As the shock dies down about “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” being suspended until further notice, industry insiders are circulating theories as to why this happened now, when leftists have been left unchecked for years to spread lies about conservatives. While the Left cries about “free speech” and “cancel culture,” and blames the whole thing on Trump, the truth appears to be a lot more of a logical business decision than it is a massive conspiracy. The New York Post noted on Thursday that Nexstar, one of the massive media companies behind Kimmel’s cancellation, is poised to enter into a $6.2 billion merger with its next-biggest rival, Tegna. The move will be closely watched by the FCC, as it could be seen as violating antitrust laws. Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said Kimmel’s comments were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse.” The outlet noted how FCC Chairman Brendan Carr was furious over Kimmel’s statements, telling conservative podcast host Benny Johnson that Kimmel’s comments represented “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and that there could be “a path forward for suspension over this.” “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” “Clearly, Nexstar is sucking up to Carr,” a telecom lawyer told Fox News correspondent Charles Gasparino on Wednesday. “Kimmel’s comments are noxious, but from a First Amendment standpoint, they would have been protected in the past. He’s a comedian, so how is he distorting the news unless you have a deal to be approved by the FCC?” Reactions online have been divided on partisan lines, with the Left freaking out over censorship and the Right insisting this is the standard that was set long ago by the same leftists who now oppose it. The comments from Kimmel that prompted the backlash included the host claiming that Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA supporter. Investigators say that the 22-year-old man arrested for Kirk’s killing was deeply steeped in leftist ideology and disliked the conservative commentator for his beliefs. “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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said during his show. This prompted Sinclair, another major media group, to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live” until further notice. There’s been a big shakeup in the media since the Trump administration took over. George Cheeks, the president and CEO of CBS, discussed the cancellation of “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert in July 2025. His statements came on the same day that Paramount Global and Skydance Media finalized their $8.4 billion merger. “The challenge in late night is that the advertising marketplace is in significant secular decline,” Cheeks said following the deal closing, as The Daily Wire previously reported. “We are huge fans of Colbert, we love the show, unfortunately the economics made it a challenge for us to keep going.” Also in July, Paramount Global agreed to a $16 million settlement in a lawsuit Trump had brought that accused the media outlet of election interference. The lawsuit stemmed from an interview CBS News’ “60 Minutes” conducted with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris one month before the 2024 election. The lawsuit alleged that the interview was edited to make it seem more coherent than it really was.

The Republican-led Senate confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s remaining nominees for below-cabinet-level federal positions, moving ahead with what’s called an “en bloc” nominee package after Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) invoked the nuclear option. The bloc of 48 nominees confirmed on Thursday included a number of lower level War Department positions — and several ambassadorships including those held by Kimberly Guilfoyle and Callista Gingrich — and passed 51-47 along party lines. WATCH: 48 NOMINEES: CONFIRMED TODAY ✅@SenateGOP ended liberal obstruction and CHANGED the Senate rules to get @POTUS’ sub-cabinet noms in place (in groups) and speed up the process. We just confirmed the first “en bloc” nominee package of 48. More to come. ? pic.twitter.com/Dg4oxsrHCl — Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) September 18, 2025 Thune promised to move forward with the nuclear option a week earlier, saying that Democrats had stonewalled the process long enough. Quoting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Thune said that it was unacceptable for nominees to be blocked unless there was a legitimate reason or concern that made it necessary. Thune also pointed out the fact that all of the 48 nominees in the first bloc had actually been approved out of committee — with bipartisan support — and were only being blocked in the full Senate. The Senate Democrats, he said at the time, were intentionally stalling the process by refusing to allow the nominees to be confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent, as is traditionally done with civilian nominees. One major nominee who did not make it through on Thursday was former Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), whose nomination to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations is still pending. Democrats succeeded in recent weeks in having Waltz’s nomination sent back to committee.

Eight days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, it’s time to get specific about what actions need to be taken in order to prevent any more conservatives from being hunted in this country. It’s true, as we discussed yesterday, that there are several indications that Charlie’s killer didn’t act alone. At the moment, the FBI says that it’s looking into additional suspects, including the people who predicted that the shooting would occur several days in advance on social media. But even if a domestic LGBT terror cell is uncovered in this case, prosecuting those responsible is necessary but not sufficient. If we want to ensure that conservatives have the right of free expression, we need to dismantle hundreds (if not thousands) of Left-wing terror networks in this country, as we’ve been saying all week. But it’s one thing to rail against Left-wing NGOs and trans activists, over and over again, until everyone gets bored and moves on, and nothing is accomplished. To get anything done, of course, you need evidence of actual criminal activity. You need some kind of smoking gun. And despite what the attorney general might claim, “hate speech” does not qualify as criminal activity. Mocking Charlie Kirk’s death, as virtually everyone on the Left is doing, is obviously reprehensible. It’s demonic. But in most cases, it’s not illegal. What is illegal, on the other hand, is planning, funding, organizing, and otherwise abetting riots, harassment, property destruction, economic sabotage, and so on. Those are the kind of activities that, under RICO law, are actually very easy to prosecute. If an organization exists to repeatedly engage in criminal activity like this, the whole organization can be shut down, and everyone involved can be hauled to prison.  The president himself has invoked the RICO law recently, in public appearances, as a potential way of dismantling some of the Left’s biggest and most powerful institutions. And the other day, a researcher named Ryan Mauro, with Capital Research Center, outlined exactly what those prosecutions could look like. He provided what appears to be a smoking gun — or at least, the first of many, many smoking guns that will soon follow. This is a very important report that’s worth highlighting because it moves beyond rhetoric and gets us much closer to actual, tangible results.  Here’s part of the report. Since 2016, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), now run with his son Alexander, has poured over $80 million into groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence. … Open Society has sent millions of dollars into U.S.-based organizations that engage in ‘direct actions’ that the FBI defines as domestic terrorism. These groups include the Center for Third World Organizing and its militant partner Ruckus Society, which trained activists in property destruction and sabotage during the 2020 riots, and the Sunrise Movement, which endorsed the Antifa-linked Stop Cop City campaign, in which activists currently face over 40 domestic terrorism charges and 60 racketeering indictments. … Open Society awarded $18 million to the Movement for Black Lives, a group that … instructs activists in the use of false IDs, blockades, and economic disruption. The report adds that, according to Mauro’s investigation, “Open Society awarded at least $23 million to seven groups that engage in or materially assist violence, property destruction, economic sabotage, harassment, and other criminality that meets the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism.” To expound on one of these organizations. The “Ruckus Society,” as the name implies, reportedly suggests in their own training materials that they encourage certain types of illegal activities. According to InfluenceWatch, these training materials instruct members on “tactics to resist the unjust system. Some of these may be legal strategies while others may be outside of the law, such as the use of civil disobedience.” To be clear, under federal law, nonprofits are not allowed to engage in any form of partisan political activity, much less criminal activity. So we’re potentially talking about tax crimes here, in addition to everything else. There could be layers upon layers of criminal activity going on. And it happens so often that you probably don’t even think about it, or realize the extent of the problem. For example, you probably don’t remember this scene from San Francisco last year:   Credit: 7NEWS Australia/YouTube.com Rioters stormed the Golden Gate Bridge. They blocked traffic, including ambulances, from going anywhere for hours. And guess what? It wasn’t a random group of Leftists who decided to do this. A woman named Ellen Caminiti served as a spokeswoman for the rioters. And her day job, as it turns out, is serving as communications director at a nonprofit called the “National Center for Lesbian Rights.” So she takes tax-exempt money from the lesbian nonprofit, then stages a criminal takeover of a major bridge during work hours. Of course, the lesbian nonprofit had no problem with this, because this is the entire purpose of Left-wing nonprofits. For the most part, they’re engineered to organize and fund lawlessness under the cover of law. Multiply this incident by about a million, and you begin to get a sense of the scale of the problem. There is a vast network of well-funded Left-wing NGOs that, if you look below the surface and get past their “mission statement”, are intent on undermining and destroying the United States. If you’re someone who likes to find conspiracies, here it is. This is it. Here’s another example, which Andy Ngo reported over the summer. Michael Backes is a 46-year-old trans activist and prostitute from Houston, Texas, who dresses like a girl.  According to Ngo, the man, “has been standing outside the courthouse in downtown Portland recording people to try to intimidate witnesses who testify in the injunction hearing to enforce sound ordinances at the anti-ICE Antifa riot.” Supposedly, he’s often armed. Something totally normal that happens in any trial even tangentially involving antifa. They stay outside to film people. This is the LRAD person from that infamous night. pic.twitter.com/v7IZoFhtNA — C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom (@hunnybadgermom) July 26, 2025 Credit: @hunnybadgermom/X.com This particular trans prostitute, a deranged individual, a psychopath, who’s reportedly freaking people out near the courthouse to advance some kind of open-borders agenda. And guess what? This person has apparently received financial support from yet another Left-wing nonprofit. Ngo reports that this prostitute has “received thousands in grant money from a trans 501(c)(3) for cosmetic surgery. Disturbingly, the Point of Pride nonprofit describes Backes’ child prostitution past as if it was normal.” This kind of thing is very, very common. And it needs to be shut down immediately. Nonprofits should not be allowed to fund known criminals, much less known criminals who are engaging in acts of intimidation outside courthouses. And even beyond that, nonprofits shouldn’t be allowed to fund sex changes for mentally disturbed individuals who think they’re transgender. That’s another problem that we can put an end to, overnight. And it’s time to do so. If you want to read Ryan Mauro’s full report — and you should — it’s on the website of the Capital Research Center. You can read more about how various organizations have received millions of dollars from entities connected to George Soros, and then used that money to endorse Antifa coalitions that have “engaged in arson, property damage and violence against law enforcement personnel and utility workers to try to stop construction of this local police training center. Attacks include setting a police vehicle ablaze; throwing Molotov cocktails, bricks and rocks at police; setting construction equipment on fire; blocking roads with obstacles like tires; harming police officers’ eyes with lasers; and attacking the Atlanta Police Foundation’s building with fireworks.” And on and on. Dozens of charges, including domestic terrorism and racketeering, have been filed in these cases. The evidence is well-established. And now it’s time to act on it. This is a crackdown that should commence without any hint of hesitation whatsoever. It should be lawful but forceful. We have control of the federal government. We have the support of the majority of Americans. And we’re morally justified. On our side, we don’t celebrate cold-blooded murder. We don’t glorify political assassinations. We don’t deny the reality of biology, or encourage the mutilation and sterilization of children. We have every conceivable mandate to dismantle these criminal enterprises. And we need to carry out that mandate, using the full weight of the federal government. The momentum is ours. There are other indicators, as you may have seen, that we’re winning this fight. Last night, for example, the Left-wing activist Jimmy Kimmel was finally taken off the air. Here’s what Kimmel said, in case you missed it: The left is about to melt down over Jimmy Kimmel’s how being cancelled. The bottom line is he isn’t funny. He replaced comedy with scolding half the country. And he decided to exacerbate his unfunniness by telling egregious lies about Charlie Kirk.pic.twitter.com/ACMMI9EZWG — CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) September 17, 2025 Credit: @thecjpearson/MRC/ABC/X.com Kimmel was taken off the air just hours after the FCC chair, a man named Brendan Carr, gave an interview with Benny Johnson yesterday, where he suggested that ABC (or more specifically, ABC’s affiliates) might be violating the terms of their broadcast licenses by airing Kimmel’s show. For background, it’s been clear for many years that Kimmel was violating the terms of ABC’s broadcast license. He was never performing any kind of comedy routine. He was simply delivering propaganda on behalf of the Democratic Party, every single night, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that his ratings were plummeting year after year. In fact, on several occasions, he was caught working directly with Democrats in the Senate to distribute campaign materials. He celebrated the termination of conservatives, including Tucker Carlson. He celebrated when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. He routinely embraced censorship and partisanship, and now he’s finally gone. From a legal perspective, Kimmel’s behavior was a problem because, as you may have noticed, not everyone gets the right to use the public airwaves in the way that ABC and its affiliates do. One of the requirements of holding a public broadcast license is that your content must advance the public interest in some way.  From the FCC’s website: In exchange for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcast station using the public airwaves, each radio and television licensee is required by law to operate its station in the public interest, convenience and necessity. Generally, this means it must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license. Flagrant lies about major public events, which are distributed solely for the benefit of one political party, are clearly not in the public interest. In fact, there are specific federal rules against disseminating false information, using the public airwaves, about “crimes or catastrophes.” Again, this is direct from the FCC’s website. These are the rules. They’ve been well established for decades. Just because they’ve never been enforced against these left-wing networks doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. So, broadcast licensees cannot broadcast false information concerning a crime or catastrophe if the licensee knows the information is false, and it’s foreseeable that the false information will cause substantial public harm, and the false information does actually cause substantial public harm. You can debate whether Kimmel’s lie caused “public harm” under the strict legal definition. But in general, there’s no doubt that flagrant falsehoods like this — falsehoods that effectively endorse political assassinations by running cover for them — are incredibly damaging to the country in every meaningful way. And they certainly aren’t “in the public interest.” Kimmel knew it wasn’t true that Kirk’s assassin was a Trump supporter. He knew that it made no sense to suggest that. He knew he was defaming a Christian husband and father who had just been murdered in front of his family, and in front of the entire world. But he lied anyway, like the disgusting scumbag that he is. And he thought there would be no consequences for doing so, because he’s been lying for more than a decade, in pretty much the same way. And indeed, typically, conservatives would hear smug degenerates like Kimmel say stuff like this, and they’d shrug it off. Meanwhile, the Left would destroy conservatives’ livelihoods for infractions that weren’t half as egregious. Conservatives wouldn’t start a campaign to cancel Jimmy Kimmel. They certainly wouldn’t call on the federal government to do anything. That was the state-of-play, right up until the moment Charlie was murdered. That’s not the state of play anymore. First of all, immediately after Kimmel’s comments, conservatives on X with large followings — including people like Auron MacIntyre at the Blaze — began telling their followers to bombard all of Kimmel’s advertisers, as well as Disney and ABC executives, with complaints. There was a massive response. And then on top of that, here’s what FCC chair Brendan Carr said, in an interview with Benny Johnson yesterday: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” This is the approach that — along with activism by conservatives on social media — presumably sent ABC executives into a panic, along with the executives at Sinclair and Nexstar, which own the affiliates that broadcast ABC’s content. But it’s not actually clear that Brendan Carr was the tipping point here. There’s evidence that these affiliates, especially after seeing the backlash, were simply tired of Kimmel’s act and outraged by what he had said. In fact, Sinclair is now demanding that Kimmel apologize to Kirk’s family and make a donation to Turning Point. Meanwhile, they’re going to broadcast a tribute to Charlie Kirk in Kimmel’s usual time slot. In other words, there’s no reason to think that the government or the FCC had anything to do with Kimmel’s suspension. The response from conservatives was probably enough. In any event, the upshot is that, at least for now, Kimmel won’t be able to lie to his 15 viewers anymore, or implicitly encourage them to commit political assassinations. And in response, the best defense that the Left can offer isn’t particularly convincing. Watch: Stelter says Kimmel “suggested” the killer “might’ve been” a pro-Trump Republican & that Kimmel said the motive was “unclear” & “maybe” the killer was rightwing. This is a lie by Brian. Kimmel was *definitive* in his false claim that the shooter was MAGA.pic.twitter.com/6RXMHAOF2m — Jerry Dunleavy IV ?? (@JerryDunleavy) September 17, 2025 Credit: @JerryDunleavy/MRC/CNN/X.com Again, it’s another lie. That’s all they can do. First of all, Kimmel didn’t “suggest” anything. He said it. He flat-out said that the shooter was a MAGA Republican. And contrary to what Brian Stelter is saying, there is no basis — none whatsoever — for saying that the shooter might have been a Republican. Every single piece of evidence contradicts that claim, starting with the fact that he shot one of the most prominent Republicans in the entire country, wrote that Charlie was a “fascist” on one of the bullets, fell into Left-wing politics according to his own family, and had a gay furry transgender roommate. Any attempt to suggest that this was a Republican shooter — including the claim that Stelter just made — is a grotesque lie. And it’s a lie that has legal implications, given that ABC relies on broadcast licenses. But the lies kept coming on CNN. Here was Van Jones’ meltdown: Van Jones reacting to Jimmy Kimmel’s show being pulled: “This is a red line that has been crossed for our industry. For the First Amendment, for the right of people to speak. There was nothing hateful about what was said.” Erin Burnett: “The job should be to speak truth to… pic.twitter.com/NKRH5dt873 — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 17, 2025 Credit: @Julio_Rosas11/CNN/X.com He’s wrong that the speech wasn’t hateful. It clearly was. It was, very obviously, an attempt to malign Charlie Kirk’s movement and every one of his supporters. But that’s not the biggest problem with what Van Jones says. He’s acting as though the FCC has just violated the First Amendment, simply because the FCC chair mentioned, on a podcast, that they were considering the possibility of taking lawful action against ABC and its affiliates. But of course, in his answer, Jones doesn’t say a word about broadcast licenses or ABC’s obligations under the law. He doesn’t acknowledge the very significant distinction between an organization like CNN — which is a cable network — and a network like ABC, which is broadcast over public airwaves. Nor does he address the statement from Sinclair, which was obviously appalled by what Kimmel had said, all on their own. Nexstar had a similar statement as well. But even if we assume the FCC was the deciding factor — even though it probably wasn’t — the key point is that Jimmy Kimmel and these ABC affiliates do not have a constitutional right to use the public airwaves to disseminate malicious propaganda on behalf of a political party. The use of those airwaves is a privilege. And there’s a mountain of evidence, up to and including Kimmel’s statements about Charlie Kirk, that ABC does not deserve to have that privilege. Admittedly, at this point, we’re in unfamiliar territory, as conservatives. We’re not used to the idea of utilizing the power of the federal government in a way that inflicts any kind of meaningful consequences on our political opponents — or even that suggests consequences might be possible — in order to improve this country and restore civil liberties to all Americans. We’ve seen how Democrats use the power of the federal government — maliciously and unlawfully — and so we have a natural aversion to the idea of doing anything remotely similar. But not all federal crackdowns amount to lawfare. Not every aggressive action by the DOJ or the FCC is unconstitutional. We don’t actually have an obligation to pretend that every Soros-funded nonprofit is untouchable, or that every corporate media outlet deserves to have a broadcast license. We can believe in the First Amendment, while also punishing unlawful conduct that’s masquerading as legitimate. Every conservative must understand this. As long as we’re very judicious about how we proceed — as long as we don’t devolve into a Fani Willis-style circus, or go around policing “hate speech” — then we have the opportunity to bring about some of the most significant improvements to American civic life in generations. We can prevent rioters from terrorizing entire cities because BLM has selected a new martyr, or because ICE officers are arresting illegal aliens in a particular city. We can shut down militant trans NGOs, preventing young people from receiving money to mutilate their bodies or commit acts of terrorism. We can end the practice of strangely well-funded and well-equipped protesters popping up, at a moment’s notice, to harass law enforcement or witnesses in federal trials. We should do all of these things. The job of the federal government is to ensure that every citizen in this country can enjoy their civil liberties. And a big part of that responsibility is to ensure that criminal enterprises are not operating within our borders, plotting acts of terrorism that will silence conservative expression. Again, the president seems to understand that. Last night, for example, he declared that Antifa is a major domestic terrorist organization. And while the Left will complain about that designation, no reasonable person can really dispute it. Everyone can see now that the Left supports political assassination. They openly endorse political violence, without any reservation. They revel in it. And there’s strong evidence that some of the most powerful groups on the Left are funding this violence. These criminals have operated with impunity for far too long. Like Jimmy Kimmel, they’ve never contemplated the possibility of facing consequences for those actions. Now, after what they’ve done to Charlie, those consequences — which will be as ruthless as they are righteous — are finally upon them.

Jimmy Kimmel’s show was suspended indefinitely on Wednesday. The question is whether that is a result of organic pressure from the crowd, which, if so, is great. I’m on board. Jimmy Kimmel is a schmuck. Jimmy Kimmel is the worst. Jimmy Kimmel has been trash for over ten years. Jimmy Kimmel was the funny guy who used to tell jokes, going all the way back to his days on KROQ 106.7 in Los Angeles. When I was in high school, I was listening to “Kevin and Bean in the Morning” because my carpool mates refused to listen to anything else. Jimmy Kimmel was “The Sports Guy,” and he was funny and obviously very talented. And then Kimmel somehow became a late-night host. He then decided it was incumbent upon him to become, as my friend Guy Benson has said,  the “Woke Pope of Late Night.” He would lecture you every night and be incredibly d***ish all the time. That was his shtick. He would go on TV and lecture you and be terrible. There are numerous times that Jimmy Kimmel should have been canceled, where he said things that were so egregious, terrible, and gross that he should have been done. By the standards of the modern woke media, they should’ve just dug up his old stuff and gone after him. There’s old tape from “The Man Show with Adam Carolla” of Jimmy Kimmel simulating groping a woman without her permission and mimicking having sex with her from behind without her knowledge. That didn’t get him canceled. Jimmy Kimmel dressed up in blackface, back in the day. He dressed up as NBA star Karl Malone in blackface. That didn’t get him canceled. Forget about his old stuff. He didn’t get canceled for saying on the air that people should die in hospitals if they took Ivermectin for COVID, stating, “Doctor Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU … that choice didn’t seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right on and we’ll take care of ya. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, Wheezy.”  I’m very happy to see Jimmy Kimmel go, for whatever reason. He was a horror show. His morality is completely backward. His obvious, dripping disdain and hatred for anyone who disagrees with him are perfectly clear and have been clear every night for years. No one could more richly deserve being taken off the air than Jimmy Kimmel. The question is whether the federal government had anything to do with him being taken off the air. Policy cannot be a blunderbuss. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show Charlie Kirk was killed while advocating for free speech. He was killed while engaging in political debate. And one of the legacies that Charlie Kirk left us with is the necessity for such political debate, the necessity for free speech. Again, that doesn’t mean speech without consequences. It means the necessity for debate. And what that requires is that the government not be involved, for example, in shutting down free debate. So the question with regard to Kimmel is whether this is an organic outgrowth of natural outrage over Jimmy Kimmel, or whether it was forced by the federal government. Kimmel had said in his monologue: “We had 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, and doing everything they can to score political points from and in between the finger pointing.” By the time that Kimmel broadcast this on Monday night, it was perfectly clear that it was not true. We all knew. All the evidence shows that the shooter murdered Charlie because the shooter was in a gay relationship with a trans-furry, and had decided that Charlie was hateful because Charlie said that men were not women, etc. We knew that already. So was Kimmel lying? I believe Kimmel knew he was lying. I also know that there are a bunch of delusional people on the Left who are trying to pretend that either the shooter had no political motivations at all, which is totally crazy, or that the shooter was MAGA, which is even crazier. Perhaps in his own head, Kimmel was part of that delusional crew who thought that because the shooter grew up in a MAGA house, that meant he was MAGA, despite the fact that all the evidence shows he was anything but. So the question is whether these local affiliates canceled Kimmel because they were upset with him, or they canceled Kimmel because they came under pressure from the FCC.  Nexstar ABC put out a statement: Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXST), today announced that the company’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show. Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC‑affiliated markets. … Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.  The question is, was that natural, or was that a result of the fact that Nexstar is currently trying to push a $6.2 billion merger through FCC scrutiny and the fact that the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, seemingly threatened action against Kimmel, ABC, and Disney? I like Brendan Carr. But the FCC should not be threatening action against ABC or its affiliates or Disney based on Jimmy Kimmel being a jackass. He’s been a jackass his entire career. Social censure is perfectly appropriate. The blowback from the public is totally natural and good because Jimmy Kimmel is a schmuck who should have been taken off the air ten years ago. But I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be false. Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot. I know that we’ve gotten out of the habit of this. I know that a lot of people on the Right are saying, “The shoe will never be on the other foot, and if it is, the Left will just do it anyway.” But preemptively breaking things because you believe that the Left is going to break the things still makes the things broken — and you can’t unbreak them.  I’m an advocate of the idea that things that are not yet broken probably should not be. If we are now in a world where we’re going to preemptively break the plate because we believe that the bad guy is going to break the plate, all the plates are going to get broken. And regardless of what you do, that’s going to get used against you. The shards will be used as weapons against you. I promise you, if the FCC is removing local affiliate licenses or threatening to do so, based on Jimmy Kimmel being a jackass, the next time a Democrat is elected, which will happen sooner or later, you will say the FCC should not be involved in this sort of stuff. I’m not saying Kimmel shouldn’t be taken off the air. I’m not saying the social sanction shouldn’t have forced him off the air. I’m not saying any of these local affiliates shouldn’t have said they don’t want to air Kimmel’s show anymore. I’m saying they should have done all that ten years ago. If, best case scenario, the public forces the local affiliates to react and take him off the air, totally legit. But I do not like that the FCC muddied the waters here. I think it is bad politics, and I think it is bad policy. Because if Democrats win the presidency and you get a Democrat in charge of the FCC, you know which affiliates are going to get threatened. Let the public be outraged, and let the public outrage organically drive for Kimmel’s ouster. Legally, you’ve muddied the waters on First Amendment grounds in much the same way that the Biden administration was threatening Facebook with consequences if it did not remove certain material.  If you wish to hand power back to the Democrats, what you do here is overreach or at least create the perception of overreach. So two things can be true at once: I’m very, very happy that Jimmy Kimmel is off the air. He is a schmuck. He’s the worst. Don’t let the door hit him on the way out. But also, the government should not be muddying the waters. If they do, they put themselves at risk of significant overreach, and that could come back to haunt us.

A boxcutter-wielding Guatemalan man accused of violently raping a young jogger in New Haven, Connecticut, last month is an illegal immigrant who has already been deported twice, The Daily Wire has learned. Guatemalan illegal immigrant Ludvi Carias-Interiano, 34, allegedly tackled the female victim to the ground 30 minutes into her marathon training on August 9, according to the New Haven Register. The man held a boxcutter to her throat as he “repeatedly” raped her before running away. Carias-Interiano admitted to investigators that he engaged in sexual activity, but claimed it was consensual, the report noted. The feds deported Carias-Interiano twice during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, but he later snuck back in undetected, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Daily Wire.   Mugshot of Ludvi Carias-Interiano (Department of Homeland Security) Police finally nabbed Carias-Interiano at his home in nearby West Haven last week thanks to DNA evidence, which gave them a “hit” and also tied him to an unsolved sexual assault in Plano, Texas, according to the local news outlet. He was also arrested in 2016 in Texas for allegedly assaulting a child.   David Peinado/Anadolu via Getty Images New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson earlier this month said that the victim was “shaken,” but still came forward to help law enforcement hunt down her attacker. “She’s doing well, but it’s a long process,” Jacobson said. “Her resilience has potentially prevented this from happening to another person, so we are extremely grateful for the victim to come forward and have to go through this ordeal. We will continue to support her and pray for her,” the chief added. ICE lodged a detainer on September 11 for local cops in Connecticut to hand over Carias-Interiano “to ensure” he’s “not released on U.S. streets to terrorize more innocent women,” McLaughlin said. “This criminal illegal alien should have NEVER been in our country in the first place to commit this heinous rape of a young woman jogging in the park. This violent criminal has prior charges for sexual assault of a minor and violent assault,” she said. Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images McLaughlin expressed concern over Connecticut’s “recently reinforced” Trust Act that has “severely limited” local authorities’ ability to work with ICE, “effectively making them a sanctuary state.” “ICE lodged an arrest detainer to ensure this criminal illegal alien is not released on U.S. streets to terrorize more innocent women. Unfortunately, Connecticut is a sanctuary state that protects predators like Carias-Interiano by refusing to work with ICE,” she said. “These sanctuary politicians put American lives in danger.”