If it feels like the Federal Communications Commission has gotten more press in the past 18 months than it got in the previous nine decades, you can thank Brendan Carr. President Donald Trump<\/a> named Carr, a longtime FCC commissioner and a Project 2025 contributor, as FCC chairman in November 2024. And since then, Carr has been using enforcement actions, official letters and statements, and even a podcast interview to reshape the media landscape.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, critics \u2014 including some within the FCC\u2019s own ranks \u2014 have accused Carr of bullying media companies into bowing to conservative policy goals. \u201cThe goal is to get companies to capitulate in advance, to the point where the FCC or the administration doesn\u2019t even need to speak,\u201d FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez told Politico<\/a> in September 2025. \u201cIt\u2019s the process that\u2019s the point. It\u2019s the threats that are the point.\u201d<\/p>\n And Ari Cohn, lead tech counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told Poltico\u2019s Digital Future Daily<\/a> newsletter that same month that the Carr-era FCC is using \u201cwhatever regulatory tools [it] has laying around at its disposal to punish speech with which the [Trump] administration disagrees.\u201d<\/p>\n Here are five ways Carr has been wielding those tools.<\/p>\n Carr has been drawing unprecedented lines around which TV shows are news programs and which aren\u2019t, as Politico reported. He applied an FCC rule about \u201cnews distortion\u201d to both 60 Minutes<\/a><\/em> for a Kamala Harris<\/a> interview \u2014 before Paramount paid Trump $16 million<\/a> to settle a lawsuit over the same segment \u2014 and, controversially, to Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/a><\/em> \u2014 after host Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> made divisive quotes about the Charlie Kirk killing<\/a>. Carr also threatened federal action against ABC affiliates who carried Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/em>, even going so far as to say, \u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way,\u201d per NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n The FCC chair has also been casting skepticism<\/a> that The View<\/a><\/em> qualifies as a news interview show exempt from the equal-time regulations that require competing candidates to have the same access to broadcast TV during an election, according to Politico. And recently, this February, Stephen Colbert<\/a> blamed CBS lawyers\u2019 interpretation of the FCC\u2019s equal-time guidance<\/a> for the cancellation of a Late Show<\/a><\/em> interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico. In the same monologue<\/a>, Colbert called out a January 2026 letter in which Carr considered dropping equal-time exemptions for talk shows he considered \u201cmotivated by partisan purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n1. Threatening broadcasters through equal-time and news-distortion rules<\/h2>\n