Politicians, media figures and free speech organisations continued to express anger and alarm at the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, warning that critics of Donald Trump were being systematically silenced.
ABC announced it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely after comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show.
The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday that the action taken by Nexstar and Sinclair was “unprecedented” and defended the move. Carr also accused late-night talkshow hosts, including Kimmel, of transitioning from “court jesters” to “court clerics enforcing a very narrow political ideology”.
“I can’t imagine another time when we’ve had local broadcasters tell a national programmer like Disney that your content no longer meets the needs and the values of our community,” Carr said. “So this is an important turning point.”
Sinclair, one of the affiliate station owners that took Kimmel off the air after his comments, indicated there could be way back for the talkshow host if he issued a “direct apology to the Kirk family” and to make a “meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA”, the youth-focused organisation Kirk founded.
Anna Gomez, the only Democratic member of the FCC, criticized Carr’s remarks, posting on X that “an inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship or control”.
Gomez added: “This Administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”
The Producers Guild of America said in a statement on Instagram: “Free speech is fundamental to our democracy. It is the lifeblood of our industry.
“Late-night television has long been a space where satire and commentary contribute to our national dialogue. We believe that artistic expression is essential, and that critical voices must not be silenced.”
The Writers Guild of America (WGA), Hollywood screenwriters’ labor union, condemned the decision to take Kimmel off air as a violation of constitutional free speech rights.
“Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth,” it said in a statement.
Former president Barack Obama posted on Bluesky about Kimmel, linking to a Vox article about the talkshow host’s removal, and took aim at the Trump administration directly: “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 … This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent – and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”
On Wednesday evening, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called the firing of commentators and cancelling of shows “coordinated” and “dangerous”. He went on to say that the Republican party “does not believe in free speech. They are censoring you in real time.”
The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said that “what is at stake here is free speech” and he accused the Trump administration of using “the power of government to go after anybody who’s criticized them – and in this case, Jimmy Kimmel. We need to all stand up and speak out.”
The Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said “everybody across the political spectrum should be speaking out to stop what’s happening to Jimmy Kimmel.”
Senator Chris Murphy said it was probably the start of a campaign to “use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents”, while Democratic House member Ro Khanna said “this is perhaps the first administration to make comedy illegal”.
The actor Ben Stiller said the decision to suspend Kimmel’s show “isn’t right”, while comedian and occasional Daily Show host Michael Kosta wrote: “This is a serious moment in American history. TV networks MUST push back. This is complete BS.”
The comedian and actor Wanda Sykes said in a video that Trump “didn’t end the Ukraine War or solve Gaza within his first week, but he did end freedom of speech within his first year. Hey, for those of you who pray, now’s the time to do it. Love you, Jimmy.”
The Hacks star Jean Smart wrote that she was “horrified” by the decision. “What Jimmy said was FREE speech, not hate speech. People seem to only want to protect free speech when it suits THEIR agenda,” she wrote on Instagram. “Though I didn’t agree at ALL with Charlie Kirk; his shooting death sickened me; and should have sickened any decent human being. What is happening to our country?”
Sharing recent footage of the Fox commentator Brian Kilmeade calling for mentally ill and homeless people to be killed, the comedian Paul Scheer wrote: “So let me get this straight. Kimmel is off the air for his comments about the politicization of an assassination but this is totally fine.” Kilmeade later apologised for his “extremely callous” remarks.
The comedian Mike Birbiglia wrote: “If you’re a comedian and you don’t call out the insanity of pulling Kimmel off the air – don’t bother spouting off about free speech anymore.”
The MSNBC political commentator Chris Hayes called it the most “straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life”.
The actor Dominic Monaghan wrote on Instagram that he had known Kimmel “for over 20 years” and knew him to be “so kind and caring to his staff and all of his guests” and “a man who gives back to his people his community his country”.
“I am appalled with his show being cancelled. First [Stephen Colbert] now Jimmy. Control the media and what it puts out you control the people. Shocking,” Monaghan wrote alongside an image of himself and Kimmel.
In his monologue on Monday, Kimmel said that “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.”
On Tuesday he said Trump was “fanning the flames” by attacking people on the left.
ABC, which has aired Kimmel’s late-night show since 2003, moved swiftly after Nexstar Communications Group said it would pull the show, saying Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death “were offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.
Trump and figures aligned to his Maga movement reacted with glee to the news, with the president calling it “Great News for America”. Trump posted: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent.”
The president, who is on a state visit to the UK and hours earlier had attended a banquet hosted by King Charles, also appeared to encourage the NBC network to cancel other late-night shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.
Earlier on Wednesday, Carr, the FCC chair who was appointed by Trump, appeared on a rightwing podcast and threatened ABC affiliates’ broadcast licenses if action was not taken against the late night host.
In the interview with Benny Johnson, Carr suggested suspending Kimmel could be an appropriate action from ABC.
After ABC’s announcement hours later, Johnson boasted online that it was his interview with Carr that had led to Kimmel’s suspension. “It’s called soft power,” he said. “The Left uses it all the time. Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield power as well.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said the timing of ABC’s decision, after the comments from Carr, “tells the whole story”.
“Another media outlet withered under government pressure,” the free speech advocacy group said, adding “we cannot be a country where late-night talkshow hosts serve at the pleasure of the president. But until institutions grow a backbone and learn to resist government pressure, that is the country we are.”
Truth Wins Out (TWO), a non-profit dedicated to exposing extremism, said the move was part of a rightwing “Cancel Crusade” that has “weaponised outrage to silence dissent and intimidate media outlets”.
“This is a new McCarthyism that has expanded the boundaries of ‘woke’ to once unimaginable dimensions. It is chilling the free press and punishing truth‑tellers.”
TWO’s statement references the wave of firings that have followed Kirk’s death, with companies sacking employees for making comments that are deemed to be insensitive or divisive.
There have been reports of teachers, firefighters, journalists, nurses, politicians, a Secret Service employee, a junior strategist at Nasdaq and a worker for a prominent NFL team, being sacked or censured in some form after publishing opinions on Kirk’s politics or death.
Efforts to track down, intimidate and harass people perceived not to have sufficiently mourned the killing of the Kirk were endorsed on Monday by JD Vance.
The US vice-president guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast and said that people who “see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder” should “call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Kimmel, like CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, had consistently been critical of Trump and many of his policies on his show and his suspension comes just weeks after rival network CBS said that it was cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show at the end of this season for financial reasons, although some critics have wondered if his stance on Trump played a role.
