If you want to know how bad it’s getting, look at what happened last night

Last night at 11:35, after thirty-three years of The Late Show on CBS and eleven years of Colbert behind that desk at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, the lights went down for the last time. After years of personal obsession with silencing voices that speak truthfully about him, the President of the United States was successful in removing a comedian from the air. This will be remembered in the history books as one of the darkest modern assaults on the First Amendment and a deeply dangerous escalation into authoritarianism.

Based on the events of 5-21-2026

The Breakdown:

• Stephen Colbert's show was number one and winning its timeslot when CBS announced it was pulling the plug, calling it "purely a financial decision"
• Days before the cancellation, Colbert called the $16 million Paramount paid to settle Trump's 60 Minutes lawsuit "a big fat bribe"
• Paramount had an $8 billion sale to Skydance pending, a sale that needed approval from Trump's FCC
• When the cancellation was announced, Trump wrote, "I absolutely love that Colbert got fired," and added that he heard Jimmy Kimmel was "next"
• Colbert used his final ten months on air to tell the truth louder, calling what was happening "worse than fascism"
• Why authoritarian movements target comedians, from Nazi Germany's cabaret performers to Soviet-era comedians who disappeared from the stage
• What we are really losing: one of the largest mainstream voices reaching millions who never watch cable news
• What Trump told CBS's Lesley Stahl years ago about why he attacks the press: "I do it to discredit you all and demean you all"
• How the White House Press Secretary laid the groundwork by suggesting that calling the president a fascist was a crime
• The wave of intimidation and threats that floods in whenever Trump targets someone for speaking out
• Why financial resistance matters, and how every paid subscription to independent media is a vote against what happened
• Why supporting independent journalism and PBS matters more than ever right now
• House Republicans abruptly canceled a vote on the Iran War Powers resolution twice because they did not have the votes to defeat it
• Republicans walked away from Trump's $70 billion funding package, including new ICE and DHS funding and roughly a billion for the White House ballroom project
• Leadership sent everyone home until June rather than force members to put their names on the record
• Why a party that controls everything still ran from its own votes, and why that fear did not appear out of nowhere

They took one of the bravest voices we had off the air. But Stephen Colbert spent the last ten months proving something important: you can take away someone's platform and still fail to take away their voice. Tonight, it becomes our responsibility to carry that resistance forward ourselves, louder than before. They wanted us to be quiet. Instead, they are about to discover they created the loudest resistance movement yet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I'm Heather Clainey Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country. Last night at 11.35 p.m., something happened in the United States of America that should never have happened. After years of personal obsession with silencing voices that speak truthfully about him, the President of the United States was successful in removing a comedian from the air in an effort to control what millions of Americans are allowed to see, hear, laugh at, and think about. This will be remembered in the history books as one of the darkest modern assaults on the First Amendment of the Constitution and a deeply dangerous escalation for our country into authoritarianism. Stephen Colbert's show was number one, and he was winning his time slot when CBS announced it was pulling the plug. They called it purely a financial decision against challenging backdrop in late night. But you do not cancel the most watched late night show to save money. You cancel it for another reason, and we all know what that reason was. Because shortly before the announcement, Colbert stood in front of his audience and openly criticized his own parent company, Paramount, for paying Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over the editing of a 60 minutes interview, a lawsuit Paramount itself had previously described as meritless. He said he did not know whether anything could restore his trust in the company, before joking that maybe $16 million would help. Then during his monologue, he went even further, saying the technical legal term for the deal between CBS and Trump was, and I quote, a big fat bribe. And three days later his show was canceled. And the timing was no coincidence because Paramount had an $8 billion sale to Sky Dance pending, and that sale needed approval from Trump's FCC. Colbert told the truth about the bribe and the upcoming deal, and then the company that paid it took him off the air. And here's the part that tells you everything about the man in the Oval Office. When the cancellation was announced, Trump did not stay quiet. He celebrated. He went on his platform, True Social, and wrote, I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. That was a sitting president openly gloating that one of his most prominent critics had been removed from television. He even added that he heard Jimmy Kimmel was next. Colbert did not bend even after that. He pushed harder. From the moment he was handed his own ending, he used every single night he had left to tell the truth louder and call exactly what Donald Trump was doing to our country, even sending a message directly to the president shortly after the cancellation was announced, using language the president understands. And this is what he said. He said, go F yourself. And he kept saying that for the next 10 months. The gloves were off. He could finally speak unvarnished truth to power. And he said exactly what he thought of Donald Trump. He joked that this was worse than fascism. He turned his own execution into 10 months of defiance. And last night, after 33 years of the late night show on CBS, and after 11 years of Colbert behind the desk at the Ed Sullivan Theater, the lights went down for the last time. And as tragic as what happened to Colbert is, I have full faith that he will ultimately come out stronger on the other side of this. Hurt, shaken, and undoubtedly exhausted from years of being targeted by the President of the United States and treated almost like an enemy of the state for doing his job. But Stephen Colbert will continue being a beacon of truth, humor, and moral clarity during one of the most dangerous periods in modern American history. Men like Trump cannot create voices like his, and that is precisely why they fear them so much. But what happened to Colbert is bigger than one man losing a platform. What we are really losing is one of the largest mainstream voices in the resistance, someone capable of reaching millions of Americans who are not glued to political coverage every day like maybe you and I are. People who may never sit down to watch cable news or any news or even read lengthly political analysis. They still invited Stephen Colbert into their homes every night. They came to laugh and to decompress, to feel human again after exhausting days. And in the process, they were exposed to truth and accountability and the normalization of speaking openly about what is happening in this country. That is the real reason authoritarian movements target comedians so aggressively. Not because comedy is meaningless, but because it is influential. Humor lowers defenses. It reaches people in ways that propaganda cannot fully reach. It creates a connection, the sense of community, and a shared understanding in moments when fear is designed to isolate us from one another. They did not just want Stephen Colbert gone. They wanted the platform gone, the nightly reminder to millions of Americans that powerful people can still be mocked, questioned, and challenged publicly. Comedians make the powerful look small, and nothing frightens a strong man more than being laughed at. That is why this has always been one of the first moves in the authoritarian playbook. In Nazi Germany, the regime went after cabaret performers and satirists who mocked the right. In the Soviet Union, comedians who went too far disappeared from the stage and their communities. Every authoritarian movement eventually comes for the people who make the population laugh at its leaders, because laughter is proof that the fear has not fully taken over. And when the laughter stops, they know they're winning. Colbert was not the first, and he will not be the last voice silenced. We have watched this administration come for the press over and over again. They came for Jimmy Kimmel, who was suspended by ABC last year after Trump's FCC chairman publicly pressured the network. The one time a company actually held the line when Disney and ABC brought Kimmel back and refused to cave, it showed us exactly what was possible when a corporation chooses its audience and the country over the president's favor. CBS chose differently. This is just another moment of Trump executing his plan to completely silence anyone willing to speak the truth. Trump hates the media. And he already told us why, years ago, to one of CBS's own, Leslie Stahl, the longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, who once asked him off-camera why he attacked the press over and over again. And he told her plainly, I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you. He has spent every year since proving he meant it. He has come for individual reporters, attacking them by name from the White House podium, and aboard Air Force one, calling them stupid, nasty, piggy, and even more recently a B I T C H. I know I can say the word, it still just feels wrong. He and his administration have come for entire newsrooms with threats to broadcast licenses. They settled lawsuits that should never have been settled, paid money that looked exactly like what Colbert called it. And then they removed the people who said so out loud. This is not a series of unrelated business decisions. This is the steady consolidation of money, power, and truth into a smaller and smaller funnel, until the only voices left standing are the ones the president has approved. And they told us this was coming. Earlier this month, the White House press secretary, Caroline Lovitt, stood at that podium and laid the groundwork in plain language, telling the country that those who call the president a fascist, who compare him to history, who speak out against him, were responsible for violence and were engaged in a potential crime. What she delivered was a warning that dissent itself was going to be treated as dangerous. And last night we saw the next level of their plan to silence us all. What happened last night also sends a chilling message to every journalist, writer, comedian, entertainer, and ordinary person who's still speaking out. Trump has no limits when it comes to punishing voices he views as disloyal. Stephen Colbert was taken off the air because the president wanted him gone, and because a corporation seeking political favor ultimately decided compliance was safer than resistance. I have been bracing for last night because after writing these posts every night for more than a year now, I've started to recognize the pattern. Whenever Trump publicly targets someone for speaking out, the ugliest, most disturbing, and most unhinged messages begin flooding into my inboxes and messages almost immediately afterward. It is never just criticism, it's intimidation, it's threats, and it's rage, and sometimes explicit fantasies about violence, and far too often they drag my family into it too. It has gotten bad enough that I now need help filtering through emails and messages because some of them are genuinely horrifying to read, especially the ones mentioning my children or the people I love. That is part of what this movement does. It tries to wear people down psychologically until silence feels safer than speaking out. And I know the next few days will bring another wave of this. Because what happened to Colbert last night sends a message to Trump's loyalists that intimidation works, that if they scream loudly enough and threaten aggressively enough, pressure corporations hard enough, eventually people will disappear. But what they still do not understand is this. It will not work on me. And it did not work on Stephen Colbert either. He may have lost his show, but he did not lose his voice. If anything, last night proved how powerful that voice actually was. Powerful enough that a president of the United States spent years obsessing over silencing it. Powerful enough that corporations became afraid of standing beside it. And powerful enough that millions of Americans looked to it nightly for truth, humor, relief, and reassurance that they were not losing their minds watching all of this happen. And for those of us still speaking out, writing about what is happening to our country and sharing information with each other, organizing and resisting, and refusing to normalize this madness, we have a responsibility now to carry that resistance forward. Ourselves. Because Stephen Colbert lost something deeply meaningful to him last night. And he lost it because he refused to stop speaking honestly during dangerous times. He understood that some things really are worth risking everything for, our freedom and our country. I often talk about what I call the financial resistance, especially during moments when it feels like we are helplessly watching the destruction of our country. And over the past more than several months now, I have become increasingly intentional about where every dollar I spend goes. It is not a perfect science by any means, and none of us are going to get this right every single time. But I genuinely believe that money is one of the last forms of power ordinary people still fully control. And when spent consciously, every dollar can become an act of protest. I try to make sure the businesses and services I support are not openly aligning themselves with authoritarianism or helping normalize what is happening in this country. I intentionally buy from companies that have taken public stance when it matters. I support independent journalism and independent media through paid subscriptions because I understand that truth does not survive for free under systems like this. It survives because ordinary people decide it is worth protecting. And on nights like last night, I feel even more strongly about that. Because every paid subscription to independent media, every dollar sent directly to a writer, a journalist, a comedian, a podcaster, a filmmaker, or an outlet still willing to speak honestly, becomes a direct rejection of what happened last night. It becomes a private act of resistance against the growing effort to silence dissent and intimidate people into submission. Because the people behind this movement want critical voices weakened, isolated, defunded, exhausted, and eventually erased. They want all of us quiet. So we answer by making sure the people who refuse to be quiet can keep going. And when we do that together, it sends an even larger message than we realize. Because as corporate media increasingly bends itself around political pressure and billionaire interests, independent media becomes one of the last places where truth can still exist freely. But independent media can only survive if we choose to fund it directly. So if you are able, I hope you will consider joining me in that economic resistance. And please think beyond just my work when you do. I appreciate every one of your paid subscriptions. It means the world to me that you appreciate what I do and it helps me get this message out to more people. And beyond my own work, I would love for you to consider the other independent voices you rely on for their honesty too. If they offer a paid option, and of course if you are financially able to support them, please consider doing so. Because every subscription to an independent voice is a vote against everything that happened last night. It is us privately funding the people they are the most afraid to let speak. And if you're already supporting your favorite independent voices, I would encourage you to consider supporting PBS. Public broadcasting matters deeply during moments like these too. With Stephen Colbert gone, we are going to have to work even harder to make sure the truth about what is happening in this country still reaches people. Because buried underneath all the chaos, the intimidation, the distractions, and the constant outrage, Trump floods the country with every single day, we are also beginning to see cracks forming inside his own movement, and we need to make sure they grow bigger. Even some of the people who enable all of this are starting to discover there are limits to what they can publicly go along with. Yesterday, Republicans, who, by the way, control both chambers of Congress literally fled Washington, D.C. rather than publicly stand beside him. They were supposed to vote on the president's priorities before leaving for the Memorial Day recess. And instead, House leadership abruptly canceled a vote on the Iran War Powers Resolution, not once but twice, because they did not have the votes to defeat it. And this came immediately after Republican members of Congress crossed party lines to address a resolution aimed at stopping further military strikes tied to a war Congress never authorized in the first place. And it was not just about the war. Republicans also walked away from Trump's own $70 billion funding package, which included massive new funding increases for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, along with roughly a billion dollars connected to security and infrastructure tied to Trump's absurd vanity ballroom project at the White House. Leadership did not even want the votes on the record because there were real concerns they could lose those two. So instead of forcing members to publicly choose, they sent everyone home until June. And we need to think about how extraordinary that is for a moment. A party that controls the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court still became so publicly afraid of their own voters and the public backlash that they chose to run away from the votes entirely rather than defend them openly. Now, this was not courage and it was not a moral awakening, and it certainly was not decency. The war continues without authorization, regardless, which is its own quiet nightmare. Those Republicans are not suddenly heroes. They are afraid, afraid of town halls, afraid of constituents, afraid of attaching their name permanently to Trump's war, Trump's slush fund, and Trump's grotesque ballroom vanity project, while public anger continues growing around them. But here's the important part. That fear did not appear out of nowhere. We put it there. All of the protesting and our organizing and pressure, all of the refusal to normalize this. It matters. A regime that feels fully secure does not run from its own votes. A movement that feels universally supported does not panic about public backlash. And yes, they took one of the bravest voices we had off the air. But Stephen Calbert spent the last 10 months proving something incredibly important. If you can take away someone's platform and still fail to take away their voice, yes, last night it became our responsibility to carry that resistance forward ourselves louder than before. They want us to be quiet. Instead, they are about to discover that instead they created the loudest resistance movement yet. That is why self-hope for America, and you should too. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day, and together we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.