FWIW.
| September 21, 1963 The War Resisters League organized the first American anti-Vietnam War demonstration in New York City. The League, founded in 1923, was the first peace group to call for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and played a key role throughout the war, organizing rallies, the burning of draft cards, civil disobedience at induction centers, and assisting resisters. History of WRL  WRL home |
September 21st (since 1982) The International Day of Peace was established by United Nations resolution in 1981 and first celebrated in 1982 (then as the 3rd tuesday of the month). Events are planned all over the world to promote peace and make it more visible. About Peace Day and plans around the world |
Because it doesn’t hurt to know a little about these things, too.
In the news of the week ending September 19, 2025, are lots of profanity, a stone skimming scandal, and saying goodbye to Robert Redford.
If I ever win the lottery, remind me to save and invest the money.
Every time I put down an ant trap, a mouse comes in overnight and takes it away. What are they doing with them?
I love prescription medication commercials that say “Tell your doctor what medications you’re taking.” Shouldn’t my doctor know that already?
Could you eat an entire meal at a restaurant without your phone? That’s what you have to do at the new eatery Hush Harbor in Washington, D.C., which doesn’t allow cell phones. They will supply you with letter-writing materials and board games though!
Life advice: Try not to be the type of person who would go on a reality show.
Kids, what if I told you that in the 1960s and ’70s, companies embedded vinyl records on the back of cereal boxes? It’s true!
If I put down mouse traps, will a larger animal come into the house overnight and take those?
Why do things have to change?
Massachusetts is currently in the process of picking a new state flag and a new state seal. The old ones were perfectly fine but I guess they’re no longer appropriate for modern times. Or something.
Unfortunately, the finalists are TERRIBLE. The seals are passable, I guess, but the state flag choices are a mayflower (the flower, not the ship), a mountain with a gold star on top, and a circle of turkey feathers.
Writer Matt Taibbi thinks the state should run with the turkey idea but maybe in a Norman Rockwell direction.
Some people have joked that the new flag should be the colors of Dunkin’ Donuts, and compared to the finalists that might not be a bad idea.
I have a theory that everyone swears. They may not do it all the time and they may even pick the mildest of curse words. But everyone from the ages of 9 to 90 does it.
The New York Times thinks so too. The writer, Mark Edmundson, grew up in the 1950s and ’60s when cursing was relatively rare. And the people that swore were almost always guys (only never in front of a parent, teacher, or cop). But it’s everywhere now, from homes to schools and on television. I’m still sometimes shocked by what the basic cable channels can get away with now.
We try our hardest to leave out certain words in the pages of the Post, and if you leave a comment, please try to control yourself as well.
“Cheating Scandal Rocks World Stone Skimming Championships”
Robert Redford starred in many classic films, including All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Way We Were, The Sting, Three Days of the Condor, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Candidate, and many other movies and TV episodes. He was also a director, helming Ordinary People (for which he won an Oscar), Quiz Show, and A River Runs Through It. He died Tuesday at the age of 89.
Here’s the Post’s Bill Newcott on Redford’s career.
Bobby Hart was half of the music duo Boyce & Hart. They not only recorded their own music, they wrote and produced songs for The Monkees, including “Last Train to Clarksville” and the theme song to the show. They also wrote “(I’m Not Your” Steppin’ Stone,” “Come a Little Bit Closer,” and the theme song to Days of Our Lives (!). He died last week at the age of 86.
Here’s Boyce & Hart on a classic episode of I Dream of Jeannie (they also made an appearance on Bewitched around the same time).
Uploaded to YouTube by Willy Gilligan
Patricia Crowley starred in the TV series Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and played Mary Scanlon on Port Charles. She appeared in dozens of other TV shows and films. She died Sunday at the age of 91.
Thomas Perry was a writer of bestselling thriller and suspense novels. He died Monday at the age of 78.
Marilyn Hagerty achieved fame at the age of 85 when her newspaper restaurant review of Olive Garden went viral. She was championed by Anthony Bourdain, and he even published a collection of her columns, titled Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews. She died Tuesday at the age of 99.
Ricky Hatton was the former world boxing champion. He died Sunday at the age of 46.
Here’s how Taft’s bid for a second term made for a chaotic 1912 election.
This was a big day for the debuts of classic shows. Lost in Space, Green Acres, I Spy, The Big Valley, and Gidget all started on this day in 1965.
It was actually a big week for debuts. Other shows that launched this week in 1965: I Dream of Jeannie, Hogan’s Heroes, F Troop, The Dean Martin Show, and The Wild, Wild West.
That woman has a lot of hands.
You can use your own hands to make these recipes with those fruits and veggies.
Smitten Kitchen has Broccoli Parmesan Fritters and a Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Salad. Jellojoy has a Jello Fruit Cake, while Martha Stewart has Boiled Asparagus. The Pioneer Woman has a recipe for something called Melting Potatoes, and Allrecipes has Copycat Cracker Barrel Fried Apples. Iowa Girl Eats has this Marinated Vegetable Salad, Love & Lemons has Roasted Brussels Sprouts, and Dance Around the Kitchen has Banana Pudding.
All these recipes sound $%&*! great!
If you’re keeping track, it happens at 2:19 p.m. ET. (It also starts at that time even if you’re not keeping track.)
This, is, the, day to celebrate? periods, Commas; Exclamation “points” and other … forms of punctuation!!!!
The annual U.S. vs. Europe golf event takes place at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York. Here’s the broadcast schedule.
Hacks star Hannah Einbinder ended her Emmys speech with choice words for Donald Trump’s secret police force and some solidarity with the people of Palestine.
More than a dozen elected officials were arrested in or around 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, where ICE detains people in what courts have ruled are unsanitary conditions.
Police arrested more than a dozen New York state and city elected officials Thursday at 26 Federal Plaza, the Manhattan immigration court and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office, many as they pressed to gain access to the building’s 10th-floor lockup, where recent court rulings—including a temporary restraining order—directed ICE not to cram immigrants into overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
The lawmakers and other officials, arrested around 3:45 pm local time, say they were “attempting to conduct oversight” following claims that people appearing for court hearings were being confined for hours or days without proper food, medical care, or contact with attorneys.
A spokesperson for New York City comptroller Brad Lander’s office told WIRED by phone that Lander and 10 other elected officials were denied access and then arrested while “engaged in an action on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE inhumanely detains thousands of immigrant New Yorkers.” Lander was previously arrested at the same facility in June while accompanying a migrant man whom ICE targeted with arrest.
A joint press release issued by New York officials in the aftermath lists the electeds among those arrested:
At least some officials, according to Lander’s office, had been released at the time of writing. The final four on the list were arrested outside the facility, reportedly by the New York City Police Department. Dozens of New Yorkers who had gathered, holding signs and chanting “ICE out of NY,” were also arrested, officials said. A follow-up demonstration was planned for 6 pm ET at Foley Square, a longtime rallying point for immigrant rights protests in the heart of Manhattan’s Civic Center neighborhood.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE immediately responded to a request for comment. Reached by phone, a New York Police Department spokesperson declined to comment because “the incident is ongoing.”
Under federal law, members of Congress have explicit authority to inspect immigration detention facilities, including conducting unannounced visits. State and city lawmakers don’t have that authority and must rely on DHS or ICE to approve such requests. The Trump administration has instituted new policies, such as mandating advance notice and designating certain field offices and short-term sites off-limits, that have blocked or delayed congressional oversight visits in recent months.
Federal judges and civil rights groups have zeroed in on the conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza. This summer, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the government after allegations surfaced that the facility’s detainees were being crammed into severely overcrowded rooms and made to sleep on bare floors and were denied food, hygiene, and confidential access to their lawyers.
The problems echo a broader pattern across the US, where watchdogs and courts have flagged overcrowding, poor sanitation, and blocked access to counsel in ICE facilities from Arizona to Louisiana.
Advocates say some of the most jarring overcrowding is happening on 26 Federal Plaza’s 10th floor, where detainees have estimated that between 70 and 90 people have been crammed into rooms measuring roughly 215 square feet. That would leave each person with roughly the space of a doormat—less room than a folded bath towel—in an area no bigger than a studio apartment kitchen.
The arrests came as part of a coordinated action by progressive Democrats, timed to amplify demands for Albany to reconvene and pass the New York for All Act. The bill would bar state and local agencies, including police and sheriffs, from sharing information or resources with ICE, aiming to stop what lawmakers describe as abductions of immigrants at court hearings and check-ins. Along with New York City Council’s proposed Trust Act—which would let people sue if city agencies unlawfully cooperate with ICE—the legislation is essential, Democrats say, to defend due process and prevent local governments from becoming de facto extensions of ICE.
“The criminalization, demonization, and state-sponsored violence against immigrants in this country has reached a fever pitch under this administration. All of us, and especially elected leaders, must do more to protect New Yorkers, regardless of when they arrived,” Assembly member Emily Gallagher, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, said in a statement.
Many elected officials have been arrested while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. Among others, in June, Senator Alex Padilla of California was handcuffed after challenging Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem at a Los Angeles press conference, and in May, Newark mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside a federal detention center during an attempted oversight visit.
In a statement, Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project, applauded the lawmakers’ actions Thursday, accusing the US government of “egregious abuses of power,” and imploring New York governor Kathy Hochul to use her clemency powers to shield migrants dealing with overlapping punishments from the courts and immigration authorities.
“New York leaders cannot let this cruelty go unchecked,” she said. “The moment to act is NOW.”
Additional reporting by Andrew Couts.
In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, experts say the FCC commissioner’s conduct is flatly unconstitutional. They also expect him to keep going.
In what has become an all-too-regular display from Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman used a podcast appearance Wednesday to flex his regulatory power. In this instance, he threatened action against broadcasters that refused to punish Jimmy Kimmel for remarks he made on his ABC show Monday night.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on former Turning Point USA contributor Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Since taking over the FCC at the beginning of the year, Carr has tested how far the agency can limit speech without ever quite formally censoring it. By leveraging his position as chairman, he has relied on informal threats and regulatory incentives to keep broadcasters in line with the Trump administration’s politics—and experts say Carr won’t end this campaign until someone stops him. For now, it’s not clear who’s even willing to try.
“He’ll push it until he’s stopped. Congress has been silent on this, and there hasn’t been a basis to get to court,” former FCC chair Tom Wheeler tells WIRED. “He’s been very artful in not making formal decisions that are appealable to the court, but instead having these informal, coercive activities that are not appealable, and so until Congress or the courts say he can’t, he’ll keep pushing.”
Over the past eight months, Carr—a formerly light-touch telecom regulator turned MAGA hardliner—has shown how far he’s willing to take this crusade. He has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for outlets the administration sees as “distorting” news content, targeting Comcast outlets over news coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation in April. He opened investigations into NPR and PBS underwriting announcements, alleging that they crossed into commercial advertising. Carr oversaw the merger between Paramount and Skydance and extracted concessions on CBS’s editorial work, pressuring the company to do away with its DEI policies and promise “viewpoint diversity” in coverage. (David Ellison, son of billionaire Trump supporter Larry Ellison, founded Skydance and became Paramount’s chair and chief executive officer following the merger.) At the same time, Donald Trump was suing CBS for having edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris; after Paramount paid out $16 million to settle the suit, CBS said it would end Stephen Colbert’s show next spring.
“The FCC under Brendan Carr uses mergers and business interests of media companies as leverage to extract concessions, extract bribes, and extract censorship,” says Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Carr did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Carr’s threats have chased social media companies and cable networks, they’ve hit companies with business before the FCC the hardest. Nexstar, which owns dozens of ABC affiliate networks, was one of the companies to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! just hours after Carr’s Wednesday threat. The company is currently seeking approval from the FCC for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, which owns networks in major markets including Austin, Texas, and San Diego, California. Sinclair, another major broadcasting company, also relies on the FCC to periodically renew its licenses and allocate the company spectrum.
To Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on free speech, Carr’s threats against ABC appear to be “a pretty clear-cut case of jawboning.” Jawboning refers to a type of informal coercion where government officials try to pressure private entities into suppressing or changing speech without using any actual formal legal action. Since jawboning is typically done in letters and private meetings, it rarely leaves a paper trail, making it notoriously difficult to challenge in court.
This Kimmel suspension is a little different, Lakier says. During the podcast appearance, Carr explicitly named his target, threatened regulatory action, and within a matter of hours the companies complied.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that that’s unconstitutional in all circumstances,” says Lakier. “You’re just not allowed to do that. There’s no balancing. There’s no justification. Absolutely no, no way may the government do that.”
Even if Carr’s threats amount to unconstitutional jawboning, though, stopping him could still prove difficult. If ABC sued, it would need to prove coercion—and however a suit went, filing one could risk additional regulatory retaliation down the line. If Kimmel were to sue, there’s no promise that he would get anything out of the suit even if he won, says Lakier, making it less likely for him to pursue legal action in the first place.
“There’s not much there for him except to establish that his rights were violated. But there is a lot of benefit for everyone else,” says Lakier. “This has received so much attention that it would be good if there could be, from now on, some mechanism for more oversight from the courts over what Carr is doing.”
Organizations like the the Freedom of the Press Foundation have sought novel means of limiting Carr’s power. In July, the FPF submitted a formal disciplinary complaint to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel arguing that Carr violated its ethical rules, misrepresenting the law by suggesting the FCC has the ability to regulate editorial viewpoints. Without formal rulings, companies affected by Carr’s threats would be some of the only organizations with grounding to sue. At the same time, they have proven to be some of the least likely groups to pursue legal action over the last eight months.
In a statement on Thursday, House Democratic leadership wrote that Carr had “disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC” and called on him to resign. They said they plan to “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power,” but did not outline any tangible ways to rein in Carr’s power.
“People need to get creative,” says Stern. “The old playbook is not built for this moment and the law only exists on paper when you’ve got someone like Brendan Carr in charge of enforcing it.”
This vacuum has left Carr free to push as far as he likes, and it has spooked experts over how far this precedent will travel. Established in the 1930s, the FCC was designed to operate as a neutral referee, but years of media consolidation have dramatically limited the number of companies controlling programming over broadcast, cable, and now streaming networks. Spectrum is a limited resource the FCC controls, giving the agency more direct control over the broadcast companies that rely on it than it has over cable or streaming services. This concentration makes them infinitely easier to pressure, benefitting the Trump administration, Carr, but also whoever might come next.
“If political tides turn, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats won’t also use them in an unconstitutional and improper matter,” says Stern. The Trump administration is “really setting up this world where every election cycle, assuming we still have elections in this country, the content of broadcast news might drastically shift depending on which political party controls the censorship office.”
Makena Kelly is a senior writer at WIRED focused on the intersection of politics, power, and technology. She writes the Politics Lab newsletter that helps you make sense of how the internet is shaping our political reality—sign up here. She was previously at The Verge, CQ Roll Call, and the … Read More
Some George Carlin; I’m a huge fan:
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Don Lemon On The Street:
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Chelsea has a few free minutes for us:
Politics / September 19, 2025
Those who had nothing to do with the violence against Charlie Kirk are being menaced—just like always.
Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer was a 22-year-old white guy from Utah, but in the week since he was shot, at least six Historically Black Colleges and Universities have been forced to cancel classes due to bomb threats made against their students and faculty. Columnist Karen Attiah got fired from The Washington Post. Representative Ilhan Omar was nearly censured. Countless Black people have been harassed and, worse, countless immigrants have been threatened with the possibility of deportation, all for insufficiently respecting the life and death of a white supremacist.
Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer was, again, a 22-year-old white guy from Utah who, I’ll bet, does not own either of my books and has most likely never read a single word I have written over my nearly two decades of public life, but this is what my mentions on Elon Musk’s apartheid-curious platform have looked like for a week:
Not that we needed more evidence, but the past week has been Exhibit One that this country hates Black people, and will do everything it can to silence, harass, and even murder us. A white man killed another white man for reasons we still don’t know, with a gun I don’t think he should have had, but Black people are catching death threats. That doesn’t make sense, unless you understand how deeply racist this country is. Black people are being fired from jobs and harassed online for insufficiently venerating a white supremacist, and having the temerity to describe his beliefs in public. It’s as if we’re all being asked to say our name is “Toby” instead of Kunta Kinte while being informed that the beatings will continue until morale improves. The white-led government, and many white employers, white-owned sports leagues, white public intellectuals, and a non-zero number of Black assimilationists and assorted would-be overseers are largely playing along with this racist gaslighting, proving once again that Black people have few, if any, real allies.
Somebody who considers themselves a good-white-ally(™) is just about to type “not all white people” or “also Matt Dowd” or “look at what happened to Jimmy Kimmel” in response to this article, as if I give a shit. What’s happening to white folks is that they’re being made to feel like Black people are made to feel every freaking day. Whenever white people catch a cold, Black people catch the flu, but God forbid I do a bit of triage before handing out chicken soup and Sprite to white folks feeling a bit under the weather these days.
The same thing is happening to the trans community, and the LGBTQ community more broadly, because when Kirk wasn’t railing against Black people, he was trying to stamp the LGBTQ community out of existence.
At this point, I’m supposed to turn and analyze what makes white males violently erupt against vulnerable people who have nothing to do with their problems. I’m supposed to talk about white gun culture and how it inevitably leads to racial and cultural violence. I’m supposed to talk about how Trump and his white supremacist government have given the very worst people in this country permission to carry out violence against any person they don’t like, with the promise of pardons should they undertake violence that pleases him. I know I’m supposed to address these topics, because these are the questions that have been floating around my professional networks for a week.
But even addressing those questions recenters the conversation around white folks and whiteness. It’s asking, “Now why did the monkey throw its poop at that fellow?” before you secure soap and a shower for the person covered in feces. At the moment, I’m just a little too beset by threats against myself and even my mother to think deeply about why white people do this. Analyzing why young white men are so dangerous to me is an intellectual luxury I do not have right now. I’m just trying to survive America for another week.
Luckily, after a fashion, I have some experience with this. This is not the first round of death threats I’ve gotten, and, unless they successfully kill me this time, it won’t be the last. I’ve been a Black man in the public eye for a while now, and you don’t get to be an old public Black person without developing a few coping mechanisms to keep you going. For a lot of people currently under threat, this is their first rodeo. There are, for instance, a number of staffers at The Nation who are for the first time having to live with what I live with every day, since the vice president went after our publication. There are folks who were never on the kind of violent watch lists Kirk created who now find themselves on the wrong end of the online rope.
It is terrifying to be in the eye of violent white folks. You have to take them seriously when they say they want you to come to harm. I cannot promise that you, or I, will survive what they’ll do next, but here are some tips to make it through this current phase of white America.
They cannot kill, fire, or silence all of us. The violent people are predators and if you look at every natural predator on this earth, their first move is always to separate their target from the herd.
People must resist the urge to say some people deserve to be harassed and menaced by the government and the online right, as if to distinguish the people who deserve death threats from those who are “doing it the right way.”
Silence in the face of white supremacy is complicity with white supremacy. If we all resolve to not stay silent, we become a truth-telling hydra. Every time the white wing gets one of us, there should be others ready to take our places. (snip-MORE-excellent information)
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-people-threatened-after-assasination
Scottie's Playtime 