By AUDREY McAVOY and HALLIE GOLDEN, Associated Press

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon opened their late-night shows Thursday using a mix of humor and solidarity with suspended ABC host Jimmy Kimmel.

Stewart opted for satire to critique ABC suspending “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely following comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Colbert took a more serious approach, calling his suspension “blatant censorship.” Fallon praised Kimmel and vowed to keep doing his show as usual. Then an announcer spoke over him and replaced most of his critiques about President Donald Trump with flattery.

FILE – Jon Stewart poses in the press room with the award for outstanding talk series for “The Daily Show” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Their guests the day after Kimmel’s suspension — which also came two months after CBS said it would cancel Colbert’s show — varied widely. Fallon’s guests were actor Jude Law, journalist Tom Llamas and actor and singer Jonathan Groff — none of whom addressed Kimmel’s situation.

Stewart and Colbert interviewed guests who could address censorship concerns raised by Kimmel’s suspension. Journalist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa spoke to Stewart.

When Stewart asked Ressa, the author of “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” tips on coping with the current moment, Ressa recounted how she and her colleagues at the news site Rappler “just kept going” when she was faced with 11 arrest warrants in one year under Philippine then-President Rodrigo Duterte.

“We just kept doing our jobs. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other,” Ressa said.

Stewart makes special appearance to skewer Kimmel suspension

Stewart’s show opened with a voice-over promising adherence to the party line.

“We have another fun, hilarious administration-compliant show,” it said.

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He lavished praise on the president and satirized his criticism of large cities and his deployment of the National Guard to fight their crime.

“Coming to you tonight from the real (expletive), the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no one’s ever seen before. Someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?” Stewart said.

“The Daily Show” set was refashioned with decorative gold engravings, in a parody of gold accents Trump has added to the fireplace, doorway arches, walls and other areas of the Oval Office.

Stewart fidgeted nervously as though he was worried about speaking the correct talking points. When the audience members reacted with an “awww” he whispered: “What are you doing? Shut up. You’re going to (expletive) blow this for us.”

He took on a more stilted tone when he started describing Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom, calling the president “our great father.”

“Gaze upon him. With a gait even more majestic than that of the royal horses that prance before him,” he said.

Stewart normally hosts only on Mondays. The Emmy winner helmed “The Daily Show” from 1999 through 2015, delivering sharp, satirical takes on politics and current events and interviews with newsmakers. He returned to host once a week during the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Fallon opened his “Tonight Show” monologue addressing Kimmel’s suspension. “To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on. And no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s a decent, funny and loving guy, and I hope he comes back.”

Swift suspension after remarks on Kirk’s assassination

Kimmel made several remarks about the reaction to Kirk’s killing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday and Tuesday nights, including that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”

ABC suspended Kimmel’s show after a group of ABC-affiliated stations said it would not air the show, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said his agency had a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation.

Kimmel has not commented. His supporters say Carr misread what the comic said and that nowhere did he specifically suggest that Tyler Robinson — the man Utah authorities allege fatally shot Kirk — was conservative.

In July, CBS said it would cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May. The network said it shut down the decades-old TV institution for financial reasons. But the announcement came three days after Colbert criticized the settlement between President Donald Trump and Paramount Global, parent company of CBS, over a “60 Minutes” story.

‘The Late Show’ hosts past and present address suspension

Colbert started his monologue on Thursday with the animated song “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” but replaced the lyrics with “Shut your trap. Shut your trap.”

He later addressed Kimmel directly, saying that he stands with him and his staff.

“If ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive,” he said.

He also responded to remarks Carr made that it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming “they determine falls short of community values.”

“Well, you know what my community values are, buster? Freedom of speech,” Colbert said to loud applause from his audience.

When Colbert talked with New Yorker editor David Remnick about Kimmel’s suspension, he said: “What we are seeing now is the government acting at the direction of the president of the United States to put pressure on, to manipulate, to silence and even to shut down institutions of the free word.”

David Letterman, Colbert’s predecessor on “The Late Show,” lamented the networks’ moves.

“I feel bad about this, because we all see where see this is going, correct? It’s managed media,” Letterman said during an appearance Thursday at The Atlantic Festival 2025 in New York. “It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.”

He added that people shouldn’t be fired just because they don’t “suck up” to what Letterman called “an authoritarian” president.

Today is Friday, Sept. 19, the 262nd day of 2025. There are 103 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 19, 1988, Olympic diver Greg Louganis suffered a concussion after striking his head on the diving board during the preliminary round of the 3-meter springboard diving competition at the Seoul Summer Games; Louganis would recover from the injury and win a gold medal in the event the following day.

Also on this date:

In 1796, President George Washington’s farewell address was published. In it, America’s first chief executive advised, “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.”

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In 1881, the 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, died 2 1/2 months after being shot by Charles Guiteau; he was succeeded by Vice President Chester A. Arthur.

In 1955, President Juan Peron of Argentina was ousted after a revolt by the army and navy.

In 1957, the United States conducted its first contained underground nuclear test, code-named “Rainier,” in the Nevada desert.

In 1985, the Mexico City area was struck by a devastating earthquake that killed at least 9,500 people.

In 1995, The New York Times and The Washington Post published the manifesto of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski (kah-ZIHN’-skee), which proved instrumental in identifying and capturing him.

In 2004, Hu Jintao (hoo jin-tow) became the undisputed leader of China with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin (jahng zuh-MEEN’) from his top military post.

In 2008, struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration laid out a radical bailout plan calling for a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions. Relieved investors sent stocks soaring on Wall Street and around the globe.

In 2011, Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees recorded his 602nd save, making him baseball’s all-time leader in the category.

In 2022, Great Britain and the world said a final goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II at a state funeral that drew presidents and kings, princes and prime ministers — and crowds who thronged the streets of London.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Rosemary Harris is 98.
Singer-songwriter Paul Williams is 85.
Singer Bill Medley (The Righteous Brothers) is 85.
Singer Sylvia Tyson (Ian and Sylvia) is 85.
R&B singer Freda Payne is 83.
Actor Jeremy Irons is 77.
Model-actor Twiggy Lawson is 76.
TV personality Joan Lunden is 75.
Musician-producer Nile Rodgers is 73.
Rock singer Lita Ford is 67.
Musician Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) is 63.
Country singer Trisha Yearwood is 61.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is 60.
News anchor Soledad O’Brien is 59.
Actor Sanaa Lathan (suh-NAH’ LAY’-thun) is 54.
“Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon is 51.
Actor Columbus Short is 43.

Video surveillance caught the liquid larceny: A man pulled a box truck behind a Maplewood strip mall in the wee hours in late October, got out, grabbed a hose and jammed it into a bin of used cooking oil outside Great Moon Buffet.

He siphoned nearly $800 worth of grease from the restaurant, pumping it into a storage container in the back of the truck and slipping away into the darkness, according to felony charges against the alleged culprit, who’s also accused of hitting up two other restaurants.

“I had never heard of anything like this before,” said Derek Fritze, a 10-year Maplewood police detective who investigated the case. “Apparently, it’s a big thing.”

But it’s not new, just more widespread as used cooking oil has become liquid gold over the past decade because it’s recycled for the production of biofuel, said Kent Swisher, president and CEO of the North American Renderers Association. He said thieves are stealing up to $80 million worth of the grease every year, up from $42 million in 2013.

“So, yeah, it’s across the country,” he said of the thievery. “And as prices have gotten stronger over time, you’d think the renderers would be happy. But it actually created more problems, because it created more people trying to steal it.”

Renderers and smaller businesses collect the oil from restaurants, who are compensated depending on the volume. It’s then processed and sold to refineries. Besides biofuel, it’s used as a nutritional additive in animal feed.

The global used cooking oil market is expanding rapidly. It was valued at $7 billion in 2023 and is expected to top $14 billion by 2033, according to market analysts.

Meanwhile, U.S. restaurants have been getting 10 to 50 cents per gallon this year for the grease, says Florida-based recycler Grease Connections.

Slippery bandit

A manager at Great Moon Buffet noticed the restaurant had only been getting about $15 a month — instead of the usual $600 to $700 — because the amount of used cooking oil in the barrel out back was low when picked up by Sanimax, a rendering company with a plant in South St. Paul.

So he put up surveillance cameras, which caught the illicit act going down just before 4 a.m. Oct. 23. Cameras got an image of the man’s face, and the back license plate of his white box truck. The manager reported the theft to police on Oct. 28.

Less than two weeks later, around 4:20 a.m. Nov. 7, police saw the truck parked outside a restaurant on Beam Avenue, the criminal complaint says. The driver denied stealing used oil from any restaurant. He said the truck belonged to his friends, and that he stopped in the parking lot because his truck was not working.

Police say they later matched the driver’s face to the man in the Great Moon Buffet surveillance video.

Sanimax gave police a list of other restaurants where surveillance cameras allegedly caught the same man stealing grease: New Hong Kong Wok in New Brighton about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2024, and Peking Garden Restaurant in St. Paul around 4 a.m. eight days later.

Sanimax put the value of the oil stolen from the three restaurants at just over $3,600.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged the Minneapolis man with three counts of theft, two at the felony level. His attorney did not respond to the Pioneer Press’ requests for comment on the allegations.

Prevention tactics

Sanimax driver Jimmy Lee keeps an eye on a container full of grease as it is lifted and emptied into a recycling truck during a pickup in South St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

On a recent weekday morning, a Sanimax driver pulled up to Concord Lanes and sucked out used cooking oil from a large bin on the side of the bowling alley. It’ll end up just down the road at the company’s South St. Paul plant, a remnant of the city’s stockyards and meatpacking days.

Mike Karman, Sanimax vice president of procurement, said used cooking oil theft has been a problem for at least a decade — mostly in larger metropolitan areas — and it’s been more prevalent in the Twin Cities over the past two summers compared to neighboring states.

“We see multiple different trucks, so we know it’s more than one actor,” he said of the local spate of thefts. “So I can say that there’s more than one truck running around doing it.”

To try to prevent the thievery, Sanimax puts its bins inside restaurants when there’s room or puts locks on them. “But the problem is,” Karman said, “most of these thieves, even if there is a lock on where you dump in the oil, they’ll just lift and bend up a corner of the lid and stick in a pipe to suck it out.”

Expensive anti-theft lids are also an option, although thieves are known to drill through the bin to get at the oil, he said.

Samimax also does its own surveillance, he said, without getting into the details.

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Sanimax told police that man who took the Great Moon Buffet grease could be employed or contracted by rival recycling business Greasehauler. Sanimax did its own investigation and found the man’s truck parked at Greasehauler’s plant in Plato, Minn., several times.

Karman said he couldn’t get into all that, but added: “We take our business seriously, so when we see that there is theft, we utilize all of our resources.”

Greasehauler owner Lev Mirman, when contacted by the Pioneer Press, said he had never heard of the man charged in the Great Moon Buffet theft. He said he gets used cooking oil from several sources and that it’s possible someone gave him a fake name.

Karman said Sanimax does not buy grease from non-vetted suppliers, but there is no regulation stopping other processors from doing so.

Syndicates charged federally

Swisher, from the Virginia-based renderers association, said they started a task force in 2013 to try to get law enforcement to put more focus on the thefts “because at the time, everybody kind of giggled about stolen used cooking oil.”

That’s no longer the case, he said.

“It’s become such a big thing over the years that it’s even gotten the FBI’s attention. And some of the syndicates are quite large,” he said. “When you Google it, it’s kind of amazing how many stories pop up these days.”

The alleged capers range from a lone man with a single truck to an organized ring running a whole fleet.

A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted 21 co-conspirators — including 12 from Mexico and one from Turkey — on several charges in 2019 for allegedly stealing nearly $4 million worth of used cooking oil over five years. The ring operated across North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, storing the stolen grease in a warehouse, the indictment says.

In December, a federal grand jury in western New York announced the indictment of six New York men for allegedly stealing at least 90,000 pounds of used grease from restaurants in and around Rochester. They sold the oil to a broker, who sold it to a refinery in Erie, Pennsylvania, the indictment says.

Swisher said his association disbanded their task force after renderers started taking theft precautions. Many now have cameras, hire private investigators and offer cash rewards to try to catch the thieves. He knows of at least one renderer that puts electronic anti-theft devices on its bins that sense when the oil is being stolen and alerts police or private investigators.

An apology, cash offer

Peking Garden co-owner Teresa Nguyen said she didn’t know someone stole their grease last year. But that wasn’t the case five years ago at their former University Avenue location, when she caught a guy siphoning oil from a bin they shared with a neighboring restaurant, Golden Gate Cafe.

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She thought at first he was a Sanimax driver collecting the grease. But then he “looked afraid” and apologized, she said, and offered her $100 cash on the spot to not call the police.

She refused, told him it wasn’t just her oil. She asked him to go to Golden Gate and explain what he had done because both restaurants had been noticing the Sanimax compensation checks were smaller than usual.

The man left in his box truck, but didn’t go to Golden Gate. The theft went unreported to police.

“Honestly, we have a lot of customers in the cities that we know get stolen from, but we can’t quite quantify it because a lot of times they don’t take all of it,” said Karman, of Sanimax. “But then the customer goes, ‘Oh, my checks are half the size they used to be. I wonder why.’ And then they just go on to doing something else and don’t report it.”

Family and friends of Avontae King were back in the same Dakota County courtroom Thursday where the man who fatally shot him in 2023 was sentenced just a year ago.

This time it was for the shooter’s accomplice, Tre Manuel Iglesias, who in July pleaded guilty to his role in King’s killing outside his South St. Paul home — a murder that was over stolen marijuana and that one of King’s two young children witnessed through a window.

Andrew Michael Fisher and Tre Manuel Iglesias (Courtesy of the Dakota County sheriff’s office)

They spoke about how King was a loving father to his two sons and of the anguish and heartache they all experience every day because of Iglesias and Andrew Michael Fisher, who fired a lone shot, hitting the 26-year-old in the chest.

King may have taken his last breath, “but you didn’t take mine,” Bobbi Martin, King’s former girlfriend and the mother of his children, said in her victim impact statement. “And I’ll always be here speaking on his behalf for the person that’s no longer with us. A role I wish I didn’t have to take on.”

Judge Stacey Sorensen Green sentenced Iglesias to 12½ years in prison for second-degree aiding and abetting unintentional murder. Iglesias, 24, of St. Paul, will receive credit for 665 days already served in custody.

The sentence was the maximum allowed under Iglesias’ plea agreement with prosecution.

King went outside to go after Fisher, who had grabbed a bag of marijuana off King’s table and ran out of the home. Fisher turned around and fired once, hitting King in the chest. Fisher and Iglesias sped away.

Assistant Dakota County Attorney Caitlyn Prokopowicz said in court Thursday that the evidence showed Iglesias set up what was to be a marijuana purchase from King and that Iglesias brought a gun with him.

“Your Honor, Mr. Iglesias was the driver who drove away and left Mr. King to die in front of his 4-year-old child,” Prokopowicz said.

Fisher, 21, of Cambridge, Minn., was sentenced to just shy of 13 years in prison in August 2024 after pleading guilty to the same charge. He reached a plea deal after the prosecution offered the length of his prison term.

Neighbor witnessed shooting

According to court documents, Fisher and Iglesias went to King’s home in the 400 block of Third Avenue South on Nov. 24, 2023. After Fisher grabbed the marijuana, he and Iglesias ran. King was close behind. Fisher, while standing on the sidewalk, turned and shot King, and they fled the scene in Iglesias’ vehicle.

A neighbor told police it was just before 5 p.m. when he heard someone outside yell, “shoot him,” so he ran to his front window and saw three people moving quickly down the street. He said as the two men moved past a car parked in the street, one of them turned around and shot King, who fell to the ground and rolled in front of the car.

The neighbor said the two men, who were wearing dark-colored hoodies, got into an older, black Chevrolet sedan. He called 911 and provided aid to King, who was lying in the street. He was unarmed.

Avontae Troy King, 26, was fatally shot outside his South St. Paul home Nov. 24, 2023. (Courtesy of Bobbi Martin)

King did not have a pulse when police arrived on scene. He was pronounced dead at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.

Later that night, Iglesias reported to law enforcement that he was there during the shooting.

Iglesias told investigators that Fisher had been staying on his couch for the last week. He said Fisher asked him for a ride and that they went to the South St. Paul home. He said Fisher, while standing on the sidewalk near the grassy part of the curb, shot King. Iglesias said he drove the car from the scene, according to the charges.

‘Robbed’ of fatherhood

King was kind, loving, selfless and humble, said his mother and stepfather, Tanasha and Antone Beale, in a victim impact statement read in court by Prokopowicz.

King, the oldest brother to his three siblings, “was special and had a gift to make you feel good whenever he came around you. You just felt better because of his presence,” the statement said.

To Fisher and Inglesias, they said, ‘How dare you! How dare you take the life of our son from us! Who or what gave you the right to do so? Not only did you steal our son from us, you also stole a father from his children. … You ought to be ashamed of yourself for the crimes you committed.”

King’s aunt Monique King recalled how whenever he would call or see her, he would say, “Hello, my lady” and that it made her feel special.

“Then come to find out, he would address his mother and grandmother the same way,” his aunt said in her victim impact statement, which was read by the prosecutor. “But looking at it, it just showed his respect and character for the women he loved in his life and how he would make us feel so special and loved.”

Martin, the mother of his children, Giovanni and Leonato, now 5 and 3 years old, said he always wanted to have his own family. His kids “gave him hope and changed our lives around, she said. “He prayed for a reason to live, to be a dad, to feel joy. And now he was robbed of the true experience that comes with fatherhood.”

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