The move to cancel one of television’s last remaining crown jewels of broadcast programming came just days after Colbert publicly criticized CBS’s corporate owner, Paramount, for agreeing to pay... Donald Trump $16 million to settle an outrageous $20 billion lawsuit against the company. Trump has now long claimed that 60 Minutes producers unfairly edited their interview with then-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, a complaint widely viewed by legal and media experts as completely baseless. The agreement was the latest in a series of bootlicking moves by Paramount as its chairwoman, Shari Redstone, desperately tries to sell the company to Skydance Media, a deal that requires federal approval.

the details of what led to the decision to sack Colbert are certain to expose an extraordinary level of eagerness by Paramount’s top brass to grovel at the feet of (Trump), as he targets his perceived enemies—the nation’s top schools, law firms, and so forth—with colossal funding threats, lawsuits, and beyond. Remember that Redstone, daughter of Paramount founder Sumner Redstone, reportedly saw nothing wrong with instructing CBS leaders to shelve negative stories about Trump until after the Skydance merger was officially sealed.

But Paramount’s future aside, the end of Colbert signals a dark new chapter in Trump’s authoritarian slide. Though his second term has already produced a string of stunning capitulations by some of the most powerful forces in the country, one could argue that Trump’s attacks had yet to take down our actual culture. I’m talking about the literal content we consume—the television, art, movies, literature, music—no matter how much Trump complained. That it remained protected and free-willed, a rare area of control for a public that otherwise feels powerless to take action.

Clearly, that was magical thinking. If this can happen to Colbert and a storied franchise, this can happen to anyone.