One of the nation’s largest broadcasters is accusing the Trump administration of retaliation, alleging the Federal Communications Commission is unfairly policing ABC and ABC-owned stations by conducting an unprecedented early review of its broadcast licenses because the president personally dislikes its programming.
“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” lawyers for the network said in a Wednesday filing.
Disney-owned ABC has found itself a target of the administration’s attacks on the press as President Donald Trump tests his power to weaponize government agencies in an effort to intimidate and deter the media from covering him in a negative light.
During his second term, the president has repeatedly demanded the network have its licenses revoked and called for the firing of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over political remarks he made. The FCC announced the early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses earlier this year, along with a number of other investigations into the network.
Most recently, the president demanded ABC — and any other network that refused to air his July 16 primetime speech — have its licenses revoked.
Now, the company is warning that the administration is making a clear attack on the First Amendment and threatening all broadcasters’ freedoms, claiming the express purpose of the FCC’s actions is “to punish ABC for the content of its speech and to chill future speech that the Administration dislikes.”
“Even if any violation were ever substantiated, the [FCC] has a graduated set of well established remedies far short of the corporate death penalty of license non-renewal,” the company’s lawyers argued. “That the agency reached first for the most extreme sanction in its arsenal, before making any finding at all, reveals its true objective: to chill not only ABC, but every broadcaster watching.”
The FCC made its unprecedented move in April when it announced it would require ABC to file early broadcast license renewal applications for all eight of its television stations, just one day after Trump publicly chastised Kimmel for a joke he made about first lady Melania Trump.
Before that, the commission had not called for renewal applications ahead of schedule for more than 50 years and never once demanded simultaneous applications from a group of stations.
“The Commission’s departure from those norms lays bare what is really going on: the Administration is retaliating against ABC for the exercise of its First Amendment rights,” the filing reads.
Despite Trump’s best efforts, the FCC would still face significant obstacles if it ever attempted to strip ABC of its licenses, as it would need to prove that the network had abused rules and engaged in misconduct.
Trump’s attacks on ABC began while he was still running for a second term, when he accused the network’s moderators of unfairly fact-checking him during a 2024 debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, asserting the FCC “ought to take away their license.”
Shortly after returning to the White House, Trump’s newly appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr asked the agency’s Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation into the network for potentially violating equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting DEI efforts in the workplace.
In September, after Kimmel made an on-air joke about Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, Carr issued an ultimatum to the network: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
ABC suspended Kimmel’s show for roughly a week before reinstalling the program after facing backlash from the public and political leaders on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who called Carr’s threats “dangerous as hell.”
But the FCC continued its pursuit of ABC in February when it launched an investigation into “The View,” alleging a violation of an equal opportunities rule by hosting Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.
Lawyers for ABC noted that the “View” investigation was launched just a month after the FCC reversed decades of precedent that exempted late-night and daytime talk shows from the equal opportunity requirements.