By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” ABC and its local affiliates were listening. Within a matter of hours, ABC suspended Kimmel’s show “indefinitely,” a stunning move that has raised serious First Amendment concerns.

“Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke,” the ACLU said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s actions, paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”

While many free speech groups are saying that Carr’s conduct ran afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment, Carr did not violate the letter of the law. That’s because the First Amendment bars government action limiting free speech. And Carr didn’t take any action — he merely, and perhaps ironically, spoke.

The takeaway: President Trump and his lieutenants have a clear grasp on how to pressure companies to change their entertainment content and news coverage without taking action that would provoke a legal battle.

Who is Brendan Carr?

Carr is a long-serving member of the FCC who has become an increasingly visible attack dog for the Trump administration this year. He is an attorney who joined the FCC as a staffer in 2012 and became a commissioner, appointed by Trump, in 2017. Upon Trump’s reelection, the president-elect chose him to chair the regulatory agency. Carr has been a regular at Mar-a-Lago as well as Fox News, and earlier this year he showed his loyalty to Trump by wearing a gold lapel pin of the president’s face.

He rose to prominence in 2024 after he wrote the chapter on the FCC in the conservative blueprint known as Project 2025. In it, he railed against technology and media companies’ “censorship” of right-wing content and values — and promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He wrote that among the agency’s top priorities should be “reining in Big Tech.”

He has promised to hold broadcast TV and radio stations accountable, and just one hour after thanking the president for his appointment, Carr wrote on X, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.”

Since Trump’s election, Carr has gone on the attack, threatening broadcasters with enforcement actions and investigations for perceived slights against Trump and the MAGA movement. He also has an active presence on social media, and is unafraid to make his rooting interests known: Carr initially reacted to the news of ABC’s Kimmel show suspension with a celebratory dancing GIF from “The Office.” On Thursday morning, he wrote on X that he was “glad to see that many broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”

Taking on Kimmel

On Wednesday afternoon, Carr tapped into preexisting MAGA media anger about a Monday night Kimmel monologue and used a right-wing podcaster’s platform to blast Kimmel and pressure ABC’s parent company Disney.

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said.

He also pointed out that local station owners have a lot of power over ABC, since those owners choose whether to carry ABC’s national programming. “It’s time for them to step up,” Carr said.

Two big station group owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, came out publicly and criticized Kimmel after Carr’s interview garnered attention on social media sites. Both station groups told ABC they would preempt Kimmel’s show, which likely led the network to pull the show nationwide.

Crucially, both station groups also need the Trump administration’s blessing as they remake their businesses in the streaming age.

Local stations broadcast over the public airwaves, so the FCC is tasked with licensing TV and radio stations and ensuring that they’re operating in the “public interest.”

While license renewals can be a time-consuming process for stations every eight years, they’re typically not an uphill battle; the FCC hasn’t denied any license renewal in decades. “Decades of regulatory capture has made case law that strongly favors incumbent licensees,” public interest lawyer Andrew Jay Schwartzman told CNN last year.

But Trump repeatedly threatened TV license holders while campaigning for reelection, and he has continued to do so from his Oval Office desk. Carr has followed the president’s lead and opened multiple investigations into media companies that Trump dislikes.

Weaponizing the FCC

Some of Carr’s predecessors, and the one remaining Democratic FCC commissioner, Anna Gomez, have spoken out against what they view as the weaponization of the FCC.

Pro-Trump influencers, meantime, have egged Carr on. Podcaster Benny Johnson reshared his interview with Carr after ABC yanked “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and Johnson wrote, “This is what got Kimmel fired. Right here.”

Johnson continued, “It’s called soft power. The Left uses it all the time. Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield power as well.”

In this case, the power was rhetorical.

“This is what’s known as jawboning — when state actors use threats to inappropriately compel private action,” The Free Press wrote in an editorial on Thursday.

“When a network drops high-profile talent hours after the FCC chairman makes a barely veiled threat, then it’s no longer just a business decision. It’s government coercion,” the editors wrote.

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