The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under Brendan Carr, has spent the second Trump Administration going after broadcast networks with previously unheard-of tactics, including pushing for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary removal from the air, probing The View, and targeting TV stations’ broadcast licenses.
Now, a major corporation is striking back.
Per NBC News, Disney and ABC have filed a lawsuit against the regulator, “seeking to stop an unusual early TV station license renewal process that they say is an attack on free speech by the Trump administration.” Disney owns ABC and eight of its “owned and operated” broadcast stations. Earlier this year, the FCC ordered those stations to file renewals of their broadcast licenses.
Disney has finally decided to defend its ABC television shows in a lawsuit alleging that the FCC is waging a “retaliatory campaign” against them. https://t.co/9t4GBL54qB
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 18, 2026
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NBC describes it as “one of the most muscular legal challenges” any media company has made to the Trump Administration.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the lawsuit says, per NBC News. “That campaign began in this Administration’s earliest days and has only intensified since.”
“The Commission issued an unprecedented order requiring the Stations to file early applications to renew their licenses—years before any of their licenses would have come up for renewal in the ordinary course and allowing only thirty days to file applications which ordinarily take months to prepare,” the lawyers said in a statement along with the lawsuit.
With 6abc potentially facing a Trump-forced blackout, ABC sues the FCC https://t.co/n44QNtQD8w
— The Philadelphia Inquirer (@PhillyInquirer) August 18, 2026
The suit also asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to immediately stop the FCC from “taking or threatening to take any action” against the network.
Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, expressed support for the suit.
“I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up,” Gomez said in a statement. “This should be a welcome sign for every broadcaster who has felt the weight of this overreaching government pressure in silence.”
Photo courtesy of Brendan Carr’s official FCC photo.
