No Kings. No censorship. No silence.

First it was 60 Minutes.

Slapped with a frivolous $10-billion lawsuit by President Trump, Paramount, the show’s corporate parent, chose to pay Trump $16 million and degrade the iconic TV newsmagazine’s editorial independence rather than defend it. Paramount, you see, needed Trump administration approval for an $8.4 billion merger – and got it a few weeks later.

Then it was Stephen Colbert, who called Paramount’s payment to Trump “a big fat bribe” and saw his show canceled by Paramount a few days later. Trump cheered the move on social media and added, “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

Trump was right. Next it was Kimmel – pulled off the air “indefinitely” by ABC on Sept. 17 after joking about MAGA’s response to the horrific assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a co-author of Trump’s Project 2025 blueprint, called publicly for Kimmel’s suspension and added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” (“That’s right out of Goodfellas,” observed GOP Sen. Ted Cruz.)

Executives at ABC and its corporate parent, Disney, didn’t think Kimmel had “crossed the line,” according to multiple press reports, but dumped him anyway because they feared Trump reprisals. (ABC had already paid Trump $16 million to settle another of his many lawsuits.) And because a Disney customer called Nexstar – the country’s largest owner of local television stations – had also come out against Kimmel. Nexstar, you see, needs Brendan Carr’s approval for a $6.2 billion acquisition that would extend its reach to a whopping 80% of U.S. television households. Current law caps its reach at 39%.

The backlash against ABC/Disney was immediate, vociferous and sustained: As calls to boycott Disney products and streaming services spread online, searches for “how to cancel Disney+” reached a 12-month high and the company’s stock market value dropped by nearly $5 billion. On Sept. 22, ABC announced that Kimmel would resume his broadcast the next day. Facing the same outrage, Nexstar soon backtracked as well.

“I barely paid attention in school,” Kimmel said on his first night back. “But one thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.

He was right. And if that ended the immediate threat to Kimmel – no sure thing, as Trump promised to “test ABC out on this” – it did not end Trump’s threat to American freedom of speech. The president has been saying the quiet part out loud, threatening to revoke the broadcasting licenses of networks whose on-air personalities criticize him.

The right to criticize and, yes, mock our political leaders is as American as apple pie – just ask Mark Twain or Will Rogers. And it is under attack as never before. As John Stewart has said, comedians “are the banana peel in the coal mine. When a society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first.”

In 1934, Nazi Germany imposed the so-called Treachery Act, making it illegal to tell jokes about Hitler. You know what came after that.

It can’t happen here, right? Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, freedom of speech has been enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But the current U.S. President obviously doesn’t care about that.

The good news is that a great many Americans do care passionately about our First Amendment rights, and we’re responding to Trump’s assault on our essential freedom the best way we can: By making some righteous noise.

This is a galvanizing moment. Now is the time for all Americans – Democrats, Republicans, independents, whatever – to stand up, speak out, and get loud, letting every elected official know that Trump is trampling sacred American ground, and that we won’t stand for it. As conservative pundit Tucker Carlson said after Kimmel was suspended, when the government tries to take away your freedom of speech, “there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever. And there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think.”

We need the comedians now more than ever – because few others seem interested in holding Trump accountable. Conservatives used to complain bitterly about perceived liberal media bias, but today the majority of U.S. media is controlled by billionaires who either actively support or choose not to stand up to the President: Elon Musk (X), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, Instagram), Larry and David Ellison (Paramount, CBS, TikTok), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Washington Post), Rupert Murdoch (Fox, Wall Street Journal, New York Post). So when the president does something truly incendiary – for example, announcing that he’s sending troops to “War ravaged Portland” and “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” – much of our media now pretends it’s business as usual. Normal stuff.

This is not normal stuff. So here's one easy way to stand up for your – and everyone’s – right to free speech. Come out to one of the many No Kings events being held all over the country on Saturday, Oct. 18.

This could be the largest national demonstration in U.S. history, and there’s a demonstration right next door to us: 1:30-3:30pm in Wells Park, Village of Brewster. See you there?

Eric Pooley is a longtime resident of North Salem.