Rand Paul: FCC chair had "no business" intervening in ABC/Kimmel controversy
71 comments
·September 22, 2025Animats
jonny_eh
Tomorrow, September 23.
> Following a suspension of the show for host Jimmy Kimmel's comments about the death of Charlie Kirk, Disney says "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will return to air on Tuesday, Sept 23.
anigbrowl
Just in time for the Rapture - COINCIDENCE??!?!?!?!?!?!?!
mothballed
Streisand effect in full force. I had never heard of Kimmel nor Kirk until psychopaths tried to silence them.
reassess_blind
You'd never heard of Jimmy Kimmel?
4ndrewl
Outside the US - I'd not heard of either of them too.
cindyllm
[dead]
Esophagus4
Sigh… flagged for being off topic.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon… If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Please, all: I know it’s tempting, but let’s not turn this site into just another outrage-news discussion site.
Without commenting on the righteousness of Rand Paul’s take or the craziness of the situation under it, “Politician contributes sound-byte to current political hot topic” isn’t valuable for discussion here (in my mind).
I really don’t want to see this thoughtfully assembled and curated forum turn into Reddit/Facebook for engineers, no matter how much airtime the current hot topic is getting.
ahmeneeroe-v2
The FCC exists (in part) to enforce a certain morality on public broadcasters. Whatever we think about that today, that was a core responsibility of the FCC when it started and that still exists today.
gwd
I'd be all for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.
cjensen
The Fairness Doctrine has become an urban legend among the left with a regrettable amount of built-up legends of its power.
Whatever you think it did, it almost certainly did not do that. In practice it meant that J. Random Crazypants would be allowed to give an editorial -- sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes as 60 second after the news. Additionally the Doctrine never applied to Cable TV for obvious First Amendment reasons.
smegger001
problem is who gets to decide that both sides are bing presented fairly? do you think that Fox Newsmax and OAN are going to be under the same pressure to give the liberal viewpoint as MSNBC and CNN will to show a righting viewpoint?
koolba
> problem is who gets to decide that both sides are bing presented fairly?
There’s also more than two sides to an issue.
The supposed fairness doctrine was utter nonsense for many many reasons.
imiric
The fairness doctrine was a good thing, but it existed in a different time. Bringing it back today wouldn't address the main issue which is the internet.
When everyone is given a loudspeaker, and the power to create an audience of millions; when "journalism" is equivalent to any random opinion; when anyone with the will and a negligible amount of resources can promote their agenda... No amount of oversight can bring back balanced discussion about actual facts. Reversing a post-truth society cannot happen without radical disruptions to the system that got us here in the first place.
ahmeneeroe-v2
Yes please
TacticalCoder
[dead]
voxadam
> The FCC is barred by law from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view. The Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcast material, in most cases, and from making any regulation that would interfere with freedom of speech. Expressions of views that do not involve a “clear and present danger of serious, substantive evil” come under the protection of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press and prevents suppression of these expressions by the FCC. According to an FCC opinion on this subject, “the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views.” This principle ensures that the most diverse and opposing opinions will be expressed, even though some may be highly offensive.
Source: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/the_fcc_and_freedom_...
"Last Reviewed: 12/30/19" (Trump's first term)
ahmeneeroe-v2
Highly cherry-picked. The next paragraph says that FCC limits broadcast of indecent and profane material.
As I said, the FCC is allowed to enforce a certain morality. It seems clear that the morality being enforced would fall in line with the ruling power of the day.
voxadam
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
What part of that sentence qualifies as either indecent or profane?
null
mrandish
Yes, but the FCC has existing procedures for communicating concerns and warnings to broadcasters about possible regulatory enforcement. The new FCC chair directly addressing a specific incident off-the-cuff on a podcast and making threatening statements about FCC action against broadcasters was extremely unusual and a troubling precedent. And, to be clear, I'd say the same thing if it were the Biden admin's FCC chair issuing semi-veiled threats against Fox News.
As a separate matter, it's long been clear the FCC was created to serve a very time, context and needs - most of which either no longer exist or have changed substantially. Most media no longer travels through the limited shared resource of "airwaves". The agency's whole charter is in need of a major rethink.
lokar
Why does this need to be a federal concern? Other than the need to manage spectrum assignments at state borders, why can’t the states do all of this?
Why do California and Mississippi have to follow the same standards?
drdec
There are plenty of locales where broadcasts cross state lines. I grew up in an area where we got Boston (Massachusetts) and Providence (Rhode Island) stations. NYC stations cover three states. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples (probably involving even more than three states).
So the justification for federal intervention (interstate commerce) is there.
Of course, that doesn't prevent the feds from letting the states handle it, but it does create an incentive for some states to want the feds to handle it.
add-sub-mul-div
And the Food and Drug Administration exists in part to supervise food safety but it can't use its power to shut down Olive Garden over a culture war. What are we doing here?
ru552
*Please note, I'm not in favor of censorship, it's just that this analogy is inaccurate
Olive Garden isn't given access to something it requires to operate at the pleasure of the government. Broadcast TV on the other hand...
All of broadcast TV is allowed because the government says it is. ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX don't own the radio spectrum they are operating on, the government does and they grant the right to use it to those companies. There's a long list of things that the government requires them to do in order to keep this pleasure. One of them used to be the Saturday morning cartoons. I miss those.
ahmeneeroe-v2
not a valid analogy
nitwit005
The problem is that Trump made it clear the issue was criticism of him. For democracy to function, saying negative things about politicians has to be possible. If criticizing a sitting president isn't safe, you couldn't even safely air a presidential debate.
lenerdenator
How is Jimmy's speech immoral?
A list of words you can't say is about morality; it's a drag but at least it's objective. You either said the word or you didn't.
This is far more subjective.
ahmeneeroe-v2
Jimmy's greatest sin was being unfunny and having terrible ratings.
His second greatest was lying about Charlie Kirk's assassin.
lenerdenator
Okay, then the person he lied about can file a defamation suit. That still doesn't fall within the FCC's regulatory authority, so far as I can tell. They're not the arbiters of what is and isn't a lie; a judge or jury during the defamation trial is.
pupppet
Look at you straight-up parroting Trump's comments.
thunderfork
[dead]
suzdude
He could have said, "No comment'.
But a Project 2025 co-author felt he wanted to illegally use his position in government to silence those who he disagreed with.
platevoltage
Every other year or so, Rand Paul pretends to actually be a libertarian.
mensetmanusman
[flagged]
suzdude
The chair of the FCC said:
>What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.
Do you really want to pretend that he is no applying pressure by threatening businesses who broadcast speech he doesn't like?
cvwright
So you’re telling me that, in the past 10 years, this was the only speech on network TV that the Trump crowd didn’t like?
Kimmel got caught spreading blatant falsehood about who the shooter was. That has always been against the rules for public airwaves.
tw04
Did you have a sibling growing up? Did you ever have that sibling beat the crap out of you and tell you it'd be worse if you told mom about it?
The chair of the FCC literally threatened them in public. It doesn't matter if "ABC admitted they didn't get pressure" in some attempt to appease Trump. We all got to watch and hear it for ourselves.
blaufuchs
“He gave an answer” is comically dishonest framing, so it doesn’t matter what that answer is at all? Nice deflection at the end there, almost convinced me.
nkrisc
When you’re in a position of power, every word you utter has meaning and the weight of your authority behind it.
saubeidl
"Nice broadcast license you have there. Shame if anything happened to it"
mindslight
So presumably Rand Paul supports impeachment and conviction, right? The Supreme Council has Decreed that the only possible check on this naked corruption is impeachment by Congress, so you either support impeachment or you're just grandstanding.
nickff
If the FCC chair was the one engaged in wrong-doing (as Paul seems to believe), they would be the prime candidate for impeachment. In any case, it seems like Paul thinks that the previous administration was also engaging in censorship, and there were no impeachments in that case either, so perhaps he does not believe that censorship is a 'high crime or misdemeanor'.
xp84
I think wherever you stand on the left vs. right spectrum, it's clear now that "High crimes and misdemeanors" is now de facto defined only as "stuff we don't like that the other party's guy did." Trump could openly commit treason and probably not even be impeached ny his party, let alone removed.
But I don't for a second believe that the Democratic Party would cooperate with "their" person being impeached now either, except if it was politically advantageous for them (for instance, to remove an unpopular Democrat for an embarrassing misstep when there was a popular VP ready to go). No way would they impeach for crimes of overstepping presidential authority to do something the President from The West Wing would be proud of, for instance.
mothballed
The House has the sole power of bringing impeachment, Rand is in the Senate.
If he did the thing you ask, he would just be 'grandstanding' on something he has no vote to bring forward, which your statement would appear to damn him for.
anonymars
This splits hairs. He can still support it, or not. And the message says "supports impeachment and conviction"
mothballed
I find it odd to blame the impeachment situation on Rand when the ball is in the court of the House. You can have an opinion on something that other people have the control over, but it's not particularly damning if you don't spend your time doing so, given many constituents would probably prefer their senators spend their time on issues they can actually tackle in the senate.
>"supports impeachment and conviction"
As it stands now, Rand has no vote on any impeachment conviction and no ability to bring one, so I don't see the point in asterisking on the "and conviction" as it doesn't change the situation beyond shoehorning a connived reason in to blame Rand for not making a public statement on the non-existent impeachment.
stretchwithme
In a free market, the spectrum would be private property.
null
ahmeneeroe-v2
Tautology.
SilverElfin
But they didn’t intervene. He made a statement indicating they’d look into it. Action from FCC would require the commissioners to vote. Not just a unilateral choice by the chair.
There is also some allowance for the FCC to regulate content under some circumstances, and it has been upheld as constitutional previously. Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, rejected doing anything about online content because it would be unconstitutional.
In spirit I don’t think government or large companies should be moderating or censoring speech. But Rand Paul should be focusing on the precedence of FCC being able to regulate things like “obscenity”.
willmarch
On these reported facts, this looks like unconstitutional government-induced censorship. A court applying Vullo, Backpage, and Bantam Books would likely view the official’s statements as coercive retaliation for protected speech.
stretchwithme
You mean like FCC fining people over Janet Jackson's boob?
You have freedom of the press, when you own a press. But the spectrum is not owned by the licensees. There are rules. Limits.
I am not for government owning the spectrum. But that's the current situation.
willmarch
Broadcast indecency rules (like those for a wardrobe malfunction) are a narrow exception and don’t authorize the government to punish political viewpoints; even on publicly licensed spectrum, officials can’t wield licensing power as a cudgel against disfavored speech, because the 1st Amendment forbids it.
null
xnx
The Supreme Court decision in NRA v. Vullo (2024) states that a government actor can't threaten legal action unless content is removed by a social media platform (or a TV network in this case).
Sparkle-san
He didn't intervene in the say way that a mobster doesn't make threats when he states "nice place you got here, be a shame if something were to happen to it."
legitster
The problem isn't limited to the FCC in this case. The FCC doesn't actually have to act - it could be someone in the SEC, it could be the DOJ, or (as we have learned) it can literally be about bags of cash.
The FCC chair's statement was a bit of an indirect threat ("Pity if someone looked into your affiliates licenses"). But the timing makes it clear they were at least aware of and complicit in the backroom dealings that led to the show being taken off the air.
potato3732842
There's a different between making a threat and posing a threat. The reason we're having this discussion at all is because we've vested too much power in bureaucracies that have too much discretion in how they use it.
tw04
No, the reason we're having this discussion is because the current Supreme Court doesn't seem to actually be interested in precedence or existing law, just saying yes to whatever whim Trump has this week.
Under any normally functioning government, the head of the FCC would never threaten a television station because it's both an obvious violation of the first amendment, and under literally any other administration would have resulted in immediate dismissal.
eesmith
Did the FCC intervene in any sort of regulatory sense? No, that would be the "hard way", which didn't happen.
Did FCC chair Carr use the threat of regulatory power to intervene in internal business at ABC? Getting ABC to obey in advance sure seems like the implied "easy way."
Both fit the first definition of "intervene" at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intervene - "To become involved in a situation, so as to alter or prevent an action"
b0sk
There's actually a word for it - jawboning
Kimmel will be back on the air next week.[1]
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/09/22/j...