1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Jokes Are Not Crimes: Defend Political Satire and Condemn This Abuse of Power Dear Representative, For generations, political satire has been one of America’s most cherished democratic traditions. From Mark Twain to Saturday Night Live, the right to mock those in power has served as a vital check on authority and a cornerstone of free expression. That tradition is now under direct attack from the very office sworn to protect it. President Donald Trump has used his platform as President of the United States to demand that ABC and Disney fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a satirical joke made during a comedy monologue. He has characterized the joke as a “despicable call to violence.” First Lady Melania Trump followed with her own public demand, calling on ABC to take action against him. This is not a matter of taste or decorum. This is a sitting president using the power of his office to intimidate a private employer into silencing a comedian for political criticism. The facts of the timeline demand scrutiny. Kimmel taped his monologue on Thursday, April 23rd. The shooting at the Washington Hilton occurred on Saturday. He could not have known what was being planned, and the joke itself was almost certainly a reference to Trump’s well-documented history of surviving assassination attempts. Drawing a causal line between a comedian’s joke and a violent act he had no foreknowledge of is a deliberate and bad-faith effort to silence political opposition through fear and intimidation. The First Amendment explicitly protects political satire. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right of comedians and entertainers to criticize public figures, including the President. When a president uses the bully pulpit to pressure private employers to fire citizens for political jokes, and when the implicit threat of FCC licensing retaliation looms over that pressure, we have crossed into dangerous territory. Nations where leaders punish artists and entertainers for political mockery are not democracies. We cannot allow that precedent to take root here. I am demanding that you publicly condemn this as an abuse of presidential power, affirm Americans’ fundamental right to political satire and free expression, and call for hearings on this administration’s pattern of using government influence to punish its media critics. Your constituents are watching, and your oath demands courage. Silence is complicity. History will remember who stood up for the Constitution and who looked the other way while it was dismantled joke by joke, reporter by reporter, and broadcaster by broadcaster. Respectfully,