Trump threatened TV broadcast license revocations; FCC chair targeted The View's news-program status

On September 18, 2025, President Trump publicly threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks whose late-night programming he viewed as partisan. Asked about FCC Chair Brendan Carr's moves against ABC following the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, Trump stated that networks functioning as "an arm of the Democrat Party" are "not allowed" to do so, that their licenses "maybe should be taken away," and explicitly deferred to Carr to make that determination. On the same day, Carr publicly questioned whether ABC's daytime talk show The View "still qualifies" as a "bona fide news program" — a classification whose revocation would subject ABC affiliates to the FCC's equal-opportunity rule, requiring them to give equal airtime to any political candidate who appeared on the show. The FCC's lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, publicly characterized the agency's conduct as "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel" as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."

Broadcast licenses are issued by the FCC under the Communications Act on the condition that licensees serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity." The agency's statutory revocation authority covers technical violations and legal infractions — not the political content or editorial viewpoint of a broadcaster's programming. The equal-opportunity rule that Carr threatened to apply to The View applies to "bona fide news programs," a classification the FCC has historically determined on viewpoint-neutral grounds. Stripping that classification because a show covers politics unfavorably to the administration would convert a neutral regulatory category into a political sanction.

Media-law experts noted that actual license revocation over editorial content would face immediate First Amendment challenges. The coercive mechanism, however, operates well before any formal proceeding: the threat of revocation and elevated regulatory scrutiny is itself enough to induce self-censorship among broadcast networks whose business depends on FCC licensing. The FCC Democratic commissioner's statement — identifying the conduct as a "campaign" rather than isolated decisions — placed it in a pattern of coordinated pressure on disfavored outlets.