Jimmy Kimmel on the midterms: ‘We can’t have an election soon enough’

Late-night hosts covered alarming new comments by Donald Trump as well as his outburst at a heckler in Michigan.On Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host said that in the first two weeks of 2026, “all hell has broken loose” and “if this was Jenga, there’d be blocks of wood all over the house.”He spoke about Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act as a result of his ICE officers causing chaos in Minneapolis. Kimmel joked that “he hasn’t been able to get an insurrection for years”.The host said that instead of trying to de-escalate the situation, he is doing the opposite and that “he turns the temperature up on everything but his wife

Seth Meyers on ICE: ‘An army of out-of-shape uncles’

Late-night hosts talked cratering public opinion on the Trump administration’s deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in US communities and the president’s apparent preference for whole milk.Seth Meyers opened Wednesday’s Late Night with a reminder to viewers about how Trump “sold his mass deportation program to voters during the campaign”.That would be by declaring some version of “We are going to start with violent criminals” again and again.“If you say you’re going to get violent criminals off the streets, of course people are going to be into that. But that was a lie,” Meyers noted

Adelaide writers’ week 2026 cancelled as board apologises to Randa Abdel-Fattah for ‘how decision was represented’

Adelaide writers’ week 2026 has been cancelled after days of turmoil as more than 180 authors and speakers dropped out in protest of the decision to disinvite the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah.In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, the Adelaide festival board announced the event, which was scheduled to begin on 28 February, would no longer go ahead. The three remaining members of the festival board have resigned immediately, after the resignations of four others – with the exception of the Adelaide city council representative, whose term expires in February.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe decision to cancel AWW entirely came five days after the festival board announced it had intervened to drop Abdel-Fattah from appearing at the festival, citing “cultural sensitivities” after the attack on the Jewish community in Bondi.On Tuesday, the board apologised to Abdel-Fattah “for how the decision was represented”

Civilised but casual, often hilarious, Adelaide writers’ week is everything a festival should be – except this year | Tory Shepherd

The sun almost always shines on Adelaide writers’ week, held on Kaurna land each year at the tail end of summer.For those who start looking forward to it as soon as soon as the Christmas tree is packed away (or earlier, frankly) there’s a sense of loss, of betrayal, at the omnishambles that has led to its cancellation this year.We’re bereft, and angry – not least because some of the most vocal critics seem to have no idea what writers’ week actually is.During Adelaide’s Mad March, the city’s parklands are home to the festival fringe’s sprawling performance spaces, bars and restaurants. On a Sunday you might leave behind the carnival chaos of the Garden of Unearthly Delights

Ian McKellen to star as LS Lowry in documentary revealing trove of unheard tapes

Fifteen years ago, Sir Ian McKellen was among the leading arts figures who criticised the Tate for not showing its collection of paintings by LS Lowry in its London galleries and questioned whether the “matchstick men painter” had been sidelined as too northern and provincial.Now, 50 years after Lowry’s death, McKellen is to star in a BBC documentary that will reveal a trove of previously unheard audio tapes recorded with Lowry in the 1970s during his final four years of life.The interview is the longest the artist ever gave and was recorded in his living room, his “private sanctuary”. The tapes are said to reveal Lowry’s authentic voice, which McKellen will lip-sync on screen.The Lancashire-born actor described the role as a “unique privilege”

Jewish American columnist Thomas Friedman says he was uninvited from 2024 Adelaide writers’ week over ‘timing’

A New York Times columnist at the centre of a second controversy engulfing Adelaide writers’ week has said he was uninvited from the event in 2024.Thomas Friedman, who is Jewish, confirmed to Nine newspapers on Thursday that after he agreed to appear in a video link session, he was subsequently notified “that the timing would not work out”.Earlier this week, former festival board member Tony Berg, who is of Jewish heritage, made an extraordinary accusation of “hypocrisy” against the director of Adelaide writers’ week, Louise Adler, saying she had lobbied for the removal of Friedman from the festival lineup.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailAt the time, a group of 10 academics had signed a petition demanding Friedman’s removal due to a controversial column he had written in the New York Times days earlier, which compared the Middle East conflict to the animal kingdom. The Palestinian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was uninvited from this year’s writers’ week, was among the group