The Federal Communications Commission is preparing an early review of Disney’s broadcast licenses for its local stations, according to Semafor, increasing government pressure as President Donald Trump calls for the company to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
CNN’s Brian Stelter later reported that the FCC “is planning to file paperwork as early as this afternoon that will challenge Disney’s eight licenses for its eight ABC stations.”
The FCC and Disney did not respond to immediate requests for comment. In an X post, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, called the move “unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere.”
“This political stunt won’t stick,” she wrote. “Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
A source told Semafor the potential review is not tied to Kimmel, who irked Trump and first lady Melania Trump over a joke comparing the first lady to “an expectant widow” days before an alleged gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and target the president and his officials. The two called for Disney to fire him.
Kimmel on Monday refused to apologize for the joke, telling his audience that it was a “very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that.”
Trump has frequently called for the FCC to pull the broadcast licenses of networks over news coverage he doesn’t like, and Carr threatened Disney’s licenses earlier this month over the company’s diversity initiatives. The Wall Street Journal reported the move was tied to such efforts, stemming from a probe it launched last month.
“If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that’s a very serious issue at the FCC, that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license,” Carr told Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on “The Story” earlier this month. “But we’re going to follow the facts wherever they go.”
Disney briefly suspended Kimmel last year after Carr warned broadcasters following the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk; Carr has said he did not threaten them. More recently, Carr confirmed an FCC broke into ABC’s “The View.”
The FCC licenses public airwaves to ABC local stations, and the next series of renewals is not expected until 2028, according to the agency’s website. Carr told Reuters last month he was open to early reviews — and revocations after investigations — if it meant helping “broadcasters reorient their operations to the public interest.”
“The licenses could come up earlier than 2028,” he said. “Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn’t. They could.”
The agency has not revoked a U.S. broadcast license in more than 40 years.
