Jimmy Kimmel to return to the air Tuesday after a week-long suspension

Jimmy Kimmel Live! is back. After a week-long suspension following a joke by its host about the murder of Charlie Kirk, the show will return to the airwaves on Tuesday.

This was confirmed by The Walt Disney Company, the parent company of ABC, the network on which the nightly show airs, in a statement. “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the statement said. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”

“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” Disney added.

Kimmel’s show was suspended sine die last Wednesday afternoon following a comment the host made about the alleged killer of ultra-conservative youth leader Charlie Kirk. In his Monday night appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he suggested that Tyler Robinson might have been a Trump-supporting Republican: “This weekend, we hit rock bottom. The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” the four-time Oscars host said.

The suspension of the show has led the United States to seriously consider how freedom of expression is being treated. Hundreds of figures from the world of politics and entertainment, as well as associations promoting artists’ rights or defending the Constitution, have expressed their disbelief in recent days. Even former president Barack Obama spoke out on the matter: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.”

Last Thursday, Kimmel’s television colleagues, from Jon Stewart to Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Fallon, came to his defense on each and every one of their shows. On Monday, more than 400 artists, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), signed a letter accusing the Trump administration of taking a stance similar to the witch hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition