LOS ANGELES — In Hollywood, something shifted in the six days between the time that Walt Disney Co. dropped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”“indefinitely,” following Kimmel’s comments about the suspect in the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and the late-night comedian’s return.

For many, Kimmel’s rebound appears to be a win for free speech and a testament to the power of boycotts against powerful corporate interests. However, for other writers, particularly comedy scribes, who view the events that transpired in the darkest, most McCarthy-esque terms, the fight over comedy may have just begun.

“There’s fear and outrage at the same time,” said Emmy-winning comedy writer Bruce Vilanch, who for years was the head writer for the Oscars and “Hollywood Squares” and has written jokes for comics including Billy Crystal and Bette Midler.

“Ever since ‘woke’ started before COVID and George Floyd, comedy became a minefield. And then, last week, it became a nuclear garden,” he said.

Indeed, the day after Disney announced Kimmel’s return, President Donald Trump told reporters that TV networks critical of him are an “arm of the Democrat Party,” and said, “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.” Angered that Kimmel was returning to the airwaves, he took to social media to threaten ABC and called for the late-night scalps of NBC’s Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.

Such ominous threats have cast a pall in writers rooms across the industry.

One showrunner currently developing multiple series, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that many of her colleagues have started to become more cautious about incorporating certain elements in their stories, something they didn’t do before. Others are having discussions privately rather than posting them on social media.

Several writers and showrunners who have worked on late-night shows, sitcoms and films declined to share their thoughts on the matter with The Times, citing fear of reprisals.

The cascade of anxiety comes at a time when Hollywood continues to struggle to get on solid footing after the pandemic lockdown, the dual labor strikes in 2023 and cost-cutting across the media landscape.

“Artists are already very concerned about our consolidated media ecosystem. A small shrinking number of gatekeepers control what Americans watch on TV, and these conglomerates are now being coerced into censoring us all by an administration that demands submission and obedience from what should be a free and independent media,” said television writer Meredith Stiehm, who is the outgoing president of Writers Guild of America West, during a rally in support of Kimmel outside the El Capitan Theatre last month.

“This cowardice has not only put the livelihoods of 20 writers, crew members and performers in limbo,” she said. “It has put our industry and our democracy in danger.”

Political satire has long held a mirror to human folly while challenging power with humor.

More than 2,400 years ago, Greek playwright Aristophanes’ biting, satirical comedies such as “Lysistrata” ridiculed Athens leaders during the Peloponnesian War. Many of the English nursery rhymes that are now viewed as sweet stories of princesses and fairies began appearing during the 14th century as veiled swipes at the monarchy. Rather than a lovely children’s melody, “Baa Baa Black Sheep” is said to be a critique of the wool tax imposed by King Edward I.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the brilliant satirical singer-songwriter (and mathematician) Tom Lehrer skewered taboo topics of the day such as the Catholic Church, militarism and racial conflict in America through parody songs.

In the early 1970s, George Carlin’s controversial monologue about the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” set off a landmark Supreme Court case that broadened the definition of indecency on public airwaves and set a free speech precedent for comedians.

Every presidential campaign season has become must-see TV on “Saturday Night Live.” Think Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, Phil Hartman’s Bill Clinton, Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin or Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump.

But now the political climate has changed drastically.

“It’s a dark time for comedians and, by extension, for all Americans,” said a statement put out by hundreds of comedians under the banner Comedians4Kimmel in the wake of his ouster.

“When the government targets one of us, they target all of us. They strike at the heart of our shared humanity. They strip away the basic right every person deserves: to speak freely, question boldly, and laugh loudly.”

What’s different now is that where once market and cultural forces placed pressures on comedians — see Ellen DeGeneres and Roseanne Barr — the squeeze is now coming directly from the government. (Barr, who was fired from her eponymous reboot in 2018 after she made a racist tweet about senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, has accused ABC of having a “double standard.”)

“That’s just called censorship,” said Vilanch. “This is the government actually intervening in the most capricious way.”

It’s not just late-night comedy that is deemed offensive, Trump has made public a rolling perceived enemies list, and he is going after them with vigor.

Just last month, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted, and Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she would “absolutely target” people who engaged in “hate speech.”

Also last month, Trump sued the New York Times for $15 billion, claiming that the paper and four of its journalists had engaged in a “decades-long pattern … of intentional and malicious defamation.” A federal judge dismissed the suit. In July, he sued the Wall Street Journal and its owner, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for $10 billion, claiming defamation. That suit is ongoing.

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What’s deemed funny or offensive has shifted through the years. Comedy writers have long pushed that line and adjusted. But after the cultural wars and trigger warnings of recent years, where writers adapted to audience sensitivities, they are now facing an era where offending the president and his administration itself is considered illegal.

”So much was going on before,” said a veteran late-night TV writer. “It just feels like another brick in the wall of the world that I have worked in for the past 35 years no longer exists.”

The uproar over Kimmel began after the comedian seemed to suggest during his monologue that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican.

On Sept. 23, after Kimmel came back on air with a defiant defense of free speech, several writers sighed a breath of relief, seeing his return as a victory.

“It would have been scary if this actually ended in his firing,” said the former late-night writer.

But the culture and free speech wars are not over.

“I think [comedy] will get sharper,” said Vilanch. “It will get sharper and probably meaner because people are angry, and they want to fight back. And that’s always what happens when you try and shut people down. They come back stronger.”

By JESSICA DAMIANO, Associated Press

I just cleaned out and filled a couple of birdfeeders to help my migrating backyard buddies fuel up for their long journeys south. And I’ll keep it well-stocked with high-energy seed mix throughout winter to feed the non-migratory birds that tough it out until spring in my suburban New York garden.

After all, it’s now, when the garden is slowing down, that birds need us the most. Providing sustenance is one of several ways that we can support them.

This Jan. 20, 2025, image shows a Northern cardinal perched on a snow-covered viburnum branch on Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

When selecting road food (sky food?) for birds, I always seek out options that provide high-quality sources of fat and protein, like unsalted peanuts, black-oil sunflower seeds and suet, which are cakes made from animal fat, seeds, grains and mealworms.

I’ll also whip up a batch of sugar-water “nectar” for migrating hummingbirds by dissolving 1 cup of white sugar in 4 cups of boiling water, then allowing it to cool.

All this is to supplement the buffet of seeds and berries that my perennials, shrubs and trees will naturally provide.

Let some perennials remain as food, habitat, visual interest

I’ve long ago abandoned the idea of a tidy winter garden, instead leaving most of my perennials, many of them natives, standing until spring. The plump seeds hidden in their faded flower heads will also feed the non-migratory birds that rough it out here in New York over winter, when other food sources are scarce.

The asters, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, goldenrods and ornamental grasses will soon be dry and crispy, but they will continue to serve the garden and its inhabitants for months.

This Sept. 29, 2025, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows spent coneflower plants in a Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano Via AP)

So will the berries nestled between the spiky leaves of my American holly bush, and those clinging to soon-to-be bare viburnum and dogwood branches. With any luck, nuts will fall to the ground encased in their “pinecone” packages, although I suspect this may be an off year for my Norway spruce.

If you aren’t already in the habit, consider leaving your spent perennials standing over winter. Not only will they serve essential wildlife, but they’ll serve you, too.

Birdsong in winter is a treat in my suburban New York garden, and the view of snow-covered seedheads from my window is certainly prettier than what my neighbor sees when gazing at her barren wasteland of a flattened, cleared-out garden.

Add trees and other plants

If you don’t have seed- or berry-producing plants in your landscape, you’re in luck. Not only is early fall a great time to plant shrubs and perennials, but the plants are likely to be steeply discounted at the garden center.

This Sept. 29, 2025. image provided by Jessica Damiano shows red berries on an American holly bush on Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano Via AP)

Consider adding trees, too. Oaks, firs, hickories and evergreens are among those that provide quality food, shelter and nesting sites for feathered friends. And that friendship will never be more apparent than in spring, when they’ll repay you with free pest-control services, feeding their baby hatchlings with thousands of insects that would otherwise go on to ravage your plants.

Leave some leaves and cut some lights

Pushing fallen leaves into garden beds to insulate plants and nourish the soil will also shelter hibernating insects that, in turn, will sustain ground-feeding birds. It’s much better for the ecosystem — and easier for the gardener — than bagging them up and sending them to a landfill.

This December 5, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows colorful fallen leaves covering the soil in a garden bed on Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

I’ll also disconnect my solar-powered landscape lighting and keep the porch light turned off for the next couple of months to avoid disorienting migratory birds, which rely on the moon and stars as celestial navigation cues to find their way south. It’s the closest they have to GPS, and I, for one, don’t want to be responsible for interfering with their signal.

In the end, caring for birds during the leanest moths is a gift that will fly right back at you.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

By Amanda Hernández, Stateline.org

America’s prison population is growing older at a pace that some experts say is unsustainable. As of 2022, the latest year with available data, people 55 and over made up nearly 1 in 6 prisoners — a fourfold increase since 2000 — and their numbers are projected to keep rising.

A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin warns that this trend is straining correctional systems that were not designed to care for older adults.

If current trends continue, the authors estimate that by 2030 as much as one-third of the U.S. prison population will be over 50.

“It puts it into perspective how bad that this has gotten,” said Alyssa Gordon, the report’s lead author. Gordon is an attorney and legal fellow with the ACLU National Prison Project. “People don’t realize that prisons are woefully equipped to handle this crisis.”

The findings are based on data from public records requests to all 50 state corrections departments, publicly available state prison population datasets and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some data, however, were not available for every state, limiting the authors’ ability to make extended state-by-state comparisons.

The report’s findings come as states face competing pressures: a nationwide crackdown on crime and public safety, tightening corrections budgets and severe overcrowding and staffing shortages.

The aging prison population is largely a product of the “tough-on-crime” era of the 1980s and 1990s, when lawmakers at both the state and federal level enacted a wave of punitive policies under the banner of public safety, according to the report. These policies, including mandatory minimums, “three strikes” laws and “truth-in-sentencing” statutes, led to significantly longer sentences and fewer opportunities for early release. Experts say many of those policies remain in place today.

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The report also highlights the growing price tag of incarcerating an aging population. Corrections spending data shows an upward trend in medical costs across some states, according to the report.

Prisons often lack accommodations for older adults, including accessible showers and beds, dementia care and hospice services, putting them at greater risk of injury or premature death, according to the report.

Emergency protocols also are frequently inadequate, the authors found, leaving older prisoners particularly vulnerable during natural disasters, disease outbreaks and other emergencies.

Some experts say that the costs of incarcerating older adults could create common ground for policymakers, as reducing this population may lower prison spending without significantly affecting public safety.

“If you want to figure out which population to target where it doesn’t have a public safety implication, this is the population to turn to,” Michele Deitch, one of the report’s authors and the director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, told Stateline. “This is an issue that can gather bipartisan support.”

The report’s authors estimate that more than half of incarcerated people over 55 — more than 58,000 individuals — have already served at least 10 years, with nearly 16,000 behind bars for more than half their lives.

Older adults are less likely to reoffend, with recidivism rates reported at 18% in Colorado in 2020, 12% in South Carolina in 2021, and 6% in Florida in 2022. These rates are far below the national three-year rearrest rate of 66% for the general prison population, according to the report.

In recent years, more states have explored measures to address the aging prison population, including legislation commonly called “ second look” laws or policies that expand parole eligibility for older or seriously ill inmates.

Most recently, a new Maryland law, which is set to take effect on Oct. 1, will allow certain incarcerated people to apply for geriatric parole. The law applies to those who are at least 65, have served at least 20 years, are not sex offenders, are serving sentences with the possibility of parole, and have had no serious disciplinary infractions in the past three years.

Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Patricia Kime, KFF Health News

At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Force Capt. Monte Watts bumped into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who told him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Watts knew other missileers with similar cancers. But the connection really hit home later that same January day, when the results of a blood test revealed that Watts himself had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“I don’t know if it was ironic or serendipitous or what the right word is, but there it was,” Watts said.

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Within the community of U.S. service members who staff nuclear missile silos scattered across the Northern Rockies and Great Plains, suspicions had long been brewing that their workplaces were unsafe. Just months after Watts was diagnosed in 2022, Lt. Col. Danny Sebeck, a former Air Force missileer who had transferred to the U.S. Space Force, wrote a brief on a potential cancer cluster among people who served at Minuteman III launch control centers on Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

Sebeck identified 36 former workers who served primarily from 1993 to 2011 and had been diagnosed with cancer, including himself. Of those, 11 had non-Hodgkin lymphoma; three had died. The Air Force responded swiftly to Sebeck’s findings, launching a massive investigation into cancer cases and the environment at three intercontinental ballistic missile bases and a California launch facility. The goal is to complete the research by the end of 2025.

The service has released portions of the studies as they conclude, holding online town halls and briefings to highlight its findings. But while former missileers say they are heartened by the rapid response, they remain concerned that the research, which crosses decades and includes thousands of ICBM personnel and administrative workers, may address too large a population or use statistical analyses that won’t show a connection between their illnesses and their military service.

They need that tie to expedite benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Historically, the Department of Defense has been slow to recognize potential environmental diseases. Veterans sickened by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, Marines who drank contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and service members who lived and worked near burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan fought for years to have their illnesses acknowledged as related to military service.

In the case of the missileers, the Air Force already had studied potential contamination and cancer at Malmstrom in 2001 and 2005. That research concluded that launch control centers were “safe and healthy working environments.” But with Sebeck’s presentation and the decision to pursue further investigation, Air Force Global Strike Command — the unit responsible for managing nuclear missile silos and aircraft-based nuclear weapons — said the earlier studies may not have included a large enough sampling of medical records to be comprehensive.

Sebeck, who serves as co-director of the Torchlight Initiative, an advocacy group that supports ICBM personnel and their families, told congressional Democrats on April 8 that the Defense Department has not accurately tracked exposures to the community, making it difficult for veterans to prove a link and obtain VA health care and disability compensation.

“I had to go to a VA person and pull some papers,” Sebeck said, referring to the government system for recording service members’ environmental risks. “It says that I visited Poland once. It doesn’t mention that I pulled 148 alerts in a launch control center with polychlorinated biphenyls and with this contaminated air and water.”

PCBs — and the missileers exposed to them

PCBs are synthetic chemicals once used in industry, including missile control electrical components such as display screens, keyboards, and circuit breakers. They have been banned for manufacture since 1979, deemed toxic and a likely carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Air Force’s Missile Community Cancer Study compares 14 types of common cancers in the general U.S. population and the missile community and also studies the environments at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to determine whether they may have contributed to the risk of developing cancer.

An unarmed Minuteman III missile sits inside a silo at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming on July 9, 2025. (Michael A. Richmond/U.S. Air Force/TNS)

The Malmstrom, Warren, and Minot bases together field 400 Minuteman III missiles, the land-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, which also includes submarine- and aircraft-launched nuclear weapons. The missiles are housed in silos spread across parts of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, staffed around the clock by missileers operating from underground, bunkerlike launch control centers.

So far, the Air Force investigation has found no “statistically elevated” deaths from cancer in the missile community compared with the general population, and it found that the death rates for four types of common cancers — non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung, colon and rectum, and prostate cancer — were significantly lower in missileers than in the general population.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma accounted for roughly 5.8% of all cancer deaths among people who worked in launch control centers from January 1979 to December 2020.

Early results, derived from Defense Department medical records, found elevated rates of breast and prostate cancers in the missile community, but a later analysis incorporating additional data did not support those findings. The studies also did not find increased rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Air Force officials noted during a June 4 online town hall, however, that these assessments are based on roughly half the data the service expects to review for its final epidemiological reports and cautioned against drawing conclusions given the limitations.

The final incidence report will include federal and state data, including information from civilian cancer registries, and delve into subgroups and exposures, which may “provide deeper insights into the complex relationship” between serving in the missile community and cancer risk, wrote Air Force Col. Richard Speakman in a September 2024 memo on the initial epidemiology results.

Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said during the June town hall that only the final results will determine whether the missile community’s cancer rates are higher than the general population’s.

Some lawmakers share the concern of missileers about the Air Force study. Following the release of a University of North Carolina review of Torchlight Initiative data that showed higher rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — at younger ages — among Malmstrom missileers, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced an amendment to a defense policy bill calling for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to review health and safety conditions in the facilities.

“Let’s make sure that we have some outside experts working with the Air Force studying cancer rates with our ICBM missions,” Bacon posted July 30 on the social platform X. “We want to ensure credibility and that whatever results come out, we’ve done total due diligence.”

Regarding additional studies on the working environments at the installations and a possible relationship between exposures and cancer risk, Speakman, who commands the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, said Malmstrom had two types of PCBs that the other two missile wing bases did not.

He added that benzene, found in cigarette smoke, vehicle exhaust, and gasoline fumes, was the largest contributor to cancer risk in reviews of the bases.

The assessment concluded that health risks to missileers is “low, but it’s not zero,” Speakman said. He said it would be appropriate to monitor the health of launch control workers.

Next steps

Watts, whose story has been highlighted by the Torchlight Initiative, has asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate — the watchdog agency referred his request to Global Strike Command — and is closely watching the Air Force research. He said the bulk of the cancer cases reported to Torchlight occurred in the 2000s, when ICBM personnel still used technology that contained PCBs, burned classified material such as treated paper and plastic coding devices indoors, and possibly were exposed to contaminated water.

“I open the door and there’s guys standing there in pressurized suits with sampling equipment,” Watts recalled. “They said, ‘We’re here to check for contaminated water.’ I look at my crew commander, and we’re standing there in cotton uniforms. I said, ‘Do you see anything wrong with this?’”

An Air Force firefighter rappels down a training missile silo during a training exercise at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming on Oct. 26, 2024. (Hunter C. Kirkland/U.S. Air Force/TNS)

Launch control operators no longer burn code tapes indoors and the Air Force has made improvements to air circulation in the centers. Sebeck wants Congress to consider including missileers and others sickened by exposure to base contamination in the PACT Act, landmark legislation that mandates health care and benefits for veterans sickened by burn pits and other pollutants.

“It’s documented that there is a large cancer cluster in Montana, probably also in Wyoming. People act surprised, but all they have to do is go to the oncology office in Denver. I can find my missileer buddies there. We are sitting in the same chairs getting chemotherapy,” Sebeck said.

Air Force Global Strike Command spokesperson Maj. Lauren Linscott said in response to Sebeck’s remarks that the unit understands the impact of cancer on its personnel and is committed to supporting them.

“While current findings are preliminary and no conclusions can yet be drawn, we are dedicated to a rigorous, peer-reviewed, data-driven process to better understand potential health risks because the safety of our airmen is our top priority,” Linscott said.

Bills introduced in the House and Senate would address the situation. In addition to Bacon’s amendment, the Senate version of an annual defense policy bill would require a “deep cleaning” of launch control centers every five years until the sites are decommissioned as a new ICBM, the Sentinel, replaces the Minuteman IIIs.

The Air Force aims to release its final epidemiological report by the end of the year.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.