Trump FCC warns all broadcasters to follow orders or be punished like ABC
Summary
The Trump administration's FCC warns all broadcasters to comply with orders or face punishment, citing ABC's ongoing case where Disney was ordered to submit early license renewals over alleged discrimination violations. ABC challenges the order as unconstitutional and retaliatory.
<p>The eight broadcast TV stations owned by ABC filed applications for early license renewals under protest yesterday, accusing the Federal Communications Commission of trying to suppress speech as part of "an unprecedented attack on a single company’s entire portfolio of broadcast licenses."</p>
<p>FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses from President Trump's least favorite networks. He recently <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/fcc-orders-review-of-abc-licenses-after-kimmel-joke-offends-trump-and-first-lady/">ordered the Disney-owned ABC</a> to file early license renewal applications for all of its TV stations over allegations that its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices violate anti-discrimination rules.</p>
<p>"The only plausible reason to issue the Order is to punish the Station for speech the government does not like," ABC said in its filings. The FCC is "using the license process renewal to punish a broadcaster for its editorial choices" in "an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices," it said.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/trump-fcc-warns-all-broadcasters-to-follow-orders-or-be-punished-like-abc/">Read full article</a></p>
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# Trump FCC warns all broadcasters to follow orders or be punished like ABC
Source: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/trump-fcc-warns-all-broadcasters-to-follow-orders-or-be-punished-like-abc/](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/trump-fcc-warns-all-broadcasters-to-follow-orders-or-be-punished-like-abc/)
## ABC: FCC order “has*no*legitimate purpose”
ABC submitted individual filings for[WABC\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df87d8b5c00ce&id=25076f919df5a492019df87d8b5c00ce&goBack=N)in New York;[WPVI\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df8a44014011e&id=25076f919df5a492019df8a44014011e&goBack=N)in Philadelphia;[WTVD](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076ff39ddf363a019ddf8acbbc00a6&id=25076ff39ddf363a019ddf8acbbc00a6&goBack=N)in Durham, North Carolina;[WLS\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df88fde5100f6&id=25076f919df5a492019df88fde5100f6&goBack=N)in Chicago;[KGO\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df83be64f0076&id=25076f919df5a492019df83be64f0076&goBack=N)in San Francisco;[KFSN\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df825bd76004e&id=25076f919df5a492019df825bd76004e&goBack=N)in Fresno, California;[KTRK\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df873ad3300a6&id=25076f919df5a492019df873ad3300a6&goBack=N)in Houston; and[KABC\-TV](https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076f919df5a492019df7a4f19c001e&id=25076f919df5a492019df7a4f19c001e&goBack=N)in Los Angeles\.
The station “submits this license renewal application under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional Order issued on April 28, 2026, by the Media Bureau,” ABC’s filings said\. “The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades\. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here\. The Order has*no*legitimate purpose\.”
ABC said it was filing the applications without waiving any rights and called on the FCC to rescind the order\.
“There is no information that the application will reveal that the Commission could not obtain through other means,” ABC wrote\. “The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment\. Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal\. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail\.”
## Carr calls Disney responses “disingenuous”
Carr wrote in an[X post](https://x.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/2060112706762391556)yesterday that the “FCC has been investigating Disney for over a year now after reports surfaced alleging that it had been discriminating against people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws,” and that “Disney only filed these applications to renew their ABC broadcast licenses after the FCC informed the company that their responses to the agency’s investigation had been disingenuous, deficient, and improper\.”
ABC said in its filings that the company produced over 11,000 pages of documents in response to a series of FCC requests\. ABC said the order to file early license renewals “purports to investigate ‘possible violations’ of the ‘prohibition on unlawful discrimination,’ but never identifies what violation it had in mind\.”
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