A day after Donald Trump and Melania Trump publicly demanded ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke, the Federal Communications Commission ordered Disney’s eight company-owned ABC television stations to refile for license renewal within 30 days, as first reported by Semafor.
Under the existing schedule, renewal paperwork was not due until 2028 at the earliest. The FCC framed the order as a step in a year-old investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices and purported violations of rules against unlawful discrimination. A Disney spokesperson said the company would defend its record “through the appropriate legal channels.”
On April 23, Kimmel aired a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner sketch in which he said Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow,” a pretty obvious jab at the 79-year-old president’s age. Two days later, a 31-year-old California man, Cole Tomas Allen, opened fire near the security checkpoint at the actual correspondents’ dinner. Federal prosecutors charged Allen with attempting to assassinate the president.
On Monday, the Trumps both demanded Disney fire Kimmel. “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” the president posted on Truth Social, calling the joke a “despicable call to violence.”
Anna M. Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner on the FCC, called the agency’s move retaliatory. “This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere,” she said in a statement, according to CNN. “This political stunt won’t stick. Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
The agency’s chairman, Trump appointee Brendan Carr, has spent the past year using the FCC’s enforcement powers to pressure broadcasters whose programming has drawn White House complaints. In September 2025, after Kimmel joked about the political affiliations of the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk, Carr warned that the FCC had “remedies” available. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said.
ABC pulled Kimmel’s show within hours. Nexstar and Sinclair, two affiliate groups with regulatory matters pending before the administration, preemptively dropped the program from their stations. After mass viewer protests, the show came back six days later.
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In March, after the president complained about media coverage of the war with Iran, Carr posted on X that broadcasters running “hoaxes and news distortions” had “a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.” Carr’s remarks drew significant backlash, including from some Republicans. Senator Ron Johnson, a Trump ally, told Fox News that he disagreed with the chairman’s approach. “I’m a big supporter of the First Amendment,” Johnson said. “I do not like the heavy hand of government no matter who’s wielding it.”
As public-interest lawyer Andrew Jay Schwartzman told CNN last year, no large broadcaster has lost its license since the 1980s, when one was pulled for bribery. Since then, only small radio stations have lost licenses, he added, for “felonious conduct or severe misrepresentations.”
On Monday’s show, Kimmel defended the joke and declined to apologise. “I think a great place to start to dial [rhetoric] back,” Kimmel said, “would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.” He called his comment “a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am.” He added that it was “not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination.”
Kimmel has long been unbothered by Trump’s pressure campaigns. In his 2025 Rolling Stone Interview, he said he found it “funny” when Trump complained about him to Disney. “I like when he admits I’m bothering him,” Kimmel said. “If he ignored us, it wouldn’t be as much fun.”
From Rolling Stone US
