Author: Morgan

Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that TV networks which cover him “negatively” could lose their licenses after his celebration of ABC suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

On Air Force One, the president spoke with reporters on his flight back to the US from his state visit to the UK. The president said major US networks were “97% against me”, though he didn’t offer evidence to prove this figure, or detail how this conclusion was evaluated. He said that he read the statistic “someplace”.

“Again, 97% negative, and yet I won easily. I won all seven swing states,” Trump said. “They give me only bad press. I mean they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their licenses should be taken away.”

Trump celebrated ABC’s decision to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, saying on Thursday that the comedian was “not a talented person” who “had very bad ratings”.

“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump told reporters on Thursday during his state visit to the United Kingdom. “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.”

According to Nielsen ratings as reported by LateNighter, while Stephen Colbert’s Late Show leads the time slot in total viewers with 2.42 million, Kimmel’s show averaged 1.77 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025 and edged out Colbert in the key 18-49 demographic. However, there was an 11% drop off in his show’s viewership the last month. Kimmel also has over 20 million subscribers on YouTube.

The controversy began after Kimmel, in a recent broadcast, suggested that “many in Maga land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. Within a day, FCC chair Brendan Carr condemned the comments as “truly sick” and suggested ABC could face regulatory consequences.

ABC suspended the show after affiliate operator Nexstar called Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive”.

The indefinite suspension of the popular late-night show has prompted numerous calls for a boycott against Disney, ABC’s parent company, and other major media conglomerates that have refused to air Kimmel’s show.

Writers Guild of America union members protested against the suspension of Kimmel outside Disney/ABC in Los Angeles on Thursday, with the union issuing a statement saying: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other – to disturb, even – is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.”

Carr further raised censorship concerns when he suggested that the FCC might be “looking into” the View, another ABC talkshow. Appearing on conservative podcast the Bulwark, Carr was asked if other shows could face similar issues as Kimmel’s.

“I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether the View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place,” he said.

The View hosts notably did not comment about Kimmel, their fellow ABC colleague’s cancellation during the show’s Thursday broadcast.

Damon Lindelof, a powerful Hollywood showrunner and creator of the ABC series Lost and other dramas, has promised not to work with Disney unless it puts Kimmel back on the air.

Lindelof wrote on Instagram: “I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon. If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.”

He added: “If you know Jimmy … You know he loves his country. You know he appreciates a good roast and he can take as good as he gives. You know he supported his crew through multiple strikes and you know he is generous and philanthropic and most of all, you know that he is kind.”

The feud between Trump and Kimmel stretches back years, most notably when Kimmel hosted the 2024 Academy Awards and Trump posted online calling him a “WORSE HOST”. Kimmel read that message out during the ceremony, and responded by asking Trump if it wasn’t “past your jail time?”

The comedian also emerged as a vocal critic during Trump’s first term, leading the fight against Obamacare repeal efforts after revealing his newborn son’s heart surgery had been made possible by the Affordable Care Act.

Kimmel is the second prominent US late-night host to lose his show in the last few months. CBS announced in July that it would be cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show after he was also critical of Trump.

JD Vance added to the pile-on Thursday, joking on social media that secretary of state Marco Rubio will be taking over as host of ABC’s late night show, a quip referencing Rubio’s multiple roles in the Trump administration.

On Thursday morning, Barack Obama condemned what he called a “dangerous” escalation by the Trump administration. “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote on X.

FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat on the commission, also accused ABC of “shameful” corporate capitulation that “has put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger”. She said the FCC “does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes”.

House Democratic leaders on Thursday called for Carr’s resignation, accusing him of forcing ABC to suspend the show through regulatory threats.

“Brendan Carr has engaged in the corrupt abuse of power,” said the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and five other lawmakers in a joint statement. “He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration.”

Ro Khanna, a representative of California, on Thursday issued a motion to subpoena Carr in the House Oversight Committee. “This administration has initiated the largest assault on the first amendment and free speech in modern history,” he said. “They’re making comedy illegal.”

Democrats are also planning legislative action in response to what they see as escalating government censorship. Senator Chris Murphy and congressman Jason Crow announced Thursday they will introduce bicameral legislation meant to protect anti-government speech from censorship and includes creating “a specific defense for those that are being targeted for political reasons”.

In a press conference in Washington, Murphy warned that “Jimmy Kimmel is likely to not be the last person to lose their job, or face retaliation for their criticism of Donald Trump,” while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the administration’s threats “an assault on everything this country has stood for since the constitution has been signed”.

Chris Stein contributed reporting.

Donald Trump has told Britain it should “call out the military” to control its borders during a tightly controlled summit in which Keir Starmer ducked major flashpoints with the US president.

During a potentially difficult two-day state visit for the government, Trump has for the most part avoided exploiting tensions, although he described the UK’s plan to recognise a Palestinian state as “one of our few disagreements”.

The UK is preparing to formally acknowledge Palestine as early as Friday, after Israel failed to meet conditions that would have postponed the historic step, including a ceasefire in Gaza. Starmer insisted the timing had nothing to do with Trump’s visit.

Trump’s visit, which was officially hosted by King Charles, came at the end of a turbulent few weeks for Starmer in which he lost his deputy, Angela Rayner, and was attacked for his handling of the Peter Mandelson row, with his position as leader coming under question by his own MPs.

However, Downing Street sources said that his efforts in building a close relationship with Trump, despite criticism at home for doing so, had reaped rewards, with the pageantry of the state visit apparently helping to secure £150bn of promised investment in the UK by US companies.

At a closely managed press conference at Chequers, his official country residence, that prevented Trump taking many questions from journalists, Starmer avoided major potential bear traps, including coming under pressure over Mandelson’s links with convicted paedophile Jeffery Epstein.

The president dismissed a question about the former US ambassador. “I don’t know him,” he said, even though the pair have met previously, including talks on whisky tariffs in the Oval Office earlier this month. Trump has previously praised Mandelson’s “beautiful accent”.

Trump ended the state visit with a warning that illegal migration could destroy the UK, telling Starmer that he should follow the US in taking tough action to stop migrants unlawfully crossing its southern border.

“I think your situation is very similar. You have people coming in and I told the prime minister I would stop it, and it doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what means you use,” Trump said.

“It destroys countries from within and we’re actually now removing a lot of the people that came into our country.”

The first Channel migrant was deported to France on Thursday under Starmer’s “one in, one out” deal, with further flights due to take place in coming days.

With public concern rising over the UK’s borders, and Nigel Farage’s Reform exploiting tensions over the issue, Downing Street believes it has to stop the highly visible crossings. The UK will accept an equal number of people through a newly established safe and legal route.

Some Labour MPs have already suggested the government should send the Royal Navy into the Channel to prevent small boat crossings, an approach tried and failed under Boris Johnson in 2022 and 2023.

Starmer has also come under pressure from his own party over the situation in Gaza, and the UK is preparing to recognise the state of Palestine ahead of a UN summit next week, even though the US opposes the move.

While Starmer spoke of the “humanitarian catastrophe” unfolding in the devastated territory at Chequers, neither man condemned Israel’s actions in the strip, which has seen IDF troops pressing ahead with a ground offensive into Gaza City, forcing more people to flee their homes.

Trump, asked when he would put more pressure on Israel to halt its military offensive, focused almost exclusively on the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas. He patted the prime minister on the back when he said the group would play no part in any future government.

The US, now effectively opposed to a two-state solution as unobtainable and undesirable, has rejected the UK move as unhelpful, but Trump has decided not to make the matter a point of division with Starmer on the basis that Washington sees it as a largely symbolic act.

In a significant change of tone on the Ukraine conflict, Trump said that Vladimir Putin had “really let me down”, to the delight of British officials who had hoped to use the unprecedented second state visit to isolate the Russian president on the world stage.

“He’s killing many people, and he’s losing more people than he’s killing. The Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers,” Trump said.

Just a month after the US president held talks in Alaska with Putin, he admitted he had thought it would be easier to negotiate a truce between the two countries. He did not say how he would put pressure on the Kremlin to end the war but urged Nato countries to stop buying Russian oil.

In the biggest surprise of the press conference, Trump revealed the US is seeking to retake control of Bagram airbase from the Taliban after it was surrendered during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US views it as an important strategic foothold in the region, which could help counter the threat of growing Chinese military might. “One of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons,” he said.

In another point of difference, Trump praised North Sea oil as a “phenomenal asset” and urged the UK to use more of it, while he dismissed wind power as a “very expensive joke”. Starmer, meanwhile, defended the importance of an energy mix, including renewables.

After a weekend in which Starmer eventually spoke out against some of the rhetoric at the largest nationalist protest in decades, organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, it seemed inevitable that Trump would echo the criticisms of JD Vance over free speech in the UK.

However, Trump avoided any conflict on the issue. The prime minister told reporters, including a large US press pack, that the government would protect free speech “jealously and fiercely and always will”. He also condemned the killing of the far-right activist Charlie Kirk: “Whatever our political views, it is shocking and is to be condemned.”

And Starmer, who is not religious, responded to questions by the US media about whether the UK was a Christian country by pointing out that he had been christened, and so “that is my church, has been all my life”. He added that the religion was “wired into” the informal constitution but added he was proud that the UK celebrated other faiths too.

The cost of seeing private psychologists is soaring and many are so busy they are turning away new clients, research has found.

The prices psychologists charge have risen by 34% since 2022 and 12 sessions now cost an average of £1,550, compared with £1,152 just three years ago, according to a survey by myTribe Insurance, which tracks the cost of private medical care.

Almost three in 10 (29%) psychologists are already treating so many patients that they are not taking on new ones, according to a survey of practitioners across the UK.

The sometimes months-long delays people face in their efforts to access NHS mental healthcare and the record number of people seeking help, usually for anxiety or depression, appear to underlie the double-whammy facing patients of fee uplifts and closed waiting lists.

Chris Steele, the founder of myTribe Insurance, said: “What we’ve seen over the last three years is a market that has become significantly more expensive for patients. A 34% rise in consultation fees is not just a statistic. It shows how private talking therapies are moving further out of reach for many people who need them.”

While many people are seeking help from a psychologist in private practice, the survey of 345 practitioners found that doing so can involve high prices, long waits and online-only care. The findings include:

• The average cost of a consultation in the UK has risen from £96 in 2022 to £129.20 in 2025.

• Psychologists in England charge the most (£131) per session and those in Scotland the least (£124).

• Those in Scotland have the shortest waiting times (16.9 days), and people in Wales the longest (23.8 days).

• While London clinics charge the most for a consultation – £160 on average – fees at those in the north-east of England are much lower (£107).

Leicester-based psychologists charge an average of £164 for a session, with London second on £160. Colchester, Bath and Coventry charge £85, £99 and £100 respectively.

Steele advised people seeking help to shop around and be prepared to accept online support provided far from their home in order to beat delays and pay less.

The British Psychological Society, which represents 19,000 of the UK’s 27,774 psychologists, said they had increased their charges to help cover rises in the cost of living.

A spokesperson said: “With the continuing postcode lottery for accessing NHS mental health support, increasing numbers are seeking out private treatment. This is causing private providers to reach capacity and [be] unable to take on new clients. Demand is outstripping supply on all fronts.”

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One in three people waiting for NHS mental health care end up going private because of delays, according to research last year by Rethink Mental Illness. The rising cost of private psychology is “troubling”, and the trend towards private care could lead to a “two-tier system”, it said.

Jeremy Bernhaut, the charity’s head of policy and influencing, said: “There are an estimated 1.8 million people waiting for [NHS] mental health care [in England] and the consequences are severe: suicide attempts, lost jobs and hospitalisation, which puts strain on the wider NHS.”

The number of people on the waiting list for support from NHS community-based mental health and learning disability services in England has risen from 1.56 million last year to 1.79 miillion.

NHS England said more than a million people a year received help from its talking therapies services. A spokesperson said: “We plan to expand the service further, increasing the therapist workforce and reducing waiting times.”

Donald Trump has accused Vladimir Putin of letting him down in a joint press conference with Keir Starmer during which the US president piled criticism on his Russian counterpart.

Trump said on Thursday that he had hoped to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine soon after entering office, but that Putin’s actions had prevented him from doing so.

His comments came during an hour-long press conference alongside Starmer which marked the culmination of a two-day state visit during which the president has largely steered clear of several points of tension between the two leaders.

Trump largely avoided criticising the prime minister over Palestinian statehood or attacking Britain on free speech, though he caused awkwardness when he suggested Starmer could bring in the army to deal with irregular migration.

His comments about the Russian president, however, will delight British officials who had hoped to use the unprecedented second state visit to isolate Putin on the world stage.

Putin “has let me down”, Trump said. “He’s killing many people, and he’s losing more people than he’s killing. The Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers.”

Trump said he had thought it would be easy to negotiate a truce between Russia and Ukraine “because of my relationship with President Putin … but he’s let me down, he’s really let me down”.

Trump ladled praise on the royal family, Starmer and Britain at the end of a visit full of pomp and pageantry.

“We’re grateful beyond words for the spectacular honour of the state visit yesterday at Windsor Castle, hosted by His Majesty King Charles and Her Majesty Queen Camilla,” he said soon after watching the Red Devil parachute team land on the Chequers lawn.

“These are two fantastic people,” he said, before calling the UK “these beautiful, magnificent isles”.

During a wide-ranging press conference he offered his opinions on: wind power – “a very expensive joke”; the sacking of the US television host Jimmy Kimmel – “not a talented person”; and his predecessor Joe Biden – “never the brightest bulb in the ceiling”.

He dismissed a question about Peter Mandelson, claiming never to have known him, despite the pair having met several times.

He disagreed openly with Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood, but only briefly, saying it was “one of our few disagreements”.

He also gave his advice on dealing with small boat arrivals into the UK: “I told the prime minister I would stop it. It doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what means you use, but it destroys countries from within.”

To the relief of Downing Street advisers, he entirely avoided answering a question about whether Britain has a problem with free speech, given the recent arrests of Lucy Connolly and Graham Linehan over social media posts.

Starmer’s greatest success during a 90-minute bilateral meeting was arguably to focus the president’s ire on Putin over the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Trump has in the past blamed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Biden for the war. In recent weeks, however, he has called Russia the aggressor, and he focused his attention entirely on Putin on Thursday.

“I spoke to President Putin about Ukraine, it was the apple of his eye,” he said. “But he would have never done what he did, except that he didn’t respect the leadership of the United States.”

He resisted Starmer’s direct calls, however, for more sanctions on Russia.

The PM said: “It’s only when the president has put pressure on Putin that he’s actually shown any inclination to move.”

Trump responded by drawing attention to European and Indian imports of Russian oil. “If the price of oil comes down, Putin is going to drop out,” he said. “He’s going to have no choice. He’s going to drop out of that war.”

Kamala Harris watched mortified as her running mate, Tim Walz, fell into JD Vance’s trap in last year’s vice-presidential debate and “fumbled” a crucial answer, she writes in a campaign memoir.

The former Democratic presidential nominee also admits that Walz had not been her first choice for vice-president in her book 107 Days, obtained by the Guardian ahead of its publication next week.

Walz and Vance held a 90-minute debate, hosted by the CBS News network in New York, on 1 October. It was the last debate of the campaign and Harris hoped that Walz would be “the closer”.

But Vance, previously vicious in attacking Harris, came with a strategy to tone down the anger and insults that characterise his boss, Donald Trump. Instead the Ohio senator presented himself as mild-mannered and eager to find common ground with Walz.

“When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at JD’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, ‘What is happening?’” Harris writes.

“I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.’”

While Vance twice got fact-checked by the moderators, Walz ended up defending his record as governor of Minnesota, she continues. “Then he fumbled his answer when the moderator, predictably, questioned why he had claimed to be in Hong Kong during the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.”

Instead of simply saying he had got his dates mixed up and taking the opportunity to highlight human rights in China, Walz “talked about biking in Nebraska”.

Harris adds wryly: “The following weekend, Saturday Night Live did a sketch in which actors posed as Doug and me, sitting on our couch, watching the debate. While I did not in fact spit out wine, it was otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening.”

Walz “felt bad” that he had not done better, the book states, though Harris assured him that the debate would not decide the outcome of the election, and indeed it had a “negligible effect” on polling.

In 107 Days – a title that refers to the length of the campaign that Harris inherited from Joe Biden – she also describes the process of auditioning Walz, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, for the job of running mate. Her senior staff, sister Maya and 17-year-old godson Alexander all favoured Walz.

But Harris admits that her “first choice” for the job would have been the then transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a close friend of hers who is gay.

“He would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man. But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.

“And I think Pete also knew that – to our mutual sadness.”

A serving senior police officer is facing a misconduct inquiry over their response to the Manchester Arena terror attack.

The unnamed officer, who played a key command role on the night of the bombing, is accused of failing to tell others that they, the officer, were not adequately trained.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it launched an investigation after a complaint in 2021 from families of the victims of the attack at an Ariana Grande concert.

A public inquiry strongly criticised Greater Manchester police (GMP) for large parts of its response to the atrocity, in which 22 people were killed and dozens seriously injured on 22 May 2017.

Sir John Saunders, the chair of the inquiry, found in 2022 that senior officers failed to declare a major incident for two and a half hours after the blast and did not tell other emergency services it had triggered a terrorism response plan.

The inquiry was also critical of specific officers over a lack of training and having insufficient experience in charge of major incidents.

The IOPC said the unnamed senior officer, who still works at GMP, would face a misconduct meeting where they could receive a sanction ranging up to a final written warning.

The IOPC director Amanda Rowe said: “It will now be for a police disciplinary panel to consider the evidence and reach a decision based on all the available information.”

Terry Woods, GMP’s deputy chief constable, said the force supported the instruction to hold a misconduct meeting and said the outcome would be made public.

He said: “I want to reiterate the chief constable’s unreserved apology made on behalf of GMP to the families following the public inquiry. We are steadfast in our commitment to ensure we do not repeat the inadequacies identified in the public inquiry. We have worked extensively in the years since to continue cementing the substantive improvements made as a result of the recommendations made.”

An extraordinary split has opened between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in the formation of their new leftwing party, with the former Labour leader suggesting he will take legal action over an unauthorised membership portal promoted by his co-leader.

Sultana claimed the party was being run by a “sexist boys’ club” and suggested there were deep disagreements over how to launch party membership – including with the four other MPs in Corbyn’s Independent Alliance.

The split emerged on Thursday when Sultana outlined a new membership portal in a post on X, saying it was a “safe and secure” platform and that supporters should keep trying to sign up despite “issues due to such high traffic”.

But Corbyn issued an “urgent message” telling supporters to ignore the site, and said “legal advice is being taken”.

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A desk used by John Lennon has gone on display after being found in the attic of his former school, where teachers had not wanted to remember the musician because he was a “nuisance”.

Lennon attended Quarry Bank high school in Liverpool between 1952 and 1957, and the name of the Quarrymen, the band that would become the Beatles in their formative years, was inspired by the school’s name.

His desk was rumoured to be somewhere in the school for decades, with a common tale detailing that staff had hidden it after Lennon shot to fame with the Beatles as his former teachers had found him a “nuisance” and did not want the school to be associated with him.

Tom Barry, a teacher at what is now Calderstones school, said the former headteacher had led the plan.

“The story is that the headmaster, Bill Pobjoy, when John had made some sort of fame with the Beatles, we think in about 1963 or 1964, he asked the caretaker, known as Yozzer, to unscrew John’s old school desk from the history room and put it into storage,” Barry said. “That’s been locked away for years and they lost the key so we had to beat the door down to get to it.

“The rumour had circulated through the school and we weren’t quite sure if it was actually the desk belonging to John, but we’ve now found a document from the headmaster’s PA which notes down the task for the caretaker, so we have written proof.”

Barry said the school had long refused to acknowledge its famous former student, who is known to have been disruptive during his school days, even turning away fans who would turn up at the gates.

But it has now embraced Lennon’s time there, offering tours to fans that will include sights such as the stage where Lennon performed with Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

“When John left, he was that much of a nuisance and a bully and that much of a poor student the school staff didn’t want to acknowledge that he ever went to the school, and removed any trace of him,” Barry said. “He was never spoken about, he was never acknowledged through Beatlemania.”

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Lennon’s desk, along with an enrolment ledger signed by his aunt Mimi and other pieces from his school days such as uniforms and school signs, are the latest additions to the Beatles Museum on Mathew Street, where the Cavern Club that the band played in their early years is also located.