Key events
Rachel Leingang
Late-night television hosts credited people who boycotted Disney for getting Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show back on the air after the corporation had indefinitely suspended Kimmel amid pressure from the Trump administration.
“We got word that our long national late-nightmare is over,” Stephen Colbert said during his show on Monday night.
“Once more, I am the only martyr in late night, unless … CBS, you want to announce anything?” Colbert joked, referencing CBS’s decision to cancel his show earlier this year. “Still no? Because the money thing, I forgot.”
Protests against Disney’s suspension of Kimmel and canceled subscriptions to Disney products mounted as concern over free speech rights grew. High-profile people joined in the calls to boycott. Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani said he wouldn’t do a town hall on a local ABC channel, reversing course after Kimmel’s reinstatement.
Some Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, also spoke out against the Federal Communications Commission’s chair pressuring Disney.
“Here’s why Disney folded after Kimmel was suspended: Google searches for cancel Disney+ and cancel Hulu spiked,” Colbert said, “which explains why the other trending search was ‘how to entertain my child without Bluey’. So Disney put Kimmel back on because you, the American people, were upset.”
Comedian Jon Stewart credited the boycott campaign with “pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of Only Murders in the Building” on his show on Monday night.
Democrat Adelita Grijalva wins special election for southern Arizona congressional seat
Rachel Leingang
Adelita Grijalva, the daughter of the late progressive congressman Raúl Grijalva, won a special election on Tuesday to fill the seat left open when her father died earlier this year.
Grijalva faced Republican challenger Daniel Butierez in the heavily blue seventh district in Arizona, which covers the southern parts of the state and the borderland areas.
Raúl Grijalva held the seat for more than two decades, until his death at 77 in March. His daughter will become the first Latina that Arizona has sent to Congress.
Filling the seat narrows Republicans’ advantage in the House, where Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by only one vote.
Adelita Grijalva, a longtime local elected official in southern Arizona, fended off Democratic challengers in a primary that attracted national attention amid an ongoing debate over the future of the Democratic party, and in particular its ageing candidates, as Raúl Grijalva was one of multiple Democratic lawmakers to die in office this year.
Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of US politics as Donald Trump has made clear his displeasure at the return of late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.
Before Tuesday’s broadcast, Trump opined on his Truth Social online platform that he “can’t believe” ABC gave Kimmel back his show, and hinted at further action against the network.
“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE,” Trump wrote.
“He is yet another arm of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this.”
He added: “Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit.
In his show last night – the first since his suspension over comments about the shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk – Kimmel called government threats to silence comedians “anti-American”.
Kimmel said he had not intended to make light of Kirk’s murder and he understood his comments could have been seen as “ill-timed or unclear”.
Later in the monologue, Kimmel hit out against Trump, saying that the president “did his best to cancel me” but that “instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.”
Kimmel added that “the president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”
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Stay with us for more on this story, and in other developments:
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Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv. Writing on Truth Social after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the UN on Tuesday, the US president said “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.
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Donald Trump launched a full-on assault on the UN during his general assembly speech, describing it as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership. In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.
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Meanwhile, Trump was accused by a UK cabinet minister of “misreading” London after the US president claimed the city wants to “go to sharia law”. The president renewed his feud with London mayor Sadiq Khan, calling him a “terrible, terrible mayor”. The British work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden dismissed the president’s attack and said Trump had had “a beef” with Khan for years.
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The Secret Service said it had uncovered and dismantled a covert, hi-tech operation in the New York area, which had the capability to disrupt cellular networks. Authorities revealed that the hidden communications system included over 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers.
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The man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course two months before Trump clinched his second presidency in the 2024 White House election has been found guilty by a jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. Ryan Routh – who now faces up to life in prison at a later sentencing hearing – reportedly tried to use a pen to stab himself in the neck as the guilty verdict was read in court. Officers quickly swarmed him and dragged him out of the courthouse.
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After promising to meet with Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Thursday, 25 September, Trump shared in a social media post that he would no longer meet with the top Democratic lawmakers. The negotiations had been intended to secure a government funding measure, before it expires at the end of this month.
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Defense secretary Pete Hegseth decided to close a defense department advisory committee dedicated to recruiting and retaining women in the military. In a social media post announcing the closure of the defense advisory committee on women in the services a Pentagon spokesperson wrote: “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.”