Jimmy Kimmel Pulled Off Air ‘Indefinitely,’ and Former C.D.C. Head Issues Warning

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Thursday, September 18th.

Here's what we're covering.

In an abrupt move last night, ABC announced that it is indefinitely pausing Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show amid intense political pressure from the Trump administration over Kimmel's on-air comments about the killing of Charlie Kirk.

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 doing everything they can to score political points from it.

During his opening monologue on Monday, Kimmel suggested that the suspect in the Kirk assassination had right-wing views, setting off a wave of anger from conservatives.

While officials have released few details about the alleged gunman's ideology, they've said his political views had recently moved toward the left.

You know, when you look at the conduct that has taken place by Jimmy Kimmel, it appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible.

The decision to suspend Kimmel, which was made by top executives at Disney, the parent company of ABC, came after the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, ripped into Kimmel on a conservative podcast.

I think this is an isolated.

Carr said Kimmel's monologue was part of a concerted effort to lie to the American people about Kirk's death, and that local broadcasters, whose licenses the FCC oversees, should stop airing the show.

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 going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Almost immediately, the owners of some of ABC's affiliate stations said they would stop airing Kimmel's show to their local audiences, heeding Carr's comments.

Disney then made its decision to pause the program altogether.

Brendan Carr is hugely influential over the nation's media companies, and the commission has really never exercised its power in quite the way that Carr has done over the last few months.

Michael Grimbaum is a media correspondent at the Times.

He says that President Trump hailed Carr as a, quote, warrior for free speech when he appointed him.

But in the role, Carr has leveraged the power of the FCC to crack down on speech that he finds offensive.

Carr is actually the author of the Project 2025 chapter on media regulation.

And he himself is an ideologue.

I think he would be upfront about his conservative viewpoints.

And what he has contended in public appearances is that there's a liberal bias in the American media and that the FCC has done little to combat that, that national networks have a stranglehold over the programming that billions of Americans see and hear.

And he has stated that his goal at the FCC is to create some, what he considers more balance in that programming.

But of course, what is in the public interest and what is considered politically fair is often in the eye of the beholder.

This is just despicable, disgusting, and against democratic values.

The announcement that Kimmel had been pulled off the air sparked outrage and alarm, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who warned that the whole situation was like something out of what he called a dictator's playbook.

That is not what democracies do.

That is what autocracies do.

And it doesn't matter whether you agree with Kimmel or not.

He has the right to free speech.

Kimmel is the second late-night host in recent months to lose his slot.

CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show in July.

The network cited financial reasons, but critics have claimed it was an attempt to stay on the good side of the FCC, whose approval it needed for a major merger.

Colbert, like Kimmel, has been a frequent critic of President Trump.

I want to be clear: today should not be about me.

Today should be about the future of trust in public health.

On Capitol Hill yesterday, Susan Menarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a stark warning saying that Health Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

is ignoring science and putting public health at risk.

Menaras was fired by Kennedy this summer after clashing with him over vaccines in a private meeting, which she shared new details about in testimony to the Senate Health Committee.

He called CDC the most corrupt federal agency in the world.

He said that CDC employees were killing children and they don't care.

He said that CDC employees were bought by the pharmaceutical industry.

Beyond his broad criticism of the CDC at large, Menara says Kennedy is particularly focused on the agency's current immunization recommendations for kids, which protect against 16 diseases like polio, whooping cough, and hepatitis B.

She said Kennedy, who spent years promoting baseless claims about the dangers of vaccines, told her he wants to change that guidance, going against long-standing medical consensus.

The panel that makes those recommendations meets today and tomorrow.

Earlier this year, Kennedy fired all of the members of the panel, replacing them with his own picks, several of whom share his skepticism of vaccines.

If the vaccine advisory panel makes recommendations to change the childhood vaccine schedule, should the American people have confidence in that decision.

No.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and one of the few Republicans who has publicly criticized Kennedy, said the health secretary is undermining the legitimacy of the government's public health guidance.

In response to questions from the Times, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said that the committee will not change its recommendations without sound evidence and that any decision would be approved by the CDC's new acting director, Jim O'Neill.

O'Neill is a former Silicon Valley executive who has previously criticized vaccine mandates.

He has no medical or scientific training.

Today, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to lower our policy interest rate by a quarter percentage point.

The Federal Reserve has now lowered interest rates for the first time this year.

The central bank had been holding them steady month after month as a way of keeping inflation in check.

But the chair of the Fed, Jerome Powell, said yesterday that the Fed was acting on a new concern.

So, what's different now?

What's different now is that you see a very different picture of the risks to the labor market.

Powell said the Fed is closely monitoring what some economists have called ominous signs in that labor market.

Unemployment has edged up, and job growth slowed sharply this summer.

Lowering interest rates could be a balm for that by encouraging companies to borrow money, making them more likely to expand their payroll.

Powell described the drop in rates as a risk management move.

The rate drop comes as President Trump has tried to exert power over the Fed, a traditionally independent institution.

Just hours before the Fed's meeting, a new Trump appointee to the board, Stephen Myron, was sworn in.

His appointment is an unorthodox arrangement, since Myron says he's just taking a temporary leave of absence from a role he has at the White House, meaning while he's at the Fed, Trump is still technically his boss.

I'm going to address you this evening concerning a critical incident that has rocked the community here in York County.

In Pennsylvania, authorities say three police officers were fatally shot yesterday while trying to serve a warrant in a rural part of the state.

Two other officers were seriously injured.

I can confirm that the shooter is dead.

The shooting took place a little after 2 p.m.

on a quiet country road a couple miles outside of an old mill town.

Officers were there following up on what authorities described as a domestic-related investigation.

They gave few other details.

Studies have shown that domestic violence-related calls are among the most dangerous situations for police officers.

A federal report found that those kinds of calls were responsible for the highest number of police fatalities.

We got to do better as a society.

Pennsylvania's Governor Josh Shapiro joined authorities at the press conference following the shooting.

This kind of violence isn't okay.

We need to help the people who think that picking up a gun, picking up a weapon is the answer to resolving disputes so we don't have to deal with tragedies like this.

And finally.

Did you understand a word of that?

Our universal translators must must be malfunctioning.

The idea of headsets that can instantly translate any language.

Importing preferences and calibrating virtual environments.

Or glasses with a virtual assistant built in ready to help.

All of that used to be the domain of science fiction and experimental devices.

But the tech giants, Apple and Meta, are now both trotting out their own versions.

Apple's newest earbuds use artificial intelligence for real-time translations.

Times tech columnist Brian Chen just used them to to catch up with a friend who talked all about what he'd done this summer in Spanish, a language Brian doesn't speak.

Brian says he then reviewed the transcript with his friend afterwards and other than a few minor mistakes, the headphones gave a solid translation.

And yesterday, Meta unveiled new smart glasses.

They've had a version of these on the market for a few years that can take photos and videos, but the latest ones have a tiny built-in screen that can display apps.

They also have a built-in AI assistant who responds to voice commands and can see what you're looking at through a camera.

Tricky thing is that when CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to show off the glasses yesterday, demonstrating how they could look up a barbecue sauce recipe or take a video call, they didn't quite work.

I don't know what to tell you guys.

Zuckerberg laughed it off, saying, they tell us not to do live demos.

Those are the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News quiz.