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writers guild of america
After Kimmel Suspension, 400+ Entertainers Rip Government Campaign to ‘Pressure’ Them Into Silence
"In an attempt to silence its critics, our government has resorted to threatening the livelihoods of journalists, talk show hosts, artists, creatives, and entertainers across the board," the letter said.
Sep 22, 2025
After the Trump administration successfully pressured ABC to kick Jimmy Kimmel off the air last week, hundreds of artists signed an open letter Monday denouncing the government's campaign to "pressure" entertainers and journalists into silence.
The letter, organized by the ACLU, was signed by numerous household names, including Jason Bateman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana DeBose, Jane Fonda, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Regina King, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Diego Luna, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Natalie Portman, Olivia Rodrigo, Martin Short, and Ramy Youssef.
"Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after our government threatened a private company with retaliation for Kimmel’s remarks. This is a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation," the letter says. "This is unconstitutional and un-American. The government is threatening private companies and individuals that the president disagrees with. We can’t let this threat to our freedom of speech go unanswered."
Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after our government threatened a private company with retaliation, marking a dark moment for free speech in our nation.More than 400 artists across our nation signed on to say: We refuse to be silenced by those in power.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) September 22, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Kimmel's suspension came hours after the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened to revoke the broadcast license of ABC News affiliates unless the network pulled the comedian's late-night show off the air following comments he made criticizing the President Donald Trump's reaction to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Major entertainment unions have condemned Kimmel's suspension, including SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, which organized demonstrations in Times Square and outside ABC's parent company Disney over the weekend that drew hundreds of protesters, while some actors have pledged to stop working with Disney until Kimmel is reinstated.
In subsequent days, Trump continued to issue threats to the media, suggesting that he would seek to strip the broadcasting licenses of networks that give him "bad press," saying, "They’re not allowed to do that.”
The letter says that "In an attempt to silence its critics, our government has resorted to threatening the livelihoods of journalists, talk show hosts, artists, creatives, and entertainers across the board. This runs counter to the values our nation was built upon, and our Constitution guarantees."
Members of the Trump administration, including JD Vance, have also promoted a wide-ranging campaign to have private citizens reported to their employers over critical comments they made about Kirk following his assassination.
Students for Trump National Chair Ryan Fournier created a database with tens of thousands of social media accounts and has boasted of having gotten dozens of people fired over their posts, many of which simply state disagreement with Kirk even without endorsing his assassination.
"We know this moment is bigger than us and our industry. Teachers, government employees, law firms, researchers, universities, students, and so many more are also facing direct attacks on their freedom of expression," the letter says. "Regardless of our political affiliation, or whether we engage in politics or not, we all love our country. We also share the belief that our voices should never be silenced by those in power—because if it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us."
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, described these blacklisting efforts as the dawn of "a modern McCarthy era" with Americans "facing exactly the type of heavy-handed government censorship our Constitution rightfully forbids."
Noting that former Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) "was ultimately disgraced and neutralized once Americans mobilized and stood up to him,” Romero said that "we must do the same today because, together, our voices are louder and, together, we will fight to be heard.”
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Writers Union Calls for Bribery Probe of Paramount After Colbert Cancellation
The Writers Guild of America voiced concern that Paramount is "sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval."
Jul 20, 2025
The Writers Guild of America is calling on New York's attorney general to launch a bribery investigation into Paramount Global following the cancellation of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
WGA, some of whose members worked on the CBS show, said in a statement that while "cancellations are part of the business," a "corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society."
"Paramount's decision comes against a backdrop of relentless attacks on a free press by President Trump, through lawsuits against CBS and ABC, threatened litigation of media organizations with critical coverage, and the unconscionable defunding of PBS and NPR," the union said.
WGA noted that the show's cancellation—which CBS insisted was a "purely financial" decision—came after Colbert criticized Paramount's $16 million settlement of a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump.
In a July 15 segment, aired 48 hours prior to his show's cancellation, Colbert called the settlement with Trump a "big, fat bribe" aimed at greasing federal approval of Paramount's pending merger with the entertainment company Skydance. Paramount owns CBS, and Paramount's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has reportedly been monitoring the network's coverage of the president.
The day of the Colbert segment, the CEO of Skydance met with Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to discuss the pending merger.
In its statement, WGA urged New York Attorney General Letitia James to investigate "potential wrongdoing" at Paramount, which is headquartered in New York City.
"Given Paramount's recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS News lawsuit, the Writers Guild of America has significant concerns that 'The Late Show' cancellation is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval," the union said. "We call on our elected leaders to hold those responsible to account, to demand answers about why this beloved program was canceled, and to assure the public that Colbert and his writers were not censored due to their views or the whims of the president."
Ahead of the official settlement announcement, California's Senate launched an investigation into whether Paramount "violated state laws against bribery and unfair competition" by offering Trump $15 million to end the legal fight, Semafor reported.
After news of the settlement deal broke earlier this month, Democratic U.S. senators called for a federal investigation.
"With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration's approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. "Paramount has refused to provide answers to a congressional inquiry, so I'm calling for a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken."
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Number of US Workers Who Joined Major Strikes Surged by 280% in 2023
"From the United Auto Workers to nurses across the country, these strikes provided critical leverage to workers to secure better wages and working conditions," said one expert.
Feb 21, 2024
While federal data released on Wednesday shows nearly half a million workers last year participated in 33 major work stoppages—the most since the turn of the century—labor experts still stressed the need for more policies protecting the right to strike.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that there has been an average of 16.7 U.S. work stoppages with more than 1,000 strikers over the past two decades, meaning last year's number was almost double the norm. BLS also said that 458,900 workers joined the 2023 strikes, and nearly 87% of them work in service-providing industries, including 188,900 with jobs in education and health.
In their analysis of the data, also published Wednesday, Margaret Poydock and Jennifer Sherer of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) pointed out that "this is an increase of over 280% from the number of workers involved in major worker stoppages in 2022, which was 120,600. Further, it is on par with the increase seen in pre-pandemic levels during 2018 and 2019."
Poydock, a senior policy analyst at the think tank, said in a statement that "a surge of workers went on strike in 2023 to fight back against record corporate profits, stratospheric CEO pay, and decades of stagnant wages. From the United Auto Workers to nurses across the country, these strikes provided critical leverage to workers to secure better wages and working conditions."
Other notable actions include the actors' and writers' strikes that together effectively shut down television and film production for months. A report released last week by researchers at Cornell University and the University of Illinois—who, unlike the BLS, also tracked smaller U.S. actions—tallied 466 strikes and four lockouts involving a total of 539,000 workers.
"It's a historic moment for the labor movement," declared Robert Reich, a former U.S. labor secretary who is now a University of California, Berkeley professor. "Workers are done letting billionaires and corporations hoard all the wealth and power."
As Poydock and Sherer, EPI's State Worker Power Initiative director, wrote in their report:
It should be no surprise that workers are taking collective action to improve their pay and working conditions—but we should be asking why it is happening now. The U.S. economy has churned out unequal income growth and stagnant wages for the last several decades. Research shows that unions and collective bargaining are key tools in combating income inequality and improving the pay, benefits, and working conditions for both union and nonunion workers. However, the continued rise in collective action is not likely to increase unionization substantially unless meaningful policy change is enacted to ensure all workers have the right to form unions, bargain collectively, and strike.
The BLS said last month that "the union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of
unions—was 10% in 2023, little changed from the previous year."
"In the public sector, both union membership and the union membership rate (32.5%) were little changed over the year," the bureau added. "The number of union workers employed in the private sector increased by 191,000 to 7.4 million in 2023, while the unionization rate was unchanged at 6%."
Stressing that "the increase in major strike activity in 2023 occurred despite our weak and outdated labor law failing to protect workers' right to strike," Sherer argued that "federal and state action is needed to ensure the right to strike."
At the federal level, EPI supports several proposals. As Poydock and Sherer detailed:
- The Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act includes critical reforms that would strengthen private sector workers' right to strike. The PRO Act would expand the scope for strikes by eliminating the prohibition on secondary strikes and allowing the use of intermittent strikes. It would also strengthen workers’ ability to strike by prohibiting employers from permanently replacing striking workers.
- The Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act would prevent employers from cutting off health coverage of workers and family members in retaliation against striking workers.
- The Food Secure Strikers Act would allow striking workers to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
- Congress should also pursue policies that extend a fully protected right to strike to railway, airline, public sector, agricultural, and domestic workers. None of these workers has the fundamental right to strike under current federal law.
"Right now, only a dozen states grant limited rights to strike to some public sector workers," the pair also highlighted. "States should also join New York and New Jersey in making striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits."
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