Did You Ask the FCC If You Can Make That Joke?
Plus: America's cocaine habit, how Charlie Kirk handled South Park, and more...
Jimmy Kimmel pulled off the air: Yesterday evening, ABC News (a subsidiary of Disney) announced it was suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show "indefinitely" following factually inaccurate comments he made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Of course, comedians have no obligation to be factually correct. Kimmel's show is intended as a hybrid between comedy and news, though, so it's fair to wonder whether he does. "The MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," said Kimmel during his Monday night monologue. "In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving." A montage of President Donald Trump followed, making fun of how, though people have claimed Kirk was like a son to the president, he's moved on rather quickly.
It wasn't especially good or funny. It also was somewhat anodyne. To overly psychologize for a moment, I wonder whether Trump pivoted to talking about construction at the White House when reporters asked him about Kirk's death because he is, in fact, distraught about it but didn't feel up to going there. We can't know. Kimmel's shot felt cheap. But Kimmel is allowed to be bad—he's been bad for a while.
The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day's news every morning.
The issue is that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr suggested the agency might punish ABC, pulling its broadcast license in retribution. On conservative Benny Johnson's podcast, Carr suggested Kimmel's comments were part of a "concerted effort to lie to the American people," and that the FCC was "going to have remedies that we can look at."
"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," said Carr, ominously. "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead."
"Just before ABC's announcement, Nexstar Media Group said that its stations that are affiliated with ABC would pre-empt Kimmel's show 'for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight's show,'" reports CNBC. Nexstar, which owns 10 percent of ABC's affiliate stations, is in the process of securing FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, which owns roughly 5 percent of the affiliate stations.
"Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED," wrote the president on Truth Social. "Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!"
Courage sure is an interesting word choice, given that Trump's own agency threatened them with consequences (though he's not wrong if we're solely judging him as a media critic).
"I don't think this is a legal issue," said former federal prosecutor Joseph Moreno on CNN. "I don't think this can be pointed to the FCC or the Trump administration and say, well, this is about them going after Kimmel because of what he said. Personally, I think it's more of a cultural issue. And I got to tell you. I'm about as moderate a Republican as you can get. I'm from New York. I have not been comfortable watching late-night television for 15 years because when you have conservative leanings and you're constantly mocked and you're constantly feel like you're doing something wrong, you shut it off. You don't watch it anymore."
Some people have made the point that the FCC might have given Disney/ABC cover to do something they already wanted to do, and do it in a way that makes the Trump administration look like the bad guys:
My theory is that Disney/ABC brass saw Kimmel pick a fight and say some false and inflammatory things. They could have pulled him aside and made him set things right but they intentionally did not do that because they wanted to get rid of him
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) September 18, 2025
I also think this point is very fair, which is that this didn't start yesterday. If you haven't noticed the extraordinary media jawboning—indirect censorial pressure directed at private companies from the federal government—over the last few years, you haven't been paying much attention:
i'm turning over how i feel about ABC shitcanning kimmel under duress
i'm thinking that while of course it's first order bad, it's maybe a net good; this because it establishes pretty clearly for everyone and not just the right that regulated media firms answer to washington
— eigenrobot (@eigenrobot) September 18, 2025
"The government pressured ABC—and ABC caved," wrote Ari Cohn of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "The timing of ABC's decision, on the heels of the FCC chairman's pledge to the network to 'do this the easy way or the hard way,' tells the whole story. Another media outlet withered under government pressure, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and exact retribution on broadcasters and publishers who criticize it. We cannot be a country where late night talk show 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."
Cohn makes a good point, both that this is the direct result of government coercion that is wrong and disturbing, and that these institutions should not be in the business of caving. It's disturbing to see massive law firms, media outlets, and organizations that should have some amount of fuck-you money choose the path of cowardice. But given that Disney has been interested in fighting the government before (albeit in a different context), the fact that they weren't willing to do so this time makes me think maybe Kimmel was already a goner.
Jawboning done so explicitly, so publicly, serves to intimidate other networks and generate compliance. But jawboning done by the Biden administration, during the COVID-19 pandemic (both to suppress public health information and to promote Democratic candidates and bury scandals), possibly disturbs me more, because it was covert, hard to uncover and to see the full extent of. I can't decide; both are horrible. No matter which party's in power, you get government coercion—you just get the privilege of deciding which flavor.
Scenes from New York: "A Long Island cop swindled a sick fellow officer out of $200,000 with claims of business investment—but instead blew the cash on OnlyFans, gambling and luxury living like a new car, prosecutors said," reports The New York Post. "Nassau County police officer Leonard Cagno, 39, allegedly duped his colleague out of the cash as he recovered from an unnamed serious illness then blew it all within two months, cops said Wednesday as he was slapped with a grand larceny charge."
QUICK HITS
- For a contrast in how comedy can be dealt with, consider Charlie Kirk's reaction to being parodied on South Park.
- The right-wing take on all this, from Lomez, which I don't agree is aspirational but I think identifies the problem and describes the MAGA mindset quite well:
"We are finally seeing the first real consequences of major institutions having spent the last decade undermining the facade of liberal neutrality they at least used to claim as an ideal. This facade actually mattered quite a lot, and even though it was obviously never entirely sincere and even though conservatives were always out numbered and often poorly represented, they at least felt like participants and stakeholders in these institutions. During the Trump years this all went away. Conservatives were aggressively ousted, even as token voices, and the facade came down to reveal a perverse and illiberal set of political and cultural directives underneath it that were explicitly antagonistic to more than half of the country and denied them as legitimate participants in public life. Despite this, MAGA won (again), and, surprise, surprise, do not intend on preserving the institutions that declared them illegitimate political actors. This is, in fact, MAGA's core promise."
- "An immigration judge in Louisiana has ordered pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., deported to Syria or Algeria for failing to disclose certain information on his green card application, according to documents filed in federal court Wednesday by his lawyers," reports Politico. "Khalil's lawyers suggested in a filing that they intend to appeal the deportation order, but expressed concern that the appeal process will likely be swift and unfavorable."
- "America loves cocaine again," by The Wall Street Journal. "Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers. Consumption in the western U.S. has increased 154% since 2019 and is up 19% during the same period in the eastern part of the country, according to the drug-testing company Millennium Health. In contrast, fentanyl use in the U.S. began to drop in mid-2023 and has been declining since, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
