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The First Amendment makes it very clear. The government is not allowed to censor speech, which means the president doesn't have

the power to say, get Jimmy Kimmel suspended for making comments about Charlie Kirk.

But if agencies within the executive branch indirectly pressure private companies to carry

out that censorship, there is enough wiggle room to make free speech champions nervous. From KERA in

Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. There's actually a term for this kind of censorship by proxy.

In legal and political circles, it's called jawboning.

And as my guest will explain, the way it offers the government plausible deniability in controlling

or compelling speech makes the tactic controversial even within the party that controls the

White House and the Congress currently. Jim Rutenberg is writer at large for the New York Times and the New York Times

magazine, where you can read his article, The Maga Plan to Takeover TV is just beginning. Jim,

welcome to think. Thanks so much for having me.

You open this article with an account of Ted Cruz, who of course is a Republican, calling FCC

Chairman Brendan Carr to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee.

What was Cruz upset with Carr about?

Well, and listeners may remember this, but Chairman Carr had the FCC, which oversees all broadcast television, your ABCs, your NBC's, your CBS's

had said, and everyone will remember this, after Jimmy Kimmel made a joke relating to the Charlie

Kirk assassination that was viewed as basically a totally factually incorrect.

Carr said,

frankly, when you see stuff like this,

...