President Donald Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of government and society intensified on Wednesday with the suspension of comedian Jimmy Kimmel by ABC’s parent company Disney following threats from the Federal Communications Commission.

The suspension of Kimmel’s late night talk show is the gravest and most clear attack on free speech rights in generations. FCC chairman Brendan Carr publicly called for Kimmel to be removed from the air over a joke he made about how the Trump administration sought to cast blame on anyone to their left for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The pressure to fire Kimmel was backed by threats to pull broadcast licences of ABC affiliates if the comedian wasn’t taken off the air.

This is blatantly illegal. The First Amendment explicitly pr

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