Jimmy Kimmel is back, but don’t get complacent

This essay was originally published by The Dallas Observer on Sept. 26, 2025.

Last week, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel just hours after FCC Chair Brendan Carr directed a thinly veiled threat at the media giant over comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said on Benny Johnson’s The Benny Show. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”      

Carr’s message was a clear example of a government pressure tactic known as “jawboning,” and though ABC reversed the suspension days later, returning Kimmel to the air with an emotional yet triumphant monologue on free speech, the damage had been done. Kimmel was off the air for three episodes, and President Donald Trump took the opportunity to encourage even more censorship, saying on Truth Social, “That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News [sic] NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”

Consider the events that immediately followed Carr’s comments the same day. Nexstar, an Irving-based company that owns various ABC affiliate stations, suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! from its programming. Sinclair, another media company that owns ABC affiliate stations, followed suit. Then Disney, which owns ABC, announced Kimmel’s indefinite suspension, thus shutting production down entirely.

The justified backlash against Disney/ABC was swift, prompting them to switch sides. On Monday, the media giant announced that the show would return to the air. The show’s “welcome back” monologue amassed a record of over 14 million YouTube hits in 16 hours. CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported that a typical monologue on the show rakes in roughly 240,000 YouTube views. That’s over 5,000% growth, courtesy of the Streisand effect.

Still, we must not let celebration temper our vigilance. As FIRE Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere said recently in a Washington Post op-ed, “The law denies the [FCC] ‘the power of censorship’ as well as the ability to impose any ‘regulation or condition’ that interferes with freedom of speech.”

That Trump’s administration chilled protected speech notwithstanding the law is distressing. Jawboning is unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court unanimously held last year in NRA v. Vullo. In that case, the state of New York pressured financial institutions and insurance companies to sever ties with the gun rights organization in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the opinion, “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

Yet that is exactly what happened here. We just witnessed the FCC attempt to coerce Disney to suppress Kimmel’s speech, just as New York attempted to coerce financial institutions to suppress the NRA’s advocacy.

Carr’s influence wasn’t the only factor. Outrage over Kimmel’s remarks was already building. A New York Times analysis of “thousands” of posts and media mentions found that criticism started “as a whisper, then eventually as a shout.” Breitbart covered it, Newsbusters’ Alex Christy wrote an X post that drew 15 million views, Fox’s The Five picked it up, The Blaze host Auron MacIntyre called for Kimmel’s firing, another viral post demanded his “career completely destroyed,” and Elon Musk weighed in: “Jimmy Kimmel is disgusting.” But it was Carr’s podcast threat that pushed the outrage into overdrive. As the Times noted, the anger “became apoplectic” after his remarks. His intervention should have carried no weight, yet instead it was a force multiplier.

Another cause for concern in this otherwise triumphant moment is that Trump made it abundantly clear his sights are still on Kimmel, according to a Truth Social post on Tuesday night.