From the cancellation of Stephen Colbert, to the preemption of Jimmy Kimmel and the postponing of Jessica Chastain’s new series, President Trump’s administration is using politics to squeeze Hollywood. Acclaimed filmmaker Rob Reiner calls the current climate “beyond McCarthy era-esque” and warns Ali Velshi, “This is just the beginning.” He says his colleagues need to speak up: “Our job now, as communicators, is to start communicating to the rest of the country.”

A new ADP report indicating significant drops in private employment is "definitely a negative signal" for the economy, economist Justin Wolfers tells Ali Velshi. But amid the government shutdown, we don't have an up-to-date jobs report or even someone leading the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after Trump withdrew his controversial nominee, E.J. Antoni. "The only thing he'd ever done with statistics was misrepresent them," Wolfers said. 

As part of a multi-pronged deal with Pfizer, President Trump announced a new government website called “TrumpRx,” where he says Americans can buy discounted drugs directly from manufacturers. Co-Founder of The Contrarian, Norm Eisen, tells Ali Velshi that Americans are “already getting lower prices” because of the Affordable Care Act, and TrumpRx is “another example of President Trump deceiving and distracting” for political gain.

Since returning to office, President Trump has sought to reshape Immigration and Customs Enforcement to fit his mass deportation agenda. ICE insists agents use a “minimal amount of force” when making arrests, but video footage shows otherwise. Now with Trump ordering federal deployments into Chicago against the wishes of local officials, Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes says, “This is not about safety or security. This is about sowing division. This is about control.”

It’s day five and counting of a budget impasse in Washington, but critics say characterizing this moment as a government “shutdown” is misleading. For months, Donald Trump and his budget director Russell Vought have taken a sledgehammer to the federal bureaucracy and are now using this moment to gut agencies and programs that benefit working and middle-class Americans, while conveniently keeping in place everything that benefits the wealthy. 

On day four of the government shutdown, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined Ali Velshi to discuss the state of negotiations around the government shutdown – notably that they are not happening. He also dismissed the White House’s claim that the shutdown would force them to conduct mass layoffs across the federal government, saying it is “just pretext” for what they have already been doing. “This is why it's important for us as Democrats, of course, to continue to hold the line on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said.

With no end in sight to the government shutdown, Donald Trump and OMB Director Russell Vought are threatening to fire civil servants en masse and freeze federal funds. They claim Democrats are forcing their hands – but this is exactly what the Trump administration has been doing all along, as laid out in the Project 2025 playbook. “There’s going to be a political consequence to this that the Republicans will have to eat,” and Democrats should want to teach the Republican base a “painful lesson,” former GOP strategist Rick Wilson tells Ali Velshi.

All in one week, federal agents stormed a Chicago apartment complex, Donald Trump told 800 of the military’s top brass that America’s cities should be used as “training grounds” and that American citizens are “the enemy within,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denigrated women in combat and mocked transgender service members. According to ex-GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, these actions represent a desecration of military values. “There will be a moment where every email; where every detail; where every criminal act that has taken place during this rogue, fascist administration comes to be known– and is held to account,” says Schmidt. “We live in a free country.”

Four days into a government shutdown, congressional Republicans are refusing to negotiate and have ultimately done away with regular order. President Trump is using the shutdown as an excuse to punish his political rivals and advance his agenda by canceling government funding to Democratic-led states, from infrastructure funds for New York to transit funds for Chicago.

The son of a former Franciscan brother and nun, Christianity is deeply important to John Fugelsang, and inspired him to write the new book “Separation of Church and Hate.” “They don’t really follow this holy book they wave around like a prop,” Fugelsang tells Ali Velshi. Fugelsang argues that the rhetoric of Christianity “has been hijacked” by right-wingers and Christian nationalists whose ideology actually runs counter to the teachings of Jesus.

A new report released by PEN America outlines the disturbing new trend of book bans becoming normalized. The report tracked more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled from library shelves during the 2024-2025 school year. Author Stephen King tops the list with the most books banned. Critics warn that schools are “obeying in advance” pulling books from the shelves before it’s even demanded. 

Book bans have slowly become normalized in recent years and a new report from PEN America shows the alarming consequences. Under President Trump, the book ban movement has escalated with the federal government becoming a potent force for restricting book titles deemed to be controversial. PEN America President and author Jennifer Finney Boylan warns “this is not normal. This is not the way democracy is supposed to function… free people read books."

Donald Trump recently signed a new presidential memo that the White House says aims to counter domestic terrorism. But legal experts warn that it is overly broad and could be used as a framework to crack down on political dissent. “That’s the thing that ultimately scares me the most,” former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes tells Ali Velshi. “The combination of the weaponization of the justice system and the politicization of the military is how you get a real autocracy in this country.”

The so-called “marketplace of ideas” doesn’t simply reward truth or the strongest arguments— it rewards power. Without guardrails, the strongest players dominate while minority views are sidelined. Mary Anne Franks, professor at George Washington Law, warns nowhere is this more apparent than under Trump, who owns his own social media platform and uses it as a propaganda megaphone. The marketplace, as an idea, Franks says, “is not designed to get us truth or democracy or autonomy or any of the things that we think the First Amendment is supposed to get us.” Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor at Slate, adds, about the First Amendment, “There's both too much law and not enough law and an immense amount of abuse of the space between the two.”

The same people who once posed as champions of “free speech” during the years when Donald Trump wasn't president are now demanding government sanction, criminal penalties, firings, and surveillance of those who criticize them. Open markets - including the marketplace of ideas - don’t just reward truth—they reward power. And without certain thoughtful intervention, stronger players dominate weaker ones, and minority views are trampled. That’s the world the second Trump era is ushering in - and if we don’t change our conception of the First Amendment, the loudest voices shouting “free speech” will continue to be the ones burying it.

Last week, the Supreme Court let President Trump’s firing stand for a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, pending litigation. Alvaro Bedoya, one of two commissioners Trump fired in March, warns with the president’s weaponizing of the independent, bipartisan FTC, “We’re seeing corporate executives get off easy.”

Skilled foreign workers need an H-1B visa to work in the U.S., and now that the Trump administration has placed a $100,000 fee on such visas, workers who usually bring their talents to the U.S. could soon turn to other countries. Immigration attorney Allen Orr argues the U.S. will suffer as a result. “Many of the H-1B holders are people we educate in this country,” Orr said. “So, it’s not just a brain drain, it’s that we’re turning the talent we train in this country over to other nations.” American Medical Association president Dr. Bobby Mukkamala says the new fee will be especially detrimental to the U.S. health care industry, which has a growing shortage of physicians. “It’s been critical to have international medical graduates come to this country to practice medicine to fill that void,” he said. 

President Trump has submitted a record number of emergency cases to the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” persuading it to overturn lower court rulings that go against his administration’s policies. Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern warns the high court is giving Trump “unprecedented control over the federal government” with little or no explanation and even less transparency. Jeff Rosen says its use of the shadow docket “invites chaos.”

ABC’s temporary pre-emption of Jimmy Kimmel’s show is a symptom of a systemic crisis that allows a shrinking pool of media moguls to buy up ever-greater shares of the airwaves, says monopoly expert Matt Stoller. Consolidation, he warns, “is necessary in - and is authoritarianism.” Boycotts can pressure CEOs to reconsider capitulating to Trump, but the long-term solution is for lawmakers to “deconcentrate and democratize the economy.”

A look at how decades of media consolidation set the stage for the censorship of Jimmy Kimmel and public pushback forced his return. With just a handful of media orgs controlling the airwaves, free speech is under fire. But the Kimmel episode also highlights people-power, and how collective resistance can check authoritarianism where institutions fall short.

The Democratic party has been struggling to mount a unified defense against the Trump administration. Author and scholar Bill McKibben argues that there’s a group of Democratic newcomers who may illustrate how to govern in the Trump era: not on a federal level but at a municipal one. McKibben says that unlike more established politicians these up-and-comers are actually trying “to address the issues of the day instead of trying to hem-and-haw around the edges and look for small advantages.”

Author Arundhati Roy joins the Velshi Banned Book Club to discuss her Booker Prize-winning novel “The God of Small Things,” and to share her perspective on the subversive power of storytelling to shatter social and political boundaries. Though written in 1997, Roy’s exploration of these social rigidities–from Indian caste codes to societal taboos to familial responsibility–remains relevant as ever in the broader fight against literary censorship.

Donald Trump’s visit to Britain this week came with royal pageantry, but the cautionary tale is what’s outside the palace gates. Britain’s post-Brexit reality is a warning for America. From Brexit to MAGA, both nations abandoned the larger stories that once bound their people together.

As measles cases in the U.S. reach their highest level in a quarter century and RFK Jr. leads an anti-vaccine push from the federal government, it's crucial to understand the importance of vaccines. Historian and University of Oklahoma professor Kyle Harper tells Ali Velshi that "vaccines are arguably the innovation, the discovery that has done more than any other to contribute to human health, to longevity, and to overall human wellbeing," and that "for most of the human past, infectious diseases were difficult or impossible to control."

Donald Trump’s visit to Britain this past week came with royal pageantry, but the cautionary tale is what lies outside the palace gates. Ben Rhodes joins to explain why the American Dream feels “stale,” how inequality fuels identity appeals, and what it takes to reclaim the American Dream. Democratic leadership, he says, must be about “rebuilding the system” and removing barriers that keep doors closed for ordinary Americans. Trump is ultimately a story of distraction, he says, noting that “the oldest trick in the book” is to keep the working class angry at a scary “other” while doing nothing to fix their problems.