Jimmy Kimmel says his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico won't air on ABC television because the FCC has threatened his show, his network, and its local affiliates. The segment will run on YouTube instead. When a federal regulator can intimidate a network into yanking a political interview, the First Amendment is already dead on arrival — the government doesn't need to fine you when the threat alone does the job.

Kimmel made the announcement during his Wednesday monologue: "Now that [Trump is] president, his 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." He said the decision was made "out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense."

This is the second time a late-night host has been forced off broadcast over the same guest. In February, Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers told him "in no uncertain terms" that he could not air his Talarico interview. That segment also went to YouTube — and raised $2.5 million for Talarico's campaign within 24 hours, according to Variety.

The mechanism is a regulatory bait-and-switch. In January, the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr issued guidance that late-night and daytime talk shows must comply with equal-time rules — a reversal from decades of precedent. The FCC granted an exemption to Jay Leno's Tonight Show in 1996, and talk shows had operated under that exemption ever since, The Hollywood Reporter noted. Now the exemption is gone, and the rule is being wielded as leverage.

Variety reported that Carr told ABC "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" last year when demanding action against Kimmel over monologue comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. ABC temporarily suspended Kimmel for nearly a week. The FCC also initiated a formal review of whether ABC's The View qualifies for the equal-time exemption, and ordered Disney's eight ABC owned-and-operated stations to file license renewals early.

ABC and Disney sued the FCC last month, alleging the commission is waging a "retaliatory campaign" and an "extraordinary assault" on its free-speech rights. Carr called the lawsuit "meritless" in an August interview with the New York Times, denying the agency is violating free speech.

Kimmel noted the double standard: Trump appeared on his show while running for president in 2015 and again just before becoming the Republican nominee in 2016. "At that time, when he was the one sitting next to me, he seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates," Kimmel said.

The FCC did not respond to requests for comment from multiple outlets. Talarico is running against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a race Newsweek reports shows Talarico narrowly leading — Democrats' best shot at a Texas Senate seat in years.

Whether you like Kimmel or can't stand him doesn't matter. A federal agency pressuring broadcasters into dropping segments about political candidates is exactly the kind of government overreach the First Amendment was designed to stop. The equal-time flip is the pretext; the pressure is the point. When networks self-censor out of fear for their licenses, the chill does the censor's work for him. The only question is who the FCC targets next.