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For over a year, ABC tried to appease the Trump administration.
It ignored constant abuse from the president and threats from his attack dog Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission. It suspended Jimmy Kimmel during a conservative outrage flop cycle. It kept silent as its affiliates were squeezed into publicly disavowing The View. It fielded more than 600 document requests from the FCC, quietly handing over more than 13,000 pages of internal records.
That era is now over. On Tuesday, ABC, its parent company Disney, and eight ABC-owned stations sued the FCC, Carr, and his fellow Commissioners Anna Gomez and Olivia Trusty for grossly violating the First Amendment.
Nasty and rude
Trump has never hidden his loathing for ABC’s news division, or even bothered to pretend that it’s based on something other than the content of its programming — that is, First Amendment protected speech.
“David Muir should be ashamed of himself, as should Linsey Davis, who I never heard of, but both were nasty and rude when they were making statements that they knew were false,” he ranted after ABC moderated one of the 2024 presidential debates. “They have proven NOT WORTHY, and hopefully an investigation will be done as to whether or not they gave the Debate questions to Comrade Kamala, whose best friend is a top ABC Executive. If she did give the questions to Kamala, ABC’s license should be TERMINATED.”
In August 2025, he brayed that ABC “should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans.”
In September, he congratulated the network when it briefly yanked Kimmel off the air.
“That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!” he jeered.
A week later he raged over Kimmel’s return: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!”
All the while, Carr was regularly menacing the network on conservative media.
"We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr mugged on shitposter Benny Johnson’s podcast.
And Kimmel is not the administration’s only target in the House of Mouse; Carr is also fixated on the journalists of ABC’s The View.
In February, he opened an investigation into Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico’s appearance on the show, suggesting the show’s failure to invite on his primary opponent Jasmine Crockett violated the Equal Time Rule.
In fact, the FCC ruled in 2002 that The View is excepted from that rule under the “bona fide news” exemption, as are Howard Stern and The Tonight Show. But in January, Carr unilaterally decreed that “a program that is motivated by partisan purposes would not be entitled to an exemption under longstanding FCC precedent,” adding that “the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption.”
Naturally, Carr himself will determine which programs are “motivated by partisan purposes.”
In a spectacularly devious maneuver, Carr went to the non-ABC-owned affiliates that carried the Talarico episode and demanded they report the program as a political appearance outside the bona fide news exemption — only to turn around and cite these reports as evidence that The View doesn’t qualify as news.
Carr’s threats spooked CBS so thoroughly that they canceled an interview with Talarico on one of Colbert’s last shows. Colbert responded by viciously roasting Carr on air and then posting the interview on the show’s YouTube channel, where it racked up a whopping 9.5 million views.
But unlike Trump, who exists in a permanent time warp where networks have “a license,” Carr understands that his leverage over the parent companies is limited.
The FCC’s remit is to manage the television and radio spectrum so as to promote competition that benefits consumers. His only real leverage against the parent company is to squeeze the local affiliate stations that use that public spectrum — particularly the small handful owned by the networks themselves. And he’s made clear that he intends to do just that.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” he wrote earlier this year on X. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Local leverage
On April 28, just a week after Kimmel pissed off Trump with a joke about Melania having “a glow like an expectant widow,” the FCC ordered all eight ABC-owned stations to file early broadcast license renewal applications.
The Commission hadn’t called for an early renewal at all in more than 50 years, and yet Carr gave the stations just 30 days to prepare applications that ordinarily take months.
If Disney needed a wake-up call, this clearly did the trick.
The company hired three heavy hitters to run its defense: Paul Clement, the former Bush solicitor general and legendary Supreme Court litigator; Beth Wilkinson, an incredibly accomplished trial lawyer who recently trounced the FTC’s bid to block Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision; and Jennifer Tatel, the former general counsel of the FCC. They filed a blistering opposition that revealed the extent of Carr’s harassment over the past 18 months.
The campaign began in March 2025, when Carr fired off a letter to Disney’s then-CEO Bob Iger informing him that the agency had opened an investigation “to ensure that Disney and ABC have not been violating FCC equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” Among the company’s supposed crimes of wokeness, Carr faulted Disney for requiring scripted programs to contain non-white characters.
Carr followed up with wave after wave of demands for documents, including internal communications among the staff at The View and itemized lists of the hosts’ political donations going back four years — a demand which was later extended to include donations by on-air talent and producers at Good Morning America, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and ABC World News Tonight with David Muir.
Perhaps hoping to avoid a public fight, the network mostly cooperated with the agency’s demands. ABC acknowledges that it did indeed censor itself preemptively, refraining from booking political interviews that might draw the administration’s ire and airing Trump’s July 16 rant on election security on ABC’s streaming platform when they’d otherwise have ignored it. But Carr’s order that the affiliate station’s renew their licenses effectively forced Disney’s hand.
The stations submitted their renewals on May 28, kicking off a public comment period that ended August 5. More than 150,000 people weighed in — 95 percent supportive, per ABC’s count.
On June 29, six right-wing groups, including the Center for American Rights, the Media Research Center, the Article III Project, and America First Legal, filed counter-petitions arguing that the licenses should not be renewed.
On July 29, ABC filed its opposition, the last step in the process.
If the FCC issues a Hearing Designation Order, the stations will be thrust into adjudicative proceedings which can last for years and will cast the stations’ viability into protracted uncertainty. And Bloomberg reports that the hammer is coming down imminently: “The anticipated FCC action, likely timed before the Labor Day holiday, would determine that The View is not a ‘bona fide’ news show, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Worse still, the FCC's only administrative law judge retired May 30, leaving Carr free to preside over the proceedings himself. Under the circumstances, Disney had no choice but to race to the courthouse to head this sham off at the pass.
The mouse awakens
Yesterday, Disney, ABC, and the eight ABC affiliates sued the FCC, Carr, and his fellow commissioners in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
“Defendants have violated, and continue to violate, Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights by launching pretextual regulatory investigations and threatening the Stations’ valuable broadcast licenses through early license renewal proceedings — all to punish Plaintiffs for content and viewpoints the Administration dislikes,” they argued.
They’ve asked Judge Loren AliKhan, a Biden appointee, to issue a declaratory ruling that Carr and the FCC are retaliating against them for exercising their First Amendment right — something the president and Carr have effectively shouted from the rooftops. And they want the court to immediately issue a temporary restraining order prohibiting the agency from issuing a Hearing Designation Order or from “taking any actions, formal or informal, to coerce or threaten Plaintiffs with sanctions in an effort to alter their exercise of editorial discretion.”
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone remaining Democrat on the panel, cheered Disney’s suit.
“I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up,” she wrote yesterday. “I am hopeful that this will mark the beginning of the end of this administration’s disregard for the Constitution and the law, and that the coming months will bring the costly legal defeat this agency has been asking for since it started down this path.”
Carr was more circumspect — for once! — merely sending an unnamed flack to mumble that “the FCC has been examining claims that Disney engaged in illegal DEI discrimination for over a year."
“Disney is obviously very concerned about the FCC’s proceeding, as evidenced by their ongoing campaign of disinformation as well as their decision to ask a court to stop the FCC from further pursuing matters,” the anonymous spokesperson snarked to NBC.
For his part, Iger’s successor, Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, seems ready for the fight.
“We’re going to stand up to what we believe is journalistic integrity. And we’re not going to be told how to run that side of our business,” he told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. “And, again, our filings, I think, speak for that. I like what we do. We tell incredible stories. I think we do it well. We do it around the world. And we’re going to stay committed to that.”
That’s it for today
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At last, ABC and its parent company Disney finally grew a spine and stopped caving in to the corrupt bullies at the FCC (I'm particularly looking at you, Brendan). They should have learned their lesson when they were ordered by the FCC thugs to suspend Jimmy Kimmel that going along to get along is not good for business. It was reported that 1.7 to 3 million subscribers cancelled Disney+, Hulu and EPSN+ Disney and stock fell $3.87 to $4.4 billion in market capitalization.
Whether its the First Amendment or The Benjamins, it was high time this behemoth started flexing its muscles.
I wonder when the Federal Corruption Commission will begin investigating what Mary Trump calls "Fox State TV" and other right wing media.
As a viewer of WPVI, Channel 6 News in Philadelphia, I am furious that Carr and the rest of the felon’s lackeys feel they have the right to oppose the First Amendment rights of a television station.
Fox “News” has been broadcasting lies and disinformation for years, and no one has tried to censor them, even though they repeat the lies of the felon.