Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. I condemn political violence and said my piece about its growing threat last summer, and don’t have significantly more to add. What I want to talk about today is the fallout, which has led to a spree of government-directed firings and harassment of celebrities and pundits whose offenses ranged from tasteless jokes to being insufficiently hagiographic about Kirk to innocuous and factually correct statements.

One of the most high-profile recent examples was Jimmy Kimmel being suspended “indefinitely.” For background, in his monologue on September 15th, he said conservatives were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” This has not really been borne out by the evidence that emerged since then, but we should remember that it was an evolving situation and lots of people were speculating on motives1.

Shortly thereafter Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), went on a right-wing podcast2 and called for Kimmel to be fired. Ironically, Jimmy Kimmel got his late night gig in 2003 after ABC cancelled Bill Maher’s show Politically Incorrect for statements about 9/11 that angered the Bush administration (time truly is a flat circle). Carr’s actual threat was something straight out of Goodfellas, saying:

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way”

Was this removal justified based on Kimmel’s statements? The constitutional law answer is NO: Political speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment, and the government cannot dictate what private citizens or companies say. Don’t take my word for it, ask the Supreme Court!

The facts get even worse if you step back and look at the pattern. In May, CBS announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was being cancelled. They claimed the reasons were purely financial, although Colbert was a fierce Trump critic, and just a few days before he delivered a sharp monologue calling the decision by Paramount (the parent company of CBS) to settle a flimsy lawsuit by Trump for $16 million a “big fat bribe.” After his firing, two things happened. One, the FCC allowed a merger between Paramount and Skydance to proceed. Two, President Trump gloated on social media and said Jimmy Kimmel was next (note the date under the post):

Still not convinced? Here are a few more examples of corruption and silencing free expression:

• Jeff Bezos personally intervened to stop the Washington Post editorial page from endorsing Kamala Harris, followed by a meeting with Trump about securing contracts for his space company Blue Origin

• A Turkish PhD student named Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE3 for co-authoring an op-ed about the conflict in Gaza with 3 other students

• President Trump is currently suing The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times over coverage he doesn’t like, and settled with ABC and CBC in meritless cases

• The White House also froze out news outlets like the Associated Press for not referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”

To see where this could be heading let’s turn to Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess grandmaster and dissident who now lives in exile in the US. He began criticizing Vladimir Putin’s government around the mid 2000s, and even ran for president in 2007. He was beaten for his political views on several occasions and arrested in 2012. Fearing for his life, he left his home country for good in 2013.

Kasparov writes about his experiences on The Next Move Substack newsletter. Yesterday, he explained how over a few short years, Russia transformed from a relatively open society to one where the content of TV shows was completely under government control (bold highlights mine for emphasis):

Forget, for a moment, about the most high-profile assassinations of reporters and dissidents in Russia. Those would come later. The government’s campaign of procedural harassment and lawfare made it impossible for journalists and media executives to do their jobs right out of the gate.

Freedom is often lost under mountains of paperwork and crippling fines rather than in a cinematic showdown with a dictator.

Many of the Russian government’s targets were never actually arrested or charged with any specific offense. Many more were never targeted at all! A few high-profile people got shaken down and everyone else got the message.

A general chill spread over the country’s media, but it took a while to entirely freeze over. In the meantime, Russian officials could continue to point out the existence of a handful of remaining opposition journalists when critical Westerners pushed Moscow on the state of independent media.

The whole post is worth reading in full 👇

The Next Move

I Saw How Russia Killed Media Freedom

Last night, apropos of nothing at all, I was thinking about how in Russia, you can’t go on television and make fun of the president or his favorites…

Read more

4 months ago · 343 likes · 20 comments · Garry Kasparov

We are at a critical juncture in this country. Freedoms we took for granted yesterday are in grave jeopardy today. On a similar note to Kasparov, comedian Michael Ian Black recently wrote:

“If I had told you a year ago that I could easily envision a scene in which a comedian is dragged off-stage by the police for making a joke about a public figure, you would have told me I was overreacting. If I told you that now, you wouldn’t even bat an eye. Because they’re going to make an example of somebody, and they’re going to make whatever bullshit charges they come up with stick.”

Why am I spending time on another political post that will likely garner low engagement and lose me subscribers? After all, this newsletter is nominally about veterinary medicine, science, and public health. Well, as the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow once remarked: “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.”

We are seeing RFK Jr censor career physicians and scientists at the CDC and FDA over vaccine policy. Researchers who run afoul of the government’s whims lose vital NIH grant funding. Immigrant graduate students and professors are being harassed, detained, and even deported by ICE for their political views. Censorship isn’t a hypothetical threat, it is already here and growing daily.

What should we do? I have two prescriptions for different audiences:

1. For individuals, do not comply in advance. As Garry Kasparov said, most of the chill in free expression comes from fear and self-censorship. If we voluntarily bite our tongues, the government has already succeeded in its goal.

2. For institutions, for the love of God, fight back when challenged!! In my own little bubble, I am talking to the AVMA, state boards of veterinary medicine, university leadership, journal editorial boards, and private companies.

I’m not naive; I realize that the government has a lot of power and the stakes for organizations are high. Universities have millions of dollars in tuition (through federal student loans) and federal grant money on the line. Companies need regulatory approval to operate and to complete deals like mergers/acquisitions. Healthcare providers must maintain licensure with government approval.

What all should realize is that those who cave and make deals inevitably face increasing ransom demands. Look at Columbia University or law firms like Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps who tried—in vain—to curry favor with the administration. You cannot make a deal with people who operate in bad faith and don’t honor their own word.

In contrast, those that fight back are having success. Harvard is winning in court. A judge dismissed a frivolous lawsuit against the New York Times. Young lawyers are overwhelmingly voting with their feet to work at firms that didn’t capitulate. Washington Post subscriptions plummeted after the changes made by Bezos. Canada and Brazil are defying the tariff bullying to the dismay of the administration.

The erosion of freedom rarely announces itself with a bang; it comes drip by drip, excuse by excuse, until the silence is total. We’ve seen this story before—in Russia, in Hungary, in Turkey—and we’re naive if we think it can’t happen here. We can either accept a future where academics, entertainers, and ordinary citizens may speak only with government approval, or we can choose to fight now, loudly and relentlessly, while we still can.

History won’t remember those who kept quiet to protect their careers. It will remember the brave ones who had the courage to speak up. I hope you join me in using your voice.

—Eric

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