Recommendations of the Editorial team
A day after Donald Trump and Melania Trump publicly called for ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke, the Federal Communications Commission ordered Disney’s eight ABC stations to to resubmit their license renewal applications within 30 days – as Semafor first reported.
According to the previous schedule, the documents would not have been due until 2028 at the earliest. The FCC justified the order as a step in a year-old investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices and alleged violations of its ban on discrimination. A Disney spokesman said the company would defend its reputation “through due process of law.”
On April 23, Kimmel broadcast a parody of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on his show in which he said Melania Trump was “shining like an expectant widow” – a pretty blatant dig at the 79-year-old president’s age. Two days later, a 31-year-old Californian named Cole Tomas Allen opened fire near the security checkpoint at the real correspondents’ dinner. Federal prosecutors charged Allen with attempting to assassinate the president.
Trump’s demand on Truth Social
On Monday, both Trumps demanded Disney take action against Kimmel. “Jimmy Kimmel should be fired by Disney and ABC immediately,” the president wrote on Truth Social, calling the joke a “despicable call to violence.”
Anna M. Gomez, the FCC’s only Democratic commissioner, called the agency’s move retaliatory. “This is unprecedented, unlawful and will go nowhere,” she said in a statement, according to CNN. “This political sleight of hand will not be caught. Companies should challenge it head on. The First Amendment to the Constitution is on their side.”
Authority chief Brendan Carr, a Trump confidant, has been using the FCC’s enforcement powers for a year to put pressure on broadcasters whose programming the White House dislikes. In September 2025, after Kimmel joked about the political affiliation of the man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk, Carr warned that the FCC had “resources” at its disposal. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said.
ABC briefly pulled Kimmel from the program
ABC then took Kimmel’s show off the air within hours. Nexstar and Sinclair, two broadcaster chains with open regulatory proceedings before the government, removed the show from their offerings as a precautionary measure. After massive audience protests, the show returned six days later.
In March, after the president complained about media coverage of the war with Iran, Carr wrote on Carr’s comments were met with considerable resistance – including from within his own ranks. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Trump ally, told Fox News he doesn’t share the FCC chairman’s approach. “I’m a big supporter of the First Amendment,” Johnson said. “I don’t like the heavy hand of the state, no matter who wields it.”
As public interest lawyer Andrew Jay Schwartzman told CNN last year, no major broadcaster has lost its license since the 1980s, when one was revoked for bribery. Since then, only small radio stations have lost their licenses, he added, due to “criminal acts or serious misrepresentations.”
Kimmel defends his joke
On his Monday show, Kimmel defended the joke and declined to apologize. “I think a good place to start to temper the rhetoric,” Kimmel said, “would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.” He described his comment as “a very harmless joke about the fact that he is almost 80 and she is younger than me.” He added that it was “by no definition in the world a call for assassination.”
Kimmel has long been undeterred 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 it when he admits that I annoy him,” Kimmel said. “If he ignored us, it wouldn’t be half as much fun.”
