By New York Times

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Jimmy Kimmel is coming back.

ABC said today that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would return to its airwaves on Tuesday, ending an impasse that began last week.

“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 Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, said in a statement.

“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement said. “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.”

The network had removed Kimmel “indefinitely” last week after a top Trump administration regulator and many conservatives said he inaccurately described the politics of the man accused of fatally shooting right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The subsequent suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” almost immediately morphed into a flashpoint for free speech in America.

ABC pulled the show just hours after Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said on a podcast that Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the agency was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson.

Kimmel had planned to address the growing firestorm during his opening monologue for the Wednesday episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” But after senior Disney executives — including its CEO, Bob Iger, and its head of television, Dana Walden — reviewed Kimmel’s planned remarks, they worried his monologue would make the situation worse, and decided to bench him and his show instead.

Disney did not publicly explain its decision at the time, and Kimmel has not commented publicly on the show’s suspension. Kimmel’s representatives and Disney executives discussed a workable compromise for days.

Conversations between Disney and Kimmel to return his show to the air formally began Thursday, according to two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Iger, Walden and Rob Mills, the ABC executive who directly oversees the show, met with Kimmel at the office of his lawyer, Andy Galker, in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles. Kimmel’s manager, James Dixon, participated in the meeting via a video call.

The session ended without Kimmel’s agreeing to changes in the monologue he had planned to deliver Wednesday, which had sought to clarify his earlier commentary but also punched back against figures on the right who he believed had misrepresented those comments.

Iger and Walden continued to communicate with Kimmel throughout the weekend, the two people said. An agreement about when to bring the show back, and what Kimmel would say upon his return, was made this morning.

A representative for Kimmel did not respond to requests for comment.

It is still unclear whether Nexstar and Sinclair — two major television operators that own many ABC affiliates and have vowed to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in the aftermath of his comments — will air future episodes of the show.

Representatives for Nexstar and Sinclair did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The imbroglio began last Monday when Kimmel used his opening monologue to say “the MAGA gang” was “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.”

Conservatives pounced, saying the comments mischaracterized the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter. Prosecutors have said that Robinson objected to Kirk’s “hatred,” but the authorities have not said which of Kirk’s views Robinson had found hateful. Robinson’s mother said that her son had recently shifted toward the political left and become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”

In the days since ABC’s decision, at least five Hollywood unions, collectively representing more than 400,000 workers, publicly condemned the company.

The screenwriters’ union decried what they called “corporate cowardice,” and organized a protest last week outside the main gate at Disney headquarters in Burbank, California. Damon Lindelof, a creator of ABC’s “Lost,” said that if Kimmel’s program did not return from suspension, he couldn’t “in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.” Michael Eisner, a former CEO of Disney, issued a rare rebuke on social media Friday, as well. Some conservatives expressed misgivings, too. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, likened Carr’s comments to a mob boss, arguing that his comments to potentially retaliate against media companies were “dangerous as hell.”

“I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business,” Cruz said on his podcast last week. “We should denounce it.”

Carr, for his part, used an appearance in Manhattan before Disney’s announcement Monday to try to minimize his own role in the events that led to Kimmel’s suspension.

He said that Disney had merely made a “business decision” in response to feedback from viewers and affiliates, and he argued that Democrats’ claims of undue government pressure were “a campaign of projection and distortion.”

“Jimmy Kimmel is in the situation that he’s in because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level,” Carr said.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz praised today’s decision to reinstate Kimmel’s show. “This is a good moment for America,” the Hawaii Democrat said in a statement. “Whatever one’s political preference, it is important to remember that the president and the presidency are powerful but not all powerful, and that upholding the Constitution and laws of the United States is good for business.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Star-Advertiser staff contributed to this report.

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