Jimmy Kimmel’s return to late-night television after a brief suspension might have looked like business as usual. It wasn’t. His show was pulled off the air for six days after comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said in his monologue mid September that the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” and of trying to “score political points from it”.
The show shortly returned after six days of backlash to Disney from the public. But the message was clear: speech can be punished, even when it comes from one of the most mainstream voices in American culture.
That is the reality of Donald Trump’s second term. The First Amendment, which once felt like a permanent guarantee, now feels conditional.
“The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke,” Kimmel said during his return monologue to late night.
Trump has never hidden his contempt for free expression. He branded the press as the “enemy of the people” during his first term and returned to office with sharper tools, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. His allies now openly threaten broadcasters with regulatory action.
Federal Communications Commission officials have signaled a willingness to scrutinize content critical of the administration. The chilling effect is already visible, not only in Kimmel’s suspension but in how local outlets and universities weigh the risks of dissent.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action … on Kimmel or … there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” Chairman Brendan Carr told Benny Johnson, a right wing podcaster, noting that licenses come with “an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
Groups that monitor global freedoms are also noticing. CIVICUS, a watchdog coalition, downgraded the United States this year to “civic space narrowed.” That designation places the country closer to democracies under strain, where governments permit limited criticism but punish those who cross invisible lines, including Pakistan, Serbia and Democratic Republic of Congo.
For students and journalists like me, the erosion is not theoretical. It shapes the air we breathe. I write this column at a community college newspaper in Stockton, aware that my ability to question, criticize and analyze is both protected and precarious. The borderlines I navigate are not only about immigration status or politics but about the fragile space where speech is tolerated.
I do not take for granted that I can write these words. I come from Nicaragua, where independent media has been shuttered and citizenship revoked for those who refuse to stay silent. Exile taught me that rights vanish quickly when power is unchecked. Seeing echoes of that experience in the United States, a country that prides itself on being a global defender of free speech, is both painful as it is clarifying.
Critics will argue that Kimmel crossed a line, that consequences are part of responsibility. But the broader pattern is undeniable: when political pressure determines who can speak and who cannot, the First Amendment becomes a privilege instead of a right.
I do not know if tomorrow I will still have this platform. What I do know is that silence helps no one. The only way to defend free expression is to keep using it: loudly, critically, and unapologetically.
So I’ll keep asking: does anyone know if we have First Amendment tomorrow?
