By Dawn Chmielewski, David Shepardson and Trevor Hunnicutt
LOS ANGELES, April 28 (Reuters) – After a joke by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel drew calls from the White House for ABC to fire the comedian, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday ordered an early license review of the network’s television stations.
The dramatic escalation by the FCC and standoff between President Donald Trump’s administration and the global entertainment conglomerate is the first crisis facing Walt Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro.
Last Thursday, Kimmel, whose late-night TV program airs on Disney’s ABC, did a send-up of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, joking that First Lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”
The joke was made three days before the actual black-tie dinner, celebrating press freedom and free speech, in Washington. The president and first lady were rushed from the dinner following an assassination attempt.
The FCC ordered Disney to respond by May 28.
Disney said it had received the FCC order and said it has “a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming.” The company added it is “prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels.”
The stations are located in Fresno, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Houston and Durham, North Carolina.
On Monday, the Trumps called for ABC to fire Kimmel, the latest incident of the White House pushing back on free speech that has roiled the world of late-night comedy. It has again placed Disney at the center of a battle among media owners, regulators and political leaders in a highly charged political environment.
During his monologue on Monday night’s show, Kimmel said the “expectant widow” comment “obviously was a joke about their age difference,” that had been misconstrued. Trump will be 80 in June, and his wife turned 56 this month.
“It was not by any stretch of the definition a call for assassination,” Kimmel said.
Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of advocacy group Free Press, called the FCC action illegitimate. “He is using his position of power to silence dissent at the president’s beck and call,” Gonzalez said. “This extraordinary and unconstitutional attack on the media is nothing more than another favor to the most fragile president in U.S. history.”
Actress Jane Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment, a group whose members include actors, writers, journalists and others in the entertainment industry, urged Disney to defy the Trump administration’s call to fire Kimmel.
“In America, satire is not a crime. The right to mock, to challenge, and yes, to offend those in power, is foundational to democracy,” the group wrote in a statement.
Steven Cheung, White House communications director, kept the pressure up, accusing Kimmel of “making a disgusting joke about assassinating the President” and “doubling down on that joke instead of doing the decent thing by apologizing,” in a post on X.
The FCC ordered early reviews of eight Disney-owned ABC stations, a sharp escalation of the administration’s fight with major media outlets. The reviews could lead to the FCC seeking to revoke the stations’ licenses to use the broadcast airwaves.
D’Amaro, who became Disney CEO in March, must decide how to respond to the mounting pressure to fire Kimmel.
A Disney spokesman could not be reached for comment about Kimmel, who survived a previous call for ABC to fire him.
The first lady’s close outside advisor, Marc Beckman, said ABC should fire the late-night host, “who for months and months is spewing vile political rhetoric … into the homes of Americans across the country?”
In September 2025, the head of the FCC pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air. ABC briefly suspended Kimmel’s show that month over comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Past White House Correspondents’ Dinner controversies have often centered on comedians pushing the event’s traditional roast format too far for some attendees. Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers faced criticism for their stinging remarks. This year’s event was to feature mentalist Oz Pearlman, not a comedian.
In 2018, Trump administration officials protested comedian Michelle Wolf’s roast of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Trump himself has declined to attend most dinners held during his presidency.
In recent years, the dinner’s organizers have opted to choose entertainers other than comedians for the dinner, including the historian Ron Chernow in 2019.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles, David Shepardson and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; with additional reporting by Bo Erickson in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio and Anna Driver)
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