Mini-Post: Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Trump and Company is doing a jig over ABC caving in to Trumps demands... Variety reports that,

FCC chairman Brendan Carr appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to praise Nexstar and Sinclair for pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from their ABC affiliate stations, after which ABC suspended production of the show indefinitely.

“Something’s gone seriously awry,” Carr said about late night shows like Kimmel’s. “They went from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology. And Nexstar stood up and said, ‘We have the license and we don’t want to run this anymore. We don’t think it serves the interest of our community.’ Sinclair did the same thing. There’s more work to go, but I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up to serve the interest of their community. We don’t just have this progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.”

So with all the high-fives over the gutting of the First Amendment some in the same party in Congress are saying not so fast, 

'Right out of Goodfellas.' Ted Cruz weighs in on FCC head's Kimmel threat

Joey Garrison

USA TODAY

September 19, 2025

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz slammed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for pressuring ABC to pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the airwaves, warning fellow Republicans the threats create an "unbelievably dangerous" precedent that could haunt conservatives.

The Texas Republican, in a new episode of his podcast released Sept. 19, compared Carr's tactics to those of a mob boss as he denounced the FCC chairman's threats to revoke ABC's television license before the network indefinitely suspended "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

"He says, 'We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way,'" Cruz said, referring to Carr. "That's right out of 'Goodfellas.' That's right out a mafioso coming into a bar going, 'Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.'"

And he is not alone in the Republican pushback...

'Be very careful': Some in the GOP balk at kicking Kimmel off TV

Republicans are splitting on FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s pressure tactics. "We all should be very cautious" about regulating speech, one GOP senator told POLITICO.

By Anthony Adragna, John Hendel and Gabby Miller

09/18/2025

A handful of prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were worried about the implications of Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr pressuring a TV network to suspend late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Their comments suggest an emerging split in the GOP over the party’s views on free speech.

“We all should be very cautious,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). “The conservative position is free speech is free speech, and we better be very careful about any lines we cross in diminishing free speech.”

[...]

House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), whose committee oversees the FCC, raised a red flag while speaking at an event Thursday. “Just because I don’t agree with what someone says, we need to be very careful,” he said. “We have to be extremely cautious to try to use government to influence what people say."

You have to wonder if Trump tanking approval numbers has created backbones in some Republicans? But not all...

Notably, none of the elected Republicans criticized Carr by name. They were also outnumbered by the more than a dozen Republicans who told POLITICO on Thursday they weren’t concerned, largely framing Kimmel’s suspension as a business decision rather than government coercion.

But the damage has been done already.