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Completely.
It is done.
It is all over.
Fold up the tents.
It's it's done.
This this.
is all over our free media that we had at one time is done.
They went after the major networks, the networks over the air networks, using the public
We had 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 do everything they can to score political points from it.
In between the finger pointing there was grieving on Friday the White House flew the flags at half staff which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this.
He's at the fourth
stage of grief construction demolition
Construction.
This is not how an adult greaves the murder of someone he called a friend.
This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.
So that's it.
So did anybody hear any lies in there that Jimmy Kimmel told?
I mean, that was the whole point of the disagreement over Kimmel's show right there.
Mega pundit Benny Johnson
Thought there were a lot of untruths in all of that and in fact checking it ourselves this morning just a few moments ago I didn't hear any lies or anything horrific in it whatsoever, but ABC said pull that guy So anyway, Benny Johnson then reached out to FCC chair Brendan Carr for a comment.
Well, you got more than a comment So let's listen to cut 126
Get some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying
frankly when you see stuff like this I mean look we can do this the easy way or the hard way these companies can find ways to change conduct to take action Frankly on Kimmel or you know, there's gonna be additional work for the FCC again There's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters and frankly
I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt.
We are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we licensed broadcaster are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.
So
between Next Star Media Group and to acquire Tegna, which is another big media group.
Next Star owns a ton of ABC stations, local stations.
And that deal has to be approved by the FCC.
So that deal's on the table.
And they say, well, hold on a second, you know, we're not going to approve this until you maybe even let's put the pressure on ABC to get rid of Kimmel.
And that's that deal has yet to been approved.
So
What can you do for us, ABC, before we approve this next R deal?
And a lot of the
affiliates of ABC refuse now to play Kimmel, to have them on their network in their local markets, which is really, really odd for something like this.
So we're just kind of watching the media fold their tents before our very eyes.
Should we play Mark Marin's comment?
Yes, Mark Marin took the words right out of my mouth.
Let me just say that this is exactly what I was going to say.
Again,
you know, he's in
So let's listen.
happening.
Jimmy Kimmel has been muzzled and taken off the air by his network ABC who are buckling to and trying to appease the next our media conglomerate.
who have a lot of affiliates and they threaten to preempt him at the suggestion of the SEC chair.
This is government censorship.
This is the Trump administration coming
after people who speak
out against him.
This is the end of it.
If you have any concern or belief in real freedom or the Constitution,
And free speech, this is it.
This is the deciding moment.
This is what authoritarianism looks like right now.
In this country, it's happening.
So if you're a free speech warrior or you really talk the talk about protecting free speech, this isn't about saying the R word or the T word or any of that.
This is government censorship.
This isn't Twitter.
This isn't people getting canceled because of a cultural pile on.
This is the United States government.
silencing voices that they disagree with.
FCC Chair Carr put this out.
This is his directive.
This is the U.S.
government.
Look, if they can come for Kimmel, they can come for anybody.
This is happening.
It's time to act, figure it out, find a way, come together, push back.
Because if this goes, it's over.
It's over.
Yeah, Mark Marin a comedian podcast podcaster as well and I said this morning that I'm disconnecting My networks, you know, you get like a Hulu plus or YouTube TV at all all of all the stations I'm cutting the cord on this one.
This is it.
I'm done.
I'm not going to play into this I'm not gonna give them the money
Yeah, when they go after the comedians like they went after Colbert and now Kimmel and you know, who's next Jimmy Jimmy Fallon in the worksite You know, where does this end now?
Yeah, gonna go after NBC and Saturday Night Live and you know when you go after the comedians who are there just to provide satire and You know really poke fun, but also more people are getting their news from like the Daily Show
Boy, it would be interesting to hear what they have to say about it.
What will
Tim from DeForest says, I love listening to you guys in the morning, but you need to get rid of ABC National News Feed at the top of the hour.
Hashtag boycott ABC.
I'm boycotting them all.
I'm cutting the cord.
That's what I think everybody should do when it comes to this.
You want to go to Catherine?
almost hung up.
I almost hung up.
I don't I don't know what to say I can't believe this is happening, right?
And I here's my concern when you say boycott ABC when our listener says boycott ABC and we have ABC on our Station and I get why he's saying that of course an NBC capitulating for on Colbert You know CBS to pitch it first while ago.
Yeah, I I don't blame you
But there are other voices on those networks still doing the good work, right?
There must be.
So cutting them off.
you know, despite our own faces, that's my concern.
I mean, these are news people still dedicated to news.
And I don't see any influence or any problem with, of course, we know for a fact that most of these newscasts do reign in it a little bit.
They don't want to say anything too controversial.
So, but all the networks are doing that now because of Trump.
So, you know, we can't, we've got to have somebody to go to, you know, so.
Right.
Well, we have us.
We have to the media.
Thank the goodness.
But hard of me when I heard the cut that got him fired.
nothing in there.
Our station.
There's nothing there.
So now I want to ask you guys to say whatever words are said that are getting people to take it off the air.
We should start saying those words.
We should repeat it.
We should play Jimmy Kimmel.
Every morning until they figure out what the flip is going on.
Well,
got?
I heard Kimmel's comment, and I've heard it before, that I can't remember where I heard it, but hearing it again, I hear nothing in that to indicate any disparagement of Charlie Kirk, or minimizing what happened.
What it does show to me is the complete heartlessness of the completely uncaringness of Donald Trump, the complete self-absorption of the man saying, oh, and I'm going, he didn't even address Charlie Kirk's slaying.
He said, oh, look at my big old.
beautiful dance floor here where he paved over the rose garden for the love of God.
I mean, oh, we've wanted this dance floor for 150 years.
I mean, it is just the callousness and, and maybe it's not even callousness on Donald Trump.
He is just completely unaware that other people actually exist other than to serve him and to service him.
And he can't even call it satire because it was just reporting and reporting what he actually said.
I mean, he made a satirical comment at the end.
I mean, we'll look at this.
I mean, the man simply does not care about even his allies.
WMDX.
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22 past the hour.
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Don't miss out on New York Times bestsellers.
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Let's check in on weather and with that, our WMDX meteorologist, Brittany Merlo.
Good morning, Brittany.
Hi.
Good morning.
How are you guys doing?
Um, it is mostly cloudy.
It's
looking that pretty, but all right, no rain here at the moment.
Got scattered showers far up north, so it's nice to be dodging that.
get to stay beautiful and pretty all day.
I really don't.
Maybe overnight, possibly.
But then again, I think maybe early tomorrow morning, you could see a sprinkler too, and then it really starts to ramp up tomorrow night.
And of course, into the weekend, unfortunately, it's going to be loud.
So what's the
are you
a golf date or something?
Oh, you're doing the deck?
I've got to
deck
sunlight on.
It is a teeny, tiny chance.
So don't worry.
Okay.
All right.
I could.
Okay.
All right.
Don't quit.
You got to put on that thing.
Just one.
Well, it's gonna start to get windy.
That's for sure wet and stormy on Saturday highs at about 78 degrees We hold that same high temperature for Sunday, but then at Sunday night I think it's gonna you see some heavy rain moving through where we could pick up an inch to an inch and a half of rainfall so it's dark and damp weekend unfortunately that
know.
You're not going to drop, but I mean.
It's not the growing season
So I
So we're talking about the media completely folding for the Trump administration, and Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, Kerry texted us out in Tosa.
She said, Brendan Carr, the individual President Donald Trump chose to chair the FCC, wrote
the actual chapter on the FCC for Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a conservative policy initiative from the Heritage Foundation, which outlines in detail the plan for the potential Republican takeover.
What a coincidence.
Yes.
How strange is that?
We've
got
Joe.
I think that Mark Moran what he had to say was absolutely right on the money It's starting in a very very obvious way.
What's the heck which is when your FCC chair says We can do this the easy way of the hard way.
Yeah, it's a mafia.
Yeah, the changes from this are rather interesting.
Someone was suggesting that one of the...
Certainly, Colbert got his walking papers and immediately struck a deal with Netflix, a very lucrative deal.
And I think someone has suggested that it's very possible for Kimmel to be into the situation of being one of the top podcasters in no time at all.
And he was comparing it to Joe Rogan, who's pulling in like $60 million a year.
And he's pulling in $60 million a year for a show that he owns.
He has editorial control over it.
to work, and I think the full editorial control is going to be extremely attractive.
He's making, I think, that if Kimmel is making about 16, 17 million a year, I think, for his hosting jobs, if he could push up with what Rogan is doing, even half of what Rogan is doing to 30 million a year, or what Rogan is doing, 60 million a year, I mean, they're just breaking up the beast that they have.
They have this broadcast
galaxy, why do you splinter it?
Why do you take something that's making money for you in the most innocuous way to take offense over those comments?
Wow, he ain't seen nothing yet.
know, broadcast is in an interesting place and I just can't understand splintering something that you've got going and that's generating money for you.
It's amazing to me.
So take care guys.
He smashed a facade that they get to control what we say, what we think, the narrative around events.
Really?
They really control that?
Or do they just report it?
See, this is how they spin.
All of this.
He also wrote, we're seeing a lot of consequences that are flowing from President Trump doing that, defunding both NPR and PBS, as well as the retirement of Stephen Colbert.
Joy Reid is out in MSNBC.
Terry Moran is gone from ABC on and on.
That's what he said.
That's how he looks at it.
This is the chair of the FCC.
He's going to threaten all the networks and reign them in.
On September 17th, when that document that was signed in the very first
Very first article executed and issued by our very first Congress said Congress shall make no law respecting, among other things, the freedom of speech or the freedom of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble a petitioned government for address of grievances.
And the reason why that was there is that James Madison needed to get the Constitution passed.
He committed to saying that in the Constitution and getting it done by virtue of the first Congress saying just that for what it's worth.
the word Congress in the First Amendment has been interpreted appropriately to meaning government.
And that includes things like public school boards and public schools and all those kinds of things.
So it's not just that limited, but that's the basis for this.
And of course, there's a huge amount of litigation that is followed.
from that, describing what you can.
And there are limits on the First Amendment, as we always say on this wonderful broadcast.
But the notion once again was that we want to make certain that the king at that time does not restrict us in saying what we want to say.
And we've got the capacity to publish things in the public domain and talk about these things.
It was a specific redress and response
to what King George was doing.
And again, speaking about Constitution Day, John, yesterday we had Sonia Sotomayor at New York University, bemoaning the fact that we do not understand that.
And she says, I'm wondering if people today understand the difference between a king and a president.
Do we understand that difference?
She said, I think if people understood these things in the beginning, they would be more informed as to what would be important to a democracy.
First Amendment, hugely important to a democracy.
You understand that we do not have a king who, through his FCC chief, can say these things, accomplish these things.
We've got a balance of power, at least we used to, and we've got mechanisms to ensure that people do have the right to speak.
that people in broadcast, including civic media, have the right to speak and to voice views.
We can say things in America, very important to note, that are offensive, that are, again, not within the public general view, that are unpopular.
We can say popular things as well.
That's what the First Amendment is all about.
You don't have to like what you hear on ABC or other places or CBS or other places.
You simply have to acknowledge the right to say that.
Absent, absent any, any advocacy to violence.
That's where the line is crossed.
We're nowhere, well, on many ways we are, but on these issues, again, Jimmy Kimmel, not advocating violence.
Stephen Colbert, not advocating violence here.
Absolute right to say these things.
And we've got these major entities that are basically saying, First Amendment, not so much, let's bring all this down.
it is a reason to be hugely, hugely concerned, a day after Constitution Day, celebrating what happened in 1787.
And I'm just, you know, softly peddling that.
The other news is that Jerry, Ben and Jerry's quit.
because he was being silenced for his activism by Unilever.
So he is no longer part of the Ben & Jerry.
Product line.
Well, they're just gonna call it Ben's ice cream.
what's
you
know, and then of course The Department of Justice removed a study showing white supremacists and far-right violence Continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violence extremism in the US.
They deleted that They they took that off because they didn't want anybody proving that that's true
Because they've been
saying once again one of the wonderful things about the internet was used to be the government published things again that may not be happy news to everybody but the Important thing that government does is tells us used to be tells us what the truth is and exposes us once again to perspectives that
that suggests we've
got a lot of
And so when you begin to take those things down, again, it is an overt infraction of the First Amendment accomplished by a government that does not want us to know.
And one of the other things, of course, Ben and Jerry, all these other situations where people get up and leave, it raises this other fundamental issue.
And I recognize being in government.
I never had to face this because I worked for people like Janet Reno and Eric Holder, who did not, and Barack Obama.
Obama and Bill Clinton and other people who did not do these kinds of things.
But the question for so many government people who know what the law is, who are there to provide service to Americans is, do I continue to fight the fight internally?
or do I leave as a protest because it's no longer tolerable?
And when they leave, we are diminished.
I understand completely the decision to get out and say, I cannot be a part of this anymore.
We saw that, of course, at the CDC, although, again, the director may well have been fired by RFK Junior.
But when these people leave, the experts, the people who know what they're doing, government is diminished.
We are no longer the government that we should be that raises dissenting voices and voices all across the board.
I don't want any of the networks anymore.
I've kept all of these networks simply to watch MSNBC.
And now I can get the audio at least on Sirius.
So I'm good with it.
Now I'm just going to cut the cord and we have a text here.
Don't know the name, but...
mentions this, Hulu was ABC, Peacock is NBC and Paramount and Paramount is CBS.
So
when you try to cut off the major networks who gave Trump the oxygen to successfully win the presidency and are now bowing, oops, and now bowing to the king, you also turn off a lot of the streaming shows.
I should specify I'm keeping the streaming shows regardless of whether it's ABC, you know, Disney I'm still gonna keep the streaming shows.
I'm just cutting off the networks screw it I mean, they can't say anything now anyway because the FCC is put a lid on what they can say and how far they can say it So they're telling them what to think I'm not gonna be a part of that and that's why I'm cutting the cord in all of that and she mentions here that Netflix is a big winner here since
it doesn't appear that it's affected by the FCC at all.
So
We all know
Again, we say we hasten to add because we still do have some allegiance to the rule of law in this program and in others.
We hasten to add that he is innocent until proven guilty.
That has been our American way, even though the Attorney General from time to time says things about people.
It certainly suggests that she does not believe that.
But basically, again, a little bit of news in the midst of everything else going on here that the judge who's overseeing that case, his name is Gregory Carose.
RO, he said that the apportion, not surprising, apportion of the charges, charging Mangione with terrorism, terrorism again in the assassination of United Health Care's chief executive on the streets of New York last year, that that is too much and that under the New York law and other principles there,
initially probably, I think people agree with this, probably overcharged.
That's not to say he did not, is not facing these charges and did not do this, but probably the right thing to do.
The judge saying that he is legally insufficient to end, you think about it, even just aside from the law, this is probably not terrorism.
It certainly was intentional murder here, but he still does face second degree murder.
And you might say, wouldn't see second degree.
all has to do with things involving lawyers and the way that the New York law is put together, those cases will proceed.
He is still facing a sense of 25 years to life in prison.
So it is a very, very small victory, if you will, for the defense, but doesn't mean a lot in terms of the overall prosecution of this man.
Again, we assume he is in a similar proven guilty, but a very strong case, obviously, against him.
and a question again about what his disposition will be.
The other one, the other big news that's out there is that the 22-year-old suspect, also the defendant, the murder of Charlie Kirk, has also been charged and a tranche of evidence was released showing what he did and did not say and including some things that prompt the prosecutors there to charge him with aggravated murder.
also seeking there the death penalty.
And again, as we know under the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court has said that the death penalty, if states want to do it, is not cruel and unusual punishment.
They looked at things that Robinson said like, I had enough of his, meaning Kirk's, hatred, and then aggravated murder and some related felonies charge and that none of that surprising.
But again, premised upon a bit more information that's now in the public domain.
That's called discovery in the matter.
It also precedes a pace.
And again, all but confessing to that shooting based upon the things that the investigators and law enforcement have found.
So just some updates that, again, have taken wildly.
I mean, in other circumstances, those kinds of things would be atop of the newspaper
He doesn't care.
You know, as you're watching him, it is just embarrassing to watch.
It is.
He's not paying attention and he's just, you know, off the off the hand commenting to, you know, the politicians who are quizzing him.
who knows so much more about the FBI than he does.
And it's also established by a president who likewise, you know, former presidents, Republican, Democrat, if you always got these briefing books, you'd see them leaving along the portico there and heading up to the residence at night with these big notebooks to read for the following day.
Again, we have a presidency.
We have an administration right now where you can, in fact, say anything.
You don't have to study.
You don't have to do your homework, not only at the White House, but also these other agencies where you simply say things.
You take your cues from a boss who doesn't care about finding out about the very agency for which you're responsible.
That's okay for Donald Trump and in here and all other agencies.
But the FBI, Chief Federal Law Enforcement Entity, they're in Wisconsin.
They are in every place in the nation.
They used to be focused not only upon serious crime, but also terrorism.
Leadership means something, and without that kind of direction and somebody who's informed, we all once again suffer in ways big and small.
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Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Right.
Yes.
Tell us.
And you know, again, to populate that even more, we've talked about this before, so your listeners have some reason to go forward here on a Thursday morning.
You know, there are some guardrails.
And where are those guardrails?
We've talked about them before.
They're federal district court judges and appeals court judges, not the Supreme Court.
But those judges, again, lifetime tenure, federal district court judges around the country who are pushing back and saying, no, you can't do these things.
Almost with unanimity, there are
pushing back on what the president is doing.
And the other interesting thing that's out there, we don't have a lot of reporting on this, but the other guardrail is out there.
Federal grand juries are telling this administration, no, we're not going to indict these people without probable cause.
They're telling the Attorney General and Assistant U.S.
attorneys, at least in two districts, that we are not going to go ahead and charge people when in fact the evidence and our sense of justice does not support that.
That's a guardrail that people should be very, very focused on.
Both of those are constitutional issues.
court judges, guardrails, and of course the capacity that you still all have going forward here, including the many things happening on October 18th, to go out there and protest.
You've got that right.
You've got that right to be an advocate in the public domain.
Again, limitations on time, place, and manner of a protest.
You can't do it in the middle of the expressway at two o'clock in the morning, those kinds of things.
But all those things are reasons to still embrace
pushback on these kinds of fronts in other areas.
And that's not to minimize them at all.
Simply to say that Americans do still have those powers, and they're being exercised inside government.
Grand juries are entities of the court.
Federal District Court judges, also entities of the court, not the Supreme Court, but other areas that people should embrace.
We've got an excess of 20 of these.
And they've continued over the summertime, even though the merit stock is what we're talking about going back in business on 18 days, they continue to issue all of these, including what we talked about last week, which is, of course, this one sentence order saying that the district court judge in Los Angeles who says he got to have reasonable suspicion before you can detain or arrest somebody in America, Supreme Court said, nope, we're vacating that.
happened again, just what, 10, 11 days or so ago.
So they will continue to do these things.
Could happen this afternoon.
That they do.
That they do with breakneck speed and with great numbers on a regular basis.
This is when they reconvene with a new term.
This will be the 2025, 2026 term.
They're excess of 30 cases already.
And again, some reasons to be concerned there.
Among other things there, remember the word Cal-A-C-A-L-O-A-I-S?
That's this major voting rights case coming out of Louisiana.
They had it on their docket.
Last term, they decided not to decide it.
It's back.
And yeah, it has to do with line drawing and congressional districts in Louisiana.
But there is this specter that they may in fact be playing around with whether or not the Voting Rights Act itself is constitutional or not.
We've been operating under the Voting Rights Act, assuring people of color and language have access to the polls.
The chopping block may have the Voting Rights Act on it.
In this case, again, they probably wouldn't issue it until June of next year.
Stunning case, they're religious cases, campaign finance cases.
Yes, transgender women in sports, that's there as well.
All kinds of things on the docket.
big ticket items, and they're so populating.
And I suspect that many of these shadow docket cases, as the lower courts resolve them, will eventually get onto the merit stock, whether you're going to have the opportunity to argue cases and have briefs submitted.
But lots of this term promises to be no less significant.
than the last two in which the Supreme Court said.
The President has great powers, and oh, by the way, you can't stop him with nationwide injunctions.
I
The SAVE Act is back out there.
The House is voting on the SAVE Act that requires a birth certificate in order to vote to keep
immigrants and anyone else from voting in national and local elections, which doesn't happen now anyway, but they're going to do this.
And the only reason I think they're doing this is because it affects women's right to vote because their names change later on.
And this will prevent a lot of women from being able to vote.
That's the only impetus for doing something like this that I can think of.
What do you
this major
It doesn't exist in America.
We know that.
So it's messaging.
As to the other thing, the reason why this is a lot of people think this is also, just with due respect, a stupid thing to do with respect to women, obviously,
It applies to all women who may have changed their name after marriage.
And I guess is they're an awful lot of Republicans and Democrats and independents who may fall in that category.
You're drawing a very, very broad category of people and presumably preventing or restricting them in voting.
A woman across the board could be the people who would vote for you as well.
It's a fascinating and again, a stumbling thing for the Congress to be playing.
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