On Monday, September 15, 2025, Jimmy Kimmel made a comment about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. In response to Kimmel’s comment, on Wednesday, September 17th, President Donald Trump called for ABC to cancel Kimmel’s show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. ABC complied, announcing that they were to be cancelling the show “indefinitely.” The cancellation created a backlash, including a boycott of ABC, Disney+ and other platforms owned by ABC. Throughout this boycott, Disney, the parent company of ABC, lost nearly $5 million dollars and its stock dropped by 2.39%.
This is not the first time that the Trump Administration has tried to censor the media. In March of 2024,George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week, a news program on ABC, made a comment about Trump, leading the Administration to ask for a $15 million dollar “fine,” which ABC ended up paying.
Back in July 2025, Trump posted on social media a call for the firing of Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert. Shortly thereafter, CBS decided to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, due to “financial reasons.” However, Colbert had made a comment on Trump a few nights earlier. Trump later said he was happy with Colbert’s cancellation and that he hoped he played a major part in it happening.
What President Trump and his Administration did to Jimmy Kimmel and others is in direct violation of the First Amendment and the Communications Act, which was created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The government can encourage private entities to follow along with their policies, but the First Amendment forbids the government from threatening companies to remove or suspend anyone. Additionally, section 326 of the Communications Act clearly states that nothing in the law should, “be understood or construed to give the commission the power of censorship.” The FCC is not supposed to censor or abolish any broadcasting networks or radio stations. Moreover, any government actions toward censoring or restricting private broadcasting entities, such as ABC, would be deemed unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has remarked that, “A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf.”
The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Inside these rights is also the right for a broadcasting company to air whatever content they want too.
Even though the Communications Act is in place to prevent these situations, the head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, called for action against Jimmy Kimmel Live. Carr stated that late night shows have gone from comedy to “enforcing a very narrow political ideology.” So, his goal has been to limit the speech of different broadcasting networks in order to limit this “narrow political ideology,” such as ABC and CBS. Former U.S. President, Barack Obama, has openly criticized Carr and his actions, stating that it is, “precisely the kind of government coercion the First Amendment was designed to prevent.”
After all of this, on September 22, 2025, ABC reinstated Jimmy Kimmel Live!. ABC released a statement, saying, “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on [this coming] Tuesday.”
When Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned the next day, it garnered 6.2 million views, four times its normal viewership. In his return, Jimmy Kimmel gave an emotional opening monologue, discussing everything that had happened over the past week. When discussing specifically the Trump Administration’s act of violation against the First Amendment, Kimmel said, “That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American.”
