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We’ll get back to the music on 120 Minutes in just a moment, but first, it’s 12:30 and it’s time to check the news.

The chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, made headlines this week after ABC pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the airwaves—a decision that followed Carr’s public threats to ABC over Kimmel’s on-air remarks on Monday about last week’s assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

The FCC chairman warned ABC affiliates on Wednesday that if they didn’t take action to silence Kimmel, the FCC could “do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Within hours after Carr made that threat, major broadcasters like Nexstar and Sinclair pulled the show from their ABC stations. Under internal pressure from Disney, ABC then followed suit on Wednesday, announcing an indefinite suspension of Kimmel’s late night show, which has run on the network for 22 years.

Variety magazine reported this week that overwhelming public outcry suggests that the FCC’s involvement crosses a clear constitutional line. The First Amendment protects political speech from government interference. And when a federal official threatens broadcast licenses over a comedian’s monologue, many see that as a dangerous precedent.

Even Republican senator Ted Cruz compared Carr’s tactics on Friday to those of a mafia boss, saying that “the government shouldn’t be in the business of deciding what speech is acceptable on the airwaves.”

Former president Barack Obama made a rare public statement Thursday, saying “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.”

Stephen Colbert, host of the Late Show on CBS—which won an Emmy on Sunday but is still slated to end next June after being cancelled by Paramount—said Thursday night, “With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. If ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive.”

And indeed, the FCC chairman has since hinted that ABC’s “The View” could be next, suggesting further scrutiny on the network despite its compliance. Trump, for his part, demanded Comcast cancel the Tonight Show and Late Night, whose host Seth Meyers has long been critical of him. “Do it NBC!!!”, he posted on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Atlantic Festival on Thursday, former Late Show host David Letterman warned, “We all see where this is going, correct? Managed media,” and said, “You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian—a criminal—administration in the Oval Office.”

Thursday night’s Late Show also saw a rare appearance of Colbert’s former satirical persona from the Colbert Report, with him saying in character that the best way to defend your rights and freedoms is to not use them and to stay silent to protect yourself, offering relatable commentary to all of those currently dealing with fearful and compliant institutions.

Former Late Night host Conan O’Brien also spoke out on Friday, saying, “the promise to silence hosts for criticizing the administration should disturb everyone on the Right, Left, and Center. It’s wrong and anyone with a conscience knows it’s wrong.”

As the fallout over ABC and Kimmel continues, the tech news website The Verge now questions whether these public airwaves will be able to remain a space for First Amendment-protected speech as they have been since their inception, or whether they will succumb to the ongoing threats and attacks from the Trump administration.

Finally tonight, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Friday that the UK employee we told you about on the show last week who was targeted by Libs of TikTok for his online comments on Charlie Kirk and then suspended by UK as a result “remains on paid administrative leave pending an investigation” into his speech.

And that’s… the news.