Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up.

The Trump administration, it appears, has learned to effectively weaponize the regulatory powers of the federal government to punish speech it doesn’t like from people it doesn’t like. This is a favored weapon of modern autocrats; its deployment against Kimmel is a qualitative escalation even above the administration’s previous acts of censorship (like targeting the author of a pro-Palestine op-ed for deportation).

What just happened, in short, shows how far down the authoritarian road the United States has traveled in just eight months.

Jimmy Kimmel and the abuse of state powers

Kimmel’s downfall began with some admittedly ill-advised speculation in Monday’s monologue: “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.”

At the time, the evidence suggested the shooter very likely was not a MAGA believer (and evidence released the next day showed that he almost certainly was on the political left).

But Kimmel’s aside — in a

© Vox