California Democrats in Congress are calling out the decision by ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air as censorship.

"Yesterday, ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air after threats from President Trump's FCC chair," Democratic Representative Doris Matsui said. "That's censorship plain and simple."

"And to the FCC chairperson and anyone involved in these dirty deals, get a lawyer, save your records," Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell said.

Republicans backed Mr. Trump.

"Clearly, Donald Trump does not have control over the media; the media is still very critical of the president," California Republican Assemblymember James Gallagher said.

Speaking on the matter during a joint news conference with the British prime minister on Thursday, Mr. Trump dismissed the idea that the move was about censorship, instead framing it as a network-level decision.

"Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk," Mr. Trump said. " And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago."

Mr. Trump also spoke to reporters about the media criticism of him and suggested the possibility of stripping some federal broadcast licenses.

"I think what we see right now are comments from the president and comments from the [Federal Communications Commission], the type of comments that we haven't seen in recent history, types of comments where they're being more explicit about 'we don't like this speech,' now they're saying 'it's not in the public interest,'" said Jessica Levinson, CBS News' legal analyst. 

The debate over freedom of speech comes after ABC took Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely for a monologue that also mentioned the Charlie Kirk assassination on Monday.

"I mean, look we can do this the easy way or the hard way," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the next day on a podcast. "These companies can find a way to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC." 

The late-night comedy question is now at the center of democrats calling for congressional investigations.

"When we think of it as 'why we do protect really hateful and vile speech that can cause more than just hurt feelings,' it's the idea that censorship is more destructive than really painful, even critical speech," Levinson said. 

Thursday, the democratic leader of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the Trump administration, ABC, and broadcasting group Sinclair, citing what they say are ongoing efforts to censor opposition to the President of the United States.

Sinclair operates ABC stations in 30 markets in the U.S. and said it will stop airing Kimmel's show. Similarly, Nexstar owns and operates more than two dozen ABC affiliates and said it will also stop airing the show. 

This is not the first time ABC has taken action against one of its stars.

The company canceled production of the reboot of "Roseanne" in 2018 after she posted a racially insensitive comment on Twitter.