Senate Democrats grill FCC leader over Jimmy Kimmel controversy

“You are weaponizing the public interest standard,” Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told Carr, telling the commissioner he should resign.

Carr refused to disown his comments on Kimmel and repeatedly said he has simply enforced laws that hold networks to stricter scrutiny than cable and other forms of media.

“The FCC has walked away from enforcing the public interest standard and I don’t think that’s a good thing,” Carr said.

Committee chairman Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, who previously equated Carr’s comments to those of a mobster and called them “dangerous as hell,” found a far softer stance in Wednesday’s hearing. While dismissing Kimmel as “tasteless” and “unfunny,” Cruz departed from his earlier criticism, shifting to attacks on the administration of former President Joe Biden, which Carr parroted throughout the hearing.

“Joe Biden is no longer president,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, shot back at one point.

The hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee was the first with the FCC since 2020, and also included the FCC’s two other commissioners, Olivia Trusty and Anna M. Gomez. Each commissioner delivered opening statements, with Gomez, a Biden appointee, saying that the FCC has “undermined its reputation as a stable, independent and expert-driven regulatory body.”

“Nowhere is that departure more concerning,” Gomez said, “than its actions to intimidate government critics, pressure media companies and challenge the boundaries of the First Amendment.”

Carr was nominated to the FCC by both Trump and Biden and unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times. But he has more recently shown more overtly right-wing views, writing a section on the FCC for “Project 2025,” the sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling agencies in Trump’s second term.

Since ascending to commissioner of the FCC this year, Carr has launched separate investigations of all three major broadcast networks. After Kimmel ignited controversy with comments on the killing of Kirk, an ally of Trump and leading voice of the right who was shot and killed in September, Carr said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Cruz was unflinchingly critical at the time, saying “I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

While Cruz didn't repeat those words Wednesday, they were repeatedly invoked by Democrats.

Sedensky reported from New York.