The FCC, which controls the licenses of broadcasters, is an independent agency required by law to operate in the public interest, immune from day-to-day political pressures from a president or other elected officials. Yet Trump has taken multiple steps to put independent agencies under his control, including by issuing an executive order requiring them to report directly to the White House Office of Management and Budget and firing several independent agency leaders without cause. As discussed below, Carr, elevated to the FCC chairmanship by Trump, is now using the regulatory process against certain licensees in unprecedented ways that reflect Trump’s direct requests—including against the CBS network and its long-running news program “60 Minutes.” Government threats and retribution against the media are favorite tools of authoritarians abroad, and without a course correction, these tools threaten media independence in the United States.
Executive branch crackdowns on the media endanger democracy
In the first three months of the second Trump administration, the FCC has initiated investigations and inquiries that use the agency’s broad regulatory powers against news organizations that Trump has long criticized, often for their protected editorial decisions. These actions are not in the public interest, as required by the FCC’s governing law passed by Congress.
Ongoing events regarding CBS and its parent company Paramount Global (Paramount) illustrate the troubling actions that the Trump administration and Carr are taking. The timeline below shows how the Trump administration is using threats, demands, and a private lawsuit against CBS to allege that CBS illegally tried to sway the 2024 election against him via fraud and other means, actions that Carr is reinforcing via FCC regulatory processes:
- July 7, 2024: Paramount announces an $8 billion deal to merge with media conglomerate Skydance Media; the deal requires FCC regulatory approval because of transfers of underlying broadcast licenses.
- October 31, 2024: Trump, in his personal capacity, files a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS, claiming its “60 Minutes” program deceptively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to hurt his election chances. Trump later amends the suit to add Paramount as a party and doubles requested damages to $20 billion. Many experts call the suit “baseless,” and Paramount/CBS move to dismiss the suit as “an affront to the First Amendment,” claiming that the network was exercising its independent editorial decisions about how to present interviews.
- January 22, 2025: Carr reopens an FCC investigation into whether “60 Minutes” illegally distorted the news in the Harris interview, an inquiry that had been dismissed days earlier under Carr’s predecessor. Carr says that this news distortion investigation, as well as the ongoing Trump lawsuit, are relevant to the pending merger review. In response, Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez states, “we cannot allow our licensing authority to be weaponized to curtail freedom of the press.”
- February 6, 2025: Trump inserts himself into the FCC’s independent regulatory decision-making, calling for CBS to lose its FCC licenses, and claims that the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris “will go down as the biggest Broadcasting SCANDAL in History.”
- February 8, 2025: Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, reportedly asks her lawyers to settle the Trump lawsuit to increase the chances of FCC merger approval. She also reportedly “expresse[s] dismay” over “60 Minutes” stories that were critical of Trump. Days later, The Wall Street Journal reports that Paramount executives discussed the risk that paying a settlement in the Trump lawsuit “could expose directors and officers to liability in potential future shareholder litigation or criminal charges for bribing a public official.”
- March 21, 2025: Carr says he is prepared to block any mergers involving companies that continue to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies—which the Trump administration is trying to eradicate—specifically citing the proposed Paramount merger.
- April 2025: “60 Minutes” again airs a report that angers Trump, who says CBS should “lose their license … for their unlawful and illegal behavior.” Days later, in an extraordinary move, the longtime executive producer of “60 Minutes” resigns, saying he no longer has journalistic independence. A top “60 Minutes” reporter, Scott Pelley, confirms in an on-air statement about the resignation that “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.” With Paramount entering mediation with Trump to explore resolution of the lawsuit, Carr says on April 28 that “all options remain on the table” while the agency continues its investigation of CBS and review of the proposed merger.
This series of events raises troubling questions about how an independent agency can misuse regulatory powers—which are meant to be exercised in the public interest—in politicized ways. At root, the interrelated actions of Trump and the FCC appear to be harnessing the immense power of the government to shape what media organizations report to the American people. Former FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel warned that the agency should not act as “the president’s speech police [and] should not be journalism’s censor-in-chief.”
Notable conservatives and libertarians have reached similar conclusions:
- Clay Calvert of the American Enterprise Institute wrote, “the personal interests of a private litigant (the president) are now deeply entangled with the investigatory and enforcement powers a federal regulatory agency whose leader (Carr) the private litigant promoted. Trump views his personal interest as concomitant with the statutory public interest, and Carr might make such coalescence a reality.”
- Walter Olson of the Cato Institute observed that “Trump is holding his related lawsuit over the head of CBS’s parent company” at the same time Carr is pursuing “speech-chilling” actions against CBS.
- The Wall Street Journal editorial board stated, “Trump clearly wants to intimidate the press, and it’s no credit to the FCC to see it reinforcing that with an inquiry.”
Aside from its actions regarding CBS, the FCC is using multiple other regulatory tools to effectuate the Trump administration’s agenda, further pushing the boundaries of existing laws and constitutional rights. For example, Carr has targeted several mainstream media companies, including NBC (owned by Comcast) and ABC (owned by Disney), in attempts “to root out allegations of left-leaning bias” and policies disfavored by the president, such as DEI initiatives. And as Trump issued an executive order terminating funding for NPR and PBS, and Congress is trying to defund the two broadcasters at Trump’s urging, Carr is investigating those entities for potentially violating underwriting rules, another move denounced as meritless by two FCC commissioners. Moreover, the FCC is investigating San Francisco-based radio station KCBS for broadcasting information about an immigration raid, which experts, including at the Cato Institute, have said falls under protected speech. KCBS is owned by Audacy, whose majority stakeholder is George Soros, a frequent target of far-right attacks.
At the same time, Trump has broken with long-standing precedent, allowing his White House staff to control which media outlets can attend press briefings, which resulted in barring the Associated Press (AP) from attending several briefings after it refused to use Trump’s preferred language “Gulf of America.” A judge ultimately ruled that the AP could not be refused access for this reason. Trump himself has a long history of threatening or initiating lawsuits against news entities, many of which he has called “Fake News” or “enemies of the people” after they covered him in ways he seemingly found unfair, including by merely publishing unflattering polls.
Attacks against the press can instill fear in media companies or cause them to capitulate. In one example, ABC News decided immediately after the 2024 presidential election “to settle a multimillion dollar defamation lawsuit brought by Trump, even though the company had a strong legal defense.”
Conclusion: Maintaining America’s free press
As the Center for American Progress has written, President Trump and his administration are assailing multiple parts of civil society and the media, perhaps out of retribution or to weaken entities they believe are left leaning. The practices of Trump and the FCC—including seemingly ignoring established legal processes and aggregating power—could transform the press from a vigilant watchdog into a weakened lapdog.
Yet there are paths to help ensure that the press can fully inform the American people. For example, media companies can stand strong and oppose inappropriate or illegal pressure from the Trump administration and the FCC, following the lead of some law firms, universities, and nonprofits. Media companies would be on solid First Amendment footing if they were to challenge some of the FCC’s regulatory overreaches on, for example, alleged news distortion. Moreover, ongoing litigation contesting the Trump administration’s attempts to control independent agency decision-making could result in favorable decisions that protect the public interest. Finally, Americans can exercise their own First Amendment rights by, for example, engaging in public protest or with their elected representatives.
The coming months will determine the future of the American free press, which, for more than 250 years, has helped provide a critical bulwark to protect democracy.