Morning Report is The Hill's a.m. newsletter. Subscribe here.

In today's issue:

▪ Reactions to Trump's media threat

▪ Partisan tensions reach boiling point

▪ CDC panel shifts vaccine guidance

▪ Senate Dems back Palestinian state

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The fallout from Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension and President Trump’s battle with media outlets is spreading as the president suggests licenses be taken away from media outlets for overwhelmingly negative coverage.

“I read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me. Again, 97 percent negative, and yet I won and easily won all seven swing states. The popular vote, won everything,” Trump told reporters Thursday.

“They’re 97 percent against; they give me only bad press. I mean, they’re getting a license,” he continued. “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

Trump's comment's appeared to allude to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) fairness doctrine, abolished in 1987 in the Reagan era, which required networks with broadcast licenses to reflect different viewpoints on major issues, The Hill's Brett Samuels reports.

The president praised FCC chair Brendan Carr as a "patriot" and "tough guy" and said the decision would ultimately be left up to him. The agency chief and Trump ally had called Kimmel’s comments “truly sick” and urged broadcasters to consider taking the comedian's show off the air.

“It’s time for them to step up and say this garbage to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities,” he said earlier this week.

Kimmel was put on involuntary hiatus Wednesday following comments he made about the response to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death.

ABC pulled the longtime Trump critic from the air “indefinitely” after he accused the “MAGA gang” of trying to depict the suspect in Kirk's killing, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, as “anything other than one of them.”

The governor of Utah, where the shooting took place, described the killing as political and officials revealed texts Robinson allegedly sent including one in which he said he had "enough of this hatred," referring to Kirk.

Kimmel also accused conservatives of trying to score “political points” over Kirk’s death and joked that Trump was mourning the conservative activist as a “4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

ABC executives made the decision to pull Kimmel's show after the host reportedly said he was unwilling to apologize. His return to the show looks increasingly slim, The Hill's Dominick Mastrangelo reports.

Top Democrats were quick to denounce Trump’s remarks going after critical coverage of him, which follow a number of lawsuits he has launched against news outlets this year.

“What we are witnessing is an outright abuse of power. This administration is attacking critics and using fear as a weapon to silence anyone who would speak out,” former Vice President Kamala Harris said in a post on the social media platform X.

“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it,” former President Obama said in a post earlier Thursday.

▪ Associated Press: Kimmel suspension is latest show of Trump influence on media.

▪ The Hill: "New York Times executive editor on Trump suit: ‘He’s wrong … and we’ll win.’"

Trump has for years battled with each of the late-night hosts, and has taken Kimmel's suspension as yet another victory following the announced cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” in July.

CBS said the decision regarding Colbert was “purely financial,” but it came days after Colbert slammed CBS parent company Paramount Global for settling a $16 million lawsuit with Trump.

Trump weighed in on the Kimmel suspension during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday in response to a question about free speech being under attack.

“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” he said.

Many conservatives are touting Kimmel’s removal, arguing his comments were inaccurate and insensitive and that he has vilified half the country. But some have expressed concern at the precedent being set.

“I shed zero tears for Kimmel, a smarmy partisan hack who unrepentantly peddled a conspiratorial falsehood about a political assassination on national tv. But the government pressure and meddling here is a problem,” Fox News contributor Guy Benson said in a post on X.

Some GOP lawmakers have also expressed concern. A half dozen Republicans told Politico they were worried about the implications of Kimmel’s suspension.

Senate Democrats have asked Carr to turn over any communications that he had with ABC about Kimmel, CBS reports.

▪ The Hill: Carr suggests it’s........

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