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It's another not especially beautiful week in the neighborhood, another week in which a spotlight is shone on President Donald Trump's unsubtle use of executive power to retaliate against critics and opponents, and to intimidate into submission those who might criticize or oppose him. Last week's lawsuit by the American Broadcasting Company against the Federal Communications Commission highlighted just how unsubtle Trump and those required to obey him have gotten -- and we're not even halfway through his second term.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has made clear that he does what Trump tells him to do, and Trump has made clear that he expects Carr to do it. In April, one day after Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he'd told, the FCC ordered that ABC's eight stations submit to early license renewal review. This was no small deal: None of the eight stations were due to renew their licenses until after Trump leaves office, and six of the eight were not due to come up until 2030 or later.

ABC claims that this was retaliation for what Trump feels is insufficiently supine journalistic coverage of him. The FCC responds that this is the silliest thing it's ever heard since the last time Trump denied retaliating against his critics. Suffice it to say that the evidence supporting ABC's lawsuit is not exactly paltry. For example:

-- After ABC hosts moderated the debate between Trump and Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump pronounced its fact-checking of him "corrupt" and "rigged," and proclaimed that the FCC "ought to take away its license." He has continued to call for the revocation of ABC's license ever since.

-- After Jimmy Kimmel made one joke too many in Team Trump's view in April 2025, FCC Chairman Carr channeled Don Corleone. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," he warned ever-so-elegantly. "(ABC and its corporate partners) can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

-- After ABC temporarily suspended Kimmel and then reinstated him, Carr's boss, the president of the United States, posted "I can't believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. ... I think we're going to test ABC on this. Let's see how we do."

-- On Aug. 24, 2025, Trump posted this about ABC and NBC: "They should have their licenses revoked for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives."

-- On Nov. 18, 2025, he lectured an ABC reporter, saying that "I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is fake."

-- On Dec. 28, 2025, our North Korean leader-wannabe posted "If Network NEWSCASTS and their Late Night shows are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party, shouldn't their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say, YES!!"

-- This past July, after ABC declined to preempt its broadcast network programming to air Trump's hooey-packed national address regurgitating his discredited nonsense about election fraud, a decision joined by NBC, Trump said this: "NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. ... This should mean a revocation of their license."

It's been a half-century since the FCC ordered a television station to suddenly justify renewal of its license ahead of schedule. Here, the FCC has ordered the ABC stations to come before it years ahead of schedule, so that the Trump administration, instead of a successor administration, can decide whether ABC can continue to broadcast.

What this is, obviously, is a fastball with spikes thrown at ABC's head, and at the media's head more generally, as any judge playing it straight should be able to discern. "If the Administration gets its way," ABC's lawyers state in their lawsuit, based on the First Amendment, "the message to every media company in the country will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government. In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free."

The judge assigned to the case has scheduled a hearing on ABC's request for emergency relief this fall. Let us hope that she sends the administration the message that while this kind of conduct is fine in Putin's Russia, it is abhorrent here.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

Copyright 2026 Creators Syndicate Inc.