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The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show has sparked concerns of what a former presidential candidate has labelled a “frontal assault” on free speech in the United States, after broadcaster ABC pulled him off air following his remarks about the killing of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk.
Critics say the decision to axe Kimmel risks crossing into unconstitutional territory.
Other critics, including former president Barack Obama, condemned Kimmel’s suspension, calling it capitulation to unconstitutional government pressure and a violation of free speech.
Kimmel had previously said it was “horrible and monstrous to shoot another human” and sent his “love” to Kirk’s family in a post on social media.
Trump celebrated his suspension, claiming Kimmel was “fired for a lack of talent” and suggested broadcasters who criticise him should lose their licences.
Brendon O’Connor, professor at the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre, said it was a “case of moving against free speech” and said the targeting of comedians and satirists was synonymous with the moves of authoritarian leaders.
Dr Emma Shortis, director of the Australia Institute’s International and Security Affairs program, said the move wasn’t unpredictable.
“Trump has always attempted to silence people who say things he doesn’t like,” she told SBS News. “The difference now is that Trump and his supporters have levers of power that allow them to actually cancel people.”
In 2013, Trump won a multi-million dollar lawsuit against a Miss Universe contestant who publicly complained that the beauty pageant’s results were fixed.
Campaigners in his 2016 presidential run were also required to sign non-disclosure agreements, which were voided in 2023 as part of a settlement of a class action lawsuit by a former campaign aide.
In May 2025, Trump issued an executive order titled Ending Taxpayer Subsidisation of Biased Media that cancelled funding for the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
“Neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens,” he said in a statement at the time.
Trump’s vendetta against news organisations that he perceives as hostile to him continued on Friday, with the president berating outlets that he said were “against me”.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think it’s really illegal, personally,” Trump, who has sued multiple major news organisations this year, told reporters gathered in the Oval Office.
A federal judge on Friday threw out a multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuit Trump had launched against the New York Times over its content, calling it a “decidedly improper and impermissible” effort to attack his adversaries.
What do US free speech laws say?
The US First Amendment protects free speech against government interference, including indirect pressure through third parties.
In 1963, the US Supreme Court ruled officials cannot create a “system of informal censorship” by pressuring private actors.
The FCC cannot revoke licences for negative coverage or other speech disliked by the government. It also doesn’t regulate programming from networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC — its authority lies with local broadcast affiliates that use public airwaves.
ABC itself also has speech rights and can decide not to air a show it sees as harmful.
That means proving a First Amendment violation would require Kimmel to show ABC suspended him under government coercion.
Carr was first appointed by Trump during his first term in 2017 and was nominated again by then-president Joe Biden in 2023.
He has also spoken in favour of free speech, having said it is “central” to America’s democracy. He wrote in the Project 2025 manifesto that the FCC “should promote freedom of speech”.
He has been critical of television networks before, including in 2024 when he accused broadcaster NBC of violating the FCC’s “equal time” rule — requiring broadcasters to give political candidates equal air time — when Harris appeared on the network’s show Saturday Night Live the just days before the presidential election.
He’s also railed against an ostensible anti-conservative bias in big tech.
In his Project 2025 chapter, he wrote that the FCC had an important role to play in “reigning in big tech” and what he said were its “attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square”.
Public interest or censorship?
Some Republicans have argued the suspension was about fighting “hate speech” and was made to serve the public interest.
In rare circumstances, the FCC can revoke a broadcast licence under a public interest standard, with expectations that a broadcaster must “air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license”.
It’s an argument Carr used, saying on Wednesday that the FCC was going to “enforce the public interest obligation”.
Republican Assembly member James Gallagher said that while he didn’t agree with ABC’s decision to pull Kimmel’s show, it was not a free speech issue.
“Private companies, like ABC and others, do have the ability to decide what they want to show on their programming. So it’s not a direct, free speech issue where the government is involved,” Gallagher said.
Democrats and free speech advocates disagree. Pen America, a non-profit which says it stands for the freedom to write, said the decision marked “a new level of capitulation and censorship of speech more redolent of autocracies than democracies”.
Fellow talk show host Stephen Colbert called it “blatant censorship”, while Jimmy Fallon on his NBC talk show joked he wouldn’t be censored — before pretending to praise Trump’s looks and Nobel Peace Prize prospects.
The broadcaster of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, CBS, announced in July that the show would be ending in May 2026.
The announcement came days after Colbert criticised parent company Paramount for settling a US$16 million ($24 million) lawsuit with Trump.
Shortis said the bigger picture relating to the pulling of Kimmel’s show was clear.
“The head of the regulator went on a right-wing podcast … and talked about broadcasters risking their licences and then had a direct response,” she said.
“I don’t think it was a direct order, but more of a mute threat.”
Silencing comedians a move from the ‘authoritarian playbook’
O’Connor said Kimmel’s cancellation was a “case of moving against free speech” and “clear intimidation”, with satire increasingly under pressure.
“These late-night comedians who have a lot of negative things to say about Trump have been under attack from the administration and their supporters,” O’Connor told SBS News. “Of course, they’re going to say all sorts of things that offend all sorts of people.”
“If that place of satire is no longer available in the United States on mainstream television, then I think it does tell us about the character of American democracy and American free speech.”
He added that clamping down on comedians is a hallmark of authoritarian leaders.
“They clamp down on cartoons, on satirists, and treat them as though they’re news broadcasters,” O’Connor said.
“In reality, the role of these people is sometimes to say things that are offensive. Not everyone is going to agree with that — but it’s the role of the satirist in our democratic societies.”
Shortis said Trump’s move is one plucked from the “authoritarian playbook” and that it was a “clear-cut” argument that the move was made to limit free speech.
“In this case, I think it’s pretty straightforward. I think that administration is reading directly from the authoritarian playbook,” she said.
It’s a reading that would be challenged by Trump, who has previously characterised himself as a great defender of freedom and democracy.
One of his first moves after being re-elected for a second term was to sign an executive order “enshrin[ing] the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without government interference”.
He accused the previous Democratic administration of “exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve”.
Shortis warned that Kimmel’s suspension, following Colbert’s earlier cancellation, could embolden further crackdowns on comedians.
“We need to see this latest movement with Jimmy Kimmel in the context of what else the Trump administration is doing,” she said.
“It’s all part of the Trump administration’s broader assault on American democracy and has to be understood as such.”
