WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s ongoing investigation of whether the ABC-owned broadcast stations should lose their licenses, a number of former high-ranking FCC officials filed comments with the regulator attacking the probe as an unconstitutional attempt to quash news coverage critical of the Trump administration.
The filing by 13 former officials accuses FCC Chair Brendan Carr of using the early renewal proceeding as a pretense to punish ABC and Disney for broadcasting speech the Trump administration doesn’t like, calling it “a grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution.”
“This early renewal proceeding follows a sustained campaign by Chairman Carr and the Trump administration of threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes,” the filing continued. “… [It] is in fact an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process.”
The filing was signed by Kathryn C. Brown, Rachelle B. Chong, Mark S. Fowler, Jerald N. Fritz, Rosemary Harold, William T. Lake, Ruth Milkman, Dennis R. Patrick, Peter Pitsch, Alfred C. Sikes, Gloria Tristani, Thomas E. Wheeler, and Christopher J. Wright. They include former FCC chairs, commissioners, and senior staff who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Some of the petitioners were part of a group that issued similar criticisms of the agency in November of 2025 in a filing asking the agency to rescind it’s so-called “news distortion” policy.
That petition was dismissed in June on procedural grounds.
The filing stems from a controversial push by the FCC to regulate content based on the public interest standards of broadcast station licenses.
That has led to investigations into ABC programs like “The View,” and statements by President Trump and Carr threatening the licenses of stations airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”. In April, the FCC issued an order requiring ABC to apply for early renewal of its owned stations.
The virtually unprecedented order calls for the review of licenses that are not up for renewal until 2028 at the earliest. Last week, Carr suggested ABC’s editorial decision to stream, rather than broadcast, Trump’s election lie speech could also be penalized.
“Chairman Carr seems to be laboring under the ill-conceived notion that broadcasters have only partial rights to free speech under the First Amendment,” said Mark Fowler, a Republican who served as Chairman of the FCC from 1981 to 1987. “Just because the FCC issues licenses doesn’t make it the speech police. With this senseless early renewal proceeding, Carr is demonstrating that he has completely lost touch not just with the role of the FCC, but also with his own job description.”
“This proceeding is an effort to punish ABC and Disney for poorly disguised political reasons," said Rachelle Chong, a Republican who served as Commissioner of the FCC from 1994 to 1997. “The early review and the allegations are unusual in a typical FCC license review which suggests it is more about a desire to silence speech.”
In November, a number of former officials from this coalition filed a petition with the FCC to consider rescinding the news distortion policy, a tool Chairman Carr has abused to chill free speech in the press. The petitioners are represented by counsel at Protect Democracy and TechFreedom, as well as Andrew Jay Schwartzman and Gigi Sohn.
The full filing is available here.
