Donald and Melania Trump demanded that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel on April 27 because he told a joke they hated. The next day, Brendan Carr’s Federal Communications Commission ordered all eight stations owned by ABC to submit their broadcast licenses for renewal years early. The stations got 30 days.
That sequence is the story. Everything Carr has said since is an attempt to make us ignore it.
On Tuesday, ABC, Disney, and the eight stations sued the FCC in federal court, asking a judge to stop the early renewal proceedings. Good. Carr has spent months testing whether a regulator can punish speech by burying the punishment inside an administrative process. A broadcast license cannot become a loyalty permit issued only to companies whose comedians flatter the president.
One day from insult to investigation
Kimmel’s offending line was a morbid joke about the age difference between the president and first lady. The Associated Press reported that he said Melania Trump had “the glow of an expectant widow”. Donald and Melania Trump called for his firing on Monday, April 27. Carr’s FCC issued its order on Tuesday, April 28.
The FCC order itself names stations in Fresno, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Durham, Philadelphia, and Houston. It directed every one of them to file within 30 days. Their licenses had originally been scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
Carr did not need to write “punishment for a joke” in the order. He had already explained the arrangement. During an earlier fight over Kimmel, Carr said ABC could do things the “easy way or the hard way” and warned of “additional work for the FCC” if broadcasters did not act against the host.
Regulators do not get to speak like collection agents and then demand that the public treat their next enforcement action as a coincidence.
The public interest is not the president’s taste
Carr’s strongest defense deserves to be stated fairly. Broadcasters use public airwaves. Congress requires the FCC to renew a station only when it has served the public interest and avoided serious violations or a pattern of abuse. Those renewal standards are real. So is the government’s duty to enforce laws against employment discrimination.
The FCC says it had investigated Disney’s employment practices for more than a year. Its April order says ABC had responded to two inquiries and that the agency considered further action appropriate. In an official response to lawmakers, Carr said staff found Disney’s responses deficient, reviewed multiple rounds of documents, and also called another broadcaster’s licenses in early. America First Legal argues that Disney’s diversity policies amount to unlawful discrimination.
Carr can investigate that allegation on its merits and issue findings supported by evidence. His legitimate authority does not let him use a comedian’s job or a network’s editorial choices as bargaining chips.
The Communications Act says the FCC has no power of censorship and may not impose a condition that interferes with broadcast speech. The Supreme Court was just as direct in its unanimous 2024 decision in NRA v. Vullo: a regulator may not selectively wield government power to punish disfavored expression.
Carr is free to dislike Kimmel. Trump is free to complain about ABC. They can denounce the joke, organize a boycott, or turn off the television. The First Amendment line appears when the man with power over the licenses tells the network to act against a speaker and pairs that demand with threatened agency work.
The process does the censoring
Carr will say no license has been revoked. That misses how regulatory intimidation works. A president does not need to win a final order if every editor understands that criticism can trigger lawyers, filings, investigations, and years of uncertainty.
ABC’s size makes the warning easier to see. Disney can hire an army of lawyers and still describes the early reviews as an existential threat to its stations. A local broadcaster with thinner margins sees Carr pull eight licenses into review and learns the cheaper response: cancel the joke or soften the interview.
The pressure has already moved beyond Kimmel. Axios reports that Carr said ABC’s decision not to carry a Trump Oval Office address was likely to come up during the license review. The Associated Press reports that his FCC has opened separate investigations involving ABC, CBS, and NBC. Carr is placing editorial judgment itself in the case file.
A deadline and a document demand can censor as effectively as a formal ban when the official criticizing your programming also controls whether your station may keep operating.
Carr should lose this power
I do not need to like Kimmel’s joke to defend it. The First Amendment earns its keep when an official hates the speech. It would be worthless if protection disappeared whenever a president called a punch line hateful or a regulator renamed retaliation “the public interest.”
The court should stop these early proceedings. Carr can enforce actual broadcast rules through evidence and neutral standards. He cannot make journalists, hosts, and station owners guess which criticism will put their licenses on his desk next.
Brendan Carr wants broadcasters to believe their future depends on keeping Donald Trump pleased. That condition converts a broadcast license into an order to obey.