Today’s notice: Jimmy Kimmel back on the airwaves? MAHA has a big moment. Democrats struggle to determine who gets to be one. A follow-up to our reporting on Ebola. And: A look inside FEMA’s new bureaucracy.
THE LATEST
Kimmel’s triumphant return? Disney announced yesterday that it would be bringing back Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show, saying that it only suspended the show last week “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” the company told NOTUS’ Amelia Benavides-Colón in a statement.
But the battle over late night is just beginning. Sinclair, a right-leaning company that owns and operates dozens of local ABC affiliates, says it will drop Kimmel’s show and replace it with “news programming” pending further discussion with the network. Nexstar, another media company that runs local ABC affiliates and has a merger deal currently in front of the FCC, has not announced what it will do after threatening last week to preempt Kimmel’s show.
The real legacy of this moment is a conservative rift, regardless of what Kimmel says tonight (or which affiliates air it). The right-wing backlash to political speech after the assassination of Charlie Kirk was met by a smaller but still powerful backlash of its own. MAGA celebrated Kimmel’s suspension, but other conservatives strongly condemned it. Their numbers are growing.
Sen. Mitch McConnell reposted a quote from Sen. Ted Cruz yesterday, in which the Texan compared the FCC’s bullying of ABC to a scene from “Goodfellas.”
“As a First Amendment guy, myself, I think he’s probably got it right,” McConnell posted on X.
Democrats point out that this goes much further than late-night TV. After Donald Trump over the weekend directly called for the DOJ to prosecute his political enemies, they raged that conservatives should split with him on that, too.
“Republicans who control the House and Senate are spineless and too scared to stand up to him because of what he could do in retaliation,” Rep. Jerry Nadler told NOTUS’ Oriana González and Riley Rogerson. “This is not normal.”
Open tabs: Supreme Court Allows Trump to Fire F.T.C. Commissioner (NYT); Tucker Carlson accused of stoking antisemitic conspiracy about Kirk murder (NY Post); Trump’s former lawyer sworn in as interim U.S. attorney in key Virginia office (CBS); ICE May Be Breaking the Law to Stonewall Reporters (CJR)
From the White House
Trump goes all in on MAHA: NOTUS’ Margaret Manto detailed the unease in the scientific community after Trump’s press conference yesterday alongside RFK Jr. and Mehmet Oz, where he announced that the country’s health agencies would be embracing several scientifically unproven or still-being-proven guidelines for pregnant women.
“Taking Tylenol is not good,” Trump said after claiming that the use of the drug during pregnancy is contributing to rising autism rates.
The new directive runs counter to current medical advice. The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Steven Fleischman, said in a statement that the president’s suggestions were “highly concerning” and would send “harmful and confusing” messages to pregnant patients.
Trump also raised eyebrows by going off script to instruct parents to spread out their children’s vaccinations over multiple visits to the doctor, saying, “It’s too much liquid.”
From the campaign trail
Democrats test their tent: “If we are going to be a big tent, it can’t just be a big tent for the conservative part of the party. It also has to be a big tent for the liberal part of the party,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal told NOTUS’ Shifra Dayak about the Democratic hand-wringing over Zohran Mamdani, which is still very much A Thing weeks out from the election Mamdani is dominating.
The opposition: “Socialism has consistently failed to deliver real, sustainable progress,” Rep. Tom Suozzi said in a recent public non-endorsement. Other vocal non-endorsers include NY Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs. Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey published an op-ed last week expressly saying that there’s no room in the party for Mamdani.
NOTUS INVESTIGATION
Inside Trump 2.0’s FEMA: “With this leadership, the information has been so inconsistent, and the guidance we’ve been getting has been so inconsistent that it has basically ground a lot of activities in the agency to a halt,” an employee in FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery told NOTUS’ Torrence Banks.
More than a dozen current and former staff told Torrence they’re increasingly worried about the agency’s ability to function. “It’s an absolutely ridiculous system,” a veteran employee at the agency said of Kristi Noem having to personally sign off on all expense requests over $100,000.
The template for these requests can sometimes change multiple times a week, tangling employees up in red tape. They’re cautioned not to use accepted agency shorthand because “DOGE is included in the process and they don’t know the acronyms,” one employee said.
The backlog is long. A spreadsheet reviewed by NOTUS showed nearly 200 $100K+ requests waiting for approval as of Sept. 8.
“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” a FEMA spox told NOTUS. “Change is always hard, especially for those invested in the status quo.”
NEW ON NOTUS
CDC engages on Ebola: The agency has deployed two epidemiologists and a senior adviser to the Democratic Republic of Congo and is working to deploy more staff, a CDC spokesperson said in an email to NOTUS’ Margaret Manto after she reported on experts’ concerns that the administration’s response to the situation there had been slow.
“If indeed they’re making this great progress behind the scenes, that’s a good news story,” Joe Biden’s pandemic preparedness chief, Paul Friedrichs, said. “It is not being reflected in the data that’s being shared thus far about the mortality rate.”
Deny, deny, deny: “Mr. (Tom) Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to,” Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing yesterday, referring to an investigation over undercover federal agents reportedly handing Trump’s border czar a Cava bag full of cash. “You should get your facts straight,” Leavitt added.
The Oracle of TikTok: The only confirmed party on the White House’s proposed TikTok deal is Oracle, whose co-founder, Larry Ellison, is a close ally of Trump. The company, which currently stores TikTok’s data on its servers, would be in charge of the app’s algorithm and source code, a senior White House official said.
More: Turning Point USA Resumes Its College Campuses Tour, by Amelia Benavides-Colón
NOT US
- Who really runs DHS? By Ben Terris for New York
- Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws, by Debra Kamin for The New York Times
- ‘We are not winning’: Greens look for new spark under Trump 2.0, by Zack Colman for Politico
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