Ted Cruz: MAGA "will regret" what it did to Jimmy Kimmel

• "That's right out of Goodfellas," Cruz said Friday on his podcast. "That's right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going 'Nice bar you have here. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.'"
• "It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it. And so again, I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business."

Between the lines: Democrats are calling on Carr to resign. Cruz didn't go that far. And he called ABC's move "a smart business decision."

Driving the news: Carr strongly suggested on Wednesday that ABC should take action against Kimmel for comments he made about the suspect in Charlie Kirk's assassination.

• "The MAGA gang 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," Kimmel said on Monday.
• "We can do this the hard way or the easy way," Carr told a conservative podcaster on Wednesday. "This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney," he said.

• On Wednesday evening, ABC News announced Kimmel's show would be "preempted indefinitely."

What we're watching: On Thursday, GOP senators mostly equivocated on whether Carr's comments amounted to government overreach or censorship.

• Sen. Lisa Murkowski called Carr's comments "unusual."
• "My preference would always be to let the companies make economic market decisions," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).