FCC chair is accused of illegally trying to rein in the media. Here are his biggest controversies.

MW FCC chair is accused of illegally trying to rein in the media. Here are his biggest controversies.

By Lukas I. Alpert

A legal watchdog group has asked bar associations to investigate whether Brendan Carr violated ethical obligations in his effort to enforce President Trump's media agenda

FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been front and center in several instances in which the Trump administration has attempted to rein in the media.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has historically been a little-known figure outside a circle of media-industry insiders and regulators. But under the Trump administration, FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been a very public face at the center of controversy.

The 47-year-old Carr has played a prominent role in President Donald Trump's efforts to rein in the media and to change longstanding rules about how big television companies can get.

Now a legal watchdog group is accusing Carr of breaking the law in his effort to enforce Trump's agenda and has asked the bar associations of Washington, D.C., and Maryland to investigate whether he has violated his ethical obligations as an attorney.

"Carr appears to have breached his ethical obligations by using his position to pressure regulated broadcasters to produce speech he - and, by implication, the President - deem politically acceptable, under threat of adverse action by the FCC," the nonpartisan Legal Accountability Center wrote in letters to the two bar associations.

The FCC didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment, but in comments to the media newsletter Status, Carr dismissed the watchdog organization as a "far-left activist group."

"I'm going to keep doing my job ... whatever activist groups like this think notwithstanding," Carr said.

Here are some of the most controversial issues Carr has been involved in since Trump returned to office last year.

Jimmy Kimmel

When the White House called for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired after he made remarks about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year, Carr was at the forefront in putting pressure on ABC and its affiliates to take action.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said at the time. "These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Carr's comments came just ahead of moves by local television group owners Nexstar $(NXST)$ and Sinclair $(SBGI)$ to pull Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic, from their ABC affiliates, which prompted ABC owner Walt Disney $(DIS)$ to take the show off the air entirely for a week.

The move to take Kimmel's show off television led to outrage from some viewers who believed the effort amounted to political censorship. Calls for a boycott of Disney resulted in double the number of cancellations of the Disney+ streaming service as in a normal month.

Kimmel's show was later returned to the air.

Jimmy Kimmel 2.0

Late last month, Trump again called for Kimmel to be fired following a joke the comedian made about first lady Melania Trump.

The following day, Carr chimed in, saying he was placing ABC's broadcast licenses under review. Carr said the review stemmed from a probe into whether the network's diversity programs were discriminatory and that they had had nothing to do with the latest Kimmel kerfuffle.

Many media watchdogs have spoken out against the move, saying that the timing raised considerable concerns and that the FCC doesn't have the authority to investigate licenses based on objections over speech.

Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic FCC commissioner, has criticized the probe as blatantly political.

"What Disney and ABC are facing is not a series of coincidental regulatory actions but a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC's authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission," she wrote in a letter to Disney's new CEO, Josh D'Amaro. "You are not the first target of this campaign, and you will not be the last."

So far, ABC has declined to take any action against Kimmel, saying it intends to challenge the FCC's probe in court.

Paramount-Skydance merger

In 2024, Paramount reached an agreement to be acquired for $8 billion by David Ellison's Skydance, but the deal got hung up for more than a year over what turned out to be political considerations from the incoming Trump administration.

When the new administration took charge, Paramount was in the midst of defending itself from a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Trump, who alleged that the company's signature news program, CBS's "60 Minutes," had deceptively edited an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Many legal experts viewed the case as baseless and easily winnable for CBS, but Paramount eventually agreed to settle the suit for $16 million in order to speed the deal's approval.

Carr waited until the case was settled before allowing the FCC to sign off on the Paramount Skydance $(PSKY)$ deal, but only after Ellison - who was backed by his father, Oracle co-founder and Trump supporter Larry Ellison - agreed to make ideological changes to news programming on CBS and to end all diversity programs at the company.

Shortly before Carr approved the merger, CBS also announced that it would cancel "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," whose host is a frequent Trump critic.

Nexstar-Tegna deal

In March, the Trump administration approved a $6.2 billion merger of local television station owners Nexstar and Tegna. The sign-off came despite considerable legal issues surrounding the deal.

The main issue has been the longstanding limit on the number of households a television station group is allowed to reach. Under current FCC rules, a station group cannot reach more than 39% of U.S. households. There are also limits on the number of stations a company can own in a single market.

Before the proposed merger, Nexstar reached exactly 39% of U.S. households, while Tegna reached 31%, meaning together their reach would blow well past the percentage limit.

Carr has long argued that the ownership limits are antiquated and anti-competitive and should be changed. But many legal experts say this is a question only Congress can address.

Many media watchers have noted that Nexstar's move to pull Jimmy Kimmel's show off its stations last year came as the FCC was reviewing the deal to merge with Tegna.

While the FCC has approved the deal, the transaction is on hold, as it has been challenged in court by a bipartisan group of state attorneys general as well as by rival DirecTV.

'The View'

Earlier this year, Carr said he had started enforcement proceedings against ABC's long-running daytime talk show "The View," alleging it had violated equal-time rules on appearances by political candidates.

The issue that ostensibly triggered the probe was an appearance in February by James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas. Under the rules, Carr said, the show would have to give equal time to a Republican candidate.

Carr has argued that "The View" - whose hosts are often critical of Trump - doesn't qualify as a news program, which would be exempt from the equal-time rule.

CBS similarly opted not to air an interview with Talarico on Stephen Colbert's late-night show due to the FCC's new interpretation of the equal-time rule.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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May 19, 2026 15:53 ET (19:53 GMT)

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