Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t suspended because of poor ratings. He wasn’t suspended because he crossed some ethical red line. He was suspended because the president of the United States decided to make an example of him.

The supposed justification came on Kimmel’s Monday night show. “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 in his monologue.

There was little evidence at the time to think the shooter was a MAGA supporter, as Kimmel’s comment seemed to imply, and nothing we’ve learned since suggests otherwise. If anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction.

But democracies are supposed to absorb careless speech. Bad jokes, bad takes, even vile remarks are the price of a free society. And the whole point of the First Amendment is to take the government out of the business of deciding what we can and can’t hear.

As my colleague Zack Beauchamp argued, Kimmel’s suspension represents a remarkably brazen attack on free speech. And if it succeeds in setting the precedent that presidents can use regulators to muzzle their enemies, we’re in a political emergency. Because free expression is more than a........

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