On April 28, 2026, Trump's FCC ordered Disney to file license-renewal applications within 30 days for ALL of its licensed TV stations. The eight ABC-owned spectrum licenses were not scheduled for renewal until 2028 at the earliest, with some not due until 2031. The FCC has the authority during a renewal review to require Disney to prove it meets the agency's 'public interest' standards — and could revoke the licenses, an action the agency has not taken in more than 40 years.
The order followed days of public pressure from the White House on Disney to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. On his April 23 broadcast, Kimmel had joked that First Lady Melania Trump had the glow of an 'expectant widow' — a quip about the 31-year age gap between Trump (almost 80) and Melania. Two days later, Cole Allen charged the WHCD security perimeter with a shotgun, handgun, and knives. Trump and his communications director Steven Cheung demanded Disney 'fire him immediately,' with Cheung adding that Kimmel should be 'shunned for the rest of his life.' Trump called the joke a 'call to violence.' Kimmel, on his Monday monologue, defended the joke as 'a very light roast about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination.'
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez (D), in a statement on X: 'This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere. Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.' Jeffrey Schneider, USC Gould School of Law professor, told the BBC the early-review tactic is 'quite rare' and usually only triggered by 'technical issues or fraudulent conduct.' He concluded: 'In my opinion, it is a purely political act meant to assuage the administration's supporters.' The FCC's official justification cited an 'ongoing investigation into Disney's diversity initiatives' — a probe FCC Chair Brendan Carr opened with a letter to Disney last year alleging the company promotes diversity in a way that 'does not comply' with regulation. Industry observers and even legal commentators framed the diversity rationale as pretext: the order arrived four days after Kimmel's joke, with the White House publicly demanding his firing.
This is the second time in seven months that Carr's FCC has been used to retaliate against an outlet that aired Kimmel material Trump didn't like. Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air in September 2025 after a monologue about the Charlie Kirk shooting; ABC reinstated him a week later. Today's order escalates that pattern by threatening the corporate parent's underlying license to broadcast — not just one show.
Update (October 6, 2026): ABC's lawsuit against the FCC's early review of its licenses was argued before Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington. “We are asking to stop pure retaliation, putting us in a process that we should never have to be in,” ABC's lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, said, calling the review “blatant violations” of the Constitution, the Guardian reported. The FCC's lawyer said the renewal process “is not about the licenses” but a “tool” to speed its equal-opportunity review, which Wilkinson called a “fatal admission.” The judge was skeptical of the government's framing: “It strikes me with all the comments that we have from the president and from Commissioner Brendan Carr that this is merely over a discovery dispute,” AliKhan said, Politico reported. She asked the government for a brief by October 9. No ruling has been issued.
ABC's lawyer told the judge the review was already affecting coverage: “We are making different editorial decisions,” Beth Wilkinson said, Reason reported, describing the network as sitting with its “head on the guillotine.” An FCC spokesperson said, “Disney filed in the wrong court at the wrong time based on meritless claims,” Politico reported.