{"id":162279,"date":"2025-09-22T21:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T21:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/162279\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T21:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T21:36:07","slug":"tom-hanks-meryl-streep-join-aclu-letter-over-jimmy-kimmel-suspension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/162279\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep Join ACLU Letter Over Jimmy Kimmel Suspension"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Ben Affleck, Ben Stiller and Lin-Manuel Miranda are among the more than 400 artists to sign on to an ACLU<\/a> letter calling out \u201cgovernment threats to our freedom of speech\u201d in the aftermath of ABC<\/a>\u2018s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEfforts by leaders to pressure artists, journalists, and companies with retaliation for their speech strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free country,\u201d the open letter<\/a> states.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLast week, Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after the government threatened a private company with retaliation, marking a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe letter does not name Donald Trump<\/a> or his FCC<\/a> chair, Brendan Carr<\/a>, but they are cited in a website introduction. The letter notes, \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRegardless of our political affiliation, or whether we engage in politics or not, we all love our country,\u201d the letter states. \u201cWe also share the belief that our voices should never be silenced by those in power \u2013 because if it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOthers signing the letter include Robert DeNiro, Selena Gomez, Kerry Washington, Jason Bateman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana DeBose, Jane Fonda, Jim Parsons, Joaquin Phoenix, Frances McDormand, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Regina King, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jean Smart, Noah Wyle, Diego Luna, Natalie Portman, Olivia Rodrigo, Martin Short and Ramy Youssef. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn his show last Monday, Kimmel said during his monologue<\/a>, \u201cWe had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered\u00a0Charlie Kirk<\/a>\u00a0as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat generated furor on the right, with\u00a0Carr chiming in Wednesday on Benny Johnson\u2019s podcast.<\/a>\u00a0Carr said, \u201cWe can do this the easy way, or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there\u2019s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHours later, station group\u00a0Nexstar said it was pulling the show<\/a>\u00a0from its ABC affiliates \u201cfor the foreseeable future.\u201d Soon after, ABC announced the suspension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Ben Affleck, Ben Stiller and Lin-Manuel Miranda are among the more than 400 artists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[2086,84227,83687,49,48,361,73453,1376,28755,75,18028,6678,4592],"class_list":["post-162279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-abc","tag-aclu","tag-brendan-carr","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-charlie-kirk","tag-donald-trump","tag-electionline","tag-entertainment","tag-fcc","tag-first-amendment","tag-jimmy-kimmel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}