?: Nope, it never is. Democrats are united in opposing Republicans’ extension. And Senate Republicans don’t have enough votes to keep the government open on their own.
Remember: All of Democrats’ leverage is in the Senate. They’re powerless in the House, where just a simple majority is needed. However, there’s a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Republicans need a handful of Democrats to jump on board.
If it’s a relatively clean funding extension, then why are Democrats opposing it?: Democrats want health care subsidies (that are due to expire at the end of the year) to be extended. Democrats also don’t totally trust Republicans right now on spending after Trump was able to cancel funding previously approved by Congress over the summer.
Schumer is under *enormous* pressure, too: Remember howSchumerhelped Republicans prevent a government shutdown in March? He took enormous heat from Democrats. He doesn’t appear to have the appetite to do that again.
The Senate is also expected to leave town today for a weeklong recess, presumably with no plan to keep the government open.
📺 KIMMEL FALLOUT
Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon & Seth Meyers enter the chat:
The blowback over Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension has been fierce.
Jon Stewart jumped back into “The Daily Show” chair Thursday evening with a gilded gold backdrop, sporting a bright red tie and an American flag pin — beginning his special edition of “another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show.”
💻 Watch Jon Stewart’s ‘All New Government Approved Daily Show’
“Late Night” host Seth Meyers took a similar approach, mocking Trump as a “visionary, an innovator, a great president and an even better golfer.”
Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon took a more serious approach. “Late Show” host Colbert began his show by proclaiming that “tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel.” “If ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naïve,” Colbert told viewers.
Fallon performed a standard monologue on “The Tonight Show,” telling viewers he won’t be “censored.” Read more about Thursday’s late-night
➤ THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION EYES ITS NEXT TARGET:
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr threatened “The View” on Thursday, suggesting it may be “worthwhile” to consider investigating the ABC daytime show.
Carr said on ‘The Scott Jennings Show’: “And I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether ‘The View’ and some of the programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.”
And Trump threatened any network that is critical of him: Trump suggested Thursday that networks and late-night shows should not be allowed to be overwhelmingly critical of him.
Trump told reporters: “I read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me. … They’re 97 percent against; they give me only bad press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
📸 Check out next week’s cover of The New Yorker
➤ MORE READS:
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal: The FCC, Disney and Jimmy Kimmel: The right gives the left a dose of cancel culture and regulatory abuse.
The New York Times: How Outrage at Kimmel Grew to a Shout From a Whisper
The New Yorker: The Grave Threat Posed by Donald Trump’s Attack on Jimmy Kimmel
Reuters: Were Jimmy Kimmel’s free speech rights violated when ABC canceled his show?
NPR: Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal ‘jawboning’
Axios: Comedians, actors urge ABC to bring back Jimmy Kimmel
Op-ed in The Washington Post: The irony of Jimmy Kimmel’s ouster
Op-ed in The Guardian: Yanking Jimmy Kimmel’s show is a new low for free speech in America
📱 OTHER NEWS
Why TikTok users have their ears perked today:
President Trump just announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping has approved a deal that would allow TikTok to remain operating in the U.S.
Trump posted on Truth Social: “I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal.” 🔎 Read Trump’s full post
Keep in mind: Trump didn’t announce many details of the deal and it’s unclear what further steps are necessary to enact it.
Here’s what we do know about potential details: “Details of the deal have not been announced, but ByteDance has for months been in talks to spin out the app’s American operations into a new company, and to bring in new U.S. investors, like the software giant Oracle, to dilute its Chinese ownership. The list of other potential investors has been in flux, two people familiar with the talks said.” (The New York Times)
Omg, this would make me spiral:
The New York Times’s Katie Rogers reports more tidbits from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s upcoming book about the 2024 presidential election.
This one excerpt is wild: “Minutes before she was to step onstage at a presidential debate in September 2024, she received a call from Mr. Biden. He relayed that his brother told him that she was bad-mouthing him, and that several ‘power brokers’ in Philadelphia were threatening not to support her because of it. Mr. Biden went on to insist that his own disastrous debate performance had not hurt him with voters, and that he had beaten Mr. Trump.
“‘I just couldn’t understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself,’ Ms. Harris wrote. ‘Distracting me with worry about hostile power brokers in the biggest city of the most important swing state.’”
Read more takeaways from Harris’s ‘107 Days’ book
⛪ CHARLIE KIRK
Charlie Kirk’s funeral is this weekend:
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s public funeral will happen Sunday in Glendale, Ariz.
When and where?: The service begins at 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday at State Farm Stadium. 💻 Watch it live
Who’s speaking?: President Trump, Vice President Vance, Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller are scheduled to speak.
Who else is expected to attend?: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Security will be extremely tight: Security is expected to be “Super Bowl-level.” Federal agencies are tracking “several threats of unknown credibility.”
COMING UP
The House and Senate are both in — that’s rare for a Friday! President Trump is in Washington. (All times EST)
3 p.m.: Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office.
2 p.m. Sunday: Charlie Kirk’s funeral. 💻 Livestream
Sept. 30: The government shutdown deadline
🐝 INTERNET BUZZ
🥣 Celebrate: Today is National Butterscotch Pudding Day. Sunday is National Chai Day, which makes me want to make Taylor Swift’s chai sugar cookies.
🫢 I love a good hot mic moment: The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond posted a video of “someone saying ‘you’re an idiot,’ as Retsef Levi — one of RFK Jr’s handpicked vaccine advisers — suggests other scientists are being overconfident about vaccine safety data.” 📹 Watch the 7-second clip
👋 AND FINALLY…
To leave you with a smile before the weekend, have you ever played horse Bop-it?