CULTURE

The biggest news story of the day is ABC’s indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. Some are calling it a proverbial cancellation. Some are pointing out the hypocrisy. Some are positing that it's the most straightforward attack on free speech done by state actors.

But as my colleague Zack Beauchamp points out, it’s a bit more complicated —and possibly a bit more terrifying. Essentially, the Trump administration has figured out how to use the federal government’s regulatory powers — in this case, it’s the FCC, led by Brendan Carr — to punish its critics. Carr threatened to revoke the broadcasting licenses of stations airing Kimmel. Nexstar, the largest owner of local stations in the US and a company looking for FCC approval for an upcoming $6.2 billion merger, announced that it would pull Kimmel’s show. ABC announced Kimmel’s suspension shortly after.

As Beauchamp explains, the worrying factor isn’t just that Carr and the Trump administration are threatening to silence their critics but how quickly and swiftly Nexstar (with that merger looming) and ABC rolled over.

— Alex Abad-Santos, Senior Correspondent

Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel

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Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up.

The Trump administration, it appears, has learned to effectively weaponize the regulatory powers of the federal government to punish speech it doesn’t like from people it doesn’t like. This is a favored weapon of modern autocrats; its deployment against Kimmel is a qualitative escalation even above the administration’s previous acts of censorship (like targeting the author of a pro-Palestine op-ed for deportation).

What just happened, in short, shows how far down the authoritarian road the United States has traveled in just eight months.

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