SILENCED: A day after ABC pulled late Jimmy Kimmel from the air for his remarks following the Charlie Kirk murder, President Trump said that federal regulators should revoke the licenses of broadcasters whose late night hosts speak overly negatively about him.

    Aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters without evidence that ,“I have read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me, I get 97 percent negative, and yet I won and easily.” As he returned to Washington from Britain, Trump said, “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

  “It will be up to Brendan Carr,” the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the President said, calling Carr “a patriot” and “a tough guy.”

  The administration is on a campaign to suppress dissent and ridicule of Trump. In the past week the  White House began to target the tax status of liberal groups, monitor online speech, deny visas based on “anti-American” opinions, and even threaten to designate certain groups as domestic terrorists.

  “This is a massive shift that’s taking place in the media ecosystem,” Carr said during an interview on Fox News. “And I think the consequences are going to continue to flow.” The FCC has the power to pull broadcast licenses if they are not being used in the loosely defined “public interest,” but it takes years of litigation.

  Under the nightly fire of eviscerating humor, Trump has abandoned his stand for unfettered free speech laid out in his inauguration speech: “I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”

  Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, said the commission “does not have the authority, the ability or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes.”

LATE NIGHT:

— Jon Stewart: “There’s something called a Talent-o-Meter. It’s a completely scientific instrument that is kept on the president’s desk, and it tells the president when a performers’ T.Q. — talent quotient, measured mostly by niceness to the president — goes below a certain level, at which point the F.C.C. must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates. These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to the even-larger mega-corporation that controls the flow of state-approved content, or the F.C.C. can just choose to threaten those licenses directly. It’s basic science. “

— Seth Meyers: “I just want to say, before we get started here, that I’ve always admired and respected Mr. Trump. I’ve always believed he was — [responding to audience laughter] no, no, no — a visionary, an innovator, a great president, an even better golfer. And if you’ve ever seen me say anything negative about him, that’s just A.I.”

THE REGIME:

— President Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow him to fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, who he has accused of falsifying mortgage documents. It’s a direct attempt to take away the Fed’s political independence. 

— Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s handpicked vaccine advisory panel rolled back the previously standard recommendation that children under 4 should receive a combination vaccination against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. A decision on hepatitis B vaccinations for newborns was postponed until today.

  Physicians outside the Centers for Disease Control say the decision is contrary to all medical and scientific evidence.

  The altered recommendation means that the vaccines would still be available but some insurance companies might not pay for them.

— A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children, saying the Trump administration misleadingly presented its actions as a “reunification” effort. Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, said the government relied on false pretexts that “crumbled like a house of cards.”

— The Trump administration plans to reinstate a more difficult written citizenship test as part of the President’s desire to tighten down on immigration. The new test will be administered to people who apply on or after October 20^th.

VEEP: Former vice President Kamala Harris admits in her new book that her first choice for a running mate was then Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, but that it would have been “too big of a risk” for a Black woman to run with a gay man.

 “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” she wrote. “Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”

  She picked the affable but unknown Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and lost.

THE SPIN RACK:  An estimated 7,000 people filled Colorado State University’s Canvas Stadium in Fort Collins last night for a vigil honoring right wing activist  Charlie Kirk hosted by his organization, Turning Point USA. As many as 1,000 people also gathered for Kirk on Boston Common last night. —  Grammy winning Country songwriter Brett James who wrote “Jesus Take the Wheel” and “I Hold On,” was killed along with two other people in a plane crash in North Carolina yesterday.  —  Human remains believed to be those of Travis Decker, the Washington state man accused of killing his three daughters, have been found, according to the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office. Back in May he was believed to have used plastic bags to suffocate his three daughters, 5-year-old Olivia, 8-year-old Evelyn and 9-year-old Paityn.— Apple is introducing new earbuds today that can do real time translation of another language.  

BELOW THE FOLD:  American Express is issuing a new “Platinum” card that will cost you $895 a year to have even before you get to the cash register. Evidently there’s a space race among card companies for luxury cards that come with dining credits and travel offers. The rich are different.

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