(Bloomberg) — Democratic lawmakers are calling for Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to resign for a “corrupt abuse of power” after Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network announced it’s taking late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air indefinitely.
The decision to pull his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, came amid conservative backlash to remarks Kimmel made about the killing of Republican activist Charlie Kirk.
“Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s war on the First Amendment is blatantly inconsistent with American values,” said House Democratic leaders, including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a statement on Thursday. “Media companies, such as the one that suspended Mr. Kimmel, have a lot to explain.”
Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate and so they have little ability to force Carr’s resignation.
ABC made the decision after Carr threatened to take action against Kimmel, ABC and Disney. The FCC grants licenses to broadcasters such as ABC and its affiliates.
Carr “has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC, the employer of Jimmy Kimmel, and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration,” Democrats said in their statement.
Carr in a post on X said he was glad “broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”
“Nothing he said justifies what they did,” said Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “In fact, if you look at what the president says, maybe he should be silenced.”
Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, the top Democrat on the subcommittee that funds the FCC, said the agency had overreached its authority in the Kimmel case.
“It’s a just terrible place we are in where broadcasters and others are being subjected to the power of government to make decisions that the government wants to take it,” he said on Thursday.
Kimmel, one of the most visible Trump critics on television, was kicked off the air after he accused Republicans of using Kirk’s death to criticize their opponents.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said in his Sept. 15 monologue.
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