The USA’s much revered 1st amendment is in shock after Trump announced he is suing the New York Times for $15bn saying it had become a “mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party”. “It has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” he posted on his social media platform.
The wording of the First Amendment, ratified on 15 December 1791, states that “Congress shall make no law – – abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
A spokesperson for the newspaper said the suit was “an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting”, adding it “has no merit. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics.” NYT founded 18 September 1851.
Political discomfort is rising still further after late night host Jimmy Kimmel, one of the USA’s best known television personalities, has been suspended indefinitely after he erroneously suggest that the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk was aligned with the Maga movement. Kimmel is the longest-serving late-night talk show host on the air and was paid an estimated $16 million a year.
What he said is not defensible but in the context of US right wing media’s excesses since 2016 – Fox etc – and extremely lax USA libel laws, which have been bulwarked by the 1st Amendment, often to a ludicrous degree (in comparison with the UK), the whole situation is Monty Pythonesque (beyond bizarre).
The USA Bill of Rights, 15 December 1791, with a Sagittarius Sun square Mars and a revolutionary Pluto opposition Uranus has a combative feel. The disruptive Uranus opposition Pluto has moved by Solar Arc to put pressure on the (fair minded, balanced) Libra North Node now and through 2026 so the challenges will continue.
Trump’s relationship with the Bill of Rights was rattled by the recent Lunar Eclipse opposing the composite Venus for an emotional upset; and will continue to spasm through 2026/27 with tr Uranus conjunct the composite Saturn.
The New York Times relationship chart with Trump has an aggravated, trapped, enraged tr Pluto opposition the composite Mars through 2026/27.
Jimmy Kimmel, 13 November 1967, New York, a Sun Neptune in Scorpio has the upcoming Virgo Eclipse next week conjunct his Uranus as his life is turned upside down. His relationship with Trump will intensify over the coming three years with tr Uranus conjunct the composite Saturn and square Pluto, then Mercury and Sun. With serious aggravation mounting in 2027/28.
Democracy dies in Darkness – reads the Washington Post banner – owner Jeff Bezos notwithstanding.
See also: “Trump’s suit against the New York Times is nonsense. Yet it poses a grave threat.” Robert Reich
There’s no credible evidence I’ve seen that indicates the shooter was anything other than right-wing, and many people believe the rumors about his relationship are fabricated to cast ugliness on the trans community. There has been a text conversation released between the shooter and his roommate that’s hilariously unbelievable–it’s being roundly mocked here in the US. Kirk was not well known outside of his base and there’s a witch hunt for people not performing enough grief for a guy they had to Google last week. It’s way more calculated than any debate about respect or decency.
@Gwyn, I agree. I follow politics closely and knew who Kirk was, but could I have distinguished him and his ideology from many other right-wing political operatives? No. His death is tragic but the hysteria is way overblown and, you’re right, carefully calculated to extract maximum political advantage by Trump and Miller.
And those texts, written in complete sentences, sure don’t sound like the words of 22-year-old gamers.
What do you think will happen to the US Bill of Rights when its chart, like the 1792 chart of France, will be upended by Uranus and Pluto transits in coming years, as well as the charts for the US Constitution and the Supreme Court? It is crystal clear that the worst is yet to come. Trump may soon leave us, but his MAGA regime will not.
Andre, I appreciate your comments on current events as being direct, relevant, informed and usually respectful of history. You lean somewhat to the pessimistic side, which is understandable considering the gravity of our times, and I agree it can be useful to point out the drastic perspective along with the hopeful one. However, it isn’t useful to paint with a house painter’s brush when an artist’s Filbert will do. The sky is not falling. Despite the woes, tomorrow is very likely to come.
There are specific lessons from the charts of France, the US Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Supreme Court and there are huge issues today. History has a lot to tell us, no question. But it’s not fine to lump them together and claim “the worst is yet to come”. Maybe events are headed in the wrong direction, but you (and we) don’t and can’t KNOW what all Uranus and Pluto transits will do.
We may fear the worst, but we don’t know what WILL be. Caution. The outcome of events in this monumentally complicated world is yet uncertain. Astrology may provide insight, but it gives no guarantees. It’s handy, but it’s not a perfect instrument. There are no charts that are so deep or so accurate, and certainly no astrologers who can read them adequately, to be certain the outcome is ‘crystal clear’. It’s more about probabilities, and the outcome is ‘likely’ to be quite complicated or possibly even surprising. Chill, please.
A federal judge just tossed out DJT’s lawsuit against the New York Times, citing the shoddiness of the filing and its numerous extraneous pages devoted to ridiculous praise of DJT. The lawyers have 28 days to refile.
Related to my earlier post, I think I saw Brendan Carr of FCC the first time yesterday, and the guy really hit all the wrong nerves in me. The moment I saw he is a Jan 5th 1979 Capricorn Sun I knew it was my 15′ Capricorn Moon sensing a false authority figure. I looked up some of his chart, and that Sun is conjunct Mars. He is also an Aries Moon.
Thinking a bit further, guess who, of the current political figures shares my Moon position? Well, that would be 16′ Capricorn Moon California Governor Gavin Newsom. Personally, I am not the greatest fan of him, but I do think he is both genuinely committed to 1st Amendment rights and wants to keep the entertainment industry afloat in California (his Moon is 4th house, and he is California native, so no question about this).
I think Carr made a dangerous enemy this week.
A second website was launched, after the first site was removed ( by the fcc? ).
The first website asked for information to be posted, to report any negative social media posts about Charlie Kirk.
This first website was called something to the effect of: Charlie Kirk murderers. As in, if anyone posts negatively
about CK, they too are complicit in his murder. As far as this second website, I searched FB and found a MAGA mouthpiece, ( someone who spreads and posts pro maga /trump ). This female presenting maga/trump mouthpiece was calling on none
other than poor Charlie Kirk’s younger sister, this mouthpiece was calling for this poor young woman to be made unemployed, to lose her job, because she is a quiet Bernie supporter, and she did not make any public announcement in regards to losing her brother.
As an American, this frightens me very much. In my opinion, Trump is a malignant narcissist. Malignant refers to a narcissist who delights in revenge, in taking perceived enemies down. Unfortunately, a narcissist is never satisfied. You can give in and do anything they demand, but it is a losing game because the action is a small bite, the narcissist wants to gobble up all the food at the banquet, while they insult all the glorious food before them, and screams about anyone who cooked it or placed it there.
Oddly, it had to take someone who wants favor from Trump for a corporate deal, who was able to topple Kimmel.
Prior to that, Kimmel enjoyed such high public approval, he was not going anywhere.
On the ground here in the normal USA, right now, unemployment is growing. The numbers are not available because these are people who have either run out of their unemployment benefits, or never had any to begin with. Back in 2013, almost any teenager could get a job at the local grocer, bagging groceries. Now mainly adults have those jobs, because most of the checkout is automated. I believe that local crime will increase, because everything is being cut back and people are frightened.
Like I said, you cannot win with a narcissist. Narcissist tendencies and disruptions increase when a narcissist is given in to.
serious narcissism, such as malignant narcissism, is as far as I am concerned, a real mental illness. Back around 2002, I visited NYC. I was surprised to read in a local newspaper, that the police were having a tough time with a mental patient who escapes. The mentally ill person insisted in believing that they were in charge of operating a subway train. They would steal uniforms and they were caught, more than once, getting into a control room. This example reminds me of malignant narcissism. The narcissist believes they can and should do whatever they want. Like the mentally ill person who insisted they were in charge of driving the subway. Nobody could convince them different. It took the police dept. to step in and try to stop this person before subway riders were in actual danger.
A legal analysis has it that The NY Times suit is being filed under Trump as an individual, not as President (maybe to get out of trouble with the first amendment clash). This would open him up to “discovery”, whereby the defense can dig in every hidden crevasse for facts. I love the idea of this, but I haven’t fact checked this yet.
I also didn’t find Kimmels comments particularly offensive- I mean as a country we are literally being gaslit that this is some organized leftist assault on a great man . What does it matter ‘whose side ‘ this kid was on- he’s literally a kid who felt his personal identity was being threatened by hate and he’d had enough. That’s not reason to kill someone but he was right, Charlie Kirk spewed a lot of hate and seemed to get off on it. The trump administration has invited violence since he ran the first time- that message was received- the thing is, he’ll only protect those on ‘his’ side.
“literally a kid who felt his personal identity was being threatened by hate and he’d had enough” . That sounds flippant. The charge brought against a 22 year old man is for cold blooded murder.
No one has even considered this young man’s mental health. That is to me the most terrifying. He has already been lynched by the mob.
Well, since everything is cyclic, I thought we needed to see a full blown return of McCarthyism, too. There might be a silver lining here, though. When I studied Film & Television, I was always interested in structures behind production, policies and funding, even if I only really realized I was interested in business in general a couple of years later.
One of the more fascinating stories was how the old Hollywood studios, already struggling because of the competition from TV, really painted themselves into corner in the late 1950’s by blacklisting much of their creative talent fearing punitive governmental measures. They pushed people with a message to other media, to TV where they’d use genre narration to push still existing Hays code, but also, in case of comedians, live stand up acts, competing with them for audiences. By the end of the 1960’s they were essentially all broke and gone. I think the same will happen to commercial funded TV – the business model has stumbled since the internet came along. Viewerships have declined, and it will not be helped by withdrawing the content people still tuned in for.
Today, the driving force behind recapitulation of media companies seems to be the fear of losing their licenses. These are regulated by Federal Communications Commission, an agency the President appoints a chair to. The current chair, Brendan Carr (January 5th, 1979), went on Fox News yesterday (September 18th) saying the US will go back to time the local TV stations will tell the people what to think. Truly a chilling, authoritarian, but also, fortunately, misguided vision of the World. There has never been a propaganda machine that has lead to people becoming compliant. Compliance has always been achieved by oppression and fear tactics. Americans are already standing up to ICE.
I am not engaging in wishful thinking expecting things to get better in the US anytime soon. That said, touching 1st Amendment is not a popular policy, and paired with the economic downturn that even DJT doesn’t seem to deny anymore, it might have true consequences to the presidency.
Yeah, the right wing is not a fan of attacks on free speech either, as Tucker Carlson has come out and criticized Trump for. The driving force behind all of the knee bending is money as the media owners want to make their big money mergers and don’t care about anything else unless it affects their ability to amass more wealth, which economic downturn may do.
Les, you made an interesting comment about mergers. I recall in the early 1900s that the public, fed up with a few business leaders who had so much power, elected officials who in turn ordered these monopolies to be broken up. Could we see such a thing happen again? It seems like these big companies are calling all the shots, so maybe its time to break them up and level the playing field.
What Trump is trying to do is media censorship, people must not speak their minds, there should not be opinions. Everybody and everyone must align with his ideas and opinions, the QUESTION? Is that possible in the times we live in? A big NO, people are educated now, they know their rights. He is a real dictator now, I won’t be surprised if he can try to shut down some newspapers and TV stations, and allow only state controlled ones that support him. He is now becoming more like Kim Jong Un of North Korea, where people are not allowed to access internet and TV. Pluto is Aquarius, the same people he is trying to oppress are the ones who are going to stand up together against him.
I wonder if Trump plans to use the military against the people. If he does, I hope there are enough commanders who refuse to follow his orders. It’s not like many of them like Trump. He is a draft dodger with bone spurs, as I recall. Hardly the type of commander in chief that inspires loyalty among the military. And should he be found to be one of Epstein’s clients, would the military protect a child predator? I guess time will tell.
Yes time will tell, it has also been reported that journalists will be barred or limited in revealing some information while reporting at the Pentagon. It has received backlash from both Republicans and Democrats. Looking into the future that is not going to work, Trump and his incompetent administration are not going to in power for long. Trump will soon fall, and in 2026 mid terms his administration will lose majority in both houses, congress and senate.
Kimmel’s comments seemed pretty mild and inoffensive to me, not a direct criticism of Kirk or any pleasure in his passing. Kimmel said, in essence, that the MAGA followers were trying to do everything to persuade people that Kirk’s alleged killer wasn’t a MAGA adherent. That happens to be true: they’re trying to portray the alleged killer as a leftist when in reality we don’t know his politics which may have been a mishmash. He seems to have been immersed in the gamer culture more than politics and the inscriptions on the bullet casings related to gaming rather than references to fascism or trans issues as alleged. He reminds me of the kid in the Massachusetts Air National Guard who accessed high level national security secrets and shared them on his Discord board with his gaming buddies.
After Stephen Colbert’s show was cancelled Trump made a point of saying that Kimmel was next. Trump just wracked up another scalp in his effort to suppress all dissent and criticism of him and his (mal)
administration. And the mainstream media, fearful of offending Dear Leader and losing their broadcast licenses, are bowing down and kissing his hem.
A sad commentary on the state of US media and freedom of speech and expression in the US
I don’t suppose that Utah will consider anything other than a death sentence. And the main reason that I support a life sentence is that turning this young man into a martyr, serves no purpose and could divide America in a far worse way than ever before. To me he looks like a 15 year old, and with the maturity of someone that age.
I agree, Linda. I’ve always opposed the death penalty, but there is such a ravenous appetite for violence and vengeance in the US now, egged on, of course, by Trump himself who stokes both. I hope cooler heads prevail, but the lust for violent retribution is real.
Nothing in my mind justifies political violence and Charlie Kirk certainly didn’t deserve to be killed for expressing his First Amendment-protected views, no matter how offensive I find those views. But there now seems to be a growing backlash against Trump’s attempts to suppress dissent and the First Amendment, even from right-wingers including Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz.
Thank you, Marjorie. This is such a difficult time for the USA
Thanks Marjorie, even Obama has now commented on X.