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common cause
Using Boycotts to Defend Free Speech: This Is Larger Than Jimmy Kimmel
Kimmel isn’t the only voice that’s been targeted for failing to toe the line in the wake of Kirk’s murder, but Kimmel’s firing is the one that’s outraged millions of Americans who aren’t political junkies, so it's the one that offers the best chance to act.
Sep 22, 2025
How can we effectively push back on the Jimmy Kimmel suspension, and its larger threats to free speech? After Charlie Kirk’s shooting, Kimmel posted, “Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human?” And sent his family’s “love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents, and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.” But that didn’t seem to matter, because Kimmel also dared to point out that the Trump administration was using the assassination to score political points.
US President Donald Trump had already warned in July that Kimmel should be the next to be fired after Stephen Colbert. After Kimmel spoke out following the assassination, Trump Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr threatened to revoke the licenses of stations carrying Kimmel’s show. Nexstar and Sinclair then jumped in saying they wouldn’t air Kimmel’s episodes. And ABC-Disney caved. Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs would be proud.
Hearteningly, Americans are responding with appropriate outrage. The cancellation site of Disney+ streaming service has reportedly crashed from people ending their subscriptions. Conservative-leaning comedians have spoken out. Common Cause has launched a Turn Off Disney campaign and FreePress.Net has started a call-in campaign. Even Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”
The question is how to sustain the pushback, which means building the broadest possible coalition of fellow citizens who are outraged, whether or not they love Kimmel’s jokes and stands. And how to coordinate as many organizations as possible working together to promote approaches like:
- Boycotting ABC-Disney, including theme parks, cruises, movies, and streaming and TV channels like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu. Asking international groups to do the same.
- Boycotting local stations of ABC, NextStar, and Sinclair. This could be particularly valuable given Sinclair’s longtime role demanding that their stations air their right-wing segments and talking points (plus demanding Kimmel donate to Turning Point or Kirk’s family). And Sinclair just backed off under pressure from their earlier announcement to schedule a Charlie Kirk Tribute in Kimmel’s slot. Public protests at the affiliates give people ways to act within their own communities, pressuring them to agree to carry Kimmel again and ask Sinclair to do so nationally. They can also spark general local coverage, along the lines of the Tesla Takedown campaigns.
- Targeting and pressuring station advertisers, both national and local. Local groups can publicly announce targets. People can find the advertisers by watching the local broadcasts. There’s also a crowdsourced map where people can take pictures of TV ads and then upload them with links to which advertiser and which station.
- Promoting all these actions on social media and in every other way. Hashtags circulating include #BoycottDisney, #CancelDisneyABC, #CancelDisneyPlus, #CancelHulu, #BoycottSinclair, and #IstandWithJimmyKimmel. Also here’s a link to related cartoons.
Successful boycotts and corporate campaigns need coalitions that act together and persist. I’m hoping other groups will now coordinate with Freepress.net and Common Cause to do this, and coordinate on common platforms to direct people. For instance, someone launched a boycottdisneyabc.com site with toolkits, templates, and an event page. But it’s not clear which, if any, groups are behind it or are using it. Pushback takes organization, as well as individual people acting.
Kimmel isn’t the only voice that’s been targeted for failing to toe the line in the wake of Kirk’s murder. MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd and the Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah. But Kimmel’s firing is the one that’s outraged millions of Americans who aren’t political junkies, so it's the one that offers the best chance to act. Kimmel’s suspension presents both a challenge to democracy, and an opportunity to keep this country one where governments can’t just shut down people who disagree with them.
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'Partisan Power Grab': Alarm Bells Ring After Missouri GOP Advances Extreme Redistricting Plan
One state Democratic leader accused the GOP of "aiding and abetting the systematic destruction of our democracy by an authoritarian regime."
Sep 10, 2025
The Republican-led Missouri House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would redraw their state's congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and potentially garner an extra seat for the GOP.
As reported by The Missouri Independent, the redrawn map carves up the district currently being represented by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) by placing regions that have traditionally voted for Democrats into districts held by Republicans.
If all goes according to plan, the new map would give Republicans seven seats in the US House of Representatives, up from their current total of six.
Although the map passed with Republican support, not every member of the party was on board. GOP state Rep. Bryant Wolfin, who voted against the measure, told the Independent that his GOP colleagues were showing that they only care about raw political power above all considerations.
"There's certainly nothing conservative about ignoring the moral implications of our actions," he said. "Morality is not defined by what is legal. Morality is not defined by what you can get away with."
Democratic House Minority Leader Ashley Aune was even more scathing in her denunciation of the GOP's power grab, and she accused the party of "aiding and abetting the systematic destruction of our democracy by an authoritarian regime led by geriatric conman who knows the only way he can win is to cheat," referring to President Donald Trump.
Although congressional maps are traditionally redrawn once per decade, Trump has been pressuring Republicans across the country to do a mid-decade gerrymander aimed at helping Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives next year.
Sarah Harris, a Missouri native and managing director of media engagement at Stand Up America, accused Missouri Republicans of doing Trump's bidding while ignoring the pressing needs of their own constituents.
"After pushing through a disgraceful mid-decade redistricting scheme in Texas, Donald Trump has now bullied Missouri Governor [Mike] Kehoe and Republican legislators in Missouri to do his dirty work," she said. "Instead of focusing on rising prices, rural hospital closures, and disaster relief, Missouri politicians are wasting time on a partisan power grab designed to protect corrupt DC politicians."
Even if the redrawn map passes the Missouri State Senate and gets signed into law, however, Missouri residents have a potential tool to block it.
St. Louis Public Radio reports that opponents of the new map can give voters the final say on it by organizing a statewide referendum.
"Any bill that passes out of the legislature can be put up for a statewide vote if opponents gather a certain number of signatures in six out of eight congressional districts," St. Louis Public Radio explains. "According to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins' website, that's a little more than 106,000 signatures."
Getting this many signatures from across the state will be challenging, however, as opponents of the new map will have just 90 days to complete a referendum drive after the end of the current special congressional session.
All the same, a new poll commissioned by Common Cause shows that the mid-decade redistricting push is broadly unpopular among voters, including those who voted for Trump in last year's election.
In all, the poll found that 70% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and 51% of Republicans opposed redrawing congressional maps in the middle of the decade, and that "large majorities" support the US Congress banning mid-decade redistricting.
"This data makes it clear: Republicans and Independents are just as tired of partisan gerrymandering as Democrats," said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause. "Donald Trump's ask to find five seats with this mid-decade redistricting effort and his ask in 2020 to find him more votes in Georgia are both attempts to take away power from the people."
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Watchdog Unveils Standards for Countermeasures to 'Authoritarian' GOP Gerrymandering
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," said the head of Common Cause.
Aug 12, 2025
As Republicans try to rig congressional maps in several states and Democrats threaten retaliatory measures, a pro-democracy watchdog on Tuesday unveiled new fairness standards underscoring that "independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering."
Common Cause will hold an online media briefing Wednesday at noon Eastern time "to walk reporters though the six pieces of criteria the organization will use to evaluate any proposed maps."
The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said that "it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures" to Republican gerrymandering efforts—especially mid-decade redistricting not based on decennial censuses.
Amid the gerrymandering wars, we just launched 6 fairness criteria to hold all actors to the same principled standard: people first—not parties. Read our criteria here: www.commoncause.org/resources/po...
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— Common Cause (@commoncause.org) August 12, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Common Cause's six fairness criteria for mid-decade redistricting are:
- Proportionality: Any mid-decade redistricting should be a targeted response proportional to the threat posed by mid-decade gerrymanders in other states.
- Public participation: Any redistricting must include meaningful public participation, whether through ballot initiatives or open public processes.
- Racial equity: Redistricting must not further racial discrimination or dilute the political voice of Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander, or other communities of color.
- Federal reform: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, including provisions banning mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.
- Endorsement of independent redistricting: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse citizen-led independent redistricting commissions as the long-term solution.
- Time-limited: Any new redistricting maps must expire following the 2030 Census, which counts all people in our country, and be replaced through the regular decennial redistricting process.
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said in a statement. "But neither will we call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian tactics that undermine fair representation."
"We have established a fairness criteria that we will use to evaluate all countermeasures so we can respond to the most urgent threats to fair representation while holding all actors to the same principled standard: people—not parties—first," she added.
Common Cause's fairness criteria come amid the ongoing standoff between Republicans trying to gerrymander Texas' congressional map and Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in a bid to stymie a vote on the measure. Texas state senators on Tuesday approved the proposed map despite a walkout by most of their Democratic colleagues.
Leaders of several Democrat-controlled states, most notably California, have threatened retaliatory redistricting.
"This moment is about more than responding to a single threat—it's about building the movement for lasting reform," Kase Solomón asserted. "This is not an isolated political tactic; it is part of a broader march toward authoritarianism, dismantling people-powered democracy, and stripping away the people's ability to have a political voice and say in how they are governed."
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