The FCC ordered a review of ABC’s licenses after Kimmel’s jokes offended Trump and the first lady

The noise is on Kimmel joke in a game where he pretended to be serving toast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Our first lady, Melania, is here… So beautiful, Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of a pregnant widow,” Kimmel said. Kimmel also claimed in his grilling that Trump and his wife were introduced by Jeffrey Epstein.

ABC has eight television stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, and Fresno. The stations’ licenses are scheduled to be renewed between 2028 and 2031, a Disney spokesperson told Ars today.

“ABC and its stations have a long history of operating in compliance with FCC rules and serving their communities with reliable news, emergency information, and community-oriented programming,” Disney said in a statement provided to Ars. “We are confident that the record demonstrates our continued eligibility as a licensee under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and we are prepared to demonstrate this through the appropriate channels.”

“Retribution for jokes that Donald Trump didn’t like”

Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner of the FCC, said today that the investigation of Disney “is the worst action that the FCC has done against the First Amendment to date. This should be a lesson to the media companies that no submission to these regulators will buy them protection.

The press freedom group Free Press said the demand for license renewal was “a very rare threat.” Free Press Director Jessica J. González said, “Carr is trying to dress up the latest move as a legitimate FCC strategy, but his intentions are clear. He’s using his position to block dissenters from the president’s agenda…