The Process Is the Punishment

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There is a difference between regulating broadcasters and threatening them into obedience. The Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Brendan Carr appears to be testing how thoroughly that distinction can be erased before a federal court tells it to stop.

ABC’s lawsuit against the FCC is extraordinary because it describes far more than an ordinary regulatory dispute. The network alleges a sustained campaign in which President Donald Trump publicly demanded punishment for coverage he disliked, Carr echoed those grievances, and the regulatory machinery of the federal government subsequently descended on ABC.

The central question is simple: Can a president use government licensing authority to punish a news organization because he dislikes its journalism?

The First Amendment was written largely so the answer would be no.

ABC’s complaint alleges that the administration nevertheless embarked on a retaliatory campaign because it disapproved of what the network broadcast, eventually escalating its attacks into explicit demands that ABC-owned stations lose their licenses.

Carr argues that the FCC is merely holding broadcasters accountable to their statutory and public-interest obligations. In isolation, that sounds reasonable. But government actions do not occur in isolation. Motive, timing, selectivity and the statements of officials matter, particularly where protected speech is concerned.

Trump has repeatedly spoken about broadcast licenses as though they were presidential permission slips for favorable coverage. According to ABC’s complaint, he suggested as far back as 2020 that broadcasters reporting what he considered “fake news” should lose their licenses. After ABC’s 2024 presidential debate, he said the FCC “ought to take away their license,” and he continued making similar threats against ABC and other networks.

Once Trump returned to office, those threats acquired something they had previously lacked: an administration willing to translate them into regulatory pressure.

Perhaps the clearest example came after Jimmy Kimmel angered the administration. Carr publicly told ABC that the matter could be handled “the easy way or the hard way,” saying the companies could take action against Kimmel or there would be “additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Strip away the bureaucratic language and the message is difficult to miss: take action against a television personality whose speech the government dislikes, or prepare for additional attention from your federal regulator.

That is not what an independent agency is supposed to sound like. It sounds like coercion.

ABC says the pressure worked. Hours after Carr’s statements, the network temporarily suspended Kimmel. Trump celebrated the decision, while Carr responded to news of the suspension with a celebratory animated image.

Then came the licenses.

On April 27, 2026, Trump demanded that Kimmel be “immediately fired by Disney and ABC.” The next day, the FCC ordered all eight ABC-owned television stations to submit early license-renewal applications, saying the review was necessary for an employment investigation and to determine whether ABC had met broader public-interest obligations.

Calling this unusual understates the point. ABC says the FCC had not ordered a broadcaster to apply for renewal ahead of schedule in more than half a century and had never simultaneously demanded early applications from a group of stations owned by one network. The stations were given only 30 days to prepare applications that ordinarily take months.

And these licenses were nowhere near expiration. The complaint shows that the eight stations were pulled into renewal proceedings between roughly two-and-a-half and more than five years early.

That timing becomes even more remarkable considering the stations’ history. ABC says its eight stations produce more than 390 hours of scheduled local news each week, seven rank first in their markets for local-news viewership, and the stations have received more than 200 awards or honors during their current license terms. None of the eight has ever had a renewal application denied.

Apparently, decades of satisfactory public service suddenly became questionable at almost exactly the moment the president became furious with the network’s programming.

The FCC’s demands did not stop with license paperwork.

According to the complaint, the agency sought internal communications involving The View’s booking staff, producers and on-air hosts concerning political candidates. It demanded detailed records of political donations by individual employees and co-hosts. It sought internal guidance on how journalists book and conduct interviews, then expanded its demands to policies concerning “journalistic integrity, newsworthiness, fairness, impartiality, objectivity, partisanship, [and] bias” across programs including Good Morning America, This Week and ABC World News Tonight.

At that point, the government is no longer merely inspecting technical compliance. It is reaching into a newsroom’s editorial process.

The demand for political-contribution records is especially disturbing. Imagine a Democratic administration demanding Fox News employees’ political donations while investigating whether its programming sufficiently served the “public interest.” Conservatives would correctly call that intimidation. It does not become constitutionally harmless because the political roles are reversed.

ABC says it has responded to more than 600 separate requests and produced more than 13,000 pages of documents.

That helps explain one of the most important ideas in this dispute: the process is the punishment.

The FCC does not actually have to revoke ABC’s licenses to intimidate ABC. It merely has to make the possibility credible.

Keep the licenses in limbo. Demand thousands of documents. Examine political donations. Investigate booking decisions. Scrutinize editorial standards. Force executives to wonder whether the next joke, interview, fact-check or decision not to carry a presidential speech could trigger another regulatory response.

Eventually, people begin making different editorial decisions.

ABC says they already have.

According to the complaint, since the FCC began scrutinizing The View, the program’s approach to political guests has changed. Decisions once based primarily on newsworthiness, audience interest and scheduling must now consider whether inviting a candidate could later be cited by the FCC during license proceedings. ABC says no candidate for public office appeared on The View after the agency’s February inquiry.

That is the chilling effect in real time.

The same thing allegedly happened when ABC chose not to carry Trump’s July 16 primetime address live. The complaint says ABC considered the possibility of retaliation and ultimately livestreamed the speech on ABC News Live, something it ordinarily would not have done. Trump then called for ABC’s licenses to be revoked, and Carr later said the network’s decision would be considered during the license review.

A president gives a speech. A broadcaster decides not to air it live. The president demands that the broadcaster lose its licenses. His FCC chairman says that editorial decision will be considered during the agency’s examination of those licenses.

That should be intolerable in a country claiming to have a free press.

ABC also points to an awkward bit of FCC history. During Trump’s first presidency, then-Chairman Ajit Pai rejected similar calls for license revocation, saying the FCC lacked authority to revoke a station’s license because of the content of a particular newscast. Federal law also expressly states that the FCC has no “power of censorship.”

The law did not suddenly become less protective of journalism. The leadership changed.

ABC’s lawsuit is unusual because the company is asking a federal district court to intervene before the FCC completes its process. Normally, the agency would act first and judicial review would come later.

But ABC’s argument is that the constitutional injury is occurring now.

The company describes the pending license process as a Sword of Damocles. Even if the FCC ultimately never revokes a license, years of investigations and hearings could leave every editorial decision shadowed by the possibility that angering the administration might provoke regulatory retaliation.

That is precisely why waiting until the process is finished could make judicial relief largely meaningless. By then, how many interviews were never booked? How many stories were softened? How many jokes were rewritten? How many executives decided that confronting Washington simply was not worth another investigation?

Censorship does not always arrive with a government official holding a red pencil.

Sometimes it arrives through investigations, compliance costs, license reviews and hearings.

And sometimes the government never needs to formally ban speech because it has made speaking too expensive, dangerous or uncertain.

Perhaps most tellingly, the concern is not coming only from liberals, journalists or ABC’s attorneys. ABC’s filing cites Republican Senator Ted Cruz calling this kind of government pressure “dangerous as hell,” Republican Senator John Kennedy saying the FCC “scares me right now,” and Justice Neil Gorsuch pointing to the Kimmel episode as a warning about what a powerful executive agency could do to a business disfavored by the party controlling the White House.

This is bigger than Jimmy Kimmel. Bigger than The View. Bigger than ABC.

ABC can be biased. Its journalists can make mistakes. Kimmel can tell bad jokes. The View can irritate half the country. None of that gives a president the constitutional right to threaten a broadcaster’s ability to remain on the air.

A free press is not a press the president considers fair. It is a press that does not need the president’s approval.

If the FCC establishes that “public interest” regulation permits government officials to inspect newsroom communications, inventory journalists’ political donations, scrutinize editorial judgments and accelerate license proceedings after presidential complaints about unfavorable coverage, every broadcaster will understand the message.

Criticize the administration, and perhaps nothing happens.

Or perhaps your licenses receive unusual scrutiny.

Perhaps your employees’ political activities become government business.

Perhaps your editorial decisions become evidence.

Perhaps your lawyers spend years answering regulators.

Perhaps your executives eventually decide that one controversial guest, story or joke simply is not worth the trouble.

ABC’s complaint argues that the message reaches far beyond one network: ABC may be the immediate target, but every broadcaster is watching what happens.

That is why this lawsuit matters.

The Trump administration can call it accountability. Carr can call it enforcement. The FCC can call it protecting the public interest.

But when a president repeatedly demands that critical broadcasters lose their licenses, his regulator threatens a network with doing things “the easy way or the hard way,” extraordinary investigations follow, licenses are dragged into review years early, journalists’ political donations and internal communications are demanded, and programming decisions begin changing under that pressure, there is another word for it.

Intimidation.

And when government intimidation is used to influence what the press says, what it airs and whom it criticizes, the First Amendment is not an obstacle standing in the government’s way.

It is the reason the government is supposed to stop.

Additional Source: New York Times (Gift Article)

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