Jimmy Kimmel announced Wednesday night that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will not air his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on ABC television, citing threats from the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission against the host, the show, the network, and local affiliates. The interview — scheduled for Thursday — will post on the show’s YouTube channel instead.

“Out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas, who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television,” Kimmel said, per NBC News.

He described a pattern of pressure: the FCC “has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.”

Talarico, a Democratic state representative, is in a competitive U.S. Senate race against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. NBC News reported that the Talarico campaign and the FCC did not immediately respond to requests for comment; ABC Entertainment declined to comment.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez — a Biden appointee — condemned the dynamic in a statement reacting to Kimmel’s announcement. “No host, local affiliate, or network should have to weigh federal retaliation before booking a guest for a newsworthy interview,” Gomez said. “Any attempt to pressure broadcasters into self-censorship undermines both press freedom and the public’s right to hear from candidates in their communities seeking public office.”

Equal-time pressure, license leverage, and prior pullbacks

The episode sits in a longer regulatory fight over who gets on the air when a candidate is the guest. In January, the FCC issued a memo saying late-night and daytime talk shows must adhere to the equal-time rule — which requires broadcasters to offer equal opportunities to other qualified candidates for the same office — reversing a roughly 20-year position that had treated those shows as exempt, NBC News reported.

In February, Stephen Colbert said CBS did not air his interview with Talarico. “He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said then. CBS said the show received legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger equal-time obligations for two other candidates.

Separately, under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC announced in April that Disney’s eight ABC-owned-and-operated local stations needed to file broadcast license renewals early. The Walt Disney Co. sued over that decision last month, according to NBC News.

About a year ago, ABC pulled Kimmel’s show after comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September 2025; the show returned nearly a week later. Trump has publicly called multiple times for Kimmel to be fired.

Kimmel noted that Trump himself sat for interviews on the show in 2015 and again before becoming the 2016 nominee — and suggested, dryly, that the rules somehow feel different when the guest is someone else.

When a licensing agency can make a network treat a candidate interview as a compliance hazard for local affiliates, the chilling effect does not need a formal ban. Concentrated broadcast licensing power that can punish “editorial decisions” is the story — whether the guest is a Democrat, a Republican, or a president who once booked the same couch.

Sources