ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Off the Air After Trump's FCC Chair Warns Broadcasters

On September 17, 2025, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live indefinitely, hours after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly pressed the network's affiliates over Kimmel's monologue about the killing of Charlie Kirk. In the September 15 monologue, Kimmel said "we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them." Carr, speaking on a podcast, urged station groups to push back on programming they considered a pattern of news distortion and raised the prospect of license consequences. Nexstar, whose $6.2 billion merger required FCC approval, said it would preempt the show, calling the remarks offensive and insensitive at a critical time in the national political discourse. Sinclair also pulled it.

Broadcast licensees are regulated by an agency whose chairman is appointed by the president, and license renewal is the leverage point. A regulator's public warning to affiliates about a specific comedian's monologue, followed within hours by preemption from station groups with business before that regulator, tests whether the licensing power can operate as an instrument of content control the First Amendment would bar the government from exercising directly.

Disney announced on September 22 that the program would return, and Kimmel was back on air September 23. Carr later faced congressional scrutiny over his role.