Too many people in this country think that free speech comes with no consequences. A constitutionally protected free pass to say whatever you want with zero repercussions. But that’s not true. There is a cost to speaking out.

On the left, think Colin Kaepernick being blackballed by the NFL for taking a knee during the national anthem. On the right, think every yahoo who’s ever been fired from their job over some racist/sexist Facebook post.

If you think that’s an unfair comparison, write about it. Yell at me about it. That’s how free speech works. I say something and you can say something back. How it definitely does not work, is when the government steps in. The courts have been very clear that the First Amendment protects us from government censorship.

That means that calls to boycott comedian Tony Hinchcliffe after he called Puerto Rico a “ floating island of garbage” at a Donald Trump rally? Legal. ABC firing comedian Bill Maher for insensitive comments after 9/11? Legal. However much you or I can loathe so-called cancel culture — it’s legal.

What happened to Jimmy Kimmel is something else.

On Wednesday, Disney-owned ABC put the late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! On indefinite hiatus. This happened soon after Nexstar Communications Group said it would pull the program from its 23 ABC-affiliated stations over a joke Kimmel had made Monday about the MAGA reaction to the killing of Charlie Kirk. The leaders of the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group also announced they would be pre-empting the show.

So far, so wrong, but within these private companies’ rights. The problem is that also on Wednesday, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, went on the right-wing podcast The Benny Show and laid out how the government could go after those who gave the late-night comedian his platform.

“There’s calls for Kimmel to be fired. You can certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. And again, the FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at,” Carr told host Benny Johnson. “Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up.”

Now, the FCC cannot go after ABC because, like the other national networks, it does not hold a broadcast license to transmit over the public airwaves (although Disney owns a few stations), but it can absolutely go after local affiliates.

Not only that, but much like in the case of CBS’ cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert— which put the Trump-mocking show on the chopping block after the network’s parent company needed government approval for a merger — Nexstar is also in merger talks.

With The Late Show, CBS executives could at least make the case (transparent as it was) that their decision was justified because ratings were down, and they would allow the show to run until the end of the host’s contract next year.

But for Kimmel, there’s hasn’t been even an attempt at that kind of pretense. He’s been suspended following a barely veiled threat by the guy in charge of allowing TV stations to do business. Now, I think that what Nexstar did is cowardly, but it is by no means nonsensical.

Add it to the list of companies, universities, and law firms that have sold out American principles and are fully on board with endangering democracy by enabling Trump’s worst instincts — all for the sake of doing business.

Also add this incident to the long list of examples of hypocrisy from the Trump administration and the right-wing commentariat. Unsurprisingly, back in 2023, Carr posted on X that, “Free speech is the counterweight — it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” The same day Kimmel was suspended, Trump criticized England’s laws limiting speech (he’s right) while praising ABC’s decision.

The president has repeatedly threatened networks over their news coverage and raged against late-night comedians like Kimmel and Colbert for making fun of him. Of the Big Three networks (sorry, kids, I’m old) Comcast-owned NBC has so far stood its ground.

This is important because Saturday Night Live alone has produced some definitive presidential portraits that have stood the test of time. In my late-night TV-watching lifetime we’ve seen George H.W. Bush as awkward and out of touch (Dana Carvey), Bill Clinton as hungry horndog (Phil Hartman), George W. Bush as clueless bro (Will Ferrell), Barack Obama as professorial but cool (Jay Pharoah), and Donald Trump as game cue card reader desperate for love and attention (Donald J. Trump).

The show may want to amend Trump’s portrayal, though, to thin-skinned demagogue who lost his sense of humor about the same time he found love and attention among the vilest peddlers of right-wing vitriol and hate on his way to authoritarianism.

As to what those of us who consider free speech one of the vital ingredients in the American Experiment can do, well, that’s easy.

Speak out, loudly and often — ideally respectfully, but the Constitution doesn’t say you need to be nice. What’s happening is not right and we need to say so. Damn the consequences.

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Luis F. Carrasco is the deputy opinion editor at The Inquirer and a member of the Editorial Board.

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