‘it’s The Threats That Are The Point’: How Brendan Carr Exerts His Fcc Power 

For days after ABC restored his show, comedian Jimmy Kimmel remained off the air at more than 60 television stations, including in major markets like Washington, D.C. — a powerful illustration of the effectiveness of a single Trump administration bureaucrat.

The Kimmel saga is the latest example of Brendan Carr’s unorthodox but effective reign at the Federal Communications Commission, turning a previously wonky agency into a new force in the American culture wars.

As chair of the FCC, Carr has spent the year jousting with big-name media companies and liberal-leaning institutions, scoring huge wins for President Donald Trump’s agenda, all without any formal enforcement moves.

He used two levers at the same time to pressure Kimmel off the air, issuing public threats to ABC and its parent company Disney, and also invoking his significant power over the station ownership groups that carry his show across the country.

In just eight months in office, Carr has used a similar mix of public pressure and background leverage to push two major telecom giants, Verizon and T-Mobile, to abandon their diversity, equity and inclusion practices to win merger sign-offs. His investigation into the venerable CBS news program “60 Minutes” helped win similar concessions and commitments on media bias as he negotiated Skydance’s merger with CBS parent company Paramount — and may have led to a settlement and direct payment to Trump himself.

None of these actions required official regulatory crackdowns. Carr didn’t even have a working GOP majority on the FCC until June. His chairmanship has instead been an exercise in sidestepping formal lanes to enact conservative policy priorities.

“The goal is to get the companies to capitulate in advance, to the point where the FCC or the administration doesn't even need to speak,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s lone Democrat, told POLITICO in an interview.

“It's the process that's the point. It's the threats that are the point,” she added.

The Kimmel story is a case study in Carr’s use of leverage. Carr made his threats informally, complaining during a conservative podcast on Sept. 17 that Kimmel’s alleged falsehoods about the killing of Charlie Kirk could open ABC and parent company Disney to FCC investigation under rarely used news distortion rules. He also stressed the FCC’s power over licensed TV stations — and hinted that local broadcasters operating them could be subject to fines and license revocation for broadcasting such “garbage.”

Within hours, Kimmel was off the air — in part because the nation’s two largest station owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, said they wouldn’t broadcast his show.

The two companies both have significant business in front of the FCC and need Carr’s blessing to expand their operations. Even after ABC brought Kimmel’s show back, both groups kept Kimmel off the air for most of the week.

On Friday, Sinclair and Nexstar announced Kimmel’s return, in part under pressure from local viewers and advertisers.

Though the restoration suggested Carr’s power has limits, Kimmel’s quick suspension last week caused alarm for many — mostly Democrats, but also some Republicans, worried about what Carr’s intervention meant for free expression on American airwaves.

Some of Trump’s biggest supporters, however, were thrilled. Daniel Suhr, the lawyer leading the conservative Center for American Rights, quickly endorsed Carr’s Kimmel comments as “excellent” and filed an official complaint with the FCC urging the affiliate station owners to “hold ABC accountable.” He later lauded Nexstar and Sinclair’s “courageous stand.”

Trump, too, remains a fan: "Keep up the GREAT work, Brendan," he posted on Friday night.

The power of suggestion

Carr, who Trump elevated to chair on Jan. 20, embraced the bully pulpit even during his earlier years as commissioner. As chair, he has become equally adept at wielding the agency’s lower-profile forms of regulatory leverage such as merger approval.

Carr often relies on the power of suggestion, opening probes and signaling future lines of scrutiny into liberal-leaning targets. One recent example was his almost offhand statement that the FCC may have to reclassify “The View” in a way that would force the liberal-leaning talk show to give equal airtime to competing political candidates. Early this year, he launched a probe into whether the public networks NPR and PBS are skirting advertising rules — which hasn’t yet included any visible outcome, but undermined their credibility as Republicans yanked their funding.

Consequences can be existential for companies, and amount to billions of dollars. In May, Carr opened a probe into whether telecom company EchoStar was adequately fulfilling its merger-related obligations to build out a 5G network, an inquiry sought by SpaceX and others eager to gain access to EchoStar’s share of the airwaves.

By the end of summer, and on the verge of bankruptcy, EchoStar announced it was selling more than $40 billion of its valuable wireless spectrum. The buyers were AT&T and SpaceX, the satellite company owned by Elon Musk, a staunch supporter of Carr’s.

FCC leaders have always used the agency as a stage to some degree, writing letters and raising issues and cajoling industry. But the extent and scale to which Carr has done this, and the depth of casually delivered threats, stands out as new territory to agency veterans, especially given the track record of apparent successes he appears to be piling up.

“I have tremendous respect for Brendan Carr’s tactical abilities,” former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who led the agency during the Obama years, told POLITICO.

However, Wheeler pointed out, the FCC would have little traction if any of these issues came to court. “There is clearly a modus operandi of, ‘How can I use threats of intimidation to achieve desired goals that, if they were formalized, a court would throw out?’” said Wheeler. “And he's done that repeatedly.”

Many concessions Carr has extracted would be found unconstitutional if linked into formal regulatory requirements, Gomez said.

“These companies really need to keep in mind that their FCC is toothless in the end,” Gomez told POLITICO.

'The easy way or the hard way'

For most of his tenure, Carr appeared to be striking a balance between traditional conservative telecom deregulation and MAGA bombast. The latest Kimmel threat has felt different, though, and it may test whether Carr finally politically miscalculated.

After Carr warned the situation could go “the easy way or the hard way” for broadcasters airing Kimmel’s show, Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) cautioned last week that Carr’s rhetoric is “dangerous as hell.”

Carr has built a wellspring of GOP support over the years, however, including at the White House. Trump, asked recently about Cruz’s comparison of Carr to a mob boss for his threats, pronounced the FCC chair “an incredible American patriot with courage."

Carr has vigorously defended his actions, and on Monday maintained “Disney, on its own, made the business decision” to suspend Kimmel and blamed Democrats for “a campaign of projection and distortion” about the issue. (He didn’t acknowledge the emerging bloc of GOP critics.) Spokespeople for Carr didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story, including to respond to concerns voiced by Gomez and Wheeler.

Some Republicans have stuck to this line. “I think Brendan Carr’s comments had nothing to do with the fact that an unfunny activist was finally fired,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) told POLITICO during Kimmel’s suspension.

Like many Republicans, Schmitt argues that market forces led ABC and the affiliates to recoil. Kimmel, in a monologue, had accused the “MAGA gang” of “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of their own,” despite the suspect’s apparent left-leaning politics. On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance downplayed Carr’s threats as a “joke.”

But in Trump’s Washington, the president’s own views are inescapable, especially for his loyalist agency heads like Carr. Trump blasted ABC Tuesday night for letting Kimmel back, teasing a potential lawsuit over the host’s perceived liberal politics, and has repeatedly called for revoking broadcast licenses.

Trump often ties those calls to personal complaints about news coverage of his own presidency. Although a White House official recently denied any role in Carr’s warning or ABC’s decision-making, many believe broader cues from the administration, at least at a high level, likely guide Carr’s choices.

Gomez disputes the idea that this is just the free market at work. She chided companies for their capitulation as they seek to curry favor with the administration, and dismissed the idea that their “voluntary” commitments — like Verizon nixing DEI, or Paramount Skydance agreeing to install a CBS News ombudsman — actually represent genuine choice, in light of pressure from Carr and other conservatives.

Strong-arming, or a rebalance of power?

Carr’s leverage over station owners like Nexstar and Sinclair comes from the agency’s longtime authority over broadcasters’ use of the public airwaves, which comes with public interest obligations and other regulatory strings.

The broadcast industry writ large, both networks and TV station owners, has significant business in front of Carr. Companies want him to, among many other changes, steer consumers to next-generation TV technology with a new mandate for what’s included in TV sets. They also want him to roll back the station-ownership cap limiting how big a TV broadcaster can get.

Loosening that ownership limit, which currently restricts station owners to reaching no more than 39 percent of U.S. households, is necessary for Nexstar to complete its $6.2-billion merger with rival station owner Tegna. Sinclair, which is exploring various transactions, would also benefit.

Carr’s threats may have limits, however, as both Nexstar and Sinclair announced late Friday they would return Kimmel to their dozens of TV stations.

Nexstar defended keeping Kimmel off air through this Friday. “We have had discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company and appreciate their constructive approach to addressing our concerns,” the company said when announcing the decision.

Sinclair cited feedback from advertisers, viewers and community leaders as well as a shooting at a Sacramento TV station. Both station owners maintained their decisions were independent of government influence. Sinclair also noted “it is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content.”

Ultimately, in the case of Kimmel, it’s still not settled just what concessions conservatives may have secured. Sinclair, which initially wanted Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and donate to his conservative organization, backtracked without any of that happening and without ABC committing to any changes. Kimmel’s ratings, meanwhile, are suddenly soaring.

Still, some conservatives see a long awaited sea change in their favor — not regulatory strong-arming so much as Carr flexing the agency’s decades-old public interest powers to even a longstanding power imbalance in the broadcast industry. His recent shifts could empower local broadcasters, they say, to push back against more liberal coastal programmers.

“New ideas are percolating,” said Nathan Leamer, a longtime Carr ally and former FCC official.