I.

America’s new cancel culture has arrived. Any remaining doubts about that were laid to rest on 17 September 2025, when a federal government official used the lingo of a mob boss to demand the removal of a comedian from the air for saying things that the US president didn’t like. Within hours, the private TV network responsible for broadcasting the offending show had complied, conscious that failure to do so would put its business interests at risk. This is not the way that free speech is supposed to work in the United States.

On 24 August, Donald Trump had demanded that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—America’s supposedly independent broadcast regulator—revoke the broadcast licenses of the country’s ABC and NBC networks. These companies, he complained in a Truth Social post, are nothing more than “AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.” Two and a half weeks after Trump’s post and a few days after the shocking assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel—host of ABC’s long-running late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live!—made the following remarks:

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

Kimmel went on to poke fun at Trump’s apparent callousness over the murder, playing a video clip of Trump being asked how he was dealing with his grief. Trump responded by yammering on about the new White House ballroom he was constructing. That last bit was funny. But Kimmel’s implication that Kirk’s murderer was part of the “MAGA gang” was neither funny nor true. So Trump administration officials—who are always sticklers for perfect accuracy—got to work trying to cancel Kimmel’s show.

On 17 September, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appeared on Benny Johnson’s MAGA podcast and accused Kimmel of engaging in what “appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible. ... In some quarters, there’s a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature ... of one of the most significant newsworthy public-interest acts that we’ve seen in a long time. And what appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that narrative that [Kirk’s assassin] was somehow a MAGA- or Republican-motivated person. If that is what happened here, that is really, really sick.”

Carr then employed the verbiage of a mafia chieftain to threaten the private companies responsible for putting Kimmel on the air. “What people don’t understand,” he explained, “is that the broadcasters ... are entirely different than people who use other forms of communication. They have a license, granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with an obligation to operate in the public interest. ... And frankly, when we see stuff like this, I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Asked what action he’d like to see ABC take, Carr mused, “There’s calls for Kimmel to be fired. Um, I think, y’know, you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this.” He pointed out that companies like Comcast and Disney create these shows and then provide them to licensed TV stations. “It’s the licensed TV stations,” he went on, “that have the public-interest in ’em, including those stations that Comcast and Disney own. So FCC regulatory action focuses on those individual stations. ... And frankly, I really think it’s past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, ‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we—we licensed broadcasters—are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.’ So I think Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this, y’know, garbage ... isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities.”

The message conveyed by the FCC chairman was unmistakably clear. According to an 18 September report in the Wall Street Journal, rattled Disney executives had a meeting with Kimmel following Carr’s remarks and asked him to use his Wednesday show to issue a correction and apology. Kimmel refused because he felt he’d done nothing wrong and informed Disney that he would argue that MAGA influencers had deliberately misrepresented him instead. In response, ABC yanked his show indefinitely. Was that decision motivated by fear of a viewer revolt from below if Kimmel doubled-down or an FCC retribution from above? Probably a bit of both, but there was no question that Carr’s remarks were intended to intimidate.

Carr’s warning to the individual stations was particularly potent because Nexstar Media, the company that runs many of these stations, has a multibillion-dollar merger in the works that will require FCC approval. Before the day was over, Nexstar had issued a press release confirming that they would not be running Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show.” The Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest ABC affiliate group in America, went even further. On 17 September, it posted a tweet on X welcoming Carr’s intervention, and the following day, it issued a statement arguing that Kimmel’s suspension had been inadequate and urging the FCC and ABC “to take additional action.”

And Carr’s reaction to this news? A “raise the roof” meme, which FIRE President Nico Perrino said, “in a sane world, would be an exhibit in a lawsuit.”

Yes, in a sane world, Carr’s response to CNN would be a damning admission. But in this one, it’s autocratic triumphalism. Donald Trump also took a victory lap: “It’s really good to see [Kimmel and Stephen Colbert] go,” he gloated on Truth Social, “and I hope I played a major part in it!” Galvanised, the president immediately issued a new demand that NBC fire “Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers].” The president and his administration are making no secret of their eagerness to crush free speech—on the contrary, everything is happening in the open and they’re proud of it.

II.

I discovered that Charlie Kirk had been shot shortly after noon on 10 September, when a member of my family alerted me to the news by text. I checked social media, and multiple videos of the assassination were already circulating on X. A particularly graphic video, recorded from the front rows of the event, instantly told me that Kirk could not possibly have survived the shooting. People from across the spectrum were offering expressions of horror, condolence, and sorrow, to which I added my own.